October is Fall Car Care Month, the perfect time to help your customers prepare their vehicles for the winter weather just on the horizon. A thorough inspection will go a long way toward ensuring safety and dependability when temperatures drop and severe winter weather finally strikes. A routine maintenance check also makes financial sense, extending useful vehicle life and helping customers avoid the unexpected costly repairs of an emergency roadside situation.
“Harsh winter weather can be tough on vehicles, and ensuring your customers’ vehicles are winter-ready before the weather gets bad is a sensible approach to helping them avoid the inconvenience of being stranded out in the cold,” said Rich White, executive director of the Car Care Council. “Using Fall Car Care Month in October as a means to get customers in your shop and ready for winter driving not only creates goodwill with them, but also generates more business opportunities for you.”
The Care Council has made it easy for shops to participate in Fall Car Care Month. A good starting point for information is the Car Care Council’s Industry Tool Box at: www.carcare.org/industry-tool-box It serves as a one-stopshop for ideas, tools and resources to help businesses reach out to new and existing customers. Whether it’s something as simple as handing out Car Care Guides or more elaborate like conducting a community car care event, the tool box walks through the many different ways that you can get involved in the campaign to grow your customer base while connecting with the community.
The Car Care Council’s website at www.carcare.org is a great resource for information to help your customers prepare their vehicles for harsh driving conditions. You can share the information with your customers by emailing article links or include them on your website and share through your social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. The media and blog sections of the website are continually updated with pertinent and timely information, including winter preparedness articles. The site also features a Winterizing Your Vehicle car care minute video.
Conducting a pre-winter vehicle check allows drivers to take care of any repair items before the weather gets bad. While it may be tempting for them to put off repairs until after the holidays, it is not worth the risk and added expense of more extensive work down the road. The article at www.carcare.org/weather-or-not-winterize-your-vehicle-now/ has steps for winterizing vehicles that can be shared with your customers.
The Car Care Council’s 80-page Car Care Guide is a valuable tool to use when discussing recommended maintenance and repairs with customers. It’s a great giveaway for customers to keep in their vehicles as a useful reference guide to better understand the when, why and how of caring for their vehicles. With the holidays approaching, it’s also the perfect stocking stuffer for every driver in the family.
Available in English and Spanish, the digital version of the guide can be shared by using the www.carcare.org/car-care-guide link. Printed copies can be easily ordered by visiting the Car Care Council’s website. Single copies can be ordered free of charge at www.carcare.org, and custom printing with a company logo on the back cover is available in bulk quantities.
“Winter magnifies existing problems like pings, hard starts, sluggish performance and rough idling,” White said. “Once customers are in your shop, it’s a good idea to remind them that preventive vehicle maintenance is a small investment of time and money to ensure peace of mind, safety and reliability. Giving certain areas of the car special attention is necessary to maintain optimal performance.”
Before cold weather sets in, Fall Car Care Month in October is the ideal time to kick off the winter driving season. Helping customers get their vehicles ready for winter while temperatures are still mild is a proactive approach to preventive maintenance.
