Repeat Customers

[Zuke]

What is your take on obtaining and keeping a customer? And once so would you do a full out detail, then wash weekley? When you have a repeat customer what do you usally do and charge.

[Mike Pennington]

Re: Repeat Customers

What is your take on obtaining and keeping a customer?

Here is a comment on keeping them -

Know what their expecations are up front on all levels, and simply exceed them....

May sound simple, but that is what it boils down to.

[ClearlyCoated]

Re: Repeat Customers

I asked the same question a couple of months back: How do you reward your regular or repeat customers?

[Mike Phillips]

Re: Repeat Customers

Mike's advice is dead-on...

Find out what your customer wants and give it to them, under-promise and over deliver.

Often times we see people get caught up in the mindset of creating swirl-free, show car finishes on their own cars and for all their customer's cars but if the car in question is a daily driver, as in a point A to point B commuter car or grocery getter, chances are good that a swirl free show car finish is the wrong service for this type of car owner.

So make sure you're evaluating how the car is used and match your services to what the owner wants and how the car is used. Keep in mind most people don't know or care what swirls are, they mostly want shiny paint that they know is protected with a coat of wax and a clean interior that looks and smells like it did when it was new.

Try to set you customers up on some kind of maintenance program, whether it's once a month you wash and wax the car or every 6 months you wash, wax and detail the interior and always ask for referrals.

Let your present customer know you're looking for more work and will appreciate any referrals they can give you and then leave them with a few extra business cards.

This is where designing your business card to be a salesperson for you helps out, always remember to think like your customer and your customer thinks like this,

"What's in it for me?"

The simple answer is a clean and shiny car that took no work on their part at a fair price.

So design your salesperson, (Your business card), to sell you by letting your customer know what you can do for them. This is hard because a business car is small and you don't want to cram too much information onto it or no one will read it anyways.

Try to have a website where they can go to get more information and see pictures of your work. This is also where doing quality write-ups on a forum like this can help you as you can include links on your website back to this forum where your threads are at. Before and After photos are very powerful also, with the most important pictures being the before pictures because without them you can't tell how dramatic the after pictures are supposed to be.

Hope this helps a little...

[Zuke]

Re: Repeat Customers

Thank you guys