Loyalty programmes for car washes that do not cost much

A saloon driver who washes every fortnight at GH₵35 spends about GH₵900 with you in a year. A Bolt driver who comes weekly for a quick body wash at GH₵25 is worth around GH₵1,300. Twenty regulars like that are the difference between a wash that worries every slow Tuesday and one that does not.

A car wash loyalty programme is simply a way to turn a driver who has tried you once into one of those twenty. The ones that work in Ghana are cheap, easy for the cashier to run without the owner present, and hard to cheat. The ones that fail are complicated, printed in a hurry, and abandoned by the second month.

What a regular is worth to a small wash

Before choosing a scheme, work out what a regular is worth to you, because that sets how much you can afford to give away. Take your average price for a saloon full wash, say GH₵45, and how often a regular comes, say twice a month. That is GH₵1,080 a year from one plate.

Giving that driver one free wash in every six costs you the water, chemicals and washer commission on that wash, perhaps GH₵12 to GH₵20 depending on how you pay your washers; it varies. The point is to reward the sixth visit, not to discount the first.

The stamp card and where it breaks

The paper stamp card is the oldest scheme and still works at many washes. Print cards with six or ten boxes, stamp one per paid wash, and the full card earns a free one.

It breaks in three ways. Drivers lose the card and ask for a new one with "the stamps I had". Washers or a cashier stamp cards for friends. And the owner has no idea how many cards are out there or how many free washes are owed. Fixes: stamp with a rubber stamp kept in the cashier's drawer, write the plate on the card when it is issued so it cannot be shared, and keep a line in the day book for every card issued and every free wash redeemed.

Tracking by plate instead of by card

Every car that enters your wash already has a unique number on it. If you record the plate for each wash, which you should be doing anyway for the reasons in Why you should record every car you wash, and how to make it painless, the loyalty count is just a tally against that plate.

The simplest version is a page per regular plate at the back of the day book, or a sheet on the wall of the kiosk. GR 4521-23: tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, free. Nothing to lose, nothing to stamp, and the owner can see at a glance who the regulars are and who stopped coming.

The weakness is that a cashier can add ticks for a friend's plate as easily as stamps. The answer is the same: the count lives in the record, and the record gets checked.

Wash five, get one free: setting the numbers

The common Ghanaian scheme is "wash five, get one free" or some variant, and the numbers matter more than the slogan. Five paid washes before a free one is a 17 percent discount spread over six visits; ten before a free one is 9 percent. For a saloon wash at GH₵35, a free sixth wash gives away roughly GH₵6 per visit over the cycle.

Decide what the free wash is. A free body wash is affordable; a free full wash with interior and engine on a Land Cruiser is not, and a driver who paid for five body washes will ask for the biggest thing on the board. Write it on the card and the wall: "Free wash is the same service as the lowest-priced of the five."

If you want to go further than a free wash, into prepaid cards and monthly unlimited plans for commercial drivers, those carry different risks and are covered in Car wash packages and monthly memberships.

Referral rewards a washer can explain

A referral reward pays an existing customer for bringing a new one, and it works best when it is simple enough that the washer drying the car can explain it. "Bring a friend, you both get a free tyre shine" is clear. "Earn points towards a tiered reward" is not, and nobody at the bay will mention it.

Record who referred whom in the day book: new plate, referred by old plate. Pay the reward on the friend's first paid wash, not on the promise of one. In smaller towns like Ho or Sunyani, where drivers at the station all know each other, a referral scheme can bring in a dozen plates in a month from one well-liked taxi driver. Make sure that driver gets his reward in front of the others.

Keeping a car wash loyalty programme honest

Every loyalty scheme leaks if nobody checks it. Once a week, the owner or manager should count the free washes given in the day book, look at the plates that earned them, and spot-check two or three against the paid washes recorded for that plate. A plate that earned a free wash after five visits in a week when the wash was quiet deserves a question.

Keep the stamp or the tally in the cashier's hands, not the washers', and let washers know that free washes are recorded against their name like any other car so they still earn their commission on them. The wider controls for unrecorded cars and side deals are in Dealing with theft and under-reporting at a car wash.

Your next step is to pick one scheme, probably the plate tally, write the rule on a card by the cashier, and tell the next twenty customers about it at check-in.