Case Study
Shopmonkey:Hours to Minuteswith Grep
"Grep helps me make informed decisions faster. With confidence."
Crystal Anderson, Risk Strategy & Operations, Shopmonkey
Research Time
Hours
Minutes
Customer Friction
Frequent outreach
Only when needed
Decision Confidence
Variable
Data-backed
Fraud Detection
Reactive, slow
Fast, comprehensive
Auto Repair SaaS
200+ employees
$110M raised
Morgan Hill, CA
Grep Deep Research
The Challenge
Manual Research Was Slow and Created Customer Friction
Shopmonkey is the leading cloud-based platform helping auto repair shops run their businesses. Backed by over $110M in venture funding, their credit risk and underwriting team faces a constant stream of decisions: Is this merchant legitimate? Does this business pose a significant risk?
Account reviews required pulling business records, checking for adverse media, scanning for litigation, and verifying ownership across separate data sources. The process was slow, inconsistent, and created friction with good customers who didn't warrant additional scrutiny. As Crystal Anderson, who leads risk strategy and operations, put it: "We would call clients to ask additional questions and request underwriting docs. This sometimes led to resistance, and in some cases, clients became unresponsive."
The team tried Gemini to speed things up. But general-purpose AI couldn't deliver the depth or structure they needed — it required constant prompt engineering and still missed critical details.
The Solution
Research Reports in Minutes, Not Hours
Shopmonkey turned to Grep to transform how their team conducts underwriting research. Instead of manually searching across multiple sources, they submit a business name and receive a comprehensive, sourced report in minutes — covering corporate records, litigation history, news coverage, business reviews, property ownership, and risk signals.
The difference was immediate. Crystal and her team now run every account that raises a yellow flag through Grep before making decisions. The quality of output means they rarely need to dig further.
"It helps me make informed decisions faster and with confidence," Crystal says. "I know that what is populated on the report is current and accurate — if I were to take the time to go look up the data myself, it would match."
"It's almost like a consultant or an extra person on the team. If I don't feel good about something, it gives me that extra push to get confident."
Dominick Oliveri, Risk Analyst
In the Field
The Stripe Story: Saving a Good Customer
The most dramatic example of Grep's impact came when Stripe flagged one of Shopmonkey's merchants for excessive disputes — and was about to shut them down.
Crystal's team didn't see any red flags internally, so she ran the business through Grep. The report surfaced a litigation record for roughly $26,000 and a news clipping that initially seemed concerning.
But the details told a different story. The legal issues were linked to a different business that had since closed. The individual involved had moved on to work at the client's shop. A news interview filmed at the shop's location created a misleading association.
Armed with Grep's research, Crystal told Stripe to stand down. The merchant was legitimate. The flag was a false positive.
"We were able to confidently fight on their behalf and keep them as a client."
Crystal Anderson, Risk Strategy & Operations
Without Grep, that merchant could have been wrongfully shut down — losing access to payment processing and damaging their relationship with Shopmonkey.
The Results
Grep vs. Gemini
"There was no comparison. Grep does the summation, the visuals, the summaries automatically. It even flags insights. Grep was by far superior to Gemini." — Crystal Anderson
| Metric | Before | With Grep |
|---|---|---|
| Research per account | Hours of manual search | Minutes |
| Customer friction | Frequent unnecessary outreach | Only when truly warranted |
| Decision confidence | Variable, dependent on effort | Consistent, data-backed |
| Fraud investigation | Reactive, slow | Fast, comprehensive |
64
research jobs in first 30 days
45
requests per month (Crystal)
27
requests per month (Dominick)
The team found Grep's data remarkably current. In one case, a report flagged a negative review that dropped a business from five stars to two within the past week — allowing Crystal to investigate context before making a credit decision. "The data is current and very accurate," she said. "I was like, wow, this is really live."
What's Next
Shopmonkey plans to expand their use of Grep as the team grows, with a vision of running every new account through the platform as standard workflow. They're also piloting Grep's custom expert feature — a tailored AI agent pre-loaded with their specific underwriting questions and risk criteria.
"It is absolutely worth paying for," Crystal says. "I'm telling everyone — colleagues, other teams — 'have you heard about this tool? Get on it!' I walk them through the research, the slides, the PDFs, and show the quality of findings and time saved."
Your Team Deserves Better Research
90+ trusted sources. Every claim cited. Reports in minutes.