Find out how our first full month in the new premises went and did we make the right decision with the big move?
So after our big move to the new premises we were full of excitement and also fear if it was the right move for our business, so come the 1st of February the garage was as ready as it could be for hopefully a lot of customers to pile in the door. (fingers crossed)
As the month started off it felt very slow compared to what we had imagined was going to happen, our business customers were very quiet and our retail customers were also scarce, this obviously wasn't the fantastic start we had hoped for and our fear grew a little. Although we knew in our hearts we had done the right thing to take the risk and try to expand the garage and grow even bigger.
So come the 2nd week in February the doors got kicked in, the garage was as busy as it could have been (huge relief) we were coming down with work and it was absolutely fantastic, for the first time since starting the move and actually getting everything ready we felt at ease slightly that it was the correct move for the business. This trend thankfully continued the whole way through the rest of the month and February turned out to be the best month the business had ever had.
Now this was amazing for everyone involved, although with the extra workload and more cars and vans than we had ever seen coming to the garage for repair we had to adapt very quickly to a different approach to fixing the vehicles. Before in the smaller garage we only had a certain amount of jobs booked a day and we had to stick by it as our space restrictions there meant we couldnt hold vehicles for long, but here we had more than enough space and we were taking on all the jobs that came to us. This sounds fantastic but we soon found ourselves completely snowed under, so after late nights and weekends we cleared up the diary and the work and had to make a plan on the amount of work that can be done each day so that our customers are happy and also just an importantly our staff were happy!
So after putting in place a better booking in process and communication process with our customers things smoothed out the way the should be, so that was the first full month it had its ups and downs but all in all it was absolutely fantastic for the garage. Onto the next one and we hope is just as good....
