Education for Success
In any industry quality training is the linchpin for future success. But, can an already successful carwash business benefit from employee training? National Carwash Solutions (NCS) believes the answer is yes and they created a unique and effective program to prove it. It’s called the College of Clean (COC) and it provides real-world training on key aspects of the carwash industry, emphasizing the most essential concepts in equipment operation and methods of running a gold-standard level carwash. NCS is a carwash solutions provider to brands including Ryko, MacNeil and others. They use strategic partners, resources and customers to get the word out about the COC trainings and the message is spreading quickly. To hire the most real-world trainers possible, NCS focusses its recruiting toward professionals who live the carwash business day in and day out. The organization looks at internal employees of carwashes, people from NCS, distributors, and customers when seeking out potential trainers. In some instances, companies will offer employees benefit incentives in partnership with NCS. Ryko for instance, provides their customers with free access to the College of Clean training program.
Training for a Better Business
During a recent search for trainer candidates, NCS set its sights on Breeze Thru Carwash, an innovative franchise in two of the Mountain States, and more specifically on the business’s lead engineer, Alma Wilcher. Breeze Thru Carwash with locations in northern Colorado and southern Wyoming is a textbook example of how an already successful business continues to improve with constant innovation and a curiosity for life-long learning through employee empowerment. Starting out small, they now boast seven incredible sites. Each location displaying large all-glass tunnels positioned in high volume areas.
Wilcher is one of a group of high-performing carwash professionals chosen to help build and teach tunnel courses at the College of Clean. “I’ve been at Breeze Thru since the beginning and we can benefit from this training—especially now that we have grown to this level,” says Alma. For Breeze Thru, the program has made a sustainable difference to the business, its employees, and especially to Alma. Creating the courses allowed him to focus on the primary training needs of managers at Breeze Thru which has elevated their performance. “Teaching others provides me with a different perspective of what we do every day. You start to see how maintenance, troubleshooting and many other skills that we learn in this business are applicable to other areas of life,” says Wilcher. In fact, Breeze Thru has now put several of its managers through these courses.
A Model Carwash for NCS Partnership
Breeze Thru has greatly improved and enhanced the level of preventative maintenance and equipment performance optimization techniques since Alma’s work with the COC training program. The business has also seen great improvements in troubleshooting since requiring manager training in tunnel equipment maintenance and repair.
The continued progression of the Breeze Thru Carwash and its employees perfectly sums up NCS’s value proposition and vision for the College of Clean training program—to provide carwash owners and operators with the tools they need to improve their businesses.
When asked about his role as a carwash professional and trainer, Alma sees it as destiny. “There are a couple of things that I never would have guessed. The first is that I started in the car washing industry working a summer job in high school and have built a challenging and satisfying career throughout the years. The other is being chosen to be a trainer for the College of Clean which I have really enjoyed. These are two amazing turns of fate!”