Wallets are tight in today’s still-shaky economy, so emphasizing the point of preventive maintenance is more important now than ever.
Today’s shop managers and service advisors must be careful to not try and sell customers more service than they feel is necessary. The key is to combine customer education with service through employee training and business initiatives. Utilizing opportunities like waiting room entertainment can help make this transition easier for a shop.
AutoNetTV is one such company that has broken down today’s vehicle technologies into layman’s terms so consumers can learn about their vehicles and why it’s critical to maintain them. Co-founder Sean Whiffen says for as much as vehicle technology is changing nowadays, the old adage, “An educated customer buys more,” still holds true. With AutoNetTV’s Lobby TV, he says consumers can learn about their vehicles and needed maintenance in a casual, entertaining manner.
“An educated customer feels more confident and more comfortable in their purchase decisions,” he says. “And so it avoids buyer remorse, and it helps them to actually more easily obtain additional services apart from repairs.”
Lobby TV, according to Lance Boldt, co-founder of AutoNetTV, focuses on helping consumers understand three things: recommendations are not made just to sell more service, maintenance schedules and inspections are important to follow and complete, and lastly, building trust is important to both the consumer and shop.
Getting the Message Across
AutoNetTV pulls information for technical help pieces from current customers, manufacturers and industry publications like Motor Age. Boldt says they back up each three-minute automotive segment with five to 15 pages of research.
Ten services are highlighted in each DVD, and they all are time-sensitive. For example, Whiffen stresses that they talk about air conditioning service during A/C season, not in November or December.
Between the automotive pieces are entertainment, news, business and CBS programming. Whiffen says all of the programming is age appropriate and family-friendly — there is something for everyone in addition to the automotive education. While the automotive information is a benefit, the programming also is of value to customers like Terry Wynter Auto Service Center in Fort Myers, Fla., which has used the service since July 2007.
“One reason we were open to something like that, a prepared-type media, is that we have historically had just a regular TV with access to (regular) stations in our customer waiting area. And many times I would walk out and there would be something offensive on TV,” explains co-owner Kay Wynter. “It was a constant situation of watching the channel surfing and making sure that one customer didn’t turn on something that another customer found offensive. AutoNetTV just takes that right off the table. And there’s something for everyone. It’s done very professionally and it takes the channel surfing problem away.”
Whiffen notes that experiences like those are part of why customers are drawn to his company’s programming.
“You give them something that will help them pass the time more easily. You help them so that they are more comfortable there. You keep them in a better mood,” he says. “It has been proven time and time again, customers want to know how to take care of things better. They want to know how to be more fiscally responsible. They want to know how to be more green. They want to know how to conserve more and waste less. And everything that we are talking about is helping the customer to save money in the long run, to improve the performance of their vehicles, to protect the lives of their loved ones. When a shop spends a little bit of money to help the customers be more comfortable, be more educated, it naturally will come back to benefit the shop.”
Patrick Walton, owner of Camarillo Car Care in Camarillo, Calif., experienced some of those benefits. He says one customer saw a segment on power steering fluid and asked the service advisor about her vehicle’s levels. While it wasn’t time on her service intervals, the advisor explained when her vehicle would need the service and further highlighted the service’s benefits.
“It wasn’t time for it yet, but now she’s pre-sold for that,” says Walton, who has used Lobby TV since February 2009. “We’ve had a few of them. It’s real difficult to measure the dollars and cents, but I have three service advisors and all three of them have had customers come to them and say they were sitting waiting for their car to be serviced and saw this.”
PAGE 2The three-minute segments (a length chosen after research and testing) explain a particular service, how often it should be performed and the benefits and problems of not doing it, Whiffen says.
“That gives us enough time to do it and have a little bit of fun,” he adds. “Not like a straight boring news kind of thing. It’s a little bit more fun. If we go too short, we can’t get enough information in there, and if we go too long, we lose their attention.”
Aaron Clements, owner of C&C Automotive in Augusta, Ga., says the three minutes are like having a service advisor talk to the waiting room.
“(Playing Lobby TV) makes it that when the service advisor walks over to talk to them about the concerns they may have found with their vehicle, then the customer is in a preventative maintenance mood,” says Clements, whose shop has used Lobby TV since mid-2007. “They feel good about investing in their vehicle. It just sets the tone for the whole deal.”
Benefits to the Shop
After completing a major remodeling project in the waiting area at Dykstra Auto Service in Hudsonville, Mich., owner Jim Dykstra said adding Lobby TV about a year and a half ago was a natural move. He says features like that are offered at dealerships, so they make sense in independent shops as well.
“Our customers love it. It gives a good background in the waiting room for the customers to listen to,” he says. “We see some questions from it. They come back and ask us while they’re in the waiting room. They might be in for one service and they ask us about other services.”
While Dykstra’s shop does not tailor specials to the DVDs, AutoNetTV says the option is there. In addition to the standard DVD that runs on a self-continuing loop and customized DVDs for multiple location shops, there is an option to run the TV program through an Internet feed and get constant updates and feeds.
“They can customize the program. They can switch and change,” Whiffen says. “They can add a bunch of stuff about brake services month or for this week they can switch it to batteries.”
Walton adds that the benefit of having a third party disseminate the information is a big benefit to his shop.
“In our industry, it is all about trust and what we say because we might have self-interest involved. So having a third party, these are professionals and this is something obviously made industry-wide,” he says. “It can’t be untrue, if you will, when it’s coming from a third party. So it reassures our customers that what we already have been promoted is accurate. They’re reassuring the things that we’ve already been telling the customers.”
The waiting area offerings are tied together with many of these shops’ Web sites through AutoNetTV’s Web offerings. The educational automotive videos can be showcased on the Internet during specific specials or times of the year.
Benefits extend beyond the customers, too, as technicians can benefit from the other side of this DVD offering.
Including the Techs, Too
Pro Channel is AutoNetTV’s employee feature. Boldt says they have taken a team approach to this training, teaching technicians, service writers, owner and managers about service.
“What we are seeing is that a lot of shop owners will have team meetings. Like some will buy lunch on Friday and they will go over the Pro Channel together,” he offers. “And I think some of the benefits they get is we try to have content for each of those areas. It kind of gives a technician a feel for some of the things that the owner or manager has to deal with, and also gives a technician some customer service or marketing tips for when he or she interacts with the customer.”
Pro Channel focuses on three areas: technical training, customer service, internal sales and marketing and finally business management. A master technician develops the outlines and is the on-camera person conducting the introductory training offered, Boldt explains.
While Wynter offers Pro Channel to employees in the shop’s training library, Clemens says his employees will turn on the programming during slow times.
“It’ll give the service advisors a chance to watch that channel and pick up some great techniques and great tips as far as providing better customer service,” he says.
Business relationships with AskPatty.com and Automotive Training Institute (ATI) also give AutoNetTV a background to offer business management tips through Pro Channel.
And some of the best management comes in getting the message across to customers, the goal of AutoNetTV and its various offerings.
“If the customers are seeing what they need to have done, and if we can help bridge that gap or reinforce the credibility and the professionalism that truly lies in the aftermarket, then we can get them to be more accepting toward all the recommendations of the service that they need to have performed,” Whiffen says.
