Hello, members

Is your car wash's no-cost, customer retention tool sitting in the palm of your hand?

I'm a member at Sgt Clean Car Wash. It's a great operation - clean and well-maintained. I've washed at five of their 16 locations. As with most automated tunnel operations, there are only a few employees on site, but those individuals play a significant role in keeping me coming back. They wave.

Yes. It's that simple.

The first wave comes from the worker watching the gates in case a non-member rolls up and needs some help (which is also a great way to convert single washers into members). Once you're through the gates, there's another attendant to guide you onto the conveyor. When your vehicle is correctly aligned and in neutral, they start walking back towards the mouth of the tunnel, but not before you get a second, aggressively friendly wave.

I had my daughter in the car, and she asked if I knew the guy waving at me. I told her no, but it did feel that way. The BBC's Science Focus says, "Waving back is a sort of ‘affiliative behaviour’, something that promotes bonding between members of a group." It can boost happiness and make us feel more connected, which is precisely how you want your members to feel about your car wash. Plus, beyond some coaching, there's no cost to implement this at your washes.

If you need some tips to get started, look no further than the Royal Family. They do a LOT of waving, so much so that King Edward VIII saw a doctor about his aching wrist following public engagements. According to Cosmopolitan, today's Royal Wave is "a much slower, more controlled movement, which could help prevent wrist aches and pains." So you probably want your staff to be somewhere between King Edward and this: