Tekmetric Training Videos: Where to Look When Your New Shop Is Still Stumbling

Tekmetric Training Videos: Where to Look When Your New Shop Is Still Stumbling

You opened a second location. Put it on Tekmetric because your original shop runs on it. Six months later the new site is still losing money and the service advisor keeps asking how to do things in the system.

You send them to Tekmetric training videos. They watch a few. Nothing changes.

The problem is not the videos. The problem is what you expected the videos to do.

What Tekmetric Actually Provides

Tekmetric offers four main training resources:

1. Training Courses: Admin and service advisor courses under 30 minutes, technician training under 15 minutes, accessible inside the software under the question mark icon.
2. Knowledge Base: Free articles on specific features, open to anyone.
3. Video Library: Tutorial clips organized by workflow, setup, and reporting topics at https://support.tekmetric.com/hc/en-us/categories/360002718114-Video-Library.
4. YouTube Channel: Longer demonstrations and feature walkthroughs.

The video library includes clips on repair order navigation, basic job board navigation, inspection workflows, estimate building, payments, parts returns, and end-of-day reporting.

These resources teach the software. They do not teach service writing.

Why Your New Shop Still Stumbles

Your second location advisor watches the repair order navigation video. They see how to click through the five tabs. They learn where the odometer field lives, where the activity feed sits, how the inspection tab works.

Then a customer walks in with a check engine light. The advisor opens a repair order, adds the concern, assigns it to a tech, and waits.

The tech completes the inspection. Finds a bad coil pack, worn brake pads, a leaking valve cover gasket, and low tire tread. Takes photos. Marks the inspection complete.

The advisor sees the notification. Opens the estimate tab. Builds line items for all four issues. Sends the estimate to the customer. The customer approves the coil pack only. Declines everything else.

Repair order gross profit: $85. Tech time: 1.2 hours. Advisor time: 0.4 hours. Shop loses money on the ticket once you load labor burden and overhead.

The advisor used Tekmetric correctly. Every click was right. The outcome was still wrong.

Why? Because the advisor does not know how to present four separate issues as a coherent vehicle story. Does not know which items to group, which to defer, how to sequence the conversation so the customer sees a maintenance plan instead of a parts list. Does not know how to use the inspection photos to build urgency around the valve cover before oil damages the alternator.

Tekmetric training videos do not cover that. They cover software navigation, not service advisor skill.

Where the Video Library Actually Helps

The videos do solve specific workflow confusion.

Example one: Your tech keeps forgetting how to mark an inspection complete. Sends estimates back to the advisor half-finished, missing labor times or photo uploads. The inspection workflow video shows the exact button sequence. You send the link. Tech watches it once. Problem stops.

Example two: Your parts person does not understand core tracking. Keeps posting returns without logging the core charge refund, throwing your cost of goods sold reports off by hundreds of dollars each month. The video library includes a core tracking and part returns clip. You assign it. They watch it. Errors drop.

Example three: Your advisor does not know where the gross profit per hour calculation lives in reporting. You point them to the end-of-day report video. They find the screen. Start reviewing GP/hr every afternoon instead of waiting for your monthly call.

These are navigation problems. Training videos fix navigation problems.

They do not fix judgment problems. They do not fix selling problems. They do not fix workflow design problems.

What the Videos Will Not Do for Your Losing Location

Your second shop is losing money for one of three reasons:

1. Poor effective labor rate: Advisor gives away labor time, undersells jobs, does not load shop supplies or environmental fees consistently.
2. Low technician productivity: Billable hours per day below 5.5, too much time in rework or waiting for parts, not enough flagged hours to cover capacity.
3. Weak sales conversion: Inspection approval rate under 50%, customer declines deferred work and never returns, average repair order below your break-even threshold.

Tekmetric training videos will not move any of those three numbers.

The software will report those numbers accurately if you use it correctly. The estimates module will calculate labor at whatever rate you program. The job board will display technician utilization if your advisor keeps repair orders updated in real time.

But the software does not decide what labor rate to charge. It does not write a compelling estimate narrative. It does not train your advisor to phone a customer with inspection results in a way that turns a $200 decline into an $800 approval.

You need to decide those things. Or your advisor needs to know them already.

The Real Training Gap at Your Second Shop

Your original location makes money because your lead advisor has done 40,000 repair orders on every car line that rolls through your bay. Knows what fails on a 2015 Accord at 120,000 miles. Knows how to say "your front brakes are at 3mm, rears at 5mm, we recommend fronts now and rears in six months" instead of "do you want brakes today?"

Your second location advisor has done 1,200 repair orders, all in the last eight months, and half of them were oil changes. Does not yet know what fails together. Does not know how to build a $1,400 ticket from a $400 concern without sounding like they are upselling.

That gap is not a Tekmetric gap. That is an operator skill gap.

Tekmetric training videos teach the repair order workflow in under six minutes. Teaching service advisor judgment takes six months of coaching and role-play and real-time feedback on live estimates.

If you expected the software training to deliver the judgment training, you set yourself up for disappointment.

How to Actually Use the Video Library

First week: Assign the core workflows. Repair order creation, inspection tab, estimate building, payment processing, job board navigation. Make sure every employee at the new shop can execute these steps without hesitation. This is table stakes.

Second week: Assign the reporting videos. End of day report, gross profit per hour, inventory tracking. Make sure your advisor knows where to find the numbers you will ask about every week.

Third week: Assign feature-specific videos as gaps appear. If parts returns are wrong, assign that video. If inspection photos are blurry or missing, assign the DVI assistant video if your shop uses it. If your advisor does not understand how to copy parts from your main location inventory, assign that video.

After three weeks, the video library has done its job. Your team knows how to operate the software.

Now your job starts.

What Comes After the Videos

You need to define your shop's repair order standards. What does a complete inspection look like? How many line items? How much narrative explanation? What photo angles? What condition ratings?

You need to script the estimate phone call. What does your advisor say in the first 15 seconds? How do they transition from the customer's original concern to the inspection findings? How do they handle "I need to think about it"?

You need to review repair orders daily. Not weekly. Not when you visit the location on Thursday afternoon. Every morning at 8:00, you or someone you trust opens ten repair orders from the prior day and scores them. Estimate quality, inspection thoroughness, labor rate accuracy, note completeness. You send feedback to the advisor by 9:00 so they adjust the same day.

You need to track the same three to five metrics every week. GP/hr by technician. Estimate approval rate. Average repair order size. Effective labor rate. Technician efficiency. When one drops, you know by Tuesday, not at the end of the month when you get the P&L.

Tekmetric will display all of this data cleanly if your team enters it correctly. The software makes the visibility easy. It does not make the decisions.

The Workflow Video That Matters Most

If you assign only one Tekmetric training video at your second shop, assign the repair order navigation video.

It walks through the five tabs: summary, inspection, estimate, work in progress, and payment. Shows where customer history lives, where the activity feed logs every change, where job board integration happens, how the technician's completed inspection triggers a notification to the advisor.

This six-minute video prevents 40 small daily frictions. Advisor does not lose time hunting for odometer in. Tech does not forget where to upload photos. Parts person knows where to log a core return before posting the invoice.

Smooth navigation saves 15 minutes per repair order. Over 30 repair orders per week, that is 7.5 hours. At a blended labor burden of $35 per hour, that is $262 per week in recovered capacity. Over a year, $13,624.

That return is real. It is also the ceiling of what training videos deliver.

When Training Videos Become a Crutch

Some owners use training videos as a delay tactic. Advisor asks a tough question, owner sends a video link instead of answering.

"Why are we losing money on brake jobs?" "Watch the estimate building video."

The video will not answer that question. The video shows how to add a line item, select a labor operation, attach a part number, and calculate a total. It does not explain whether your labor rate is too low, your part cost is too high, or your labor time is too generous.

If your second location is losing money, no Tekmetric training video will explain why. You have to open the repair orders, compare your effective labor rate to your break-even rate, check your parts margin, calculate your tech productivity, and identify the gap.

Then you fix the gap with process changes, pricing changes, or personnel changes. The software will reflect the fix. It will not create the fix.

What to Do Instead

Get your new shop team through the core Tekmetric training in the first two weeks. Use the training courses for advisors and techs, use the video library for specific features, make sure everyone can navigate a repair order start to finish without help.

Then stop sending videos.

Start shadowing repair orders in real time. Sit with your advisor while they build an estimate. Listen to the phone call. Review the ticket afterward. What did they do well? What would you have said differently? What labor rate did they use? Why?

Do that every day for 30 days. By the end, your advisor will know your standards. They will stop guessing. Their average repair order will climb, their approval rate will improve, and your second location will start making money.

Not because they watched more Tekmetric training videos. Because you trained them on your shop's process.

The Bottom Line

Tekmetric training videos teach software navigation. They do it well. The video library is organized, the clips are short, the workflows are clear.

But your second shop is not losing money because your advisor does not know where the odometer field is. It is losing money because the advisor does not yet know how to sell a complete repair, manage technician capacity, or enforce your labor rate.

Those are operator skills. You teach them through coaching, repetition, and daily feedback. The software makes the teaching visible by reporting the outcomes accurately.

Use the videos to eliminate navigation confusion in the first two weeks. Then shift to process coaching. That is where your second location starts making money.

If you are not sure where the operational gap sits or need an outside look at why your newer shop is bleeding, we can talk. No sales pitch. Just one operator to another. Reach out here.