As you are reading this, my sincere hope is that you have spent fall, winter and early spring talking to your technicians and to your customers about air conditioning service, and that as we move toward summer, your customers already have begun to address maintenance and repairs in this critical area — or are at least thinking about it. However, a much more likely scenario is as soon as the temperatures cooled off in your market area last fall, you stopped thinking about A/C repairs and, because of that, so did your customers.
As hard as you might find it to believe, our customers come to us looking for our recommendations, relying on us to keep their cars safe and reliable. That does not mean they always are happy to hear the things we have to say, and it certainly doesn’t mean they will buy everything we recommend. It does mean that we get them thinking about their A/C system before that first heat wave, when everyone from 10 miles around is in, clogging up our parking lot and begging us to make it blow cold.
I know it seems strange to even think about A/C repairs in cold temperatures, but by the same token, winter typically is not kind to us when it comes to car count or billed hours. Taking the time to check, service and repair A/C systems in the off-season is good for your technicians, good for your shop, and good for your customers.
Air conditioning customers are a funny bunch. I have seen customers put off needed brake work and ignore engine performance issues in exchange for making their A/C work. There is no doubt that roasting in a hot car is a great motivator, and those July sales are pretty easy but neglecting to check and make recommendations for services and repairs during the cooler months is missing out on selling opportunities that are sitting right there in your bay.
Maybe your shop is so successful, and your technicians are pulling down so many hours you just don’t have the time to deal with A/C now, but most of the shops and shop owners I have dealt with over the years are starving for additional sales and billable hours. Again, you are not going to sell every service or repair you recommend, but you will sell some of them. The remaining customers, who have declined work, definitely will be thinking about those recommendations as the weather starts to warm up and summer is on the horizon.
Of course, your customers are not the first step in this process; that should be you sitting down with your service advisors and technicians and laying out your expectations. If you aren’t looking, I can guarantee you are not going to find these additional A/C services and repairs you could be performing. If you don’t let your people know that “we are trying something new this year,” I can promise they won’t be looking. I think it will be likely both your service advisors and technicians will look at you like you are crazy, looking for A/C work before it is hot outside, but these are the same guys who will complain that it’s slow or that they aren’t making enough money.
Conventional wisdom does not have us checking A/C systems in January and February, but conventional wisdom doesn’t have to pay the bills or keep a staff of technicians gainfully employed either. Your follow-through and oversight of these new expectations are the only things that will move your shop in this new, and better direction. Your enthusiastic support and leadership will communicate your commitment to all of this. Your celebrating their successes in this effort will allow them to step beyond their outdated perceptions — into a new approach that will see them generating more hours for you, and more wages for themselves.
Check it out
Cars these days are marvels of design and technology, but like anything that is mechanical, they need maintenance, and they occasionally need repairs. Things wear out. The funny thing about all of this is that they are wearing out all the time and need to be checked for wear, be serviced and even repaired regularly, even in the middle of winter.
If you are waiting for summer to check your customer’s A/C system, you are missing legitimate sales opportunities and doing your customers a disservice by not being thorough and complete in checking out their car when it is in your shop. Don’t think that this misbehavior is the only one out there because if you are like a lot of shops, you do nearly the same thing with cooling systems and batteries— you stop checking them the second it starts getting warm and don’t get back to them until the first freeze next fall.
According to the Car Care Council, for both 2011 and 2012 there was in excess of $50 billion in unperformed maintenance in the U.S. Yes, $50 billion with a "B".
The problem is not consumers refusing to take care of their cars. The problem is that we, as an industry, are not doing a good job of checking out our customers’ cars. We are not doing a good and consistent job at recommending and selling maintenance. That’s because we, as an industry, are not committed to educating our customers on what it takes to keep their cars safe and reliable. If we are not educating our customers on maintenance and making service recommendations, I guarantee they are not going to think about it.
Even worse, if we are not consistent in how we inspect the cars coming into our shop, including pending maintenance services, we have no chance of providing the excellent customer service our customers deserve. Maybe you would be comfortable with a doctor, a dentist or even a plumber who did an incomplete job, but I know I wouldn’t. Our job as automotive repair professionals is to provide our customers with excellent customer service in our efforts to make their cars safe and reliable. Since April is National Car Care Month, it’s a great time to tie this all together.
No time like the present
I know it’s cold and dreary out there today, but when Mrs. Jones brings her car in later this morning for her regular oil change, what are you going to do? Do you think after 15 years of coming in as regular as clockwork to get her car serviced, she suddenly would be offended because we checked and her refrigerant was low? Do you think if we saw that her compressor wasn’t kicking in, she would leave us?
I think that after all of these years coming to us, Mrs. Jones probably trusts us. I think she would probably want to hear what we have to say.
Two or three months from now, when your shop is clogged beyond moving, Mrs. Jones and a lot of your other longtime customers might be one of the customers sweating it out with no A/C, desperate to have you make it blow cold. She might be willing to wait three or four days until you can fit her in. But then again, she might not. Should you risk that?
The best time to sell those seasonal services is right now, no matter what the temperature is outside, no matter the season.
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