Great communication drives shop success. This conversation shows how call tracking and AI improve performance and consistency. Real examples highlight how better language and tone increase trust and conversions. Coaching becomes easier when teams review calls together. Shops that train consistently build stronger teams and better results.

Host(s):

Jimmy Lea, VP of Business Development

Guest(s):

Parker Branch, Industry Coach

David Boyd, Founder & Ceo CallInbound

Show Highlights:

[00:00:00] – Strong communication improves shop culture and results

[00:05:00] – Call recording builds consistency across service advisors

[00:07:00] – Reviewing calls improves coaching and accountability

[00:09:00] – Using outside calls reduces team defensiveness

[00:10:00] – AI scoring saves time and highlights issues

[00:15:00] – Remove negative words to improve conversations

[00:18:00] – Positive tone increases customer trust and conversions

[00:24:00] – Recordings resolve disputes and protect the shop

[00:29:00] – AI finds missed chances to book appointments

[00:33:00] – Consistent coaching raises performance over time

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Links & Resources: 

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Episode Transcript Disclaimer

Episode Transcript:

Jimmy Lea: Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, or goodnight depending on where you are and where you're joining us from. It may be morning for you. For us, it is still Morning in Ogden, Utah. I'm at the headquarters of International Headquarters for the Institute for Automotive Business Excellence and I am so excited to be here with you for this webinar.

This is to be an act interactive webinar, so find that comments button and go ahead and put in your information where you're joining us from Today. We are gonna have a, an amazing conversation with both. A highly successful shop owner and a supporting technology in this industry that helps move forward shops, that helps us to take the next step and make the next.

Step in improving our shop, our culture, our skills, our sales skills, our relationships. This is gonna be a phenomenal presentation, a phenomenal discussion as we talk about those things that are gonna help you in your shops to make it awesome and amazing. We are stream, live on Streamy Yard. We're streaming live on Streamy Yard.

We're also out there on YouTube and on Facebook. So if you're joining us from any of these locations, now's the time to put in the comments. Let us know where you're joining from. Love to give you a shout out as they come in. We'll pop those up for you. Joining me today is from a skill point and a a software in the industry.

David Boyd with inbound communication. David is awesome. We, I've known David now for many years. We've known each other. David. We even have a picture of a us being twins,

David Boyd: right? The it was a I dunno what you call the wild jacket, right?

Jimmy Lea: Yep.

David Boyd: I'm looking forward to the next time that we'll meet.

Actually just in a month, at the end of the month. I'll see you out in Pennsylvania, so I've gotta get my gear in order for that.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah, get your jacket and get ready for tools. That's the Tools. Trade show conference in Pennsylvania, Hershey, Pennsylvania. It's gonna be amazing. It's gonna be awesome.

Yeah. And our next Mars conference where we took the picture initially. That is gonna be in October, so put that on your calendar as well. If you're wondering where to find the dates, do what I do, and you go to the website and you look it up on, in the events for the Mars conference. Thank you, David.

Thank you for being here. I really appreciate your expertise and your awesomeness here in this industry. Thank you.

David Boyd: It's a pleasure. Thank you, Jimmy.

Jimmy Lea: Joining as well is Parker Branch from Branch Automotive and Diesel. Is that right, Parker? Are you automotive and diesel?

Parker Branch: These days we just DBA as branch automotive.

Jimmy Lea: Branch Automotive,

Parker Branch: yeah.

Jimmy Lea: The most amazing jacket I have ever seen was that vision on Dan. He had a jacket that his logo lit up over the pocket.

Parker a branch Automotive was all across the back of it and it was totally lit up. It was the most amazing jacket. Parker,

David Boyd: did you

Parker Branch: sponsor

David Boyd: his wardrobe that day?

Parker Branch: He is, he's pretty daring and his wife is pretty talented in that area they took it upon themselves. He was excited to bring it out as a surprise to me and everybody else and

David Boyd: love

it.

Parker Branch: My understanding is he can change colors on the. The lighting around the logo and all that fun stuff. He can even make

Jimmy Lea: a pulse.

Parker Branch: Oh, he can make a blink and light up and so he was looking to put some moves on Jimmy.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. And he did, bro. He was next level. That was some awesome stuff.

I was so impressed. Not only has his wife done that for his jacket, she's also made custom t-shirts for concerts and jackets and hoodies, and they go to the concert and the logo is in response to the beat of the music, how it's flashing and s strobing. Oh my gosh. That's just some next level tech for your jacket.

Pretty crazy. Yeah. That's awesome.

David Boyd: Of all the ways you've impacted our industry, your greatest legacy may just be the jackets.

Jimmy Lea: Hey.

David Boyd: I don't know. Time will tell.

Jimmy Lea: Time will tell. I love it.

Parker Branch: You'll never be forgotten. Everybody knows the crazy hair and the awesome jackets. Love

Jimmy Lea: it. Yeah. Yeah. Oh man.

You guys make me blush. I love it. I love that we are known in the industry and that we're good friends and we support each other in this endeavor, and I think it's just really a great way for us to express ourselves and our creativity and yeah, it's a lot of fun. So on that note, back to Business Parker Branch, you are a highly successful shop owner.

Your shop is doing extremely well. Not only are you a successful shop owner, you are a coach in the industry. You're coaching other shops, and you are a user of inbound communication of which is an awesome program. How do you use this program? How does it. Develop skills with your team, and then maybe even we can talk about how it develops in the culture of your team as well.

But first to, to the team and the skills. What do you see because of phone calls?

Parker Branch: Yeah, it's a great point. When we, years ago when we were trying to improve our conversions, we're getting these leads, the phones are ringing. And we're communicating with our customers. We have, four service advisors at our store here.

And so there's a challenge in that alone, having that many people and trying to keep consistency across all four advisors. And so we needed to be able to hear the conversations. And at that point in time, I didn't have, a phone system that allowed me to go, record or go back and listen and.

I don't remember where I met David, obviously somewhere that I was traveling with the institute as a client and when I discovered what David's product could do with all the recording of the phone. Calls and that it, and quite honestly, his pricing was fantastic for, it was probably an improvement at that point in time for us with better technology.

And so we, we talked with David. I was very impressed with what he had. Know at that. I don't want to get him in trouble. But at that point in time, he literally flew out here and did the installation of our phone system, came over to the house and I think had dinner, or

David Boyd: we had dinner. It was fantastic.

Got beautiful view out there

Parker Branch: and it was like, I was blown away that and I'm sure he may have grown to where he's, got team members coming out, whatever, but he really took the time to make sure we were set up. And it gave us the capability to then start listening to phone calls so that we could go back, listen to calls.

For a lot of people, a lot of us in the industry, one of the things we worry about liability and what conversation was had with a customer. And quite honestly, in the beginning, our use of his product had a lot to do with, he said she's, if a customer was like, oh, that's not what I said geez I'm sorry that there's a misunderstanding.

If you'd I can. Download our phone call and email it over to you and you can listen to it again to see what we talked about. So it was, it protected us in that facet. But back to your point, for the coaching and growth and improvement of our shop and our team and our culture and consistency, we're able to start listening to some calls.

And that was pretty awesome.

Jimmy Lea: That is cool. I like that. You can also listen to the inbound and the outbound with David's program. Yeah. Once upon a time, there was a time where call tracking was only recording the inbounds inbound phone calls, and now. With David's program, we can not only do the inbound, but we can also get the outbound as well.

So

Parker Branch: yeah, the dashboard through, from inbound is fantastic. I'm a lot better at working on a truck when it comes to a computer system than I am on the desktop here, but even myself, his system is so user friendly, the dashboard that I can get in there in less than a minute and search inbound outbound.

What extension, who had the phone call by phone number, whatever you want, you can search through that system and pull it up really easily and quickly. And from there we try to have, we'll have one-on-ones with our service advisors, little privacy and let 'em listen to some calls. We'll do some team exercises as well.

Sometimes, I'm in a gear performance group still, so I'm coached by the Institute, by Jennifer Holbert and in that Gear Performance Group. Occasionally this becomes a subject how, like we hit it from time to time 'cause we need to stay sharp. How are we handling our calls? How are we doing on converting these leads?

All of you are spending a lot of money to make the phone ring with your AdWords campaign, social media, whatever it is. How are they get asking for the appointment, getting 'em in here And they'll coach that even in our group. And so we had a session, oh, I think in the fall. And Jennifer had secret chopped all of our shops multiple times, and she brought those phone calls to our gear performance group meeting.

David Boyd: And for

Parker Branch: Jennifer, and I'll tell you what, it was painful to listen to some of the calls, but that's the reality, and what I learned from that meeting and what I brought back on that specific time. We listened to some of o our other peers from the group. We listened to their calls here at Branch Automotive.

So it wasn't, Hey Jimmy, let's listen to your call and put you on the spot and make you defensive. Or we just said, no let's use David's software. We've already pulled some of these phone calls from other stores. Let's bring 'em in here and have my four advisors critique these other calls.

And it became an exercise. And they bought in and everybody was like, oh, I should have done this, should, so it changed the narrative where it wasn't defensive. Then after that we went through and listened to some of ourselves and our own calls here from branch. And it was it set the tone to make it constructive and fun.

It kept the culture up where we didn't want people to feel like we're beating them up. But that part of it was really cool. Beyond that, David developed his capabilities to have AI scoring and listening to these phone calls and helping give feedback. That's another thing for a shop owner.

Do I have time to listen to hours of phone calls? I should take some time to do that, but yeah, it reduces the stress. Absolutely.

Jimmy Lea: That's John firm busting in there with those comments. Yeah.

Parker Branch: Love it.

Jimmy Lea: Automotive down at Fort Worth.

Parker Branch: For sure. So

Jimmy Lea: thank you. Yeah. The truth, John. Yeah.

Parker Branch: Yeah. Now the ai, we get the, we get a, from the institute, we get an email every day letting us know, here was your metrics today, sales, and all the KPIs that they track.

That comes right out of our dashboard, and I have the team receiving that so everybody on the team can see it. It's not a secret and it helps everybody know how we're doing. Now we get the email from David from Inbound Daily. So that they can look at the AI scores on how phone calls were handled and.

The, it's, there may be some low scores. Sometimes it's a, it's a phone quality the call quality or whatever. It's not our fault, not a phone system issue. It's who's calling in is an issue maybe. But it really, the guys are interested now, so if they see. A lower score on a call.

They're like, what the heck is that? I'm gonna, I'm gonna go have a listen myself. So it encourages your team to investigate for themselves to see how things are going. And then we'll still follow up on that and have at least a monthly lunch and learn where we'll talk about the calls, listen to some calls.

I can't say enough about the tools. I could talk until you guys are sick of listening to me, so I'll stop a minute and let you jump in. But what a tool to make it easier to be better.

Jimmy Lea: Oh, so true. I'm thinking of a shop owner's listening to this right now, and how can they start this conversation?

Maybe they have inbound, maybe they have another phone recording system. Maybe they have no phone recording system whatsoever. How can they start? They could call their competition record the phone call, right? Depending on what state you're in, you wanna check on that. But if you're using it for training purposes, you can record the call.

Record the call of your competition, sit down with your team. And play the call. Let's analyze this phone call. How can they do? What can they do to make it better? And then as a culture, as a team. We're now gonna record our phone calls and this is where you can introduce it, Parker, just like you were saying, with your shop, with your 4, 5, 6 advisors.

I know. Sorry. It's just four. With your four advisors, you're able to listen to each other and can help each other grow. And what a phenomenal program with Jennifer to allow you to listen to other shops. I, that's phenomenal. I love that. I love that. That's very good. And there was another way I was gonna go down another road or the shop owner that's wanting to start with this.

How can they start? That's the way to start,

Parker Branch: right?

Jimmy Lea: And then the second need to make is with David and get signed up for inbound because you would be surprised. It is top quality. Oh, I remember it. Okay. What about this Parker, have you ever coached? No. No. David, this is to you.

David Boyd: Okay.

Jimmy Lea: Inside of your system, we can flag a weak word, a gray word, a word that's not positive, right.

The word, unfortunately.

David Boyd: So that's a great example. And there's so much to unpack with what. Parker talked about the key takeaway for your audience right now and the listener to this webinar. This podcast is normalization. It's important to normalize this aspect of your business, listening to one's own conversation on a recording.

Can really be challenging at the onset. So we wanna normalize that. And how do we do that? We do it by consistently reviewing and maybe moving in with a software expectation, moving more toward training, coaching and development as we normalize the, just the simple act of listening to these call reviews.

When we leverage ai, AI does something really powerful for us, which is takes this heavy burden of time and the time requirement. For Parker or his leadership team and others that have had to deal with this, it takes this burden of time away. You don't have the time. If your shop gets 150 calls in a day, you can't listen to a hundred.

I always joke with owners like, how long does it take to listen to a three minute phone call? 10 minutes

Jimmy Lea: so easily. You gotta add in the time to find the three minute phone call to listen to.

David Boyd: Hey, you have to find it. And then you listen to it. And then you listen to it. Did I hear that? And then now I gotta go and figure out how am I gonna coach?

I'm around this. Forget it. It. This is why historically call training and coaching has not happened unless you have. Mark from the institute and the team that does this, and that's their role in the industry, is to do this right? To sit down, find these calls and train it. But with, within the context of your normal daily operations, how do you normalize this?

Now we can leverage ai and that gets back to your question, Jimmy, which is one of the fun things. And another one of your coaches from the institute had requested this at one point in time, and I think it's phenomenal. He was just getting wrecked by. The use of the word, unfortunately,

love it. Can we just take the UN off of that, right? So we don't wanna lead with a negative, right? We don't wanna lead with no, or can't or don't, or won't or unfortunately these types of things. We don't wanna say, unfortunately, I can't get you in until next Tuesday. Fortunately, I have availability for you at 10:00 AM on Tuesday.

How do I find that in a call that's buried in 50 calls? I have to go listen to each of those one by one no longer, right? You just say, okay, ai, go it. It's certainly much more powerful than finding a key word or a key phrase. It can analyze the context of the conversation, which is where we really get that power and going through the analysis part of this.

But even something simple, just finding that word, saying where are we leading With no and no takes on different words. Can't, don't, won't. These types of things. Yeah. Unfortunately, is another way that we disappoint customers without knowing it.

Jimmy Lea: Yes. Let's finish the story.

Tell us about the shop that flagged the word, unfortunately. What happened there?

David Boyd: So we set it up to identify that word immediately, send an email, and I don't know if it was maybe two examples. And I think we licked that problem. Nice. So it be, so what happens is we create this awareness, right?

Yeah. And this is the power of coaching. It really is because, and I'll say it's it, we've done coaching for a long time as a, as an industry. It's the power of consistency in coaching. Consistency wins. Jimmy Parker you know this in your shop, Jimmy, you're certainly aware of it. Consistency wins.

So when we create this awareness. Now the coaching and training that I'm trying to extend to my service advisor resonates and it creates an awareness. So the next time they go to pick up that phone and field the call, we now have a new awareness. We're creating a new awareness of what is this?

The next one that I'm gonna be sitting down with Parker and talking about is this the next one, that in five minutes my manager or owner's going to have an email. In their inbox that says, whoop, we used the word unfortunately. Hang on a second.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. The and I think what happens for a lot of people is they don't realize that they're using these mental placeholder words.

They don't realize that they're using the word just, I'm just calling to follow up on your car. No, you're not just justice from justifying. You have to justify your existence. Why did I interrupt this person's day? No. You dropped your car off with us. I'm calling to update you on your Ford F-150.

You don't use the word just, so if we can eliminate those words, we now have a position of strength and of power, and of authority. Because we are in the industry. We are the power and the authority. We can speak with better words and better vocabulary, right?

Parker Branch: Yeah. The good news, Jimmy, I can't wait to tell you how great the software is helping us, and these phone systems make it a pleasure to try. It's that point that we're having these conversations with our customers. They're gonna go where you lead them, and it's to instill that in our service advisors. And help 'em understand. Some of it's like Michael Smith, personal leadership, understanding of human, how we operate.

And if you can train using this tool with your advisors and point out that. Being positive. Hey, the good news is this is what's going on. And here's, we found what your primary concern was. We were able to diagnose that we know what the right course of action is. We want to take care of this, that, and the other thing.

And it's this many dollars. And the good news is when we're done with that, you're gonna be back up and running. So there's no. Unfortunately, oh, this is gonna be expensive. Or, the keeping it positive and energy to David's point about the keyword or yours from that learning of, unfortunately, so I always tell 'em, Hey, remember, energy positivity and they will follow you along that line.

If you come in there and it's negative and, oh, I don't know about this. You've art, you've just, you've spent all this money to make the phone ring. You got 'em on the phone and then you led them down. The poor old, Nope, this isn't so good. So it makes a big difference, just the connotation and the energy and some of those key words.

And using the AI to expedite, sure. None of us have time to spend hours and hours searching through it. But dedicate, pick a day a month to have a lunch and learn and make yourself or your manager have maybe the day before or that morning, spend an hour or two. It's well worth spending some time, at least once a month to prepare.

Then go to the team, Hey, let's do this exercise. I'll buy you some pizza. Whatever you guys want. It's just a great toolbox.

Jimmy Lea: Oh it really is. And to your point, if you're not having company meetings consistently with an outline, with an agenda, then what you're actually holding are company beatings.

Parker Branch: Yeah, and to that point, having, if you're gonna have a meeting at least once a month you certainly should, if not more. And in that once a month meeting for a lot, there may be people out there that listen or watch this podcast that don't know have a safety topic and have a sign, sign-in sheet every time you have a meeting.

And whatever else is gonna be on your topic for that day and keep a log of that safety topic that you talked about, everybody signing in that could qualify you depending on your state and so forth. For a discount on workers' compensation insurance, it does for us.

Jimmy Lea: Oh, that's awesome. Great tip. That's that's great to hear.

Parker. Do you know of any stories, whether it's personal with your own shop or some of those shops that you're coaching? Do you know of a story that involves a phone and a phone conversation that could have gone bad, but actually turned out to be good?

Parker Branch: Oh, that's a tough one. Certainly, I think my little example earlier about he said, she said yes I know there have been a couple of times over the years where there was, it was suggested maybe by a client that.

This wasn't what I agreed to or, that type of situation which that is unfortunate, but we tried to keep it positive and as much as we can be frustrated by that situation, I think when we presented it, we tried to be professional and courteous, but let them know that, in fact I can send the conversation over if you'd like me to, because this is what we had talked about and you had agreed to.

This situation. So I'm not sure how there could be a discrepancy there, but I'd be happy to send a recording of that over and we can look at it together. So certainly if that had escalated, which it didn't thankfully but it had that escalated and put someone into a legal situation, I would advise you to check with David and his team as far as what rules and regulations.

In your state regarding recording phone calls, whether you have to have a message that announces it or whatever. But as long as you've consulted his team, he will make sure you are compliant and have that ability to then have that protection. So I, I hate getting into the examples 'cause none of us wanna have the negativity.

But it's solid if you have an issue and need it.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah,

David Boyd: I have a couple examples that I can expand on that if you have a second, Jimmy.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah.

David Boyd: One of my favorites that I actually use when I'm talking with other shops that are considering call inbound for supporting them in their communication is Institute.

Member that was part of GPG for a lot of years that uses our program. Had a customer come in and ready to check out, right? So they're there to pick up their vehicle. Were presented with their $3,000 bill and they said, $3,000. You told me they'd be $300, and they were convinced. They, they made a convincing statement, shall I say.

And now we know the rest of the story. So the manager there did something that I love and the way that we approach the use of the call recording sometimes we have to be a little bit delicate because we don't want necessarily wanna come across I'm gonna throw this in my customer's face, right?

We still are maintaining a relationship. This manager did something that was beautiful just naturally. Stated, I wasn't part of that conversation that you had with a service advisor. Lemme just go grab the call recording real quick and we'll just check that out. And he said, Hey if that's what we said, we'll stand on that.

And all of a sudden the amnesia cleared and the customer's memory returned and they said, ah, I probably have it wrong. Don't worry about it. They didn't wanna be embarrassed. Sure, because they made the demand. You told me this was $300. So it's, I call it customer accountability. We're not trying to corner somebody or we just wanna say, Hey, I call it the replay booth.

If we need to leverage the replay booth. So this is one of the pieces of a really comprehensive set of best practices about how you handle calls today. Of course, we've spent a lot of time about call, talking about call recording and how important that is and how we use that in reviews and coaching and training.

The metrics the the way that we analyze. Are we even asking people to come in and see us? Are we training our service advisors in this arena? And this is one of a set of best practices that we leverage because we're part of the automotive repair industry. So what's the best time to answer the phone when somebody's calling you?

And how can we use technology digital technology like, like our digital phone system? To ensure that happens as, as high a percentage as possible, that we answer that phone when somebody's calling. And then how do we leverage technology when we're not available? Nights, weekends, holidays?

There are various times Parker does something great at his shop. I don't know all of the details around this, but I think you got a period of time daily that you you go offline, right?

Parker Branch: Correct. For your lunch,

David Boyd: is it

Parker Branch: free your lunch? Yeah, we're closed. We're closed from noon to one.

We shut the phones down from noon to one.

David Boyd: Yeah.

Parker Branch: To give our service advisors a lunch break. But even, during that period of time, every time the phone rings and it goes to voicemail, it generates a, an email that comes into our whole team. If someone calls after hours and leaves a voicemail, it comes in to our whole team.

And we pride ourselves on, if it's during the day. W we see that email, that customer's gonna get a call back within minutes. And if it's, I have it coming to my phone maybe I'm guilty. I don't turn the business completely off. If I see an email come in over the weekend and somebody's hot and there's been a, an issue or something that, that, maybe I'm embarrassed we made a mistake or whatever.

I can see it immediately and I can turn around with his technology that he's helped us set up. I can call from my cell phone and it'll ring out with business's phone number as if I was calling him from the shop. Hey, I'm sorry that you've had this issue, whatever. But just on, in the day-to-day, receiving those emails immediately to see, it transcribes whatever the customer said.

Also has a recording. It's pretty awesome for making sure we're staying on top. I'll, like even the, sometimes the marketing team will look at, the calls that are coming in. They're like, oh, this one got missed or not answered, and I'm like, no, I don't think so. It might have been lunch or after hours, but I can guarantee you that within a short period of time, that person is getting called back because of the technology that David brings in his package.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Hey and Ashley, Joe, if you'll expand on this question a little bit, unless David, you read that and go, oh no, I know exactly what she's talking about.

David Boyd: I don't, I was wondering I think I've got about 80% of the question there, so some more would be helpful.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah I think she's saying, we're always so busy.

What happens when the phone call does go to voicemail? What happens?

David Boyd: Oh, yeah.

Jimmy Lea: And Parker's got it set up to where it comes in as an email to him. Are there other options? Are there other things that we can do?

David Boyd: Yeah. And this is the beauty of the age in which we live now, where we can leverage alternatives.

We've been familiar with things like auto attendance for a while. How can we. Try to identify the common things where customers are calling. Do they need to get an appointment scheduled? Let's kick out a text message to them right through the phone system. Can we engage them with a an AI scheduling assistant, and have that tied right into your online scheduling system.

Yes, there are ways that, that even when we can't answer that phone, that we can leverage technology to try to engage our customer. We always wanna do something that is. Forward thinking in the sense that we want to al always help our customers understand that we are the shop they wanna do business with.

Oh, you've anticipated my need in this way. After hours is a real common example, getting their vehicle dropped off. A lot of customers have never done that before, so it's uncomfortable they don't know what to do. We can provide very straightforward information, establish a clear expectation of what to do, when they arrive, what to do with their keys, when are they gonna hear from us.

And then we're leaving them with this idea of, oh, they're, they've really thought of me, right? Getting them connected to a tow service. But then using other aspects of our technology where we can get them scheduled during business hours or after business hours. If we can't handle that call, let's identify if they're calling about needing to schedule an appointment.

Just engage them with that and get that appointment scheduled right through the phone system.

Parker Branch: Yeah, I think follow me answer Ashley's question.

David Boyd: Yep.

Parker Branch: Looking at the AI will let you know if you have that option. It'll let you know if they did request the appointment. So that's part of the scoring.

So again, instead of you having to listen to calls and calls in a lot of time. With the AI tool. And I can tell you I'm probably guilty in a sense that I don't know exactly what cost is associated with what specific part of the program that I have. But I know that of all the things I do I still feel like I'm stealing the service from David because he is so fairly priced.

David Boyd: I'm

Parker Branch: making note here and but yeah, the that AI section of that will give you clues actually really quick. As to which calls maybe to go listen to or, you can pick a few and get in and out of the tool pretty quickly.

David Boyd: We leverage AI to analyze the context of each call. So we want to categorize that, one is this a customer, we don't want to have to bother with vendor calls if it's a parts shop or a parts house or dealership or somebody's calling me.

That doesn't have, it's not a customer engagement. So we can set those aside and then identify as an, an opportunity where there's an appointment or scheduling opportunity. Is it a status call? Depending on your process in your shop. A customer calling for status might be essentially a fail, right?

If they're calling us for the status versus us providing that. So do we wanna identify those status calls? And then also sales calls. In what Parker's talking about in the opportunity or scheduling call analysis, we go through various aspects, right? How did we greet the customer? Did how did we qualify, right?

Did we know who they are, their vehicle information? Did we ask for the appointment? And this is the key. I think that's exactly back to your question. Hey good to see you, Josh. You might be surprised or you might not be surprised to learn that there are various obvious, there are obvious times in a conversation when it would be appropriate to ask the customer to come in and see you.

And there are also times that we failed to do that in the shop. So quickly identifying when those occurrences happen and then be able to. Train and coach and guide against those using them as real life opportunities. Hey, we had this conversation. This would've been a good opportunity to ask the customer to come in and see us.

And then it also helps identify if you've got, some challenges maybe with advisors who are just not getting it that the AI can give you examples where this is important for understanding over time. How many times do we have to repeat this idea of asking for an appointment? I don't mean to get so sidetracked on that, but if an objection arises a hesitation, how did we overcome that?

And then in the in the scheduling and sales call analysis, we have what I affectionately call our customer care composite. How well did the service advisor care for this customer? This is important. It's your brand at stake. Were we professional and enthusiastic? And what was our tone? Were we helpful?

So these things are gauged. What was the follow up and reassurance at the end of this call? How did we sign off? So these are all, this is a very comprehensive analysis that. We leverage AI to do so that you don't have to, it's delivered to you. One other note too, we spent some time talking about maybe the opportunities in these calls.

I hesitate to call them bad calls, but, calls are there, there are things that go well and things where we have learning opportunities really in every call, but where are the good ones and can we identify those calls? Because when we identify a good call. Where really all of the boxes are checked.

Let's sit down and listen to that one and say that thing. Do that one again. Exactly what you did here. 'cause you hit all of the right things. So let's replic replicate the good behavior, the high performance, and then let's identify where we have opportunities in the parts that were missed in calls, and use those for training purposes.

Parker Branch: Yeah. Let's point out the wins in that call. And the things that were great, encourage. From there, and to your point, it's gonna get replicated. We'll have more consistency across the business that we want. So great things.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. It's so true. And it's awesome to see the progress that these service advisors are making.

The call that they have today, that is their very best call. And you've identified it. You put it up on a pedestal, everybody listens to it. There's even things there that you listen to and you go, ah, you know what? I could have done this better and I could have done this better and I could have done this better.

Let's fast forward a year down the road, listen to that call again, and that will be one of the not best phone calls because now the phone calls skills have improved so dramatically that no longer is the training module for f phone skill. You have a new standard because you have coached and trained

Parker Branch: right

Jimmy Lea: And practiced those skills consistently.

In your company meetings.

Parker Branch: Yeah, I think you just gave me an idea, Jimmy, that in our, in our drive where we have all of our, resources, materials, SOPs, whatever it is, I think there ought to be a folder for some of these calls To that point, some great examples. So let's have a new folder.

Maybe Daniel, we need to have a phone training folder added into our drive so that we can drop some of these. Coachable and celebratory, calls in there to refer back to your point, Jimmy, that's a great idea.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. This is our best of the best for 2026 and at the beginning of 27, you're gonna listen to those calls and go, wow.

They, I, okay. They were good, but man, we're so much better now.

Parker Branch: We are, we're gonna have to develop a new trophy. We have the big dog trophy here with a we have a Mack truck emblem attached to a piece of trophy board with the big dog placard on it, and Daniel Howells and celebrates someone each month.

We're gonna have to have one of those with a golden phone on it or something.

David Boyd: I've got an extra handset here. I'll paint it gold for you and ship it over.

Parker Branch: Yeah we'll nail that sucker onto a plaque and we'll have to come up with a creative name. That's

Jimmy Lea: great. I love it.

I love it. That's awesome. That's awesome. Hey, and those of you who are listening, if you've got questions, comments, concerns, type 'em in the comment section. Let's ask these guys something's on your mind. Let's ask them and go ask questions. Yeah, put 'em in the comments. David, you were gonna start some

David Boyd: I was gonna say, just it, its important to create normalcy around this.

And have an expectation as the leader of your shop and communicate that expectation so that, I love that phrase, if it's not a meeting, it's a beating. And I think the biggest damage that I've seen is, and it's not intentional. No, no business owner is intentionally beating up their team about this.

But call coaching tends to occur only when a major defect has occurred. Historically. So there is maybe some negative connotation. Maybe your service advisors came from a different shop where they did this and it was not a comfortable experience. So this isn't, we're not gonna sit around the table and hold hands, but we're gonna sit down and we're gonna have conversations consistently, consistency wins in this case.

So we want to quickly identify good opportunities, and I would encourage you, as the leader in your organization when you're doing call reviews. To talk about what went well and where we have opportunity. And any one call has that even a poorly executed call. There's something that went well even if it was just they had a, an uptone sound when they answered or, upbeat sound, that type of a thing.

So identify the positive with the opportunity and, create it. Do this consistently enough that it becomes normal and that we're elevating, together. We're gonna learn together, we're going to the other. Actually, now that I say that make sure that your advisors know the what's in it for me, part of this.

Coaching without an objective is just, it's just talk, right? It's more, we need to have this be more than a conversation, need to understand, look, I want you to do better so that our brand is valued in our community. Our our work is respected in our industry. Customers love us and trust us.

And oh, by the way, at the end of the day, your paycheck probably goes up depending on your comp plan, right? But this is the, what's in it for you, right? We wanna have these familiar relationships with customers. We wanna make sure that our service advisors know, like when you ask for the appointment and the customer comes in, and then they, spend the money.

Whatever your a RO is asking for that appointment could equate to whatever your a RO is, right? And then they. Realize the benefit of that. This is really about painting the full picture. So it's more, so much more than just answering the phone. I think that's where a lot of people start, is like, all these phones are just blowing up, or it's so busy.

I have so many other things that I have to do. Take that breath, calm yourself, brush off the tech that just, chewed you out, whatever it is. And make sure that the person on the other side knows that you Mr. Or Mrs. Customer are the most important person in the world to me right now. You have my undivided attention.

And identify those opportunities when that doesn't happen so that we can elevate that bar for your shop.

Jimmy Lea: Oh, I love that. I love that. Parker, a question for you about your service advisors. How do you train them on these programs? Is it a once a month deal or is it weekly? How do you train your advisors?

Parker Branch: So it's once a month that Daniel, my manager, will actually have a lunch and learn and talk about the phone calls. I think I had, when I mentioned before, I think it resonates like what David was saying. We don't wanna beat them down or only highlight the negative or, the.

Opportunities to make 'em feel like, oh, great, here we go. We're going to, here how bad we did on the phone. And my example early on, just to say it again and make sure the people out there listening can maybe learn from, what we experienced and learn how, if you have peer, if you're in a GPG group with the institute, you have composite partners.

Get some of their phone calls or if you have a coach, ask them to share some coachable phone calls. And we started that when we really started to do a better job of listening and coaching our staff that we have now. We took some outside calls so that they didn't feel attacked, and we listened to some of those calls from our peers that were coachable.

And they really, they got into it. Oh geez. That guy was, he sounded he was upset or somebody just kicked his dog or he didn't want to be there, or, he didn't even ask what the customer's name or, got a phone number or things went well. The customer acknowledged, yeah, sure, that sounds great.

And okay, yeah. Are we gonna ask for a appointment here? Or, just some of that practice upfront and then. We eased into listening to our own calls and and we played a little game where we just said, Hey, each of you has one minute after we've listened to the call, tell me what you think.

Yeah. And we only had, in one meeting we would maybe only have three or four calls. And spent, we'd listened to the call. Stop. Give everybody a minute a piece. Of course, I, you know how much I talk, so I'd get in there and probably break the minute rule, but try to reel it in a little bit.

But it became fun. And pointing out to David's point again, the positivity and the tone and culture of your phone call and how you. Made it relational and upbeat and, oh, hey David, how's it going? What's happening with the airplane? What have you been doing? Let you know. I know him and I know my customer, and if I'm, make some conversation and enjoy that.

And genuinely I'm asking, how are you doing, Jimmy? What's the next Coke gonna look like at the next thing? All right, great. Let's talk about your truck. When can I get you in here? So having that. Positivity. It's unbelievable how much difference that makes in converting that appointment.

And then when they're having a communication, hey the diagnosis is done. We've gone through and done the digital vehicle inspection. We promised you, let's go over this together and talk about it. This is what's going on. That's what's going on. Oh my gosh, how much is that? You know what? Let's just get through the inspection so you know what all is going on with the truck.

Then we'll decide what to do from there. Oh, okay. So again, that positivity, leading the customer is gonna follow you when you treat them that well and as a relationship. So I think that's a lot of this helps us to do that and to go back and listen to how well have we done.

Jimmy Lea: I love that.

Yeah. Tho those,

David Boyd: one more one more facet of that Parker, you had shared that you actually do something that I love and it's somewhat unique, but you're sending the AI insights emails that come to you daily into a shared mailbox. And what do you do with those?

Parker Branch: I encourage the guys to take a look at 'em and Daniel will use those in training.

Yeah. But again, a few years back. I was just going to meetings by myself, going to trade shows by myself.

I guess quite a few years back. And I had one of those moments where I was like, I learn all this stuff and I come back and try to share it. It's not the same as if I include my team.

So I would encourage you no matter what size shop you have to figure out a way to include your employees in it. So to that example, sharing the insights with them daily. Now when, we just came back from vision, we took 13 people to vision. And all of them came back empowered and like excited and stoked and we, let 'em choose their own, topics.

Even some of my technicians wanted to go to leadership type trainings and stuff because they know someday they wanna move up and, have growth potential. It ties together with even this training on the phones and stuff, and send the insights to them to, we send it to our info at Branch Automotive channel and that way everybody in the off, really everybody that has an email can see it.

And it creates that curiosity. If I see, you wanna see if you got a, a grade that you're like, what the heck is that, low, high, whatever. It creates some curiosity. And they might go in and listen to it themselves, and that's pretty fun to when you witness that, they're like doing it on their own.

I think it empowers 'em. Kudos to you for that tool, having that capability to let the individual that's on the phone take a peek and get excited about it.

David Boyd: Definitely I, and I love too that, that you've put it out there in a way like, Hey, this is normal. It's expected, it's, this isn't taboo.

If somebody gets a 50 versus a 90 or something like that, there's a learning opportunity. I think human nature says we're gonna look at that email and go. How did I do? But then the second question is how did the guy sit next to me do? So it it creates this this fun environment. So I like how you've you've leveraged that something that, that we can use ai.

I think this is a great application to ai. We talk about AI in so many facets of our businesses today, right? But we can leverage this to make it easy to access one. Then normalize so that now you've done something too where you've, you get extra credit for this one Parker, but you've you've, allowed your staff, your service advisors to consume that themselves and find those opportunities where they can self-improve.

And it, it happens even outside of the context of the formal training activity around it. It's just normal daily. Hey, we can peek at that email and see how did I do, how did my neighbor do?

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Yeah. I love it. I love it. You guys, any final words of wisdom? We need to land this plane 'cause we're approaching the hour.

I will put in my shameless plug now and then we'll close it with you, David, and then you, Parker. My shameless plug comes to say, Hey, we're the institute. We coach and train. We train shops to be the best that they can possibly be. Come try us out. There's no long-term contract. We are month to month.

Try it out. I guarantee you will see a difference in your shop right around the three to nine month time period, and usually it's right around six. You will see a difference. The difference also includes are you gonna do your homework, are you gonna do those things that Coach Parker's gonna tell you that you need to implement in your shop?

If you don't do those things, guaranteed it's not gonna work. But if you do, you will see success. You will see it turn at the institute. We have programs for advisors, managers for you as shop owners. We have 20 groups that get together and they'll descend on your shop. Imagine 20 shop owners come into your facility looking at your shop from front curb to back wall.

What do you need to do to improve on your business when they leave? You've got a list of 200 to 300 specific things. That you need to do in your business to take it to that next level. It's absolutely phenomenal. We also have programs that go into legacy. Are you looking at expanding a single location to be the premium location?

Are you looking to expand the kingdom and expand your footprint? You wanna add additional shops to your program? We can help you with that as well. That's with our legacy program. So we, at the institute, we know you need a coach. You know you need a coach. Pick up the phone and give us a call. Let us help you, help yourself, and we can help drive that difference.

David, final words from you, brother.

David Boyd: Thank you. I I echo everything that you just said. I'm a big fan of the institute. I'm a product of the institute as well on the shop side of it. But so thank you for having me on and this conversation. I'm very passionate about communication and coaching and training.

Call Inbound is a business that is really best in class. Digital voice communication, calling bound, makes shops and shop owners champions in communication. We have a whole suite of technology and best practices that we use, not only for call handling and we also leverage AI to help improve.

Performance on your phones, give you lots of data that's important to manage the the behavior and the improvement of your service advisors know how the customer engagement is going and when needed. We have the recording and data available for that customer accountability we talked about.

Jimmy Lea: Love it. Awesome.

Parker Branch: Thank

Jimmy Lea: you.

Parker Branch: Yeah, thanks for having me as well, Jimmy. It's fun for me to be here as a, just a shop owner, a client of the institute doing the coaching one-on-one for some clients for the institute. The institute has made a huge difference in our business and my life and growth.

And I think the institute does a fantastic job of being involved in the industry and networking, meeting all the vendors. Suppliers, partners that are out in our industry and bringing light to the ones that they know can really serve you well. And that's how I met David, was through the institute bringing me, together with him.

So I can't thank you all enough for that. But yeah what a great topic today and thanks for including me.

Jimmy Lea: You're very welcome. You're very welcome, everybody. That's here for to the very end. In the next minutes, you'll wanna pull out your smartphone and scan the QR code.

Set up an appointment to meet with the institute and have a business discussion. Let's talk about your shop, talk about your business. There's probably one or two or three things that my account executives could talk to you about in your shop that if you were to change them immediately, you might make an extra 15, $18,000 next month.

And the answer is yes. I have had that exact thing happen with one of our account executives and a prospect who is now a client of the Institute. So with that, thank you very much. Thank you everybody for being here. My name is Jimmy Lee with the Institute. Thank you to David. Thank you to Parker, and thank you to the Institute.

We'll talk to you again soon. See you next at the next webinar.