Operations infrastructure for repair, collision, and specialty automotive shops.
Bay time is the constraint, not budget. We build the layer that keeps bays full and estimates from going cold: intake that books, follow-up that runs without the service writer, retention that brings cars back, and reporting that shows which work and which customers are actually profitable.
The problems we keep seeing in growing shops
Estimates go out and go cold
The service writer sends the estimate, the customer says they will think about it, and nobody follows up because the phone is ringing. Approved work that never gets scheduled is unbilled bay time.
The front counter is the bottleneck
Calls, walk-ins, texts, and web forms all hit the same two people. Intake quality depends on how busy the morning is.
Customers do not come back on schedule
Declined services, upcoming maintenance, and the customer who has not been in for fourteen months live in the shop-management system and never get a message.
Reporting the owner does at night
Car count, average repair order, effective labor rate, and parts margin come out of the shop software as exports the owner reconciles after close.
What we build for shop operations
- Intake that books — web, phone, and text inquiries captured, qualified, and scheduled with the right bay time, with after-hours handling so a missed call is not a lost car.
- Estimate follow-up that runs itself — every open estimate followed up on a schedule, with declined work tracked for the next visit.
- Retention automation — maintenance reminders, declined-service follow-up, and reactivation for customers who have gone quiet, in the shop's voice.
- An integration layer on top of the shop system — we connect Tekmetric, Shop-Ware, Mitchell, or CCC, the phones, and the CRM so a customer record flows once. We do not replace your shop software.
- Shop dashboards — car count, ARO, effective labor rate, and parts margin by technician and by week, without the export.
Proof from adjacent operations work
Speed-to-lead intake after applications
Response time moved from hours to minutes on high-intent inbound.
Read case →AI-driven email marketing automation with guardrails
Repeatable campaign cycles with operator-controlled automation instead of one-off mail merges and ad hoc copy.
Read case →Attribution and forecast dashboard refresh
Capital and ops decisions tied to current revenue reality—not stale reporting.
Read case →Anonymized engagements from adjacent, lead-driven and document-heavy businesses. We scope your build against your stack and your numbers.
Built for the independent, and for the groups buying independents
Collision and general-repair consolidators are buying shops whose operations live in one service writer's head. We standardize intake, follow-up, and reporting across a group's locations so the numbers compare and the playbook travels. If you are acquiring rather than operating, see how we work as an outsourced operating partner.
How we work with systems your revenue runs on
Your customer list, your lead flow, your billing — these run the business, so the engagement machinery is built for transparency: a named account lead and assigned engineer as your direct contacts, a shared workspace logging activity, decisions, and change orders, checkpoint sessions with written recaps, and milestone billing — you pay on delivered checkpoints, not on faith. We take only the access the work requires. The full delivery machinery is laid out in the method.
The low-risk way in
AI Adoption Audit
Where automation and AI actually pay back across your intake, follow-up, delivery, and reporting — with hour and dollar estimates, the data and process prerequisites you're missing, and a prioritized build roadmap with fixed pricing. Credited toward a build that starts within 60 days.
Automotive FAQ
We are a two-person front counter. Is this too much?
It is built for exactly that. The point is to take follow-up and reminders off the counter so the two people handle the customers in front of them. Most of what we build runs without anyone touching it.
Will it work with our shop-management software?
We connect to the major shop systems through their supported integrations and build around the ones without them. You keep your software; we make it talk to the phones, the CRM, and the reporting.
What does a shop usually start with?
Estimate follow-up and intake, because that is unbilled bay time. Then retention, then reporting. Scoped as a project you own, with an optional managed retainer. Start with a free Business Checkup or a scoping call.
Scope the operating layer your bays are missing.
Book a scoping call and we'll map where estimates go cold, where cars stop coming back, and what to build first.