The car is on the lift, the claim is stuck in the office
The car comes in, the customer hands you the keys and asks when it will be ready, and for the part you know how to do you already have the answer in your head, the panel work, the primer, the paint, you know those times by heart
Then there's everything else, the claim to open with the insurer, the damage photos to upload wherever they want them, the quote to redo when the assessment changes a line, the parts to find and order, and meanwhile that car is taking up a lift that isn't earning
The time that goes before the car is even lifted
- Plate, VIN, model and customer details typed into the body shop business software, then typed again into the insurer's portal, then once more onto the parts order
- Photos to rename and upload one by one, each into the box that whichever insurer it is asks for
- A different portal for every insurer, with its own fields and its own steps, and you're the one who has to remember them all
- Parts looked up across several suppliers for price and availability, with codes that hardly ever match from one price list to the next
- Open claims to follow up, and you find out about the one you missed when the customer calls
It's work nobody pays you for, and you can't skip it either, because without it the car doesn't leave and the invoice doesn't go out
Examples of what the system can do in the middle of this
These are examples of jobs the system can do, not jobs already delivered for some body shop, Muffin Suite started recently and we'd rather say so
- It reads the registration document or the papers that reach you as photos, pulls out plate, VIN and vehicle details, and writes them into the body shop business software without anyone retyping them
- It takes the same data and opens the insurer's portal with your credentials, fills in the claim field by field and uploads the photos already renamed by the rule you gave it
- It goes round the parts suppliers' portals, checks price and availability for the codes you gave it, and puts the comparison in front of you instead of a decision already made
- It keeps an eye on the open claims and warns you about the ones that have been sitting too many days, before the customer does
- It takes the quote updated after the assessment and carries the lines back into the business software, checking that the amounts add up
If the program you use has no direct integration nothing changes, the system works on the screens the way one of your people in the office would, and it's the work we're strongest at, and the same goes for the web portals you log into with a browser
No system goes under the car
The trade, meaning the work in the workshop, nobody touches that, and nor the choices, whether to take the claim on, how to argue an assessment, which part to fit
The system does the mechanical steps and stops when something doesn't add up, a missing value, an odd amount, a screen it doesn't recognize, it doesn't guess, it sets the case aside and leaves it to you
How much autonomy to give it is up to you, at the start it's worth keeping it on a short rein, with more confirmations, then you widen it on the routines you have seen work
Why it's worth it for a body shop
In a small body shop the office hours are done by someone who could be under a car, or you do them in the evening with the shutters down, and those are the hours when a plate gets typed wrong
If the claim goes out the same day and the parts are ordered straight away, the car sits idle for less time, and a free lift is another job coming in
You don't have to replace your software, and you don't change the way the insurers you already work with operate, the system adapts to what's there, and what manual work costs you today you can see in two minutes with your own numbers
How we start
I'm Antonio Fuccillo, I write the automations myself and I answer the messages myself, so you're talking to the person who does the work and not to a salesman
You show me a procedure, a screen recording while you open a claim is fine, I look at whether it can be done and I tell you the monthly fee before we start, then we talk it through without rushing