Speed of Service VS Quality

[Joe Marconi]

In order to expand our company and add another facility, I pushed the envelope a few years back to increase traffic and car counts by offering while-you-wait service. For a period of time we also advertised, “No appointment needed.”

 

The trick was to retain quality and still offer speed of service. We found we could not do both. Our car counts did go up. In fact they went thru the roof, but we felt we were not giving each car the care that we wanted to give. We soon stopped advertising, “no appointment needed.”

 

We still offer while you wait for certain services, but we book the appointment and allotted time. We only take walk-ins if we are absolutely sure that it will not negatively impact workflow. Our new plan is working, to a point. We still get a lot of people coming in asking for service with no appointment. The issue is there are a few tire stores in our area that take everything in, no appointment needed. There are also a few new car dealers that have quick lanes (all makes-all models).

 

It’s a tough competitive world out there today. WAY BACK in the ancient times (you know, the 1980’s) we would actually laugh at someone who walked in without an appointment. But things have changed.

 

How are other shops handling this situation? I know we have members with shops from 1 bay to 30plus, so any feedback would be appreciated.

[xrac]

Joe, that is a tough one. You do not want to turn away customers because you are spending advertising dollars to get them in the door and new business is essential to replace customers attrition. However, if you overbook you do not do adequate time to inspections or customers and you do not have time to do the repairs or maintenance that you could sell. If you try to staff up to handle the walkins you may then find yourself with too much overhead. We also find ourselves with a building too small (7 bays) to handle the traffic we can generate at certain times. We try to schedule as much as possible and to not take walkins if it overloads our schedule. I try to be very apologetic and to schedule them for a future day. In our case this works about 70% of the time but we still probably lose 30%.

[Joe Marconi]

Joe, that is a tough one. You do not want to turn away customers because you are spending advertising dollars to get them in the door and new business is essential to replace customers attrition. However, if you overbook you do not do adequate time to inspections or customers and you do not have time to do the repairs or maintenance that you could sell. If you try to staff up to handle the walkins you may then find yourself with too much overhead. We also find ourselves with a building too small (7 bays) to handle the traffic we can generate at certain times. We try to schedule as much as possible and to not take walkins if it overloads our schedule. I try to be very apologetic and to schedule them for a future day. In our case this works about 70% of the time but we still probably lose 30%.

 

I'm finding the same thing. And, you are right about advertising. We need to spend the money for continued growth, but the balancing act of not enough work vs being overbooked is tough at times. It's as if people today are conditioned to get everything they want now. Years back, people were more understanding.

[TheTrustedMechanic]

It's as if people today are conditioned to get everything they want now.

 

I think you hit it right on the head. The narcissism of today's society is really appalling to me. It used to be I'm here, I'm ######, deal with it. Now it's I'm here, drop everything and wait on ME, to Hades with everyone else, those who got here before me, those who scheduled appointments, everyone but me. I'm here, I'm the only one who matters because I'm ME. No I am not ###### or ####ophobic, and I'm also not of the drop everything because I'm here crowd. I simply used the play-on words to illustrate my point that I believe Joe is right on the money with what is wrong with society in regards to how we can serve them.

 

And those are the customers you'd do very well do be without, if it were not that more and more of today's "constantly connected" society are getting that way. I'm a little different being a one man shop with two hoists and a flat bay, but I do almost everything by appointment. Even though today I am sitting here looking at an empty schedule and I would gladly take a walk-in. I think that a successful shop, if there were enough employees to even out the work would do like the brake and alignment shop I sublet my alignments to. They have six or seven techs and always have two slots each day dedicated to "Walk-ins/work-ins." I don't know if that is one hour each or two hours or how long but they built into their schedule two opportunities each day to accommodate customers who "it just started making noise." Or my doctor's office does the same thing. If you call first thing in the morning they have 3-5 appointments available for same day care. Either place can used unscheduled time as a buffer if the run over and those slots aren't filled, but it also isn't a large percentage of their available productivity so they don't hurt too much if they don't schedule those slots and they aren't filled by walk-ins. But the alignment shop has 6 or seven techs and my doctor's office has 7 or 8 doctors on staff, and late hours (til 8:00) too, talk about patient CARE! So if you have only one or two techs, one or two hours a day could be a substantial chunk of your productivity but if you have 6 or 8 techs, then it becomes a much smaller percentage and probably very manageable.

[FROGFINDER]

I keep a drive on lift open and monitor drop in business myself as often as i can. It's all about referrals! Even if you can't help offer them a cold drink and a idea on solving his/her problem. We shut down at 1:00 Saturday's. Today I let the men go for the weekend. I was just about to turn the key in the shop door lock when a frantic lady drove up with a low tire She was not happy with my answers to "our we open" and "Can you change my tire on this rental car that i am returning" No I said but I will do something. I opened the shop door, gave the lady a Rose,our business card, I aired up the tire and followed her to the down the street to Discount Tire . She gave me a hug and kiss on the cheek. Priceless!

 

 

 

The Frogfinder

[Joe Marconi]

I keep a drive on lift open and monitor drop in business myself as often as i can. It's all about referrals! Even if you can't help offer them a cold drink and a idea on solving his/her problem. We shut down at 1:00 Saturday's. Today I let the men go for the weekend. I was just about to turn the key in the shop door lock when a frantic lady drove up with a low tire She was not happy with my answers to "our we open" and "Can you change my tire on this rental car that i am returning" No I said but I will do something. I opened the shop door, gave the lady a Rose,our business card, I aired up the tire and followed her to the down the street to Discount Tire . She gave me a hug and kiss on the cheek. Priceless!

 

 

 

The Frogfinder

 

What a great story! So, we can win and not always be everything to everyone.