I agree completely. Have had the same experiences. People compliment us because the washes are always clean and they aren't being blasted by someones radio. I try to be as polite and diplomatic as possible, but there is a limit and if you don't establish it, they will for you. After having a customer turn his radio down, I've had other customers thanak me, because it was driving them crazy.
Yep! Your good customers DO notice, and they appreciate your efforts. As important as it is to achieve some degree of differentiation in a business where it's pretty hard to do, one way to do it is to be obsessive about keeping things operating properly and the place clean. I want to attract the guy who enjoys coming to the wash on his day off and spending a few hours there using every profit center on the property. If I have to run off a roofer or landscaper or two to achieve that, I feel like I need to.
70 cents a minute for air...not a problem. However I have never seen anyone using it for that purpose. However if we are on site, at times we will lend the customer a broom and pan to clean out the back of the truck before they wash.
Our lights go off at 10pm and back on at 5am (at 1 location). I was worried about that at first but I guess most of the messa makers don't want to do it in the dark.
Nope, that ain't it. I work 80-96 hours a week as it is. "Business" is also about making the best use of your time, and the best use of my time isn't spending an extra 14 hours a week cleaning up mud/grease/clippings that might gross me another $50.
That's been my point all along.pitzerwm said:
I don't **** and moan when someone brings in a muddy truck either, because that is part of the business. They also have to spend a good amount of money to wash a muddy truck - we have some regular customers that will spend $50 washing a truck, and that makes a messy bay much more worthwhile. We're talking primarily about people spending only the minimum amount of money to blast as much crap off their commercial equipment as they can and leaving the bay unusable, when their employer should be providing the facility for equipment maintenance.Tom Lee said:
I learned the lesson long ago in our roof equipment manufacturing business that we don't want all the business we can have. There are some customers that are just more pain in the butt than they're worth. Like the guy who washed his Lincoln in Bay 1 the other day then got back in his car, drove a few feet forward, stopped and opened his door, and threw out a McDonalds bag of trash - when I find him I'll tell him to not come back. And I realize I'm swimming upstream on this but I'm really not interested in tolerating a farmer's excessive mud so that I can wash his wife's Cadillac. If Mr. farmer thinks it's ok to use his shovel to scoop off enough mud to fill 2 wheelbarrows then spend a buck fifty to rinse off his boots and shovel, I don't want his business and I'll give up his wife's business too if I have to.
No, in all likelihood he was seeking revenge for me embarassing his daddy when he confronted me last year. But you make the point I've been trying to make - thanks. The point being that if you tolerate jerks at your wash just because your attendants have to clean up their messes rather than you, good for you. I won't. My other customers appreciate that I won't tolerate them.
