What should you ask a customer before tuning a file?

Most rework in a file service does not come from bad tuning. It comes from something nobody asked. The turbo that was changed, the customer who wanted economy, the file that was already modified. A short list of questions, asked every time, removes most of it.

What do you need to know about the car?

• Make, model, engine and year, or better still, the read itself, because the file often says.
• Gearbox type. Torque limits and shift behaviour depend on it.
• Vehicle type. A van at work and a weekend car want different things, and a truck or tractor is priced differently.
• The registration or VIN, so the job can be found again.

What do you need to know about the read?

• Which tool, and whether it is a slave and whose.
• How it was read: OBD, bench or boot. See what each method means.
• Is this the original file? A file that has already been tuned elsewhere is the most common cause of a wasted hour. Ask, and check.

What about the hardware?

Ask what has changed from standard: turbo, injectors, intercooler, exhaust. Ask too whether anything is worn or giving trouble. Tuning a car with a fault doesn't fix the fault, it only moves the argument to you. Any fault codes should be mentioned before you start, and your portal can explain each code where it appears, for you and for the customer.

The file that was already modified is the most expensive question you forgot to ask.

What do they actually want?

Stage 1 is not a complete answer. Do they want more power, better towing, smoother driving, or better economy? Is there an extra they want on the same job? Tell them plainly what the work will and will not feel like, because most complaints start with an expectation nobody set.

How do you ask all this without a phone call?

On one page. A good order page fills in what the file says and asks for the rest, with the tool, the work and the extras together, and shows your price for that ECU and vehicle type before they pay. Anything still unclear goes in the conversation on the job, where it stays with the file.

The aim is simple: your tuner opens a job and has everything needed to start. No thread to scroll through, and no call to return.

What should you do with the answers?

Keep them with the job. When the customer comes back in six months, or a different tuner takes the correction, the answers are still there. That is the difference between a business and a person's memory.