Auto dealerships provide comfy waiting rooms for their service customers

On a Tuesday morning in late October, several customers sat in the waiting room at Frank Ancona Honda as their cars were being serviced.

One customer worked on his computer in a comfortable chair. Another watched a flat screen television. Other televisions were available if someone wanted to watch something else.

If a customer does not have a laptop, there is an area with four computers. Need coffee? Plenty is available in several flavors.

This waiting area is quite a contrast from what existed over a year ago when the waiting room was separate from the dealership showroom.

“There were 14 chairs in a tight spot with a coffee machine, a couple televisions. We thought it was nice at first,” said Shawn Wakeman, service director at Frank Ancona Honda in Olathe.

In recent years, car dealerships have recognized the importance of a comfortable waiting room that caters to the mom who has her child with her, to the business person who wants to get some work done while waiting for the car to be serviced.

A year ago, Frank Ancona Honda completed a $6 million project that included upgrading the showroom, making the waiting room adjacent to the showroom and adding seven more work bays in the mechanics’ area.

“We took a lot of time and really put our heads together because the business today has grown,” said Wakeman, who is in his 17^th year at Frank Ancona.” A lot of people want to come in and wait on their cars while it is being worked on. The goal was to make it as comfortable and as convenient as possible.

“When we expanded, we tried to tie it all together. So if you have a lot of customers who are in the waiting room, they have an opportunity to look at cars. You see it all the time. They are on the showroom floor looking at the new cars, talking to salespeople, trying to continue that cycle of a lifetime customer.”

The upgrade was necessary because business has grown at Frank Ancona Honda from when it opened at its current location in 1986.

“There would be times we had people standing up,” Wakeman said. “It wasn’t big enough or comfortable enough to take care of all the customers we had who wanted to wait on their vehicles that were actually being serviced.”

Wakeman figures the origin of the change in dealerships improving their waiting rooms probably started around 2007 when the economy hit a major downturn. Fewer people were buying cars. Dealerships needed a revenue stream.

One of the areas was in service. Because people weren’t buying as many cars in 2007 and 2008, they needed to make sure the car they had was running smoothly.

A crowded waiting room made dealers realize that providing a more inviting area for their waiting customers kept them happier.

As Olathe Toyota parts and service director Tom Blackman puts it, nobody wants to wait on their car being serviced.

“They want to be out doing other things,” Blackman said. “So time becomes everything. Customers want to be comfortable.”

Blackman is excited about a $1.5 million upgrade to the service and waiting room area that is about a month away from starting.

“We had about six months of planning,” Blackman said. “We saw numerous drawings and finally came to one that all of us liked. It will allow us the most space for our customers along with our technicians.”

If the construction goes smoothly, it should be completed by April 1. When it is finished, customers at Olathe Toyota can expect several noticeable changes.

“We currently we can seat about 30 people,” Blackman said. “We are shooting for 70 to 80 people comfortably. We will have a larger café, a fireplace, numerous televisions for numerous tastes along with a children’s television and larger restrooms. It will be an overall comfortable environment.”

Olathe Toyota will also expand its express maintenance area.

“We currently use a process called TXM – Toyota Express Maintenance – that allows us to do a multipoint inspection, an oil change, a tire rotation and car wash in just under an hour using a two-man team,” Blackman said.

“This is very important because people are mostly concerned with time and getting out of here and doing whatever is important to them for the rest of the day.”

It was why the service area at Frank Ancona was expanded and improved.

“We focused on express service, trying to get them in and out within 45 minutes,” Wakeman said.

The goal is to keep the customer happy. For any dealership to survive in the competitive Kansas City car market, getting customers to return is essential.

It is why Wakeman is thrilled by what he has seen from repeat customers since the refurbishing at Frank Ancona Honda.

“We have customers who are still in there doing work even after their cars are done,” Wakeman said. “They won’t leave for a while.”

And the longer they are at the dealership, the more likely it is that one day in the future, they will buy their next car there.

This story was originally published November 14, 2014 at 6:00 PM with the headline "Auto dealerships provide comfy waiting rooms for their service customers."