Shop Operations

If you’re like most shop owners, when you think about making better use of the Web, you’re likely thinking about things like your website, your Google ranking or maybe even your pay-per-click (PPC) ads. But if one of your business goals is to maximize results, then improving the quality of your interactions with prospective and existing customers becomes key and you’ll find that websites and PPC ads are just the beginning when it comes to what the Web has to offer.

There’s a lot of discussion these days about providing superior customer service – in fact, this subject is the cornerstone of my Pinnacle Performance sales and customer service training for the tire/auto service industry. For a great example of how superior customer experiences correlate to increased profitability, look no further than Starbucks.

Computer technology may be an earth-shaking breakthrough in gathering information, but it can’t always help with one simple problem common to shop owners everywhere: How to find good employees.

When a customer shows up at 10:00 a.m. and asks “How long will it take for an oil change?” what most service advisors will do is answer with a specific time estimate. The superstar service advisors know better, so they’ll ask the customer, “How soon do you need it?”

In a world where service advisors don’t want to be considered salespeople, we need to search our souls. Why is it that “selling” has become a dirty word? Why is it that we cringe at the term “sales?” It’s simple! Most service advisors do what they do each day because they care about people.

When car counts aren’t what they need to be, most shop owners will pump more money into their auto repair marketing efforts. But before you invest one more dime in your marketing campaigns, you should first make sure that you’re doing a good job of converting your current leads into customers.

In addition to setting clearly defined goals and deadlines for each position, you also need to establish what we at Elite refer to as Minimum Levels of Acceptable Performance. Your employees need to know how they’ll win by reaching the goals that have been established for them, and they will also need to know the consequences for not meeting the minimum levels of acceptable performance.

Your customers are far more likely to believe what they see than what they hear, because being able to visualize a problem and solution provides them with verifiable information that makes their decisions easier.

Heard this one before? When a first-time customer comes into a service facility, it’s not uncommon for service advisors to “hold back” on some of the recommendations.

During December it’s easy for people in the auto service and repair business to find excuses for why their sales are down. They’ll tell themselves that people have the holiday season on their minds, they’re busy shopping instead of taking good care of their automobiles, etc. Don’t buy into any of these excuses!

As business owners, there are two types of customers that we need to focus on: external and internal. Let’s first talk about the internal type, our employees. Although we don’t think of our employees as customers, in a roundabout way they are our customers.

In the July/August 2011 issue, we reviewed the value of developing a brand for your company, built on the “promise of an experience.” Oftentimes, people assume that a brand is just a logo used on marketing materials. A brand goes far beyond having a logo.