Customers are no longer willing to wait days, let alone weeks, for vehicle repairs, and shops that fail to respond quickly risk losing business, a shop coach told a recent conference.
Bill Haas, of Auto Ignite Management, said modern consumers expect immediate attention when they contact a repair shop, regardless of how busy the business may feel internally.
“We live in a society where people expect everything now,” Haas said, describing modern customer attitudes as ones saying, “I shouldn’t need to wait. I don’t have to wait. I don’t want to wait.”
At the Midwest Auto Care Alliance Hi‑Tech Training and Vision Expo in Kansas City, Haas said time has become more valuable to customers than price, and shops that delay service or push appointments too far into the future send an unintended message.
“When somebody calls you and you say, ‘I can look at that next Tuesday,’ what you really said was, ‘I don’t have time for you,’” he said.
Haas described what he calls a “service now” mindset, which focuses on responding to customer needs immediately while still being selective about the work a shop accepts. That service now does not mean saying yes to every request, he stressed.
“The service now mindset is that we learn to say yes to the right things,” he noted.
Central to that approach, Haas said, is eliminating the belief that a shop can have too much work. He challenged shop owners and service advisors who turn away vehicles based on a full schedule.
“The shop that has too much work is a myth,” he said.
Shops should stop treating schedules as barriers and instead focus on production data, including hours available and hours sold, Haas argued. Technicians generally want to stay busy and that unfilled capacity often exists even when shops believe they are overloaded.
“Technicians love to be busy,” Haas said. “They want to have work to do.”
He also encouraged shops to set clear expectations for customers by making specific commitments. One example is a timed promise to inspect a vehicle after drop‑off.
“When somebody brings you a vehicle and drops it off on your lot, your promise is that it will be looked at within 24 hours,” Haas said.
That promise alone can set a shop apart in a crowded market, particularly when competitors offer vague timelines or delayed responses.
“That’s a ‘service now’ mindset,” Haas said. “You’re important, this problem is important, and I want to help you now.”
Image credit: Depositphotos.com
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