Car Mechanics: 5 Tips for Better Customer Flow Management

 

When you own a car repair shop, it can be difficult to keep track of customers. These tips will help you with better customer flow management here.

Are you looking for ways to streamline the productivity of your car repair shop's staff? Do you want to ensure that all your customers feel like they're a priority? If so, then you need to shift your focus to increasing customer flow management.

As the name would imply, customer flow management helps ensure that all of your new and retained customers are in and out of your shop as quickly as possible. Believe it or not, there are many ways to improve it instantaneously.

See below for an in-depth guide you can use to better manage your customers and give them the best service possible.

1. Invest in a Queue Management System

Perhaps you've noticed that your car shop has a habit of skipping over people to the next person in line. Maybe you've received complaints about how your service is managing its clients.

You and your staff might not notice when you accidentally skip over a customer in your queue but believe us... the customer does! For that reason, you need to make sure that you have a foolproof system.

That's why we recommend investing in a trusted queue management system, such as Inteli Queue. We pride ourselves on a simplified system that creates an easy-to-understand interface. It offers you the chance to receive live information on each order and can even spread across multiple locations.

As the business owner or manager, you can have a to-the-second update on where your car shops' workflow is at. 

The Queue also has instant feedback features that collect your customer's experience, turns that information into data, then present it to you in a helpful way. You can use that data to streamline the efficiency of your entire system.

You can also use it to gather analytics such as the number of visitors each shop has, the peak times that customers come in, which promotions are gaining the most traction, etc. In other words, this system can help your company with marketing, productivity, customer service, and so much more!

2. Give Your Customers Resources

Put yourself in your customer's shoes, for a moment. Your car broke down and you have no other means of transportation. You now have to take it into a car repair shop to get the vehicle running again.

Since you have no other means of transportation, you have no choice but to sit and wait for it to be finished. 

Which would feel like a longer wait time to you: sitting in a room with nothing to do for 30 minutes or sitting in a room with a TV, coffee to drink, and phone chargers to help recharge your phone battery? 

Even if you pitch your car shop as a place for customers to drop their vehicle off, there will be those that wait in the waiting room. If you want to keep them satisfied, then you have to keep them entertained.

Go above and beyond. Don't just run the local channels on your break room's TV, put a family-friendly movie on; Have tea available for those that don't drink coffee; think outside the box a little, and your customers will happily wait.

3. Prioritize Follow-Up Calls

Follow-up calls are a company's ace in the hole. That said, most companies (car shops, especially) do not take the time to prioritize them.

If you want to streamline your customer flow management techniques, then communication with your clients has to be at the forefront. The best way to install more communication is to integrate follow-up calls at each stage of the process.

Did your customer leave a car on your lot overnight with the keys in your dropbox? If so, call them first thing the next morning to set the expectation of what the issue might be, the cost, and how long it might take to fix. 

Did your customer just pick up a vehicle while you weren't in? Call them to thank them for their trust in your company, ask for their feedback, and ask for a referral as well.

4. Keep an Open Ear

You taking the time to read this article is proof that you care about your customers. You want to find different ways of improving their experience and your shop's efficiency.

However, if you aren't listening to your clients, then you might be missing out on nuggets of wisdom that could improve your customer flow management.

Be sure to take some time each quarter to review the most common complaints and feedback that you received from customers. What are the most consistent topics? How can you improve them?

5. Run Promotions

Of course, you want to make sure you're able to organize and manage your growing list of customers. However, there's another side to customer flow management: getting more people in the door.

All of that starts with an incentive; something to get them in the door. For that, we highly recommend that you run a big promotion! 

This could be things like a free checkup or half-off oil changes. The promotion itself really doesn't matter; it's just the promotion in general that will yield better results. Some people just need an excuse (your promotion) to revisit their local car shop (you).

Invest Time and Resources into Customer Flow Management for Your Shop

Now that you have seen an in-depth guide on how to invest in customer flow management and see better results, be sure to use this information to your advantage.

Please begin by reaching out to our team at 1-416-254-9995 and we will be happy to assist you further.