Your customers can find answers to just about any vehicle maintenance question with an online search. But that doesn’t necessarily mean the answers are correct.  

That’s where shop operators and employees come into play, so it’s important to have the most current answers to help keep customers’ cars running right.  

One store manager in Coralville, Iowa, John McDonald with Iowa Quick Lube, dba Jiffy Lube, shared the top two questions he hears, and how he formulates the most accurate responses.  

No. 1: How often should I get my oil changed? 

For McDonald, whose high-volume quick lube sees 55-70 internal combustion engine cars each day, this is the question he gets the most. And the answer today is not straightforward, he says. 

As McDonald puts it, “The answer to this question has evolved a bit in the last few years, depending on what they drive.” 

According to McDonald, vehicle manufacturers have shifted to direct injection designs that theoretically would benefit from more frequent oil changes, which is at odds with current recommendations from vehicle and oil manufacturers, as well as the EPA. In addition, oil manufacturers have created fully synthetic formulas marketed as capable of going a greater distance, which can make recommendations and guidelines even more unclear. 

“Classically, we had the view that older cars require more maintenance,” McDonald says. “More maintenance, more fluids, more frequent top offs.”  

But today, the messaging from vehicle and oil manufacturers has moved the standard “3,000 miles” recommendation to 5,000 and even 10,000 miles. 

In McDonald’s view, these extended service recommendations can actually be unrealistic, even for newer cars. 

“Newer vehicles consume oil by design, and customers get blindsided by vehicle troubles even when they’ve followed all the manufacturers’ recommended guidelines,” he says. 

In addition, he says, oil manufacturers do the testing and rating of their products in the lab, and people don’t drive in a lab. 

“If a customer has a newer vehicle that’s an oil consumer, they’re thinking their car can go 10,000 miles, when in reality it burns a quart of oil per thousand miles and you could run out of oil halfway there,” McDonald says. 

Given these variables, what response does McDonald give his customers when they ask how often to make a pit stop at his quick lube? 

“It can never be a one-size-fits all answer,” he says. “It depends on their individual vehicle and the customer’s driving style.”  

So, the best way to steer a customer in the right direction is by assessing their vehicle and habits behind the wheel, and then going from there. 

No. 2: How do I use this new technology?  

A high percentage of the questions McDonald and his team get are simple ones about all the new tech in vehicles today. 

“New vehicle owners have a difficult time navigating all the touchscreens and other electronics,” he says, as an example. 

After customers get an oil change, each week he’ll see two or three pull back in because they’re not sure how to put their digital gauge cluster back to the screen they’re used to seeing. 

To answer straightforward questions like question No. 2—and more nuanced ones like question No. 1—McDonald says his shop’s affiliation with Jiffy Lube helps keep his team up to speed. 

“For years, Jiffy Lube has had guidelines with vehicle manufacturers’ recommendations,” he notes, which are a big head start for answering all the things a customer might ask.  

Still, McDonald contends, a lot of things about new vehicles aren’t fully encountered or uniformly addressed for a few years after a new line of cars comes out. So, even the best guidelines are only helpful to a point. 

“Until the issues keep cropping up and we learn what they are, sometimes the best we can say about new vehicles is that we’re not entirely sure,” he notes.  

The process of learning the technical and electronic issues—and their answers—must often unfold naturally and painstakingly over time. As McDonald puts it, “You don’t have all of your customers coming to the desk at once (with their universal questions). You have them coming up one at a time.”

Steering Customers in the Right Direction, No Matter the Question 

Circling back to customers’ trickiest question about how often to change their vehicles’ oil, McDonald says, “It takes vigilance and (potentially) changing the oil more frequently—and maybe not spending all the money in the world for(oil) you think will last longer.” 

He continues, “This tactic might save customers money in the long run, because it will force them to be more vigilant. Because newer vehicles consume oil by design, which is a reversal from the previous 20 years of automotive technology.” 

It sounds as if the road ahead is likely to be paved with even more questions, frequently asked.