Kevin Torfs, Cromax Brand Manager for Europe, Middle East, and Africa, explains how to leverage today’s customers and turn impatience into profit.
It’s widely known that consumers across the world are growing increasingly impatient as a result of constant technological innovations. There is a clear demand for better and faster services from customers in all industries. A recent study revealed that 79% of management believes that consumers are more impatient than ever before and that customers will leave if they do not get what they want when they first make contact with a brand.
Kevin Torfs explains: “In today’s on- demand world, technology has created the belief that everything happens quickly. Google research shows that 40% of customers will leave a web page that takes longer than three seconds to load, so it’s fair to say that people are more impatient than ever and that companies need to adjust their product and service offerings accordingly.”
Capitalising on impatience
On the face of it, the increasing impatience of customers may seem like a negative trend, but in fact it has important implications and exciting opportunities for bodyshops.
“It might sound unconventional, but the truth is that bodyshops can profit from the impatience of their customers. Today, the time-saving, material-saving, and energy- saving tools and systems from Cromax drive productivity like never before and help bodyshop owners capitalise on customers’ demands for swift turnaround times on vehicle repairs. The bottom line is that convenience and speed will ultimately give bodyshops a competitive edge.”
Implications and opportunities
Rather than viewing customer impatience as a thorn in their side, bodyshops should evaluate their operations. By identifying where they can improve throughput, they will be able to drive productivity whilst satisfying their customers’ need for speed. “With the right Cromax product system, the possibilities to capitalise on customer impatience is endless, regardless of the size of the repair,” says Torfs.
For jobs that involve minor damage to the vehicle, small area repairs can be carried out with special techniques that speed up the repair process. These repairs give bodyshops the opportunity to profit on small repair jobs whilst providing a quality service to their customers in a short time frame. The Ultra Productive System enables bodyshops not only to reduce waste and to optimize their workflow, but also to achieve greater cost-efficiency and increase profit margins.
For larger paint repair jobs, the Cromax Ultra Performance Energy System can be used in an optimised timeframe – a vehicle part can be refinished in just 36 minutes. It allows refinishers to achieve a high-quality appearance with outstanding gloss hold-out after top coating and as a system it is flexible too. Torfs explains: “Even if a bodyshop decides to let a repair fully airdry, the overall process time is only 74 minutes and still enables outstanding results.”
Torfs concludes: “The only way to stay in the game and to increase profitability is to understand what customers want and figure out how to give that to them.”
Cromax introduces ChromaWeb
The new ChromaWeb app from Cromax for smartphones and tablets is now available in the AppStore and on Google Play. The ChromaWeb app is free of charge and offers the same functionality as ChromaWeb, the comprehensive cloud-based colour retrieval software from Cromax, but it has some additional features that provide a value-added solution for digital colour matching.
The ChromaWeb app helps refinishers work faster and with more precision, allowing them to access and to share colour data with the IP scale for mixing the formula, the bodyshop or with an entire bodyshop network on the go. In combination with the spectrophotometer ChromaVision Pro Mini, the ChromaWeb app forms the most advanced digital colour management system ChromaConnect, which is available from Cromax.
