March 2020

BY Andy Savva A hot topic within the industry, and one that I cover in my business courses, is online service providers; third-party booking sites or aggregators – or whatever you happen to call them. Let’s recognise what they are, and examine why these aggregators exist in the first place. Think from a consumer’s perspective. Chances are that when you go on holiday, you reserve a hotel through a third-party booking site, for example, Expedia or Hotels.com. My guess is that this is exactly what you do because in today’s fast-paced, tech-savvy world, third-party booking sites have become the norm. Consumers are driven by price point and ease, both of which are met through a wide variety of online service providers. While this seems like a win-win situation, there is the obvious downside of enabling consumers to be disloyal. In the age of e-shots and social media, deals fall into consumers’ laps, and it’s only natural to take the better deal over brand loyalty. Most garages don’t have the necessary skills to create such platforms, and thus create the resulting footfall. Fortunately for us, these online service providers have identified our repair sector as another service industry that could become part of the digital revolution. Digitally minded The digital world is here to stay and we have to accept that. It’s a good idea to take a step back and examine who our future customers will be in this world. When I look at my children, 18, 21 and 23 years old, I see the next generation of customers, not the 45 to 55-plus who have been visiting our garages over the last couple of decades. My daughters purchase at least 90% of their clothes online, which is astonishing to me. We in the garage sector have to engage with these digitally-minded youngsters. Like all other service businesses, there is the good, the bad and the ugly. I was extremely critical of these aggregators when they first appeared in our sector. To be honest, I still am. I don’t agree with many of the practices currently used by these sites. That being said, there are advantages to partnering up with one. The main one being access to new customers. For a consumer, the first and most obvious advantage is price, and this is where a major problem exists for me. Prices found on third-party sites are often less expensive than the listed prices a garage may advertise. For those who have attended my courses, you would have heard me say on many occasions, these ‘come and get me’ prices do very little to aid our bottom line in an already highly competitive market. However, us garage owners aren’t always squeaky clean when it comes to pricing, are we? Pricing For example, I often see adverts for a ‘Service & MOT - £99.00’ or 18 AFTERMARKET MARCH 2020 BUSINESS www.aftermarketonline.net THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY: THIRD PARTY WORK PROVIDERS Andy asks whether online aggregators are good news for garages, or whether they are storing up trouble