mspecperformance

mmotley, the important part is not the web design which is subjective to a person's taste but rather it is that they optimize their sites for search engines and are constantly monitoring and adjusting their sites to make your site the most searched site for auto repair in your area. Anyone can make you a fantastic looking website, making it work for you and getting customers through the door is something else. Your website is a tool to get customers through the door, if its not working for you 24/7, if people are not visiting your site and opting in for appointments or calling your shop via your website then its worthless to you.

mmotley, CL and KuKui are really very different. Think of it this way... CL is a shop that only offers brakes and oil changes while KuKui is a full service one stop shop. I don't want to sound mean and compare CL with a bottom feeder shop but KuKui is much more than Customer Retention, they are a NEW CUSTOMER marketing service.

mmotley, As to my knowledge CustomerLink is a CRM program meaning it does the e-mail marketing, customer retention through e-mails and texts, appointment reminders through e-mail and text etc. CRM is also a portion of KuKui's service. They have a part were e-mail reminders, appointments, marketing campaigns can be done. That is really only a small percentage of what they do. What you are really paying for is their internet marketing and their numbers tracking. They build a full website for you and optimize everything for SEO. They also budget $200 per month for Google Adwords. They assign tracking phone numbers (different phone numbers that still link to your main line) to every internet marketing avenue (website, yelp, google+, direct mailers if you do them, facebook, e-mail campaigns etc) so you can actually see real results. All this data is collected and presented on their control panel which is web based. This allows you to actually track how well your marketing efforts are. This is real data and real numbers. Its much different from every other service out that I know of. I heard it i is likened to something the dealer network uses. I would check out their site and get some info from a rep before you pass judgement. I like it so far, its a hefty ransom but it works for me.

Everyone is hostile here in NYC. Its a terrible thing, I much rather be around people outside of this city. Its a huge plus if you can come across genuine and knowledgeable since a lot of people deal with shadiness with every aspect of their daily lives here.

Jeff, I definitely think it has a lot to do with region, population etc. In a large metro area, everyone is on their phones looking at review sites etc so it definitely works a lot better for shops in big cities.

Hit the marketing hard, focus on customer service! Good luck!!!

Lovely to get a ton of brake jobs at the dealer!

Years ago one of my competitors thought it would be a good idea to offer a free oil change to the first 10 cars on a given day. I believe the special was advertised on BMW enthusiast forums. I am not sure of what the outcome was ultimately, I do know a few of those people were acquaintances/customers of mine that said they literally waited an hour outside of this shop for a free oil change and wanted nothing else. I could never get myself to do such things.

What I find lacking is the speed of a lot of scan tools. We have an Autel that we use to scan everything other than Euros. We use a VAG Com for Audi/Volkswagen and autologic for BMW and mercedes. The autologic has fast boot up times, it take a few minutes to set the lap top up and the autel is SLOWWW.

If you'd don't do enough volume to justify a lathe I completely understand. It will get to a point (hopefully) that you will be selling enough brake jobs to warrant not going through the hassle and wasted time of taking rotors to another shop and losing out on that money.

I think as shop owners you have to wear many hats and you have to be able to see the shop in every different perspective (customer, tech, service writer, supplier and owner). I don't necessarily see anything wrong with hearing the thoughts an opinions of those who work at a shop rather than own it. It gives another point of view in which maybe we as shop owners did not realize. Being the owner or the boss affords us the opportunity to be more open minded IMHO.

Slightly off topic even though I am so farrrr from being a facebook expert (very much a novice!) I have seen a huge difference in impression numbers and general participation with videos over photos. We post "This is what a bad X looks like" videos and just goofy videos all together. They seem to get a lot of interest. Next will be to post some more edited and informative videos for FB and Youtube.

We are covering our monthly ransom with the service which is great I have seen a huge boost in customers coming and saying, "I found you on the web, you have great reviews!" when Kukui took over opposed to when I had DemandForce but to be fair I only had DF working for about 2 months before the poop hit the wall with that garbage company. Customer service has been great so far, I hope they improve their CRM portion, that seems like it could use a little more work but I am not complaining!

ADealerTech, Thanks a lot for your input. Its great to read constructive information from the other side of the coin. Phynny, I think you should take it easy on the techs on the board. The ones like ADealerTech are only trying to help. Lets all get a long!

Dustin, can I give you a ring on Monday? Best time to call? Or does private msg over ASO work better?

Dustin, thanks again. I will speak to my NAPA rep about it on Monday. I hear they have a decent deal on these bad boys.

Thanks Dustin will do! I've been looking at the Pro Cut a bit more closely, I had a customer recently with a stoptech big brake kit. Has some weird wear on his rotors due to him not driving the car very often. Those rotors are probably in the $400+ range. Got me thinking about an On Car Lathe. I have always debated on how to set apart our brake service from the rest of the competition. We are a German Specialty shop so most of the services we provide are catered toward those car makes and customer generally know they can't get the same service elsewhere even at the dealer sometimes. Brakes on the other hand I've always debated on how to sell since a lot of franchise shops offer crazy deals as well as other chain stores. I know for a fact no one in my area does Rotor Matching and if what is advertised is true, if I can put of a better job and ensure no comebacks and 100% satisfaction I am very much interested.

Hey Dustin, wondering if you could give some insight on a few things. What is your hourly rate? Trying to get an idea of what I can charge for a cut rotor. Do you charge more for cross drilled/slotted rotors? How long does it take to perform the service per side? Have you had an difficulties or problems initializing the system and getting the job done? How often are there other issues that cause problems such as wheel bearings?

For those who have an on car brake lathe, how much labor do you charge to cut a rotor and how much average time is spent? I can see the value in adding a few bucks to a job where the customer doesn't want new rotors and the old ones are salvageable.

Do you have actual numbers on how many brake jobs are sold? What car makes and models? Average time you wait for deliveries? What your expected turn over rate is on stocked parts?

Sorry to hear Jeff! The northeast has been pretty cold this January. Things slow down when it gets cold and work flow takes a hit especially the first part of January when I had no gas for my heaters. Things have been ok so far thank god. Good luck guys.

We have been signed up with Kukui for 2-3 months. Has been working well for us. The price is steep but I feel I get what I need out of their service opposed to DemandForce. The customer service at Kukui has been far greater than DemandForce.

Customer brings vehicle in after had just fixed his climate control problem (bad heater valve). About a week later his concern is that he is leaking a lot of oil. He was previously leaking oil but got tremendously worse in only a few days. He did not blame us for it but wanted to get the leak fixed. We diagnose the issue to be his valve cover gaskets and upper timing case cover gaskets. The vehicle is a 2008 4.8L x5. The engines in this car is crammed into the engine bay so visibility is very poor. I spoke to the customer and I told him we were confident they are leaking however there may be another leak. The job was rather expensive and is a tough job to do but the customer authorized. Fast forward to the job being done, we are still getting a massive oil leak. The gaskets we replaced were definitely leaking no question however it seems the oil leak in question is coming from sort of distribution block on the side of the engine block in the middle of the engine that you can only see through a small opening from the bottom of the vehicle. Due to the location of the leak, it would not have been determined if we did not do the timing case cover gaskets and valve cover gaskets as we would have probably still singled out those parts. I try my best to explain to customer that oil leaks happen from top to bottom and in cases where the engine is soaked on a whole side of the engine we can't rule out multiple leak points. The fix is looking to be a time consuming one. How would you guys break the news to the customer? How would you charge? The customer's budget is already stretched and I feel terrible as we were very confident that was the cause of the major leak.

Its amazing how stupid people are. Then you bang yourself in the head because you hired them! I've been there, not with stolen money but stolen tools/parts and owed money. Let an employee borrow money and let him also slide on not paying back for damaged property. Ended up getting rid of him and holding the bag for about $2000 worth of money/property. Small price to pay to get the POS out.

wowww that sounds terrible Scott.