TowingBossPro Blog — Accounts & Customers

Body Shop Accounts: Turning a Tow Company Into the Shop's First Call

A body shop that trusts your company is worth more than its own calls. Shops get asked "who should I call for a tow?" all the time, and they recommend whoever has made their life easiest. Win that spot and you get the shop's work plus a stream of referrals.

After the documentation-heavy world of agency tows in Police and Municipal Tow Accounts: Records That Hold Up When Someone Asks, body shop accounts are about something else: reliability and making the shop look good to its own customers.

What a Body Shop Actually Wants

Talk to shop managers and the list is short. They want the car to arrive when you said it would, in the spot they asked for, with the keys where they expect them. They want to know the car is coming so they can plan the bay. They want invoices that are clear and easy to match to the repair order. And they want drivers who are polite to their customers.

Notice what is missing from that list: the lowest price. Shops care about price, but most will pay a fair rate to a company that never makes them chase a car, a key or an invoice. The tow company that wins body shops usually wins on the boring details.

None of that is complicated. All of it depends on information getting from the account record to the driver and back.

Saved Locations With Real Instructions

Every shop has its way of taking drop-offs: a specific bay, a fenced back lot, a key drop box, a "do not block the paint booth door" rule. Save each shop as a location on its account with those instructions in the notes. Chains or shops with a separate storage lot get multiple locations.

When a driver gets a call with that shop as the drop-off, the instructions come with it. New drivers do it right the first time, and the shop stops calling to complain about cars left in the wrong place.

Texts That Help the Shop Plan

Shops appreciate a heads-up. A text to the shop contact through two-way texting lets them know a vehicle is on the way, and the driver's arrival text confirms it got there. For after-hours drops, a text plus a photo of where the vehicle and keys were left is the kind of detail that builds trust.

Use alert choices thoughtfully. A busy shop may not want a text for every movement; ask what they want and set it up that way.

Photos at Pickup and Drop-Off

Collision vehicles arrive damaged by definition, which makes condition photos even more important. If a shop or an insurer questions whether damage happened before or during the tow, driver photos from pickup and drop-off answer it.

Photos attach to the call through the driver app, so the office can find them later without asking the driver to dig through their phone.

Invoices the Shop Can Match

A shop processes a lot of paperwork. Make yours easy. Put the information the shop needs on each invoice — vehicle details, pickup and drop-off, and any reference the shop uses, held in a custom field. Some shops pay per tow, some want invoices batched; ask and note the preference on the account.

Be careful with retail customers whose cars go to a shop. Sometimes the shop pays the tow and adds it to the repair; sometimes the vehicle owner pays you directly. Decide which on each call and put it under the right customer, or you will end up invoicing a shop for a tow they never agreed to cover.

Online payments and card on file make collecting from shops simpler, and payment follow-ups chase the invoices that slip. Calls and invoices stay under the account, so when the shop asks "what do we owe you," the answer takes seconds.

Grow the Relationship With the Account History

The account history tells you how the relationship is going. If a shop that sent several cars a week starts sending fewer, it is time for a visit before the work moves to someone else. Reports by account make that trend visible without guessing.

Tag your body shops so you can see them as a group — how many you serve, which send the most, which have gone quiet. A friendly check-in to a quiet shop is one of the cheapest ways to win back work.

• Visit your top shops in person a few times a year
• Ask whether drop-off instructions have changed
• Ask what one thing would make your service easier for them
• Update the location notes the same day

Body shops are one of the six commercial account types at the heart of towing account management software. Next up is the account type that sends the most scheduled work: dealerships.