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Tysons Auto Specialties is a full-service maintenance and repair automotive shop located in the busy Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C. They pride themselves on personal service and strive to build long-lasting relationships and satisfied customers. Tysons Auto stands out from other mechanic shops by assisting their clients in making well-informed decisions based on the car owner’s needs and goals.

Customer Spotlight: July 2007
By Traci Riley

Tysons Auto Specialties is a full-service maintenance and repair automotive shop located in the busy Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C. They pride themselves on personal service and strive to build long-lasting relationships and satisfied customers. Tysons Auto stands out from other mechanic shops by assisting their clients in making well-informed decisions based on the car owner’s needs and goals.

At the creation of their new website, Tysons Auto Specialties determined they wanted to provide an improved communication medium for their clients. They also planned to include general information on what services they provide. Functionality and ease-of-use were keys in this process for them.

Improve customer communication through on-line newsletter

One thing Katalyst Solutions did to assist in meeting these goals was to implement an on-line newsletter subscription system. Today the staff simply uploads new newsletter content each month and sends out the newsletter via email with automated links back to their website. The newsletter system allows Tysons Auto Specialties customers to subscribe as well as unsubscribe, all without Tysons Auto Specialties staff having to intervene. This is something the customers are finding valuable, and the staff has the benefit of a reduced work load in this previously tedious, though important, area.

They are now finding that more and more people are approaching them because they found them on the internet. Tom Ivey, Owner/Operator of Tysons Auto Specialties, says that this is due to the increase in search engine hits.

Gauge customer satisfaction through on-line customer satisfaction survey

Another key implementation was an on-line customer satisfaction survey. Since they are focused on keeping customers satisfied and building long-lasting relationships, the survey was a must-have. The current survey allows Tysons Auto Specialties to gather feedback on their customers’ experience. They in turn use this information to improve their service. In fact, Tysons Auto Specialties has found that they have more customer testimonials now. They’ve been able to expand the customer testimonial portion of their website even more with the additional testimonials they’ve received through this survey. With a business that thrives on strong customer relationships, the benefits of this enhancement never cease to end.

But Tysons Auto Specialties has also had some rewards with the new web presence that have surprised them more than others. Of course, the content management in general is more flexible. They are not only able to update small changes as they need, but they are able to put up new coupons or remove old ones whenever they want. The updated web presence is still quite new and yet they are already seeing customers walk in with coupons printed off the website. This tells them that their web presence is already making its way into more homes in northern Virginia.

New customers through better search engine results

Every contact or customer that walks through the doors of Tysons Auto Specialties is also tracked. They are paying attention to marketing efforts and determining what ways their customers most frequently discover them. They are now finding that more and more people are approaching them because they found them on the internet. Tom Ivey, Owner/Operator of Tysons Auto Specialties, says that this is due to the increase in search engine hits. They modified headers and page titles and other content. Now when people type in “auto mechanic, Vienna Virginia” Tysons Auto Specialties will appear. In the past it had not. This can be attributed to the way that Katalyst Solutions encourages customers to think about what they most want to include in those headers, which is what many search engines use to locate responses.

Provide directions to customers

Yet another seemingly simple problem was solved by putting clear and simple directions on the website. Tysons Auto Specialties has a hard-to-find location when verbal directions are given. The staff took a long time determining what the best way would be to write out the directions. Something as simple as directions would not seem huge to many organizations. But for Tysons Auto Specialties, this was a key area of focus. Now with printable directions on their website customers are able to find them with no problem!

Tysons Auto Specialties has also found it extremely valuable to use a number of links to auto websites. This wasn’t an area they initially were thinking about enhancing, at least not right up front. Instead, they have been fascinated by the results they are already seeing just from links to certain suppliers. For example, they generally don’t compete in the tire market. But now that they have a link to a supplier of tires, Tysons Auto Specialties reaps the direct referral benefits.

Tysons Auto Specialties continues to grow and flourish and they can now attribute a decent portion of that strength to their web presence. Their pride in customer satisfaction is what drove them to enhance their web presence and it’s what continues to drive them to on-going changes. They continue to look at ways to update their information and find ways to put their name in front of new customers as well as those long-time patrons.

For more information on what Tysons Auto Specialties has done through Katalyst Solutions, please go to Project Details.

If we can help you implement or upgrade your own web presence challenges, please contact {contactlink 1}.

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“Don Cranford and Katalyst Solutions are excellent collaborators. They bring a wealth of knowledge and are a pleasure to work with. Katalyst Solutions are truly experts.”
– Dorothy Banzon
Owner/Designer
D Banzon Design

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