National Tire & Battery: Online Appointment Scheduling
I’m terribly impressed by something that is hidden on National Tire & Battery’s Web site: online appointment scheduling. I mean, look at their front page and tell me where to find that. How did I run across it? I went to their find-a-store page so I could look up the number for the place and also check the store hours, as this is standard data to have on the store-locator part of a clicks-and-bricks enterprise. [Holy bizspeak, Batman!] When I got there, I found the opportunity to schedule an appointment online.
The online appointment schedule left a lot to be desired: each successive drill-down [year, make, model, variation] was simply information added to the URL’s query, which gets unwieldy. Also, the system was slow, but it would respond after 45 second or so. [I was working on an email at the time, so I had time to toggle back and forth.] Eventually, though, I got to a screen where I could tell them what I wanted done [oil change, belts and hoses, and replace my battery] and roughly when. Presumably they’ll call me to follow up.
This is not something that I expected something as low-tech as I perceive a garage to be to do for its customers. Things that I’d suggest as an improvement in the future:
- Allow me to create an account so I can tell you vital details on my vehicle(s) so I can cut the process down a number of steps.
- Show an estimate of time and price to me on the site. I understand that both are estimates and subject to variances once they actually get under the hood, but I’d like to know roughly what I’m in for on this job.
- Repair histories would also be nice as well.
Hey, what they’ve done is a good first step for an industry where I don’t expect this kind of thing to occur. If I have a good experience with the garage, they’ve quite probably won my business.
I wonder how long it’ll take other places to figure out that this is something they should be doing? My local Saturn dealership has a form for online scheduling, but it’s basically just a set of text entry boxes, which then sends them an email so they can call you. Dang it, in that case I can just call in the first place.
Props to NT&B for their vision, even if it still has a few kinks to be worked out.
August 8th, 2006 at 12:53Chris: For all I know, that’s all that this system did. I’m not 100% sure of how NT&B works, as to whether they’re a franchisee system or a hierarchical organization; if the former, giving them my information to have them call to confirm an appointment is the best I could probably hope for.
The other thing to consider is that automobile work is not an easily definable enterprise, from two perspectives: 1) garages that turn away drive-up customers are shunned in the marketplace, and non-dealership garages typically serve drive-ups as a rule rather than an exception and 2) the customer may well under-diagnose what needs to be done. In my case, I know that I need my belts and hoses changed, an oil change, and them to replace my battery. They may find other things.
Now, if a garage organization were serious about going to appointment-driven work, they could make this happen: after all, a couple weeks ago I went to my dentist for a cleaning, and they didn’t fill the cavities they found right away…
August 8th, 2006 at 13:53