Automotive
Repair orders and parts quotes for a car garage
The garage quoted by text message and tracked jobs on a whiteboard. When a customer asked about their car, somebody had to walk to the workshop and look.
Quote turnaround down from 2 days to 3 hours
An interface concept reconstructed for this use case. Brands and data are fictional; this is not a screenshot of a client system.
- Client
- Client asked not to be named
- Duration
- 3 months
- Engagement
- Fixed price
Context
Every quote passed through three people: a technician inspected the car, a manager looked up parts prices, the owner approved. Three people on three different channels, and a quote took two days on average.
The workshop whiteboard was the only record of job status. If somebody wiped a line by accident, the information was simply gone.
What was built
Technicians photograph and record line items at the car on a phone. Parts prices come from a preloaded price list, so the manual lookup step disappears.
Quotes reach the customer as a link that works on a phone, with a photo per line item. Customers approve line by line rather than all or nothing — a change the owner had not asked for, and the one that moved approval rates most.
Data capture runs on a phone, at the place the work happens. The real user of this screen is standing up, busy and has one hand free, so it carries only the fields that are actually required.
Outcome
Quote turnaround fell from two days on average to three hours.
Approval rates rose because customers see a photograph of the fault instead of reading a line of text and a number.