Memberships, charge accounts, and corporate clients are an incredibly important addition to any service-based business. Whether that is a gas station, a retail shop, or a car wash, you need them. The importance of repeat business cannot be overemphasized, especially when regular consumers have a wide variety of options available. These revenue streams are a great way to guarantee that your business gets sales every month and are an important way of ensuring profitability during lull periods. One of the hardest aspects of running a car wash is getting new customers in the door. That’s why making sure your operation can run without these clients is necessary. The revenue from recurring clients will allow you to make upgrades, market more effectively, and maintain a good image in the community as a successful and diversified operation.
Charge and Corporate Accounts
Corporate clients typically use services during business hours so they contribute to your profits during lull periods. Since car washes, much like gas stations, are very time-dependent businesses, it is important to have a means to reconcile the lessened traffic with clients that are guaranteed to use services during these periods. Casual and common consumers are usually at work between 8am and 5pm. Corporate clients wash their vehicles at these times. Providing an easy to use, convenient, and quality corporate program allows you to take advantage of these preferences. It will also help you maintain a steady income during slow periods.
Starting a corporate program is not very difficult. However, it depends on how easily you can reach and convince clients of your services’ merits. To make the process as easy and streamlined as possible, you should set up a reliable way to keep track of these accounts and produce invoices or have a billing system set up for them. Having the most convenient service for your clients is the difference between them choosing your operation over another as their provider. A well structured business account service is critical in the success of your charge accounts so having a point of sale capable of handling these types of transactions is a huge advantage. Though you can keep a record of all the accounts in charge books or simply give out gift cards with set amounts, this will become difficult once you gain more than a few clients.
How do I get them to use my site?
Corporate customers require very different marketing techniques when compared to regular consumers. You have to actively look for contracts and make proposals to businesses to land a charge account or corporate client. Some of the most common deals are for car dealerships, emergency vehicle fleets, rental cars, and trucking businesses. These types of customers typically set an allotted amount of money for their employees to use. You are giving them an account number, and letting them use the services at their discretion within that limit. This, again, is where a good payment system comes in handy.
By making usage tracking as simple as possible, you’ll be saving yourself the time needed to verify accounts. You’ll also save the corporate customers’ time by expediting the process. Win-win!