Trade Secrets

Motor, Oct 2004 by Cerullo, Bob

Many of the vital services you perform for customers are invisible to them. That's one reason why it's important to pay attention to the things in your shop they can see.

I was still in high school when my dad decided he was going to remodel the office/waiting room in our shop. He had a drop ceiling installed. Comfortable leather armchairs were provided for the customers to watch TV while they waited, and we had a stock of magazines to suit most tastes. Handsome framed prints adorned the walls, while the windows were treated with the latest style in Venetian blinds. I was given the job of finding the most calming colors for the customer waiting room.

But everyone agreed that the crowning glory of the new office was a hand-made, woodpaneled, curved service counter. Over the years we've received many compliments on it; one antiques dealer even wanted to buy it.

I took it for granted that our office/waiting room looked pretty good and never gave it much thought until one day a young woman customer I was talking to in the waiting room said, "Everything in this place is so old."

At first I was offended. Then I began to look around, trying to imagine what she meant. In faet, 30 years had somehow gone by since we remodeled the office. We had repainted the walls several times, of course, and re-covered the floor but, essentially, things were pretty much the same, with the exception of a few computers on the desks behind the counter. The counter was still in great condition, but it did seem kind of old-fashioned for a repair shop that prided itself on being technically state-of-the-art. Maybe even my gray hair added to the "old" feeling the young lady experienced. I put my injured ego aside and decided to redo the waiting room.

As a shop owner, your top priority is to keep the work rolling and make a profit. Getting the work done-and done properly-is a time-consuming job, so it isn't surprising that tilings like the condition of the office/waiting room is not a top priority. No one comes to your shop for a clean, comfortable waiting room or restroom. They come for top-quality auto repairs at the right price. So why bother with how attractive the waiting room looks or how modern your office looks?

The answer is that your customers and potential customers make judgments about you and your shop based on things that really have nothing to do with how good a technician you are or how well you'll repair their car. It's a given that to be successful in the auto repair business, you have to be a good technician. But you also have to have customers and be able to keep them.

You might, for example, have been taking customers' keys for years without tying on a label, relying on your ability to remember which keys go with which cars. Even the occasional misplaced key is not usually a big deal-you always seem to find it.

Key tags come in all forms. You can buy simple prestrung tags at any stationery store, or order a stock of tags with your shop name and address and a place for the vehicle information. You might be amazed at how many customers will keep this land of tag attached to their keys.

Just about every motor oil supplier will give you lube tags with its name on it. For about $70 you can buy 500 lube tags with the name and address of your shop so that anytime a motorist wonders about his vehicle needing an oil change, your shop name is right there as a reminder of where he got the last LOF service. New customers may have forgotten your address and even your shop's name, but if it's on the lube tag, they can find you and come back.

One of the things that really makes customers angry is getting their car back with a grease smudge on the seat or dirty footprints on the carpet. Lets face it,! it's easy for this to happen unless you provide some protective covering. Steering wheel protectors, seat protectors and floor mats are available in disposable plastic. Even if you've never dirtied a car you've worked on, customers are going to be impressed when they see the covers, and conclude that you really care about keeping their cars clean. It's all in the packaging.

More and more customers are asking for their old parts back. If you keep a stock of plastic bags and cheerfully bag and return old parts-or at least have them handy-should the customer ask for them after the job is complete, customers are likely to conclude that you're not trying to hide unnecessarily replaced parts. It's the same with old tires. This is particularly tine of female customers. If you just throw the old tires in the trunk a customer may have good reason to be unhappy about your making the trunk dirty. On the other hand, if you put the old tire in a plastic bag made for the purpose, you're a hero.

If you're not doing your invoices and accounting on a computer, you should certainly consider the time and money you could save by doing so. Consult with your accountant and get into computer work orders, invoices and accounting. Look into the odier capabilities of computer systems, such as service reminders and seasonal mailings. Some shops send a birthday greeting to their customers. One tiling service computers make easy is providing customers with a history of work previously done on their vehicles. Printing that out on request or using it to decide what work is needed goes a long way toward impressing customers.