AutoFix TechnologyCast

Chris Cotton [00:00:00]:
It's time for the Autofix Technology Cast. Here's your host, Chris Cotton. Hey, everybody. I got Keith Twitchell here with me from Octorocket Digital concierge. Thanks for checking in and listening to the Autofix Technology Cast where we talk about all things technology related that we use in our shop. How are you doing, Keith? I know we had some technical difficulty, but here we are.

Keith Twitchell [00:00:31]:
Technology happens. Thank you, Chris, for having me on. Yeah, it's funny that we all have. Nobody's immune, right? All of us. Yeah, I'm great. Technology is our wheelhouse. So this is going to be an exciting conversation.

Chris Cotton [00:00:51]:
But here's the thing. I almost missed the other background, though.

Keith Twitchell [00:00:57]:
What do you mean by that?

Chris Cotton [00:00:58]:
Sorry? The. The octo rocket background with the octopus and the purple and everything.

Keith Twitchell [00:01:02]:
Yeah.

Chris Cotton [00:01:02]:
So if you, if you haven't seen that then, then most people don't know what I'm talking about.

Keith Twitchell [00:01:07]:
But so Chris is. Chris is. Chris and I have been on multiple video calls, but those are always like work related where it's not a podcast. And so I couldn't bring my. We do these fun rocket ships with octopus on other planets and I use those as backgrounds. And our whole team thinks it's cool. It's probably super distracting to the, to the guest, but yeah, actually I think.

Chris Cotton [00:01:32]:
It'S better because now I'm trying to be like, okay, we got lightsabers. We've got this other light in the back and then we've got like a, like a white pill clock behind you that probably is. Is a sound bar and everything else. So now I'm trying to figure out what everything else you've got going on.

Keith Twitchell [00:01:49]:
It's all superhero centric, comic book centric. The, you know, we all have other lives. We, we don't. It's good to reset when you walk out of the shop. Right. And do things that aren't. As much as I love things that go fast and things that have wheels and things that hover or whatever. Right.

Keith Twitchell [00:02:08]:
Like we're, you know, so those are my. That's all my Disney. Marvel stuff.

Chris Cotton [00:02:13]:
There you go. Okay. I'm not. I've never, I've like Disney, but I've never been much with the Marvel. So some of it's, some of it's probably lost on me. But the funny thing is, like you said, most people think that shop owners, like I got on a podcast not too long ago and the guy wanted to talk about cars and going fast and that's just like completely over my head. Like, I have Zero desire in that whatsoever. Which is completely opposite of somebody that's usually in our industry.

Chris Cotton [00:02:42]:
But.

Keith Twitchell [00:02:42]:
Well, there's a Working on the business versus working in the business. Right, Right. And if you're a shop owner, sometimes you have to step out of that. That boots on the ground roll and kind of get into a different headspace.

Chris Cotton [00:03:00]:
Right. And so last thing, and I promise we'll start. Are you into watches at all?

Keith Twitchell [00:03:07]:
I have a look. Wait a second. All right, so just. You can edit this later. Right. If my wife is listening, you can cut this next part out.

Chris Cotton [00:03:15]:
You don't have any watches at all and. No, it's okay. Yeah.

Keith Twitchell [00:03:19]:
I might have a problem. Allegedly. Yeah.

Chris Cotton [00:03:23]:
Okay. So I'll. You know, I may have lied. This may just be about you and me talking watches. The rest of the podcast. Maybe we should start that. When. When I see your other background, it makes me think of the new, like the Swatch.

Chris Cotton [00:03:41]:
The new Swatches with the Omega and everything.

Keith Twitchell [00:03:43]:
Yeah.

Chris Cotton [00:03:44]:
I think. I think you need to do a purple Omega Swatch as a company thing and then make sure you send me one whenever you do that.

Keith Twitchell [00:03:51]:
That's a great idea. I. I allegedly might have a couple of those you may have touched on. You know, one of which I had to travel to a specific store because you can only get those. Not all of them are available online. So. Yeah. Right.

Chris Cotton [00:04:08]:
You have to go to the store. Yeah.

Keith Twitchell [00:04:11]:
Swatch owns Omega. It sounds backwards. Right. But that's. That's the way it happened. And they did a cross. A collaboration, I guess you'd say, for the higher end Omega brand. But it brings people into the Swatch brand.

Keith Twitchell [00:04:24]:
And so you got this kind of nice mashup and. Yeah. But I don't know at all what you're talking about, Chris. Right.

Chris Cotton [00:04:30]:
Nothing. Nothing. Well, that's like. So I. I think it's most. I think it's common knowledge at this point. So I. In the last 18 months, I went back to school and completed my bachelor's degree.

Chris Cotton [00:04:43]:
I graduate in 37 days, and I may or may not have a Panerai in my closet boxed up and ready to go for graduation day.

Keith Twitchell [00:04:55]:
I. Yeah. And by the way, congratulations. I hope you make something of yourself.

Chris Cotton [00:05:01]:
Thank you. Yeah. When I. When I grow up. That was one of those. It's a completely selfless thing or selfless maybe selfish thing. I just wanted to check that box off. And my daughter's getting.

Chris Cotton [00:05:12]:
My daughter graduates from college the day before I do, so we're going to be busy. We're going to have to go to her graduation and then go up to mine, because I'm actually going to walk the stage and do it like I should have done it 30 something years ago.

Keith Twitchell [00:05:25]:
That would be an interesting long form. I would pay to see this. I would pay to sit in on this. I. What was the turning point in your. In your life that show? Because you've made a series of. Of decisions, right, that you basically said, there are directions that I want to go that.

Chris Cotton [00:05:44]:
Right.

Keith Twitchell [00:05:45]:
I. I want to. I want to make some changes. And, you know, all of us get in this rut of. I'm kind of trapped. Right. I can't change these other. If I do this, then I'll, you know, I'm scared.

Keith Twitchell [00:05:57]:
Right. Or whatever the reason is. And so that would be a fascinating talk. I would sit in on. When's your next ship? Like, when's your next. Like, let's. Let's do this at a conference. Let's.

Chris Cotton [00:06:08]:
Yeah, I don't know. Like, you let me know what conference you want to go to. We'll go. And if we. I mean, we can fill a room and just sit and talk about it, you can interview me or whatever, or we can figure it out.

Keith Twitchell [00:06:18]:
It's.

Chris Cotton [00:06:18]:
It's very interesting. I've talked a little bit about it on the other podcast, the Weekly Blitz, but, you know, it's. It's one of those things that I. Long story short, I have a short attention span. I was bored in college, read all the wrong books because I spent all the time in the library reading stuff about ancient Rome and the Greeks and German history and those things and not studying any of the stuff that they wanted me to check the boxes off of and just got bored and left. And that's how I got in the industry, because I answered AD as a service advisor in a good year for $6.50 an hour. If you people can realize that, like a lot of people, the young people now are like, oh, my gosh, you did what? Yeah, yeah, right. Working six days a week, you know, every Saturday, seven to seven, Monday through Friday, and just left.

Chris Cotton [00:07:10]:
And really, all through life is like, I don't really need that. And so really, it just became about. I'm not gonna promise, I'm not gonna cry, but whatever.

Keith Twitchell [00:07:22]:
That's great content.

Chris Cotton [00:07:24]:
Yeah, right. Yeah, It. It became more about. I wanted. I wanted my daughter to come from a home that had parents that both had bachelor's degrees. And Kimberly got hers way back in the 90s when she should have. And, you know, I've, you know, made it. In life without it.

Chris Cotton [00:07:45]:
And honestly, it was ridiculous. Oh, man. This is something I've never thought of. I wonder how many watches I could have bought with all. Allegedly. With all the tuition I just paid for school because I did 50 hours in 18 months and that was a pretty expensive task. I obviously don't need it for career advancement at this point, but whatever else. Anyway, we should probably get into it.

Keith Twitchell [00:08:10]:
But it's a. Yeah, but there you go. There's your next podcast channel. Right.

Chris Cotton [00:08:17]:
Right.

Keith Twitchell [00:08:17]:
Like, this is a great. Yeah, I could go for hours.

Chris Cotton [00:08:21]:
Yeah, it's pretty fast. And I like to talk to other people from that too. You know, I, I thought I was going to be the first person in my family to graduate from college in my direct line through my dad, but it's going to be my daughter by a day, you know? Yeah.

Keith Twitchell [00:08:38]:
But that's such a great story. You know, it's. Yeah. That you guys will always have.

Chris Cotton [00:08:43]:
Yep. So. So we will both be graduates of 2025. So with our, with our bachelor's. But anyway, so we have Keith here. Octorocket Digital concierge. I think most people know that I use Octorocket, but we just got started with Digital concierge a couple weeks ago so far. Love it.

Chris Cotton [00:09:03]:
Love Octorocket. But why don't you tell us your thoughts on Octo Rocket. May maybe how it started, what your. What you saw as the niche you were trying to fill, and then we'll just keep going from there.

Keith Twitchell [00:09:16]:
Yeah, sure. So there's a concept in play here that you already actually put out there, which is that missed. Missed opportunity has a cost or a financial impact that goes along with it. Right. Whether that's, hey, I was dormant for 10 years of my life and didn't maybe take the steps and go through the things that I had dreams to do or whether it's I run an automotive shop and I'm missing phone calls or I don't really know. We're just, we're just repairing the things that the customers ask us to do. We're not doing inspections. And, you know, there's a financial impact to everyone involved in that.

Keith Twitchell [00:10:03]:
Right. And so we, we're actually two companies that became one in January, interestingly enough. Both started separately with. But with kind of the similar concepts and motivation, which was to take that, that quality assurance and, and, and ratchet it up or to, to just shine a spotlight on it and help shop owners specifically because that's, that's our, our target customer is the shop owner. Is help Them run their business, help them understand what they need to pay attention to and where the, where the fuel leaks are, if you want to call it that. Right. Where the gaps are. And so I always go back to the gym analogy.

Keith Twitchell [00:10:45]:
And Chris, you've heard this before and I'm sorry. Yet this is like probably the third or fourth time you've heard. But you know, we see the commercials. You want to get stronger, you want to, you know, whatever, you want to get faster. We've, we've taken that to the point of being able to dial it in to the minimal amount of work. You still have to do the work. Right. And I guess maybe the, the current analogy, if you want to use the automotive world, is, is self driving cars.

Keith Twitchell [00:11:10]:
Like I am a huge fan of what Lexus does with their, they call it a co pilot. That's the way they reference their assisted driving in all their marketing. Right. Versus some of the other ones out there that call it self driving or you know, autopilot or what have you. And that almost implies you don't have to do anything, right? Versus the, we're going to help you. We're going to pick up on the things that you maybe are missing or that you aren't aware of. Right. And just call those to your attention.

Keith Twitchell [00:11:42]:
So that's kind of our mindset, right, in terms of how we use the tools, the technology, the AI it's all, it's all to help augment what's already there.

Chris Cotton [00:11:51]:
And again, I'm fascinated by it and I'm prepared for you to scold me because I'm sure like most things, shop owners don't use things to their full potential. Right. I'm sure Octorocket does so many more things that I don't use it for. But I love the fact that I can go in there, I can look at it, my store manager can look at it. We can, we can see our projections for the month. And of course I've gone in, I've set the goals. The goals are in there. Everybody knows where we're going.

Chris Cotton [00:12:27]:
But I like to go in there every day because I like to see the numbers and be like, okay, you know, where are we at? What's the projection? And then I also like, I like to do it first without the whip in there and then I like to do the whip because it gives me that little boost.

Keith Twitchell [00:12:41]:
Yeah.

Chris Cotton [00:12:42]:
And for those of you that don't know what the WIP is, it's a work in progress. So those are the things that are sold that are Sitting there that we just need to finish. But then I also love. I just drew a blank. The little button up there that tells me when I'm going to start making money.

Keith Twitchell [00:12:59]:
Yeah, yeah. That's our overhead projection.

Chris Cotton [00:13:01]:
The overhead projection running overhead.

Keith Twitchell [00:13:03]:
Yeah. So I mentioned that it was two companies. So on the analytics side, which was originally Octorocket, that's if you think of that, it's the back end. For those of you guys that are watching and listening that don't know that is the inside of house, back end of shop operations tool set. That's Chris is talking about. So it's going to help you do things like look at your. We do projections with the. With the ticket data that we have.

Keith Twitchell [00:13:29]:
Chris can look at his calendar. It's in a calendar view. And see what day of the month his shop is going to break even and what day he'll be profitable. And those projections are sometimes scary accurate down to the day of. Here's based on the current trend. So. So lots of focus on things like back to the inspections. Right.

Keith Twitchell [00:13:54]:
It's amazing to me the concept that you either get it or you don't. As a shop, if we don't ask for the work, how can we expect to get the work right? And a lot of owners and a lot of you guys listen to this are seasoned veterans and you know that. Right. But then you have some of your techs doing the inspections that don't get it. Oh, well, you know, they just told me they needed a bridge out. Right. But the water pump's leaking. Did you bring that up? Right.

Keith Twitchell [00:14:19]:
And so that literally can be the difference in that mindset over the course of a month of that shop breaking even or being profitable. Just. Just pointing out that the. To the customer that these things could need your attention and giving them the opportunity, they can say no. Right. And then of course, that's in the advisor's hands to have that discussion. But that's kind of. So on our analytics tool, that's what we're all about is finding those opportunities and.

Keith Twitchell [00:14:44]:
And drawing attention to the ones that are. That are being missed.

Chris Cotton [00:14:49]:
Right. Well, knowledge is power, right? Like, so as an owner, if I know. And two, I shouldn't be shocked by it, but this is like the octo rocket voodoo, right? So I can look at the projection for the month, I can look at the projection for the year, which is really good because it just shows me that what I thought this shop was capable of, we are capable of it because we're trending closer to that. And we're not even in summer yet, so we should be really, really good. But if you're a shop owner and you're looking at that and you know, I talk about being pissed off for greatness sometimes. If you don't like the fact that you're out running your overhead on the 23rd, 24th, 25th, 30th of the month and you want to be out running your overhead by the 15th or whatever, then you can look at it and be. As long as you've inputted everything correctly, you can be like, okay, what else do I need to do to make that happen?

Keith Twitchell [00:15:46]:
Yeah. And I think the biggest objection, at least that I hear and, and talk, I talk to a lot of shop owners. That's, that's part of my job. Right. Is you, you're trapped in this, you know, people listening to this that are in, on that, on that ledge of. But you know, I lost attack a couple weeks ago. I've got to go do some of it myself. I'm turning wrenches.

Keith Twitchell [00:16:07]:
Right. I don't have the time. But I would counter that with we, we give you factual data that shows you. With, with you. Here's what it's costing you to not fill that bay or what it's costing you if you've got that lift sitting there, not being used. Right. And right. Having those definitive answers.

Keith Twitchell [00:16:25]:
It's sort of the unknown of, well, I'm just frozen in fear. Like this goes back to kind of how you open this, Chris. Like you made some life decisions and said, I'm going to do some things that are important to me. And it's. But you have to have the. Somewhat of the safety nest to minimize that risk. Right. And that's kind of what we do is okay, if you do this, here are the projections.

Keith Twitchell [00:16:49]:
Even if you get to 80% of that, you're probably going to be better off than you are doing nothing.

Chris Cotton [00:16:54]:
Right. And to take that knowledge is power thing into what you were talking about a minute ago about doing the inspections and letting customers know. Knowledge is power for your customers too. They can make informed decisions on do I sell this car, do I keep it? You know, what am I, what am I going to have. We had a conversation earlier today, Joey, we promoted him to the counter and customer walked in, he's like, hey, I need 100,000 mile service. So Joey was looking it up and he built a ticket for the 100,000 mile service and told him, hey, we're also going to inspect the car. Well, the 100k with everything we were doing was like $2,400, but. But then it also needed pads and rotors front and back, and about another fifteen hundred dollars worth of stuff.

Chris Cotton [00:17:40]:
And he's like, ooh, what do I do? I'm like, you. You estimate it, you present it, and as long as the customer knows about it, it doesn't matter if they buy it or not. In a perfect world, I'd want them to buy it, but they don't have to. But the fact is we need them to have that knowledge so that two months from now, when they bring it back for something small, and then we're like, oh, it needs brain brakes, front and rear and whatever. And then they're like. Then they call our integrity into question because they're like, oh, well, why didn't you see this last time? Or whatever.

Keith Twitchell [00:18:09]:
Yeah. And, you know, again, preaching to the choir here. Right. But don't assume that just because that car is potentially going to be sold that, you know, that they're done with.

Chris Cotton [00:18:19]:
Yeah.

Keith Twitchell [00:18:20]:
You know, this is a lifetime relationship. Right. Right. So it's always that integrity. You know, I. I've gone through you guys that I'll. I'll be your example. I've gone through.

Keith Twitchell [00:18:33]:
I've taken my wife's car into shops where I know there are problems, and I just want to see if they find it Right. I'm expecting to have them fixed. I. I'm just. We, you know, new location, moved into town, whatever. I need to find somebody that I trust. Well, the first step in that is just give them the car and see what they say.

Chris Cotton [00:18:51]:
Right. Well, and back to that. Or on that still, like, when. When our daughter first started college, I was trying to find a place for her to go. She's 16 hours away from us. It's not like I can't really manage her repair. Yep. But.

Chris Cotton [00:19:09]:
So we took it to. To a place that. That they use tech metric. They should have had a great dvi. I gave them a list of things that I knew was wrong with it and said, hey, can you look into these things? And can you also change the air filter while we have it? She goes in, she's waiting on it. 45 minutes later, she texts me. She says, okay, I'm done. I'm like, wait, what do you mean you're done? And she's like, yeah.

Chris Cotton [00:19:36]:
They said, everything's good with the car. I'm like, I know for a fact that there are things that are not good on that vehicle. And so I remembered that I had somebody in one of my classes she goes to school in San Marcos, Texas. I remember that I had somebody in one of my classes that was in Buda or Kyle to the north, which is not really convenient for her. But I called him up and was like, hey, I need somebody to look at her car. And they went and looked at it, and they did a beautiful DVI, sent me an estimate for like $4,800. Oh, and the other place, they just tapped the air filter out, took a picture of the dirty air filter and put it back and said she didn't need it, by the way, which pisses me off to no end. I hate that.

Keith Twitchell [00:20:17]:
Yeah, well, that number one, dads. Yeah, right. And then your automotive knowledge in. In that space. Yeah, yeah.

Chris Cotton [00:20:24]:
I'm like, if you have to bang it on something to get all the dirt out of it to put it back in, then it probably doesn't need to be.

Keith Twitchell [00:20:29]:
Right? Yeah.

Chris Cotton [00:20:30]:
Yeah. But anyway, so they took it. They did the dvi, they sent it back to me, and I proved all of it. So the. The case in point of that is, is the one shop could add almost a $5,000 ticket, and they didn't. They didn't follow up on any of it. They just basically let the whole thing go. And then the other shop gave me a great dvi.

Chris Cotton [00:20:54]:
They found some things that I didn't know about, and I'm like, sure, I want this car taken care of and knock it out.

Keith Twitchell [00:21:01]:
We. We have started putting analytic. So we're numbers nerds, and. And, you know, knowledge is power. Right. So we've started putting that. That analytics mind of ours at Octorocket into dollar amounts, attaching numbers to missed opportunities.

Chris Cotton [00:21:20]:
Right.

Keith Twitchell [00:21:21]:
And one of my kind of favorite things to do is to sit down with the shop because it's. Because it's helpful, and show them to train that analytics tool on some of their existing work and just say, do you realize that, oh, just over the past week, you're looking at a potential $15,000 in. In missed opportunity. And, you know, I would be remiss if I didn't mention the other side of our business as we came together was on the. Because you already referenced this, how we interact with the customers. Right. So how are your. The.

Keith Twitchell [00:21:55]:
That same analytical mindset is helping the advisors reviewing the conversations with the customers, whether that's campaigns. Right. To follow up with customers that have declined work. Hey, you declined to repair on your air conditioner six months ago. Summer's coming up. Are you ready now? Just being able to reach back out to those customers to track their interactions. So we've got a tool set that'll do all that. But I think the thing that I love the most about that is the training aspect.

Keith Twitchell [00:22:24]:
Right. Taking that information, those conversations that you had with that shop and saying, what could we have done better here?

Chris Cotton [00:22:31]:
Right. Well, and the other thing is, as a coach in the space, I like being able to look at other people's octorocket dashboard or whatever we call it, and I can look on there. Yep. I'm a big Ronald Reagan fan. You know, trust the verify. It's one more step. Like, I can look at techmetric. I can look at Shop, where I can look at other stuff, but I can look at Octorocket and be like, okay, based on the conversation we're having, you know, this is what's posted.

Chris Cotton [00:22:57]:
This is where, you know, it gives us a really quick look at kind of some things that are going. And then you guys have taken that even further now and have your, you know, your little red. It's almost like a twinkly light up there that says, yeah, here's all the ways you're screwing up. And then if you click on it, it tells you, hey, you know, you need to keep an eye on this. And it gives you a little bit of information about that.

Keith Twitchell [00:23:22]:
It's so, again, kind of back to our. Our approach with technology or, you know, artificial intelligence. Right. It's the. It's the. If your coach were here, what would he say?

Chris Cotton [00:23:31]:
Or she.

Keith Twitchell [00:23:32]:
Right. Like, if Chris is. What would Chris say? Right. So. So it's a fuel gauge. We call it our fuel gauge. And then we point out fuel leaks, and it will show you things that are. That need attention and.

Keith Twitchell [00:23:47]:
And it's not to take the place of a coach. Right. You have to understand why those. Why those components are important and first of all, what you should be doing. But once you have that understanding, once you've worked with a coach, you use this to help you with your routine. It points you back to the things that. Because there's a lot. Right? There's a lot that you're supposed to be paying attention to.

Keith Twitchell [00:24:10]:
Okay, well, what matters the most this week?

Chris Cotton [00:24:12]:
Right? And then two. I love the daily and the weekly summary that gets emailed every day, although sometimes I question the accuracy of it because it seems like we're mountain time, and I. It almost seems like it goes out central. So it misses, like.

Keith Twitchell [00:24:28]:
Yeah.

Chris Cotton [00:24:29]:
Which just pisses me off because I'm like, oh, I know we did $1,000 more than that. And anyway, we have A.

Keith Twitchell [00:24:37]:
So, yeah, this is the generation one of that. We have a morning version of that that for those of you that are west of the Mississippi, I guess might be. Well, there's still central time, I guess, a little bit west of Mississippi.

Chris Cotton [00:24:52]:
Yep.

Keith Twitchell [00:24:54]:
Get the morning report and the. And the reason that I'm. I'm saying that is because if you've got a couple tickets left open for whatever reason, late pickups, you haven't closed out, the customer hasn't paid, they're not going to be in that report like you, like you said. So we have the option to. If you take the email report the next morning, it'll include everything.

Chris Cotton [00:25:14]:
Oh, okay.

Keith Twitchell [00:25:15]:
As long as somebody didn't leave something open that they should, right?

Chris Cotton [00:25:19]:
Yeah. Well, my guys are pretty good about it. And the last thing I do is check every day and I'm like, okay, this needs to be posted. This needs to be posted or whatever just to make sure it gets done. Because, again, numbers nerd. I like to see stuff completed and done and checked and everything like that. So, again, that's one of those things that I told you that I'm not using it quite like I should and I should probably get in trouble over. So I'm gonna have to go into the report, flip it to the morning report, and then be done with it.

Chris Cotton [00:25:47]:
So anything else about the analytics side before we kind of move into digital concierge a little bit?

Keith Twitchell [00:25:53]:
You know, you just said it, right? So you can't do all the things all the time. It's an F1 car, right. Like, there's a reason why there are only so many people skilled enough to drive those vehicles. And if my son's into F1, if you ever looked at their steering. Steering wheel, it's. I'll. I just. It gives you, like, anxiety just looking at all the buttons, right? So there's a lot.

Keith Twitchell [00:26:16]:
To use the. A cliche. There's a lot under the hood. Right. So focus on a few things. It's. It's. It's.

Keith Twitchell [00:26:23]:
It's just that pick what you want to get better at first and focus on those few things and grow slowly. Don't try to eat the whole elephant in one bite. Just. Just do a few things. And all of us, myself included, like, you know, I will go look at shops that are just crushing it and they will point out things or. Or we will. That. Hey there.

Keith Twitchell [00:26:44]:
Did you know that there's a gap over here? So.

Chris Cotton [00:26:46]:
Right.

Keith Twitchell [00:26:47]:
It can be. Can feel overwhelming, but just know that you can pace yourself. There's a lot to it. And I guess I should say, you know, in. In correlation with your coach. Right. Which is always the first thing you need to consult. We do training.

Keith Twitchell [00:27:03]:
We do a couple training sessions a week. So if you want to learn to use some of these other features, that's all on our website, octorocket.com and you can just sign up for a training. It's just classroom training. We'll show you how to. How to do it.

Chris Cotton [00:27:15]:
So one thing I would say is like, some people are probably out there and they're like, oh, you know, this is just one more thing I have to pay for or whatever like that. And I would say as a coach, I have tools, I don't need it, but I love using it. I love the information it gives me. So therefore, it's a must do for me.

Keith Twitchell [00:27:37]:
It's interesting. So the coaches are the people that probably need it the least because they already know it is built around the coaching principles.

Chris Cotton [00:27:45]:
Right.

Keith Twitchell [00:27:45]:
And yet we have coaches that love it because those are the same people that do those things every day. My counter to that is. And I'm. I'm serious, but I'm. But I'm joking. It's. It's as close as you're going to get to printing money. It is as close as you're going to get to.

Keith Twitchell [00:28:05]:
This tool should find you the money to pay for all the things in the shop that you need, whether that's equipment, other products, software, marketing expenses. This is the tool that you use to help find the revenue to grow. And if you don't care about money, then we can just throw my Venmo up on screen at the end.

Chris Cotton [00:28:24]:
Yeah. And just throw it to you. Just send you. Yeah. I think. I think people just have to be brave enough. Right. To do the things that they know they need to do.

Chris Cotton [00:28:39]:
And I've sent some kind of cheeky Facebook posts out here lately about like, here's the Think about It program. You know, just. And it's a picture of the same guy before and after. That didn't change at all because all he did was think about it. He didn't really do anything.

Keith Twitchell [00:28:54]:
Right.

Chris Cotton [00:28:55]:
And so I would also tell you because there's plenty of shops to go around. I don't have hesitation saying this if you are too cheap or don't want to spend the money or whatever, however you classify that as, and you don't want to coach outside of a peer group, I think this is the next best option. If you know you need help and you have money you want to spend on that, but don't know what to do and don't trust a coach or whatever for whatever reason, then I think you should at minimum do Octorocket and, and look for the leaks and do some other stuff like that and start there.

Keith Twitchell [00:29:31]:
You know, if it, if it. I am a huge fan of we all win. Right? Like so helping others and kind of growing the community. It's a community that I love. I've always been a gearhead. I've always loved cars. I've loved anything that, that, that it goes right, that moves, it's art. I love engines.

Keith Twitchell [00:29:54]:
I love all the complexity. Back to the point here. If it helps preserve that and, and helps your audience and some of these shop owners, and it removes the risk. And you know, there's a, there's an alarm company here. I'm in the Nashville area, and the guy would always this, it was a father son company and he would always go on the commercials and say, just don't tell my dad. I, I told you this, right? So I guess I'm saying don't tell the owners. But if you, if you reach out to us and tell us that you heard this on the podcast, we'll let you try it for a month. We're not going to charge you for it.

Keith Twitchell [00:30:26]:
You'll see the benefit of it. I will stand behind that. Right. So for your, for your, for your audience, if I can get the words out, if they want to try it and they're not sure and it is an expense, I get it. Right. And, and we know it's a good tool. And the values there, you guys just hit us up on our website and we'll let you take it for a test drive. That's.

Chris Cotton [00:30:45]:
I'm coining this phrase right now. I've done a couple in the last several years of podcasting, but I'm gonna say that Octorocket is going to be the gateway drug to coaching. Because what's going to happen is you're going to get in there, you're going to look at the analytics, you'll be like, okay, I know what this is. I know what this is. You're going to turn three or four dials, you're going to make four, five, six, seven thousand more dollars a month, and then you're like, okay, now I need somebody to push me across the finish line and whatever. So that's why I don't have a problem with it at all. So again, moving on to digital concierge. But this is what happens when you get to numbers people together.

Chris Cotton [00:31:26]:
Right?

Keith Twitchell [00:31:27]:
Yeah. And you got editors that can make us look. Sound good. Look good. Yeah.

Chris Cotton [00:31:31]:
Braxton. Braxton will do a great job. So for, you know, for our shop, we just signed up with digital concierge and got it running. I love the platform. I love the thought of it because I can answer the phone via the app anywhere in the United States. And because I travel a lot, if I want to catch some phone calls, if I want to log into the dashboard and listen to some phone calls and do some of those other things, I can. So that's why I got it. That's why I liked it.

Chris Cotton [00:32:04]:
But I'll let you talk more about that and kind of the program.

Keith Twitchell [00:32:08]:
Yeah. So same concept, but this time focused on the customer side. Right. So Octo Rocket originally was internal shop back office analytics. Brad started what was digital concierge. I think his dad was a shop owner, Former shop owner, retired. And back in the day, Brad came from a communications company, had the experience to put it all together. And I think there was a little bit of conversation back and forth with his dad of, hey, wouldn't it be great if kind of, kind of stuff, right.

Keith Twitchell [00:32:40]:
And eventually built it out. And there are. There are elements of what we do that we are seeing other companies validate because they are now trying to step into that. But nobody really has the complete package that we have with all the knowledge of the analytics. And so we targeted that on the customer experience. Right. That's what Brad did really well. Things like, okay, what Once.

Keith Twitchell [00:33:09]:
Once we have the inspection done, once we have the estimate over or the quote over to the customer, what's happening from there? Or we did marketing, we paid for a bunch of mailers, right. What's the conversion rate on. On those calls? How many of them? Otherwise you're putting. You're literally putting money in a bottle with a note in it that if you find this, please bring it back to me. Right? Like There's. This is 2025. We have better tools. So one of the favorite things that our customers love about the.

Keith Twitchell [00:33:45]:
We call it customer engagement side now, which used to be digital concierge, is the analytics that we put on the calls. So we do an AI scoring. We call it the Advisor iq. It literally grades good, bad, neutral, positive or negative. Right. And so you can go right to the negative calls. What happened? I want to see a waveform of that call. You know, if we look at this podcast, I can.

Keith Twitchell [00:34:10]:
I can look at the waveform and I can see who was talking. We can do that. On phone calls, we, we can of course transcribe them. And so you can use that as a teaching tool. One of the things that I love that we do is, is back to the marketing side. I can tell you based on how many phone calls that came in, how many of those converted. We can tell you if there are things that were, you know, how many of those were first time callers, what kind of vehicles, right. Are these people calling with? What, you know, what, what are the things that they are saying? Are there consistent things that customers are calling and saying that we're hearing again and again and again? So we're using our tools to be able to analyze the calls and do that kind of stuff.

Keith Twitchell [00:34:52]:
I love that because as a numbers nerd, that helps me sort of focus on, well, what aren't we doing? Right? So it's the, it's all things customer communication. Like you said, we do phones. That's just the beginning. It integrates with most of the major shop management softwares out there. Techmetric included. Protractor, Mitchell Ro writer, Shopware are the others. And, and you can use the, you know, it's got, it's got all your customer CRM info. So you, you can tell how long has this customer been a customer, what's their total spend, what kind of, you know, you want to target Jeep Owners this month? Okay, well, let's pull a campaign built at Jeep Owners, right?

Chris Cotton [00:35:36]:
Very. I mean, I love it so far and again, it does way more than what I'm using it for, but I got to learn more. So that's.

Keith Twitchell [00:35:45]:
Yeah, but you know, that's the good thing, right? If you're using 20% of the tool and you're seeing a value there, imagine what happens when you grow and you use another 10%.

Chris Cotton [00:35:56]:
Right? So is there, is there anything new that you can share with Octorocket or anything that you want to tease or give me the scoop on or let our listeners have the scoop on?

Keith Twitchell [00:36:10]:
Man. So what's in the works that I'm allowed to talk about? Okay, we are, we are always refining our, our software. Some of the, let's see some of the. Oh, just things that I won't get fired for, Chris.

Chris Cotton [00:36:29]:
So this is, so this tells me there's stuff there that we need to talk about or I need to dig deeper off recording. So that's perfect.

Keith Twitchell [00:36:36]:
Yeah, yeah, there are some things coming. I will tell you that we are working right now. Our, our focus is on unifying both sides of the business to help with even more analysis of when that call comes in the front door. What's the entire life story? Right? Did they schedule an appointment? What was that appointment for? Did they come back? What did they come back for? You know, are, are they declining work and are we getting them back for that? Declined work? Those are some of the short term things. Yeah, we, I mean, there's some cool stuff coming that I can't. If I put it out there right, then it's gonna, it's gonna be where there's a target on our back. But we're trying to, we are staying ahead in the, in this space. We are, we are like the leader in all things analytics in the shop.

Chris Cotton [00:37:33]:
Okay, so we'll, we'll. Everybody have to stay tuned now. We just need to, to roll auto fix into it. We'll call it Octo fix or. Yeah, Rocket fix or something like that. We'll figure it out and then add the coaching to your stuff. So anyway, so any final thoughts? And then how can people reach out to you? And you already gave them a great offer. I'm not going to repeat it again.

Chris Cotton [00:38:01]:
If you didn't hear it, you got to go back and listen there. Yeah. Final thoughts.

Keith Twitchell [00:38:07]:
First of all, thanks for having me on. And I will say probably the most important thing that, that I'm taking away from this now, I might cry. But all of you, if you're thinking about betterment, if you are thinking about a change, this is your example, right? You have somebody that has, has shown you that it's possible and accomplishable. We are. I would like to think of us in a small way as a tool set to help you with that change on a smaller scale. Right. Especially as your, as your repair shops go. So don't be discouraged.

Keith Twitchell [00:38:41]:
Happy to help you take those steps, small steps as they may be. And if you feel like it's time or you want to learn more, hit us up on our website. There's a, there's an inquiry form there. It's okto R O C K E t dot com Octo Rocket. So octopus rocket mashed together.

Chris Cotton [00:39:02]:
There you go.

Keith Twitchell [00:39:03]:
Yeah. And, and we'll be around to help answer questions.

Chris Cotton [00:39:07]:
Awesome. So thank you so much for. Thank you so much, Keith, for joining us today. This was really, really fun. I'm going to hit the stop recording button and you can tell me all the stuff that you couldn't say and then we can talk about the watches that we may or may not know anything about.

Keith Twitchell [00:39:22]:
There you go.

Chris Cotton [00:39:24]:
Have a great day, everybody. That wraps up this episode of the Autofix technology cast. Thanks for tuning in and being part of the conversation about the tools and technology driving the auto repair industry forward. A special thank you to our sponsor, Cinch for making this podcast possible. Remember, Cinch isn't just a tool, it's a game changer for your shop's customer retention and outreach. I use it in my shop and I know it can help yours too. Don't forget to check out Cinch IO Autofix to claim your free onboarding a $3,000 you. And as always, rise and grind, folks.

Chris Cotton [00:39:57]:
I want you to keep pushing forward, stay on the cutting edge and keep your mindset positive. Together we'll keep driving success in the auto repair industry. Until next time, take care and keep thriving.