Spring Cleaning Means Stronger Business

When a customer walks through your door, it’s “just an oil change,” right? Actually, it’s much more—it’s a first impression of everything your business stands for and every service you offer.

Especially in springtime.

Drew Blackburn, service manager and son at family-owned Kennesaw Tire in the northern suburbs of metro Atlanta, knows firsthand about the importance of customers’ immediate impressions when they walk through the door. The tire, quick lube, and quick maintenance shop sees a steady stream of traffic and has ever since it opened in 1977.

A clean space, Blackburn knows, speaks volumes even before he opens his mouth.

Sight and Smell Can Mean Staying or Leaving

To do a superb job at spring cleaning, quick maintenance shop owners and operators must stop and look around their shop’s front end with inquisitive eyes—just as customers do.

As Blackburn says, “First impressions are a big deal. We take pride in the way everything looks, especially when somebody walks through the door, because if you take pride in your waiting room, customers will notice it.”

At Kennesaw Tire, longtime customers and prospects consistently find a clean front counter straight ahead and a spacious, renovated, modern, and immaculate waiting area to their left.

Clean restrooms off the waiting area continue the good vibes.

“It’s so important to have a decent restroom,” Blackburn advises. “I’ve heard horror stories about some of the restrooms in shops.”

Amazingly, the Kennesaw Tire crew does its own in-house cleaning, and not just in springtime. The team keeps on top of the cleaning upkeep daily, according to Blackburn.

After closing time each day, Blackburn gives the shop’s front space a once-over.

“I go around with the sweeper, hit the rug with the vacuum, and wipe down all the seats and surfaces with a Clorox wipe,” he says. “And my dad will come in real early and mop the floors (when they need it).”

When the clean-up is consistent, Blackburn finds that the end-of-day cleaning is pretty straightforward. As he puts it, “When we do the basic maintenance (ongoing), it kind of takes care of itself.”

Renovation Lends a Clean, Uncluttered Feel

It’s easier to keep a shop’s customer-facing areas clean when they’re freshly renovated, and it makes a springtime deep-cleaning go much faster.

At Kennesaw Tire, their current, fully renovated interior came somewhat by accident. When the family and crew decided to take out a wall between the service counter and the waiting room to make it open concept, a floor tile got ripped up in the process.

Blackburn says, “We found out that those tiles were discontinued, and it started a crazy snowball effect where once we finished the floors we couldn’t not repaint, and then we saw that we needed a new counter.”

Fortunately, Blackburn Sr. is an excellent carpenter, and his wife is skilled in interior design.

“So we team-worked it and we bartered with a customer to do the floors,” Blackburn adds.

Spring Cleaning on the Shop Floor

Cleaning the shop is a team effort at the family business, too. Kennesaw Tire tends to do it in April and stay on top of it all year long.

“(This spring) we threw away the old tires and old scrap metal that gets left around and forgotten about occasionally,” Blackburn describes. “We moved things out and cleaned up all the leaves that blow into the corners behind things.”

The routine, daily cleaning of the bays is the technicians’ responsibility at Kennesaw Tire.

“As far as the bays go and keeping the floors clean, it’s mostly individual responsibility for whichever bay you work out of. You clean up after yourself, and pretty much all the guys are good about it,” Blackburn says. “We don’t have to hound anybody.”

The lack of a rigid set of cleaning rules works within the business’s laid-back, non-micromanaging culture, Blackburn finds.

“We don’t have a checklist for before you walk out the door at night,” he affirms. “We leave (our employees) to be free to clean up their own areas, typically. They like a clean work area, so it works out well.”

If somebody on the shop floor is forgetful, they’ll get reminders but not usually ultimatums.

Kennesaw Tire’s employees tend to understand what’s expected of them from day one when it comes to keeping the shop clean.

 “Because we’re a family place, we take a little bit of pride in the way everything looks,” Blackburn closes.