Thinking of Flex serve with Limited Space

Need some input from the flex serve operators.
I run a full service car wash. All vehicles are towel dried. The customer stays in the car. We run a single lane (this is all of the room I have) until the vehicle is approx. 60 ft from the tunnel - then it divides into two lanes. How do I separate the cars that get wiped down and the one's that do not? We used to give the vehicles for towel dry a laminated cards that they would give to the attendants - but eventually the cards would disappear since occassionally the attendants would forget to collect them. We thought about having the customer present a register slip. But, I want the attendants to know which customers get towel dried before the car gets there. Taking laminated cards did'nt work and looking at register slips takes too much time.
How have the flex serve guys addressed this ?

Thanks

Use a grease pen and mark the windshield appropriately. You can buy them at your autparts store.

Good luck!

We use a bright orange rubber band around the driver's side mirror. We wanted something that didn't require the customer to do anything. It isn't perfect but it works.

David

Sorry... it's not a "grease pen" it's water soluble. Then one we have is brand called HYPRO it comes in a yellow,black and white package and marks white. It kinda looks like white-out that you would use when correcting a paper but only it comes off in the wash process. It leaves no marks and comes right off. Now if you don't want it to come off in the wash process then mark the inside of the window of your choice and in "aftercare" have them wipe it off where windows are part of the package. I am assuming that all the packages include windows. YOu can also use a grease pen and mark the outside of the windshield as it won't come off during the wash process but will obviously need to be wiped off in the aftercare dept.

Al

I have one customer that is full serve, but this may work or give you an idea. His set up was having a lot of problems with identifying what packages customers should recieve. His solution was to go to a print shop and print his packages/descriptions on different colored pieces of paper then have them trimmed down (I think they were 1x2). The ticket writer would set these on the dash, easily visible, inexpensive, and solved confusion issues.

David,
I like the bright orange rubber bands so far. Where do you purchase these? I'm still open for other suggestions.

Thanks

In considering going from Full serve to flex serve - I have the following areas of concern. 1.) In offering a $5 express wash, how many more customers do I think I can attract? How many of my $8 customers will opt for the $5 express wash ? This would be a loss in revenue. 2.) The attendants would loss tips which in essence will reduce their take home daily wages. If I increase their hourly pay, then this is a counterproductive to increasing revenue. 3.) Customer that pay for express will offer the attendants a few bucks to dry the car off (if no one is supervising them) and the attendants will take it if they are not busy. How is this handled ? 4.) The express cars will not be a "perfect" as they had been. Customers perception of my wash quality will be less, along with the water spotting. 5.) Charging $5 for an express and $9 for a towel dry is a wide spread in price. In today's economy, customers may go more for the $5 wash. I will in essence be appealing to a wider customer base with lesser quality. Is this, what I should utlimately be striving for ? 6.) I have always thought "do not put a new procedure that cannot be controlled". Some ramdom thoughts I had.

Any comments?

Joe