Exclusive Auto Caters To Customers: Yucaipa, CA, Shop Awarded Top Honors For Customer Service With 'Perfect' Rating -

Exclusive Auto Caters To Customers: Yucaipa, CA, Shop Awarded Top Honors For Customer Service With ‘Perfect’ Rating

When a customer visits Exclusive Auto, located in Yucaipa, CA, the staff's goal is to greet that person immediately, and then to always exceed their expectations. It's that kind of customer service ethic that has helped make the shop what it is today.

By Debbie Briggs
Contributing Writer

michael proud, ownerWhen a customer visits Exclusive Auto, located in Yucaipa, CA, the staff’s goal is to greet that person immediately, and then to always exceed their expectations. It’s that kind of customer service ethic that has helped make the shop what it is today.

“I told my crew, we’re so well-trained in how good we take care of people, we’re kind of blowing it for all the other businesses around — no matter what kind of business,” says Owner Michael Proud. “It makes it a lot easier when you do what you know you should be doing. Customers appreciate it because they aren’t getting the attention they deserve ­elsewhere these days.”

After earning a degree from Universal Technical Institute in 1985, Proud worked for an ­independent repair facility ­before going to work for ­Mercedes-Benz, where he honed his skills to become a Master Technician. Two decades later, he decided to leave the daily workforce and, thus, Exclusive Auto was born in November of 1994.

Exclusive Auto started off as a small two-bay shop. In 2002, it had expanded by relocating into a new building located on the city’s main boulevard. The larger facility was equipped with six in-ground lifts and two unique, quick drive-on stalls.

The crew ­includes four techs, two service writers, an administrative coordinator, two property managers, a general manager and, lastly, but an extremely crucial ingredient to ensuring customer satisfaction, a quality control ­inspector.

Quality Control
“We quality control every job,” Proud explains. “Even if it’s just a quart of oil on an invoice, Q/C looks for anything that might need to be ­addressed, and then brings it up to the technician or the service writer.
“We also have an administrative ­coordinator, and she assists the service writers so they can really concentrate on managing their techs and, even more importantly, their customers,” he continues. “The administrative coordinator makes sure everything is flowing correctly, and if anything is bottling up anywhere.”

After the initial ­intake, each service writer writes only for their two technicians, who focus solely on certain makes of vehicles. It’s a system that ­allows the service writers to focus their attention and communicate easily with the techs when a question does arise.

“When a vehicle arrives, ­depending on its particular make, this will ­dictate which technician will be working on it,” Proud says. “And then that will, in turn, determine which service writer will end up handling the customer throughout the rest of the process. Our production flow is such that each service writer has certain technicians who they write for and they don’t cross.

Follow-up is a huge key to ensuring customer satisfaction, and it’s not just once two days after the completed service, but there is also a second contact made 30 days later.

Every single invoice that’s generated, no matter how small, will receive the two-day and the 30-day follow-up calls.

Optimal Workflow Processes and Awards Galore
Proud says the shop’s workflow has become so successful, that owners from all over the country — and even Canada — have visited to see the process in action and commented that “they’ve never seen such control and organization on the administrative side.” Fixing cars to high-quality standards has always been a given, he says, so the one thing left to focus on was the ­customer experience.

“Instead of thinking we’re in the auto repair industry and we’re fixing cars, we saw that we were actually taking care of people who have a problem with their vehicle,” he ­explains. “Our technician is going to fix the problem, but what we really need to concentrate more on is, ‘How do we make this person’s life better right now at this time?’ This might involve getting them in a rental car, driving them to where they need to go with our shuttle service, or just really slowing things way down and taking the necessary time talking to them about what’s going on with their car. What do they need to be happy? Once we started looking at it from that standpoint, everything else just sort of fell into place.”

So much so that Exclusive Auto has been recognized with various top business awards recently, ­including being honored as one of the Top Five Businesses in Yucaipa, which is home to 1,300 businesses, as well as receiving the CMUS Talk of the Town Award from Celebration Media U.S. for the second year running. In fact, Exclusive Auto also was awarded the top auto repair shop in the region by CMUS.

“The awards coordinator told me we had won the award with a perfect rating, and that came from criteria such as customer satisfaction reviews along with Better Business Bureau standings, etc.,” Proud explains. “She said she’s been doing this for nine years, and said only 10% of businesses in the U.S. even qualify to get the award, and we won it with a ‘perfect’ rating. She said she had never known an auto repair shop get the award with a perfect rating — ever.”

Catering To Female Customers Is Key
The attention to customers doesn’t stop there; the waiting area features coffee and donuts each morning, as well as a solid glass wall that allows ­customers to see their vehicles being serviced. Every detail of the waiting area has been well thought out, from the magazine assortment to furniture, all selected with the shop’s target ­audience in mind.

“We know that 80% of our clientele are women,” he says. “There are no pictures of cars anywhere in the lobby; we have art, flowers and a decorative water fountain. The other day a customer was reading a Redbook, and I was putting the new issue of Health out. She told me that ours was one of the few businesses that were actually current with its magazines. I have one Sports Illustrated — and it’s the one on the bottom of the entire spread!”

Women’s car care clinics at Exclusive Auto have become so popular, Proud says, that they’ve begun marketing them to everyone, not just female customers. Hosted monthly, the classes last about four hours, include a free lunch, and feature the shop’s master technicians, who help co-instruct.

“We started having a lot of guys, even families, asking if it was just for women,” he says. “We then renamed it to the Vehicle Awareness Clinic. I’ve had people go to one, and even though the clinics are essentially the same each time, they want to come back to another one.”

Proud started with a dream of owning an auto shop that would stand out above all others. He took that dream and, ultimately, paired it with the help of an organization that consults and trains independent repair facility owners across the nation. Proud says that many aspects of the business, such as the internal workflows, marketing and public relations, and the great organization were all taught and honed by Management Success, which is based out of Glendale, CA.

“Most shop owners are all top master technicians who decided to open their own place, but none of us really knew the first thing about the art of management,” he says. “I owe a huge gratitude, which could quite possibly be my life, to my consultant, my ­mentor, and my now friend, Jim Smith (senior consultant for Management Success). He has helped me in many ways make my true dream of Exclusive Auto turn into an actual reality.”

In addition, Proud gives credit to his staff for making Exclusive Auto run smoothly day after day.

“My crew is also the reason why Exclusive Auto is what it is and how well we’ve done,” he concludes. “It’s not just the owner. The owner may have a plan and vision, but it’s a ­really great crew who are properly trained that makes it what it is. This crew really knows how to take care of people.”

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