Automotive consultancy firm, Fourmative is continuing its short series on common customer feedback mistakes with four more tips for garage owners.
Experts at the company say around half the population will refer to customer review before choosing where to spend their money.
It aims to help garages understand the importance of feedback and how they should respond to it.
Mistake five: Focusing business growth on new custom
Your current customers are your biggest, easiest, most stable source of growth.
These are people who already love your business, and it’s far easier to entice them back than attract new people.
Do what you can to make your current customers are delighted with the service they receive you will then be top of the list next time they need a service or repair.
Mistake six: Standardising responses
Your customers are individuals.
And as you know, there is no one size fits all approach when it comes to dealing with people.
Each concern should be dealt with considering the exact circumstances, and not because you have a standard process – because that might not be enough.
Be open, flexible, and make appropriate decisions for each case.
It’ll pay dividends.
Mistake seven: Believing satisfied customers are better than those who complain
This isn’t always the case.
Customers who complain are doing you a favour – they’re telling you what’s not right, so you can fix the problem.
Plus, people who complain and get a response that pleases them tend to be more loyal than customers who say nothing.
Customers who are just satisfied are usually the ones who don’t speak out, so you never find out what wasn’t right.
That means you’ll have missed out on the opportunity to impress them into coming back, or writing a good review.
Mistake eight: Assuming satisfied customers will come back
They won’t.
Research shows that 60 per cent of customers who change supplier are satisfied with their existing supplier.
That speaks volumes: an average service is forgettable.
Only delighted customers come back for more, so get their thoughts on how you can improve.
Then, make sure that you deliver that great service to every customer on every visit.
Related: Common mistakes garages make when responding to customer reviews
A Fourmative spokesperson said “People remember bad comments more than the good, so it’s not surprising that little mistakes can cost you thousands of pounds each month.
“Customer feedback can make or break your business.”
Fourmative provides a web-based system which helps garages gain valuable customer feedback which can be used to help improve satisfaction and business retention.
The spokesperson added: “Typically feedback systems rely upon the Customer choosing to leave their views relating to a particular sale or service experience.
“This approach often results in customers choosing to opt out if the experience was acceptable with many customers only leaving feedback if the service was deemed to be exceptional and worthy of a mention or alternatively very poor.
“This means that many businesses rely upon a very small sample of their total customers to measure customer satisfaction.
“Instant Feedback obtains customer views at the end of the customer experience, prior to them leaving.”
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