phone app for your shop?

[Handson]

I am being approached by a fellow who wants to design and maintain a phone app for my shop. He says it will provide customer retention features. Want 200 per month. Anyone else heard or tried this?

[mspecperformance]

Would need more info and details. What features? How is it going to make you money?

[Hands On]

First, sorry for having two accounts, it logs me on through facebok on my phone and through a regular log in at work, not sure how to combine the two. I asked him that same question, whats it do for me. Well, poeple who actually use the application I can send push notifications to, coupons, blogs. They can check in their car and get notifications on items that need to be fixed. It can have a digital loyalty card that you "stamp" each time they come in to earn rewards. That kind of stuff. I did a search online and another company does it for 500 down and 60/ month, much better in the long run.

[mspecperformance]

I think the challenge will be to get people to download your app. Car Repairs is not like starbucks or dunkin donuts. It is not a service you are using regularly (2-3 times a year and you are doing a good job). There is very very little incentive for people to download your app. I don't know about you but I hate having a whole bunch of apps on my phone that I never touch. I toyed around with the idea of signing up with these services but I do not believe they will see a large ROI. Besides that if the apps are not updated and new phones and OS come out they might become obsolete before you know it. Even if you got a good program going you might be limited on the advancement of said tech company.

[myCARFAX]

Hello Hands On,

 

I'd suggest downloading our myCARFAX app and taking a look around some of the features we offer your customers. It's free to you, and free to your customers. We automatically set your shop as the preferred shop when they sign up within 30 days of getting work performed at your shop, meaning that CARFAX will recommend your shop for their next due oil change, tire rotation, safety, or emissions inspection.

 

We also offer additional value-add features such as VIN-specific Recall alerts, access to the OEM maintenance schedule, and the opportunity to add DIY services they complete themselves.

 

I'm happy to answer specific questions about the program, and what other benefits come with our myCARFAX Service Shop program.

 

Available on:

• Apple App Store
• Google Play Store
• mycarfax.com

Feel free to login to my demo account "demo@mycarfax.com", password: "Password" with a capital P.

 

Thanks,

Thomas

[lmcca]

  On 9/2/2015 at 4:03 PM, mspecperformance said:

I think the challenge will be to get people to download your app. Car Repairs is not like starbucks or dunkin donuts. It is not a service you are using regularly (2-3 times a year and you are doing a good job). There is very very little incentive for people to download your app. I don't know about you but I hate having a whole bunch of apps on my phone that I never touch. I toyed around with the idea of signing up with these services but I do not believe they will see a large ROI. Besides that if the apps are not updated and new phones and OS come out they might become obsolete before you know it. Even if you got a good program going you might be limited on the advancement of said tech company.

 

i agree with this, gonna be a challenge to get people to use it. To do that it has to be something they are really interested in. However, your on the right track, what you need to do is find a web marketing company to promote you on the web, smart phones are starting to overtake desktop computers as the main medium to the internet. Research is finding people are NOT looking for stuff in the community in front of their pc's as much as they are in their cars looking for it on their phones. Google is moving to this with pushing, promoting websites that are mobil optimized, meaning they are setup to cater to smart phones, we have all seen this, some sites are super easy to read on your phone, which are mobil optimized and the others, you have to zoom in and out to read the info, which are not mobil optimized. As seen here: http://www.engadget.com/2015/04/21/google-mobile-search/ google search will favor a site that is optimized for mobil phones.

 

The carfax app or others would be the "apps" people install like mycarfax stated, gives more functionality.

 

Good luck!

Edited September 3, 2015 by lmcca