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“The industry is crying out for retention and service plans,” Angela Barrow, Emac's managing director of motor service plans UK and Europe, told delegates at the AM Aftersales Conference.

Service plans are not designed to be a hard sell, she said, but to be an offer – something that your customer needs. Customers will take a service plan if they’re offered one, she said.

O2, Delphi and Vodafone are already offering on-board diagnostics tools to the independent aftermarket elsewhere in Europe.

Every car needs a service in its lifetime and with customers buying 9.4 cars on average in a lifetime, every motorist will require one. This figure used to be 13, which shows people are keeping their cars for longer, which is even more of an incentive to sell these customers a service plan so they keep coming back to you.

Barrow said: “Service plans have a 60% retention rate, as opposed to the 40% without a service plan. Plus, you won’t have to spend additional marketing costs on getting these people to come back to you.”