Autowork Online features a customer reminders facility, this allows you to notify customers when their MOT or service is due, and remind them of any work that they had previously deferred. This boosts profits by encouraging repeat business, and minimising lost sales.
MOT and service reminders can be set from the main point of sale screen, as you are creating the customer’s job, and deferred work reminders are created automatically when work has is deferred (see the following video for more information on deferred work: https://www.youtube.com/edit?o=U&video_id=EOsC-iQkU6c).
The reminders reporting feature can be used to view a list of currently outstanding reminders (sorted by reminder type (i.e. MOT reminders), and date range). reminders can then be sent out via SMS or email, automatically using the contact details held on file.
Today we’re going to be looking at how the customer reminders feature can be used in Autowork Online.
Firstly, click the reports tab, and then customer relationship management. Select the reminders option in the dropdown menu at the top. There’s also a new option for deferred work, which we’ll cover in a later video.
You can select a start and end date for the report, we’re going to select the next two calendar months.
When you click the display button, a list of customers with reminders that fall within that date range will show below.
You can select a contact method from the dropdown menu, including SMS, email or phone, we’re going to use SMS today.
The message dropdown menu allows you to select from a range of preset messages to send, we’re going to use the MOT due message.
There are various placeholders in the message including title and surname, these will automatically be replaced with data from the customer database.
As you can see on the grid below, some customers already have a checkmark against them, this means that a reminder has already been sent to this customer. We’re going to send this first customer their reminder, so we’ll check the box and then click the send button.
