Tag Archives: garages

marketing to women, Social Media

Why blogging matters to small businesses

We’ll soon be merging this blog with the News and Information section of our website. Our various blog topics have all grown like Topsy but from 2018 FOXY Lady Blogs will be posted HERE, to make it easier for our readers.

FOXY Lady blog is critical to getting our message across. In our new Blog Section you’ll find a blog post explaining why we write what we do and how our blog reflects our strategic business plans. It’s all part of our ‘drive’ (pardon the pun) to get what we do to a wider audience as part of an affordable and measurable PR plan.

To raise awareness about the Club, I started the FOXY Lady blog in March 2008, writing for and about women drivers.

It’s not a sexy read and I doubt it’ll make it to the top of a busy female’s ‘must read’ blog list but if women want to know about motoring they stand a chance of finding useful insider information here, with their best interests at heart, when they need it most. Or decide to join the Club for 1:1 support of course.

Writing about motoring for women is certainly a perilous path to tread (some prefer simple and lightweight content whereas others find that approach patronising…) but I do this to amplify the Club’s key messages and for a whole raft of good business reasons.

FOXY

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garage services

Is your garage good enough?

The UK garage industry isn’t regulated which means that anyone can open a garage, set up a used car showroom and service or repair our cars without the latest know-how.

I have a statistic on my wall to remind me why this matters. It is that 93000 of us complain to Citizens Advice centres each year, about a combination of used cars and garage services. That’s a lot, bearing in mind that many of us never take it any further than the garage.

When I first uncovered this unsavoury fact, some 15 years ago now, I was quite shocked. Like most motorists I expected anyone who carried out repairs that could affect my personal safety to be licensed to do their job. As gas fitters and electricians are for example.

Types of Garages

Businesses and individuals who do garage work fit into several different categories in my experience. There are very good ones, ones who hide their light under a bushel, those that can do better and those that’ll never be good enough.

Fortunately the best ones are usually licensed to do their job and do it well or at least adequately. Sadly this doesn’t always make them best at customer service but at least your car should be safe.

Then there are others who are good enough and caring enough to be licensed, but aren’t because they don’t have to be and can’t see the cost benefit. Some of these businesses are among the most friendly I’ve spoken to on the phone and often have excellent customer feedback. But without evidently-qualified ie licensed ie ethical staff in their workshop I couldn’t sleep at night recommending them to female motorists. Just in case their work wasn’t good enough.

But the ones that aren’t good enough to be licensed and couldn’t care less about being so are the ones that really wind me up. This is because they can earn a decent living doing a mediocre or worse job, getting off scot-free because too many poorly informed motorists think it’s a good idea to buy cheap MOTs, car parts, servicing and repairs – not realising what good garages need to pay for licensed staff, the latest diagnostic equipment, car parts and the cost of premises and customer services.

It’s just commonsense that the cheapest prices are unlikely to be the best value for money in today’s unlicensed garage industry.

Minimum Garage Standards

So how do you find out who your best local garages are based on signs of measurable quality. Here are a few clues.

Franchised dealers

To begin with, if you use a franchised dealer you can be sure that their technicians have been trained to provide repair services that are approved by the car manufacturer. And whilst you might pay a tad over the odds compared to a good independent garage, you need to decide if their (typically superior) facilities, customer services and specialist training justifies this. Certainly most motorists driving new cars within their warranty period favour franchised dealers, in case they need to make a claim.

Independent garages

There are two main schemes to check if your local garage is as good as it gets. The first one is the IMI Professional Register where you can check for a licensed garage and/or mechanic near you.

The second is to see if the garage is a subscriber to a Chartered Trading Standards Institute (CTSI) Approved Code of Practice scheme.

Incidentally if you have a run in with a Motor Codes approved subscriber you can apply to the new Motor Ombudsman to review your case. With that name you might expect them to look after all motor industry complaints but they don’t. Perhaps that’s what they’re hoping to do in time?

It’s a shame that the motor industry feels the need to brag about complaints handling processes but with 93,000 complaints on the horizon and dysfunctional businesses allowed to trade, maybe it’s better to be prepared than let it happen to you.

We hope it’s not you, but if you do get fleeced at any stage, we help Club members sort things out. And if need be (this rarely arises because this is a genuine deterrent), we share the experience with local Club members.

If you’d like to contact me about any of this please email info@foxyladydrivers.com or get in touch via the Club’s Twitter account @FOXYtweets.

FOXY

motoring

A Professional Licence to Skills in the motor industry

dash

I wish I wasn’t surprised to read that “Car dashboard warning lights are beyond the grasp of 98% of British drivers” but I’m not.

It’s another reminder of the realities of life.

Car manuals that aren’t easy to navigate, read or understand. And instead of our asking professionals for advice here, many of us don’t do this, for fear of being sold things we don’t need.

Presumably they either Google for the warning light, simply drive on regardless, or find out what this means at MOT/car service time or when their car lets them down?

Heaven forbid it’s a safety-related warning light.

The perception of women drivers

Perceptions are very powerful influencers of behaviour. When it comes to the motor industry few women (and probably men too) perceive garages or car showrooms to be trustworthy or welcoming places to visit.

For example, last month I spoke at a WI event in Sussex about motoring matters in general, and tyre safety in particular.

Once again I heard that all too familiar intake of breath when I tell females that the UK motor industry isn’t regulated when it comes to car servicing, mechanical repairs and used car sales. Few realise or want to consider that anyone could be fixing their brakes, selling them tyres they don’t need or shiny cars that aren’t safe or reliable. Yet most women ‘perceive’ this to be true from the tales they share about bad garage, car and tyre sales experiences either they or their friends have had…

As I see it there is a clear parallel between the absence of minimum quality standards (as in industry regulation or compulsory licensing of all staff) and the subsequent level of complaints about shoddy garage services and used cars, leading to an unacceptable number of unsafe cars on our roads today.

So I then talk to women about ways to find out who the measurably better guys (and a very few gals) are and how to find them locally…

Motor industry regulation

“9 out of 10 motorists prefer to deal with an accredited professional” IMI-conducted/independent survey 2014

IMIPR

Thankfully MOT’s are regulated by the DVSA so we can be as sure as we reasonably can be that they are conducted to strict rules and regulations.

Of course when you visit franchised dealerships, you know that any garage service work has been carried out to car manufacturer standards. That’s not entirely true in all cases of course because many are expected to repair non franchised makes but aren’t trained here. That’s what the ATA (Automotive Training Accreditation) scheme is all about…

Sadly none of this training means that mistakes aren’t made, but if you aren’t happy at least you have a clear chain of complaint, taking you through the business and then involving the manufacturer during the new Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) process operated by Motor Codes.

But if you want to find an accredited professional in an independent garage, bodyshop, car showroom or fast fit repair centre in your area, you need to know where to look, as things stand. And that means looking for more than just membership of unfamiliar trade association names (unfamiliar for motorists that is) or testimonials about garages having friendly staff. Important yes, I think it’s more important to check that the workmanship is being done professionally as well.

So, this is how you can check who’s licensed as more professional than the rest. Oh that there were more individuals and businesses on the list.

Best practice motor industry schemes

FOXY is the only business to look for measurable signs of quality workmanship before awarding our FOXY Lady Approved status. Our minimum measurable quality standards include Chartered Trading Standards Code of Practice schemes (there are three competing service & repair schemes, one new car code and a warranty products scheme), Publicly Available Standards (PAS) for accident repairs alongside ISO and leading tyre auditing schemes.

But the problem with all industry self-regulation schemes like the CTSI ones is that the cowboys don’t have to join them, and clearly don’t. And the other criticism I have of them is that they don’t require staff to be licensed, which is a huge disappointment.

So the one standard that sits above them all, as I see it, is the industry’s Professional Register, operated by the Institute of the Motor Industry (IMI). And which could so easily become the minimum industry standard aka regulation by any other name.

And in case you haven’t heard of it before, the IMI is THE professional association for all individuals working within it, whether in technical-related, management, customer facing, car sales and consultancy roles. The IMI Professional Register is therefore the only one where listed professionals have committed to ethical standards and undergo a process of accreditation akin to licensing.

Sadly not all IMI members are on the Register. Those that choose to, apply to go through a vetting process, commit to topping up their skills and knowledge through the collection of customary CPD (Continuous Professional Development) points and their registration is reviewed every three years.

But because this process isn’t compulsory, many individuals choose not to bother. But they would have to if their license to earn depended on it…

I think this is the direction this industry needs to be heading in. Especially now we’re driving electric cars and whatever the future brings…

How to search the IMI Professional Register

register

The IMI Professional Register allows motorists to search for the best local specialist, based on their car sales, garage services or accident repair needs at the time.

Rather than lumping all car services into the category of ‘garage’ it makes good sense to check who, nearest to our postcode, has gone that extra mile to be one of the very best choices in the following technical and mechanical categories.

1/ Accident/bodywork repairs
2/ Air conditioning
3/ Brakes
4/ Car servicing
5/ Diagnostics
6/ Digital/in car technology
7/ Electric cars
8/ Exhausts
9/ Mechanical repairs
10/ MOT’s
11/ Tyres
12/ Windscreen/glass work

There is also a section in the Register showing individuals that are licensed in Car Sales (we need more in this category please…) and there are specialists for Breakdown, HGV, Motorcycles & Electric vehicle services.

NB: Where you come across a Master Technician, he/she is one of the very best in their discipline.

Motor Industry Professional Pride

I am a Fellow of the IMI (FIMI) and proud to be on the IMI Register to demonstrate my superior experience and qualifications within the trade. I am listed as a motor industry marketing consultant (not a mechanic) by the way. This puts me on a par with others at the top of the marketing profession and I an required to top up my skills with CPD points to have this status renewed after three years. As I have to do to retain my Chartered Marketer status too.

So I cannot understand why other seemingly career-oriented individuals do not seem to share this pride or want to be seen at the pinnacle of their career? Maybe this is a question of cost and their time? Or could it be the knowledge that they might not look as good as others on paper? Well, isn’t that the point of the Register and future training? To show a willingness to improve standards and our individual professional competence?

More information

This is how to search the IMI Professional Register
a/ Decide which job you need an expert for.
b/ Enter your postcode.
c/ Compare your choices.

The IMI blog includes automotive tips to help you care for your vehicle and to give you confidence when visiting garages.

For details of all signs of measurable quality in UK garages.

FOXY

Join FOXY Lady Drivers Club to be sure of FOXY Lady Approved businesses and standards in future!

garage services

Why are women rip off targets by some garages?

woman_ventingIt’s never good news when you read what seems to be a case of a garage attempting to rip-off a female.

And tackling a female that knew more about tyres than the Kwik-Fit fitter in this instance.

Being charitable, perhaps he was a new member of staff, doing his best?

Not realising that £360 to fix a puncture was a tad outside the customer’s expectation .

But at worst this was a cynical ploy to exploit a motorist who just happened to be female and motoring savvy.

And therein lies the difficulty because female motorist perceptions are such that we imagine this sort of thing happens more often than it does. Although this IS an industry where it does…

The Ripple Effect

When I set up FOXY 11 years ago I did so because I was horrified to think that any Tom, Dick or Joanna could set up a garage and profess to know what they were doing when my brakes needed sorting. Or that I’d be sold expensive tyres when I didn’t need them. My stepdaughter had been well and truly ripped off by a garage rogue and showed no remorse when we tackled him together…

So I wanted to identify the genuinely good garages from the mediocre and worse, requiring the ones we promoted to women to sign the FOXY Promise to ‘never overcharge, patronise or sell motoring services they don’t need.’

The majority of UK garages would never do this I feel sure but that isn’t the point. The point is that too many women think they WILL be ripped off and, despite their independence, numbers and wealth, feel very uncomfortable in macho garage environments. This results in too many women not getting their tyres checked as often as they should and not going to garages to get their cars serviced as often as they should.

So their cars aren’t as well maintained or as safe as they should be – and could be dangerous as a consequence.

And many good garages are missing out on this business, because local ladies don’t realise they have a FEMALE CHOICE.

Sadly some fast-fit businesses cannot sign the FOXY Promise because they pay their staff minimum wages, knowing they will respond to a sales campaign to sell specific services and products to earn commission. So, in a nutshell, some motor industry businesses WILL sell motorists services they don’t need. Female and male customers alike. I do not like this…

FOXY Lady Approved standards

Any FOXY Lady Approved garage joins our network on the basis of FOXY’s pre-determined minimum standards. This could be one of the following – a listing on the IMI Professional Register, a Chartered Trading Standards Institute Code of Practice scheme and other evidence of being better than the rest.

Our standards are based on quality, value for money, cleanliness and customer service although some are more modest than others, to keep prices down. Otherwise this wouldn’t be a FOXY Choice. In addition to an initial compliance visit, we expect all garages to provide a minimum level of good female feedback each year to secure their network place. Most do this easily.

I would rather not comment further about Kwik-Fit other than to say that I honestly think they are working hard to up their game. There will always be weak links in a massive organisation and, providing Kwik-Fit acts upon this negative feedback then that will surely strengthen their internal culture?

But will they be given time to change their spots without changing their brand name? The minute there is a bad story (and where do sensationalist headline hunters head for to get one?) the same old bile is unleashed again from motorists and trade professionals alike. And bad news reflects on us all.

Buying cheap garage services is a risky option

Another risky area in the motor industry is to do with comparison websites and garage brokers who market what they do on the basis of price. We are all conditioned to compare prices and buy the cheapest insurance, and or goods on supermarket shelves. But in an unregulated motor industry where servicing check-lists can easily be ticked (without the check-list ticks being checked ie sometimes the ticked jobs haven’t been done) how can it make sense to buy cheap? When you could be up-sold expensive services (like £360 for a puncture perhaps?) or not realise when safety corners have been cut.

A lady I spoke to yesterday thought she was being ripped off because her MOT garage tried to sell her a car service after 3 years of not having one. I was able to explain that the MOT doesn’t look after her potentially expensive and neglected engine – she then realised that these are complementary nor competing checks and her garage was simply being honest and transparent. But she didn’t know enough to realise this at the outset…

Finally, another area we should all be wary of is when you buy via a garage broker ie you pay a central organisation without knowing which garage (or their credentials) will eventually repair your car. Obviously a broker has negotiated a cheap price to add his cut on top, before selling to you. Yes, you might get your car collected and returned to your doorstep after car servicing, but you mightn’t know how to check the work they have – or haven’t done.

I could write a lot more because this is my subject but I think I’ve probably said enough. So perhaps it’s sufficient to round up by saying…

Here’s how to steer clear of bad garages (and help other motorists)

1) Join the Club and see what else we do here.

2) Help us do a better job in future by posting recent garage feedback here, good, bad or indifferent, for us to share. If you are female and the business is a FOXY Lady Approved one you’ll get a free Club membership (online lifetime one) as a thank you from the business, for your time and comments.

3) If you want to see where your nearest FOXY Lady Approved business is, follow these links.

To see your nearest FOXY Lady Approved tyre service (tyres, wheels, that sort of thing)

To see your nearest FOXY Lady Approved garage/repairer/car dealer for any MOT, servicing and/or repair work.

And by all means call the office on 01903 879988 for more details if we can help you.

FOXY

PS: Here’s the link to the offending Kwik-Fit story if you’ve read this far.

women

Why Women Drivers Matter

mary_barra_changeOn International Women’s Day one’s thoughts can happily turn to our own gender, hopefully without someone feeling the need to tell me there’s no International Men’s Day.

Well there mightn’t be but so what? If I want to write about women, celebrate feminism, praise the achievements of my gender, the new Women’s Equality Party and/or remind everyone why women matter then so be it.

Men have been patting themselves on their backs for years and that’s fine by me. But today it’s our turn and sadly the gender news in the motor industry isn’t as self congratulatory as it might look to those that don’t know how to scratch the surface here.

But let’s take this step by step…

1) The economic importance of women drivers

As you know, my blog is about women and motoring (by and large) so you can expect me to confine my comments to this area. So it’s worth reminding ourselves that the number of women drivers on UK roads will soon overtake that of men on our roads. So that’s close to 50% of all car tax, insurance and fuel payments/taxation straight away. We were at 47% of license holders last year for your information…

Then let’s add in the fact that women buy about half of all ‘new’ cars in their own right, influencing as many as 80% of all cars bought*. By influence, that’s when ‘he’ chooses the car but says to the salesman ‘that’s what I want but my wife/partner needs to approve this before I pay’. In the US they say this female influence accounts for as many as 90% of car sales. And some car dealers put this at 100%, based on evident experience (and a wicked sense of down-trodden humour I suspect).

* estimated as two million brand new cars and some five million used cars.

2) The female motoring multiplier effect

The point of this massive consumer motoring influence is that this also represents jobs in manufacturing plants, jobs in UK car dealerships, in garages and automotive suppliers – as well as the spin off effect of the jobs created to serve the expenditure from these jobs and so on. So what women buy (or not?) influences jobs and the businesses that do best and so on.

At FOXY Lady Drivers Club we feel the female shopping effect particularly strongly when it comes to buying garage services today. Like the many cars women are increasingly buying online (rather than going to unfriendly garages/car dealerships) an increasing number of busy females are shopping for MOT’s, car servicing and both mechanical & bodywork repairs online, often at night, for the family fleet. Even if those women then delegate the test drive and/or garage visit to a male (that’s another story for another blog…).

3) Is our fantastic motor industry as good as it could be?

Let’s look at the key statistics taken from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) excellent Facts Guide (2015).

+ The UK automotive industry turnover was a cool £69.5 billion in 2015
+ There are more than 32 million cars on our roads
+ More than 1.5 million cars were built in the UK in 2014
+ 2.47 million new cars were first registered in 2014
+ Nearly 800,000 individuals are employed in the UK automotive industry
+ 7 out of 10 F1 teams are based in the UK
+ 80% of the world’s largest automotive suppliers are based in the UK

Impressive figures for sure but let’s remember – this is the industry that we women are paying our fair share towards and much as I’d love to carry on crowing about it, I can’t because it doesn’t represent our female needs. But it should.

In a nutshell this industry needs to be a lot more female friendly than it is. Too many women prefer visiting dentists than garages. Recent research** suggests 90% of a Mumsnet and Reevoo female sample would not go car shopping without a man and women are three times more likely to report an ‘awful’ than ‘excellent’ experience in a dealership.

How can this be good enough for such important customers I have to ask?

**See Different Spin research.

Don’t you think we women deserve better than this guys, when you see why we should matter so much more to you?

4) The missing female industry talent

Whilst it’s International Women’s Day and a chance to celebrate our female influence in the automotive industry I’m sad to end this blog on a negative note, although this can become a future positive given genuine intent.

In a recent film project involving ITN, the Institute of the Motor Industry (IMI) suggests that a woeful 2% of jobs in this industry are occupied by women. I was horrified and have questioned this. Can it possibly be so low?

Accurate or not, diversity needs to be a top level strategic Board agenda objective and reported on annually by both the SMMT and the RMI (Retail Motor Industry Federation) about their respective memberships. We should surely benchmark best gender practice wherever we find it, to encourage the many laggards here to get their act together, once and for all, to represent female customers (and future employees) in the Boardroom. Only then will the ambitious female talent pipeline have somewhere appealing to head for in this industry rather than the many more female friendly career destinations we compete with.

5) Quotas are needed in the motor industry

I suggest we measure this gender outcome in future International Women’s Days to come. Quite frankly I’m not interested in Lord Davies’ token 25% gender targets now. We’re too far behind to follow his footsteps gently. We need an urgent and determined stride towards the only gender metric that really matters – 50:50. And we’re SO far away from this goal in the UK automotive industry that I can’t see us getting there without QUOTAS.

If I’m wrong, and I’d love to be, pray tell me how come waiting for the female creme de la creme to rise to the top of the automotive industry naturally hasn’t happened to date? And why it would do in future without benchmark quotas to meet? It certainly isn’t because we aren’t good enough.

If you are against quotas (as I was originally) please work out how long it’ll take to be fair to female employees and customers if we don’t impose female quotas? But don’t tell me you would only want to be chosen ‘for being the best’ because you aren’t even in the final selection process as is…

How can 2% of jobs allocated to women in any industry be fair enough or suggest that any women who were chosen in a future quota aren’t good enough (or even the best) to too many male Board members who clearly don’t want any sitting at their top table?

As I see it, the time is right for gender quotas in the automotive industry and not just in the UK one either. I don’t see the industry has a choice unless women continue to let it get away with this any longer.

By all means tell me what you think via Twitter @FOXYSteph or info@foxyladydrivers.com.

And if any automotive businesses would like my help to get on the female radar ahead of others, be sure to get in touch with me via my personal website.

FOXY

NB: Our country earns a similar amount of motoring-related tax as it spends on defence, and twice as much as we spend on education it seems. I also wish more women voted hence my support for the Women’s Equality Party.