How Many Calls is Your Collision Repair Shop Missing?

Table of Contents

• Intro
• How Customers Decide to Call Your Body Shop
• What Happens When You Miss a Customer Phone Call?
• Calculator: Estimate What Missed Calls are Costing You
• How to Salvage Missed Calls to Your Collision Repair Business
• Final Thoughts

Video

Intro

If you run a body shop, you know how important it is to answer every phone call from your customers, but sometimes you just can’t. Your team may be on other calls, a customer is at your front desk, it is outside of business hours, or for any number of reasons you and your staff are unavailable to pick up the phone. What happens when you miss a customer phone call? And how can it impact your business?

In this post, let’s look at the consequences of missing customer phone calls – and how you can keep those callers engaged with your business rather than watching them move on to a competitor.

How Customers Decide to Call Your Body Shop

You know customers find your shop in a number of different ways. They may call because your shop is the closest one to their house. They may call because a friend or family member recommended you. In many cases, they’ll simply jump on Google to search for body shops. 

Once they’re looking at the results on Google, they may just start calling in order of how they’re listed - which is often based on a shop’s ratings and reviews.

Now imagine a customer finds your business and decides to call you for more information about having their vehicle repaired.

What Happens When You Miss a Customer Phone Call?

Have you ever really thought about what happens when someone calls and you don’t answer? Do you just assume they’ll call back? Don’t be so sure. 

Now let’s go back to that prospect who did choose to call you, and see how that might play out.

1. The prospect dials your number and waits for someone to answer.
2. The line rings for a few seconds, then a voicemail message that says "Sorry, we are not available right now. Please leave a message and we will get back to you as soon as possible."
3. The prospect hangs up without leaving a message and moves on to the next shop they see on Google.

When you miss a customer phone call, you are not only losing an opportunity to connect with your customer, but also risking losing their trust, loyalty, and business. 

Perhaps you have a backlog and full bays, but most shops still don’t want to turn away business. 

What’s the Big Deal? They’ll Leave a Message or Call Back!

Today’s consumers have grown to expect good customer service, and are accustomed to instant gratification.

According to a study by M&T Bank, 85% of people whose calls are not answered will not call back. Instead, they move on to the next shop, and whoever answers has a much better chance at getting their business.

In another study by Invoca, only 3% of people who get pushed to voicemail actually leave a message! That’s painfully low.

Customers expect businesses to be responsive and professional. When you miss a customer phone call, you are unintentionally sending a message that you don't have time for them.

Use this Calculator to Estimate What Missed Calls are Costing You

If your average repair order is worth $4,000, and you miss one call per week, and 25% of your calls turn into a sale, at the end of a year you’ve potentially lost $52,000 in revenue!

Try it yourself below.

How to Salvage Missed Calls to Your Collision Repair Business

With the right systems in place, the customer phone call scenario can work out in a more productive way.

Again, imagine your customer finds you on Google and calls your shop.

Just as in the previous scenario, your team can’t answer the call. The caller either leaves a message or they simply hang up.

But now, we send them an automated text message, saying “Hi, this is [BODY SHOP], we’re sorry we missed your call, how can we help you?”

And now the customer realizes they can text you, which today’s customers love!

They reply that, “This is John Doe - i had a little fender bender and wanted to see about getting it repaired”.

That reply comes in on a mobile app and/or website portal that you and your staff can access.

Now you’ve shown this prospect that while you were unavailable to answer their call at that moment, you’re here and ready to help.

You can point them right to your scheduling page if you have one, continue to text with them, or call them back.

We call this the Conspicuous Missed Call Text-Back System. Every time an inbound call to your shop goes unanswered, we'll send a text message back to the caller within seconds. When they reply, we'll push you a notification from our mobile app, where you can continue the conversation.

Your phone system continues to work the same as it always has. Setup is easy, and we can have you up and running in just a couple of days!

Want to see an instant demo? 

Final Thoughts

Missing customer phone calls can hurt your business! Stop missing out and turn your missed calls into text conversations. Add the Conspicuous Missed Call Text-Back System to your business and retain the revenue you’d otherwise lose to competing shops. Setup is quick and easy, so get started today.

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