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THE NEW MOBILITY: Eliminating the pain of maintenance
Understanding how consumers think of maintenance is a critical first step for shop owners who want to redraw the boundaries of the relationships they have with their customers.
Vehicle maintenance is a painful experience for most consumers… and understanding that principle presents new opportunities to aftermarket shops, says auto consultant James Carter.
In the fifth installment of his series on what he dubs “the new mobility,” Carter says aftermarket professionals need to understand that most consumers consider vehicle maintenance to be a necessary evil. Anyone who can remove the drudgery and inconvenience of maintenance is going to have happy, loyal customers.
“We’re not in the most appealing business from a consumer point of view. We’re not selling something that gives great joy,” he writes. “But any industry that is predicated on a pain point is ripe for disruption.”
He says repair shops that find a way to disrupt the status quo of vehicle maintenance will reap the reward.
“Shops – or chains – that bring together a bunch of new ideas that understand their customers’ pain points and find a way to eliminate them will be the big winners in tomorrow’s aftermarket,” he says.
It is the latest insight from Carter, the principal consultant at Toronto-based consultancy Vision Mobility.
Among other topics covered in this series, Carter discusses how autonomous vehicles are expected to change the repair landscape, the dominance of fleet business in new mobility (taxi-bots / ground drones), how new technology will create different mobility business models for ASPs, why fuel cells may begin to show the way forward, and how connected cars and forward-thinking ASPs will impact how consumers think about maintenance.
Check out Part 5 of the NEW MOBILITY SERIES here, and look for additional articles in the weeks to come… only at AutoServiceWorld.com.
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