Did you know that 80% of human communication is nonverbal?

What that means is that even if you were to keep your mouth absolutely shut, people would still be able to figure out a lot about you just with their eyes.

This happens thanks to your personal grooming. By definition, the term ‘personal grooming’ refers to how you make yourself presentable and neat. This covers everything from your clothes, to your hair, and to the rest of your body that’s people can see or even smell (like your breath and body odour!).

In most jobs, the significance of personal grooming is already well-understood.

But if you’re working in automotive customer service, is your personal grooming as important?

After all, the automotive industry is one that involves a lot of hard work with heavy equipment, surrounded with all sorts of oils, grease, and other substances. After a long, hard day of work, it’s understandable that you’ll look just a little untidy, the same way a chef’s uniform gets dirty after finishing a shift in the kitchen.

But if you’re dealing with customer service, interacting with car owners and attending to their needs and questions, is personal grooming still important?

Yes! It very much is important.

So what does it say about you if your grooming is at its best? If your shirt is pressed, and your hair is clean, and nails are cut short, what nonverbal messages are you communicating to your customers?

Trustworthiness and Reliability

Put yourself in the shoes of a customer who walks into your office. This is a person who has a problem with their prized possession: their car / motorcycle / truck, for instance. They know that there’s a chance that a workshop might take advantage of their need for repairs, so they’ll need to assess whether or not you and your business can be trusted to take care of their needs.

In customer service, are the first and probably main contact point for them. Whether you like it or not, you are a representative of your company and everything that it stands for.

When automotive customer care employees are well-groomed, it indicates to the customer that this place is one that practices a certain degree of professionalism. It tells the customer that their vehicle will be in good hands, and the chances are much lower that they’ll be taken advantage of.

That kind of peace of mind is hard to quantify and is very hard to put a price on. Many times when it comes to businesses of any kind, be it a garage or a restaurant, one main reason that customers keep coming back to the same place is because they trust the staff and know that they can be relied upon.

Ultimately, that’s what everybody wants: you want your customers to keep coming back while recommending your company to their friends, and customers want a place that they can go to that’s trustworthy and reliable.

Knowledge and Authority

As an extension of your trustworthiness and reliability, being well groomed and carrying yourself professionally also helps make you more persuasive. This is because looking neat and respectable plays a very big role for when you’re helping customers with their needs and concerns.

Being persuasive is a good thing, because in automotive customer service chances are one of your responsibilities will be to upsell to your customers. This includes making recommendations to your customers to invest in upgrades, repairs, or products and services that your company offers in exchange for their hard-earned money.

The ability to persuade, of course, is also dependent upon your product knowledge and communication skills, but your personal grooming serves as a foundation to all of that.

Think about it, would you accept advice from or give your money to someone who is messy and unkempt, or someone who looks clean, well organized, and professional?

At The End of The Day,

Being successful in the area of Customer Service depends on a combination of skills and knowledge, but your personal grooming and how you carry yourself as a professional is an important piece to that puzzle. Your personal grooming should act as a foundation, and with a solid foundation there is nothing stopping you from being your best at automotive customer service.