There’s an entire process that goes on between myself and the customer, when it comes to helping them find new tires for their vehicle.
Often times we’ll get “Do you sell tires,” from our customers. The answer is yes!
From there, I’ll begin asking about any brand preferences the customer may have for tires, but a lot of times they don’t have a preference. That’s perfectly fine because we’re an authorized Goodyear and Continental dealer, and we carry several other tire brands, so there’s no shortage of options.
Throughout the process, I’ll ask the customer a lot of questions to see what kind of driver they are. Did you know that the way you drive, and the main use of your vehicle impacts what kind of tires you should be using? This means that I need to talk with customers about how many miles they drive, how long they’re planning to keep the vehicle, if they do most of their driving on the highway or in the city, among many other questions to make sure that we’re going to put our customers in a set of tires that work best for their needs.
We also need to know about tire size and speed rating, to make sure we’re helping you select a tire that’s appropriate for your vehicle. As a service advisor, I’ll go through or stock and speak with our customers about all of the tires we have – starting from our premium and recommended tires, because we always want our customers in the best tires, and work my way down to the more entry level tires. We always give our customers a price quote for tire options that would work for their vehicle, and try and take a look at their tires to see what they already have.
We will run into people that want the cheapest option out there, when it comes to buying tires, but this isn’t the right way to think about tires. As a driver, you should be thinking about your tires as an investment. If you opt for entry level tires, you’re going to go through two sets of those before going through one set of quality tires, which ends up costing you more in the long run. We try to explain the durability and value of each of the customer’s tire options.
The more educated the customer is, the better choice the customer will make based on the criteria of their driving. The more educated the advisor is, the more information you can offer to help the customer make the right choice. This is why I’m always trying to learn information about our tires, that I can pass off to the customer.
I believe in giving all the information available to our customers, as well as my personal experiences with different brands. I even use experiences of other customers I’ve had over the last 12 years with particular brands. ‘Knowledge is power’ in these situations, and we want our customers to be confident when they’re buying tires from us.
Written by Teresa Anderson for Steve’s Auto Repair & Tire
