Quick Tips to Reduce Your Response Times and Close More Repairs

There’s a new currency that customers are buying with, and too many body shops aren’t capitalizing on it. What am I talking about? The human trigger of responsiveness.

Imagine you’re fishing. When you have a fish nibbling at your hook, you need to be responsive in order to make the catch. The same goes for your customers. When a customer is reaching out and expressing interest in your shop, you need to act quickly to set the hook. The faster you engage the customer, the more likely you are to capture the repair. 

The faster you engage the customer, the more likely you are to capture the repair.

These days, customers are not used to waiting. In the digital age, people are used to getting what they need and want at the click of a button. If you beat out your competition when it comes to response time chances are you will beat them out in booking the repair as well.

Your digital response time is especially important. If a customer walked into your shop in person, how long would you or your staff make them stand there before acknowledging or greeting them? 5 minutes? 10 minutes? No, you would address them within seconds of them entering your shop. Why make your customers reaching out online wait any longer?

Look, I get it. There are more ways than ever for customers to get in touch with you. Email, voicemail, text message, website chat, web contact forms, DRP assignment, yelp requests…the list goes on and on. It can be difficult to keep track of it all, but neglected customers do not turn into sales. So what can you do to stack the odds in your favor and start being more responsive to your customers?

Expect Accountability

At my shop, we started with an accountability algorithm. This software monitored all our incoming communications and alerted staff when a customer reached out. If the estimator, for example, didn’t reach out to the customer within ten minutes, their manager received a notification. If the manager didn’t deal with it within 24 hours, it escalated to the owner. This kind of accountability sets an expectation for your staff and ensures that leads are never falling through the cracks. What gets inspected gets respected. 

Take Action with Technology

Technology is another key factor in improving your response time. Something we learned recently is that only 72% of repairs sent directly to a shop by DRPs are captured when the damage is drivable. Responsiveness is key in picking up that slack. That’s why we’re seeing insurance companies beginning to measure shops on their speed from assignment received to first contact. What they’re finding is that the giant consolidators of the world have about a 13 minute response time. Smaller operations and independent shops, however, take more like a day or a day and a half to respond. That’s a big gap, and the bigger the gap, the lower the capture rate. Who do you think is making a better impression on the customer?

Increase Availability through Automation

The good news is that even smaller operations who don’t have the staff to respond immediately have the opportunity to keep up with the big guys now thanks to automation. For instance, at BodyShop Booster we have developed a tool that grabs any incoming assignments and automatically initiates first contact within five minutes via email, text message, or voicemail. These automatic messages prompt the customer to take any action necessary to begin an estimate, and move you one step closer to capturing that repair. 

Automation can also continue taking care of your customers outside of business hours. Accidents don’t stop just because your shop is closed for the evening, and when damage occurs people want to take action right away. Instead of losing those customers because you take the night or the weekend to respond to them, automation can make sure they begin to build a rapport with your shop and feel supported. The more responsive you are, the more work you will get. 

The more responsive you are, the more work you will get.

Remember, responsiveness is a currency that your customers are doing business with. If you can figure out how to use this human trigger to your advantage, you will see the difference it will make in your booked repairs.

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Keep crushing it!

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- Ryan