According to 61% of retailers, retaining customers is their most significant problem. Meanwhile, increasing customer loyalty by just 5% could boost your average profit per customer anywhere from 25 to 100%.

With that said, if you want to take your customer loyalty to the next level, meeting customer expectations is crucial. In fact, after multiple bad experiences, 59% of consumers in the US will stop doing business with a given company - even one they have loved in the past. The same is true for 17% of customers after a single negative interaction.

Do you want to make sure this doesn’t happen to your auto shop? Here’s how to know if you’re auto shop is living up to your customers’ expectations.

Ask for Feedback

One easy and effective way to get a sense of your customers’ thoughts is to ask them directly. Getting feedback from both long-term clients and newcomers to your auto shop will provide you with a valuable source of information on customer satisfaction levels.

Once you’ve collected enough feedback from your customers, you should begin to see common themes emerge. When that happens, you’ll fully understand what you’re doing right and what needs to be improved. By doubling down on your strengths and dealing with your weaknesses, you can work to create better customer experiences–and enhanced customer loyalty–in the long term.

Naturally, when and how you request feedback from customers matters. In some cases, it’s possible to ask clients about a recent experience in person or over the phone. However, it’s usually much more effective to send them a text or email asking for their thoughts. That way, they may feel less pressure to say what they think you want to hear.

Collect Data

Using data to analyze your customer satisfaction levels may sound imposing, but it’s not as complicated as you might think. 

First, you’ll want to find information on your most loyal customers. Some data points you could focus on include:

• The number of times they’ve visited your shop
• What products and services they’ve purchased
• Whether or not they participate in your loyalty program
• What demographics they belong to

The next step is to analyze the same information about customers who weren’t as happy with their experience. By crunching the numbers for both sets of clients, you can determine the key differences between these groups–and get ideas for how to keep your customers as satisfied as possible.

Solicit Reviews

Not everyone enjoys confrontation, and that certainly applies to your clients. Yes, some customers won’t hesitate to let you know about a dissatisfying experience, but others will dodge the issue when asked to give feedback face-to-face.

Fortunately, people are often less inhibited when leaving online reviews–and that means closely monitoring them is crucial. 

To start, begin soliciting reviews after every transaction and make a point of regularly checking them on Google and social media. It’s important to respond to every review you get–positive or negative–as it shows that you care about each customer’s experience.

Know Your Customers’ Expectations Are Being Met

Monitoring reviews, keeping track of data, and listening to feedback are all crucial elements in the process of deciding how to improve your customer service. When you focus on taking these steps, you’ll be able to meet your customers’ needs more effectively.

Of course, it can be challenging to set aside time to improve your customer satisfaction when you’re already busy running an auto shop. And while some larger shops have the resources to hire employees specializing in marketing, that may not be the case if you own an independent small business.

The simplest, most affordable solution to that problem is adding automated marketing software to your shop’s workflow. BayIQ offers marketing software created with independent tire and auto shops like yours in mind. With BayIQ, you can better reach your customers by:

• Sending text/email appointment reminders
• Asking for feedback and reviews after an appointment
• Creating a robust loyalty program
• Introducing online appointment scheduling services

Along the way, the software will keep track of all your customer interactions, making it easy to look back on how individual transactions went. With BayIQ, you’ll no longer be left guessing–it provides the data and resources needed to consistently meet the expectations of your customers.