by Brian Warfield

Are you relying too much on your automotive repair talent to bring customers back for their next service?

Being able to fix the customer’s car is clearly part of your success strategy, but unfortunately fixing cars is not enough to guarantee loyal relationships.

Relationship building is just as important as fixing the customer’s car because it drives:

• Return visits to your shop
• Trust, which sells service recommendations
• Referrals to friends and family
• Second-chances when repairs don’t go as expected

Blow Customers Away with ManagerSE + SocialCRM 

Set yourself up for successful relationship building with the following strategies:

• Decide who in the shop owns the relationship-building responsibility and officially makes it part of their job description.
• Call your SocialCRM support agent for help to:
  • Make sure you have logged into your SocialCRM program and clicked the box to save your login credentials. Do this on all your customer service area and office computers.
  • Once logged into the SocialCRM dashboard, click on the “Respond/Share” link next to one of your reviews and make sure you have also saved your login information for your review page.

Now, blow your customers away with this daily relationship building routine!

• Each morning, look over your scheduled appointments in Manager SE and note any previous customer reviews. This is indicated by a prominent star on the Customer, Vehicle or Invoice screens.
• When greeting the customer at the front desk, thank them for their previous review and mention how valuable reviews are to getting new business. They’ll be extremely impressed that you remembered.
• Each afternoon, take a couple of minutes to respond to at least one “New Customer” review. By using the SocialCRM Reports button at the top of the Manager SE page (also marked with a star), you’ll notice the “New Customer” label next to some of your reviews. Write a thank-you response. This automatically sends your new customer an email and is added to their original review for others to see. Reciprocating customer gratitude like this is one of the easiest ways to strengthen your new relationship. Then, blow them away again by thanking them again when they return. Now that’s extraordinary customer service!

For more information on how to build valuable customer relationship see…