How can you tell if a garage is female friendly or not?

A good start is to look for the foxy logo because FOXY Choice is the UK’s only female friendly garage network to identify, approve and monitor female friendly garages, promoting them to women drivers.

No other website lists or checks a range of quality credentials such as ATA, BSI Kitemark and OFT logos. Such is the importance of measurable quality workmanship to fussy FOXY that we even give garage holders with these a discount on our subscription rates!

So if you see a FOXY branded (2011-2012) Female Friendly Garage Code on reception walls you know you can trust that garage, dealership or accident repair body shop to have made a commitment to

• Industry accredited staff
• Ethical behaviour
• A fixed price menu
• Local car collection or courtesy car
• Jargon free explanations
• No hidden costs
• A warm welcome
• A drink made available
• A comfortable waiting area
• A clean washroom
• Current magazines for females
• Books or toys to entertain the children

Whereas if a garage claims to be female friendly but there’s no sign of the fox logo in evidence you can’t know what their service levels are going to be.

And in case they don’t know of FOXY Choice and our services, please introduce us!

We’re always looking for good garage feedback from females so please tell us what you think and we’ll thank you for taking the time, with a free subscription to FOXY Lady Drivers Club that’s worth £23.  While this promotion lasts…

Yet another female friendly gesture to share important feedback so other lady drivers can be foxy (as in shrewd, canny and astute) in future and look forward to better customer services in future…

FOXY Steph

Google lists some 23 million searches for female friendly businesses so it makes good sense to be well listed for ‘female friendly’ and your type of business, in this instance ‘garage’,  ‘fastfit’ or ‘car dealership’ and your postal town. Female friendly marketing is big business in the US and Australia and now it seems to be coming here which suggests that UK women are looking for more in terms of service levels than they are getting from some businesses and in certain industries with an unfriendly reputation…

In these circumstances, businesses that get it genuinely right for women and can promote themselves (online and offline) as female friendly are highly likely to win new business by being different and ahead of others.  And, let’s face it -  if she is impressed she is likely to tell her friends, family and work colleagues because that’s what women do; we talk and compare shopping feedback particularly when we’re talking about expensive products or services we mightn’t know plenty about (or be all that interested either…).

How will she tell if a business is female friendly enough?  To be genuinely female friendly in my book any garage, fastfit or car dealership has to be able to prove that they are a good business for starters and ideally one of the best in their area. That means meeting high standards in terms of measurable quality workmanship, value for money, cleanliness (especially the loos) and customer welcome.

It’s all too easy to say ‘we are female friendly’ or ‘we are a good garage’ on a website or in a sales leaflet.  What’s to stop bad and unfriendly garages, fastfits and dealerships from saying this about them to tempt her in? And some do, believe me without understanding what women want and making that fairly obvious over the phone to a casual mystery shopper (often me…).

Well I thought long and hard about all this before I set up FOXY Lady Drivers Club and again before FOXY Choice because whoever sets out any such standards must be totally independent, able to monitor them and not be overly influenced by a commercial owner, sponsor or agenda that has a vested interest in spinning the marketing message in that direction.

For example, you could say that the Good Garage Scheme (which is owned by US company Forte Oils) has a vested interest in signing up any garage that wants to be promoted as a good garage simply if they agree to sell their oil products and fill in gaps in their UK network.

And you could say that the newish Motor Industry Code, Service and Repair, sponsored as it is by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders who represent the car manufacturers and their franchised dealers, has a vested interest in promoting franchised dealership subscribers over independent garages (which they do in the ratio of some 80:20 incidentally).  Fair enough perhaps but the female motorist running a car on a budget who is influenced by their advertising is likely to end up in a dealership paying some 30% more than she would do in a quality independent.  And they don’t explain this choice to her beforehand. And the Code standards are so very elementary that you have to wonder why the dealerships were required to sign up to this by the likes of Ford. Surely they were exceeding these basic standards before…)

So, catching up here, the way to identify a good and female friendly garage must be by giving the customer (in this instance the female because FOXY represents female motorists) all the advice and information they need to make the right buying choice for them, their car, their budget and the occasion.

I find that many women drivers are interested in comparing the likes of services and amenities alongside the all important quality and price. And because so many women are using the internet to shop, the business website is vital alongside any garage feedback and social networking site content.

But the problem with garage feedback and many testimonials, including social network postings, is that they can so easily be written by those with a vested interest, and to order.  Otherwise many of them are sufficiently bland that you know the customer has had to write something (mental picture of the motorist with his or her arm twisted behind the back.  And which would you trust most, someone who tells you they are a female friendly garage without any evidence of what this means on their website, someone who  says their local garage is ‘nice’ and ‘friendly’ or a website that shows which local businesses operate to demanding quality standards like ATA, BSI or fully approved OFT Code.

We follow up the good garage feedback we get and very often the surnames are the same as the business owners! It isn’t rocket science to spot this! They must think we are daft too!

What we do instead is to provide a Good Garage Guide for women to explain that and get all FOXY Choice subscribers to sign the female friendly FOXY Promise© to ‘never overcharge, patronise or sell women services they don’t need or want’.  We then spell out all the quality indicators such as ATA, BSI and full OFT approval, mentioning the Motor Industry Codes and the Good Garage Scheme so that shoppers can see the entire picture.

Those who want to can also list their customer services like free local car collection and courtesy cars as well.

Then we promote these subscribers to Club members and share any female feedback within the Club.

Finally if any member needs our female ‘welly’ to get things sorted out we will help and ultimately we are prepared to eject any ‘couldn’t care less’ or worse behaviour from our network of female friendly garages and dealerships across the UK.

FOXY Steph