Marking the halfway point of its 2013 Tyre Safety Month campaign, TyreSafe has launched the latest in its series of animated videos. Featuring the crash test dummy family of road safety ambassadors, the McIntyres, the latest episode contrasts the family with their less well-informed neighbours, the Hazards, making their acting debut. The animation, one of the highlights of the campaign, is available to watch below, or at www.tyresafe.org.
Bringing a huge boost for consumer protection, Motor Codes has announced a 45 per cent surge in its independent garage subscriber-base, taking the number of formally-endorsed local businesses to more than 2,000 across the UK.
Apollo Vredestein has been named one of The Netherland’s best employers. The Best Employer (Beste Werkgevers) 2013 awards were presented in Amsterdam on 8 October, and the tyre maker was ranked the third best employer in the 1,000+ employee category, behind airline KLM and non-profit organisation Stichting Buurtzorg.
The annual Labour Rates Survey carried out by Warranty Direct, suggests that garages are charging an average of £8.16 an hour less than last year to carry out service or repair work. The average hourly labour rate in 2013 of both franchised and non-franchised workshops is £74.70, down 9.84 per cent from £82.86 in 2012. Data from more than 12,000 cases were analysed in the study.
Bridgestone has stated its support for TyreSafe’s Tyre Safety Month campaign by urging drivers to use the clocks going back as a prompt to check their tyres. Bridgestone is calling on motorists to spend five minutes checking their tyres to combat the rising threat of accidents and breakdowns as roads become slippier and conditions more inclement.
When it comes to B2B selling online, automotive organisations are struggling to provide the online buying experience that their customers have come to expect. That’s the view published in the 2013 E-commerce Report from Intershop, which also reveals that smartphone usage, social media and the so-called “consumerisation of IT” are driving up B2B customer expectations. The report’s advice? Automotive firms have to adapt to changing customer expectations, driven by trends such as smartphone usage and social media. But how can that be done? In addition to assimilating the research data, Tyres & Accessories asked Chris Barling, chairman on e-commerce system developer SellerDeck for his views.
It gets underway tomorrow, and UK motorists will be put under pressure to ensure their tyres are properly inflated. The Tyre Safety Month campaign, organised by no-profit road safety group TyreSafe and supported by thousands of garages and other organisations across the UK, will be encouraging drivers to make monthly checks on their tyre pressures to ensure they remain safe on the road.
TyreSafe has launched an online dealer locator for motorists to use during October’s Tyre Safety Month to help them find retailers and dealers offering free tyre health checks throughout the month. The brand new resource – which can be found at www.tyresafe.org – is a key part of this year’s campaign. Visitors simply need to enter their postcode to find their nearest tyre retailer offering a free tyre safety check.
Tyre and wheel traders are among the UK's best businesses when it comes to answering customers' telephone calls, according to a survey of 3,630 companies by audio branding specialist PH Media Group. The survey revealed that tyre and wheel suppliers put callers on hold for an average of just 20.05 seconds. Only garden centres (17.44 seconds), demolition firms (17.67) and pharmacies (19.63) performed better. Still, there is room for improvement. Previous research has shown 50 per cent of callers will hang up within 20 seconds if forced to listen to silence while on hold.
According to Continental, the habour tyre range it unveiled at the TOC Container Supply Chain Europe exhibition in Rotterdam in July has struck a chord with port operators. The company claims that more than half the respondents to a recent survey plan to purchase or recommend the newly-released range.
When it comes to B2B selling online, automotive organisations are struggling to provide the online buying experience that their customers have come to expect. That’s the view published in the 2013 E-commerce Report from Intershop, which also reveals that smartphone usage, social media and the so-called “consumerisation of IT” are driving up B2B customer expectations. The reports advice? Automotive firms have to adapt to changing customer expectations, driven by trends such as smartphone usage and social media.
The AA reports that it is the latest motoring organisation to be trialling the use of a 'universal spare wheel'. At the same time the company revealed data relating to spare tyre usage. A survey of 22,827 AA members revealed that close to a fifth (17 per cent) of members do not have a spare wheel in their car. The innovative wheel fits the majority of modern cars with a five-stud wheel. The 17” alloy uses a system of special adaptors of ten different sizes to find the best fit.
In the UK, August is traditionally a slow month for sales of new cars, as people hold on for the change of registration plate which happens in September, with only around three per cent of sales during the month. September, by contrast, typically accounts for over 17 per cent of full year registrations.
The NTDA has announced that after over 25 years as director of the NTDA, Richard Edy is to retire from the post at the end of January.
The Bosch Car Service network is celebrating a decade of existing and scoring 99.5 per cent customer satisfaction for its car servicing and repairs. Originally launched in 2003, the network of independent garages has gone from strength to strength. The latest independent customer satisfaction survey results show that an amazing 99.5 per cent of Bosch Car Service customers would use the network again, based on their overall experience. The scheme was also the first car repair code to achieve key accreditation, helping ensure that customers get a fair deal – first with the Office of Fair Trading and more recently with the Trading Standards Institute.
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