5. What do you see as the advantages and disadvantages of allowing direct customer reservations???? It had been ten years since Dan Audall founded Audall Auto Servicing as an independent vehicle-servicing and repair business. Previously he had been the manager of the servicing department of a ‘premium’ car dealership, the experience of which had convinced him that there was demand in the area for servicing one of the ‘rival’ makes of car. ‘We were continually getting requests from owners to service or repair their vehicles, partly because we had a good reputation, but mainly because there were no local dealerships that could do that kind of work. Owners had to use small independents or travel a long distance to get to the nearest dealership. I persuaded the auto company that I could provide appropriate service for their vehicles without taking significant business away from their other franchised service centres. It was a gamble, but they backed me.’

That was ten years ago, and Dan’s gamble had paid off.

Audall Auto Servicing had grown to the point where he had invested in a modern service centre close to his first location. The outline plans for the new centre are shown in Figure 10.13. It had five servicing bays, a parts store, a car wash and a customer waiting area. ‘Although the new building is the same nominal capacity as the old one, it gives us more room for the technicians to move about, and the customer waiting area is a distinct improvement in the service that we can offer customers. There is also room next to this building that we could use for expansion, although I would prefer to wait a couple of years before committing to this investment. Before then, I think that we could do more business with our existing capacity.’

(Dan Audall)