Repair Shop Advice

Earlier this year, Entrepreneur magazine ranked Millennials as the number one small business trend in 2016.  How is an entire generation a trend?  With the oldest millennials now in their early 30s, they are beginning to represent a large portion of the consumer base – and employee base – for most small businesses.  Every year, successful businesses will need to dedicate more focus towards their desires and interests.  And that’s as true for independent auto repair shops as any industry.

So what makes a Millennial a Millennial?  Here are three factors that Entrepreneur magazine argues are uniquely Millennial – and our take on what this means for your repair shop.

“Millennials demand comprehensive leadership and opportunities for growth within every position they fulfill.”

One of the biggest complaints young technicians have against shops is that there are few training opportunities – tire techs get stuck fixing tires, without a lot of training opportunities provided.  They don’t have the opportunity to collaborate with Master Technicians.  Smaller shops, however, require employees to be more versatile – because at smaller shops, sometimes there aren’t any tires to change.  This means that younger techs will have opportunities to assist Master Technicians, which they wouldn’t have at dealerships.   If this sounds like your shop, make sure to highlight that in your job descriptions, as it can help attract hard-working young technicians that want to learn more advanced skills.

“For entrepreneurs from the millennial generation, the ability to rapidly spread information is key to successful marketing.”

It used to be the case that some businesses had an online presence, and some didn’t.  That’s generally not true anymore.  Some businesses manage their online presence, and others allow it to be controlled by everyone else – their customers, their competitors, and information brokers.

Even repair shops without a website have online reviews.  They may not know it, but their customers (and, in some cases, people who aren’t their customers but are pretending to be) are talking about them. Some of these views are positive and some are negative, but all provide an opinion to the world about whether they should visit the shop or not.

This makes it more important than ever to manage your online presence – to have professionals who know what’s being said about you, and helping you project the best possible image of your repair shop.  That’s because, if your image becomes negative while you aren’t around to combat it, it will take many months to address the damage that’s been done while you were absent.

“And because millennials place so much value on quality and ethics, they prefer to use technology to take care of the busywork.”

Millennials are accustomed to switching tasks very quickly.  The world moves faster to them than the rest of the population – they maintain communication with a larger group of people than ever before, thanks in part to social media.

With so many things competing for their attention, they aren’t willing to spend as much time on tasks and decisions as other people.  It’s possible they’ll select a shop in 3 minutes of online research – and they expect to be able to book an appointment 3 minutes after that.

This is why our websites make communication with your shop easy. We do this in a number of ways:

• Phone numbers are placed very prominently on our sites, in part because of the number of users you lose after only ten seconds on your site!
• Many of our customers take advantage of our online appointment request forms, because some customers prefer not to communicate via phone at all.
• We also provide drop-off forms for shops that want to allow key drop-off before work.

To learn more about how to attract Millennials to your auto repair shop, call us at 855-219-7506 or email Team_RSW@repairshopwebsites.com

Last week, we discussed the best ways to convert a shopper into a customer in a short phone call. (here’s a link to our infographic on the topic).  But it’s much more expensive to gain a new customer than to keep an existing one.  So once that customer decides to give your automotive repair shop a chance, how do you convert them into a long-term customer?

Here are five tips that will help your shop stand out in a sea of uncaring franchises and dealerships.

• Be available. Customers want a hassle-free experience that fits into their schedule. If it’s a drop-off service, make sure to minimize the amount of time they wait before they are talking to someone who’s working to get their questions answered and get them out the door.  If it’s a longer repair that needs to be scheduled, give them several options, and make sure you’re giving them times when they can be a priority as soon as they show up.
• Show sympathy. It’s nothing personal, but unless they’re dropping their car off for a detail, they’re probably not happy to be in your repair shop. Best case scenario, they’ve shown up for routine maintenance like an oil change or new tires, and they’re spending time and money they’d prefer to use elsewhere.  If it was an unplanned repair, their entire day probably just got wrecked by their vehicle. When you’re dealing with customers like this, ask yourself what would be the best thing that could happen to you if you were in their shoes, and try to offer it.  Maybe they need a referral for a rental car that can come pick them up, or you have a loaner you could offer them.  Maybe they’d appreciate it if you could offer them some certainty as to what the problem is or how long they’ll be out of a vehicle.  Even acknowledging how frustrating it is for that to happen can make them feel better.  It’s uncommon to get great service like this these days – those conversations stick out in a customer’s mind.
• When telling the customer about any unexpected repairs that need to be made, make sure to mention things that are in good shape, and other things that may need to happen later but you wouldn’t recommend yet.  This indicates that you’re not trying to find every possible thing wrong with the car and get them to fix it today.  It also makes them feel less like their car is ‘bad luck’, which can cause frustration that they might take out on the nearest person (that’s you).
• When recommending unexpected auto repairs, also make it clear you know it’s a surprise and you want to be as transparent as possible. Offer to show them the issue on their vehicle.  If there’s another vehicle in the shop where you can show them what it should look like, show them that too.  If it’s a serious issue, indicate that, but take extra effort not to come off as pushy, especially on their first visit to your shop.
• Meet your price and time estimates. A shop being able to meet their price and time estimates is not just a sign they are honest and customer-focused. It also means that a shop can accurately diagnose a problem, how long a car will be ‘in line’ and how long it will take to fix.  If you run into ‘unexpected delays’, customers might wonder why you weren’t expecting them. That being said, no shop can meet their estimates 100% of the time.  Sometimes digging further into a problem reveals more problems.  Sometimes part suppliers are flaky.  If you are unable to get the vehicle back to a customer when they were expecting it, apologize, acknowledge the impact that’s going to have on them, and work with them to make sure they aren’t left stranded.

To learn about how Repair Shop Websites can help you better serve your shop’s customers, call us at 855-219-7506 or email us at Team_RSW@repairshopwebsites.com.