Advance Auto Parts 2006 Annual Report Download - page 13

So, in addition to the high quality of our Team, Advance has long been
committed to what we consider the Five Basics of Sales and Customer
Satisfaction:
1. Quality and Quality Control
2. Good Housekeeping
3. Proper Stock Levels/ Variety
4. Proper Pricing
5. and, of course, our Legendary Customer Service
New, bright, well-kept stores offer a clear point of difference to customers,
giving them many reasons to prefer Advance to all other auto parts stores.
We use custom mix and micromarketing to match each store’s inventory
to local demand. Unique, high-quality merchandise and everyday low
pricing provide customers with a compelling value proposition. And
Legendary Customer Service is the proverbial cherry on top of a great
shopping experience.
We continually look for ways to serve our customers’ needs better.
Sometimes customers don’t even know they have a particular need until
we launch a unique product – a product that addresses an unserved
need in the marketplace. In some cases, that might take the form of an
Advance Auto Parts branded item where we showcase our value against
a leading national brand. In other cases, it might be a premium item that
we brand under our Professional’s Favorite
®
label. Professional’s
Favorite items are available exclusively at Advance Auto Parts, which
translates into a lot of repeat business, because once we wow customers
with a Professional’s Favorite item, we can count on them to return to our
stores for these items in the future. Take our Professional’s Favorite
No More Dust Wheel Cleaner, for example, which we launched in 2006.
Customer response to this product has been overwhelming because
there is no comparable item in the marketplace. Filling that need takes
Quality and Variety to a whole new level!
Systematically meeting customers’ needs is great, but as we’re fond
of saying, we grow our business one customer at a time, one trans-
action at a time. In 2006, Advance completed more than 230 million
customer transactions – which works out to more than seven every
second. With all that activity, it’s easy to see how a customer can
occasionally leave a wallet behind, or forget merchandise on the
counter. That’s exactly what happened at our store in Marietta,
Georgia, which prompted the attached customer compliment.
It would be easy to tell the forgetful customer that the merchandise
they mistakenly left on the counter is still there, that our store is open
until 9 p.m., and that we’ll keep the merchandise at the counter for
them. But it takes someone special … someone who embraces the
Five Basics of Customer Satisfaction (and then some) … like Harold,
who offered to personally deliver the item to the customer. This
showed the customer that Harold (and by extension Advance) is caring,
committed to Legendary Customer Service and values the customer’s
patronage.
“It is people that make the difference,” the customer said in his letter
to us. We couldn’t say it better ourselves.
Serving Customers the Advance Way
Advance Auto Parts, Inc. ▲ Annual Report 2006
11
To be a successful retailer, it’s essential
that we provide a great in-store experi-
ence. That starts with great people,
but if we don’t have the products our
customers want, then our great people
are like salesmen trying to sell ice
scrapers to customers in Puerto Rico.