117 - Becoming a Champion in Communication with David Boyd

117 - Becoming a Champion in Communication with David Boyd

April 2nd, 2025 - 01:00:14

 

Show Summary:

Jimmy Lea welcomes David Boyd from Inbound to discuss how technology, communication flow, and consistent training shape the customer experience in auto repair shops. They explore how shop owners can use AI to streamline call reviews, build advisor confidence, and ensure consistent, high-quality interactions with customers. David shares the importance of shifting from rigid scripts to natural, process-driven call flows, and how shop owners can better define their expectations and measure performance. Together, they emphasize the power of call analysis, customer journey awareness, and daily coaching to drive shop success. The conversation wraps with a live demo of Inbound’s AI tool and thoughts on the future of AI in customer communication.

 

Host(s):

Jimmy Lea, VP of Business Development

 

Guest(s):

David Boyd - Founder & CEO of Inbound

 

Episode Highlights:

[00:02:08] – David shares his passion for improving communication in the independent automotive repair industry.

[00:03:13] – Call flow should define expectations, build confidence, and lead to customer satisfaction.

[00:04:00] – The biggest challenge in call coaching is finding the right calls to review.

[00:05:48] – Using AI to pre-screen and identify meaningful calls saves time and improves coaching.

[00:07:06] – Scripting is outdated; teaching flow and natural conversation is more effective.

[00:09:12] – Advisors must be trained in communication and soft skills, especially with a younger workforce.

[00:14:05] – Calls must build trust and credibility within the first 15 to 30 seconds.

[00:18:43] – Every customer interaction is an opportunity to create a lifelong customer.

[00:26:06] – Normalizing call reviews improves team performance and builds comfort over time.

[00:51:01] – A live demo shows how Inbound’s tool identifies coachable and champion calls instantly.

 

In every business journey, there are defining moments or challenges that build resilience and milestones that fuel growth. We’d love to hear about yours! What lessons, breakthroughs, or pivotal experiences have shaped your path in the automotive industry?

Share your story with us at info@wearetheinstitute.com, and you might be featured in an upcoming episode.

 

👉 Unlock the full experience - watch the full webinar on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kk2jVaCR8s

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Jimmy Lea: Welcome. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening or good night, depending on when and where you're joining us from today. Thank you very much. I'm excited to be here. David Boyd is coming into us from Minneapolis, Minnesota. Minneapolis, Minnesota.

David Boyd: That's correct. Minneapolis.

Jimmy Lea: Nice. Glad you're here. David, this is going to be awesome.

David Boyd: I am enjoying our fresh blanket of snow outside in Minneapolis. So for those of you, Cindy, I think you got a little bit up in Alaska. And, thanks for sending that down to Minnesota. But for the rest of you around the country that aren't familiar with snow, let me just tell you, it's, a real, sad event in April to have a fresh layer of snow hit the ground.

David Boyd: So, thank you, everybody, for joining today. Our our content is going to be very exciting, and I'm glad that we can share it. I've visited with Jamie before where we've talked about, communication and I of course, I'm in the communication industry. And with inbound we focus exclusively on the independent automotive repair industry. So I work with, many, many of your peers across the country, and we talk about, communication and the various aspects of communication to drive growth and, to drive training.

David Boyd: And so it's something I'm very passionate about. And I'm glad that, you're able to join us today. So we have a great line up for you today. We're going to talk about, how to get started with, you know, a communication plan. What is coaching and training look like? What is call reviewing look like? Some of you are likely doing that today.

David Boyd:  And there are areas and opportunities to improve as you move down that path. We'll talk about a call flow. There's a, dirty word that we used to use in the industry called a script. And, I'd like to, you know, read rethink that terminology because it speaks to how we look at, the communication process.

David Boyd: I'm a process guy. I come from a background of process engineering and corporate America. So I look at things as process flow. And, we'll talk a little bit more about what that is, what is a call flow. And as we look at, creating this process and moving down the path of this process, we want to, define aspects and clarity, develop confidence for your team, and ultimately drive customer satisfaction.

Jimmy Lea: So, David, thank you for filling in. A couple of shout outs to, inbound from Todd. Todd says he loves inbound, so thank you very much, Todd. And, Ed chair is joining us from Las Vegas. Thank you, chair, for being here. The super awesome. Glad you're here. So David, to your point about call tracking and call scripts and call.

Jimmy Lea: I've listened to hundreds of thousands of phone calls. I can tell you right away why it is a phone call was not successful, why it did not connect, why it did not close a deal, it because of the thousands and thousands and thousands of phone calls that I've listened to. That's also the challenge. David. Finding the call. Right.

Jimmy Lea: So previous life coaching and training with sales skills and customer service skills at a at a former company. And we had to go in and find the calls. So if you rely on your person that you're coaching to send you the calls, it doesn't happen. Send me a good one. Send me a bad one. It generally those that are good for the coaching, that that want to succeed and want to progress, they're the ones that will send you the calls.

Jimmy Lea: Those are the ones that don't. They? I'm being forced to do this. I really don't want to do it. It's a totally different experience. And so I would love to talk to you about your program, because it is so cool what you have done in your process procedures, in your advancement, in your technology. Yeah, you're a nerd when it comes to this as well.

Jimmy Lea: And I say that nerd in a loving, kind and generous and respectful way that you are amazing. Thank you. You've done this work and this coding to get there. So the first thing I'd love to talk about is. Oh, and a quick shout out to Christopher Johnson, Southern Ontario. Christopher, thank you for being here. You're awesome. To the phone calls.

Jimmy Lea: Your system has an amazing method and an amazing way of finding those phone calls and identifying a closed deal, or a closed opportunity, or a missed opportunity. What does that look like? What are you doing?

David Boyd: We're really using technology and it's a great point. You you've touched on so many, parts that, every, every owner I talk with wants to do call reviews and training and coaching, but they also acknowledge that there's this heavy lift of time. It's always the time. And you talked about the scenario where the service advisor may send in the, call examples to the coach.

David Boyd: Well, if they do it, you know, they, they may be softballs. Right? So, they're going to self-select something that isn't that bad. And we miss that opportunity. So assuming that we understand what we're trying to accomplish in the coaching process, and I do want to make sure that we cover that as well. We want to make sure that we have the ability to very quickly get to effectively, you know, pre-qualified, meaningful calls for this coaching review process, something that, has evaluated the call.

David Boyd: We use technology. Now AI is everywhere, right? So how we utilize AI to evaluate key performance indicators in a call to evaluate key insights. I can be used in a positive light to help us reduce that heavy lift of time required to listen to call after call after call, and very quickly get to something that would be effectively prescreened or pre-qualified to benefit our call coaching and review process with the service advisor.

Jimmy Lea: What? So no question for you in that process. And I love the AI is involved in this. It is a when it comes to a script, I've always thought that you should memorize the script and then couple it up and throw it away. You don't want to sound robotic. You don't want to sound like you're reading a novel or, write a script to somebody nobody wants to be read to.

Jimmy Lea: But let's have a conversation. Can the AI, can your software can your program identify? Is the service advisor following the pattern that we've established?

David Boyd: Yeah. And you've in that statement you've asked two questions there. One is are we doing a script anymore. And at the, at the risk of, of upsetting maybe people that are holding tight to their script. I'm sorry in advance. Scripting is, I think, a little bit antiquated, where we really want to train to the flow so that it isn't robotic and it doesn't become this.

David Boyd: I need to, you know, did it, did it, and go step by step through this process. The, the flow of the call now becomes, really the important aspect of what we want to evaluate. So and I like that that was that flow and understand what is the context of the conversation. And that's now where, the tools and technology can help us.

David Boyd: They're very powerful in this regard because that, that is much like having a person sit on the call. Yeah. And listen to it and review it from that standpoint instead of, was this word spoken in this order in this sequence that's can still be evaluated. We may want to hit those key performance indicators, but it needs to be a little bit more natural.

David Boyd: So we want to identify who I am and who the customer is called. We want to know who they are and how did they hear about us. And we want to go through this flow, but it can be very much conversational. You and I can just sit down and have a conversation. I can get to know you. Now we're developing a relationship, right?

David Boyd: And we're communicating rather than me going through the checklist of how I check these aspects off of my script.

Jimmy Lea: Yes. And I think a lot of the, service advisors that you are analyzing or the that are part of your program have gone through an extensive phone training program so that they now know the flow of what to do. There's an entire generation now that would rather text than talk, right? I think there's an entire generation that has lost the soft skills of how to answer the phone properly, how to greet a customer, how to acknowledge.

Jimmy Lea: And so, I agree with you. It's the flow. Let's back up a couple steps. We've got to teach a script first for you to follow, and then crumpled up, throw it away and now you've got the flow. Now it's just bullet points, and you're able to do it because you know the right words to say in the right order to say them.

Jimmy Lea: But it's not scripted. It's now conversation.

David Boyd: Yes. And even prior to this, it starts with the owner's expectation. So does the owner have a clear understanding, an idea of what they want to accomplish and call handling? Who are they hiring to be in the front office and represent the face of that business to the customer? Assuming that somebody is calling and and overwhelmingly, people are still calling today, they may text at some point in the interaction, but they are absolutely calling.

David Boyd: And the people that we hire and have on the front counter now, we need to understand emotionally, which is funny to talk about in this context, but emotionally, where are they coming from? Do they even do they even feel comfortable talking on the phone? Right. So if I hire a younger service advisor, as you mentioned, they may be coming from an upbringing that doesn't have this type of, interaction.

David Boyd: So thinking through a conversation may not be natural. So that might be part of our training. The owners need to understand and acknowledge that's the case. Do I need to go out and get some third party help to help with this? This is something that we're going to do ourselves. Ultimately, we still have to have that basis of understanding.

David Boyd: What do I want to accomplish as the owner? And then, here are the things that I want covered the script, as you say. And here's how we want this to go. Well, we'll talk to this, will train to this so that we have a core understanding. Now, this is going to go away. And we're going to talk about communication, and, and personal interaction.

David Boyd: That's where we get into the call flow that it does become a logical progression. It starts with the owner. And of course, if they don't have a, sense or concept of what call training can be and should be, there are plenty of helpers out there, like contact Jimmy at the Institute. You got a camera over there just to touch.

Jimmy Lea: Right.

David Boyd: And, you know, I work very, very closely with. Yeah. Make the noise as well to go with it. Gotta get Mark and the crew, that do a lot of call coaching with the Institute. Just fantastic. So getting the business process nailed down is a core, competency for the owner to have as well.

Jimmy Lea: Oh, it is 100%, because there's a lot of people that can't talk on the phone or. And here's where I discover those that can't talk on the phone. Oh, can't. Wrong word. Those who are intimidated by the phone. It generally comes down to two things. One is training. Have they been trained that phone is the most powerful tool in the shop.

Jimmy Lea: It's more powerful than the air gun, more powerful than the the lift in the back, more powerful than the engine hoist. It is what determines if the vehicle comes into the shop or not. So the most powerful tool is the phone. Are you certified to operate that phone? Most people that are intimidated haven't been trained, so they don't understand the basics of what needs to be done there, and that's where they need training.

Jimmy Lea: The institute can definitely step in. Mark Seawell, phenomenal program for the APG. The advisor performance group. We call that the APG phenomenal program. The advisors that graduate from this program are, by far the best in the industry. So that being said, the second reason somebody is not confident on the phone goes into their mindset. And it could be that their self-esteem, their self-confidence, they've been just hammered so much with the no, no, no, the negative, the slammed phones, the yelling, the screaming.

Jimmy Lea: Their mindset isn't right. Well, that's a whole other course on a different subject, you probably can't test for mindset with inbound communications.

David Boyd: Kenya mindset is is not something that we can test, but we can look at other aspects of the call because that's really our ability to overcome objections. Yeah. And we can evaluate that. And if somebody has a tendency to cower back when an objection is met, right. They may not know how to overcome an objection. So this becomes a turning point.

David Boyd: And these are the parts that we learn as we as we, you know, have consistency in our review process over time. What is the capacity of my service advisor to handle calls for them to recognize where they're at in the conversation, to control that conversation, have ownership use their own sales skills, and we can develop sales skills.

David Boyd: We can teach how to overcome objections. And these are key components that help us make sure that, you know, we are understanding the customer because, I mean, when we think back, there's the cliche, right? When a customer calls the shop and they don't know what to ask, what are they going to ask? How much?

Jimmy Lea: How much is it?

David Boyd: How much is it? Right. And how many times to service advisors hear that? Well, if we change this mindset just by a simple understanding that that only means that my customer needs to be educated, right? So now that's my job. I'm an advisor, I will advise, so let me understand more. Why do you think you need XYZ. And we're going to we're going to flow into this conversation.

David Boyd: I'm going to take ownership of this of this call. I'm going to ask open ended questions. I'm going to overcome these objections. And ultimately I'm going to get them to agree to come in and, visit with my ask certified technician. And we're going to take care of them. So we're going to build this confidence. We're going to develop this relationship.

David Boyd: All of these things can happen, you know, in fact, they should be happening to establish credibility within maybe the first 15 to 30s of this call. Right. We want to make sure that we're controlling this or we're not going to go down this other path. Right. The other problem that we see and we can test for and call analysis is things like diagnosing over the phone.

David Boyd: That's a whole separate webinar. Right. So let's maybe not go down that path today and, we can have Mark join us for that one.

Jimmy Lea: Sure. For sure. Yeah. There's just so many stories coming up in my mind as you talk about these, service advisor skills in the questions that can be asked or should be asked, my brother called up the shop and said, hey, I want all new shocks and struts. Sure. We got you booked in today at 2:00. Come on down.

Jimmy Lea: That that that that one simple question. What makes you think you need new shocks and struts? Because my brother left the shop, went around the block, came back in and said, you didn't fix my car. Yeah. We replace all the new shocks and stress. There's four of them. They're brand new. Come here. We'll show you what's going on.

Jimmy Lea: What's wrong? Well, the. It shakes. The whole truck is shaking as I'm driving down the street. Oh. Let's go look at your tires. You needed all new tires. You had a big old bubble on one of his tires. Simple question. Would have avoided that. Whose fault is that? Is it my brother's for saying, hey, I want new shocks.

Jimmy Lea: It struts. Or is it the service advisor who should have taken the position of professional authority and say, what makes you think you need new shocks and struts? I'd be happy to do it right. How come? Why?

David Boyd: Yeah. So the mindset and the mindset shift now is I'm not an order taker on the front counter. Right? I mean he's not going to call and just order a set of shot and shocks and struts from me. They're going to order, you know, a competent review and inspection of their vehicle. So my job then is to get them to gain, you know, agreement that this is how this how this works, right?

David Boyd: We are a professional organization or skilled and qualified, competent in what we do. And I'm going to build your trust. Mr.. And Mrs., car owner, and we're going to come in and work together on this, and I'm going to keep you informed and advised every step of the way. So these are the trust components that are important when we're looking at, call reviews and training.

David Boyd: Are we, you know, identifying, who we are that we're, you know, a trusted organization. How do we establish our credibility right off the bat? Where are we building brand value throughout the course of our conversation? And a conversation may be 90s. It could. I mean, it could be several minutes, but it's not like we're having this very long dialog.

David Boyd: We're not speaking for 15 or 20 minutes on the phone. These are relatively short conversation. So this is a, a, trainable, teachable skill. Some people are more capable to do this naturally, and some, everybody can do it. I think we need to all acknowledge that that, for somebody who says I just I'm not good at that.

David Boyd: I don't I don't buy that because there are plenty of things that I thought I wasn't good at in my life that I recognize. Looking back, I now I'm very good at those things. And it really has to do with, again, what's the expectation, what tools and training do I have available as an advisor to develop these skills required to meet and satisfy or even exceed the owner's expectation?

David Boyd: And then we all share the need to share the understanding that it is really about the customer. So at the end of the day, the experience of our customer is paramount. And, the if I'm talking with somebody for the first time this now we're setting the tone of our relationship literally forever. So the likelihood of them coming back depends on, you know, this first 15 to 30s of the very first time they ever call our shop, what are we doing in that period of time?

David Boyd: How are we? Establishing our credibility, building confidence in our brand?

Jimmy Lea: Oh, I love that. And, you know, when they do call in to the shop, you've got to take that full customer journey experience coming in that the time that they actually call into the shop is the second opportunity you have to make that first impression. And I say that because they have looked at your website, they've looked at your social media, they've done some research about you before they call you.

Jimmy Lea: Now that they call you, they want to confirm is my research correct and my calling the right shop? Do you guys actually know what you're talking about? So that customer journey becomes very powerful in communicating with those customers.

David Boyd: I love that that I think I, I'm familiar with the term customer journey. I don't know how much we talk about that as an industry. I think we're I'm hearing it more, but I think that's an important part of our dialog. As successful high performing shop owners. Yes. And operators within the industry is do we understand the customer journey.

David Boyd: So this call process is part of the customer journey. And I love that that picture you paint to that it is the that phone call. The first phone call is the second impression. We're making the second opportunity to make a good first impression. Because it does come down to, the search that they've done or the referral that they heard from their neighbor or the, the reviews that they've read out on, on the website or, and other sources.

David Boyd: So it's a, it's a valuable, understanding that feeds nicely into this call handling process.

Jimmy Lea: Oh, it does, it does. And, and luckily, unluckily, okay. So to our ability to analyze the customer journey, you may you, as a shop owner may want to talk to your neighbors and, and recruit them as secret shoppers that you're going to comp their oil service, but you're looking for their customer experience. You want to know from them as a secret shopper what's their customer journey.

Jimmy Lea: And we as shop owners, we need to do this often to look at our full experience. Is it easy for somebody to book an appointment with us? Is it easy for them to call in on the phone? Is our phone easily identifiable? Does it ring one, two, three and we answer it? What is the customer journey? And to that point the customer journey?

Jimmy Lea: Is it consistent? Is everybody having that same experience as they're coming through?

David Boyd: This is good. And consistency is driven for the customer experience and our, our internal, process. Right. Do we have consistency in everything that we do with does every vehicle receive a complete inspection. And do we estimate, the entire inspection? Are we presenting all of this, all of those? We learn about consistency. That ties back to the phone as well, because I'll tell you, it's super easy to be distracted by something when I answer the phone.

David Boyd: Oh, we got I've got a technician that is chewing me out because of I don't know what reason right now. And I go answer the phone and I'm angry and they can hear it and it comes across a little bit of like, yeah, what?

Jimmy Lea: Yeah.

David Boyd: Oh. Okay. I need some help.

Jimmy Lea: You breath first, buddy. Deep breath.

David Boyd: That's exactly it. And that's what I talk about, like, okay, no matter what's going on around me, no matter what noise is happening or, how busy I am, it's always that moment of pause before I answer the phone. I'm going to take that breath. I'm going to, you know, collect my thoughts, regroup, and then I'll answer the phone and I'll the I'll let them hear me smile, because when I'm physically smiling, it sounds different.

David Boyd: It sounds better. Right? And when I'm, you know, I'm when I'm tensed up like this because I'm angry and I just whatever had, some interaction, believe it or not, that's easily detectable on the other side of the phone.

Jimmy Lea: It is important.

David Boyd: Parts.

Jimmy Lea: It is absolutely. And even a fake smile is better than a real frown. Right? You can hear it. Every service advisor class that I've taught, every, phone skills course that I've taught over the last 15 years. One of my questions is, can you tell when a customer is multitasking? Oh, yeah. Totally. Can you tell if their feet are up on the desk, if they're reclined in their chair?

Jimmy Lea: Oh, yeah. Totally. Yeah. Me too. And guess what? They can hear the same thing about you, right? Are you multitasking? Are you distracted? Are you being lax a days ago? Do they have your full attention? Yes or no? So not only does this phone skills help on the phone and the front counter, it also helps in communication in life.

David Boyd: Right? It does the way that we interact with one another. It's it's very important. Am I distracted and am I sitting here trying to have a conversation with my kids while tapping away on my phone? Right. Because that leaves an impression on the recipient. And, it's so it's so true in every aspect of communication through our lives.

David Boyd: And, you know, I, I spend a lot of time. Thanks for bringing that point up to me. But I spend a lot of time thinking about how we, handle calls and manage communication in the front office. It's easy to lose sight that it does apply to every aspect of our life. And setting the phone down, making this connection here some eye contact.

David Boyd: I'm going to smile. I'm happy to see you. I'm enthusiastic about being able to talk with you today. Jimmy, I'm going to use your name. Not too frequently, but I'll use your name, Jimmy, because you're worth it, right? You have my undivided attention, and this becomes important. When we talk about technology and call reviews, it, it's important to have the process and expectation established to go through this consistently, so that we don't develop complacency and then, manage the make this normal.

David Boyd: Right. So we want to make our, review of communication. And the review process is always backward looking. We don't want to spend too much time looking in the rearview mirror, but we want to know what's been on the road behind us so that we can, make better decisions about how we're going to navigate going forward.

David Boyd: So if we do this consistently now, it becomes a familiar process. We can sit down and do it very quickly, and we have to, have the ability to, you know, quickly get to a call, that isn't in in a lot of cases. You know this very well. It it happens more frequently, probably than it ought to.

David Boyd: But in the shop, the only calls that are reviewed, so to speak, are where something's gone really wrong. Yeah, right. And now we have a problem. And this becomes an uncomfortable experience. It doesn't feel normal. So we want to normalize the the review process. The other part of this too, is boy listening to myself in a recording.

David Boyd: Man, that sounds funny. It really does. It's uncomfortable for the first half a dozen times, and then it becomes normal. But if I if I listen to myself in a call and then it's six months before that happens again, now I'm right back to the beginning where it sounds unusual. It's not normal. So we want to drive consistency around this.

 

David Boyd: And consistency is important for you as an owner to determine what is that? I'd like to see something done weekly. If we can spend ten minutes a week on this, I'll tell you what. Your performance on the phone is going to go to the moon.

Jimmy Lea: Oh, and daily, let's do it daily.

David Boyd: Why not?

Jimmy Lea: Quick, quick phone call. And this goes to providing feedback. How can in let's back up a little bit. My mind is getting a little bit further ahead of the conversation. My mouth is just wanting to be there with it. The mind. If you're not having weekly company meetings or daily company meetings, you're having company beatings. And what that means is there's a problem.

Jimmy Lea: Let's talk about it right. If it's a consistent company meeting and you always have the agenda and you follow the agenda and you play a good call, you play a call that needs attention. Even the good calls can be improved. But playing that for the entire team allows them to hear it, see it, feel it, imagine it, and it becomes easier for them to then duplicate it and do it again.

Jimmy Lea: And when you're asking for feedback on how can we make this our best call from yesterday, how can we make this best call from yesterday? Even better today when it happens to play that call, everybody listens. They give their feedback and it goes on. So what, how can you. And maybe I just answered my own question.

Jimmy Lea: How can you start reviewing calls and turning that feedback into improvement? Well, you got to be consistent with it.

David Boyd: It is definitely about consistency and the ability to to get to those calls quickly. Again, I keep I feel like I'm saying the same thing and I apologize for that. But, the heavy lift of time, if we remove that barrier now, this becomes natural. It becomes easy to do and becomes fun and engaging. So how can I quickly get to those calls?

David Boyd: Because my only other option historically really has been listening to call after call after call after call until I find something that's reviewable. Right.

Jimmy Lea: I've done that. So your software identifies that these are the, angry customers. These are the missed opportunities. These are the top performers.

David Boyd: All of these things. So it will review the call and transcribe it so you can read it like a text message. You can look at a an AI generated summary, evaluate the key performance indicators that are important to you. And then we, you know, take additional, steps like having the AI determine is this is this a lead?

David Boyd: Basically, are we talking to a customer? Right. Because the other funny thing about, call recordings is, everybody calls the shop, including our parts suppliers and vendors and distributors and, you know, the, the various, dealerships and all of this stuff, those, when we start to introduce technology, those can look like bad calls because, you know, we tend to answer with the parts guy down the road in a very familiar way.

David Boyd: Hey, what's up, man? That kind of thing. Well, now, right off the bat, this is going to but this isn't a reviewable call. So we want to know that this is a customer interaction. We want to know is this an appointment setting conversation or is this a status check. Let's talk about that. Is check just for a second.

David Boyd: Right. When a customer calls us at 2 or 3:00 in the afternoon and says, hey, what's the status of my vehicle? And they might use those exact words.

Jimmy Lea: Well, you dropped it off at lunch.

David Boyd: Yeah, yeah. Or they dropped it off at seven in the morning or the night before.

Jimmy Lea: And that's true that that's a different scenario. Certainly somebody should have called early in the morning and followed up with them. But let's say they didn't. And now it's 2:00. The customer's doing the heavy lifting. That shouldn't be the experience, but that's training for a different day. Yep. To that phone call 2 p.m. in the afternoon. Hey, what's the status on my vehicle, David?

David Boyd: Well, yeah, let's check on you. I mean, we're going to go down this path right? And I'm like, oh, let me look up and see. And we want to know how well that that call is handled. I, I agree with you. I think that, that I didn't mean to get us off track on, on a status call because that's probably a webinar by itself.

Jimmy Lea: But yeah, it is, but that's okay, David, let's go down there.

David Boyd: So, do we have an expectation to, get in front of that for the customer? Really, no matter what time, they have dropped their vehicle off, did we establish an expectation on when they're going to hear from us, and then how they're going to hear from us? How are they prefer hearing from us? That could be a text message.

David Boyd: It could be a phone call, whatever that happens to be. But whenever, whenever a customer calls and they're looking for a status check, I shouldn't say whenever the majority of the time from what the types of calls I ever hear and see. This is a this is a defect. I'll use that word. It it's an error.

David Boyd: We've let somebody down. So now we have to backpedal. And I got to go look up the status of this vehicle. I got to go and ask the technician who's still working on this. Where are we? I haven't done that pre-work that might take 90s, but I haven't done that and then proactively communicated to the customer.

David Boyd: So now they're calling the shop. What's the status of my vehicle? And I see that usually happening about 3:00. They're beginning to mentally kind of shut down for the day. You're thinking about I'm going to check out from work here shortly. Do I need to go get my car? What do I need to do for taking the kids to practice tonight?

David Boyd: They're asking, an innocent enough question, but we've created some customer disappointment in that process.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. No. It's true. Yeah. You have. And hopefully somebody is taking care of that earlier in the day. But those are coachable.

David Boyd: Calls coachable calls. Exactly. So then we can go pick them up. Is this the status call. Is are we using words or terminology. You know the nice thing about technology, because we're transcribing calls, we can identify if a word was spoken.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah.

David Boyd:

And, and I have, I have a customer that it was, feeling plagued by, service advisors that were using the word unfortunately.

Jimmy Lea: Ooh. Okay. Tell me more about the story.

David Boyd: We want to use. We want to know when that happens so that we can coach an alternative option. Right. Is it really unfortunate for the customer? Unfortunately, I can't get you in today. Or fortunately, I can get you in, next Tuesday at 10 a.m.. Is it unfortunate that it's going to be a $1,300 repair or. Fortunately, we found this now, right.

David Boyd: How do we frame that up? And where are we using, terms that could be off putting to the customer. That makes them defensive. So this was the my customer's mindset. I don't want to hear that word, unfortunately out of my service providers mouth. So we said, well, we're going to analyze the calls. We're going to find out when your service advisor speaks that one word, which is easy enough for the technology to pick up.

David Boyd: But then I'm also going to send you an email with that transcription and the audio file that you can listen to within moments of that call, and now have an immediate coaching opportunity. So and then you see that change in behavior almost immediately. The other thing that if I can talk about this just for a second to me, is when we do this consistently and we know that the review process is happening and this is normal.

David Boyd: Yes, in the shop it's normal for the service advisors. The next time they pick up the phone there, they have this conscious awareness. This might be the next call that we're reviewing. Well, what happens when I feel like somebody is watching me? I'm going up to the next level. So I, I'm driving accountability of performance. Right. We establish the expectation.

David Boyd: We do this review process. We do it consistently. We understand what the outcome is going to be. And now we're driving the accountability through, you know, improved behavior. They are aware that this is happening. And, you know, it's not like they're operating in fear. I don't mean to confuse what we're talking about here, but there's an awareness, right?

David Boyd: And where there's awareness, we understand that things are being measured. When something's measured, it's improved.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah, 100%, 100%. And you remind me of a story that I just barely heard up at 80 and in Seattle, Washington. Katie, service advisor for a shop up in Washington is in the APG program. The advisor, advisor performance group, a PG program. And her complaint was, I'm selling everything. So nobody there's no objections to overcome.

Jimmy Lea: Everything is being sold.

Jimmy Lea: Interesting feedback. Thank you very much. Interesting complaint. I don't take that as a complaint though. Congratulations. That is awesome. Awesome for Katie that she's operating at a level with her coaching and training. And she's got that feedback. To your point, the sooner the quicker you can come to an advisor with feedback that change will happen faster. If this is a call from last week, forget about it.

Jimmy Lea: This is a call from last month. Forget about it. Old news.

David Boyd: Right?

Jimmy Lea: Old news. Even yesterday. It's going to be a little bit old. Yeah, it's better than last week or the last month, but yesterday, is good. Hey, here's a call from this morning.

David Boyd: So. Yeah, it's going to be great. Yeah.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. You're using this word. Unfortunately, we talked about using the word fortunately instead of the opposite. A word for me. And I'm wondering if you hear this on the phone calls as well is the word just, just as a weak word. I'm just calling to follow up with you. I'm just. It's just going to call you.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Just checking in. So the word just justified can justify. It's a weak position to take as opposed to. I'm calling you back about your vehicle. I'm calling to tell you we can get you back safe on the road, and it's going to be $1,300. That's the other thing I hear a lot from service Advisors is that they're selling from their own pocket book, right?

Jimmy Lea: Their own wallet, their own bank account. Don't do that. Don't do that. You are an advocate for the vehicle. The car right now is telling you, I need $1,300 worth of work. I need $2,500 worth of work. You as a service advisor are the advocate for the vehicle, right? And it's your job to be able to explain to the customer what your vehicle needs.

David Boyd: It's a mindset, a mind shift. Again, this comes through training because I, I might think that $1,300 is a lot of money or too much money. So if I frame my presentation to the customer for my personal financial perspective, that can influence how I present that to the customer. Yeah. I'm like, I'm sorry, it's going to be 1300.

David Boyd: You know, it's not the it's not the professional, mindset that we want to have. Even if I feel like that $1,300 is a lot of money, I can still come from the mindset or the perspective that my customer and I share the same objective. My belief is that they want to keep their vehicle and they want to be safe.

David Boyd: Yes, I understand what they're doing with their vehicle. Is that a commuter? Is it the, you know, is it the proverbial grocery getter or am I taking the kids to practice on, on Saturday morning? What am I doing with this vehicle? And do I do I understand do I believe as the service advisor that, it's my job to inform my customer and share their interest to be safe and have a reliable vehicle?

David Boyd: Reliability and safety are the top two things that most customers will tell you as important about their car and if they're going to if they just want it fixed so they can sell it, and they'll tell you that. Right? So, that doesn't happen very often though. But I think that's kind of the.

Jimmy Lea: Oh, David. David. David. It happens more often than you want to admit. I'm sure this car has been for sale for three years. I just want you to do the minimum. It's. I'm going to sell it next month.

David Boyd: Next month? Right. But I still want it to be reliable and safe in the meantime.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah, and that's what that's where advisors need that coaching and training to be able to overcome the objections and be able to talk to the client. Customer, help them to understand that, yes, I understand what you want, but it's not safe if this is my own vehicle, if this was my mother's vehicle or my father's vehicle or my daughter's vehicle, no, absolutely.

Jimmy Lea: This needs to be fixed and repaired today. It's really it's not safe. Right.

David Boyd: And if there are things that are going to be do soon like they're, they're invocations. Right. What are those. Yeah. I'd be it'd be best to do that all today. We're already in here working on this. Right. And however that is presented. How but we may need to be, you know, earn our keep as an advisor and put this plan in place.

David Boyd: So in three months, we're going to do this and, that, I mean, that's, that's getting kind of far in the weeds here because a lot of times this is much better suited for, the advisor, the sales training part of this, the AP GM program, does such a good job. And training. How to do this really super effectively and, making sure that, you know, we understand and we're following up with the customer if they ever have decline services.

David Boyd: So what does it come all down to though, Jimmy. It's really it's it all comes down to the customer experience isn't it.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah, absolutely. What is that customer experience.

David Boyd: Yeah. Yeah. The customer experience is paramount from the, from the time that they're, looking at, at our website or they hear about us from their neighbor, maybe they have a, you know, a, referral card with a discount in their hand. Something of the sort. Yeah. Now they're going to call, they're going to begin checking us out.

David Boyd: And, I've, I've seen, you know, the, the, the journey that we talked about earlier in our session here, the customer journey, suggests that as we get to the fourth and fifth visit, now, we, we have brand champions and people that are they're loyal to us. We develop loyalty. But that loyalty that dates all the way back to that first phone call and the first the first information they've ever heard about us, really their first experience.

David Boyd: So every customer interaction is an opportunity to create a lifelong customer. Owner spent a lot of time generating, customers to come in the front door. And we know that there are, you know, the back door is pretty big on some shops. Hopefully the owners know what's going out their back door as well. So if we invest in the, the, the, call review time, if we invest in the process and the training for the service advisors, that back door now begins to swing a little bit more closed and a little bit more closed.

David Boyd: And it's because the customer experience has been elevated. They really trust and believe that, you know, you know, no matter who I talk with here, maybe you have 2 or 3 advisors at your shop and you're not going to talk to the same. The customer won't talk to the same person every time. Do I have a vastly different experience depending on who I talk with?

David Boyd: This is important to know. So, training and coaching and call analysis and review, in my humble opinion, is best done when we're looking at everybody. And sometimes it's necessary to, you know, take the new person and bring them up to a certain point. But then are we are we consistent internally in our dialog and our conversations, looking at everybody's calls and, addressing those?

Jimmy Lea: I totally agree, totally agree. I'll give you my mother's advice when it comes to that sort of coaching and training is that we praise in public and we reprimand in private, or we instruct in private, or we provide that feedback in private, because you don't want to embarrass somebody in the in front of everybody. Those public meetings.

David Boyd: Not this is important for, the, the process areas that I help owners with because, a lot of times we're looking for bad calls, and it doesn't have to be. There's just be bad calls. Right? I, this is where, sometimes, an owner will tell me, I can't listen to calls because I'll choke them.

David Boyd: Well, whether they will or won't, I don't know, but, the whole point in all of that is, if I, you know, as a, as the shop owner, if I listen to my service advisor's calls and they do something that's upsetting to me, how am I going to respond to that? I have an emotional response to that.

David Boyd: Yeah. So it speaks to the, the normalcy. Right. Is it normal for the owner to review calls and listen to calls? But are we also reviewing good calls? Right. Can I listen to and can I identify what has gone well in a phone call? Right. It was, you know, efficient. It was effective. We made good use of the customer's time.

David Boyd: We got an appointment set. We didn't diagnose over the phone. We did all of these things well, and we're going to listen to that and identify. This was a good call. You did a great job on this one, boy. If you know, especially when we're doing this, as a, as a group or a team effort, when we listen to good calls together, now we know what good sounds like.

David Boyd: Yep. And then separately, we can go and listen to a I. There may be times where you do want to listen to something that didn't go quite so well, but I want to be very careful now about how do I correct somebody on this. Right. If I, if I talk to the group, versus Jimmy, I've talked with you about this before.

David Boyd: I, you know, and I start to listen to you now. Now we're reprimanding publicly and that can be very, very damaging for employee morale and the culture in the shop. So I agree with you 100% praise publicly. And you know, correct privately. And there are there are times and certainly we want to make a habit of evaluating when things go well and, you know, giving the, the, the fist bumps and the high fives for doing so.

Jimmy Lea: I love it, I love it. In fact, let's ask our audience, how many of you guys are doing weekly meetings, daily meetings, monthly meetings. How often are you having quick meetings, stand up meetings with your service advisors, your technicians? How often are you having these meetings to provide feedback on phone calls? How many of you are listening to phone calls?

Jimmy Lea: I'd love to hear that as well. So go ahead and put those into the comments, because, David. Yeah, if we are not having those morning huddles, if we're not having those quick stand up meetings, it's a public meeting because it only gets addressed when it's a problem. Oh yeah. Look there Bill is weekly. Cindy is morning huddles and weekly meetings.

Jimmy Lea: Very nice. And Bill and Cindy for your phone calls. Phone call reviews. Is that also a weekly event? Is that a daily event? Is that only as needed? Cindy says she's listening now.

David Boyd: Now and then and then. Yeah. Thanks for your, like.

Jimmy Lea: I'm only tasking. I'm listening to this webinar, but I'm, I'm checking all these phone calls as well, and. Yeah, now and then Mike's.

David Boyd: Mike's point is, that that's a key takeaway, that, it's important to acknowledge that we never want to lose the, the intent. So, And good job, Bill. The intent is super important. So as an owner, you can begin to skirt yourself by saying, I've told myself, I want to do this more for three years now, and I forget that I'm going to give up on it.

David Boyd: So, point well taken. It it it's if you want to do it more, great. Maintain that and then do it more. And if you don't, because something, you know, busyness gets in the way, maintain the intent to do that and pursue that, pursue the intent, because it will, will, elevate your service advisors and elevate your customer experience.

Jimmy Lea: Oh, and I love it. And you see Cindy's comment as well. They've got a new person. And with that new person, they're doing more phone reviews than they previously do. Why? Because you've got a new person. You want to make sure that they're part of the company the culture, the process, the procedure, the look, the feel, the customer journey experience.

Jimmy Lea: They want to make sure that that resonates. Yes, with the new people.

David Boyd: So I'll go back to the, the process part of this. Right. So the, the owner's expectation, for the owners and thanks for the, the real time feedback from those that have, you know, voiced their perspectives. If you don't have a clear understanding yourself of what you're wanting to accomplish, just take a little bit of time and do that talk with your coach.

David Boyd: You know, the service advisors can get involved in the coaching and training program, but I know, certainly a number of the people, live with us here now are also part of coaching. So talk with your coach and help define what that expectation can be and should be because, there, there are, good, healthy ways to define as the owner, what do I really want to accomplish in this phone call?

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Oh, for sure. And to that point here, Cindy is saying, hey, you know, I'm super interested in this, I programing. How will that, I well, Cindy, I think it is and save you a ton of time.

David Boyd: Right. It's it does save a ton of time and, I don't I don't know that that we want to. I mean, I'd be happy to just show real quick and give a, quick overview of what it what it looks like. Yeah. Right. I would say, you know, I'm happy to talk with anybody, whether you're an inbound customer or not.

David Boyd: I can talk with you about what? What the tools can help you accomplish and how you can quickly get to the review process. And, what we have is, is our insights platform. And I have this set up based on some real data here. We're looking at a, at a subset of calls. And, I think Stu will be able to flash this up on the screen here, but.

Jimmy Lea: Michael, Michael, I'm sorry. Michael. Michael, pull up the screen here, Bubba. So you've click it and, we're going to be able to see, your live screen. This is your probably your demo account I'm guessing.

David Boyd: Yeah. So it's based on real data. But it's so we have, you know, we have the ability to look at a subset if you're a multi shop owner, we can look at a subset of locations and we can filter in on a specific service advisor. We have different scorecards that we can use. But what I want to really help illustrate to Cindy's question point here is, you know, I have a subset of calls, this is actually filtered down for leads.

David Boyd: Like I know that these are customer interactions. And the appointment was not set. So the appointment set is false. I want to identify calls where we didn't set the appointment, but this was a customer interaction. So I have set up calls where things went well except we didn't set an appointment. And then I have defined coachable calls, but I can look at a summary on this and figure out, you know what?

David Boyd: And just like, very quickly, what, is going on with this call, I can look at a transcription of this call. I can if the funny thing is I can read through a transcription very quickly. Yeah. That's super helpful. And then if I want to, I can drill into the, the call in more detail. And this gives me an interesting perspective to not only telling me about the, you know, the length of the call, but who's talking.

David Boyd: And when this we were talking a little bit before about, you know, ownership and control, these are some leading indicators about who is in control of the conversation of, you know, if the customer is talking two thirds of the time, we might want to question, really who is in charge of this conversation. So just wanted to give you a, you know, a quick peek.

David Boyd: But the whole idea here is that I can quickly drill in for a particular service advisor, or maybe one location that I'm working with if you're an MSL and then, filter down based on certain criteria, I want to evaluate, if I, if I just want to look at if these are leads, these are all of the lead calls, whether an appointment was set or not.

Jimmy Lea: And, seven days. This is looking at seven days, 200 and.

David Boyd: 60 days worth of data here. So I have 216 calls to look at which is way too many. Right? I can't get 216 calls over here. I see a gross conversion of the customer interactions of 70% conversion. So 70% of these 215 calls, we had, an agreement to buy or an appointment set. And then I can go down into here and identify there is a subset of five each.

David Boyd: So five champion and five coachable calls that I can very quickly go to. These are prescreened qualified. I have all of the key performance indicators here that I know that's super small on your screen, but you know, was this an existing customer? Did we take ownership? Did we leverage our sales skills, build brand value things of this sort and at a super high level?

David Boyd: That is what technology can do for you. So Cindy, this is how you can, you know, leverage, technology to, to really drive this process for you and others that, that, you know, we're hearing this today or in the near future.

Jimmy Lea: Because what you're going to do is say, Cindy, hours and hours and hours and hours and hours of listening to phone calls, looking for that one call to find it coachable. It just stacks it right up for you. I love that. That's absolutely amazing.

David Boyd: It really puts it right in front of you. And when I, when I talk about taking the heavy lift and we can go ahead and take that off the screen now, but when we take that heavy lift of, of time off of the owners table or the call coaches table, that is where it becomes a force multiplier, right?

David Boyd: I have the ability to do more in less time. Yeah. And that's, that's, super powerful for the owners. Who if they're, if they're taking this responsibility on themselves. But it also means that that my, call coach, who I brought in to come alongside in my training process, can maybe work with, 2 or 3 of my advisors instead of just one.

Jimmy Lea: Oh, I love it.

David Boyd: They have the ability to very quickly get to these calls.

Jimmy Lea: And I love your drill down as well. Were you able to drill down to the specific advisor. So to our audience, are there any questions, comments or concerns you have that you want to address here with David that we're coming in quick here to be landing this plane. If you've got questions, let's type them in now. I love that we can drill down to the specific advisors.

Jimmy Lea: That's for to see their close rates too. Will it show you, a, Eric is closing at a 99% or let's call it 90%. And then I've got Joe over here that's closing at a 30%, where they might say the shop averages 55 or 60. That's not bad. Yes, but can we look at each advisor to say, all right, Joe, you need to shadow Eric for the next 3 or 4 hours.

David Boyd: Exactly. So, so it does just that to answer your question, the short answer is yes. So, with our insights dashboard, when, when you filter, if that filter includes just the advisor that, that that those numbers, the conversion and the data and the metrics, the key performance indicators. That's only, looking at just that one advisor. So it really it is a powerful tool because if I have an advisor who's, you know, conversion is 50%, an appointment setting calls.

David Boyd: And I have an advisor who's 90% on appointment setting calls. We can do a couple things. One, we can acknowledge that we have an appointment setting problem, and, we know who to work with, but two, we can leverage, my stronger advisor to have examples. Right. We were talking about the review of good calls.

David Boyd: We can take some of those good calls and say, hey, underperforming advisor. This is what a good call sounds like, because once I once I hear those examples, now I can begin to relay, relate and adapt to my interaction with the customer and begin to emulate what a stronger advisor is doing, in order to perform better.

Jimmy Lea: Nice. I love that. And, there was a testimonial there a minute ago from Jenny that's using you at, Titan Auto entire Chesterfield, Virginia. 

David Boyd: Thank you. I saw that pop up. I didn't read it, but,

Jimmy Lea: Oh, it's good, man. It's been a wonderful coaching tool. It makes monitoring advisors easy.

David Boyd: Thanks, Jenny.

Jimmy Lea: Thank you. So, to Ed Scheer's question here, what do you think about the AI driven automated phone answering system? So this will be our last question before we land the plane here.

David Boyd: This is a good question. And, this is a yeah, I would say probably a different type of AI. So now we're doing some customer interaction, with, with the use of a bot. And, my preference would be to not use the bot, but I also see that there's value in the industry to be able to do that, because I, I fully acknowledge there are times when we can't handle 100% of the calls.

Jimmy Lea: Oh yeah, we've got four clients in front of us. The phones are ringing off the hook. We can't get to the phone because we got to take care of who's in front of us. If we take care of who's in front of us, we miss all those phone calls that could have come through. Or maybe it's after hours, right?

Jimmy Lea: So that would be better.

David Boyd: Yeah.

Jimmy Lea: Let's say that's the scenario. We're not having a service advisor not answer the phones because they want it to go to the bot. That's bad right? Let's assume that it is a scenario that it's the safety net. What do you think of that?

David Boyd: I think that if we have the correct perspective that really this becomes an interactive voicemail, then it's a powerful experience. It can benefit the customer. And this is about the customer experience. And you may also know that there are times that a customer may I say I'll say annoyed, but they may just be like, I whatever, you know, hang up.

David Boyd: So, if you have the correct expectation about what that type of, tool can do for you, it's important to know that it can and will benefit you after hours. Because it allows you to take that appointment. Right. And, and I partner, with somebody that provides a very powerful tool that does this and integrates, you know, with, with the vehicle history.

David Boyd: And it can pull this forward and, you know, allows us to, to really be sophisticated in that appointment setting process. But that is probably the, the, the ideal time to use this is after hours. And if we look at this is really the sophisticated or interactive voicemail. This is a good use of, of AI in this way.

David Boyd: The last thing and thanks, Cindy to, I love that comment. I on the phone, has gotten a lot of heat lately. I don't know if you've seen or heard about this, but, I as a communication expert focused on the industry, I pride myself in my ability to protect my customers. So, there is some case law coming forth now with regard to the use of AI.

David Boyd: Whether it's kind of I, I do with car reviews or the bots and things of this sort. And we want to be, very particular in the way that we deploy that. So, I've got my thumb on that. It was on a very extensive, call, yesterday with a law firm that, is a frontrunner in the industry, in the communication industry.

David Boyd: So, these are all of the things that are important. And as an owner, there's a lot of, you know, cool and flashy tools out there. I would say I make sure that that you understand, what you're deploying and the potential legal implications, particularly in states where we have two party consent laws with regard to phone use.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah, yeah, that's interesting. David. Thank you. We'll have to do a follow up webinar to this webinar to find out what the ruling is or what happens with this new case law that that would be fascinating.

David Boyd: It's important. Yeah. It's important, you know, the wiretap call recording all of these. And I'd love to, have a follow up for your audience because it is important, and, we don't hear about it. Often. People get in trouble. So. Yeah, you got to have an advocate on your side that can that can help you with this, right?

Jimmy Lea: Love it. Love it with that. Thank you. David. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your effort, your energy to our automotive aftermarket industry. You are an awesome asset for everyone here and those who use your services. They know how great you are and the services you provide. So hats off to you brother. Thank you very much.

Jimmy Lea: You make the coaching and training side of what we do with phone skills and advice and following that proper phone flow. So much easier.

David Boyd: Thank you Jimmy. This has been a lot of fun. I really appreciate you.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah you're welcome. Thank you brother. And for those of you still with us, there are some upcoming events. Check out our website. We are the institute.com. Go under all events. See that we have a leadership intensive coming up very soon. If you want to dig deep into the human centric side of why you choose to do what you do and why your clients are the way they are, and why your employees are the way that they are.

Jimmy Lea: And how can you best communicate knowing these? This information is going to be very important. That leadership intensive happening in April. We are in April, happening in April in Salt Lake, Salt Lake City, Utah. Love to have you be a part of that. It's going to be awesome, awesome and amazing. We've also got some service Advisor training coming up soon, and in September is September or October.

Jimmy Lea: I think it's September is the next mini Mars series we are going to have at in the office in Ogden. It's going to be limited seating, 50 people only, limited seating, mini Mars. Love to see you there. Thank you very much, David. Thank you to everybody who is here today. Good to see you my friends. Thank you. Cindy.

Jimmy Lea: Bill, Ed Sheer, Jenny. Mike, you guys are awesome. Thank you so much. Have a great day.