Wow Them at Delivery

You only get one chance to make a first impression, goes the saying, but what about making a lasting impression? You really only get one chance at that, too, and it comes when you’re delivering a car back to a customer. And that lasting impression could be even more valuable when it comes to seeing return business down the road. 

 

There are, of course, some things that you won’t be able to solve with a dynamite delivery. If your shop did a poor job communicating, made a major mistake, or simply did a poor job on the repair, customers won’t even remember the small details. So before you dive into those, be sure your processes are rock solid. 

 

“The delivery process is really set up by our communication and QC process,” says Brandon Van Eck, COO of Michigan-based Car Center. “So by the time we get to delivery, hopefully we’ve done an outstanding job setting appropriate expectations and following through on those expectations.” 

 

 

When we go through our release meeting and discuss the cars that are set to go today and the cars that are set to go tomorrow, all those customers get a call with what our expectations are as far as delivery expectations, and then also any barriers that that may set us off. “So, hey we’re planning on having your vehicle done tomorrow afternoon, it does still need an alignment, or a calibration, or both,” or, “We’re still waiting for a belt molding to come in,” but we do expect to be able to handle those barriers. So then we ask, “Hey, are you able to pick up tomorrow, if we get it done?” And then we call them back once we get those barriers crossed. 

 

We have a bunch of processes laid out. We always have key fob batteries on site that we’ll replace for people if they’re getting low. We have what’s called a Car Center delivery, that’s what we call it, where we’ll kind of tag-team when the CSR or the estimator, whoever’s doing the checkout of the customer, collecting payment and going through things, somebody else will see that. Grab the keys, grab a bottle of water, go pull the vehicle right up, back it up to the front door. And then, depending on the type of season, if it’s cold outside, we’ll keep it running to get it warm, and then when that person who’s doing the checkout for the customer is done, they will walk them out, and the car’s pulled right up to the front door, backed in, to go over the repairs. It’s a nice little touch. 

 

We empower employees to listen and to make decisions. So, as they’re getting to know the customer, and they hear that their son is starting college, or they’re going on a road trip after they pick the car up from us. That was one that just happened last week; one of our CSRs figured out that the person was going on a road trip. So we empower people to, within a certain dollar amount, go put together a basket, or put a card together or whatever. And in this case, she put together a little road trip basket with snacks and stuff, and that was sitting in the front seat with a little note. 

 

We’ve talked about having ready-to-go gifts. It happens fairly often where somebody’s got a wedding that they’re going to, or, hopefully not, maybe a funeral that they’re going to. And can we pre-make gifts or cards or something that are ready to go, ready to deploy? 

 

If there are issues, we have processes that deal with those issues. But we do have a process where we do a follow-up if the vehicle is a certain type of repair. If there’s suspension work or anything like that, we’ll always say, “Hey, it feels like it’s driving straight to me, but you’re the one who owns this; let us know.” If it’s a heavy structural repair or something like that, we’ll usually follow up in a day. Our goal is worst-case scenario, 48 hours. But best-case is 24 hours, follow up and make sure that everything’s OK. 

 

Our owner, Nick Edwards, always says that our business is the customer experience. Our commodity, what we do, is collision repair. So that’s what we strive to be, and I would encourage any other shop out there, or any other business, really, if you don’t have top industry-level service, it’s going to be tough to compete with your surroundings.  

 

My message to my team is, there’s a lot of really good body shops around us, a lot of them. And we have great quality. We have great speed. We follow OEM procedures. We have OEM certifications. We have great technicians. We have all those things. But I can throw a stone and hit 10 other shops that have all those things, and what really sets us apart is how the customer feels about us. And for any shops out there that don’t have that focus, I would encourage them to flip and start to have that focus.