The ADAS conversations you’ll need to have with your customers

As a member of the automotive industry in 2025, you couldn’t avoid hearing about ADAS even if you wanted to – although you shouldn’t want to, since it’s been the biggest topic for some time now and will be a source of tremendous profitability for years to come. 

But if you’re quite familiar with ADAS, most of your customers are not. At least not much beyond “that thing that makes a sound when another car sneaks up on me.” 

Of course, they should be glad that it does. Whatever ADAS means to service shops, it means one huge thing to drivers, whether recognized or not: safety. ADAS lives up to billing. It works. 

To keep working, it needs calibrating from time to time. Which means your customers will need educating about ADAS. Which means a lot of communication on your part, and the earlier the better. 

It should start long before a calibration is needed. It begins with having resources readily available in the shop, such as videos, tablets, brochures, customer-facing websites, social media and texts. 

But there will no substitute for face-to-face conversation. Since your customers aren’t all motivated by the same things, they won’t all respond the same way to information. With safety as the ultimate goal – there’s no substitute for that, either – there are several paths you can take to make sure your customers get there. 

Here are four of the types you’ll likely encounter. 

Safety first. To be sure, this is your sweet spot. This type of customer is conscientious and sensible and needs little convincing that safety systems exist to keep people safe. Since there’s already buy-in, all that’s needed is effectively communicating that calibrations are periodically necessary to make sure that happens. It’s not an upsell; it’s a requirement. 

It’s easy to give examples of how improper calibrations or no calibrations at all can result in system failure. A failure can range from missing something that is there, like a car in your blind spot, to imagining something that isn’t, like a brick wall. Automatically slamming on the brakes is the right response when heading for a brick wall. It’s not so useful when you’re just cruising down the road at 40 MPH.  

Safety-conscious drivers will instantly grasp what calibrations are for. 

Money first. No one ever comes into a service shop hoping to hear all sorts of unexpected exotic work needs to be done. The first reaction is guaranteed: That doesn’t strike me as necessary and I don’t want to pay for it. 

The message here is that what may appear as an unnecessary option is in reality protection against an unnecessary expense. A properly calibrated system will help prevent accidents, whether a minor fender bender or something much more serious. The choice is between a relatively small amount now, against major repairs and bloated insurance premiums later. 

Perspective is vital here, because it’s the same logic that justifies so many other typical procedures. For example, customers are usually willing to spend a little on an alignment now, to delay spending a lot on a new set of tires later. Whatever the calibration costs, it won’t be nearly as much as whatever it’s designed to avoid.  

There is no need for a customer to verify this the hard way. To repeat, ADAS works. Allow it to do what it’s designed to do. 

Slick ride first. Familiar to service shops are the customers who value cars less as a means of transportation and more because they like zipping around in sleek machines. For true car lovers, ADAS calibrations should be viewed as keeping the contract you made with yourself when you bought it.  

In that sense, calibrations are simply one of many things you do to take care of your vehicle. If systems like lane-keeping assist or adaptive cruise control aren’t calibrated, they can cause unwanted corrections or unnecessary braking, which run from irritating to exhausting to continually manage. 

That’s not the performance experience they signed up for. It’s not smooth, it’s not fun, and it’s not safe. 

For those vehicle owners who are conscientious about always maintaining their investment, ensuring calibrations are performed in a timely manner is an important way of always maintaining their investment. 

“Whatever” first. Then there’s the “Oh, yeah, that safety stuff” customer. In these cases, it’s best to just get to the bottom line. 

One of the challenges of explaining ADAS is avoiding getting too far in the weeds on the technology, followed by navigating the dozens of different names OEMs use for the same functionality. Simply illustrate the big picture by humanizing the result – this stops you from bumping into the trash truck; this stops you from sliding into the ditch when looking at your phone – rather than trying to explain electronic stability control or the hows and whys of forward-facing this and that. 

These are the customers that underline the need for early-and-often ADAS education. Acquaint them with why calibrations matter and why they’re often required, so when the alignment that had previously cost $100 now triggers a $500 set of calibrations, they won’t laugh and walk out of the shop.  

With your help, they’ll understand the price of safety. 

Now the last. One more thing. Some customers manage to disable some of their ADAS components because they find them annoying. As a service professional, you should advise them that ADAS is there for their safety and when properly maintained is a vital part of an event-free driving experience. It’s true enough that notifications may get on some nerves, but the choice between occasional annoyance and a smashed-up vehicle or something much worse should be an easy one: ADAS works. Let it do its job. 

Want to make sure your shop is ready to handle ADAS calibrations effectively? Hunter Engineering is ready to support you with guidance, training and equipment.