6 Tips to Improve Customer Service at Your Car Wash

Providing excellent customer service is part of building long-term relationships with your customers. If you fall short in this area, you could be looking at a low customer satisfaction rate. When customers are not happy with your car wash, it will be harder to create loyal customers and develop customer retention.

As a car wash owner, you need to realize there is more to just washing and detailing your customers’ vehicles. Even if you provide the best car wash service, it does not mean you will retain customers if they don’t have pleasant customer experiences.

Whether you need to improve your customer service skills or are trying to determine if you are providing great customer service, we invite you to review the following tips and ideas.

Tip #1: Ensure customers receive prompt customer support when they need it.

Put yourself in the position of your customers. If a customer were to have a problem or issue or simply wanted to provide customer feedback, how easy would it be for them to do so? You need to make your management approachable and available to your customers.

The last thing your customers want to do is spend their time trying to get the support they need. There are several ways to make yourself available to your customers, as follows:

Offer several different customer support options.

In-person support and telephone support just won’t cut it these days. You need to make sure your customers can reach you via email, online live chat through your website, and various social media platforms. Offering different support options and responding in a timely manner goes a long way toward building better customer relationships.

Respond promptly when you are contacted by customers.

Customers are impatient and want a response quickly. You should be able to respond to your customers quickly in about an hour or less. Ideally, this can be challenging since you have a car wash business to run.

One viable solution is to hire someone to monitor your various support channels to provide a quick response. A response could be a confirmation that you received their message and will be in contact with them within a set period.

Offer self-support options through your website.

Sometimes customers have a simple question or just need further information. An effective way to do this is to have a FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) section on your website. You could also provide self-service options for customers by allowing them to set up user accounts through your website to manage car wash payment plans, customer loyalty rewards, etc.

Use a software app to provide personalized auto-responses.

Investing in a software app that can send a personalized response automatically to your customers promptly is well worth it. Your customers receive an email notification, text message, or another response when seeking customer support.

This gives you and your customer service team the time to read their inquiry and formulate an appropriate response. In addition, it allows you the opportunity to improve interaction with your brand by delivering in-person responses and resolutions.

Tip #2: Make Customer Service a Priority

With the number of competitors in the car wash industry growing, you need to set yourself apart. One effective way to do this is by providing good customer service experiences and placing a priority on customer service and customer satisfaction.
To illustrate, from your customer’s perspective, they could get their car washed and detailed at your car wash or at another one down the road. The costs are about the same, so what will influence the customer’s decision where to wash their car? The answer is the level of customer service they receive.

When you can provide a superior experience, you can start to build customer loyalty and retention. Not to mention, when customers are happy, they share their experiences by word of mouth, social media, and other channels, so it’s free advertising for your car wash.

Other ways to show your customers you care about them and that customer service is a priority at your car wash is to do the following:

Reward your loyal customers with special incentives and thank-yous.

Offering a free vacuum service or discounts on wash packages is a great way to thank your customers. You could even start a points program where customers earn points and can redeem points for free washes, detailing services, or products from your car wash.

Get to know your customers by name.

When you and your employees can greet customers by their name, it makes your customers feel valued. They appreciate being recognized as one of your loyal customers and not just another car wash customer.

When customers make mistakes, turn it into an opportunity.

Not all mistakes are the fault of you and your employees. Sometimes customers also make mistakes. For example, a customer may buy an air freshener and leave it sitting on the counter. By being observant, you could run the air freshener out to the customer before they drive off.

Another option is if you know the customer by name and where they live, you could go out of your way to deliver the air freshener to their home. You could even deliver a second one for free. This type of customer interaction goes a long way to turn a customer mistake into a customer satisfaction success.

Avoid being overly generic with your customers.

Make sure to provide personalized customer interactions. Whether it is responding to an email, answering a phone call, or speaking to a customer in-person, take the time to learn their name and use it during the conversation.

Surprise your customers with personalized cards in the mail.

Start a mailing list by encouraging customers to sign up online or in-person when they visit your car wash. You can use the mailing list to send holiday greeting cards, birthday cards, and even the occasional postcard with special offers.

Tip #3: Encourage Customer Feedback

A business that listens to its customers will be far more successful than a business that ignores the needs of their customers. There are various ways to solicit feedback from customers. You could hang up signs around your car wash that ask customers to rate your business and have the web address where they need to go.

You could put out comment cards with a dropbox where customers can fill out the cards and leave them in a box. You can ask for feedback on social media channels by putting up different polls or a link to a customer service survey.

If you use surveys, make sure to reward your customers for their time with a special discount offer like $5 off a premium wash or something like that. The thing you need to remember when asking customers for feedback is they are giving up their precious time, so make sure to offer some incentives to thank them for their valuable time.

Tip #4: Don’t Ignore Negative Customer Feedback

No matter how hard you work at creating exceptional customer experiences, there will be times that certain customers feel you did not deliver and feel short-changed. When these customers leave feedback or contact you to let you know about their experience, don’t blow them off.

This is a big mistake many businesses make. These businesses figure “What does it matter if one customer is not happy?” However, all it takes is one unhappy customer to ruin your business.
They can post negative comments on social media sites and review sites. They will let their friends, family, and co-workers know how horrible their experience was and tell them to avoid your business.
Anyone they tell about their negative experience could turn around and tell others. So, it could potentially snowball to where you start noticing you are losing repeat customers and not attracting a lot of new ones. Rather, it is better to take any negatives and turn them into positives.

With negatives, attempt to get to the heart of the matter. Once you do, then you can better address the problem or issue. Take steps to resolve and solve problems to the best of your abilities and make things right. Make sure to update the social media site or review site with what you did to resolve the issue for the customer.

Tip #5: Always Thank Your Customers

One common complaint customers have about businesses is when they are not thanking them for their business. A simple “Thank you for your business” goes a long way and makes the person feel valued.

If you know the customer’s name, include that in the thank you note to make them feel even more appreciated. If you cannot personally thank your customers face-to-face, leave a thank-you card inside their vehicles.

Tip #6: Train Your Employees to Deliver Great Customer Service

Take the time to make sure all your employees are treating your customer with the level of customer service you expect. Make them aware of how their body language or tone of voice could make a customer uncomfortable.

To further encourage your employees to deliver superior customer service, take the time to recognize your top customer service reps. You could reward them with a paid day off, bonus pay, or some other reward. When other employees see what rewards they could earn, they will be more likely to also want to go out of their way to ensure every customer is happy and receives the highest level of customer service.

We hope these tips have inspired you to think about different ways you can improve customer service at your car wash. For your car wash supplies, vending products, accessories, and more at wholesale prices, please feel free to browse our online store, or contact Superior Car Wash Supply at 800-554-9274 today!