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How to send out WOF and Service reminders

Diary looking a bit empty? Get your customers to come back with reminders in 2 easy steps.

• Create/edit different types of followups
• Sending Followups

Create/edit different types of followups

The "Followup Code" tells you what kind of follow-up it is - so creating/editing these can help you set different rules for different types of follow-ups. Let's jump in and have a look - click the dropdown arrow beside your company name (top left) and select Setup:

Now click Followup Codes in the Maintenance menu

This will display a list of existing followups types (we've added some default ones like SERVICE). Any existing follow-up codes can be edited by double-clicking them in the list.

To create a new Followup type, click the Add icon in the top-right corner  

• Keycode - A single-word name to uniquely identify this follow-up type.
• Name - A more descriptive name e.g. "Automatic Trans Flush" or "Tyre Rotation".
• Automatically Add - This sets when the reminder will be activated; for example, you would likely add 6 months (to the current date) for a service follow-up.

Sending Followups

Sending Followups on a regular basis is a proven way of generating repeat business and improving customer loyalty and satisfaction. The first step is to go to Reports > Marketing Reports > Vehicle Followup Report.

From here, you'll see the Vehicle Followup Report screen. You can filter the list by date, find specific ones using the Search field, or Sort Order to focus on what you care about.

Tolerance - there is also a tolerance filter available beside the date range fields. This is used for the reading (not date) based follow-ups (for Fleet items). 

For example, a vehicle has a follow-up with a due reading of 25,000kms and has a current vehicle reading loaded as 24,000kms. If a tolerance of 1,000 was added to the report, then this item would display, anything less and it wouldn’t. (item reading 24,000+ Tolerance 1,000 = Follow-up reading 25,000)
 

Warning: Only use follow-up readings when you are actively updating the vehicle recordings once a week or month. In all other cases, a date driven follow-up is more accurate.

Select the follow-ups you want by clicking the tick box in the Tagged column, OR use the Tag button at the bottom of the screen to automatically select multiple vehicle follow-ups.

• All - yep, that means everything on the list.
• Email - only remind customers with a valid email address.
• SMS - only remind customers with a mobile number.
• Method - these options select customers based on their preferred communication method, which is set up against each customer in the Maintain Customer screen.
• Sent - this selects reminders that the system has marked as having been sent to the customer previously, so you can follow up again in case they missed your email.

Once you have tagged the reminders you want to send, you have the following options on the bottom right of the screen.

• Excel Export - This is just in case you want to use this data elsewhere.
• Print - This gives you a report with customer and vehicle details (including follow-up due date), contact details, and recent work undertaken on the vehicle.
• SMS - This will display the list of selected followup able to receive SMS messages, and shows a preview of the message, with an option box to select an SMS Template so you don't have to type everything out again every time.

• Email - This displays a list of customers with an email. At the bottom left of the screen, you have an option to choose the appropriate Template message to be sent. When ready, simply click Send on the bottom right.
• Letter - The letter format downloads a list of reminders, one page per reminder. These can be printed and sent through the mail. Useful for customers that don't want email or SMS reminders.