At this year’s ATRA Powertrain Expo, one session promises to show shop owners exactly where business is slipping away — and how to stop it.
A customer’s car starts misfiring on a Tuesday morning. Before they call anyone, they pull out their phone. They search, they scroll, they click — and within four minutes they’ve already decided which shop feels trustworthy. In some cases, that shop isn’t yours. Not because you can’t fix the car. Because your website looked like it was built in 2009, your Google listing had a three-star average from a single bad review, and when they tried to call, nobody answered.
This is the uncomfortable reality Carl Borsani of Graphic Home, LLC will lay out for shop owners at the 2026 ATRA Powertrain Expo. His session, The Complete Customer Experience: Stop Losing Them Before, During, and After the Sale, will walk through the full arc of how modern automotive customers find, evaluate, and ultimately choose a repair facility — and identify the specific moments where far too many shops silently lose business they never knew was available.
If you’re attending the Expo, this is a session worth planning around.
THE INVISIBLE DECISION
The most significant shift in automotive service marketing over the past decade isn’t a new platform or a new ad format. It’s that the customer’s decision-making process now happens almost entirely before contact is made. By the time someone calls your shop, they’ve already conducted a private audition — and you weren’t in the room.
That audition starts with search. When a driver in your area looks for transmission repair or brake service, Google surfaces a handful of results. Your shop’s position in those results, the photos attached to your listing, and the star ratings visible at a glance all shape a first impression in seconds. A shop that doesn’t rank well, or ranks well but shows a sparse, outdated profile, gets scrolled past without a second thought.
Then comes the website. Carl will make the case directly: a dated website doesn’t just look unprofessional — it actively destroys trust. Customers equate the appearance of a website with the professionalism of the shop itself. If the site is hard to navigate on a phone, uses blurry photos, or fails to communicate that your technicians can handle the advanced electronics and driver-assistance systems on modern vehicles, the visitor leaves. Silently. And you never hear about it.
“The shops losing the most business aren’t losing it to bad reviews. They’re losing it to a bad first impression no one bothered to mention.”
ADVERTISING THAT ACTUALLY WORKS
For shops still spending on Yellow Pages inserts, mailers, or local print ads, Carl will offer a frank comparison. Traditional media reaches a broad, unfocused audience and provides limited ability to measure results. Google Ads, by contrast, places your shop directly in front of someone who is actively searching for the service you offer, at the moment they need it.
The economics, he’ll argue, are more accessible than most shop owners assume. A well-configured Google Ads campaign for an independent repair shop can often be maintained for less than the cost of a single major repair. The profit from one transmission job — that’s frequently enough to cover a full month of advertising spend. The return, measured in qualified leads from customers who were already seeking help, is far easier to track than any print campaign.
Critically, the session will emphasize that Google Ads and website quality are not independent variables. An ad campaign drives traffic — but if that traffic lands on an unpersuasive website, the investment is wasted. The two must work in concert: ads to generate the visit, and a well-designed, mobile-friendly site to convert that visit into a phone call.
THE PHONE CALL THAT MAKES OR BREAKS IT
Suppose the website works. The customer calls. This is the moment most shops treat as administrative — and that’s a mistake. Carl will describe first contact as a trust-building event, not a scheduling transaction. The person calling is often stressed, unfamiliar with automotive repair, and already worried about cost. How they’re spoken to in those first sixty seconds shapes everything that follows.
Common phone handling errors include putting customers on hold immediately, using jargon that alienates rather than reassures, and failing to clearly communicate what will happen next. A caller who doesn’t understand the process — when the car will be looked at, when they’ll hear back, what the diagnostic fee covers — is a caller who second-guesses the choice and may cancel before the appointment.
The antidote isn’t a script. It’s a culture. Shops that handle calls well do so because their front-of-house team understands that every inbound call is a person who has already done research and made a tentative choice. The session will explore how to build that culture and what it looks like in practice.
THE PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT AS MARKETING
Online reputation and phone manner matter enormously — but they can all be undone the moment a customer pulls into your parking lot. Carl will address something shop owners rarely frame as a marketing issue: the physical appearance of the facility itself.
A cluttered lot, a waiting room with mismatched chairs and a coffee maker from 2003, or a front counter buried in paperwork sends a signal. Customers — especially those bringing in vehicles worth fifty, sixty, seventy thousand dollars — read their surroundings for evidence of professionalism. A clean, organized shop communicates competence. An unkempt one introduces doubt, even if the technicians in the back are exceptional.
The same applies to your team’s presentation and conduct. Every interaction a customer has, from arrival to checkout, is either reinforcing or eroding the trust you’ve worked to build. The session will cover how to align your team around a consistent, professional customer experience from first call to final handoff.
TURNING CUSTOMERS INTO ADVOCATES
Carl will close with the long view. A customer who has a good experience doesn’t just return — they tell people. In an era when a single Google review or a casual mention in a neighborhood Facebook group can influence dozens of decisions, the downstream value of a satisfied customer is significant. Equally, a bad experience travels. Unhappy customers rarely complain directly to the shop. They complain to everyone else.
The goal, he’ll argue, is not simply to complete repairs correctly — though that’s the foundation. The goal is a consistent, end-to-end experience that gives customers nothing to complain about and plenty to recommend. That experience begins the moment someone searches for a shop online, and it doesn’t end until they’ve left a five-star review and told their neighbor where to go.
For most independent shops, the path to measurable growth doesn’t require a massive marketing budget or a full rebrand. It requires identifying the specific points where customers are quietly slipping away — and fixing them, one at a time. Carl promises practical, real-world examples and improvements attendees can begin implementing immediately after the session ends.
DON’T MISS THIS SESSION
The Complete Customer Experience: Stop Losing Them Before, During, and After the Sale will be presented by Carl Borsani of Graphic Home, LLC at the 2026 ATRA Powertrain Expo. If growing your shop’s customer base and reputation is a priority this year, plan to be in the room.
