Don’t let customers lead you into the “have a quick look” trap. I understand time is precious but so is life. Customers are reassured if you quickly look the car over when they are worried about tyres or brakes. If you say it’s OK after a quick look, in their mind it is perfect. But what about what you can’t see when you take a quick look?

A tyre centre had a quick look for a customer outside their premises. They said the tyres were OK. Two weeks later the customer called into our garage. He thought a wheel bearing was going, as it was wobbling on the road. A short road test told me it wasn’t a wheel bearing issue and we would need to check it properly. I maintained it wasn’t safe for driving, and it would be a little while before we could have a proper look.

On the lift we found play in a number of suspension and steering components, but the main cause for the wobble and a huge safety concern was the tyres. Though the tyres had been “looked at”, they failed to see that the inside of the tyres were completely worn out and were extremely dangerous. The customer, though dismayed at having to leave the car for a while initially, was quite relieved we hadn’t just taken a quick look when we showed them the findings.

Thorough checks during a service of a vehicle offers the potential for efficient upsell of services, coupled with more reliability for your customer. Do you carry out a diagnostic health check, as well as the actual physical checks, of the vehicle? Do you check vehicle scan tool data?

Things that we often see are glow plug faults, and fuel additive levels getting low, often without any complaint from the customer. When glow plugs crop up during our inspection, we generally carry out a few quick tests to confirm glow plug failure, and contact the customer to update them. If left alone, glow plugs have potential to give hard, cold start issues, and even DPF regeneration problems.

If fuel additive fluid is getting low, we tell the customer to save a possible return trip to us in the near future. Even if the customer decides not to go ahead on this repair, they are now aware of the potential failings in the future and you have a documented fault in their service history. You will have a record if any issues arise down the line.

By finding these faults during service and informing the customer, you can potentially save the customer time, increase reliability issues, and save yourself time by efficiently carrying out the repairs, while the vehicle is still at your premises. It’s a win, win really, for you and your customer.

Keith Shanahan, Shanahan Auto Services