Increasing Customer Retention With Service Text Message Reminders

Dealer management system and car dealer website provider Dragon2000 examines the effectiveness of sending SMS text message reminders direct to customers’ mobile phones, and how this can benefit your garage or workshop business.

Keeping in contact with your service customers is essential to improving retention at your workshop or garage operation, however with phone calls not guaranteeing an answer and emails often being missed in a customer’s growing inbox or sent straight to the junk folder, aftersales and service managers are finding more success with automated text messages.

Regular maintenance schedules for vehicles provide garages with the opportunity to contact customers on an annual basis with essential information regarding their vehicle, which is why it’s so important to ensure your message reaches its target. The straightforward approach of a text message, compared to time-consuming phone calls and emails, means your customer is more likely to both see and read this information instantly and they can now make the decision to book their vehicle into your workshop.

The ability to send text messages in bulk for service and MOT reminders will save you time from manually checking upcoming MOT and service dates for your customers and allow you to instead focus on running the workshop while future bookings are quite literally taking care of themselves.

Once your customer has responded and booked their vehicle in for a service, automatically sending a booking confirmation text message to their mobile phone will provide them with an instant digital copy of the arranged date and time, which means they don’t have to manually record details of the appointment and you can be assured they know exactly when to bring the vehicle in.

Each day, text messages should be sent out to all customers booked in the following day to remind them of their upcoming visit, as this will further reduce the possibility of them forgetting the appointment, reducing no-shows and allowing your garage to maintain the productivity of technicians set to work on their vehicle.

The DragonDMS dealer management system has the ability to send these text messages to your customers, using MOT and service information which is recorded when a new vehicle is first entered into your database. If a customer doesn’t respond to your message, they will be flagged in your system so that you can consider either re-sending the text or you can instead take the time to give them a quick phone call about their vehicle’s upcoming requirements.

Dragon2000 have been helping dealers and garages drive their businesses forward since 1995. Talk to our team today on 01327 222 333 or email us at sales@dragon2000.co.uk to find out how our dealer management system, car dealer websites and mobile apps can help your business increase profits and reduce costs.