Talking Tech: Data, Marketing, & Memberships with AMP

Have you considered how a customer experience platform could strengthen your car wash business? Guests Dennis Dreeszen and Adam Trien talk with your host Lanese Barnett about AMP Memberships, a powerful platform specifically designed to support car wash business owners and their customers.

In the episode, Dennis and Adam share how AMP works and how it can benefit car wash owners. AMP offers a highly customizable white label mobile solution that interacts with customers and members on and off site. AMP helps car wash owners know more about your customers, use what you know to have targeted interactions, and run creative, trackable promotions. Listen in to hear how programs like AMP can strengthen car wash operations and build greater brand loyalty with customers and members. 

For a full transcript of the episode and more, check out the post.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:07

Welcome to CarWatch M ⁇ A, the podcast, brought to you by Amplify CarWatch Advisors, the number one advisors of CarWatch chains nationwide on mergers and acquisitions in capital advisory services.

SPEAKER_00 0:25

Hi, I'm Lenise Barnett, Vice President of Business Development at Amplify Car Wash Advisors, and your host of CarWatch MA, the podcast. Here we'll take a deep dive into the current mergers and acquisitions activity of the car wash industry with the goal of keeping car wash owners informed on where the market is today and where it's going tomorrow so that you can make informed decisions about your business. We'll help you answer the question should I sell my car wash now or should I enter growth mode and really scale my operation? Each month, I'll speak with industry experts who will share practical advice on how to sell or scale your car wash. While the industry is undoubtedly changing, what remains constant is the need for solid information so you can evaluate where you are and chart the course for the future of your business. Welcome to episode 13 of CarWatch MA, the podcast. Today I have my guests, Adam Trion and Dennis Driesen from AMP. It is a customer experience platform that we can't wait to talk more about and hear everything that it can do to help car wash owners run their operations even better. So thank you both for being here with me today. And I will let Dennis you kick it off with just giving just a quick background on you. And then Adam, I'll go over to you for a quick background and then we'll talk about what AMP is.

SPEAKER_02 1:53

Yeah, I got into the car wash business about a decade ago. And before that, was doing uh, I guess, kind of financial planning, running 401ks and doing a bunch of taxes. Wanted to do something a little bit different. So got into the car wash business about 10 years ago with my wife, and we built up the AutoWatch brand. Uh we're now at 24 locations. But a few years ago we got kind of frustrated and so we started uh looking at building an alternative way to run memberships.

SPEAKER_00 2:16

That's the best way for coming up with innovative solutions is because you actually know what the real problem is. So this isn't hypothetical. You're you're the user.

SPEAKER_02 2:25

Yeah, a lot, a lot of a lot of what we're gonna talk about today is probably like born out of our frustrations as an operator.

SPEAKER_00 2:31

Great. Uh I can't wait to dive in. And Adam, um, just give a little bit of your background pre-CarWASH and then what you do now.

SPEAKER_04 2:38

Yeah, sure. So I've been uh in the software development space for over 20 years. Um, several of those years were with Ernst and Young, um uh leading up a development, uh building platforms for them to run big merger and acquisition deals and things like that. About six years ago, I split off from Ernst Young and started a company called Incited, which is a boutique development firm in Atlanta, Georgia. You know, uh really, really uh pride ourselves on having you know really kind of Silicon Valley level um talent and um building really slick applications, uh rapid development cycles, uh, you know, really big focus on data and analytics and marketing and really cool things. And about two years ago, I met Dennis who was looking to build a car wash app. So uh we hadn't I'd never done anything in the car wash space before. I actually knew nothing about the car wash space. Uh but yeah, really uh loved working with Dennis, building at first it was an application for for Autowash to manage their memberships with a mobile app. Um, but it it's evolved quickly. And uh we yeah, we decided a couple months into the project, it was so powerful what we were building. We decided to make a whole company around it. So that's how AMP was was born and been really, really exciting taking kind of really advanced uh development techniques and technology capabilities and bringing that to the car wash space.

SPEAKER_00 4:05

Yeah, and it's the car wash industry is so ripe for this type of technology because I know that you guys were at the Southwest Car Wash Show two years ago, which is when I met you, and it was probably pretty early in your journey of launching AMP. Was it already off the ground then or had it launched? So two years ago at that car wash show.

SPEAKER_02 4:25

Our first exposure kind of testing to see if AMP was a viable product was at the SCWA a couple years ago. And so we had this like makeshift booth. We printed off a couple of boards, pinned them to the wall, and hopeful that we just kind of really trying to see uh what the response might be for it. So that was uh that was our our uh our launch, soft launch, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 4:47

Yeah, and I definitely remember meeting you guys there and thinking, wow, this is really cool. And that show was coming out of you know a lot of dormancy from no shows for years with COVID. And then it just seemed so cool that there were so many new technologies and new opportunities and new solutions for car wash owners. But um, before we go too far down that path, so um, Dennis, you had this car wash brand that you and your wife had started, AutoWash. You wanted to build a mobile app for it to handle your memberships and do some of your marketing capabilities and everything. So let's talk about what you built for AutoWash and then where it's grown to today.

SPEAKER_02 5:25

Yeah. So when we first got started, we we were trying to figure out a solution because we run all uh primarily eBay automatics and self-serves. And we were trying to figure out a way to run our memberships without anybody on sites. We're uh kind of a headless system where we don't have anybody on that can put a sticker on a car, or you know, we didn't want to put a bunch of different LPRs for six different lanes, uh, would have been like cost prohibitive. So we wanted to find something else that made more sense. And so that's where we kind of designed uh our first generation of the app. And uh, you know, it was functional in the very beginning, and then uh we kind of hit some some dead ends necessarily on where we wanted that first version to go as far as marketing, connecting with customers, uh fraud prevention and things like that. And so that's when we reached out to uh to Adam to build generation two of our car wash app for the membership. Where it's at now is I mean, we've kind of grown, it really changed our business model for sure. I mean, I think most people who get into the membership model of car washing, it changes the revenue line, makes things a little bit more predictable and a little bit easier to operate and it lets you grow and scale. And that's uh that's what the app kind of did for us. But the uh what we've been able to do now since we've changed over and built AMP is uh really explode our growth. Now we you know just have so much more capabilities to grab people. I think we were sitting at maybe um, I want to say four or five thousand members when we switched over and to the AMP platform, and now we're at 16,000 and growing. It's been pretty incredible.

SPEAKER_00 6:50

So, Adam, when when Dennis first approached you about this, uh and you were talking about coming from this more corporate background where you're working with these, you know, Fortune 100 or Fortune 500 companies and building mobile platforms for them and things like that. What was your first reaction when you were starting to dive into the car wash side of it? What did that feel like?

SPEAKER_04 7:12

Yeah, it was uh, you know, Dennis uh has been such a great partner from the beginning. He had all these uh amazing ideas of what an app could do and how he could interact with his customers. So, really from the very first meeting, it was like, yeah, this this would be really, really cool. You know, you see mobile apps all over the place at you know, kind of retail shops, like you know, you look at Dunkin' Donuts and Starbucks and Chick-fil-A. It's hard to find an industry that that doesn't have mobile apps to help grow loyalty and grow membership programs and things like that. So it it seemed immediately I could see there was this big gap in capability in the car wash space. Um, Dennis, I think yeah, he he kind of mentioned he was on an app even before we met. I think he was one of the first car wash apps ever in in existence. So he's been doing this from the beginning. Yeah, it would seem like just a tremendous opportunity to take you know a lot of what where we've been successful in other industries, take some of those techniques around marketing and and data capture and bring that that to the car wash space. Yeah, we we kind of always had like throughout the years, you know, if we created some really cool tech or something like that, we always had that mindset, reproductize this. Is there a way to wrap this up and create a SaaS platform or a product? Um, so I always had my radar up for that kind of thing. And this this was a no-brainer. Once, once I saw, you know, we turned it on with within a couple of weeks, we were seeing traction at Dennis's car washes that he hadn't experienced before. And um, when you when you have a tool and technology that is is not just convenient and nice and people like it, but it actually drives revenue. That's an equation that that always wins. It was really exciting to get get going with AMP.

SPEAKER_00 8:49

For sure. And and so while there's other providers out there for to build apps or you can hire a developer to do this, what seems really cool about what you guys are doing is making this available to car wash chains that are looking to incorporate some other platform to manage their memberships. That correct me if I'm wrong, it's not tied to a POS. You're it's configurable, it's customizable, and you don't have to have a developer on your staff to be able to figure out how to use this. It's like an iPhone. Like you can you can turn it on and you can start start messing with it and figure it out because it is tailored for um ease of use. So talk to me about what it looks like for a car wash customer of amps. Like, what can this do for them and what power is behind the ease of use, the customization that it has? What does this look like for them and what can it do for them?

SPEAKER_04 9:39

That was so important for us. You know, every car wash runs differently. They're their brand is different, they look, look, and feel their messaging is different, their pricing, their products, what they offer when you get on site. So that you know, really important for us to build a product that was completely white labeled that felt, you know, it's it is the car washes app, you know, that you go to the app store, it doesn't say amp, and you know, we're on some platform, you know, managing multiple car washes. So when you advertise on our app, your only you know, the only advertisements your customers will see are are for that car wash. So we yeah, we take this very, very seriously. Every single picture, line of text, pop-up, deal, everything in our app is configurable by our self-service portal because we've made it so easy to configure and so flexible. We could have a new app up and running in a couple of days where it's launched, it's on the app store. What does take some time is you start working with the marketing team and getting all the collateral and the images and um figuring out the messaging and then figuring out on the marketing side what deals we want to show and promotions and what the customer notifications are gonna be. You know, it's it's a really super powerful platform. So there's a lot of uh ongoing work to continue to refine your brand, refine your messaging, test new things, make changes and things like that. And we, you know, we really help along that entire journey.

SPEAKER_00 11:01

Yeah, and it sounds like it sounds like what a great partnership for car wash owners that one, it's giving a push to get that content solidified and get that messaging and that goal solidified. Cause I know speaking from my own experience, you know, sometimes until something is right in front of you that you need to do, it's kind of pushed off. But messaging and marketing is so important. And so this gives that prompt to, okay, let's let's let's get that together if they don't already have it already. But then knowing that that there's the support to launch that without having to refigure out some whole thing that it's customizable and it's easy to do, uh, I bet that's a real game changer for car wash owners. What are some of the results that you've seen with your clients as far as they've not only adopted the app and started using it or they're the the experience platform because it's more than just an app, what's some of the results that they've seen and some of the benefit that they've experienced from that?

SPEAKER_02 11:54

First, I think one of the biggest things that we've seen, there's there's a couple of huge statistics out there that we've we've been able to like expose. One is uh a 93% capture of accidental or involuntary churn.

SPEAKER_00 12:06

Yikes!

SPEAKER_02 12:07

It's which is really awesome. I'm my wife was asking me uh earlier this morning. She goes, What about the other seven? Like, what are we gonna do with those? Why aren't we capturing that? And that's like prepaid debit cards, things like that. But uh so capturing 93%, I think uh some of the competit competitors grab about 60, 65%. So that's uh almost a you know 50% better capture, which is like those real dollars for an operator. Like that's huge. And so that's that's money to the bottom line right away. Uh so we've seen that. Also seen really, really tremendous growth of MRR using some of our tools, like our attendant mode uh tablet tool, as much as like 50% increase of MRR, which is monthly recurring revenue uh for the month for the memberships, 50% growth in about a six-week period of time.

SPEAKER_03 12:52

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 12:53

It's uh like mind-boggling how how fast you can move the needle by actually using the tools and using them properly in the app.

SPEAKER_00 13:00

And so let's look a little bit holistically at how this is a customer experience platform beyond just the app. I also want to talk about your tie-in and partnership with retention express because we're talking about capturing customer churn. And I know that you guys have a partnership with them and actually part of Amplify Ventures, we're all moving this ship forward in promoting and advocating for more solutions available for car wash owners. But how does that work with what they do?

SPEAKER_04 13:28

Yeah, I think when you look at churn, there's kind of you know, there's being proactive and then being reactive. What's exciting is we handle both really, really well. So with Retention Express, actually, one interesting side story that they launched also at that same conference, and they were two booths over. So we've been partners with them really since the beginning, and they've they've been a big part of our ongoing success. So basically, in our app, if somebody has any issues or problems at the car wash or questions about their membership, you're able to either send them through the phone or text message to get on with someone at Retention Express to start addressing their problems. So if they're an existing customer, we've given tools to Retention Express in our portal to solve the issue, to offer credits, give coupons, and really quickly see all the information about that customer, you know, how many times they've they've been to a car wash, what their lifetime value is, you know, really try to keep that customer, keep them happy. If they are calling to cancel, we're then able to look at, you know, what's their payment history? Have they been a good customer? How many times do they wash a month and feed them promotions specific? We also collect the reasons why people are canceling. So give promotions that way. And then once they've left, um, we still have all have have their information. We could still contact them. So, you know, while they're in the cancellation period, we could hit them up a week or a day before their cancellation date, make sure that they don't want to extend or we can't get them with a promotion. And then even when they're gone, we could, you know, send out emails. We want you, you know, we miss you, you know, that that kind of thing. So it's like uh yeah, like this this huge campaign. Um, we help these car washes set up. Um and retention express, they're awesome. You know, when they get customers on the phone, that they keep satisfaction way, way up. They do a great job of getting people to to continue on the on the journey of a membership.

SPEAKER_00 15:17

What's so cool about both of those services is it's advocating on behalf of the customer. So giving them a positive experience, giving them ease of use for your for your car wash end user, but also for your clients as the car wash owner. So this is such a win-win for both sides of that. And that's what I really love about how the car wash industry is evolving because this is, you know, it's beneficial across the board for everyone. And it's raising the bar for what the standards of car washing in general are from a wider consumer expectation that now they expect more from us as an industry. And I think that that's helpful for that rising tide to lift all boats that we can provide a better product, keep people happier, have that loyalty. When we talk about car washing and who the customer is, you know, a lot of it's based on convenience. One of the things that I've heard you guys say that I think is really cool is changing that convenience loyalty to a brand loyalty. So I want to dive in a little bit about that. And Dennis, I think you guys do some really cool stuff with Auto Wash and then also with your Aunt Pat on how to change that convenience loyalty to your brand loyalty.

SPEAKER_02 16:26

Yeah, I think the uh, because obviously the convenience loyalty means it was just on the way. And if you move, you're gonna lose that customer where brand loyalty is they're they're aligned with your brand emotionally and logically. Being able to convey the unique points of difference or your USP through the app and being able to like, you know, educate your customers through multi-page educational pop-ups inside the app or deals and other things. There's just so many ways. I think building that brand loyalty, I think it really comes from the connection with the customer, where without the app, you really don't have that tight conversation that you can have with the customers. And that's where the platform comes in, is it allows you to control that conversation and be able to have that with them, not just when they're on site, but when they go home and they're watching the Super Bowl or something like that? They can, you know, if they can get a pop-up or a special deal or a special offer or a uh a hey, did you know Mad Chlories of his you know damaging when it's snowing outside and they're not at the wash?

SPEAKER_00 17:22

So, what does this look like for your user engagement outside of the car wash? What are some tangibles on that? I mean, are people watching the Super Bowl and looking at pop-ups from from AMP or from their car wash of you know that they're connected to?

SPEAKER_02 17:36

So we we've got about 50% engagement on any kind of a notification that gets sent out. Uh so if there's uh an event, we're seeing reactions uh if we send those out because we know it's good data, right? We know that they they want to be part of that brand. They downloaded the app, they're in it. Some of the things that we've done to increase engagement is like our the spin to win game that we can put in there, which is you know, they can win like five dollar credits or you know, fifty dollar credits or even maybe a free year.

SPEAKER_00 17:59

And what time out real quick? So also on this spin-to-win, so they get these different incentives, but then how are how are you working to fulfill those incentives that they want too? So if they get this five dollar credit credit, what does that look like? Where does it go?

SPEAKER_02 18:14

They get if they win something and the spin to win, it automatically gets applied to their account. And so then they can see in their like in the gift card portal, they can see how much money they've earned or how much they've saved. And then they can, if they wanted to because they're a member, they can give it away or they can use it to offset their current membership.

SPEAKER_00 18:28

Even just in that part of it. So I've been in the cars industry for about 13 years. Early on, especially, it's okay, so we're gonna do this Father's Day promotion and we're gonna pick winners, and then we're gonna get this gift card, put it in a sleeve, put it in the mail, and mail it to the winner, or have them come pick it up because there was no way to just like give it to them electronically. So it's so cool just to see that that's no longer, you know, that that part of it's solved. But it's I just uh reminiscing about that. These were real things that the the car was just so far behind on how to figure out that bridge that gap and knowing that there's a place for customers to keep their information in one place, they're not having to go to multiple things, it's got their loyalty tracking in there because the worst thing for customers to be like, oh, I didn't bring my, you know, people don't use punch cards anymore, but I didn't bring whatever thing, or I'm not in on the good deal. And it seems like through this engagement, they know and they feel comfortable and confident that they're always in on you know whatever's available to them, that they're rewarded for that.

SPEAKER_02 19:35

Right. And that and that's why it's I think really, really, really important to have a really good functioning slick app that's engaging to the customers that when they're when they're playing with it, that it's not buggy, it's not crashing, it doesn't look like it was coded in 1985. And so like it's it's modern and it continues to evolve that way. But with like, you know, those features like that spin-to-win, we've got we've with from the app side, we can see multiple clients and you know, clients that use the spin-to-win have a 50% higher daily engagement rate than clients who don't. And so it means that people are just constantly using the app. And then what that means is then you you know that you're able to from you use the pop-up engine. So after they get a wash or after they do a certain function, we can you know surface different uh pieces of information. And it could be just the did you know type thing. It doesn't always have to be like a savings type of situation, but it is very much an educational piece of why we're different. Is that you know our soaps do this, or you know, you know, pollen is acidic and it can do that. And so that's like a way to connect with the customers where they already are, which is on their phone.

SPEAKER_00 20:37

Yeah, that's awesome.

SPEAKER_04 20:38

One thing to add, like kind of how we achieve some of those great, great numbers of people actually opening up emails or uh clicking on a link that we send in a text message and things like that. A big part of it's using modern online marketing techniques around you know customer segmentation and making sure the people that you're sending the message to, you know, what one they've opted in, two, you have a verified phone number so you don't have a bunch of junk data that you're trying to send these messages out into. But then three, we know so much more than that person than just their phone number. Uh, we know what car they drive, we know how often they wash, where they wash, uh, how many times they log into the app, you know, uh all their birthday, all sorts of things there. Um, but we also have a survey tool uh where we could start asking additional questions of customers to even further segment them, and then you could use those answers to send out uh really direct mail. So a tangible example, uh Dennis actually did this at AutoWatch, is he he was originally they there were their partners with the Broncos and the Rockies, and they'd send out these blasts. Um, and you get a bunch of people who would opt out, right? Because they don't like the Broncos, they hate the Broncos, you know what they don't want to see another thing about the Broncos.

SPEAKER_00 21:48

So now we're Cowboys fans, obviously.

SPEAKER_04 21:52

The joke is no no one really likes the Broncos right now. So, but uh, so we uh we have a survey tool. What's your you know, what's your favorite? Team when they launch, you know, what's your favorite local team? We're able to collect that information. And now when we send those messages, we send them to people who just love the Broncos and get so much more engagement. So that's just like one little example. We we have people who use the survey tool to get live feedback from their customers. We've had people that ask, you know, do you like hamburgers or hot dogs for the car event that we're about to do? You know, you could you could use it for all sorts of different things. And if you're really creative, you start building these rich profiles about your customers that you could then use to re-re-connect and build that conversation Dennis was talking about.

SPEAKER_00 22:33

That's the other thing that, you know, we're seeing this huge evolution, not just in the car wash industry, but that's what we'll talk about, is uh how to leverage data. So one, capturing the data, because you have to get this information from the customer in a way that they want to share it with you. And then where do you put the data and how do you quantify it and how do you use it to benefit you in the customer? And that sounds like that's a great example of just one way of reaching a customer in the language that they want, in the manner in which they want to engage, but also with the preferences that they have. So it shows that they're tracking them, that you care about them, that you you want to engage specifically with them to a tailored message. Uh, and that's really, really cool. Talk to me a little bit about what else you can do with this data that you're collecting and how you're pushing the envelope on benefiting both the car wash customer and and then the owner for building that brand loyalty.

SPEAKER_02 23:28

I think before Adam jumps into that question, one of the reasons we really liked working with Adam in the very beginning was because of the the sanctity of the data. That was their their focus, obviously, coming from their background at UI and doing all the projects that they were doing is having good data is but so just having data in a minute's garbage doesn't really help very much. And so knowing that we actually have the right answers and we are putting that message out to the right person was one of the one of the big differences uh that we noticed when we started developing this program that that is a foundation of our platform is how much how strong those data relational databases are.

SPEAKER_04 24:02

It was one of the first conversations Dennis and I had when he he was talking about his vision, and he and he kind of said this was born from frustration. And one of the frustrations was the lack of ability to get to pull good data out of these systems. So that was from the day day one, having full transparency and access and having a really nice design data model sitting behind the system was really one of the most important goals of AMP. Um, so yeah, we're we're collecting so much information. You know, we we already kind of talked about some of the information about the customers we that that we know. We have operational data, you know, where they're washing, how much they're washing, things like that. We have financial data. So we're able to see, you know, how how long has someone been a member? We know when you know people who are having trouble with credit cards versus not, different levels of membership. Uh, you know, we we know timing, you know, when someone gets a trial wash, how long does it take them to become a member? And then when they become a member, what's their lifetime value? How long are they a member? Uh we we have interactions within the app. So if someone clicks on a deal, we we track impressions and clicks and redemptions. So you're able to see on the marketing side how successful that is. And it's really bringing all that data together and making it super accessible. So we we have our own reports and and dashboards that uh where we try to derive insights from that data. We also pump our data. Uh you could pull our data with APIs. We use this tool called Snowflake, which is an online data repository that lets customers take our data into their own data repository. Um, but now for yeah, the sort of questions you could ask of the this data, it's it's hard to answer that that question because it's kind of unlimited. But certain things we do is you know, what what promotion is most effective at driving lifetime value? Get the first month free, get the first month for $5, download the app, get a free car wash. You know, we we have all these different promotions we could run. How can we tell, you know, so now we have the data to really draw that out and look at your cohorts of members based on these different promotions and and really understand what's working, what's not, and make a tweak. And and you know, we're not waiting, you know, we're not having to dump that data out and send it to someone else to analyze it. It's all coming in real time. Um, and what's what's really exciting, I think, about our future roadmap is starting to bring in um data scientists and machine learning algorithms um to start, you know, there's there's some obvious things that a human can spot, but are there certain correlations uh that uh you know humans can't easily derive that these algorithms could find? So, for example, you know, what give me uh the list of people most likely to churn that are our current members, and we could jump into that algorithm. How many times are they washing per month? What's their payment history and failure rate? And try to start finding you know these groups of people that we could then market to and um try to make sure, you know, be be more proactive rather than reactive.

SPEAKER_00 27:01

There's a lot of rich things there that you just touched on and shared about. And exciting. It's I think it's really again, you know, it's really cool just watching the evolution of the car wash industry to find how we can use this information to reach, connect, and communicate with the car wash customer in a meaningful way that builds up brand loyalty. And one of the things that you mentioned kind of early in this part of the conversation is that opt-in messaging or that opt-in communication with the customer. So this is a very transparent, it's not like you're spying on them. They are giving you this information because they find value in the relationship. And I love that part of it because it is a relationship that both of you are mutually bringing something to the table of value.

SPEAKER_04 27:43

That's really important. And yeah, we definitely take a lot of inspiration from the food and beverage industry looking at you know how how generous the Starbucks points system is. You know, really what that is is they're they're wanting people to download the app, they're wanting to get information about those people, they're wanting to understand their buying patterns. So, you know, we there's great statistics out there that if you're have a user or customer that has an app, they're gonna spend 30% more with your brand than someone without an app. So yeah, it's it's it's pretty exciting, you know. So so you can be really generous and you can do things like offer discounts and promotions in the app, um, but still kind of your your your net growth and your net profits are are still going up because now you have this huge audience that's a captive audience that likes your brand. Um, that you could, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:30

And it's not even just it doesn't have to be just a monthly membership customer. This is your retail customers too. So I think that we've had a lot of focus on the memberships and and rightly so, but the retail customer is important too. And this gives a way to bridge that to still engage with them, right? That they that you're still reaching them as well if they have the the platform downloaded.

SPEAKER_02 28:51

Yeah, totally. I think from an operator's perspective, you want to have all your customers' information, not just your members' customer information.

SPEAKER_00 28:59

Right.

SPEAKER_02 28:59

And so being able to grab all those folks and you're gonna, it's you know, anywhere from half to 70% of your users are not members, which means they're using you maybe once a month or when it's convenient, or they're trying you for the first time. And there's not a really good way to capture those people if you don't capture them on that one on that initial visit. Uh that might be your only shot in an old model.

SPEAKER_03 29:20

Right.

SPEAKER_02 29:20

But now with a model of like everybody download the app, you have an opportunity to aim for memberships in this with loyalty. And by that, maybe not an explicit loyalty program, but a an ability to go after and capture that person that wants to do it.

SPEAKER_00 29:34

And they come in every six weeks, yeah, or whatever it is.

SPEAKER_02 29:36

We can go in and say, hey, someone who tried us, they got they washed once, they haven't washed in 90 days, ping that person. And we have the ability to do that in in the in the mobile app and grab that person to bring them back to our brand because they're gonna go, they're gonna watch somewhere. And it's probably you know, if they're not already locked in loyal, then it's convenience loyalty, which is where it's on the way to work on the way home. But if you're able to push them and give them a nudge just a little bit, then when that does have that next uh weather event, they're like, ah, yeah, that car wash is they messaged me. I should go there.

SPEAKER_04 30:06

One really cool example of this. One of our customers just did last weekend was they were launching a new location. So, you know, app is really great. If you're launching new locations, you really quickly bring that location into your membership program. It's POS agnostic, but but that activation event, like it, there's like this, you know, you basically you're trying to grow membership as quickly as possible at that new location and and get to that critical mass. So, what we're able to do is you know, come in for a grand opening, get a free wash. But instead of just giving everyone a free wash and maybe taking on paper, I don't know how, you know, without an app, how you would collect information about that customers. It's well, you have to download the app and then you get your free wash. Um, so we're we're able to capture hundreds and hundreds of people the first day that a car wash launches that we know live in that area are interested in that car wash and and really quickly reach that critical mass of memberships at location, at each location. It's really cool to see.

SPEAKER_00 31:00

And this is so important for a lot of car washes that that we interact with and have relationships with that are growing, and maybe they're growing through acquisitions and they have multiple POSs across different regions or maybe even in the same town, that finding that bridge to not have to rip everything out and start all over with the hard equipment at those sites that are extremely expensive and you know, cross-prohibitive and time prohibitive, that this helps them speed that process along and work with what's there in still an advantageous way. That it's not even that they're losing anything out on this. This is still helpful.

SPEAKER_02 31:34

You know, being agnostic of the POS and being flexible, because you know, even today, if you're you know, tying into the the different POS providers, whether it's Sunny's DRB or ICS or whomever, there's new technologies always coming out, and there could be a different POS, you know, tomorrow and being able to like tie in with that as well, just being dynamic and flexible, it allows the operator to not have to worry about the sunk cost of like, oh man, no, I gotta rip out that POS.

SPEAKER_00 32:00

Right.

SPEAKER_04 32:01

That pain point of we hear that a lot from customers looking for or potential customers looking for an app is it's really hard to run a big promotion that talks about you know how membership across all your locations and and things like that. When you know you there's certain locations where, oh yeah, well, that that location, you know, we haven't migrated them yet to our point of sale. So that that's not covered. And yeah, to be able to almost immediately bring a new location up and get them on the membership and get existing memberships going to that location. Um yeah, it's pretty exciting.

SPEAKER_00 32:31

Absolutely. With what you guys are doing advancement-wise on the AMP technology, correct me if I'm wrong, but when you do have new features that you've developed that you've created, how do your existing customers do they have access to that when they come out? Do they have to add that on later? Or what does that look like for your for your customers as far as the things that the new things that you're you're working on?

SPEAKER_04 32:54

I think this is one of the most exciting things about how we architected this the solution. It's cloud-based, it's called multi-tenant, which means everybody is always on the latest and greatest version. Um, we do something called feature flagging. So we we do releases about once a month uh to or iteratively adding new features to the app. Uh, we have release notes that go out. Um, so people could see all the new features, how they work, the new you know, new settings, things, things like that. And then once once they get launched, you'll get a notification that the features are now ready and with instructions of how to turn them on in the portal. Uh, so it's yeah, really, really easy for people to take advantage of the latest and and greatest. That allows us that feature flagging really allows us to march quickly and keep on adding great new features without interrupting current customers, but still letting them opt in uh to all the great things that we're building.

SPEAKER_00 33:49

Great for your customer loyalty for AMP, because they're getting all these cool things. So I think that that's such a neat thing because it really does, you know, it becomes frustrating when you hear that your neighbor has such a better spectrum deal or whatever it is because there's some promotion that came out right then. So just feeling like you have access to all of the new cool stuff that you guys are developing for, you know, down the road and and on an ongoing basis. I think that's so cool. And and how neat to grow with your your car wash partners and offer them new solutions that maybe they haven't thought of.

SPEAKER_02 34:22

One of the challenges is being able to do that intelligently and not mess the app up or mess the platform up. I think that's like the the hardest thing to do and make sure we have a good architecture on the back end of it so that when we do add all these different configurations that they that one doesn't take down another and so that they all work in concert and can create a really cool user experience.

SPEAKER_00 34:41

And what does it look like as far as the future of what you guys see for AMP from starting as this car wash mobile app? And then where is it going kind of in the long run? I mean, I know you don't have a crystal ball and have it all laid out because you're constantly developing and tweaking and and things like that, but what do you see for it just kind of in a general sense moving forward in the evolution?

SPEAKER_04 35:03

I do think it is interesting. We started really focused on the app. That was our key thing. Get a mobile app for your car wash. You could even see in the tagline behind me, uh, you know, we were called AMP the car wash app. And as we've evolved, we've realized it's so much more than just an app. So you have your customer service reps and giving them the tools they need when customers call in. It's the the data analytics um that your business and operation folks need to make better decisions. The marketing piece is is turned into a huge, huge part of this and making that so much more sophisticated. You know, we we have multi-years of ideas of how to continue to iterate and make this thing stronger and stronger. And I think our our big goal is you know, any interaction that a car wash has with a customer prior to them entering the tunnel and them getting the actual wash. We think there's so much room for improvement as the things are more interconnected, and the text message that you send out is aware of the mobile app and the kiosk also is aware that this person's a membership and um you know, loyalty points and and all this stuff you could do is as you have all you know, kind of all these different separate uh communications with the customers, kind of all unified in one central platform that just unlocks so much capability of what you're able to offer, what value you're able to offer, and how you're able to build that that loyalty.

SPEAKER_00 36:28

Totally. Again, like we had talked about that convenience loyalty to that brand loyalty, that there's there's so many sticky points with the interaction and the relationship building and the investment and getting to know your customer that especially beyond the the walls of the of the car wash, that there's a relationship there that's deeper. And uh I think that's really exciting. And I think you guys are doing some really cool things with that. And it's it's fun to watch. And I'm excited to you know, share in in this journey to you know, keep offering real solutions to car wash owners that are addressing these pain points that are helping grow memberships and loyal customers that are retail customers or whatever it is, but capturing and using this data in a meaningful way to grow your bottom line is I think what every all car wash owners want that. They want to have more loyal customers that's growing their business, but also that there's a a continued path forward to keep growing.

SPEAKER_02 37:25

Yeah, I think one of the challenges is as the industry becomes a little bit more mature, is the commoditization of the car wash and how are you going to differentiate? And so now it becomes about operational efficiency. And that means that you need to have a lower churn rate than your competitor, and you need to make sure that you're doing things for additional capture and growth of your MRR and and or your retail customer, or what we call like the paper wash customer. And how what are you doing to grab those folks? Because you have to you have to get to a point where you can grab all of it if you're if you're not doing the most efficient things, then you're probably going to get beat long-term competition-wise.

SPEAKER_00 38:00

Right. And that's just kind of an it's good business practice, anyways. But the nature of where we are right now, it's more expensive to do everything and money costs more. So protecting those customers and strengthening that brand loyalty makes so much sense. And also streamlining the rest of your operations. So working in tandem with multiple facets of your business to really optimize the experience for the user, optimize the operational strategy and execution on the car wash side of it as well. And that those all work, you know, hand in hand.

SPEAKER_02 38:36

I think my uh marketing professor back in college used to use the hammer on us about how much how expensive it was to grab a customer and how valuable it was to retain that customer. And I think that's where the uh like really our the platform is really kind of honed in on is like we and we've kind of touched on it a couple of times already, is grabbing that non-member and keeping that person engaged because if eventually, hopefully they become a future member. And so I guess probably should like classify them as maybe future members and existing members.

SPEAKER_00 39:03

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I love that. Yeah, yeah, it's just that that customer that the car wash industry historically has been very volume based. And you, you know, you talk about how many, you know, how many cars you wash per hour, and while all of those things still matter, it's really shifted to how many, how many members you have and how much are you growing that membership base. And again, we know we're still talking about the the retail customers too, but that that's the important part of it is that ongoing because it's the relationship and the ongoing future business that they'll have as well. Well, thank you guys for sharing about AMP and just talking about this really cool evolution again of what we started as a Car Wash Mobile app two years ago at the Southwest show, which was coming up. This this show will actually release while we are at the 2023 Southwest Car Wars Association convention in uh Fort Worth. And it's been such a cool journey to watch you guys. And again, just remembering being one of the people that was pulled in to like, hey, hear about our new car wash app. But from the minute that I met both you guys and Bobby with Retention Express, you are just doing something so cool for the industry. And I really love watching how the industry is growing and evolving, and there's new things coming in and new ways of looking at things that are taking hold. And I think that you guys are doing an awesome job. Not that you need my my two cents, but I really do. And I've had so much fun getting to know you guys and your team, and I'm excited to, like I said, keep keep seeing where everything's going.

SPEAKER_04 40:35

Absolutely. Yeah, so are we filling is mutual. Yeah, it's been been a while, ride. And as someone new newer to the car wash industry, I I speak to so many people who are just like fall in love with this space and just so amazing how collaborative people are and kind of yeah, hungry for new ideas and open to to and how quick they're able to move and and make decisions and things like that. It's just been been so much, so much fun to be a part of this. And yeah, we're we're very excited to see where this goes.

SPEAKER_00 41:01

Yeah, and especially with your you know, your your pre-car wash background, you know, maybe at first it's like you're car wash and you're kind of like what what does that look like? Or you may be excited about it or maybe not. But then once you get into it, it sounds like like my experience as well, that it just really sticks with you. And there's something so cool about it that the relationships and the people and the collaboration and the desire to perform better always. Like there's there is always room to keep getting better and growing and evolving. And uh, I think that drives all of us. So it's really cool. For those of you who are listening when this episode releases, who are in Fort Worth at the SCWA, the Southwest Car Rush Association Expo, come by and see us. Dennis and Adam will be at booth 635 with AMP, and I'll be with my team at Amplify Car Wash Advisors at booth 734. So those are conveniently located right next door to each other. Also, if you want to stop by and see Bobby Thompson with Retention Express, his booth is not far away either at 844. And if you're loving this podcast, please take a minute to subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you like to listen. Those reviews help other people in the car wash industry find us. Until next month, see ya.

SPEAKER_01 42:21

Thank you for joining us on this episode of Car Wash MA, the podcast, with your host, Lenice Barnett. Like what you hear? Subscribe to our podcast feed and leave us a review or follow us on social media at Amplify Car Wash Advisors. Want more MA information? Visit our website at amplifywash.com and listen for new episodes on the last Thursday of each month.