MB Liverpool

MB Liverpool is an independent vehicle repair and service centre on Athol Street, just outside Liverpool city centre, specialising in Mercedes, BMW, MINI, Land Rover and Range Rover. It was established by Scott Walsh and Shaun Murphy, who both spent years as trained technicians inside Mercedes, BMW and MINI dealerships before setting up on their own.

That dealership background shapes how the workshop runs. MB Liverpool has been through the registration and approval process with Mercedes, BMW, MINI, Land Rover and Range Rover, so the team can update a car's service history online using the same systems a franchised dealer uses. They run manufacturer-level diagnostic software, fit OEM parts, and cover everything from MOTs and warranty-safe servicing through to gearbox work, DPF cleaning, timing chains, 3D camera wheel alignment, and hybrid and EV servicing.

The garage describes itself as the largest independent garage in the area, and the workload shows it: a full workshop, a front desk fielding calls and walk-ins from open to close, and a steady flow of customers who have moved across from the main dealers. At that volume, the difference between a system that helps and a system that gets in the way is measured in hours a day, which is exactly what Scott found.

Before Autopilot, MB Liverpool ran on Garage Hive for more than three years. Scott Walsh had also worked with the majority of other garage management systems on the market, so he knew what was and was not possible. He had become increasingly frustrated with the limitations of the system they were on, and with how time-consuming even simple day-to-day tasks had become.

The cost of that landed on the front desk. Admin that should have taken minutes stretched out across the day, and the time came from somewhere: hours spent pushing information around a system were hours not spent talking to technicians in the workshop or looking after the customer standing at the counter.

Online booking was the second gap. The garage was averaging around 12 online bookings a month, a trickle for a workshop of that size, in a city that size. Almost every other job had to arrive by phone or in person, which pulled the team straight back into the admin that was already eating their day.

Scott's conclusion was blunt: there had to be a better way to run the business.

MB Liverpool moved to Autopilot GMS and rebuilt the way the front of house works around it.

Online booking took the first weight off. Customers can see real availability and book themselves in, day or night, without anyone picking up the phone, and the booking lands straight into the diary rather than on a notepad to be typed up later.

Front of house pulled jobs, estimates, parts and invoices onto one screen, so reception stopped hopping between places to finish a single job. Customer management keeps every vehicle, every history and every conversation against the right record. And the technician app puts the job on a tablet in the workshop, with digital vehicle health checks that give the front desk something to show the customer instead of something to describe.

What Scott singles out, though, is not a feature. From day one, the Autopilot team listened to MB Liverpool's feedback, took their suggestions seriously and worked alongside them to develop a system that genuinely works for the people using it every day.

The headline number is time. MB Liverpool now saves approximately two hours every single day in front-of-house administration alone: around ten hours a week handed back to the team. That time goes into communicating with technicians in the workshop, looking after customers, and concentrating on delivering exceptional customer service, rather than feeding a system.

Online bookings tell the same story from the other end. The garage went from around 12 online bookings a month to over 70 a month, an increase of more than 480%, and those bookings arrive without anyone answering a phone.

Customer service levels improved dramatically, and average invoice values went up with them. When the front desk has time to talk to people, and the technicians' findings reach the customer clearly, more of the work that genuinely needs doing gets authorised.

The costs moved the right way too. MB Liverpool reduced their garage management system spend overall, and because Autopilot charges nothing per extra front-of-house member or technician, the system grows alongside the business instead of billing more every time it does.