BY SARAH B. HOOD

2020 will be “the year of the customer,” said Marketing Insider Group CEO Michael Brenner at the end of last year. And that statement is already proving itself to be valuable insight, especially in the car wash industry.

Since the 1980s, business writers have been repeating the statistic that it costs five times as much to attract a new customer as to keep an existing one. Whether or not this is an accurate figure for the car wash industry, it’s clear that customer loyalty is an important ingredient in profitability. In fact, Brenner names customer experience (“CX”) as a top priority for business. Here’s a look at various strategies car wash operators are using to make sure every customer is a repeat customer.

MEMBERSHIPS

Loyalty programs are still an effective way to build customer engagement, like the Club Program at Mr. Klean Car Wash, which runs three locations around Tulsa, Okla., with a fourth under construction. The family business has operated in various locations since 1976, and focuses on express service.

Co-owner Jimmy Short said that the Club Program, a collection of unlimited-service membership packages, is “attracting numerous new customers.” Although the program has been in existence for 20 years, people have become more aware of it; it’s become a lot more accepted and looked for, and it’s affordable, said Short. They base their pricing on the cost of three washes per month, which “seems to be the magic point for pricing,” he said.
The Club Program is advertised on radio and increasingly (with the help of a marketing firm) through social media and Google search. In addition, Mr. Klean uses banners on site and messaging at the point of payment. “Honestly, it’s a lot of impulse buying for my customers,” he said.

WhiteWater also uses a loyalty program, at four price points. “The customer can sign up at the pay station; it’s convenient and easy. The cancellation process is extremely easy; people just email us,” said Clayton Clark, Founding President & COO of the four-year-old WhiteWater LLP, which has 15 locations in Texas and Oklahoma. “We subscribe to a philosophy, KISS: Keep It Simple, Stress-Free. If you make it hard for a customer to get out of a plan, you create stress for your customer and also for your employees.”

PERSONAL CONTACT

“We stopped paying tens of thousands of dollars to companies that don’t use our car wash,” said Max Hall. He is the Director of Marketing at The Washhouse, founded in 2011, which has eight locations offering self-serve, in-bay and express tunnels in Texas and Oklahoma. Rather than paying for online advertising through large companies, The WashHouse has gone the route of personalization (another of Michael Brenner’s marketing keywords for 2020).

Hall uses Facebook and other social media to build a relationship with customers. Also, he channels his advertising dollars into giving away free car washes to patrons, which engages them and encourages them to promote the car wash. “They are now waving the flag for us,” he said. “You’re not selling car washes; you sell a feeling. You have to know your customer base. Once you’ve figured out who you want to sell it to and what you’re selling, then you know who you are.”

St. George Car Wash & Detail Center operates a single premium location in Utah. “Our demographic is 45 to 80 years old; they have a nice car and they want to spend $25 to $30 for a better wash,” said Co-owner Scott Sechrest. “We’ve never had any kind of discount; we’ve focused on the best car wash for the best value.”

After taking over the 25-year-old business, the couple branched out from radio advertising to online ads and social media. “We’ve been using Instagram, Facebook and Google for ads and postings. We’ve been trying to build up our (online) presence and make our audience bigger by putting out hints and tips online about things that we’re offering,” said Lauretta.

Preferring quality of audience over quantity, the Sechrests are trying to grow small and organic instead of paying for huge numbers of followers. “For the last couple of years, we’ve been doing a monthly special on Facebook; we have customers who ask us about it on a monthly basis,” Lauretta said.

AVOIDING UNEXPECTED TURNOFFS

The personal touch goes a long way to inspiring customer loyalty. However, even in the best-run establishments, good intentions can sometimes pave the road to customer dissatisfaction. For instance, in a society where instant gratification is becoming a norm, complicated steps should be avoided. This includes signing up for a membership or canceling one, making a damage claim or even asking a question, said Clark, who calls some company websites “way too convoluted.”

—Lauretta Sechrest, St. George Car Wash & Detail Center

Businesses are also at risk of alienating current and potential customers if they don’t understand their audience. “I’ve done a very large survey, and it was worth every penny. We went so far as giving a free car wash to every single person who completed that survey,” Hall said. We got incredible data from that. It solidified what we thought before and opened our eyes to certain things, like what services are important to them.

At St. George Car Wash & Detail Center, “one of the things that we have been very successful in doing is keeping an older workforce; we have some employees who have been with us over 20 years,” said Lauretta.

In fact, as Michael Brenner suggested, in the Year of the Customer, employee engagement is closely tied to customer retention. “The staff is so critical; that is pretty much our number-one priority, to have smiling and knowledgeable workers,” said Clark, whose WhiteWater builds the capability of its workers through a program called EEL, for Enabling Everyone to Lead.

“When a customer has a question, the manager is not always available, so we enable all of our staff to be able to answer questions and make decisions at the store level,” he said. The results of the program have been not only to create a better customer experience, but also to retain more employees.

Furthermore, there’s a fine balance between being attentive and being overbearing. “Especially in the express side, you pretty much wait to see if people need help. If it looks like people are having a hard time with a transaction, we’ll walk out and help them. We try not to be too over-friendly; we don’t want to hover,” said Mr. Klean’s Short. “But with a well-trained staff, friendly attendants and patience, we handle everything that comes our way.”