An Honest Guide to Ceramic Coating Paint Protection

You’ve just bought a new car and you’re considering having a ceramic coating applied.

Well, you need to read this before you go any further.

In this guide we will give you all the information you need about ceramic coating and hopefully, allay some myths that you may have heard.

I’m sure you have seen promotional videos where water and mud are thrown over a car’s bonnet. The liquid immediately beads off the surface and you probably found it extremely therapeutic. In some other videos, you find clips where the detailer is seen scratching the car’s surface with a sharp object.

Could this all be true?

A ceramic coating becomes a layer of protection over your car’s paintwork. The main active ingredient found in ceramic coating is Silica Dioxide (SiO2). After application, this viscous liquid crystallises and forms a hardened shell over the clear coat layer of the car’s paint. The coating bonds on a molecular level with the clear coat, filling up small microscopic holes in the paint. This increases water contact angle with the surface, thereby creating beading, better known as the hydrophobic effect. Due to the active ingredients in silica dioxide based ceramic coating, the resulting layer is UV and chemical resistant. This means for example, those unsightly bird droppings, that are acidic, are less likely to etch onto the surface, making it easier to clean off.

The benefits of having a ceramic coating applied include;

• Improved paint optical clarity
• Prevention of paint oxidisation and discolouring
• UV protection
• Gloss enhancer
• Protection against watermarks and etchings
• Increased hydrophobicity

You’ve been told a ceramic coating will prevent scratches, swirl marks, and stone chips.

The scratch-resistance nature of a ceramic coating is constantly exaggerated in many ways.

Your ceramic coating will deflect some minor scratches that occur in the lifetime of your car’s ownership, however, it is not possible to completely resist the damage from a stone chip or scratch from a key or even a plastic box. Improper car washing techniques will continue to cause swirl marks on your car’s surface. A ceramic coating does not substitute products that can prevent serious scratches or stone chips.

Most ceramic coating formulations are rated 9H on the pencil test scale. If you understand this test, 9H rating is the highest possible grade available. However, it does not mean it is impenetrable. Most ceramic coatings for cars are simply not flexible enough to deflect the impact of a stone hitting your paint at high speed or to resist against someone scratching your car on purpose.

If you are searching for paint protection to prevent this sort of damage, then you need to look towards having a Paint Protection Film applied, something we can do for you. We have various options available, please check out our website.

You’ve been told you won’t have to wash your car again.

Certainly a ceramic coating will help to keep your car looking like new.

However, it does not mean that you don’t need to put in the work to maintain your car the right way. Ceramic coatings are low maintenance, they aren’t no maintenance.

Wash your car regularly. Not every day. Just once a week is good enough.

Use a pH neutral shampoo without wax or other additives to ensure a clean coating surface. The benefit of a coating is such that it makes your washing regime faster, easier and less labour intensive. It also takes away the need to wax your car every month and thus, reduces the amount of money spent in the long run. Proper maintenance will extend the life of your ceramic coating.

We highly recommend that after each wash you use a ceramic detailer spray to maintain and increase hydrophobic properties of your ceramic coating. We stock suitable products which have been tried and tested, we know they work.

Car coatings are permanent. Really?

Nano ceramic coatings are considered semi-permanent, as it forms a molecular bond with the car’s paintwork and crystallises into a hard and glossy sacrificial layer. The good news is you won’t need to re-apply the coating every few months to achieve that glossy, wet appearance to your car’s paintwork. For good quality coatings, the life span can range from 1 to 5 years. However, there is a definite life span to all coatings and re-application will be required after a certain time. Nothing lasts forever.

Ceramic coatings can be applied very quickly. You take too long to do it.

With more DIY kits in the market, ceramic coatings are becoming easier and faster to apply. However, to ensure that a job is done correctly, we do have some procedures that are required before we can lay down that layer of coating on your car’s paintwork. We can’t emphasise enough how important this process is, it is vital, and will be the determinant factor in how good your ceramic coating looks. If this isn’t carried out, then it’s no different to sticking “lipstick on a pig”.

Before application, the paint surface has to be free of blemishes, this rule applies to even brand new vehicles. The process that we carry out before each application is called paint correction. Depending on the condition of your car’s paintwork, our paint correction packages range from 1 pass for brand new cars, all the way up to 4 stages for cars that might not have received any care in the last 10 years.

As the ceramic coating bonds semi-permanently, it will add a layer over your car’s paintwork. Therefore, it is imperative to restore the paintwork and increase physical gloss levels before any form of application.

Ceramic coatings are glossier and shinier than sealants and wax.

This is not necessarily true. Nano ceramic coating for cars do not increase physical gloss or add too much artificial gloss to the paintwork, the gloss enhancement comes from the prep work that is done to the paint surface. If you have faded paint or a badly scratched surface, applying any type of coating to your car will not cover the blemish. It might make it more obvious in some cases.

The same theory applies to holograms and swirl marks, these unsightly imperfections will be “locked” under the coating and can become more obvious once the coating is applied. Besides, due to surface irregularities, the coating cannot form a good bond with the paint surface and bubbling or de-lamination can occur over time. Therefore, as a friend and fellow consumer, I urge you to choose carefully and find a detailer who has the experience and knowledge about coatings before you hand your hard earned money over.

Sprinter Signs Auto Styling.

Maximising the impact of your Signs & Graphics

Customer Service Programmes – Finding A Balance

                                                           

                                       

              Customer Service Programmes – Finding a balance.

                                

Who benefits most from the majority of customer service programmes 

• New customers?
• Existing customers?
• The company itself?
• All of the above equally?

I think it’s probably fair to say that it’s rare to find customer service programmes that benefit all of the above equally — or that truly benefit existing customers.

In challenging economic times particularly, it certainly pays to keep customers coming back. Existing customers are the natural source for good word-of-mouth and referrals. 

Getting & Giving

Many customer service programmes are aimed at companies;

getting ideas for new product sales,

getting new customers,

getting help for the sales force to convince prospects,

getting excitement about the brand,

getting revenue.

With all this getting by companies, shouldn’t we be looking at these customer service programmes for how much giving they provide to customers?

Are the benefits to customers:

• Long-term, from the customer’s point of view?
• Reflective of the value they bring to the company, from the customer’s perspective?
• Applicable only if the customer spends more money to buy the next product — or can customers reap improved experiences with the product they’ve already invested in?

Even with economic pressures, buyers switch suppliers mostly because of disappointment or annoyance, and much less often due to a more attractive offer. What’s needed to improve customers’ experience overall (and likewise improve your company’s experience), is more attention to preventing hassles.

An Economic Customer Experience Strategy
While a focus on attracting and converting new customers is obviously tied to revenue, it doesn’t guarantee higher profit or sustained market share. One of the great things customer experience management does in preventing customer hassles is it also results in lower waste inside a company, and hence lower costs and higher profitability — and greater ability to pass along savings to both new and existing customers.

At Sprinter Signs we don’t always get it right, we’re human after all,  but we do have a well defined customer experience strategy that is customer focused, systematic, and preventive of a negative experience which:

• Encourages thinking from the customer’s viewpoint and of the processes that will improve their experience
• Demands a much broader view of what the customer experience is
• Values existing customers as much as new customers
• Keeps customers returning by managing expectations — not by removing choice
• Increases brand equity by strengthening our brand promise
• Differentiates our brand in ways that are hard to copy
• Helps us to avoid competing on price
• Enables great strides to be made on a low budget.

Through true customer focus, we try to  balance giving and getting and improve both bottom-line and top-line results by naturally keeping customers happily giving great word-of-mouth, referrals, and a share of their spend.

It’s not easy for any of us but, how have you overcome the temptation to focus on getting, in order to ensure your programmes are giving value to customers?

I would welcome your comments and would love to know how your strategies have improved your customers’ experience.

@thesignsprinter

Sprinter Signs

Tel: 01670 528425

info@sprintersigns.co.uk

SIGNS – HOW? WHAT? WHERE?

                                                        

Choosing signs can be a confusing task. Will the end result be as you imagined. It can be difficult to work out what kind of signage you will need. We want to give you a helping hand because having a clear strategy from the beginning makes it all so much easier.

Here’s our abbreviated guide to a signing strategy.

Signing Strategy

Signing is an essential element in a building’s effectiveness. Poor signing is consistently mentioned in the ‘top ten’ complaints by building users,  getting it right is not something that can be left to chance. There are clear issues to address and accepted principles and methods for successfully signing a building.

Perhaps the most important of these is to have a clear and consistent signing strategy. This means taking an overall view of the building and identifying a family of sign types that, together, address all the signing requirements of the building. Each sign in the family should work in isolation. They should also work seamlessly together. The signs should work in relay, the building user being passed from sign to sign until they reach their final destination.

To develop a signing strategy we need to consider 6 key questions;

1. What are your communication objectives?
Information conveyed by signs goes well beyond literal statements of fact…

2. Who are the signs for?
Signs have different audiences, all of whom require different sorts of information from signs…

3. What is the function of each sign?
A signing strategy will include a ‘family’ of sign types, each of which will have a specific role to play…

4. What are the messages?
Communication in signing is usually made up from; text, maps and pictograms and logos…

5. Where to locate signs?
Positioning signs should be carefully considered…

6. What should signs look like?
There are ‘good practice’ guidelines for how signs should look…

Conclusions
Considering the information above will help you to decide what different type of signs you will require and how they relate to each other, what they say, what they look like and how they are to be made and where they will be located.  Using the sign strategy you would have answered the How? What? And Where?

If you would like to receive the full version which expands on the methods you can use to develop this strategy please  email info@sprintersigns.co.uk  with the subject heading “Sign Strategy” and a full report will be sent to you free of charge with no further obligation from you.