Social Media and Automotive Repair
September 29, 2011
Social Media and SEO have become the buzzwords and acronym for the 21st Century auto industry. I read a lot of articles about social media and SEO. Every one of these articles is about capitalizing on the social media craze and how the auto sector will be able to sell more cars. What I haven’t read about is how social media can help the automotive repair industry.
Social Media is in its infancy stages today, and there’s no doubt it will be a driving force within the auto industry. The big question is how do leverage social media to best serve our customer’s today and future customer’s of tomorrow? I don’t believe that currently there’s a proven model.
Automotive repair or more importantly the “Backbone of the Auto Industry” is a great place to start with social media. There are some 150 thousand plus automotive repair shops contending for service customer’s every day. The competition isn’t only another independent repair shop around the corner, but the franchise dealer and their OEM’s are getting much more aggressive and competitive today. What are you doing to differentiate yourself and standout from your competition?
I hear a lot of independent repair shops state that they have a built in loyal customer base, they treat their customer’s right, I’ve been in business for 20-30 years, the franchise dealer isn’t my competition, etc… My concern is that a lot of independent repair shops have fallen into a state of complacency. Customers are only loyal to a certain extent, and if you don’t continue to evolve and stay abreast of what customer’s want, then you’re going to find yourself with a declining customer base.
How can independent repair facilities better serve their customer’s today, and stay ahead of their competition? Let’s start with what customer’s have been telling the auto repair industry for decades, yes decades.
The primary reasons cited by consumers for not returning to a repair facility are: 1) Trust 2) Lack of communication between the repair facility and their customer 3) Lack of understanding on behalf of the consumer as to what specifically is being recommended for repair.
There are going to be some readers that feel the above paragraph doesn’t apply to them, and perhaps that’s the case. Unfortunately it applies to the repair industry in general, thus every repair shop is under the auspice of these concerns and suspicion.
We know what the customer’s pain points are per the survey data noted above. How do we address these pain points and simultaneously build social awareness around the solution?
Step One: TRUST-Post real time photos of recommended repairs directly back to the repair facilities web site so your team can review the real time photos with your customers. By demonstrating to your customers through visual explanation as to why a repair or service is necessary, your building trust and confirming for your customer why a specific task needs to be completed. This is a much more efficient process than attempting to convey verbally what’s wrong with the vehicle. We’re visual beings, take advantage of visual explanations with real time photos. This is also much more efficient that walking a customer into your shop to take a look at a recommended repair and or saving failed components for your customer after the fact. Regardless of how simple the task or repair, don’t take it for granted that it’s also simple in the mind of your customer.
Step Two: LACK OF COMMUNICATION BETWEEN THE REPAIR FACILITY AND THEIR CUSTOMER-If you consider the decades old process of customer drops their vehicle off at the shop, technician sources the vehicle, service writer calls and leaves a message or repeatedly attempts to contact the customer via phone, while all this time the vehicle is sitting on the rack costing everyone time and money while we await response from the customer. Let’s compliment this decades old process by posting real time photos of recommended repairs back to the repair facilities web site, simultaneously email and SMS/Text the consumer so we’ve made every attempt to contact the customer via phone, email, sms, and posting repair recommendations to the repair facilities web site. The repair facility has gone out of their way to communicate with their customer. Imagine the efficiency of your customer being able to review real time repair recommendations via your web site, through their email, as well as reviewing on their smart phone-powerful stuff!
Step Three: LACK OF UNDERSTANDING ON BEHALF OF THE CONSUMER AS TO WHAT SPECIFICALLY IS BEING RECOMMENDED FOR REPAIR-Consumers have a difficult time understanding verbally what repair shop personnel are attempting to convey regarding a recommended repair. Lets make this process simple for the repair shop, repair shop personnel, and most importantly, your customer. The repair shop will post real time photos of a recommended repair from the customer’s actual vehicle, associate those photos with expert content from an interactive service library (illustrations, context, and stock images of new components), and then communicate those repair recommendations via phone, email, sms, and posting real time photos with supporting content directly back to the repair shops web site. The consumer now has real time photos of the recommended repair or failed component(s) from their vehicle, illustrations to show location, function, and system of the failed component, supporting context to verbally explain the component and system, and the expertise from the repair shop manager verbally walking the customer through the visual process. The customer now has a clear, concise understanding of the recommended repair.
HOW DO WE TIE THE SOCIAL PROCESS INTO THE AFOREMENTIONED STEPS? Repair shops need to utilize their web sites more effectively and capitalize on the current traffic as well as generate more eyeballs/visits to their sites. The visual process of reviewing recommended repairs via real time photos and posting this content back to your web site is a great start. The repair shop is providing current customers a reason to revisit the site to review repair recommendations, while simultaneously promoting on their web site that they stand for transparency in automotive repair and validate all repair recommendations with real time photos and detailed illustrative content. Think about the prospective customer that’s visiting your web site for the first time or they heard about your repair facility from a friend. While visiting your site they note that you represent transparency in auto repair and validate repair recommendations with real time photos. This customer is much more likely to visit your shop than the competition.
Social Media will help your current business, and help you grow in the future. Repair Shop Websites has the social media tools to help your repair facilities compete in today’s ultra competitive repair market. Please call us today and let our team introduce VIP-Visual Inspection Plus. Many of the concepts detailed in this article are a result of VIP. The vast majority of this program is free of charge as well. Great Selling!
