For years I took my vehicles to the same auto repair shop – until Antony, its owner, decided to retire. Last I saw of him, he was prepping a new-to-him motorhome for a year of travel. Good news for Antony; bad news for me!
I don’t recall how long he’d been in business, I just know that when my first car needed work, Antony was there, and that was decades ago. Nor do I recall whether I found Anthony’s shop through social networking – you know, asking an actual friend for a recommendation in person – or whether I found him in the only search engine available in those days, the Yellow Pages.
The waiting area of Antony’s shop was dark, dirty and decidedly grim, smelling of cigarettes, used oil and hard-working men, but there was always a pot of hot coffee and a vintage television tuned to some local station. I recall more than once watching a commercial for one of Antony’s competitors while waiting for my car and thinking there was something not quite right about that.
After Antony’s shop closed, I consulted a phone app that listed my closest options and let it direct me to the one that had the highest user ratings. The new shop was nothing like Antony’s. In contrast to Antony’s small, seedy room, the waiting area was clean, bright and open, with seating arranged in discrete groupings and at least one video monitor in direct view of every customer.
And those monitors weren’t displaying random broadcast programing. Instead, customers were treated to short videos explaining the finer points of the shop’s various services. They were informative and entertaining – enough so that I actually watched them instead of reading email and Facebook posts on my phone.
I watched one that contrasted the traditional tune-ups of yesteryear to the new shop’s multi-step tune-up service, and then I watched another that described the components of modern brake systems and detailed the various steps included in the shop’s standard multi-point brake service. As I watched the brake-service video, I recalled that I’d been noticing a little shimmy when I applied Old Blue’s brakes and realized it had been several years since Antony had worked on them last. So I opted to have the brakes serviced, too, while already there for my oil change.
I didn’t invest much thought in all this until I later read a case study of State Farm’s project to install digital signage in the offices of each of its 17,000 North American agents. Project manager Digital Multimedia Solutions designed turnkey systems for State Farm and selected Advantech’s DSA-3400 digital-signage platform to power the installations. State Farm agents will use these systems to inform customers that it offers, among other products, financial services – even banking – in addition to the consumer and commercial insurance lines that had been its mainstay. Who knew?
State Farm agents are owner-operators of small businesses, few of which have IT experts on staff. Fortunately, Advantech’s DSA3400 Series all-in-one networking-and-control appliances are easy to install and operate – even for the least tech-savvy insurance agents.
My new auto-repair provider entertained and informed me with video content that explained its services while I was already there and could take advantage of those additional services. And I did. Countless State Farm customers will learn about new State Farm products for the first time while at their agents’ offices … where they can take advantage of those services. And they will. What are your customers watching while waiting for you?