Modern beautiful showroom with cars

Contributed by Avmor.

Mickey Crowe once wrote in an article on CleanLink.com that "the showroom, restrooms, and open areas of an automobile dealership are very important in the image [the car dealership] is trying to project."

The article goes on to discuss the importance of maintaining the showroom floor. However, one area that was not mentioned – but that is just as important – is keeping the service bay floors clean, shiny and well-maintained.

According to Mike Watt, Director of Training and New Product Development at Avmor, manufacturer of professional cleaning solutions in auto dealerships, floors convey messages.

"When purchasing a car, the showroom floor impresses the buyer. It says this is a reputable dealership I can trust," says Watt. "It can even make the car they are considering look better."

But once the car has been purchased, "the customer wants to be reassured that repairs to their car are handled professionally and correctly. Clean, well-maintained service bay floors help convey this message."

Recently, Watt was called in to help a dealership in Ontario, Canada with a floor problem.

"This was a high-end dealership, handling expensive cars and serving up-scale customers," he says. "They wanted the entire facility looking perfect. But the service bay floors were just not up to their high standards."

Watt prepared for the meeting by bringing samples of different floor care products and cleaning solutions, specially made to remove grease and oil on service bay floors. He also was going to suggest different types of sealers and finishes to apply to the floor, not only to protect the floor and make it easier to clean in the future, but to provide the high-gloss shine they wanted.

"However, after reviewing their entire floor care program, I realized it wasn't the cleaning solutions that was the problem, it was the auto scrubber," says Watt. "They thought they were using [floor] pads, but the only thing on the machine was the pad holder."

Watt says he addressed the problem by driving – in the early evening - to a nearby hardware store that was still open and purchasing the correct floor pads for the machine. 

"It was a surprise to me that they were not aware of this, but I'm in the cleaning business, and they're in the car business, so I guess that explains it," he says.

With the new pads on the machine, the service bay floors cleaned up very nicely and, needless to say, the customer was exuberant.

Watt adds that what he provided this customer was nothing more than "old time" service. 

"It's one of the reasons Avmor has been around for 70 years," says Watt. "We never forgot how important this is. It refers back to something Stephen Covey once said, and that is, 'you can buy a person's hand, but you can't buy his heart. His heart is where his enthusiasm, his loyalty is.'"