meowpox

Love this topic. We value our employees at the same level as our customers and try to have that show through their pay. It's been rocky trying to figure out what will work and still looking for solutions so Im glad I now have a forum of people that are going through this! Initially, they were paid commission only. But as others said here, it is so up and down, esp when big project cars come in. I can understand the feeling of working hard all week but seeing a low paycheck (even though they'll see it on the next). And also, they keep the shop clean and talk to customers, etc. So, we started paying them hourly base + bonus (if they do a certain amount of hours working on a car, they start earning a larger commission per hr worked). Adding the hourly base helped in terms of making it a little more stable, but its still rough. We are thinking of removing that threshold # of hours to start earning the bonus. Salary is definitely in the future though.

We use Google calendar which is shared with all our techs, but don't let customers book themselves because we do all types of jobs/repairs and don't always put the time right on google calendar (by that, i mean, if a job takes 3 hours, we dont put it on calendar as that---maybe we should though) We just put name, car and job to be performed and then customers phone number in the description.

We thought about whiteboard but still havent used it. I think it would be a nice addition to what we already do (below) because it would be a better visual, but ended up being too repetitive. We use Google Calendar for the appts, and all 4 of our techs have their own company email so we share that calendar so they can all see it. As for daily tasks, they usually know what they need to do...but then again, we are small. We did try Google Keep to list all tasks daily and shared it but it seemed unnecessary and time consuming to do it everyday so we stopped.

1) Be clean yourself. Me and my significant other (owner) keep the shop and office immaculate. This means customers get amazed by it. Which also means the techs feel like they need to be clean as well because if it gets even a tad bit dirty, it will stand out. When customers bring up the fact that the shop is so clean and the employees hear this often, they will feel like wow, I work for a shop that impresses people....this will give them more reason to be clean. 2) For messes shared like the bathroom, we take turns and have a schedule. This is still hard and a work in progress because people forget or get stuck on cars. 3) For pay, they are paid hourly plus bonus for completed jobs. So even though they are not working on a car, they will still be paid for their time there in which they can use to clean or research, etc.

Hello all! New to the forum but would like to chime in. Our shop has only been open for a year but we do alright. Here is my advice on what I am finding to be the most important, most of which are marketing (an aspect most shops neglect): 1) Logo and Branding - our logo was professionally designed to look modern yet sophisticated and will stick longer in a person's head. Our shop walls also match the color and all of our documents have our logo. We were lucky that my cousin is a graphic designer so didn't spend much on this but I know there are a lot of reasonably priced designers out there. We get so many compliments on our logo/branding....which means so many customers want stickers, windshield banners, shirts, etc...its all advertisement and then people will start to hear about your shop from random places and remember seeing that logo. 2) Updated Website - I see a lot of auto shops that have very outdated looking websites. However, websites are usually the 2nd thing new customers will look at when they find you on yelp or Facebook first. We use our website to showcase our shop, lobby/office, let customers request appointments and quotes. We get most of our appointment requests via our website, which is awesome because it gives us time to come up with accurate quotes. Also use our website to show what events we're going to, post blogs of photos of past events, show all of our pricing, show our bios and photos of us. I find that people like transparency....there are reasonably priced sites that have beautiful templates: Wix, Squarespace, Shopify. 3) Clean & organized shop - First thing new customers say when they walk in is wow, your shop is clean. We make sure we set time each day to clean and organize. Our clean floors make any photo of our shop look great. Customers think if we take care of our space like this, we take care of the cars as well. Also our office is modern with plants, TV with Roku, Wifi, coffee machine, free snacks, car books to read, phone charging station, we bought a cheap counter top and brackets from IKEA to put by the window so that customers can work on their laptop while look into the shop. 4) Social Media - we are very active in social media and we dont spend a dime on it. Instagram: great for photos, and tagging...just had a new customer come in today and said he found out about us on Instagram (tagging works!) Facebook: we get a lot of engagement here. Post photos of cars we're working on, blog entries that link to our website, events that we are going to, we message customers here if they do that to us first. We tend to get a lot more likes when we are more personable, show them that we are humans 5) Network like crazy - we go to a lot of events, and we host a lot of events/BBQs as well. We work on a lot of track cars, so we go to the track a lot. We paid about $1k for a canopy, large flag, and tablecloth with our logo on it. That was kinda pricey but it made its money back. A lot of people say they knew about us first because they saw us at the track. Some people walk up to us just to ask what we do. So even though we're there to have fun and track our cars, we are still advertising. If not track, we go to meets, drives, car shows. 6) Treat everyone (including vendors and other shops) with respect, regardless of the car they drive or how much money they spend at your shop. One customer said he comes back because he gets better vibes from us than any other shop. Another customer tried to tell us we should try to takeover another shop's customer base and we replied that we're not about that, and we are all just car enthusiasts trying to make a living--there are enough cars to go around--that customer replied well, thats why i love coming to you guys. Always stay humble, never bad-mouth anyone and people will always remember that. Hope that helps!