For collision, hail repair and dent repair shops
The car's in the bay. The customer wants to know when it's coming out.
Status calls, insurer calls and storm-week estimate requests all land on the same phone. None of that should pull you out of the bay.
Get a diagnosticSound familiar?
Hail hits on Tuesday. By Friday you're twenty estimates behind.
Your office is working 14-hour days just to get everybody answers.
A customer's been calling every week asking when their car will be ready.
The insurer wrote it low, and the supplement's been sitting for 25 days.
They said there were ten dents. There are three hundred.
Rental coverage is running out, and the customer wants to know why the car's still here.
After the storm, there are banners on every corner and salesmen at every door, all promising to cover the deductible. Drivers don't know who to trust.
A customer paying out of pocket called around. Most shops wouldn't even look at the car.
If that's your busy season, keep reading.
Whatever comes in, the customer wants an update.
Collision repair.
Insurance claims, supplements, parts delays and the calls in between.
Hail repair.
Storm weeks, insurer estimates, rentals and a lot full of hail cars.
Retail dent repair.
Door dings and creases, quoted from photos that never show the whole story.
Customer-pay work.
The out-of-pocket jobs other shops turn away.
What changes when the systems actually work.
The phone gets answered.
A storm-week estimate or a customer checking on their car: every call gets a real answer and a next step.
It's set up the way your best office person would answer: your service area, what you fix and don't, which insurers you work with, and how to send photos for an estimate. Anything it shouldn't decide comes to you.
Customers hear where their car stands.
Parts, supplements and the finish date go out as updates, so nobody's calling every week to ask.
Every estimate gets followed up.
The customer who got a cash or hail estimate and went quiet hears from you next week, and again after that.
Past customers hear from you again.
When the next storm hits, after the next fender bender, or when a neighbor asks who fixed theirs, they still have your number.
Dealers and agents keep sending work.
The dealers, mechanics and insurance agents who send you cars hear from you every so often, so yours is the name they give out.
None of it waits on you.
Calls, follow-ups and updates keep moving while you're in the bay, under a hail light, or home for dinner.
How it works for your company.
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Map how calls, estimates, status updates and follow-ups actually flow today. Who answers when you're in the bay, what happens after an estimate, which customers are waiting on an update, which past customers haven't heard from you.
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Work with the tools you already have (your CRM or spreadsheet, your phone), so nothing depends on you remembering or being in the office.
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Then the numbers show up. More calls answered, more estimates followed up, more cars in the bay, and less of it depending on you.
Been burned before?
You've probably paid for worthless leads, the kind where nobody ever picks up, and maybe for software nobody on the crew uses.
It starts with a diagnostic, same as an estimate. Find what's actually wrong before anyone quotes the fix.
Nothing new for your crew to learn unless it makes their day easier. It's built on the tools you already pay for.
Questions owners ask before they call.
I already have a CRM (or a spreadsheet).
Keep it. The build makes sure the call you missed in the bay and the estimate that never got a second follow-up end up in the system you already use.
Won't automated follow-up make us look like the pushy companies?
Only if it reads like a sales pitch. Yours goes out in your words, on your schedule, and you approve what it says before anything is sent. A customer who asked for time to think it over is expecting to hear from you.
What about having AI answer my phone?
It handles the routine: taking the details, finding out what's going on, setting up a next step. The rules come from you, so a customer checking on their car doesn't get treated like a new hail estimate. Anything it shouldn't decide goes to you.
Won't customers know it's not a person?
Some will. Most just want to know when they can bring the car in. A customer who gets a next step is still your customer. One who gets your voicemail is calling the next company.
What does it cost?
Depends on what's broken. Every engagement starts with a diagnostic, so the price fits what your company actually needs, not a guess.
Every customer wants to know where their car is. Tell them before they call.
Find out where your calls and estimates are getting lost.
No obligation. No slide deck. Thirty minutes on where the revenue's leaking, whether we work together or not.