Engaging customers, not just marketing to them, is essential for today’s shops interested in building strong brand awareness and customer referrals. Engagement has taken on a whole new meaning in our social-media-driven world, and knowing how to effectively use Facebook, Linked-In, Twitter and other social media tools can mean the difference between maintaining a favorable reputation in your market and being destroyed by negative viewpoints that spread like wildfire.
“Brand is not what you define it as; a brand is what the customer says you are,” says Scott Stratten, author of the book Unmarketing: Stop Marketing, Start Engaging. Stratten served as keynote speaker at this year’s PPG MVP Business Solutions Spring Conference in Scottsdale, Ariz. Held at the JW Marriott Camelback Inn & Spa, the conference was attended by 455 of PPG’s top shops and customers who participated in business breakout sessions and other educational events.
Stratten kicked off the event with an entertaining yet informative breakdown on the effectiveness of social media, and what collision shops need to do to attract loyal customers who can be advocates for their repair services. One key point Stratten conveyed is that shops must realize the potential reach of a consumer’s voice. Customers have never before had such leverage with tools like Instagram, Twitter and other online tools.
“We are the media now. We have the power,” he said, referencing the viral nature of social media. “We need to behave as if everyone has a million followers.” Your shop may have a limited number of “Friends” on Facebook, for example, but those “Friends” may have hundreds of connections. A bad experience can destroy you, or at least make life miserable. A good experience can bring you lots of additional business.
Stratten, who has more than 168,000 Twitter followers, says marketing needs to be something of value and interest, not just a logo. He also warns shops that the most important contact with a customer is the last one. A bad experience can undo years of positives, and kill your referral business.
The PPG MVP Conference also hosted eight breakout sessions featuring speakers from various segments of the collision market.
Mitchell International’s Greg Horn spoke to shops about trends in the automotive sector that will have short- and long-term implications for their business. One example is the increased usage of airbags among carmakers and the trend toward “micro-cars,” which use airbags to keep passengers safe. Horn said statistically 25 percent of all accidents occur on the sides of vehicles, but as side airbags are added to newer vehicle models severity and vehicle totals continue to climb.
“We’re going to see an epidemic of side air bag deployments adding to the cost of collision repair,” said Horn.
He also noted the influx of aluminum being used by the OEMs, and cited the Ford 150 and its “military grade aluminum alloy” as an example of a high-volume, popular model that will require additional equipment and training for shops. He estimates that shops may need to invest $50,000 or more if they don’t already have equipment to handle aluminum repairs.
Toyota’s Rick Leos was also on hand for a breakout session on Current Estimating vs. Next Gen Made Simple. Toyota has teamed with Mitchell to feed standardized repair data into an estimate when it’s written. During the estimating process, if a user picks a particular part for a Toyota vehicle, the associated labor times, parts and some auto-included operations will appear. Users will then have the option to auto-include the Toyota data on the estimate.
The system has been in development and, at press time, was expected to launch in June. It will include 2012-2014 model years and extend repair information to 17 VIN characters, said Leos.
The carmaker hopes that by exposing OEM-recommended repair procedures upfront in easy-to-access templates the industry will see improvements in flow of information and shorter cycle times, which helps shops and Toyota drivers.
“We spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to get a five-star crash rating on a Corolla, and some guys are out there fixing them to no standards,” he said. “I think we’ve been putting ourselves in jeopardy. I think you really need to lean on the OEs. We need to provide you with the repair data…. We owe it to you guys and we owe it to our customers to make sure you have the repair information you need.”
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