40 GEARSMay/June2008

Whenever any two people from this industry get together, you can count on

the conversation swinging around to the topic of change: How much cars have changed over the last 20 years or so… how the technology has changed… the change in business… in pricing… war-ranties… and the list goes on and on.

But in all that time, amid all that change, one thing hasn’t changed: the customer. Or more specifically, what the customer expects from our industry, and from you, the transmission repair shop owner. Sure, the players have changed — far more women are now shopping for repairs and making their own repair decisions — but the overall expectations that consumers have of your shop remain exactly the same as they were 20 or 30 years ago.

Sound like a bold statement? Well, before we go on, let’s look at a bit of recent history. If you’re a regular reader of GEARS, you know that over the last couple years we’ve been examining this industry through our What’s Working program. We’ve sent out surveys, and followed up with phone calls and by monitoring the posts to our What’s Working forum.

It was a tremendous start, and it yielded an enormous amount of infor-mation about what the most successful shops are using to bring cars in the door. But it wasn’t nearly enough. So our next step was to commission a series of consumer surveys, to let us get a look inside the customers’ heads, so to speak. We wanted to know what the customer was thinking… about us, about our industry, and about transmis-sion repair in general.

Much of what we learned was of no great surprise to anyone. For example — get ready for this! — consumers don’t like to spend money having their transmissions repaired. Whoa! I didn’t see that one coming! Time to completely reevaluate our attitudes toward our industry.

Okay, maybe we could have guessed that one. But even so, reinforcement is a good thing, too. At least we know for sure the mentality we’re combating.

But one of the most interest-ing points we discovered was the subject of this article; that is, that in the last 30 years or so, the con-sumer mentality hasn’t changed all that much. What they’re look-ing for in a transmission shop can be boiled down into 5 simple expectations:

1. Trust2. Quality3. Price4. Warranty5. Convenience

Take a good look at those five expectations. Do they look at all famil-iar? Think back a few years ago, to a series that we ran in GEARS called The Satisfaction Files (available through the ATRA BookStore). There we talked about the 3 critical steps necessary for selling transmission repair: trust, need and value.

Trust? Yeah, that’s still there… and it’s still right at the top of the list. And value? That sounds a lot like quality and price; we could maybe even make a good case for adding warranty under

the heading of value. What about need? No, it’s not on the list, but come on: What customer would consider buy-ing a transmission that he didn’t need? Need is always a requirement for a sale, even if the customer doesn’t vocalize it.

Then what’s changed? Not a lot, when you look at it in those terms. Maybe convenience, which has become a critical consideration for our entire society these days. On the other hand, convenience isn’t really all that new. Customers always call the shops that are closest to their homes. Why? Because it’s convenient.

So if nothing’s changed, why are car counts down? One of the biggest reasons is that transmissions are lasting longer. That means fewer calls with transmission problems.

WHAT'S WORKINGWHAT'S WORKING

by Rodger Bland

The Constant Customer: The One Thing that Hasn’t Changed

What’sWorking!

What’sWorking!

What’sWorking!

GEARS May/June 2008 41

2/3 COL HERE 1/3 COL HEREOne of the things that a lot of peo-

ple forget about the ’80s is that back then, it wasn’t all that hard to make a good living fixing transmissions. Those transmissions were dropping like flies. And if you didn’t sell a job to the con-sumer who called at 10 am, so what? There’d be another call at 10:10, and another a few minutes after that. You didn’t have to sell a lot of them to make a great living.

Today, thanks in part to trans-missions lasting longer, more time is going by between calls. So it’s become more important than ever to turn those calls into customers. That’s why ATRA introduced its new Phone Procedure pad: To help you persuade those callers to bring their cars in, and turn them into customers.

(ATRA’s Phone Procedure pads are available exclusively to ATRA Members; call the BookStore for details and to order your starter kit.)

Another thing that’s changed is the way customers think about their cars. Many customers believe that their cars have become so complex that no one can fix them except the dealers. No great surprise there: For years trans-mission shops insisted on fixing only the transmission, sending the car back to the dealer to fix any problems in the computer system. Is it any wonder that consumers assume the dealer is the best one suited to fix the problems in their new cars?

And it’s not just consumers; in many cases that’s why general repair shops have changed the way they deal with transmission repair. Much of the proliferation of remans within the industry can be attributed to the general shops having lost faith in the transmis-sion shops over the years.

In the end, it’s what hasn’t changed in this industry that’s hurting busi-ness for many transmission shops. Too many shops are still doing business the way they did 30 years ago. But while consumers are still looking for much the same thing they did back then, to remain successful today, transmission shops need to work harder than ever to earn that trust from their market.

And that may be the biggest change to hit this industry in the last 30 years.

S a m e n a m e , S a m e q u a l i t y p a r t s a n d s e r v i c e ,

S a m e m a n a g e m e n t… f o r o v e r 5 0 y e a r s !

• U s e d , N e w & R e b u i l t

H a r d P a r t s

• S o f t P a r t s

• E l e c t r i c a l C o m p o n e n t s

• F l y w h e e l s

C u t t i n g e d g e i n f o r m a t i o n

r e s o u r c e s… f o r t h e n e x t 5 0

y e a r s , a n d b e y o n d .

• S l a u s o n . c o m• S m a r t P a r t ™ P a r t s i d e n t i f i c a t i o n /o r d e r i n g s y s t e m

• T h e N e w 2 0 0 8 S l a u s o n B o o kF o r C u s t o m i z e d c a t a l o g s , a n d S m a r t P a r t ™ f o r s u p p l i e r s . . . c a l l e x t . 6 0 3

O f f e r i n g q u a l i t y p r o d u c t s f r o m t h e s e f i n e v e n d o r s :

Tr a n s t e c • R a y b e s t o s • A l l o m a t i c • A l t o • D y n a x • S o n n a x

S p x F i l t r a n • L u b e G u a r d • Tr a n s g o • B o r g W a r n e r • S u p e r i o r

R o s t r a • Te c k P a k • H a y d e n • Tr u - C o o l • A u t o c r a f t • AT S G

P h o n e H o u r s : 7: 0 0 a m t o 5: 0 0 p m / P S T

C a l l (8 0 0) 4 21- 55 8 0 • L o c a l ( 310) 76 8 -2 0 9 9

FA X ( 310) 76 8 - 8 2 9 8

O r d e r O n l i n e 2 4 / 7 a t w w w. s l a u s o n . c o m • S e h a b l a E s p a ñ o l !