August 15, 2019—Last week, Bolt On Technology launched a new website with tools and features designed to educate automotive repair shops with information and products they need to improve operations. Timothy Cifelli of Bolt On shares some insight with Ratchet+Wrench as to how exactly the website will do this.
How could a technician use the website daily to help better their operations?
There are a series of videos, including “A Day in the Life of a Service Technician” and “The BOLT ON Effect”, that demonstrate best practices in working in a shop in order to demonstrate the best way to be efficient, more productive and make money. The software is just a tool. The real secret is to change your daily routine.
Could you walk me through a path of how a shop owner could set a goal for the shop and use Bolt On's site to reach and track the progress of that goal?
At the top right corner, you will see a “Customer Login”. This grants access to shop owners to the new DashBoard tool which allows them to see how their employees are using the software. Being able to properly measure that growth enables you to identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats that you can act on. The Bolt On Technology Dashboard provides that and more.
Once set up, Dashboard will serve up the most important shop metrics taken right out of your management system in real-time. No searching for, copy and pasting or combining multiple reports required. Dashboard presents your information in a variety of ways that make it easy to track, understand and act upon daily.
- Newsfeed displays the current jobs you have in the shop management system.
- Scoreboard, when selected, shows tech hours.
- Reports display a variety of different reports you can run measuring overall usage of the BOLT ON software.
- Leave Feedback. Dashboard has been designed to be a tool to help you grow your business. We want your input to make it even better. Click on Leave Feedback and tell us how we can make Dashboard even better.
- Settings will enable you to update or adjust the content highlighted on their Pitstop website, such as Shop Information and more.
In terms of education and training, shop owners and their teams can also use the site to access our library of training videos on YouTube, while there are obviously some marketing videos here there are also a ton of training videos, recorded webinars, best practices demos, etc.
Lastly, the owner can sign up for live webinars, access our User Guide and enroll in an upcoming Bolt On University.
How does this stand out from other educational platform websites on the market?
Rather than simply training shops on how to use our products, we also promote tons of thought leadership intended to help them run their businesses better. Attached are just a few samples of recent thought leadership content that we have promoted through the website.
What Keeps Shop Owners Up at Night
What are some underutilized features of the website that can really bring a shop to the next level?
Nothing can really be classified as underutilized yet since the site has just launched. But I would definitely encourage visitors to our blog and the Bolt On Effect interactive brochure. The thought leadership items listed above can also be game-changers for our shop.
Finally, our product page is set up so shop owners can select the specif goals of problems they want to resolve and info on the specific product that can accomplish that is served up to them. This puts the focus on their needs vs what we want to sell them.
Visit the blog for more information.
