Quality Mobile Fleet Services

ABOUT QUALITY MOBILE

Quality Mobile Fleet Services, founded by Jan and Dave Kettle, roared onto the scene in 2019. As their name suggests, they specialize in mobile repairs; while they do have a physical shop, only about 10% of their work happens there – the rest is handled by their armada of mobile techs. They serve San Diego, Riverside, and Imperial counties, handling roadside repair, routine maintenance, and inspections for heavy-duty vehicles like trucks, tractors, trailers, and everything in between.

WHAT QUALITY MOBILE NEEDED

Quality Mobile had all the problems mobile techs are used to – now multiply those problems by several mobile techs. They were using a type of software that hindered more than helped, and communication between techs and home base could get spotty at times.

Jan and Dave hoped they could find an application that made life easier for everyone and increased efficiency and productivity.

CHALLENGE #1 PREVIOUS SOFTWARE NOT BUILT FOR MOBILE

The software they started with might have worked out just fine for a standalone repair shop with no mobile arm; for a company built on its mobile offerings, it fell flat. When a job came in, the office staff wrote down all the details in a notebook. They’d then call the technician they wanted to dispatch. Once that was set, the office would text the tech all the details – the company name, what might be wrong with the truck, and the contact number and name of the driver. The tech then mapped it from their phone. Then the tech texted the Quality Mobile office when they left for the job, when they arrived at the job, and when they finished the job so the office staff could report time outs/time ins. And we haven’t even mentioned the constant communication during the job and what sort of effort went into finding and ordering parts!

“I would have to manually put that in the system,” Jan recalls, “for every repair, for every tech. Sometimes we had 3-4 jobs per tech per day!”

It was a huge amount of lost time.

CHALLENGE #2 COMMUNICATION ISSUES

Because everything had to be manually entered into their software, Jan and Dave spent many, many hours hunched over their service notebooks, picking out what information they needed and typing it into the computer. There was no real way to track parts; techs had to call in or text to request the necessary part, or even show up at the office looking for it.

“It was like a zoo around here!” Jan says. “It was always, ‘Hey I need this, I need that part, I need that.’”

The office staff always got as much information as possible over to their techs, but sometimes that wasn’t enough. The tech had to scroll through text messages to find the right information, or call the shop back to obtain it. They couldn’t access the software itself from the road, and thus couldn’t look at a job or its history.

This led to numerous communication issues. Sure, techs were in constant contact with the shop, but those fractured pieces of information didn’t always add up to a complete picture – or even a partial picture. Texts might disappear, or a single typo could change an entire order. Things got lost in translation.

ENTER FULLBAY

Jan and Dave stumbled across the Fullbay booth at SEMA and immediately noticed that they could put it to work for their mobile techs – literally. Since it ran on cell phones and tablets, techs could take over a lot of the initial legwork the office staff had handled; they could also see all the information on a vehicle right away. In short, it seemed like the answer to all their issues.

BUILT FOR HEAVY-DUTY USAGE & MOBILE

When the office gets a job, the staff creates a service order in Fullbay. Techs click into their timesheet when they leave for a job, so if the customer calls to find out when the tech will arrive, office staff can just look into Fullbay to see that the tech is en route.

Fullbay also lets techs “click out” of travel and “click in” to a job. They can pop the mileage into Fullbay, along with what was wrong with the vehicle, how they intend to fix it, and what parts are needed. With the job done, the tech clocks out, then clocks back to driving home or to the office. The invoice is already done and ready to bill out – all with a handful of clicks instead of constant phone calls and text messages.

“It is night and day better! Every one of our technicians loves Fullbay.”

A MORE EFFICIENT SHOP

Fullbay didn’t just make Quality Mobile’s techs more productive. The shop had been on the verge of hiring another service writer because the manual processes of the old software took so long to deal with. The physical shop is located in San Diego, where service writer salaries range from $60-$75,000 per year. Fullbay does the work of that service writer at a much lower cost and without the additional payroll expenses. That’s $75,000 a year that Fullbay has saved them right out of the gate because they didn’t need to hire anyone.

Allowing techs to access repair history was one of the biggest game-changers. The techs know exactly what service a vehicle has had before, and what’s coming up for it. Fullbay gives Quality Mobile’s techs “all the tools they need to talk to the customer knowledgeably about their vehicle.”

“With Fullbay, we are saving $60-$75,000/year just in the service writing aspect.”

EXCELLENT COMMUNICATION

Transparency and communication are the name of the game at Quality Mobile. Fullbay ended up smoothing out some internal wrinkles with techs who weren’t sure if they were being over- or under-worked; today, if a tech has a question, Jan and Dave just show them the metrics in Fullbay. Techs also know exactly what goals the shop has per month; they can find out how much more they need to work to hit those goals. Cutting down on calling and texting and scribbling down information has increased tech efficiency by 30%. That’s a lot of time a tech can now put into another job!

Customers are thrilled, too. “We want a relationship with them, not just a one-time visit,” Jan says. The Customer Portal lets them see exactly what is happening with their trucks, and customers appreciate that level of transparency.

“Our customers absolutely love us and I do attribute part of that to Fullbay because we have everything there. We know everything that is going on, we can talk intelligently to a customer, we can remind them if we’ve talked to them about it before, all of that!”

PROMISING GROWTH

Quality Mobile got Fullbay in November of 2019. From December 2019 through January of 2020, they doubled their sales – and they’ve grown every single month since then. It’s a testament to the staff and techs at Quality Mobile – they do great work, and word is getting around about them. The crew at Fullbay is just happy to be along for the ride!

“We have to add a tech almost every other month,” Jan says. “That’s how fast we are growing.”

Our business has grown 500% since we’ve started with Fullbay [in November]. We’ve grown about 300% since January 1st. With Fullbay, we can do more with less.