Your garage is a restaurant, and your technicians are the chefs

I use a lot of analogies, and the restaurant is my favourite. A restaurant business and a garage business are very, very similar.

We share nearly all the same challenges, apart from one. You go to a restaurant because you want a meal or you’re celebrating something. Nobody takes their car to a garage to celebrate.

Beyond that, it’s all about the service. And it’s all about the perception of value.

Your customers price you before you say a word

Go to a Greasy Joe’s for a breakfast and, as you walk in, you already have an expectation of what you’ll pay. £8 or £9, maybe, for a full English, whatever that full English turns out to be.

Go to a brasserie, somewhere like Browns, and you have a different expectation. You’re going to pay £20.

That £20 doesn’t mean you’ll get better service than the £10. It’s the perception you have when you walk in.

Under the arches or main dealer?

It’s the same with a garage. Walk into one that looks like a garage ‘under the arches’, and in your mind you’re expecting to pay a certain amount. Walk into a main dealer and you’re expecting to pay a lot more.

And in most cases, the service in the place that looks better is actually worse.

So the way your garage looks sets the price your customers expect to pay before you’ve quoted a thing. That works for you or against you.

The chef can cook a beautiful meal, and front of house can still sink it

Here’s the other side of the analogy. In the restaurant, the chefs are in the kitchen. In your garage, the technicians are in the workshop. Out front, the restaurant has its waiters and waitresses. You have your service advisors.

Now think about this. The tech repairs the car fantastically. But front of house don’t deliver. For whatever reason, they don’t call back, or they don’t explain the invoice.

The customer pays, the technician hasn’t done anything wrong. But the customer walks out thinking, “That wasn’t very good.”

Andy Savva

It’s the same in a restaurant. The chef cooks a fantastic meal with great ingredients, but the service out front isn’t very good. The whole business suffers.

Your customer can’t judge the repair. They can judge the phone call, the invoice and how they were treated. That’s what they’ll remember.

What to do this week

1. Walk in through your own front door as a customer would. What price would you expect to pay, based on what you see?
2. Make sure every invoice is explained to the customer when they collect, not just handed over.