By John Volz, owner
Volz Bros. Auto Service

As I look back over my 30-plus years in business, and reflect upon the things our company has done to grow and improve our business, a lot has changed as it relates to the movement (and obtainment) of information.

Thirty years ago, there was no Internet and our only source of automotive industry information came from the monthly trade magazines. When I had an idea related to our business, I had to either call information to locate a phone number, or send a letter requesting information from a source. Sometimes by the time someone got back to me, the thoughts or ideas I had didn’t seem so important or cutting edge any more.

I remember reading an article about how the industry was going to start recycling antifreeze. I contacted the company in the Los Angeles area and told them of my interest. Although they had begun the program in southern California, there had been no interest in the northern part of the state for the program.

I spent the next six months working with the company and sharing the importance of recycling used antifreeze with shop owners in the somewhat remote part of the state, and finally helped develop a voluntary used antifreeze program. Within a few years, this practice became commonplace as well as law.
My point being, something I read about in a trade magazine that I wanted to implement to better my business took months to put into place because of the slow flow of information.

Business Model Improvement
In today’s business world, we use the Internet for many areas of our business, including ordering parts and helping diagnose today’s complex vehicles. The opportunities abound for using it for business development, as well.

I’ve always considered myself a ­forward thinker when it came to business development, but now that my son is involved in our business, I can see that my skill set has only scratched the surface. With a two-year degree in computer science and a bachelor’s degree in business and marketing, my son, John Jr., has helped take our company to the next level. John Jr. is constantly researching ways to improve customer service, as well as our company’s bottom line. Always providing fresh ideas at our weekly meetings, he looks at all business sectors, not just auto repair.

He creates news feeds of areas of interest and reviews topics of interest that might improve our model. He also tracks social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter to see what ­interaction businesses are having with their followers. For example, one of the companies he tracks was giving away ChapStick as a promotional item. We’ve always given away pens, key chains, candy etc., but we had ChapSticks designed with our company logo and our customers have really enjoyed the give-away.

Team Building
Most of our customers comment about how clean and organized our shop is, and compared to our industry in general, we excel in these areas. It would be easy to just say our shop is cleaner than our competition and let it go at that, but at our weekly meetings we discuss other ways to stand out and innovate as it relates to capital improvements and improving deferred maintenance intervals.

We also discuss with employees ways to reduce clutter, and our staff has come up with some great ideas, ­albeit some very simple things, to help with this initiative. Having your whole team on board really helps. My instructions to them are, “Look at the shop through our ‘customer’s eyes’ to help us find ways to improve the ­appearance of our business.” I generally will buy my team lunch after a good idea is implemented and ­announce that we are having a shop lunch for the great ideas suggested by an employee. A nice lunch and a little recognition go a long way as it relates to team building.

Being creative in the world we live in today is much easier than the world in which I grew up. There is so much information out there that it can become overwhelming, but take the time to ­research and use the benefits of technology to enhance your business. We have our cell phones linked to our company e-mail, so if we receive an inquiry on our website or a question from our company Facebook page, we can respond promptly, generally within the hour, even after hours.

We encourage our team to think like an owner to help make our customers’ experience with our company the best that it can be. We then initiate the necessary changes to make the next experience even better. After all, continuous improvement and innovation can pay dividends in more ways than one.

John Volz is owner of Volz Bros. Automotive Repair in Grass Valley, CA. The 38-year industry veteran goes to great lengths to put customers first and takes pride in offering environmentally conscious auto service, which he’s done since the day he opened the shop in 1982. Volz Bros. ­specializes in Subaru (the shop’s primary specialty), Toyota, Honda, Lexus and Acura.