By: Heidi Harris, Director, Solutions Engineer, CCC Intelligent Solutions
If you had asked me back in my shop days what’s one thing I would fix tomorrow, I would have had an answer ready. Honestly, most weeks, I would have had several.
Some weeks it was car count; others, it was estimates that never converted into repairs. Then there were the weeks the phone rang nonstop with customers politely asking where their car was. But nearly every week, the ultimate question was: How can I get faster and drive more profit?
Those challenges haven't disappeared, but the tools available to solve them have drastically improved. What I used to manage with a clipboard, seven printed reports, twelve spreadsheets, a Posca marker, and pure hustle can be streamlined today.
If we got to chat recently, some of this may sound familiar. If not, pull up a chair. Here are three of the most common challenges I hear about, and some practical ideas for each one.
"I need more work coming through the door"
Referrals come from everywhere: relationships, contracts, a neighbor, a coworker, or someone at yoga who said, "Go see them, they took care of me." But the first thing any referred customer does is look up your business on their phone. Ensuring they feel comfortable taking the next step is how you drive that traffic.
It helps to think about the customer's path in four steps.
- Can they find you? Search for your shop the way a customer would, including through AI chats. Do you come up? Are your hours right? Is your phone number current? Do you have recent photos of your building and your team? Small details like these are often the first impression.
- Do they trust you? Reviews do the heavy lifting here. Getting the review is the part we have all been doing for years, but responding to every review timely is what builds a strong reputation for both prospective customers and AI search tools.
- Can they connect easily? Not everyone wants to make a phone call. Many prefer snapping a few photos and booking an appointment from their couch after dinner. Does your shop offer that digital experience?
- Will they take the next step? This comes down to the speed and warmth of your response. A quick text with a personalized greeting, a thank-you, and a proposed appointment time goes a long way.
In a CCC controlled study this year, single-store shops actively using online customer engagement tools wrote 30 to 40% more estimates than comparable shops that weren't.
If you want a simple place to start, count your online leads for one month and see how many turned into appointments. That number tells you a lot about where to focus.
"I'd love to turn more estimates into repairs"
Every shop I worked in had a "maybe" pile. Estimates we had written, customers who seemed interested, and then nothing. Often that has more to do with the customer's budget, or their confusion about insurance, than with anything your shop did.
Money is tight for a lot of families right now. The Federal Reserve's latest household survey found that nearly 40% of adults could not cover a $400 emergency expense. Now think about a $1,000 deductible or a customer-pay repair.
A few things can make a real difference here.
- Offer payment options early and naturally. When you go over the estimate, mention that a lot of customers choose to spread it out over monthly payments. Said that way, it sounds helpful instead of salesy.
- Walk them through the estimate. Customers often go quiet because they don't fully understand what they're looking at. Explaining what's included, what insurance covers, and why a supplement sometimes comes later can calm a lot of nerves.
- Give follow-up a rhythm. A friendly text the next day from the workfile including a link to the estimate, an easy way to schedule, and a way to apply for a payment plan if needed goes a long way.
- Look at the list together. Reviewing open estimates once a week as a team helps you spot patterns. If customer-pay estimates over a certain amount rarely come back, that's useful to know.
This is a great place to let technology carry the load. A seamless digital process tied to your estimating system keeps the customer engaged and helps you manage the entire workflow.
"I want to make sure nothing slips through the cracks"
Today’s repairs have a lot more moving pieces than when I started: more sensors, more parts, more procedures, and more hands on every job. CCC’s mid-year data puts the average repair at $4,821 in the first half of 2026, up from about $3,331 in 2020. With that much riding on every car, a missed scan, a wrong part, or a few unflagged labor hours cost more than it used to.
With that much complexity, it helps to build support right into your process.
- Scan at check-in and before delivery. A pre-repair scan shows you what's going on before teardown, and a post-repair scan confirms everything is working before the customer drives away. Both give you documentation if questions come up later.
- Look up OEM procedures and build data early. Pulling repair procedures and build data during blueprinting, before parts are ordered, helps you catch required operations, proper options on parts, and one-time-use parts up front instead of mid-repair. Many systems now link all of this right to the estimate, so the technician and estimator can see them without digging through a separate website.
- Order parts electronically. Electronic parts ordering pulls part numbers straight from the estimate, gives you visibility to live pricing and easy check out, sends the order to your vendors, and shows confirmations, backorders, and delivery status in one place. That cuts down on a lot of mistakes and leaks later in the process.
- Digitize your labor tracking. Instead of Friday afternoons with a calculator, a stack of repair orders, and a few technicians waiting to talk about their hours. Allow your system to flag the labor hours as the repairs move through production. Allow technicians real time mobile access to their allocations so they don’t have to leave their stall to get information and make requests. Payroll becomes a quick review instead of a project, technicians can check where they stand any day of the week, and your labor profit stays more predictable.
The more these steps become routine, the less your team has to remember on their own. You'll see fewer surprises, and less profit will fall through the cracks.
For more practical tips on mastering these processes, check out the Run My Business series on CCC's YouTube channel. Find the episode that fits your shop's "one thing" and share it with your team at your next meeting.
