Success Stories

Super Star Carwash, Phoenix, AZ

Full-service carwash

Viewing Customer Histories With SiteWatch® Portable Touchscreen Terminal Personalizes Sales, Helps Double Prepaid Volume

Like many successful carwash operators, Reza Amirrezvani believes in offering customers a choice. "Different people have different needs, so we want to give them a range of options to choose from," said the owner of two Super Star Carwashes in Phoenix. "Choice is good."

However, sometimes you can have "too much of a good thing," especially if you're a greeter at a high-volume full-service carwash on a busy Saturday. "There are a lot of different services and options for our greeters to talk about, but only a limited amount of time to spend with customers," observed Amirrezvani. “Our greeters must be able to choose their topics quickly and intelligently, so they don’t waste time talking about something that doesn't appeal to the customer. This is not only unproductive from a selling standpoint, it also puts off the customer – no one likes being subjected to a ‘sales pitch’ about something that they have no interest in buying.”

To help his greeters focus their selling messages, save customers time, and speed up his transaction process, Amirrezvani installed the SiteWatch Portable Touchscreen Terminal from DRB Systems. "I bought the PTT, because it makes it simple for our greeters to call up customer histories by tracking license plate numbers, and this allows us to make more personalized and targeted selling suggestions."

Entering vehicle plate numbers takes very little time with the PTT, according to Amirrezvani, because greeters do not have to write down numbers by hand, or walk over to a fixed position terminal. "It wouldn't make sense for us to track plate numbers if we had to go back to a fixed position computer, because of the time it would take," said Amirrezvani.

It isn't even necessary for Amirrezvani's greeters to spend time attaching customer names and contact information to the plate numbers they enter into the SiteWatch System. Simply by tracking license plates, greeters can call up a vehicle’s history and make more informed selling suggestions.

"Customers are upgrading more, because our people are giving them better, more targeted information," said Amirrezvani. "The fact that our greeters are more focused has also sped up our sales process. They're less likely to stumble looking for the right things to talk about, and they aren't wasting time talking about options that have little or no chance of selling to a particular customer."

Targeted selling with the PTT has also helped Amirrezvani's greeters remain more enthusiastic, because they aren’t getting turned down trying to sell the wrong option to the wrong customer.

Having customer histories literally in "the palm of their hands," not only influences which upgrades greeters talk about, it also affects how they present these options. For example, says Amirrezvani, if a customer who has never purchased a hand wax asks about this option, the greeter will explain the "basics of why it’s important." On the other hand, when the same greeter encounters customers who've purchased hand waxes in the past, but haven’t gotten one for three months, he will focus more on reminding them that it’s time to get this service again.

"The SiteWatch PTT makes us all much smarter as salespeople," said Amirrezvani.

The empowered salesmanship that results from using a PTT is very evident in Super Star Carwash's prepaid card business. When a greeter sees that a vehicle has been to the wash regularly, he shows the driver its customer history on the PTT, and explains how much that individual would have saved if those purchases were made with a prepaid card.

"It's very effective when you can call up real customer histories, and point out all of the savings that people would have realized had they used prepaid cards," said Amirrezvani. "This makes the whole interaction much more than a sales process, because we’re talking about real money that the customer would have saved doing something that he was doing anyway."

Amirrezvani knows firsthand how effective the SiteWatch Portable Touchscreen Terminal can be in boosting prepaid card sales. He recently ran a prepaid card promotion at his two carwashes. His second site, which does not have a PTT, sold only about half as many prepaid cards as his site with the hand-held unit. This site has also been “far less successful” selling upgrades.

"The big difference has been the PTT," he explained. "It's put a lot of power in the hands of our greeters. They now know who the customer is, what he's purchased in the past, and what he's likely to be receptive to now. There is no comparison between having a PTT at your full-service and not having one. You do so much more selling when the customer histories are at your fingertips.”