How This Car Care Company Built Deep Customer Relationships and Tripled Its Revenue With Square

When Eco Car Cafe opened in 2012 in the Seattle area, the goal was simple: to provide environmentally friendly auto care and detailing services at a popular mall location.

“We were able to conveniently provide customers with their auto care options when they came to watch a movie, get dinner, and shop in the mall,” said owner Benjamin Reed, who joined the family-run company in 2016 before being appointed to take it over in 2019.

Customers also feel good about the company’s commitment to the environment: because the services relies on steam cleaning, it takes just one gallon of water to wash a car, versus the 50 gallons it could take at an automatic car wash. In addition, the business uses all organic, all-natural products on the vehicle’s interior, and offers owners of electric vehicles a 10% discount as a “thank you” for choosing a more environmentally sustainable car.

Eco Car Cafe’s focus on sustainability has led to significant demand for the business across the Pacific Northwest. To grow and scale the car-care service to its full potential, he knew they needed the right technology solution.

The challenge: Offering a frictionless but personalized experience

The entire premise behind Eco Car Cafe revolves around convenience and hospitality. Initially, that meant performing auto-care services while the customers enjoyed doing other activities at the mall. In time, the business saw the opportunity to double down on customer care by offering mobile detailing and auto-care services at an individual’s home or place of business.

For a frictionless experience, Eco Car Cafe needed to find an easy way for customers to schedule their appointments online and pay for their services with ease, wherever they took place. At the same time, Reed wanted to nurture customer relationships so that they didn’t feel transactional. He wanted a way to track a customer’s history and remind them when services are due, while also making them feel valued.

As the business grew, Reed also found himself challenged by the amount of time it took to oversee the day-to-day business operations. Payroll, in particular, was consuming a lot of hours. For a business set on convenience, Eco Car Cafe was feeling increasingly inconvenient to manage.

The solution: Consolidating systems for better services, better analytics, and better customer relationships

To create more convenience for the brand, Eco Car Cafe decided to grow with Square, branching beyond taking payments.

“We started using Square to transact payments, and then we slowly migrated to using it for payroll, appointments, invoicing, marketing, and messaging,” he says.

Square Appointments, in particular, have been a game changer, says Reed. “Appointments are really what runs our business, because customers will book that appointment and then we’re able to assign our staff to that appointment,” he says. Through Square appointments, Reed can also learn from customer feedback and preferences. For example, when they know a customer had a good experience with a particular employee, they can then match the customer with that employee for future visits.

Appointments also tie into the CRM, so information about the customer’s history is integrated with the appointments app, making it easy to engage customers by sending targeted communications and offers. If a customer hasn’t come in a while, they know, and can easily organize how they reach out to them. That, along with offering personalized perks such as a free birthday carwash, are helping to build deeper relationships that he hopes will last a lifetime.“It changes the way we engage – knowing how customers want to interact with our services and we can provide more convenience and care during the entire process. We stopped becoming transactional,” says Reed. “We started becoming relational.”

The quest for a deeper customer experience ultimately paved the way for a deeper business experience. Adding Square Payroll has given them better insights into labor performance through data analysis and reports which enables the business to make smarter staffing decisions that aligns with the customer experience they’re looking to create. 

“Like every business, at some point, we will run into an issue and need to resolve something with a customer. Just by running our business on Square, it makes that significantly easier, because we’re able to have all the data at our fingertips, in one place.” 

The impact: Triple the revenue

Stronger customer relationships have proved great for business. In the last six years, Eco Car Cafe has tripled its revenue, which in large part is attributed to the business’ ability to connect and reach customers. In addition, more efficiency and stronger business insights have led to 2,000 to 3,000 hours saved a year on administrative tasks, which he equates to approximately $60,000 to $70,000 in annual cost savings.

A booming business with a solid foundation has Reed considering different ways the business can grow and expand. One of the ways he envisions growth is franchising through Square for Franchises, an integrated franchise management solution. His goal is to create a model that empowers him to train his own employees to become business operators and owners. His team would continue providing support as those team members advance to become franchise owners and build their own auto-care businesses across the country, engaging their own customers, and pursuing their own dreams, while operating under a central brand, all using Square. “I think it would be very doable,” he says. “It would disrupt the automotive industry with a new ownership and a new ownership structure for car care companies.”

Anything that enables genuine growth and disruption requires some investment, and Reed knows firsthand how intimidating it can feel to spend money on tools and systems you haven’t used before. Still, he encourages other business owners to take the leap. Because the potential rewards are unlimited.

“My advice would be, don’t be afraid,” he says. “Getting the right tools and support around operating and running a business is crucial to long-term success. It makes scaling and growth a lot easier.”