In a three-month pilot program using electronic instead of written signatures for customer documents, CollisionMax found it reduced the time to secure customer approvals by nearly 98 percent, saving an average of nearly two days on every vehicle collision repair job, the auto body and glass repair company reported.
CollisionMax, a family-owned auto body and glass repair business with 11 shops in and around Philadelphia, Penn., ran the pilot earlier this year at its Pennsauken, N.J., repair shop. The pilot program used an in-house electronic signature system, called Ok2Repair, for more than 300 claims involving vehicles that were towed to the shop.
Written signatures are the standard practice in the collision repair industry for securing customer approvals to begin repairs, on supplemental estimates and on “certification of satisfaction” documents when repairs are completed.
The study found that it took an average of nearly two full business days to secure written signatures compared to an average of a little more than one hour using electronic signatures. It also found that with electronic signatures, 97 percent of the documents were signed on the same day, 100 percent on the following day and the longest authorization took 26 hours.
Over the same period using written signatures, 62 percent of the documents were signed on the same day, 80 percent by the following day and the longest authorization took nine days.
“We estimate that, on an annual basis, we could reduce replacement vehicle rental costs company-wide by $200,000,” said Pat Beavers, CollisionMax chief operating officer. “The process of obtaining customer authorizations is an increasingly antiquated one. Electronic signatures are now both legal and effective, and there are significant efficiencies to be gained by shortening the authorization cycle time."
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