Tag Archives: female friendly

FOXY Lady Drivers Club identifies and works with the best and female friendly garages and car dealerships nationwide across the UK.

Do men ‘organise’ female friendly businesses?

My son is 16, could be better organised and sounds very similar to Marianne Kavanagh’s son as described in the Telegraph this weekend. When the family taxi service (usually me) is waiting for his ‘come and get me’ instructions things can go wrong, get misunderstood or get very worrying…

Whereas, were he a girl, he’d have more empathy allegedly, know what information to tell me to stop me worrying and so he’d be more likely to get his way. In general girls are considered to be better organised than boys.

On the other hand, boys like taking risks and asserting their own independence in different ways, hence the absense of reassuring communications, author Nicola Morgan believes.

Marianne suggests that there might be a different agenda here altogether whereby boys (and men imho) are actively grooming women to become the organisers in their lives (without women realising this ;-() whilst they continue to do what they like best, without worrying about the perceived ‘trivia’ of who, what and where goes on in their social lives.

I am sure this often ‘evolves’ in business too. When it has to do with people ie employing staff for example, women are more in evidence in the area of Human Resources and Personnel than men, although I would hesitate before suggesting that this makes them any better than men. And similarly, whilst some women like getting their hands dirty and fixing things, they are the exception to the rule – this is normally male territory.

And is it always the boss that takes the lead in gender business relationships I wonder? For example, is it men who ‘organise’ female friendly businesses or women along their side?

To me FOXY approved female friendly garages and dealerships are the perfect business compromise in that they commit to a female friendly promise and where, unsurprisingly, you’ll often find male and female employees working together – helping each other play to their commercial strengths to all-round mutual gain.

And an increasing number of women entrepreneurs are setting up their own garage businesses to cater for female and male motorists. You can expect these businesses to be different from 100% male environments and naturally more female friendly as a result. Including male staff of course, because we must keep men happy too.

FOXY

Should sheds and garages be feminised?

According to James Vaughan in yesterday’s Weekend Telegraph men love their garden sheds because they don’t have the same need for social networks as women but they do need somewhere of their own to let off steam and express themselves.

I’d say that this could explain why men like male environments like garages too and, by and large, more than women. And why men are loathe to alter the characteristics of sheds and garages to please women because these are ‘their’ environments.

It might be stretching this thought process a tad too far to suggest that herein lies yet another difference between men and women drivers but I believe that women want female friendly garage services and there is something about all this that encourages women to feminise their environment (generalising here of course) whereas men want their own place to order as they see fit but not necessarily how women might like it to be.

And whilst a shed or garage at home may escape the feminine touch (by mutual agreement)  it isn’t the same logic when the garage is a business concern and needs to wear a female friendly hat to appeal to women driver customers.

So a compromise is needed here – after many years of the men having garage and workshop environments all to themselves.

Now it’s time to feminise the UK garage and aftersales industry; fortunately an increasing number of female business owners are doing exactly that.

Vive la difference (funny how the gender of difference is female in French…).

FOXY

A female friendly garage in Sheffield

I am considering adding testimonials to the FOXY Choice website in 2010, having decided against this last year in the light of so many bland and evidently prompted endorsements that I find on other websites.

In an industry where garages don’t have to be licensed or mechanics qualified, how good can an endorsement be to the effect that ‘I’ve been coming here for years and they are nice people..’  if the person giving it doesn’t know how to check that the standard of the workmanship in the workshop is good enough.

But a recommendation that arrived yesterday caught my attention and summed up what makes a garage female friendly in my opinion, over and above the FOXY minimum standards we expect.

So in case anyone is reading this and wonders what the female friendly FOXY Choice website is all about, and what a garage, dealer or dealership has had to do to be listed by us (other than sign the female friendly FOXY Promise of course) this testimonial speaks volumes about the level of service we are working hard to identify and promote for women.

It is about a FOXY Choice garage subscriber in Sheffield which is also a Unipart Car Care Centre and called Chris Noyland Bill Rhodes.

This is what one of their female customers, Christine Antunes, has said about them.

I was recommended to Noyland+Rhodes a few years ago and have not looked back. We have always been impressed by their friendly service but also by their reasonable prices.
I am a mom with 2 young children and I recently developed a problem with my car’s clutch. I had just dropped off my toddler at nursery and almost all the red lights came on.

I had nowhere else to go and I prayed to get to the garage, which I did thankfully.

I had my 3 month old daughter with me at the time and the manager, Phil, said he would fit my car in and try and sort it out asap. He was really friendly and helpful. They also offered me a loan car, which was such a help, as my car repair took 3 days. I could use the car at no extra cost, which I could not believe! My car was still under warranty and Phil took my details, phoned the necessary people up and sorted it all out for me. What a star.

I would highly recommend Noyland+Rhodes to other women drivers for their friendly and professional customer service.

Thank you Christine for troubling to tell us some good news.  I agree that this is a sign of a caring garage that goes the extra mile for women. Well done Phil.

FOXY

“Four words sum up what lifted successful individuals above the crowd – a little bit more. They did what was expected, and a little bit more.”

A. Lou Vickery.

The customer should be Queen in a recession

What’s your business strategy in this recession?

I hope you are doing well – many independent garages are I find, and perhaps that is because their aftersales prices are often (but not always) cheaper than dealers, combined with the fact that it has been cool to defer buying new cars for a while.  Pre-scrappage I agree but probably true during the rest of 2009, even if there might be a mini car sales bonanza come the summer.

Or are the independent garages marketing themselves more effectively than many dealers or franchised car dealerships?

FOXY certainly has more independent garages promoting themselves as female friendly than new car dealerships but there again new car dealerships have been more affected by the recession because of the down in new car sales. That and the fact that Ford, Peugeot and Mazda, at least, expect their  dealerships to subscribe to the Motor Industry Service and Repair Code even though these dealerships must surely exceed these minimum standards and may well face more complaints as a result in areas where cost conscious motorists have no independent garage choice to meet their needs.

Perhaps it is because most manufacturers are new car sales oriented and few seem to appreciate that the aftersales function is the backdoor into finding new customers that aren’t on their database yet? And maximising workshop income of course.

We find that many Dealer Principals have told Sales and Aftersales Managers to cut all costs including marketing. Others are definitely adopting a ‘let’s wait and see’ approach and of course it’s always easier to do nothing… but is that wise when others are beavering away behind the scenes…?

Fortunately some dealerships (and definitely internet car dealers) are taking a much more bullish stance and using any down time as a sales opportunity to position themselves in a different light, come the good times.

I also see companies quietly buying up struggling competitors and cherry-picking the best local employees that may have been laid off by their competitors – qualified technicians in particular.

These businesses know the good times will pay back this investment in spades and make up for the temporary cashflow shortfall.

They also know and are reacting to the knowledge that customers, including women drivers, are expecting and seeing deals wherever they go. This makes them more likely to shop around than ever, using the interweb, to sample other value-for-money products and services.

This makes a recession a fantastically fertile time to win new customers if you get out there with the right sales message. And if you are not there you send out the wrong message to customers…

I have just read an excellent article written by an American PR company saying things after my own heart in this context, recommending that businesses banish sayings like “but we’ve always done it this way” and replace them with “how can we do different things” and “how can we add more value to the customer experience”.

Gentlemen dealers, you are looking at a UK gift horse marketing solution in the heading of this blog.

You should be marketing to more women drivers. We are the ones that either buy or influence most of the big ticket purchases.  We want to know what makes you better than the rest and that you really do care about us in an industry that, quite frankly, is seen to fall woefully short in so many female customer service areas.

Whereas if you work with a female brand like FOXY you’ll learn to understand women drivers better AND your male customers won’t think that you have had a barand personality change or gone frilly overnight!

For example (shameless sales plug follows…) if you can sign the female friendly FOXY Promise we can start to market you as female friendly, online and in your local community. You get your own female friendly website presence (which you can measure) as well as a Female Friendly Marketing Pack and the opportunity to promote yourself to members of FOXY Lady Drivers Club.

With prices from £60 for a basic (not measurable) entry to £180 plus VAT for a 12 months unique and fully inclusive package what are you waiting for? What’s not to go for it!

FOXY

“Life consists not in holding good cards but in playing those you hold well”
Josh Billings

See which local garages, dealers and new car dealerships are listed as female friendly already…

Female friendly websites for women drivers

The word oxymoron dawned on me as I wrote the heading here as so few websites for garages, dealers and dealerships are as female friendly as they might be.  Not moron as in moronic you understand but meaning that the words ‘female friendly’ and ‘dealer’ are not always verbal bedfellows as seen by women drivers (but this may be the case in Swiss Toni’s head haha).

Take colour for example – my experience is that most garage websites favour black, or that their designers like black. I quite like black too but it can be drab and a bit me-too looking after browsing through a lot of similar websites.

An absolute no no for me is loud upbeat music which shocks me and invades my space – I come across this on many motoring accessory websites and find it quicker to leave the site than find the volume control.

And how many motor businesses respond to their website messages promptly and professionally? A significant number of garages don’t have a website yet seem to move from Thomson to Yellow Pages to the next advertising variation year after year, presumably oblivious to the defunct ad listings left behind. This always says more than we realise and is a bad image to give potential customers.

When it comes to answering emails the industry will hopefully get its act together in a recession?  It has some way to go I’d say.  I have recently mentioned the polite garage owner who emailed me an auto reply to say that he would  reply within 5 or was it 7 days…either way he is going to need to reduce that comms gap to hours, not days, in today’s ‘I want it now’ society.

I must admit to finding car dealership websites more female friendly looking than garages or dealers although perhaps this is simply the fact that they are more aesthetically pleasing (which women pick up on) and perhaps aspirational photos of new cars are more attractive to us all than a used car forecourt or the underside of a car on a ramp, or similar mechanical pose!

When we ask FOXY Choice garage subscribers to submit a female friendly photo to complete their entry few have a clue what we mean yet others have got it just right including Wallis & Son of Cambridge. Smiling people, female staff where appropriate, neat and tidy looking interiors, summer flowers if an exterior is used and so on are just right.  Whereas tatty secondhand car lots, men in scruffy oily uniforms and boring lookalike building exteriors do not convey ANY female friendly customer service message to me.

Have a look at your local garage, dealer or dealership’s website and please tell me how female friendly you find it.

Does it look different in any way, is there any female friendly content, photos of females or is it expecting you to like the same as men; in which case plus ca change?

How can it be improved upon for women drivers?

I can then add your thoughts to my ever-growing list!

FOXY

“The important thing is not what they think of me, but what I think of them.”
Queen Victoria