See your garage through your customers eyes
Take a step back, says Andy, and consider how your set-up will look to your customers. It could teach you a lot
By Andy Savva |
Published: 22 December, 2020
High-quality service is defined by the customer’s experience while in your care and custody. Operational excellence ensures that the customer’s cars will be ready when promised and fixed right the first time.
It’s about understanding what your customer is trying to tell you when they are communicating their frustrations with the vehicle as it is about the proper diagnosis and professional quality work.
Moments of truth
Selling service is perhaps the most difficult of all sales to make. Buying a product – something you can hold in your hand or wear - constitutes the purchase of something you can touch or feel. Purchasing a service is something else entirely. When a vehicle owner buys a service, that person is really purchasing a promise – a promise that will be fulfilled in the future. That requires trust and a great deal of faith.
Your ability to perform is based upon a lot of things, not least of which is technical competency. However, you can’t demonstrate that technical competency until you are given the opportunity to do so. The vehicle owner can’t see technical competency. They can’t touch or feel it and you can’t hang it out in front of your garage like a sign.
Service starts when a customer sees and responds to an advertisement, hears about your business from a friend or relative, calls, finds you on the internet or just walks in.
For this reason, MOTs, or “moments of truth” have to be created – moments when a customer has the opportunity to come into contact with any member of your team where they will form an opinion about your business. These opinions will occur before, during, and after the work on their vehicle has been completed. They will ultimately define your personal and business success.
I cannot stress enough the consistent execution of your processes and procedures is the catalyst for your business to be recognised as one of the best. Do a great job the first time, and something less the great the next, and you are unlikely to see that customer again! The more people you have working for you, and the more services and products you have, the greater the challenge it is to achieve this consistency.
Productivity
All of this consistent high-quality service is only sustainable in your garage if your productivity and workshop efficiency levels allow you to make a profit. Productivity is a by-product of your technicians and reception staff having the ability to execute processes and procedures flawlessly. It will take more than one training course, the odd staff meeting or for that matter the odd investment in tools and equipment to reach the elusive dream.
Survival, in a complicated and changing world, is about assumptions. Assumptions allow us to function when we find ourselves beyond the limits of our understanding and experience. When we talk about standards, we’re just defining these assumptions in a more scientific language.
Success in the garage business can be all about assumptions as well. We surround ourselves with a wall of assumptions to help us to make sense of the chaos we confront every day. To large degree, our success is based upon just how accurate many of these assumptions are. One of the ways we do that is to provide service based upon what we believe is best for the vehicle, assuming that what is best for the vehicle is best for the consumer when that might not necessarily be the case.
In the end, these assumptions are about what we believe the customer wants, needs, and expects from us, not necessarily what the customer’s actual desires and expectations are.
Compelling value proposition
A perfect example of this, is the constant battle between ready when promised and fixed right first time. My experience of running garages has taught me that these two topics jockey for position as the number one customer concern when vehicle owners are seeking a garage service or repair rather than the myth that price is first and only consideration.
Understanding these topics, or you could say behaviours helps you learn about the relationship that exists between the provider of garage services and the recipient of those services. It is all about questioning our assumptions then re-creating a service environment that is responsive and respectful when it comes to those things are most important to our customers. It’s about who we are and who we will need to become just as much as it is about customer expectations, retention, loyalty, and satisfaction.
In the end, it is about creating a compelling value proposition – something your target customer will not be able to resist – and then delivering your services in a total quality service environment. It’s all about managing the whole scope of your relationship with the vehicle owner, recognising that perception is reality and only perception matters to your customers.
Confront your assumptions
Take this as an opportunity to look at your relationship with your customers in a new and different way. Confront your assumptions about customers, business in general, and our industry and consider how different things could be if we change the way we look at them. Remember, if you change the way you see things – if you change your standards and assumptions about your customers, your business and our industry – you may just change everything. In an industry like ours where confidence, self-image, and profits have been notoriously low, that might not be such a bad thing.
If you have that elusive dream of becoming a great business, a local garage that’s respected in the community, respected by its customers and staff then accept now that you have to change the way you currently operate. You need to think about the business in a way you have never thought about it before. You have to see it in the future, not in the present. That’s exactly what I did before I started Brunswick Garage. I knew then that I could not be an all-makes service operator and have the ability to provide the level of service that is required.
Walk a mile in their shoes
I encourage you to step outside your business, remove yourself as the owner and place those customer shoes on. Walk a mile in their shoes, so to speak. Take a stroll from outside your premises, look at your sign, your brand image, is it clean bright and inviting. Pass through your reception, is it welcoming to your customer, is it clean bright and warm. Are your customers able to wait while their vehicle is being repaired in a clean, bright warm area, having refreshments?
Go through the workshop. Is it dull, dirty, things everywhere, are the technicians tool boxes clean and in order? Would you be happy to walk a customer of yours through to show them their vehicle or would you be too embarrassed?
You will be far more successful with their help and ideas of all your team than you could ever be without them. This new way of thinking will make your team feel valued and more important than ever before.
Final thought
If you don’t know where you are going, any road will do! Just remember, if you always do what you always did – you will always get what you always got.
www.thegarageinspector.com
- See your garage through your customers eyes
High-quality service is defined by the customer’s experience while in your care and custody. Operational excellence ensures that the customer’s cars will be ready when promised and fixed right the first time.
It’s about understanding what your customer is trying to tell you when they are communicating their frustrations with the vehicle as it is about the proper diagnosis and professional quality work.
Moments of truth
Selling service is perhaps the most difficult of all sales to make. Buying a product – something you can hold in your hand or wear - constitutes the purchase of something you can touch or feel. Purchasing a service is something else entirely. When a vehicle owner buys a service, that person is really purchasing a promise – a promise that will be fulfilled in the future. That requires trust and a great deal of faith.
Your ability to perform is based upon a lot of things, not least of which is technical competency. However, you can’t demonstrate that technical competency until you are given the opportunity to do so. The vehicle owner can’t see technical competency. They can’t touch or feel it and you can’t hang it out in front of your garage like a sign.
Service starts when a customer sees and responds to an advertisement, hears about your business from a friend or relative, calls, finds you on the internet or just walks in.
For this reason, MOTs, or “moments of truth” have to be created – moments when a customer has the opportunity to come into contact with any member of your team where they will form an opinion about your business. These opinions will occur before, during, and after the work on their vehicle has been completed. They will ultimately define your personal and business success.
I cannot stress enough the consistent execution of your processes and procedures is the catalyst for your business to be recognised as one of the best. Do a great job the first time, and something less the great the next, and you are unlikely to see that customer again! The more people you have working for you, and the more services and products you have, the greater the challenge it is to achieve this consistency.
Productivity
All of this consistent high-quality service is only sustainable in your garage if your productivity and workshop efficiency levels allow you to make a profit. Productivity is a by-product of your technicians and reception staff having the ability to execute processes and procedures flawlessly. It will take more than one training course, the odd staff meeting or for that matter the odd investment in tools and equipment to reach the elusive dream.
Survival in a complicated and changing world is about assumptions. Assumptions allow us to function when we find ourselves beyond the limits of our understanding and experience. When we talk about standards, we’re just defining these assumptions in a more scientific language.
Success in the garage business can be all about assumptions as well. We surround ourselves with a wall of assumptions to help us to make sense of the chaos we confront every day. To large degree, our success is based upon just how accurate many of these assumptions are. One of the ways we do that is to provide service based upon what we believe is best for the vehicle, assuming that what is best for the vehicle is best for the consumer when that might not necessarily be the case.
In the end, these assumptions are about what we believe the customer wants, needs, and expects from us, not necessarily what the customer’s actual desires and expectations are.
Compelling value proposition
A perfect example of this, is the constant battle between ready when promised and fixed right first time. My experience of running garages has taught me that these two topics jockey for position as the number one customer concern when vehicle owners are seeking a garage service or repair rather than the myth that price is first and only consideration.
Understanding these topics, or you could say behaviours helps you learn about the relationship that exists between the provider of garage services and the recipient of those services. It is all about questioning our assumptions then re-creating a service environment that is responsive and respectful when it comes to those things are most important to our customers. It’s about who we are and who we will need to become just as much as it is about customer expectations, retention, loyalty, and satisfaction.
In the end, it is about creating a compelling value proposition – something your target customer will not be able to resist – and then delivering your services in a total quality service environment. It’s all about managing the whole scope of your relationship with the vehicle owner, recognising that perception is reality and only perception matters to your customers.
Confront your assumptions
Take this as an opportunity to look at your relationship with your customers in a new and different way. Confront your assumptions about customers, business in general, and our industry and consider how different things could be if we change the way we look at them. Remember, if you change the way you see things – if you change your standards and assumptions about your customers, your business and our industry - you may just change everything. In an industry like ours where confidence, self-image, and profits have been notoriously low, that might not be such a bad thing.
If you have that elusive dream of becoming a great business, a local garage that’s respected in the community, respected by its customers and staff then accept now that you have to change the way you currently operate. You need to think about the business in a way you have never thought about it before. You have to see it in the future, not in the present. That’s exactly what I did before I started Brunswick Garage. I knew then that I could not be an all makes service operator and have the ability to provide the level of service that is required.
Walk a mile in their shoes
I encourage you to step outside your business, remove yourself as the owner and place those customer shoes on. Walk a mile in their shoes, so to speak. Take a stroll from outside your premises, look at your sign, your brand image, is it clean bright and inviting. Pass through your reception, is it welcoming to your customer, is it clean bright and warm. Are your customers able to wait while their vehicle is being repaired in a clean, bright warm area, having refreshments?
Go through the workshop. Is it dull, dirty, things everywhere, are the technicians tool boxes clean and in order? Would you be happy to walk a customer of yours through to show them their vehicle or would you be too embarrassed?
You will be far more successful with their help and ideas of all your team than you could ever be without them. This new way of thinking will make your team feel valued and more important than ever before.
Final thought
If you don’t know where you are going, any road will do! Just remember, if you always do what you always did – you will always get what you always got.
www.thegarageinspector.com
- LKQ Euro Car Parts customers donate £10k to Ben
LKQ Euro Car Parts branch customers have collectively donated more than £10,000 to its long-standing charity partner Ben, by each adding 25p to their total when they check out.
- Don’t join the gold rush, sell shovels
Futurologists have predicted it for years, but now, it’s actually starting to happen. The impact of the sharing economy on the automotive industry has upended the status quo and companies are scrambling to gain first-mover advantage within a radically reconfigured marketplace.
In the US, in March 2018 alone, an Ohio dealership launched a monthly subscription package that allows customers to switch between different brands of luxury cars, and GM announced a plan to allow their customers to rent their cars directly to each other. Meanwhile, ride-hailing is rapidly taking share from traditional car rental in Certify customers’ business travel expenses.
In the UK, a Mobility as a Service (MaaS) App called Whim is in trial in the Midlands, offering unlimited public transport, hire cars and short taxi rides for a fixed monthly payment of £440. Meanwhile, personal contract purchase (PCP) deals – essentially car rental, with the option to pay off the rest of the car’s value after three years – have already become the preferred method of new vehicle purchase.
The problem is that hundreds of companies in the automotive world have set their sights on the same goal: To be the go-to choice for consumers. That’s fine if you have billions to invest in marketing, but if you’re not at the level of Ford, Uber or Google, that fight is going to get ugly. Rental agencies, dealerships, and business leasing providers – all of whom are used to owning customer relationships in the pre-mobility world – are among those who are going to be out-gunned.
The good news is that there are two clear ways for businesses to thrive in this new marketplace in a way that won’t be disrupted by technological advances. Both strategies involve selling to businesses rather than consumers, which means they can deliver sustainably higher margins without requiring a huge spend on marketing and customer acquisition.
Strategy one: Sell a service to the dominant platforms
The most obvious low-risk, high-reward model is to provide an indispensable service to enable the mobility being sold by others. This would involve contracting with whatever mobility platforms dominate, be it Ford, Uber or Waymo, Alphabet’s self-driving car unit. A business might decide to become the leading company that deliver services around.
- No MOT exemption this time – Make sure your customers know that warns TechMan
TechMan is urging garages to make sure they customers know there’s no MOT exemption this time, and that they must make sure that they seek an MOT for their car if it is due.
- Brakes off! It’s time to accelerate…
With the country gradually emerging from lockdown, now is the time to forge ahead with your marketing. What should the message be though, and how should you deliver it?
1: Let customers know you are open for business
Your commercial customers and motorists alike should be aware of your opening hours, the PPE you are using and the new measures you are adopting in line with government social distancing guidelines. Have you enhanced your customer service to offer safe contactless pick up and drop off? If you have, explain how it works. This will instil confidence in those customers in self isolation, and commercial customers looking for a smooth, safe, and streamlined service – to contact you.
What steps have you taken to ensure your unit is a safe, clean, disinfected, and welcoming space? Manage the expectations of all customers with regards to how long it will take to complete a repair, service, MOT etc. Is it likely to be longer than usual because of the new guidelines or you have (as is more likely) been swamped with work? Have you had to change any aspects of your service? For example, all customers must now contact you by telephone or email rather than calling in which is currently on hold. Inform customers, answer their most common questions and make it clear you are looking forward to welcoming them back and making their experience with you as good, reliable, and friendly as ever.
2: Say what new services are you now offering
Vehicles have been stuck on driveways for weeks only taken out for short runs. DPFs are likely to need cleaning and attention. Services are overdue. MOTs delayed. The list goes on. Make a list of your new services/additional vehicle checks with any corresponding offers. You will naturally distinguish between commercial customers for whom vehicle downtime means lost business and motorists keen to keep their vehicle in good working condition for longer than anticipated as they return to work. What are the specific vehicle problems each group may be facing? When you have your list of services and special offers plan the dates for releasing them, so you have a steady stream of enticing campaigns running over a 12- week period. Be sure to pull out all the stops for commercial customers. Can you offer them guaranteed early booking dates?
Stuck for what to say to commercial customers by way of an introduction? Try this: “As one of our VIP commercial customers we are welcoming you back with an exclusive VIP offer this month… plus an important update on the new services we have launched to keep your fleet safe and, on the road.”
3: Use the phone
You should contact commercial customers by telephone to let them know you are open. Be organised though. Rather than just asking a team member to make the odd call here and there, treat this as a campaign – the goal being you want to ensure that every one of these customers has been contacted personally within the first five days of you opening. Make the call as much about listening as well as informing, letting them know of your services, your welcome back offers and the changes you have made in line with the new guidelines. Use the call to update details and make corrections. What is the email address of the person you should be sending information to? Is the trading address on your system still accurate? (Do not assume anything given the pandemic and the effect it may have had on a customer’s business).
4: Get flyering
Create an A5 flyer, or flyers, combining the details of a new service, or services, and any corresponding special offers together with the information I shared in the first tip. Printing costs are at an all-time low so take advantage of this. Put the leaflets through the doors of homes in the postcode areas where most of your non-commercial business comes from now. Do likewise for your commercial customers with a different wording to reflect their needs and the services you have launched specifically for them.
5: Get vocal on social media
Promote your activities and offers on social media. Take some nice photos of your workshop with the message ‘Open for business.’ A picture of your team will go down well too. Add some human interest to your posts to encourage sharing and support. Send the picture to your local paper. They are looking for good news stories so an accompanying message along the lines of the following will go down well: “The team at John Smith’s Motors are open for business with a freshly decorated workshop, full PPE and offering new services including contactless drop off and collection of vehicles plus a range of pre-service vehicle checks.”
6: Use your calendar well
Ensure campaigns are scheduled in your calendar so at a glance you can see: who the audience is (i.e. our VIP commercial customers), what you are offering (i.e. special offers on Kalimex six workshop products), what your message is (book your vehicles in for pre-service checks including a DPF check) how you are going to promote this campaign ( telephone call and two emails; one email to launch the campaign and one as a follow up) When it starts and ends (1 July – 31 July), and finally who is responsible for ensuring this happens (i.e. Colin our apprentice). If you can plan in this simple but effective way, workshop bookings will increase. Not only are you leaving nothing to chance, you are ensuring that shoestring marketing is driving those enquiries and bookings on a consistent basis – week in and week out.
Good luck!
Please do not hesitate to contact us at Kalimex if you want to know more about our Accelerate campaign for professional motor mechanics and the details of your nearest stockist. We are here to help and support you. Email colin@kalimex.co.uk or call free on 0800 783 3717.
