Your body-shop customers are going to have an "experience." The only question is, Is it going to be the kind of experience that will turn them into a Raving Fan or a Raving Lunatic?
When you think about it, the bodyshop customer has usually gone through a monumental trauma before they have any contact with your bodyshop manager. Customers who need your collision repair services are usually in a bad mood. Can you blame them? They have just had a wreck. If it was their fault they probably also received a traffic citation. If it was not their fault they are mad at the other driver. They are sure that their car will never be the same. They secretly are afraid of the insurance company and any upcoming "experience" associated with the claim.
No wonder CSI is hard to maintain in the bodyshop. But your bodyshop manager has to fix the customer before they can fix the car. According to Ken Blanchard in his book Raving Fans, we must first be able to visualize the "experience" we want our customer to have. After we have created the vision we must then compare the vision to the reality of what actually happens in our businesses. We must then try to gradually get the two images to emulate each other. This binocular approach will be very useful in creating the right "experience" for your collision customers.
I find that dealers usually have a pretty good idea of the right customer "experience." The bodyshop manager and their staff, however, may be so focused on the technical demands that they may have never considered the "experience" the customer is having and how they may be able to improve upon that experience.
We must improve on the overall experience the customer is having in our bodyshop. Let me give you a couple of examples to illustrate my point. Have you ever been to a Hard Rock CafÈ? This wildly successful restaurant chain emphasizes the "experience" big time. After you eat at a Hard Rock CafÈ, you can barely remember the burger and fries you may have eaten. But I will guarantee you will remember the "experience." The burger and fries are secondary to the memorabilia, the music, and the motif. It's the "experience" you remember, not the technical expertise of the chef. How about Disneyland or Walt Disney World? Do you go there and spend a couple hundred dollars just so you can ride a Roller Coaster or the Ferris Wheel? Once again the customer assumes the technical expertise will be acceptable. The "experience" is what brings the customer back and makes them a raving fan. So if you want the bodyshop customer to be a raving fan you must improve the "experience." In order to create the proper "experience" you must make sure that you educate the bodyshop employees. Start with sharing the vision you have of how a customer should be treated if they are to become a raving fan. Periodically compare the reality to your vision. You won't get it perfect overnight. You are looking for continual, gradual improvement here-a never-ending journey towards merging reality and your vision. But you will never get it right without examining both the vision and the reality.
Dave Dunn is the collision industry's most respected management consultant. Dave is a shop owner from Galesburg, Illinois, and president of Masters Educational Services with offices in California and Illinois. Masters specializes in all types of consulting, training, and education within the collision repair industry. If you have specific questions or require more information about this subject, please check the appropriate box on the reader response form on page 3. ddunn@dealeronline.com