It is pretty obvious that, in today’s world, for a business to meet its true potential, having a presence online is a necessity. In a time in which many people, especially young people, seem to live their lives online – sharing stories on social media, chatting via messenger services, ordering meals, booking holidays, organising events, buying gadgets and goodies, scheduling doctor visits, and innumerable other things – to not be a part of this world is to miss out on opportunities that can seriously grow a business.

Engaging with consumers online can take many forms, but where do you spend your time and resources? Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Google My Business . . . there are many different platforms offering different avenues to connect to existing and potential customers. It can get complicated and time consuming.

Safe to say then, that a product that can make aspects of running a workshop easier and make things more streamlined and simplified, while simultaneously tapping into the online world and boosting a workshop’s presence there, could be a very welcome tool indeed.

Which is where Repairy – an Australian-developed, web-based, booking and calendar platform for workshops – might just fit the bill.

Simple to use for both customer and workshop, Repairy is designed to plug seamlessly into a workshop’s website and enable them to lock into the online community using the power of features that include 24-hour booking, alert notifications, unique URL contact links, and automatic reminder messaging, while also, and very importantly, enabling customers to easily and swiftly pen Google reviews.

Plenty of people make decisions from what they see and read online, and that makes reviews particularly important. Google reviews can impact search rankings, and when people see a business with plenty of good reviews and ranking high on their search listings, they are, naturally, much more inclined to take a closer look at that business and consider them as a place to spend their money.

So how does Repairy work?

With the platform plugged into the workshop’s website, a customer can visit the site at any time of the day or night, click an ‘Online Booking’ button and, in a few easy steps, book their vehicle in with the workshop and receive immediate, automatic confirmation of that booking.

Repairy ensures that only free days and times are available for them to book and then notifies the workshop when a booking has been made.

Details of the job – including vehicle and customer contact details and whether the job is a logbook or basic service or some other specific issue – are logged into a simplified calendar dashboard for the workshop to review. Accessible from a computer or via a smartphone, the dashboard can be viewed at any time.

The frustration of no-shows is tackled by an automatically generated message that Repairy sends to customers via SMS and email the day before the booking date. After the job is complete, Repairy automatically sends a ‘thank you’ message and an invitation to the customer to write a Google review. To make it easy for the customer, that invitation comes complete with a clickable link to take them directly to the Google review page.

Repairy will also automatically send a reminder message to the customer two weeks before the next service on their car is due. This message contains a clickable link to the platform and, as Repairy already has their details logged from their first booking, the new booking can be completed in seconds. Simple and easy.

This process is not restricted to those who book through the workshop’s website.

Repairy creates a URL web address that is unique to the workshop, and this can be dropped onto any online page – be it Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and so on. If a potential customer discovers the workshop via one of these channels, the URL link will take them directly to the workshop’s Repairy booking page.

For a workshop, this means that no matter from where a customer contacts them to book a job, it all comes through their Repairy dashboard interface and there’s no need to go searching through emails, phone messages, Facebook messages or website contact boards to work out what jobs are coming in – it’s all streamlined into the one place.

While all the above explains Repairy’s usefulness as an online customer booking tool, it can be used for offline customers too. A workshop can use the dashboard as a regular booking platform to schedule jobs for walk-in or phone-in customers, making it the only scheduling tool required.

Repairy is the brainchild of Qivin Tang, a 33-year-old Melbourne-based former mechanic and self-confessed problem solver, who founded the company in 2019 with the goal to develop a tool to enable workshops to be a part of, and be successful in, the online revolution.

“I realised the aftermarket auto industry can be a bit slow in terms of adoption of technology,” said Qivin. “A lot of mechanics deliver a really good customer experience and do really good work but that is not reflected online, and one of the reasons we built this tool is to enhance that.”

And it is making a difference, Qivin added. Workshops that are using the platform are, he said, seeing significant improvements, with the automatic messaging cutting down the rate of no-shows, and the automatically created and easy-to-follow links for customers to write a Google review proving particularly effective.

“We have seen workshops decrease no-shows by 85-90 per cent,” he said. “And we have workshops that have increased their review rate by 250 per cent. And because of that, their Google search and online presence dramatically rises. Would you choose someone who has 500 reviews or someone who has a dozen reviews?”

The aim of the game here is making things simple and easy. That’s reflected in the user experience for both customer and workshops, and it is, said Qivin, just as easy for a workshop to get up and running with Repairy. There’s no complicated set-up required, no painful day-long training sessions to sit through, no headache-inducing techno-babble to absorb.

“We book a demo to show the functionality and, if they are happy, we can onboard them within 15 minutes,” said Qivin. “And because it is such a simple system, a workshop can be up and running very quickly. We spent a lot of time with our customers to find out exactly what was needed . . . and you can look at the dashboard and be able to use it within 10 minutes.”

For MTA Queensland members who use the Repairy platform, a special subscription deal is on offer that will enable them to access the whole suite of Repairy features for a discounted price. And it is worth noting that the Repairy team has enough confidence in the power and simplicity of the platform that there is no requirement for businesses to sign up to long-term contracts – a month-to-month subscription is the go here if you want, with a discounted annual option available too.

“We don’t believe in tying down any workshop. We want the tool to sell itself,” said Qivin. “If you are a happy customer, then we don’t have to lock you in like other big companies.”

Ultimately, Qivin and the Repairy team aim to continue to develop the platform and build more customer relationship and marketing features into it, including an e-commerce pricing solution, an email blast feature, and a feature to enable social media marketing. Importantly, the customer data that enables the platform’s features is owned by the workshop, not Repairy.

“Repairy does keep a log of customers, but that is the workshops’ data – we do not own it,” said Qivin. “We don’t sell customer data and we do not use it for any purpose apart from to enhance our product for workshops.

“Repairy is all about empowering workshops to grow online. We empower workshops to own their presence, profits, and relationships, and enable them to have better retention as well as better representation online. We aim to equip them with tools to grow their business in the 21st century.”

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Source: Motor Trader e-Magazine (July 2022) 

15 July 2022