Off The Clock

With more demands made on their time than ever, consumers are less likely to follow predictable routines. Thanks to the 24/7 convenience of the internet, they can now disregard their clocks and follow their own shopping schedules. Savvy retailers from McDonald's to Macy's have adjusted their strategies to compete in a clockless market. Is this a wake up call for carwashes?

At Dunkin' Donuts, about one third of its 7,000 US locations are now open all night

Remember the classic Norman Rockwell paintings that pictured families gathered around the dinner table? For better or worse, those images bear little resemblance to mealtimes at most American homes on any given evening today. A survey by Gallup found that only 28% of families eat every dinner together; and about an equal number don't even manage to share half their meals with one another.

The change in our family dining habits is only one of the ways our busy, harried and sometimes fractious lives have altered our daily routines. Grocery shopping, once nearly the exclusive domain of women, is now almost as likely to be done by the man of the house, often at late hours on his way home from work. According to a 2011 survey by GfK MRI (a market research firm), 31% of men are now their family's primary grocery shopper, compared to only 14% in 1985.

"Time-Less" Customers

Conditioned by the Internet and 24/7 supercenters like Wal-Mart to be able to access anything they want whenever they want it, busy consumers have thrown out the clock and rewritten the time rules of everyday commerce. All retailers, including carwash operators, would do well to revisit not only their operating hours, but also their entire marketing strategies to remain relevant in a world where so many potential customers have gone off the clock.

The fastest growing segment of McDonald's US operations is the Midnight to 5 am slot according to the company. Not surprisingly, 40% of McDonald's restaurants are open 24/7, compared to 30% in 2005.

At Dunkin' Donuts, about one third of its 7,000 US locations are now open all night; more than double the number in 2002. John Costello, Chief Marketing and Innovation Officer at Dunkin' Brands Group, explained the move this way: "I think we really have moved to a clockless day. People are... more time starved than ever before, and they want the flexibility to have a full variety of products that aren't limited by the time of day."

No one would suggest that a carwash remain open around the clock, but extending your hours, by being opened longer on Sundays or closing an hour or two later during your busy season, might be a way to reach more "time starved customers." The SiteWatch® Xpress Pay Terminal® (XPT®) makes it more feasible to extend operating hours by reducing labor costs and minimizing cash handling. Read how Busy Bee owner Jim Mulholland extended his open time by three hours on Sundays after adding the SiteWatch XPT to his Florida Flex Serve, cleaning an average of 150 extra cars during that period.

Got a Minute?

For many of us, it seems like there's never enough time in the day. According to Pew Research, 23% of Americans "always feel rushed" and 53% feel rushed at least sometimes. In some cases, this feeling is the result of the increased workload many Americans have taken on in order to make ends meet during tough economic times.

According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, more than seven million Americans are now working two jobs, with more than half of them putting in time on weekends. Well over a quarter of all health care and maintenance workers (30% and 27% respectively) are working non-daylight hours. Harriet Presser, professor at the University of Maryland and author of The Economy That Never Sleeps, estimates that one in five employed Americans work mostly in the evening, late at night or on a regularly rotating schedule.

The pressure to burn the midnight oil is even greater among the higher paid managerial workers, who are often prime carwash customers. Almost one in three (31%) of college educated males are now working 50 hours a week or longer, up from 22% in 1980, according to Bloomberg BusinessWeek.

Things don't get much easier for customers when they get home, especially if they're trying to balance work and family commitments as single parents. Over one in four children (25.8%) in the US are being raised in single parent households, compared to 12% in 1970.

Apple Anytime

As the economic and social trends that lead to time pressure continue, more retailers are adjusting hours to meet the needs of "time-less" shoppers. The Apple store on New York's Fifth Avenue is open 24/7, and nearby in Union Square, there's a 48,000 square foot Best Buy that's open from 8 am Monday through 12 am Sunday. "Today's consumers have hectic lifestyles that don't always conform to traditional retail hours," Brian Dunn, CEO of Best Buy, said when the store opened in 2009.

Even retailers that aren't in the "never sleeps" city of New York have found that expanding hours can be an effective way to attract time-pressured customers. In 2010, Macy's kept 18 stores open for 83 straight hours starting on December 21. The promotion was so successful that last year that the chain increased the number of stores staying open by 50% to 27, primarily in the East and Midwest.

Other retailers from Kohl's to Target have followed similar Black Friday-esque promotions that extended store hour events to build holiday sales. As a carwash operator, you might want to consider borrowing a page from their book and holding an expanded hour sale during the holiday shopping season, or after a bad stretch of snow and road salt weather. You can use the Profiles feature in your SiteWatch System to lower prices automatically at your XPT self-pay terminals during the extended hours to promote your special. The expanded hours should not only attract more customers, it should also create added brand awareness for your carwash in its market.

The Internet Connection

If customers are buying milk, eggs and cheese online, they certainly should be ready to purchase carwashes and quick lubes too.

Time pressured customers seem to appreciate few things as much as the Internet. In survey after survey, they cite "saving time" as the key reason for shopping online, far above "saving money." The need for speed is driving many consumers to purchase even everyday items like groceries online. A Nielsen survey of 250,000 adults found that online grocery sales increased at a compounded 20% annual rate between 2003 and 2008.

If customers are buying milk, eggs and cheese online, they certainly should be ready to purchase carwashes and quick lubes too. SiteWatch Website ConnectTM makes it simple to sell and control washes, FastPass® Tags, monthly passes and Prepaid Cards directly from your safe and secure website's shopping cart and have those sales entered directly into your SiteWatch System.

Being able to buy a carwash from you at midnight will not only be convenient for a harried consumer working two jobs; it may very well save him money the next day when he visits your site, since having a barcode read by the XPT scanner is much faster than taking money out of a wallet.

Of course, the most effective way to reach time pressured customers is to provide them with the fastest possible service. Customers who are trying to squeeze an ever-expanding list of work and family responsibilities into their schedules have little patience for long, slow-moving lines - at a carwash or anywhere else.

A 2009 study by Accenture found that 28% of consumers "almost always" drove away from gas stations if the lines were too long, and 42% drive off at least half the time if there was too much of a wait.

SiteWatch has a number of tools that can help you increase throughput, so you can service customers faster with less waiting in lines. For example, SiteWatch FastPass uses wireless technology to complete transactions in less than three seconds, without even requiring customers to lower their windows.

Providing this level of speedy service will likely win over the loyalty of busy customers, ensuring that they will always find time to squeeze a trip to your site into their busy schedules.