If you are just starting out with your car wash business, it is a good time to start thinking about business risk management. Safety issues, a lack of insurance, legal disputes and poor customer satisfaction can all be extremely costly, sometimes fatal incidents may occur. Moreover, by preparing yourself for potential risks and implementing policies and strategies to avoid risk, you could be saving your company time and money.

Here we will cover some of the more basic aspects of car wash business risk management:

Car Wash Business Risk Management Aspects

Safety

Recognize the safety issues that exist in your car wash business. Find as many potential hazards as you can and start implementing changes or policies to avoid those risks. This is meant to ensure customer, employee and environmental safety. Stress the importance of accident prevention to your employees and make sure they understand that accidents are preventable and you will no tolerate them.

Ask your employees to know the safety protocols. Create safety checklists for equipment, accident protocols, first aid, and work place hazards. You need to educate staff members. Moreover, safety protocols, like MSDS sheets, should be available at all times, is a very important step in car wash business risk management.

Insurance

There are many insurance policies available. It is important to pay attention to what is excluded from your policy options. Most of these exclusions can be purchased at an additional cost. Some of the most common forms of coverage to consider are;

• Liability: Protecting yourself and your staff from personal responsibility for accidents
• Property: Protecting your property and equipment from theft, fire, damage, etc.
• Worker’s Compensation: Protecting your employees and their health and wellbeing

Customer Satisfaction

Not happy customers can harm your car wash business far more than any amount of legal issues. Implement policies and procedures detailing how your employees should treat your customers. Word of mouth marketing is a powerful tool and can work for or against a company. The risks of low customer satisfaction levels include; lower sales, changes in customer loyalty, and bad public relations.

Make sure your customers are aware that you appreciate their ongoing support. Offer customer service oriented bonuses and perks. Moreover, make sure that you have a means for your customers to leave feedback and reviews on your products and services. Take their opinions seriously and advertise using your chosen method (flyer, social media, email, newsletter). But, whenever you implement a change to your company that was a customer’s idea. This will demonstrate your desire to work with your customers to serve them better.

It is no surprise that owning a car wash company presents a certain level of risk. This is why it is very important to think about effective car wash business risk management early on in your ownership. By protecting yourself, your employees and the environment, your company will run a lot more smoothly as it grows. To prepare yourself is a definite sign that you are on the road to success.

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