Shop Stack Breakdown: Accurate Auto Body in Redmond, Wash.

Justin Lewis took over Accurate Auto Body, an independent shop, about 11 years ago. That was after his parents, who opened the shop in 1994, sold the business and gave him the choice to find something else to do or move the business into a new building.

Lewis had been a law and justice major with no plans to enter the collision repair industry, but said that background became useful once he was in it, particularly in understanding insurance law and fair claim settlement standards.

Accurate Auto Body operates as a single location in Redmond with 27 employees and holds 11 OEM certifications, including Acura, General Motors, Honda, Aston Martin, and Porsche. Lewis said the shop has no plans to open additional locations, citing traffic and his own 83-mile commute as reasons to stay put. The shop recently added a second building, more than doubling its square footage.

Lewis said certification requirements directly shape equipment purchases, though the return varies by OEM. He said the shop typically demos multiple pieces of equipment before buying, weighing which options have the most OEM sign-offs against feedback from the technicians who will use them day to day.

THE STACK

Estimating and management

Lewis said running estimating, shop management, and parts ordering through a single CCC One platform cuts down on the risk of information falling out of sync across systems. He said the shop has tried running separate management systems in the past and found that keeping two platforms updated in parallel created significant operational challenges.

"If you're updating one or two platforms, it takes additional time to make sure one's on board and things are getting done properly ... that poses a big challenge," Lewis said.

The shop's Aston Martin certification is an exception, requiring estimates to also be written in a separate platform alongside CCC One, which Lewis said adds complexity since the two systems follow different estimating methodologies, one built outside-in and the other inside-out. He said the two platforms also don't always agree on which line items are included by default, adding another layer of reconciliation to writing an Aston Martin estimate.

For parts, Lewis said most dealerships are tied into CCC One's electronic ordering, letting his team submit orders with the click of a button. For vendors that don't have electronic ordering set up, Lewis said the shop falls back to printing and emailing a PDF, though the order is still logged and tracked in the same CCC One file. The system also pulls vehicle information for a VIN scrub, though Lewis said he tells staff to always double check it.

Communications and workflow

Body Shop Booster, an AI-driven answering tool, is the shop's newest addition, handling after-hours calls and overflow when the front office can't pick up. Lewis called it "still a work in progress," but said it's better than not having anything.

"It's nice to be able to see the transcript and see what the AI conversation was about," Lewis said. "If it's an existing customer, it gives you an opportunity to research the question ... then give them an answer when you call them back right away."

Lewis said the tool has also captured leads the shop previously would have missed over the weekends, using a built-in calendar scheduler that lets customers set up estimate or drop-off appointments directly.

For documentation, the shop uses Carmic, an AI-driven check-in and file management tool that Accurate Auto Body has helped develop over the past year alongside roughly nine or 10 shops in total.

"As long as they've done their job and put in a procedure for the wheels, the tech can just go to AI chat and say, 'What's the torque spec for a wheel?' And it'll go through and read the procedures that were ingested into the file, and then provide that answer along with the reference and the document for them to double check it themselves," Lewis said.

Repair and production technology

For measuring, Lewis said the choice depends largely on OEM requirements. Aston Martin, for instance, approves only the global jig system, though Lewis said Aston Martin may have added Celette as an approved option within the past year. Most other OEMs allow Car-O-Liner, which Lewis said handles a majority of the shop's repairs. The shop also owns a full set of Celette fixtures for Jaguar Land Rover repairs, a system Lewis called extremely accurate because a vehicle either "bolts up or it doesn't."

On paint, Lewis said the shop switched to Surventis’ Glasurit 100 Line about a year and a half ago. Both the shop's previous and current paint lines use water-based sealers, Lewis said. He said the tintable sealer was a big selling point, but described his painter's preference for Glasurit's clearcoats as the deciding factor.

"It doesn't matter if you give it to me for free," Lewis said, of discounts of more than 70% he turned down from other manufacturers. "If it takes longer to get stuff done, I lose production. I lose money."

What technology could you not live without?

Lewis pointed to the shop's management system, saying nearly every function in the shop depends on it.

"Without a management system, my parts guys don't have a parts list ... my team doesn't know what needs to be worked on and when," Lewis said.

Asked how he decides whether to bring in new technology, Lewis described a collaborative process built around regular staff meetings and industry networking.

"I like the collective buy-in of everybody [on staff], because the decisions that we make affect everybody's job," Lewis said. "A lot of this stuff I'm not using on the day-to-day, and I might think it looks awesome ... it might be more difficult for these people to be using."

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