Anyone who’s endured a late-night infomercial during a bout with insomnia knows that the same words keep coming up time and time again. Seemingly every product out there is “fun,” “fast” and “easy.” When it comes to customer service, it’s not just what employees say but how they say it, and choosing the right words and phrases can make a big difference in how customers perceive what they hear and read.
The following are tips for convincing customers that your car wash is the place to spend their hard-earned money — and that they should spend more of it.
“Selling” words like free, bonus, discount, gift, sale, save and value have endured for so long in our customer-service vocabulary because they work, said Sims Wyeth, author of “The Essentials of Persuasive Public Speaking.”
Even a small freebie, like an air freshener or a service upgrade, or a small discount, such as a 10 percent break for senior citizens, can encourage customers to come back. “If you include something that is free, customers typically will jump on it,” Wyeth said.
In addition, a car wash’s signage and service menu could tout the upgraded service options as the “best value” because they offer services like interior vacuuming for only a slightly higher cost.
Customers may ask which level of service is best for them, which is an indication that they will at least consider upgrading from the bottom-level service. “One way to upsell customers is to encourage them to join the crowd. For example, an employee might say, ‘Most of our customers also get our interior-detailing package because it’s such a good value,’” Wyeth said.
“You’re appealing to the person’s desire to be with the crowd,” he said. “It’s a concept called social proof, and it means that when people observe other people doing something, they are more likely to do the same thing because there is safety numbers. People say to themselves, ‘They must know something.’”
Pedro Briceno, the leadership development coordinator for Charlotte, North Carolina-based Autobell, said employees at his company’s 76 locations are instructed to avoid telling an angry customer, “I’m sorry.”
“We prefer to say, ‘I apologize,’ because when the customer is angry, he or she may say, ‘Yes, you are sorry,’ which can engage you in an emotional, losing battle,” he said.
Briceno said employees are discouraged from saying, “No problem,” because the phrase contains negative language. Instead, employees are told to use phrases like “My pleasure” or “Absolutely.”
“We train our line employees not to say no,” Briceno said. “The only one who can say no is the manager, and his or her job is to find the way to say yes. Body language is important as well. We coach our employees to move with a sense of purpose. We ask them not to put their hands in their pockets and to be polite and cordial with every single customer. When a customer pulls into the lot, that is the most important thing happening at that moment. We need to act as if it’s a racecar that just pulled in for a pit stop.”
For car washes, there is perhaps no word that’s more negative than “damage,” so “incident claims” is preferable over “damage claims.”
Briceno said Autobell’s employees are discouraged from using words like “brushes” (which can make a customer think of his car being scratched), “rags” (which sounds old, dirty and cheap) and “chemicals” (which sounds toxic and unhealthy). Instead, he said, employees are coached to use words like “cloth,” “towels,” “soap” and “shampoo.” Rare is the customer who will know what an “auto sentry” is, so stick with “pay stations” instead.
“You have to speak the language of your audience rather than your own technical language, and every industry seems to have its own technical language,” Wyeth said. “Smart people know how to translate their language into the language of the audience, which basically means ‘keep it simple.’”
Quoting authority figures is one way to influence customers’ decision making, Wyeth said. If your car wash has high-profile customers such as municipal vehicles or a prominent local company’s fleet of vehicles, use their credibility to vouch for your business. An employee might say, “We handle all of their vehicles, and they always opt for the detailing package.”
One way to encourage regular customers to keep coming back is for an employee who knows the customer well to ask when he will see the customer again, Wyeth said. At the end of the interaction, the employee might say, “Thanks for visiting us again. Will I see you again next week?”
“If they say they’ll be back in a week, that will echo in the back of their mind, and they’ll know that someone they know and like is expecting to see them, and that might make them more likely to come back,” he said.
“Loss aversion” is a simple principle in economics and decision theory in which people act in ways that allow them to preserve what they have and prioritize that over obtaining more things, Wyeth said. The word “avoid” is a simple way to encourage customers to think in this way. For instance, a car wash might spur customers to enroll in its loyalty program by posting signage saying, “Avoid paying too much for your car wash. Get discounts by enrolling in our loyalty program today.”
Using the word “advantage” also can persuade customers to take action by convincing them that one decision is clearly the wise one, Wyeth said. An employee might say, “The advantage of enrolling in our loyalty program is that it really saves you money over time.”
The word “first” grabs a customer’s attention by conveying the idea of exclusivity, Wyeth said. Everyone likes to be in the know before the rest of the crowd. A car wash’s signage might read, “Be the first to try our new platinum service.” Similarly, a car wash could advertise, “Half price on Mondays for the first 50 cars.”
The phrase “Act now” can convey to customers that they will be missing out if they don’t take immediate action. A car wash’s signage could say, “Act now: Buy holiday gift cards before they’re all gone.”