A TV mounted in your lobby or shop floor pulling live data from SalesThumb makes the shop feel modern AND helps daily operations. Here's the setup.
What you can display
- Job status board: every active job, customer name (or anonymized "Job 47"), bay, ETA, status
- Install gallery: rolling photos from recent installs — great lobby ambient
- Daily / weekly revenue dashboard: revenue, jobs, close rate (shop-floor motivator; keep this in the back, not the lobby)
- Photo wall of recent customers' cars — great social proof
- Shoutout wall: 5-star reviews from the last 7 days, scrolling
- Tip-the-installer wall: shows tip leaderboard (incentivizes care)
- Weather + traffic + safety reminders: shop ops display
Hardware
- TV: any 1080p or 4K display works. 43-55" is the sweet spot for lobbies.
- Player: cheap options include a $40 Fire TV Stick, $60 Roku, or a $80 Raspberry Pi. We recommend Fire TV Stick for simplicity.
- Network: WiFi works; Ethernet better if your shop has it.
Step 1 — Provision the display
Settings → Displays → Add display. Pick:
- Display name: "Lobby TV" or "Bay 2 Monitor" — for your reference
- Surface: pick from the list above
- Refresh rate: how often to pull new data. 30s for status boards, 5 min for galleries.
Click "Generate URL". You'll get a long URL like display.salesthumb.com/d/abc123.
Step 2 — Open the URL on the TV
Two options:
- Fire TV / Roku: install the Silk browser, open the URL.
- Raspberry Pi / mini-PC: Chromium in kiosk mode. `chromium --kiosk --noerrdialogs --disable-translate --no-first-run --fast --fast-start --disable-features=TranslateUI --disk-cache-dir=/dev/null --password-store=basic <URL>`
Either way, the URL stays open 24/7. Auto-reconnects on WiFi drop. Re-authenticates if your token expires (we send a daily refresh).
Step 3 — Configure what shows
Each surface has tunable settings:
- Status board: show customer names or anonymize? Show ETAs only or include the tech name? Limit to today or include tomorrow?
- Gallery: which photo sets to include (e.g. only PPF, only ceramic)? Rotation speed?
- Revenue dashboard: which KPIs? Hide $$ figures and show only job counts if you don't want customers seeing revenue?
Step 4 — Brand the display
Settings → Displays → Branding. Same logo + color settings as the rest of the app. The display will use those automatically.
Common patterns
- Lobby TV: status board top half + rolling gallery bottom half. Customer sees their job status AND sees great work simultaneously.
- Shop floor display: revenue dashboard (motivator) + bay assignments (operational).
- Manager office: daily P&L, real-time. Some HQ shops do this; small shops over-monitor.
- Bay-mounted iPad: per-bay job detail. Tech sees the customer info + photo template at glance.
Don't do this
- Don't show full customer names + last 4 of phone on the lobby TV. Customers can read it. Privacy issue.
- Don't show revenue figures where customers can see them. Looks tacky.
- Don't show tip leaderboards in front of customers. They'll feel weird about tipping.
Lobby = customer-friendly. Back = operations-friendly.