Where’s Oscar? - Balancing labor reduction and operating flexibility

By: Anthony Analetto
Originally Published in AutoLaundry Magazine

Cold, rain, or recession - take your pick. There is no shortage of inconsistent patterns wreaking havoc on the predictable hours to keep your doors open. It’s a catch 22 situation. If you close early or open late on questionable days, you risk alienating loyal customers who show up expecting to get a car wash. If you stay open during normal hours on questionable days, then you risk losing your shirt on excessive labor costs. To build yourself some breathing room, the answer is clear – reduce labor in the wash process. Each reduction in the headcount requirement to open your doors results in greater flexibility to plan your business. Although investing in equipment is the easy way out, you may not have the capital or access to financing to make that an option. So, what’s next? Go back to the basics. At its most fundamental, getting a clean, dry, shiny car is a balancing act between five functions: mechanical action, chemical concentration, water quality, temperature, and time. Increasing one function reduces demand from the other four, laying the foundation for reducing labor without necessarily adding equipment.

I’ll be addressing each area below, but first – where’s Oscar? This story, and lesson, comes from a full-serve operator who several years back upgraded his CTA, added a tire brush and set of wraps, and eliminated his prep labor. Cars were coming out cleaner, faster, labor reduced, but volume was dropping. Speaking with several customers, the manager quickly realized that loyal patrons didn’t notice the extra equipment. They only registered that Oscar, the man who had prepped their car from front to back for over a decade, was gone. When asked how they liked the wash, they replied with the question “where’s Oscar?” Running down to the local sign shop the manager put up a huge sign with the headline “Where’s Oscar?” The sign explained that their loyal patronage had allowed the wash to invest in new equipment to give them a cleaner car faster. It then asked them to say hi to Oscar at the exit end where he had been re-assigned to wiping down cars. While looking to eliminate labor, don’t overlook that we’re not in the business of washing cars ­- we’re in the business of satisfying customers. Satisfaction comes from both the product we deliver and customer experience at our sites. Labor is a big part of that experience. Use caution. Cutting prep and slowing the conveyor on Wednesday and then adding back the labor and speeding up production on Saturday may be a recipe for disaster. Wednesday’s customer is unlikely to appreciate that the conveyor was slower and that their car was actually cleaned better. More than likely, they’ll ask themselves “Where’s Oscar?” And either come on Saturday or not at all. That said, let’s take a look at each function at the wash.

 

Mechanical Action
Increasing mechanical action, either from equipment or labor, will produce a cleaner car. Although adding, repairing, or upgrading equipment is often the first line of defense in reducing labor costs, there is a new trend you may consider – self prep. Albeit somewhat ironic, many operators are reporting back with dramatic improvements in customer satisfaction by giving them the ability to prep their own vehicles. Go figure. It’s all in the presentation. Putting out a bucket of soapy water with a brush and a handwritten sign “Self-Wash” will most likely work against you. What’s worked well however is setting up distinct self-serve stations with professional signage and equipment to address excessive grime conditions that customers may not expect a standard automated wash to remove. Bug-Removal stations are the most common, but if that isn’t relevant for your location try something creative. Possibilities include Spot-Removal, Tar-Removal, or some other hard to remove condition. Although self-prep stations are most prevalent at express-exterior locations, if you are a full-serve or flex-serve that has tried them as a way to combat labor expense I’d love to hear from you.

Detergent Concentration
Focusing on the goal of reducing labor while maintaining wash quality, evaluate detergent concentration from two directions. First look at the type of detergents used. Second ensure the consistent concentration of their application. No amount of mechanical action will deliver consistent results without the right chemistry reaching every surface with an appropriate dwell time. So, before immediately looking to substitute prep labor’s mechanical action with that from equipment, evaluate if detergents are being applied properly. The cost of replacing nozzles or even updating your application manifold technology is far more affordable than adding equipment or labor. Once you’ve confirmed that detergents are applied in the proper concentration and consistency at each area of your wash, invite your detergent supplier in for an updated evaluation. Technology changes. Wouldn’t it be nice to discover that you can replace your prep labor with a newly designed application manifold and a few different detergents? It’s worth taking a few hours to evaluate.

Water Quality
Like detergent concentration, increasing the quality of water decreases the demand for the other functions of a wash including our target, mechanical action in the form of labor. Do you know the pH and hardness of the water entering your wash? You absolutely must if you want to maximize your profits in this business. Starting with pH, the assumption is that city water is neutral, or pH 7. Recommended detergent concentrations are commonly based on this value. Problems start with the fact that as the pH of your water supply becomes higher or more alkaline, reactivity of most detergents or pre-soaks weaken. The truth is that many city water supplies are intentionally alkaline, often with a pH over 8. While this practice helps reduce corrosion in the water mains, it also reduces the effectiveness of your detergents. That means if you increase the concentration of your detergents to match the pH of your water supply you’ll get a cleaner car without adding mechanical action.

Hardness is the other aspect of water quality that must be addressed. Softer water makes detergents more reactive. Any water with a hardness of 1 Grain or 17.1 PPM is considered hard and should be addressed with a softener to improve wash performance. If your detergent concentration is set out of the box with the assumption that your water is softer than 1 Grain with a pH of 7 and that isn’t true, then you have an easy fix that could reduce your need of labor in the wash process.

Water Temperature
Whether it’s a dishwasher, shower, or car wash, hot water helps detergents and pre-soaks become more active. When looking to eliminate prep-labor on a tight budget, don’t overlook the benefits of heating your detergents. Relatively inexpensive, both in equipment and utility consumption, this practice can deliver positive results provided you don’t have any issues with detergent concentration or water quality.

Time
Slower conveyor speeds produce cleaner, dryer, cars, regardless of your equipment package. At an exterior only wash, it makes a lot of sense to set the conveyor speed to match the wash quality, service time, and cost of production you plan to deliver and forget about it.  Full-serve, however, is different. Running the conveyor at a fast speed when volume is slow merely creates an unnecessary bottleneck in the wipe down area, assuming you’re running with a reduced crew. Learning how to develop a rhythm of balancing labor and adjusting conveyor speed to changing wash volume is an art form. Once you can reliably manage your conveyor speed to a point it makes sense to be open on questionable days, you’ll be poised to take advantage when the sun decides to shine.

 Summary
That’s it. Mastering the balancing act between mechanical action, chemical concentration, water quality, temperature, and time is the foundation of reducing your labor requirements. Don’t get stuck in a rut. Conditions change. Just because your water quality and chemical concentrations were correct the last time you checked, don’t assume they still are. Often the first reaction to problems in wash quality is to prep vehicles. Adding labor must always be the last thing to do after every other possibility has been exhausted. Removing labor must always be the highest priority to operate profitably and gain flexibility in scheduling. And, when changing anything, don’t forget to ask yourself “where’s Oscar?”

Not Valid With Any Other Offer - Revisiting your marketing plan in a changing economy

Like most businesses scrambling to keep ahead of our current economy, the only rule that seems consistently true is that everything is changing. Your customers’ needs and the criteria for their choices are changing. Media companies are innovating new ways to reach customers, and in some markets, the cost of traditional advertising is plummeting. When taken together, a savvy car wash operator is presented with an opportunity to increase their market share.

In the words of Winston Churchill, “If you're going through hell, keep going.” Assuming you’re already delivering a clean, dry, shiny car with a reasonable amount of labor, “keep going” means dust off your marketing plan. It means aligning your competitive advantages with what your market desires, and advertising it to them. Here are a couple of ideas to get you started.

Fish, or Cut Bait - Jumping on the loyalty program bandwagon

 By Anthony Analetto
Originally Published in AutoLaundry Magazine

According to Thomas Edison, “genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.” For everyone who has managed to sweat out the events of 2009, it’s time for the annual challenge to organize your best inspirational projects to grow your business over the coming year. One topic that seems to be blipping on radars all over the car wash industry is the need to implement a customer loyalty program.  After you complete the 1% inspirational part of the task and decide that you do indeed want to increase the frequency and amount of money your best customers spend at your business, the question becomes ‘what does the other 99% of the job entail?’ The potential is huge. Just take your average monthly wash volume and multiply by 20%. According to the magic number from the 80/20 rule that provides you with an approximate number of existing customers likely to be influenced by an effective loyalty program. Now take that number and predict that 20% may wash once more in a month due to your efforts and the other 80% could spend 20% more if your incentives are strong. Chances are you’re looking at an annual number in the tens of thousands of dollars, which is why everyone is talking about building customer loyalty programs. If it was as simple as putting out a punch card offering the tenth wash free, you wouldn’t have read this far. If it was as easy as buying a fancy POS system then nearly every car wash in the country would already have one – we’ve already established that the numbers make sense. Unfortunately it’s not that easy and having the right tools only gets you to the dock. Whether you ultimately fish with your loyalty tools or just cut bait demands a lot of sweat. So let’s take a look as some fundamentals before I race into a nuts & bolts discussion on loyalty points at the end of this article.

 

Thank Your Customers
In a nutshell, a loyalty program is simply a formal process to say thank you to your best customers. Why wait? Why make them jump through hoops? Before developing a formal program make sure you and your staff consistently walk up to customers, shake their hands, and say “thank you for visiting our car wash, we’ve seen you wash here before and want you to know how much we appreciate your business.” Giving a sincere thank you is powerful, and arguably the best loyalty program you could ever implement. There’s a restaurant near our office where a group of us eat three to four times a week. Great food. Great service. And a loyalty program that makes me want to take my business elsewhere. For a while, during each meal, the waitress would throw down a new punch card without saying anything.  I would throw them in the center console of my car and forget. One day I brought in the whole stack, asked that they combine them, and was told “we can’t do that.” After some joking, the manager agreed to combine the cards and honor the free lunch but still never thanked us for our business. One thank you, one time, would have more impact than even the most sophisticated loyalty program. Establishing processes and training to ensure staff consistently thank customers requires work. If you haven’t already, pick up a copy of Raving Fans by Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles to spark some ideas on accomplishing this.

 

Be Known for Something
Cultivating loyalty from your customers is impossible if they don’t first have a positive memory of their experience at your car wash. Grab onto a competitive advantage, feature, or activity at your wash and promote it on every advertisement and sign you create. You might be the fastest, cheapest, greenest, or offer a 48 hour rewash guarantee, but it means nothing if your customers don’t know about it. Over the years I’ve seen operators offer proprietary wax services complete with smoke machines, free snow-cones with every wash, and one of my all-time favorites – the pumpkin promotion - which I shamelessly copied. Each year this operator went out and bought $2,000 worth of pumpkins and created a pumpkin patch at his full-serve wash. Every customer that bought the top package was able to pick a free pumpkin. Kids in the cars driving by would point and ask their parents to stop for a car wash. His sales and average ticket skyrocketed, and people remembered it year after year. The point is that in order for a loyalty program to work, you have to be known. Whether it’s your logo, branding, stellar customer service, a red carpet on the ground, wash quality, or a patch of 1000 pumpkins - you have to stand out.

 

Be Consistent
Once started, loyalty programs demand absolute commitment. They can only be discontinued by rolling them into a better reward system. Although it’s obvious that once you give out a punch card that you must always give out punch cards or risk alienating the few precious customers that collect and redeem them, consistency should apply to every promotional effort. If for example, you heavily promote a “Whacky Wednesday” or “Early Bird” special and see huge volume spikes week after week, you are successfully rewarding your loyal repeat customers by default. Don’t stop. Don’t suddenly raise the price. Be careful. Taking away these perks that your customers expect can have a greater negative impact on your business than if you never offered a discount in the first place.

 

Make it Easy
Now that you’ve made the commitment to implement and consistently deliver a loyalty program, look to one of the available technology solutions to make it easy for both you and your customer.  To drive up your ticket average and increase your volume, you’ll want to reward customers more frequently with incentives that are compelling yet make sense, financially, for you. Computer-based point systems make this easy. Here’s an overview of the basic loyalty programs and how they work.

 

Points Program: Very simply, you’ll establish how many points your customers get for each dollar spent. Next, you’ll define rewards that can be redeemed with points that can be printed automatically on receipts. At its most basic level, it can simplify the common ‘buy 9 car washes and get the 10^th free’ program for both you and your customers. They are infinitely customizable however, and you can easily use points for offers to drive sales at other profit centers such as detailing, lobby sales, quick-lube, or premium online extra services.

Prepaid Cards: Most POS systems make it easy to sell and track prepaid card sales, but gift cards are not only for the holidays. Many operators will discount these cards as a form of loyalty program and some locations use discounted prepaid cards in lieu of a fleet program, eliminating difficult invoicing paperwork.

Prepaid Items: Instead of a prepaid dollar amount, consider selling a prepaid group of services. This can be done as a washbook or a prepaid card with a balance for items such as ten washes for the price of eight.

Fleet Wash Programs: Waning in popularity due to extra paperwork and invoicing procedures, establishing discounted fleet wash agreements remains a great way to reward loyalty in this valuable market. Creative branding of prepaid cards for specific markets, such as a special discounted “Realtor” card, can be an effective way to show appreciation for these regular washers.

Gate-Keeper Campaigns: Loyalty program software can also be used to reward loyal gate-keepers to otherwise inaccessible audiences. When you want to reach employees at a nearby company or members of local social clubs, carefully negotiated programs that track and reward the organization for each client they send over can be very effective. Rewards may be in the form of free services or gift cards for the gate-keeper, or possibly a group discounted rate.

Reward Client Referrals: These programs give your current clients an incentive to become evangelists for your business. Not only is it an incentive for new customers, but it also acts to reinforce your original customers’ attachment to your business. One possibility would be to reward members of your existing unlimited wash club with a free detailing service for them and a new friend that joins when they both prepay for an entire year.

Fundraising Programs: Filled with the potential to build bonds with the community you serve and even define what your car wash is known for, fundraising is a complex topic that warrants detailed consideration. Most POS systems have functions using gift cards or scan readable coupons to make executing these programs easier for both car wash owners and non-profit organizations.

Summary
Before jumping on the loyalty program bandwagon, first make sure that you truly believe in it. Although a tremendous opportunity to drive volume and revenue, your program will only be as effective as the sweat you put into it.

Owner Sanity & Customer Value - ’Tis the season to maximize profits

By: Anthony Analetto
Originally Published in AutoLaundry Magazine

As many car washes gear up for a hopefully busy winter season, the following quote from famous management guru Peter Drucker should play center stage in your preparations. “Quality in a product or service is not what the supplier puts in. It is what the customer gets out and is willing to pay for. Customers pay only for what is of use to them and gives them value. Nothing else constitutes quality.”

So as you look to invest in your business before the busy season, evaluate your options in terms of the value that an improvement will deliver to your customers. Ask yourself, what it is about your car wash that customers value most. Then honestly admit to yourself, what inefficient or ineffective procedures detract from your ability to deliver that value. I’ve outlined several key areas to consider below, but when trying to determine what your customers value most, don’t overlook the obvious – you can always ask them either in person, or through a survey. Price and wash quality are of course important but not always what your customers are most willing to pay for. On that note, I’m going to start this article with one of the most frequently neglected investments you can make.

Owner Sanity
Yes, you read that correctly. It’s hard to motivate your staff and lead them to work more efficiently and elevate your customer’s experience if you yourself aren’t in the right frame of mind. This doesn’t necessarily mean you should pack up and head to Florida for a week to lie in the sun. Instead, look at your business and list the top 5 incorrectly performed activities or missed opportunities that drive you crazy. Maybe it’s how your staff fails to earn loyalty and increase add-on sales when they interact with customers. Possibly you’re tired of unscheduled repairs because preventive maintenance tasks aren’t being completed on time. Whether it’s production efficiency, facility appearance, utility and detergent consumption, or wash quality, is there anything that stops you from looking at your business, taking a deep breath, and sighing with relief that everything is how it should be? Depending on your level of stress following that exercise, you might want to pack up and head to a trade-show instead. There’s nothing more soul cleansing for a car wash owner than spending a couple of days with fellow operators discussing solutions to problems. And if you can see problems at your car wash, chances are they are detracting from the value your customers perceive when they visit. For anyone who is struggling to list 5 opportunities to maximize the profitability of the season, you can be sure that they exist. Here are a couple of areas to consider.

Customer Experience
It would be naïve to disregard customer experience as part of the value proposition. Factors from staff appearance to the cleanliness of your bathroom impact the perceived quality of your wash. Assuming your site is clean and well maintained, your paved surfaces are in good repair, the landscaping is attractive and trimmed, employees are well groomed and in uniform, and buildings have been freshly painted, there may still be many things in need of changing. Be creative. Your ability to refine the added value your customer feels when visiting your wash can be a competitive advantage more powerful than wash quality or even price.

Hours of operation: Is your car wash consistently available when your customers want to wash? Just because you’ve had the same work hours for years doesn’t mean they fit the changing demands of customers in your market. Some operators have experimented and captured large car counts during hours they were previously closed. Look at your reports and trends. Has traffic in the morning dropped off and evenings picked up, or vice versa? Taking the time to look at the numbers and create graphs of the trends can highlight opportunities not noticeable on a daily basis.

Show them the love: Have you ever heard the expression that a horse can sense fear? Well I truly believe that a customer can sense if you truly love and value their business. Demonstrate that and you’ll garner loyalty and higher ticket averages. But how? You may be well connected to your community and know many of your customers by name, however this isn’t always possible. The overall appearance of your site makes an impact, but this season, you may consider revising your policies and how you present them. Rewash guarantees are effective, but also look at your signs and make sure they are friendly and inviting. And don’t overlook the power of sponsoring fundraising events in your community. You may already have a coupon redemption feature in your POS system that can easily deliver and track fundraising programs as an effective way to drive traffic and improve ties with your community. Make use of it. Evaluate the cost of delivering a VIP program. This type of effort not only shows customers you recognize their value, but provides you with an email or mailing address to send newsletters and promotions to.

Training: It’s difficult for managers to focus on improving customer service if they’re constantly struggling to keep up with the day to day operation of the wash. As you develop a training plan to improve the positive interactions between your staff and customers, don’t forget to address ways of expanding your manager’s abilities to maintain the wash more efficiently. By training basic repair skills, they have a much better chance of fixing problems quickly during an emergency. What else can deliver a better customer experience than being open for business when they expect you to be?

Wash Quality
We’re all familiar with the oath that doctor’s take, “first, do no harm.” Well I’d like to throw out one for car washers – “first, don’t break down.” Once you’re confident that your existing equipment package is prepared to reliably handle your peak anticipated wash hour, follow this procedure to identify means of improving the quality, consistency, and timeliness of the product you deliver.

Pick a slow Tuesday. Run a subcompact, SUV, and pickup truck through each of your wash packages. Don’t prep. Don’t wipe. Now, honestly list all deficiencies in descending order of how visible they are to a customer. Next increase the chain speed to where it would have to be to process your busiest day, the kind we all dream about, and list all areas missed for each vehicle profile again. Compare the lists. Evaluate the cost of options to either retrofit, supplement, or replace any part of the wash process that isn’t up to snuff. Rank each project in terms of your cost and the value you expect it will deliver to your customer’s satisfaction. Enhancing customer value begins with delivering a consistently clean, dry, shiny product. Without that foundation, everything else will be an uphill battle.

Efficiency
Automated equipment is for washing cars and labor is for improving a customer’s experience. In my opinion, that statement holds equally true for both the full-serve and express-exterior operator. Earlier, I touched upon using your staff to improve a customer’s experience at your wash. Now I want to emphasize the urgency of eliminating them from the wash process. You can’t begin a serious project to improve efficiency while using people to wash the exterior of the vehicle. Labor disrupts production, uses varying and costly amounts of chemical and utilities, and creates inconsistencies in your product that turn customers away. There are plenty of solutions from every equipment supplier to prep, wash, and dry a car online at almost any chain speed. Before exploring ways to reduce your utility or chemical expenses, look at your labor. Once you’re finished, look to reduce your consumption of the other variable expenses that eat into your profits. Documentation is crucial. Whether you keep a notebook, enter values into a spreadsheet, or get reports from your tunnel controller, make sure you have a system to easily compare year-to-year and month-to-month periods that can highlight spikes. Once you have a clear way to monitor the impact of your activities on controlling variable expenses, you’re ready to begin improving your business.

Electric: Absolutely consider programs to turn off any electrical appliance when not in use and explore the use of VFDs or other energy saving devices for vacuum and air dryer applications, but don’t stop there. Calculate the savings of replacing older motors on some equipment with newer, more efficient products on the market. Evaluate the estimated utility consumption on older compressors, pumps, and heaters, with that of newer, more economical designs.

Also make sure you’re utilizing all the options to tune your tunnel controller for more accurate activation of equipment in the wash process. Tunnel controller manufacturers have really leveraged advancements in computer technology to gain tighter control of equipment. Make it a habit to stay on top of advancing controller technologies. Also, if you’re in a cold climate, keep careful control of your thermostat.

Water: For the most part, water reclamation has become a standard practice in our industry, but there remains room for many locations to increase the percentage of water reused. 100% water reclamation is a reality. Also on the water side of the operation, look to incorporating check valves, and sizing nozzles accurately for maximum efficiency.

Detergent: As with electrical settings, accurate tuning of your controller for efficient equipment activation can deliver handsome savings on detergent. Whereas most equipment today arrives with check valves and properly sized nozzles, excessive detergent consumption can often occur as nozzles gradually wear and small leaks occur. Review your preventive maintenance routines and documentation to make sure you’re on top of this aspect of your wash. Attention to comprehensive daily preventive maintenance can literally save many locations tens of thousands of dollars each year.

SUMMARY

I’d like to wrap this article up with another quote from Peter Drucker, one of my all time favorites. “Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.” I hope you found something in this article to help you decide what the best investment is that you can make this season to improve both the value you deliver to your customers and maximize the return on your investment.

 

When Lightning Strikes - Assess, Wash, Recover, and Train.

By: Anthony Analetto
Originally Published in AutoLaundry Magazine

Stop, drop, and roll. Drilled into every child in the country, this simple, memorable plan of action during a fire has probably saved thousands of lives. During a crisis, it’s easy to lose your head, miscalculate priorities, and quickly lose valuable seconds or days on making a recovery. Last month I got a call from an operator on a Sunday morning. A lightning strike had taken out one of his two locations overnight. Distanced by several hundred miles and a good night’s sleep, it was relatively easy for me to view the situation objectively. If I were in his shoes, about to stare at a line of cars, I doubt I would have reacted with the same clarity. After the call and during the days that followed, I started to organize and outline the steps this location took to minimize the impact of the crisis. Everything settled into four categories; assess, wash, recover, and train. The fact is, during any crisis, it’s easy for even the most seasoned veteran to get distracted with one task and lose site of the big picture. Although I’m basing this article on what to do after a lightning strike, the same process can easily serve as a guideline for dealing with many catastrophes at a car wash. I hope you find some useful insights in this article to apply at your business.

Step 1a: Assess How to Quickly Satisfy Your Customers.
Computers and electronics are sophisticated but delicate. Nothing highlights how vital these technologically advanced controls are to today’s car wash operator than having a lightning strike wipe everything out. Installing appropriate industrial rated surge protectors and UPS battery backup systems goes without saying and can deliver some protection, but if your location suffers a direct lightning strike, there is little you can do to prevent serious damage. Its become so common to walk in, turn a switch, and start to run your car wash, that having it all burn up can be devastating if you’re not prepared. Imagine no credit card clearing, no internet, and not being able to power up your equipment. Now get started.

The first step in any crisis that threatens your business is to assess how you can most quickly satisfy your customers. Ideally this is simply restoring your ability to wash cars and I’ll go through a step-by-step process to achieve that goal efficiently. However, if a quick recovery just isn’t possible, divert all your energy into making sure your customers leave as satisfied as possible. Get someone out front to greet them and explain the situation. If you keep a supply of pre-printed business cards or coupons that are good for a free car wash, hand them out. Alternatively send one of your employees to an office supply store to print a flyer. Depending on the day of the week and how busy you are, you may offer a hand wash or a detailing service. Offer something until you’re confident that you’ve satisfied your customers the best you can and move on.

Step 1b: Assess how to most quickly wash cars.

1. Call the power company immediately. Even if it appears you have power to the building, you can’t trust that it is stable until the electric company tests everything - so you will want to schedule them as soon as possible.
2. Determine whether or not there is 3-phase power to the building. Try to start the conveyor. If it comes online, breathe a sigh of relief. Otherwise, go to the main breaker for your motor control center and do a reset. Next, try to override each component from the on/off switch. If you can’t override, then there is a problem with your 3-phase power supply and you’ll have to wait for the power company to resolve it.
3. Once you’ve established that 3-phase power is available, test the conveyor start/stop button again. If the conveyor won’t start, reset your 110 volt circuitry and begin testing. Check your conveyor enable circuit. If your horn sounds but the conveyor doesn’t move, check your timers and relays. If they’re bad, replace them. If you don’t have spares, borrow from other components. This may require contacting your panel builder or electrician to temporarily bypass or rewire the panel to get the conveyor running.
4. Now that your conveyor is running, go to the override switches on your relay station and test every function from the beginning to the end of your tunnel.  Document all failures and develop a repair plan for each. For example, if you have no 24 volt functions, go to your motor control center and test the power in and out of your transformer. Check all fuses and circuit breakers. If a whole relay station or board has failed, contact the manufacturer or service technician and start the troubleshooting process. Look for opportunities to steal parts from less critical components to get more vital parts of the wash working.

Step 2: Wash

1. The second you have enough functions working to wash a car, put someone outside to take cash only and start washing cars. Slow the conveyor speed, add prep labor, do whatever you have to, but reopen your business as soon as your equipment is functioning adequately, if not optimally.
2. Next look at your electronics. This can be complicated. You may have to replace a motherboard, for example, just to be able to diagnose other component failures. With multiple automated attendants and workstations, there are often opportunities to steal parts from one component to get another working. Order everything you think you may need, and send back what you don’t use. Look for creative solutions. At this location, the owner had an idea to use the cellular connection on his laptop to process credit cards which worked brilliantly.

Step 3: Recover
Are you covered? I wish I could say that I’ve experienced every catastrophe, knowing the answer to that question, but I can’t. Most operators I know can’t. What I can do, is recommend that you get with your insurance agent immediately and schedule a meeting at least once a year. I can also share several interesting insights that arose from this incident.

First, many policies handle power surges differently than lightning strikes, often providing less coverage for the former and more for the latter. That means that you must prove quickly that it was an actual lightning strike. In this case, the insurance company was able to look up the information that confirmed it from the electric company, but that may not apply everywhere and it’s a good idea to establish it immediately after the strike.

Also, office computers are covered differently than the computers that control your car wash equipment. Don’t get the two confused when talking to your insurance company. Making sure that the computers that run the car wash are properly classified as car wash equipment on your claim can help make sure you’re correctly compensated on your settlement.

Step 4: Train
Murphy’s Law would suggest that all lightning strikes and other crisis situations are more likely to occur on the first day you’ve decided to take a long overdue vacation. Make sure your employees know what to do. On rainy days, teach them how to operate the wash in manual mode. Turn off the auto-cashiers and POS systems and let them learn how to activate the wash using the key pad. Make a cash bank. Have a paper based reconciliation procedure. You may still have to talk your manager through the steps to recover, but it will go a lot smoother if their first reaction isn’t to panic and close the business until you return.

Summary
All’s well that ends well. This location was able to wash cars by 10:30 that Sunday morning, and to take money by hand. With a second location just a few miles up the road, they cycled staff through both locations to experience first-hand how to operate the business manually. The owner took things a step further and had his managers rebuild the failed auto-cashiers that he had borrowed parts from with the new replacement parts when they arrived. It’s impossible to predict every complication that may arise during a catastrophe, but if you stick with the formula of assess, wash, recover, and train, with a little luck, each crisis will be merely a small blip on your road to success.

What Goes Around Comes Around - Inspiring your employees to make raving fans of your customers

By: Anthony Analetto
Originally Published in AutoLaundry Magazine

In many ways, every new trend is an old idea refined. In car washing, the latest trend in response to our sagging economy seems to be building customer loyalty. It’s certainly not a new idea, but the means have definitely been refined and are, increasingly, on the top of everyone’s mind.

 

You may already be in the throes of evaluating some of the car wash POS systems that promise to make building a loyalty program fast and easy. While not new, these systems have certainly become more powerful in their ability to improve wash frequency and ticket averages. But today I don’t want to write about new technology. I want to dust off an old idea that is probably the most instrumental in turning your customers into raving fans: Customer Service. In particular, I want to focus on training, elevating, and empowering your staff. Some people enjoy this aspect of being an entrepreneur. Others shy away from it at their own peril. For both, I want to throw out a tried and true way to enroll your employees in a common vision of creating loyal customers out of every patron to your wash. It is called the “Manager Book-Around.” An oldie but goodie for building customer relationships that I hope you enjoy.

The Manager Book-Around

The concept is simple. Each week at your manager meetings you and your staff will discuss a popular book related to management and customer service. This isn’t an informal chat between you and the location manager over a cup of coffee. Schedule a specific time that your managers, assistant managers, cashiers, head service writers, and any key people who manage other people or interact with customers can come together for a formal training session. After you’ve addressed all the regular issues that crop up at your manager meetings, get up and move to the front of the room. Make a show of it. Let your managers see how serious this topic is. Put up a flip chart with the following three lines, leaving space to write below each.

1.) The book title

2.) What you got out of it

3.) Lessons you have or could have applied

Share your review of the book, invite questions, and pass it on to the next person to present the following week.

More than meets the eye

You are your employees’ primary role model on how to interact with customers. You can explain your expectations until you’re blue in the face, but adding a manager book-around to your meetings takes it to a higher level. First, it establishes that you actively try to learn how to do a better job each day and that you expect them to do so as well. Second, it unifies everyone in a common belief that it’s their job to provide a better experience for your customers. Third, it sets down the expectation that their jobs involve them serving customers, not just washing cars. Yes, you read that right. Delivering a clean, dry, shiny car consistently isn’t enough. Maintaining your building, equipment, and even the flowers up front won’t keep customers loyal to your business. This article is on building customer loyalty and that demands delivering an experience that  your customers desire. Site appearance, policies, promotions, and product quality are all important, but if you can get your staff to smile and make patrons feel welcome, on their own desire and initiative, that’s when the magic that makes the cash register ring (or POS station beep) starts to happen.

Where to start

There are two books I like to use when starting a manager read-around and I struggled with which one to use for this article. Chances are you’ve already read both titles. The first, The One Minute Manager by Ken Blanchard and Spencer Johnson is often my first choice at established full-serve or flex-serve businesses with seasoned managers. The second, Raving Fans by Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles, however, has broader immediate application to all wash types and has become my personal favorite to begin. The genre of short, inspirational, business books that can be read in a couple of hours is filled with many options. These two examples are fun, easy to read parables with dramatic impact. I’ve summarized Raving Fans below and provided an example of how it positively affected some of the washes I used to manage. Any book can work, and your enthusiasm for the titles you select can carry more weight than the words between their covers.

Why Raving Fans

The cover of Raving Fans claims it to be “A Revolutionary Approach to Customer Service.” Below that is a little gold star stating, “Satisfied Customers Just Aren’t Good Enough.”  And in a couple of hours, your employees will finish the book, enthusiastically ready to make raving fans out of your customers. It works. The book is that good.

It starts off by revealing the secret that you must “decide what you want.” Before, I mentioned that the magic of creating customer loyalty happens when your staff knows the right thing to do for your customers and feels empowered to do it independently. The book describes the process of deciding what you want, as creating a vision of perfection centered on the customer. Think about it. In one line of text, your managers now understand that it’s their job to create a perfect world for your customer. Even more, by giving them the book to read rather than telling them what to do, it implies that you expect them to maintain their customer-centric approach when they’re not being watched. Most importantly, it lets them know and appreciate how important their daily actions are to the success of the car wash. Wouldn’t you be more enthusiastic to work someplace where you were valued and important? Well guess what, your staff will be too. Suddenly it’s a whole lot easier for them to smile when talking to your customers.

Rather than spoil the rest of the Raving Fans parable, I’d like to, instead, provide an example of how it worked brilliantly at a chain of full-serve washes I was directing. At a manager meeting, while discussing another secret in the book entitled Deliver the Vision Plus One Percent, we came up with an idea to wow our customers. At the time, attendants would wave or yell “car ready” to alert customers to take possession of their vehicle and drive away. Already using a POS system to track license plates, many customer names were already entered into our system and automatically printed out on the receipt. The idea generated in the Manger Book-Around meeting was to print out a duplicate receipt and leave it on the dashboard for the finishing attendant. Instead of waving, they were trained to say “Mr. Doe, your car is ready” with the name prompted from the receipt. If the customer’s name wasn’t available, they knew to substitute the color, make, and model of the car. Frantic waving became “White Ford Mustang Ready.”

The beauty of the Manager Book-Around is that it focuses everybody’s attention on constant improvement. Soon after calling customers by name became standard practice, attendants were then trained to read back to the customer what they purchased. Instead of silently walking away, attendants said “Thank you Mr. Doe, you bought the super shine today. So we washed the outside of the car, we vacuumed the inside mats, seats, and cup holders. We also washed the windows inside and out, dusted your dashboard, cleaned the rims, dressed the tires, and did your undercarriage wash today. How does everything look to you?” This later evolved to include a towel on the ground which, in turn, became red carpets and so on – all originating from a Manager Book-Around meeting.

SUMMARY

What goes around comes around. A car wash is a service business and a simple smile can make a world of difference in creating customer loyalty. When your employees have a clear understanding of how you expect them to treat customers, along with the confidence to do the right thing without direction, magic things can start to happen at your business. Technology can make things easier, but it’s the people that make the difference. Your job as an entrepreneur is to elevate people who will then elevate your business and bring you huge rewards. For anyone interested, shoot me an email at aanaletto@sonnysdirect.com if you’d like more books that work well for Manager Book-Around meetings.

Crazy Clean! Crazy Fast! Crazy Good! - New Retrofit Delivers Moore Clean Cars Fast

Drive through Moore, Oklahoma and it would be hard to miss the neon sign towering over Interstate 35 proclaiming “Moore Clean Cars Fast!” Walk on the property and you’ll find bustling traffic and a friendly staff galvanized behind owner-operator Scott Bowen’s vision of “Crazy Clean, Crazy Fast, Crazy Good!” Look at the signage or listen to the internally broadcast radio station cross-selling the various profit centers and you might come to the conclusion that Scott is a marketing guru who just entered the car wash industry. Talk to Scott for a few minutes however, and you’ll quickly realize he’s a car wash veteran that’s about as seasoned as they come.

Having sold his two car washes, a full-serve and a 6-bay self-serve, Scott entertained retiring before coming across an 8-bay self-serve with two touch-free automatics for sale near his home. While running the full-serve he became interested in the express-exterior wash model as a solution to his labor headaches. The potential he saw at this older self-serve was to convert four of the bays along with some underutilized real-estate into a 135 ft express tunnel, while preserving the two automatics and four bays. One year after the conversion, he’s logged 130K washes on the tunnel, and annual self-serve vends have actually grown 13% from half the space. So what’s the secret of his success? I’ll let Scott tell you. Here are some excerpts from a recent conversation.