What Customers Are Looking For In an Auto Repair Shop

Keeping customers happy is the most important part of business ownership. As an owner, you’re likely always wondering how to better your customer experience to keep those loyal to your shop continuously happy while simultaneously bringing in and impressing new faces. 

Good Reviews

One of the most important tools you can utilize for your business is positive customer reviews. This applies mainly to prospective customers rather than existing ones since they’re already familiar with you and your business—but nevertheless it is something people are checking. Have you ever looked at how many stars a restaurant has before selecting it for dinner that night? Chances are people are doing the same for your shop when making their decision. Their vehicles are important to them, so they’re making educated decisions about who will take care of them. You know that your shop is great, but endorsements help other people know that as well. Encouraging good reviews from your loyal and trusted customers is a great way to boost what’s special about your shop for the world to see. 

Transparency 

Unfortunately, there’s a stigma about the automotive repair industry that’s hard to shake. Trust is difficult to build with customers, and that can become a frustrating part of running an automotive repair shop. You know you do great work and are only trying to do right by the customer in terms of safety and maintenance, but how do you communicate effectively with them? You’re the expert, so you should be able to share your expertise easily. 

Digital inspections are an effective tool for communicating that expertise. They simplify your years of knowledge into a digestible format for your customers. As a result, they can become the experts of their own vehicles and never feel like they’re being taken for a ride again. A digital inspection can show them, with pictures, videos and notes, each part of their car and its status. In the case of automotive repair services, seeing is indeed believing. 

Efficiency

We live in a world where efficiency is one of the most important things to a consumer. For better or for worse, they’re trained to expect things to be quick, painless, and easy. Automotive repair software now makes that efficiency possible for the modern digital shop. Gone are the days of needing to play phone tag with a customer around their busy schedule. Now your shop can get approvals via text messaging—eliminating frustration for the customer as well as yourself. Kiosks also make things more efficient for your customer base. When checking in in the morning, they can step right up, select any recommended services, and check themselves in. Instead of waiting in a long line for the morning check-in while they’re stressed about getting to work on time, they’ll breeze right through. Lastly, making appointments just got a whole lot more efficient for your customer base. Online appointment scheduling makes things quick and painless for those looking to maintain or repair their vehicles. 

There are so many components that factor into what customers look for in an automotive repair shop, but these three areas are key. The modern automotive repair shop can make sure that the needs and desires are met for their loyal and prospective customer bases by checking the above boxes.