What if a fire or other disaster struck your home or office, or your hard drive suddenly failed? What if your computer was completely destroyed? Would you be able to recover your data, or would it be lost forever? In this day and age, these are questions we have to ask ourselves. So “what if” this were to occur? Do you have a disaster recovery plan in place? Or have you procrastinated, and put off secure data storage for another day?  Many businesses think about backing up their data about 5 minutes after a catastrophic data loss. These questions should make you think about how important your information is and how you should prepare for the worst.

One option is to back up to an external drive, but there is one important rule to backing up your data you need to understand. Your data files should exist in two places or it’s not fully protected.  Once data has been lost, it is lost, and there is no inexpensive way to re ...[more]

One of the things which set an efficient “Super User” apart from an average user of Tire Power software is knowing your software’s windows and features.  Being able to quickly find pertinent information on the window makes your job easier and helps you serve the customer better.  For example, if a user is on the ‘View Customer History’ window, and wishes to see which mechanic was assigned to a particular job on a particular invoice, you can find it very quickly if you take the time to learn your software’s windows.

Inside the ‘View Customer History’ window, find the customer’s invoice which has the service you need to find the mechanic for.  Click on the invoice to highlight it, which will then bring up the contents of the invoice in the detail window at the bottom of the screen.

Once the contents o ...[more]

One of the things which set an efficient “Super User” apart from an average user of Tire Power software is knowing your software’s windows and features.  Being able to quickly find pertinent information on the window makes your job easier and helps you serve the customer better.  For example, if a user is on the ‘View Customer History’ window, and wishes to see which mechanic was assigned to a particular job on a particular invoice, you can find it very quickly if you take the time to learn your software’s windows.

Inside the ‘View Customer History’ window, find the customer’s invoice which has the service you need to find the mechanic for.  Click on the invoice to highlight it, which will then bring up the contents of the invoice in the detail window at the bottom of the screen.

Once the contents o ...[more]

I am sure that you have all heard the saying “The Little Things Add Up”.  No matter what area of life you think about this saying holds true.  Customer service is no exception.

Most of your customers can go to any number of tire shops, but why do they choose you?  If you were to ask your customers why they keep coming back most of the time you would not be given the answer you expected.  Usually it is something small and might be something that has slipped your attention.

The best way to find out if your customers are happy is to ask them. Incorporating customer surveys into your marketing efforts is a great way to identify the areas you are doing well in and also the areas you need to improve.

There are many ways to survey your customers. You can:

• Create an anonymous survey and offer it to your customer once the service has been completed
• Call them after the visit and ask them the survey questions
• Mail/email a sur ...[more]

I am sure that you have all heard the saying “The Little Things Add Up”.  No matter what area of life you think about this saying holds true.  Customer service is no exception.

Most of your customers can go to any number of tire shops, but why do they choose you?  If you were to ask your customers why they keep coming back most of the time you would not be given the answer you expected.  Usually it is something small and might be something that has slipped your attention.

The best way to find out if your customers are happy is to ask them. Incorporating customer surveys into your marketing efforts is a great way to identify the areas you are doing well in and also the areas you need to improve.

There are many ways to survey your customers. You can:

• Create an anonymous survey and offer it to your customer once the service has been completed
• Call them after the visit and ask them the survey questions
• Mail/email a sur ...[more]

Landfills everywhere are overflowing with old tires. Why not give them a few extra miles? There is a new trend of making old tires into sandals. The best instructions on making tire sandals I found were at the blog What The Cool. All you need is an old tire, a Dremel (or other tool to cut through the steel belt), old carpet scraps, adhesive and some plastic bags.

Other tire sandals instructions:

Makezine

Used-Tire.net

Landfills everywhere are overflowing with old tires. Why not give them a few extra miles? There is a new trend of making old tires into sandals. The best instructions on making tire sandals I found were at the blog What The Cool. All you need is an old tire, a Dremel (or other tool to cut through the steel belt), old carpet scraps, adhesive and some plastic bags.

Other tire sandals instructions:

Makezine

Used-Tire.net

The recent decline in the US economy has affected us all as consumers in some way. Most products have increased in price, tires especially. When those prices increase, fewer products are being purchased by the consumer, meaning more product stays on the store shelf. When more products stay on the shelves, less is ordered from the manufacturer. The tire industry is not immune to this trend.  This leaves manufacturers with a large surplus of tires waiting to be sold. The overall time frame from when a tire rolls off the manufacturing line to when it is sold to a customer, until the end of its tread life has increased. No one knows how long the new time frame is. You could be selling or buying tires much older than you actually think. Just because you bought it does not mean it is new. In general, tires shouldn’t be run if they are more than 6 years old. But how do you know how old a tire really is?

All tires are equipped with a number from the Department of Transportation; i ...[more]

The recent decline in the US economy has affected us all as consumers in some way. Most products have increased in price, tires especially. When those prices increase, fewer products are being purchased by the consumer, meaning more product stays on the store shelf. When more products stay on the shelves, less is ordered from the manufacturer. The tire industry is not immune to this trend.  This leaves manufacturers with a large surplus of tires waiting to be sold. The overall time frame from when a tire rolls off the manufacturing line to when it is sold to a customer, until the end of its tread life has increased. No one knows how long the new time frame is. You could be selling or buying tires much older than you actually think. Just because you bought it does not mean it is new. In general, tires shouldn’t be run if they are more than 6 years old. But how do you know how old a tire really is?

All tires are equipped with a number from the Department of Transportation; i ...[more]

Google Wave is a self-described “personal communication and collaboration tool” announced by Google at the Google I/O conference on May 27, 2009. It is a web-based service, computing platform and communications protocol designed to merge e-mail, instant messaging, wikis and social networking. It has a strong collaborative and real-time focus supported by extensions which can provide spelling and grammar checking, automated translation among 40 languages along with numerous other features.

At the 2009 Web 2.0 Expo in New York City, Gina Trapani (author of the “Complete Wave Guide” and founder of lifehacker.com) gave an informative talk on the basics of Google Wave and how it may be used for team-based document collaboration. Here is a link to view Gina’s full 15 minute talk, “Making sense of Google Wave”.

htt ...[more]