Every maintenance and repair job tells a story. The quality and accuracy, however, varies greatly, depending on the storyteller.
That’s because service technicians are trained to fix problems, not document what they do. But the details matter — a lot. Poorly written reports can cost dealerships time, money and customers, said industry veteran Joe McCue, who was determined to find a solution.
To help speed up the process and boost quality, McCue began developing a web-based software platform about 10 years ago. He’s been refining the tool ever since, and now heads a 40-person team at Pencilwrench, the company he co-founded in 2019 to market the product.
Pencilwrench enables technicians to write a detailed 150- to 200-word story in as little as 30 to 40 seconds, according to McCue. By comparison, he said, some technicians can take up to a half-hour to compose a service report on their own.
“Technicians are incredible at their jobs, but they aren’t necessarily the greatest spellers or typists,” McCue said, noting that writing stories can be particularly challenging for those whose primary language is not English. “We give them a platform to do it in a very repair-specific way.”
In addition to providing a faster process and more professional communications, Pencilwrench reduces mistakes and mitigates debit risk and policy expenses while increasing profitability and throughput, McCue said. Dealers can determine potential savings via Pencilwrench’s online calculator.
Entrepreneurs are used to rejection. The successful ones need to be persistent — as well as have a product with tangible benefits — to win over the staunchest skeptics.
“It took me years to pull the trigger with Joe,” said Thomas Druzynski, director of service operations for West Herr Automotive Group in West Henrietta, N.Y. “I get approached all the time in my position about products that are supposed to change the industry, and I generally find something wrong. When I looked at the latest iteration [of Pencilwrench], I couldn’t find anything wrong with it.”
Still, Druzynski wasn’t completely convinced, so he enlisted the help of one of his most seasoned pros, Todd Puccio, to try to “break” the system. With 32 years of experience across multiple dealerships and brands, Puccio has seen his share of fad technologies come and go.
It didn’t take long for Puccio to become a Pencilwrench convert — especially when the company asked for his input, then quickly implemented it, including a suggestion regarding a “quick click” oil change menu.
“Two weeks after I gave them the idea, we were using it,” he said.
More importantly, Puccio estimates Pencilwrench has cut warranty reject or resubmit rates nearly in half, dropping from 7 to 8 percent to 4 percent among West Herr users.
“It’s a pain to resubmit a warranty claim, chase the guy down and redo the story,” he said. Pencilwrench “is sweet for simple stuff like this.”
About half of West Herr’s more than 500 technicians spread across 35 dealerships now use Pencilwrench, according to Druzynski. Stores that perform the best have technicians such as Puccio championing the technology to the rest of the team, he said.
West Herr also partners with local colleges to use Pencilwrench to help teach the next generation of service technicians. One program trains current technicians to become master-level technicians, while another focuses on adults looking to make a career change, Druzynski said.
“It’s a genius idea,” said Manny Arguello, service director at Star Ford-Lincoln in Glendale, Calif. “If I had to put it in terms of dollars, the return on investment is amazing.”
Arguello, who started as a shipping and receiving clerk at a large Los Angeles dealership in 1979, began talking with Pencilwrench right before the pandemic. Nearly all of his 26 technicians now use the tool, with a focus on warranty work.
“The field service engineers from Ford always comment on how good the explanations are,” Arguello said. “Ford is very keen on explanations and followup.”
This is especially true for new products and technologies such as electric vehicles.
“We haven’t missed a beat by using Pencilwrench for EVs,” Arguello said. “Everything is similar on how we do a task and complete a recall.”
Dan Cummins Automotive Group faced similar challenges with its top Chevy store in Kentucky.
“Due to our volume, GM is constantly reviewing us,” said Tim Hollifield, the group’s director of fixed operations. “Our technicians had struggled to write good stories and notes. There’s not a tech on the planet that can spell everything correctly.
“I looked at a couple different tools to help them,” he said. “Pencilwrench was the most automotive-friendly.”
Now in its second year in the program, Cummins also uses Pencilwrench at its Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep-Ram outlets and a high-volume used-car unit. The results speak for themselves. Cummins has increased service writeup efficiency by 10 percent since it began using Pencilwrench, according to Hollifield.
McCue, who began his career as a technician in 1979 before advancing to various leadership roles in both sales and service, has always prided himself on being the consummate professional. In addition to being knowledgeable and well prepared, this means looking and acting the part — “suiting up” for success, communicating with all his i’s and t’s properly dotted and crossed and everything punctuated correctly.
As a service manager and fixed-operations director, McCue was constantly encountering a pet peeve of his — poor grammar.
“Every day, my technicians generated these reports and, by nature of [the dealership management system], whatever they write lands in the customer invoices,” he said. “You see some crazy stuff — misspellings, terrible wording and worse.”
McCue remembers one egregious example of a bad service report that read: “Hey, installed special order part, can’t guarantee it will work.”
“Stupid stuff that makes you look bad,” he said.
McCue first had the idea for Pencilwrench when he was heading up service operations at a Ford dealership. He started developing the tool after taking his next job as director of performance management for Markham, Ontario-based Dealer-FX, which specializes in data analytics.
Working on the project on his own time, McCue said he spent several vacations demonstrating the product to dealers. These early versions were rudimentary and less than optimal, he acknowledges, but they continually got more sophisticated and accurate thanks to feedback from customers and consultants.
After struggling to land and retain customers, McCue said he asked for divine intervention. This led to an epiphany, and in 2019 he started devoting his full attention to Pencilwrench. McCue is CEO, while co-founder Colin Snyder is CTO and co-founder Greg Thrasher (who penned the Thrasher Equation for multipoint inspections) serves as training manager. The fourth member of the leadership team prefers to be a silent partner.
Sales more than doubled in 2021 and again in 2022, according to McCue. Pencilwrench is now in nearly 900 dealerships, he added.
“Stewarding Pencilwrench over the past 10 years — building lasting relationships and having ongoing conversations with the technicians and dealers using the software — has been very fulfilling,” he said. “Attending NADA last week, and seeing so many of our customers stop by our booth, thanking us for the real tangible difference Pencilwrench has made, makes it all worth it.
“Our success has always been driven by our laser focus on our customers’ needs and our passion for customer service,” he said.
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