By Austin Esecson, CEO, Rinsed

Today’s bar for delivering top-notch customer experiences is higher than ever.  

Shopping online? Better be one-click like Amazon or they’ll abandon your cart. 

Offering an app? Needs to be as smooth as Starbucks or they’ll delete it. 

Managing a family plan? It should be no harder than Netflix, or they’ll never sign up.

Technological advances have been ratcheting up customer expectations. And once higher expectations are set, they stay there. For your business, this means you’ll need to find ways to exceed this ever-higher bar or risk losing your hard-won customer to a competitor who will.

The data is clear, customer satisfaction isn’t just nice to have. It can mean the difference between a wildly profitable car wash and one struggling to compete. When Rinsed analyzed hundreds of thousands of customer net promoter score surveys, we saw that first-year revenue for very satisfied car wash members (ranking of 7-10) was 40% higher than unsatisfied ones (<6). Nothing was a stronger predictor of customer lifetime value.  

So, what exactly do today’s consumers expect from their car wash?

#1. Frictionless Experience

Our industry has done a great job focusing on improvements to the speed of service in the driveway. Unlimited memberships with fast passes and member-only lanes, and continual improvements in the tunnel from chemistry to chain speed, have all resulted in a cleaner car, faster than ever before.

But what about the customer experience outside of the tunnel?

Whether finding out more information over the phone, trying to purchase a wash online or making updates to their existing membership, operators need to ask themselves if they are exceeding customer expectations in every interaction.

If the first touch point with your wash is a customer calling to get more information about hours or services, how is that call handled? Will the phone ring at the site, pulling salespeople from the lane? Will their call and questions get answered at all?  

Washes can leverage artificial intelligence to deliver a prompt resolution via an automated phone agent. For the first time in history, there is a cost-effective way to offer always-available, always-knowledgeable, and always-friendly support over the phone. Rinsed’s new AI-powered support solution was built specifically for car washes, allowing them to offer 24/7 phone support to customers — without needing extra staff! The solution not only eliminates the need for customers to wait on hold but also answers frequently asked questions and automates common requests, such as canceling or switching membership plans, through an integration with your point-of-sale.  

Take a look at your online membership purchase experience, as well. Maybe you’ve delivered a text to a retail customer with the perfect new member offer, they’re excited to join and they clicked the link to purchase. What does that online membership purchase look and feel like?  

Is it a multi-step checkout process where you’re asking the customer to create an account or is it a seamless single-page checkout easily completed on their mobile device? Every new page you introduce to the process results in a 20%+ drop-off. Funneling customers to poorly designed online stores results in millions of wasted marketing dollars. Rinsed single-page checkouts embedded directly on your website, ensures your marketing dollars result in delighted paying customers.

Now you have a happy member, but what if they want to add a vehicle to their account? Can they do so easily online, or do you require that they (and their spouse) show up at the wash and hope your employees are trained on the, often complex, process of implementing family plans?

With Rinsed’s customer portal and family plans, adding a spouse’s vehicle is only a few clicks away, and requires no new training for your on-site staff.

These often-neglected parts of the customer journey can ensure that your wash capitalizes on every opportunity to delight your customers.

#2. Personalized Experience

With increases in business-to-consumer (B2C) direct marketing across channels, your message needs to be more targeted and relevant than ever before to break through the noise. Whether it’s a suggestion to repurchase a wash type they’ve bought before, a birthday free wash coupon, or an invitation to a grand opening near their home, customers are most engaged by communication that is tailored to them.

Highly segmented audiences help personalize customer interactions. Once the audience is created, consider the customers’ pain points, preferences and purchase history, then share messaging that aligns with that. The more personalized, the more likely to exceed their expectation.

At Rinsed, we believe the future of car washing is bringing that same level of personalization into the driveway. By putting the rich CRM data collected into the hands of your salespeople, we hope to help repeat customers be greeted by name and offered the services most relevant to them in the near future.  

#3. Consistent Experience

So now you’ve white-boarded the perfect customer journey during your leadership’s planning sessions, and invested in team-wide learning and development. How do you ensure that vision becomes a reality for every customer?  

Digital interactions are easy to audit. You can see every outgoing message and ensure brand consistency. AI phone agents offer similar levels of transparency, where every call’s audio can be easily reviewed. So where are the biggest remaining gaps and risks to a consistent customer experience?

Unfortunately, our biggest blind spot as an industry is also the most common interaction you have with customers: the moment of sale in the driveway. Your marketing team has done the work to drive awareness, and a new customer pulls into your wash for the first time. Are they greeted with the enthusiasm and professionalism you’ve envisioned? Does your team effectively communicate the value of your unlimited membership program? Traditional methods of quality control — the monthly “secret shopper” visits — provide only sporadic glimpses into these critical moments, leaving vast spans of customer interactions essentially unmonitored.

This visibility gap isn't just an operational challenge — it’s a strategic vulnerability. When you can’t consistently monitor and optimize these crucial customer touchpoints, you’re essentially leaving your brand’s frontline execution to chance.

However, if you could capture and analyze every sales interaction, imagine how this dynamic could fundamentally change. Sporadic spot-checks could be transformed into continuous improvement opportunities. Salespath, developed by Rinsed, is an example of a platform that can do this. It combines comprehensive recording capabilities with AI-powered analysis, creating real-time leaderboards and personalized coaching opportunities. This isn’t just about monitoring — it’s about empowering each salesperson to develop a unique, effective approach while maintaining brand consistency.  

The result? Every interaction becomes a potential learning opportunity. Every sale can be optimized. And most importantly, the carefully crafted customer experience you’ve envisioned can become a consistent reality across your entire operation.

This transformation from periodic monitoring to continuous optimization represents more than just an operational improvement — it’s a fundamental shift in how car wash operators can ensure brand consistency and drive growth. When every customer interaction aligns with your vision, that’s when true scalable excellence becomes possible.

Frictionless, Personalized and Consistent

The landscape of customer expectations is rapidly evolving, presenting both challenges and opportunities for forward-thinking operators to delight their customers. By partnering with vendors who share your commitment and customer obsession, you can transform every interaction into a moment of differentiation. It’s not enough just to meet today’s standards, but you need to be building a foundation where you’re ready to anticipate and exceed tomorrow’s demands.