For auto shops, following up with customers is about more than selling additional services; rather, it’s a way to make sure a person is satisfied with their experience.
When you check in with a customer after a service you build trust with them, demonstrating that your team has the skills and concern required to keep their vehicle up and running.
So while follow-up isn’t entirely about sales, checking in with customers will deepen your relationships, ultimately re-engaging them and boosting revenue.
When Should You Follow Up?
Within a few days of completing a service, your team should follow up with your customer. This contact should be focused on obtaining feedback, and one of the best ways to accomplish this is by asking them to complete a survey.
By answering a series of questions related to their satisfaction with their purchase, you can better understand what your shop did well and where you can improve.
Purposefully Following Up
As a general rule, we can assume communicating with your auto shop is not at the top of a customer’s to-do list. Because of this, you’ll want to make sure each correspondence you have is purposeful, actionable, and valuable.
Apart from obtaining feedback, your communication with customers should always be rooted in providing important information. This includes reminding them of upcoming services, offering promotions, or informing them of pertinent information like a recall on their vehicles.
How to Reach Out
In recent years, email and text messaging have become the new standard for connecting with customers.
Compared to standard mail, email is much more cost-effective. Nearly everyone has a personal email address, and the return on investment with email marketing is generally about $40 for every $1 spent.
Another advantage of email marketing is the ability to include links. To make it easy as possible for customers to write a review or respond to a survey, you can place links directly in your email, allowing them to take action in seconds.
Text
Similar to email marketing, text message outreach can include links to complete a survey or book an appointment, but they boast even higher open rates than email. One study finds that text messages from businesses are opened 98% of the time.
So whether you’re looking to offer a discount or obtain feedback, text messaging comes with the highest probability of customers viewing your message.
Automate
Rather than require a team member to take on the burden of managing outreach, you might opt for a software solution, one that will automatically contact customers with proper consistency, informing them when they need an upcoming oil change, when they can receive discounts on services, and when you’d like to hear about their satisfaction with their services.
With BayIQ, a marketing software designed specifically for auto shops, you can create unique profiles for every one of your customers. These profiles will log a customer’s vehicle, the services they’ve obtained, and any they’ve scheduled in the future. With this information, BayIQ will automatically send emails and text messages providing customers with information pertinent to their vehicles.
For example, if a customer comes in for an oil change, you can have BayIQ send this customer an email after a few months have passed, reminding them that they might soon need to change their oil. You might even append this email with a coupon that discounts synthetic oil. Further down the pipeline, once a customer has received an oil change, you can automatically send them a survey inquiring about the performance of your team and the customer’s satisfaction.
Efforts like these help your customers to trust your auto shop, and by building trust, you can ensure they’ll continue to patron your shop for all future auto service needs.
Request a demo today to learn more!