The Cost Of New Customers
The cost of acquiring new customers is usually quite expensive. Through marketing efforts, if you want to see a positive ROI you’ll want to make the best use of your leads as possible. Give your new customers a low barrier of entry or you’ll risk wasting your money acquiring new leads/customers.
Give these people a valuable reason to try you out. We recommend offering all new customers a simple discounted service. Sure you may lose a little bit of money by doing this (at first) but you’d be gaining valuable data, and new customers trying out your auto shop. Think about this like if you were investing in the stock market. You’re not going to see sales climb and money falling right into your arms right away!
As the cost to get new customers is much higher than retaining current customers, it’s crucial to blow people away with digital vehicle inspections. Show them what they were missing out on with other shops. Show them pictures and video on the status of their car. Teach them a thing or two here. Show them their tire tread, the condition of the underside of the car and everything in between. It goes back to our blog “Show and Tell”. Show your customers what’s wrong as seeing really is believing.
When they can see what’s wrong with their own eyes their much more likely to approve jobs. Not to mention, most people have not gotten this kind of service before. Make use of new inspection technology and really show it off to your customers. Give them a reason to return and they will. Not only will they return if you give them a reason to (thanks to trust & transparency), they’ll most likely refer a friend or family member to your shop.
Now For Retaining Service Customers
Loyalty programs are springing up everywhere, across many industries. Many shops are seeing the benefit of loyalty rewards in keeping their customers for a long time. People simply love these rewards. Odds are if you ask around your work you’ll find at least half the workforce has loyalty cards on them.
Everyone loves a loyalty discount. They make customers feel appreciated and welcomed. This is a great way to make an emotional connection with people. It’s a great way to humanize your brand as well. When you humanize your brand and connect emotionally with people it can do wonders in increasing customer patience and forgiveness in case of errors.
When you pair this with the trust and transparency digital inspections provide, you can start creating real, and powerful relationships with your customers based on trust.
What do we recommend? Something simple like a free set of basic wipers after 2 oil changes would be quite effective. Other effective loyalty programs could be doing things like offering customers a special birthday discount. This works very well with automated email campaigns. When people sign up for your newsletter, for example, you could have them input their birthday. Then once their birthday comes up you can do something like offer a complimentary car wash +a detailing discount. There’s really no limit here. Use your imagination and give your current customers a special way of saying “thanks for doing business with us.”
An even better way to get more people trying you out? Let your loyal customers market for you!
Online reviews are absolutely crucial to a business’s success. More importantly, you not only want reviews, but you want GOOD reviews! Through research, we found that 86% of customers read reviews for a local business. That number goes
up to 95% for younger people. We also found that the majority of these people (57%) will only consider a business if it has 4 stars or more!
With AutoServe1’s latest site reviews feature you can get positive feedback through customer’s vehicle inspection reports with ease. Your customers will be asked if they would like to give your shop a review in the inspection report. If they agree they will be taken to the shop’s Google, Facebook or Yelp review page. This will do wonders for a service center’s brand image and will without a doubt influence new people to try your business out.
When your customer gets their digital vehicle inspection full of photos, and videos explaining problem areas it’s no surprise it does wonders for customer trust. Once you establish this trust, asking for a review is just common sense. Now your customers can do this with our review feature as soon as they get their reports!