WILSON – As if acquiring and renovating a new office space wasn’t enough to fill 2021, Gig East member Marcus Aman and the team at Shyft Auto have launched a new product that is changing the way automotive repair shops operate. It’s called Bayley, The Service Bay Assistant.
Think of it as Alexa for automotive technicians. Aman, a former Fixed Operations Director for a large dealership recognized bottlenecks in the repair process. Those delays had the potential to adversely affect customer service, profit, and customer retention, but there was no data to help him see how to fix it. From those challenges, Bayley was born.
Bayley from Shyft Auto
23 million new cars have been added to U.S. roadways since 2015, but there are 24,000 less service bays. The demand for repairs to these new cars is exacerbated by a severe decline in qualified technicians. The result is bustling repair shops struggling to keep up with ever-increasing demands for repairs. Bayley solves this issue by helping technicians streamline the repair process and maximize their time.
So how does it work? Bayley tracks every event in the repair process in real time. Once the technician pulls a vehicle into the service bay, the sensors trigger the bay entry time to begin. A weatherproof monitor attached to the lift displays customer, vehicle, and repair order details so that they don’t have to re-enter information. Then, Bayley sorts the job in order of fastest completion time. Each job is timed so that the operations director can see which technicians are most productive. The technician can view parts diagrams and availability for each job all from the same interface. They can also start a multi-point inspection by scanning a QR code on the monitor with their smartphone. Bayley’s IoT sensors gather data to show how long a vehicle has been on a lift or in the technician bay. They also tell technicians when equipment is available or add them to a queue.
Shyft’s award
Traditional data management systems record only two data points: repair order creation time and repair order close time. Bayley records eight, allowing the technician to follow the journey of each vehicle and customer. To top it all off, Bayley sends event based notifications to the customer to alert them of where their vehicle is in the repair process.
Bayley is already making waves in the auto repair industry, recently winning Motor.com’s Top 20 Award, an award recognizing the most innovative industry tools worldwide. Aman and team also finished in 2nd place at NAVIcon and Used Car Week’s AutoTech Entrepreneur Pitch-Off in November. “We believe what we’re working on is going to make a big difference for people. Nobody else is doing it” shared Aman. It has truly been quite the year for Shyft Auto, and with the opening of their new headquarters in Historic Downtown Wilson on the horizon, 2022 looks to be just as promising.
