Appointment Reminders for Mechanics and Auto Body Shops

As a mechanic, auto shop, or owner of a repair business, getting clients to bring their cars in for service and pick them up in a timely fashion is important to the flow of your business. In this post, we will look at a few ways that appointment reminders can streamline your business, improve customer service, and build customer relationships.

Different Forms of Communication for Auto Repair Shops

Most auto repair shops handle different forms of maintenance, so it is important that they communicate effectively with customers to run most efficiently. Streamlined communication helps customers and employees alike.

Appointment reminders
Depending on the type of service, clients may book appointments days, weeks, or even months in advance. These appointments are sometimes forgotten about as time passes. Sending an appointment reminder message helps customers remember their appointment time and ensure that they show. 

Maintenance due reminders
Even with the tag on their windshield, many customers forget to bring their cars in when they are due for routine maintenance and oil changes. A friendly text or email reminder jogs their memory and also helps to ensure that they come to your business for the service instead of going to a competitor.

Time to pick up their car
Sending text messages instead of a phone call is an easy and efficient way to let customers know that their car is ready for pickup. Most people rely on text messages as an efficient method of communication. They are easy to read and respond to during meetings, and they are unintrusive. More and more people (especially younger consumers) are screening their phone calls and completely ignoring their voicemail. Sending a text message versus making phone calls is also much quicker for your staff. 

Promotions
Your shop may offer promotions, or may pass on promotions or marketing efforts from vendors to the clients.

Reviews
Gathering positive Google reviews is incredibly important when building and maintaining a business. It can be hard to get clients to leave a review, so sending a review reminder message with a direct link can make this process easier for your customers and increase the likelihood that they leave a review. If you have an internal survey that you like to send to clients, a reminder message is also an excellent way to accomplish this.

How Much Do No Shows Cost?

No shows hurt your bottom line for a variety of reasons:

Unfilled Appointment Slots
If a client no shows or if you have last minute cancellations, those slots could have been filled by another client. Across the board, no show rates average around 15%.

Angry Customers
The customer that no-showed will likely come back and expect you to squeeze them in. If no appointments are available they will likely become frustrated with you, even though it was their fault they missed the appointment.

Other customers who do show up for their appointments can become frustrated with your shop if the schedule is unreliable and unpredictable because you are trying to accommodate late shows or squeeze in another customer who previously missed their appointment.

Frustrated Employees
Your employees want to make money and do their job well, but they can't do either of those things if customers no-show or cancel at the last minute.

How Reminderly's Appointment Reminders Help

Sending appointment reminders reduces no show rates by 90%. With Reminderly, we offer three effective ways to send appointment reminders, including text messages, email reminders, and phone reminders. Sending automated appointment reminders is easy and takes the guesswork, as well as human error, out of the equation.

Two-Way Communication enables you to message your customers directly and communicate in real-time. You can use this feature to message a client that their car is ready for pickup or to get their approval before completing additional work. This feature functions like SMS text messages.

Automated reminders can be set up in advance so that our app will message a customer "x" days after their last routine maintenance. This may be a reminder every 4 months for an oil change or once a year for their annual inspection. For certain customers, this may even be a useful way to remind them to switch their snow tires for their normal tires.

Group communication is an easy option for sending large and universal messages to your customers. This may be a promotion, information about a schedule change, or updating your company's address. Group communication automatically BCC's each recipient so no one can see who else is on the group message.

Google and Yelp reviews are incredibly important when building a business. You can automatically send a message to clients after their visit with a direct link to your Google Business Review or Yelp page so that they can easily leave feedback.

Surveys completed internally can really help improve your business without tarnishing your online presence. At Reminderly, you have the option to automatically send a survey to each client within 24 hours of their appointment, asking them how likely they are to recommend your business, on a scale of 0-10, and why (this is also known as Net Promoter Score or NPS surveys). We gather this information and analyze it for you.

Wait Lists can be incredibly useful for filling canceled appointments. If your business runs a tight schedule, it may be hard for customers to get in. Reminderly's software has a "Wait List" feature that allows you to easily let customers know when an appointment is available so that they can come in sooner. Customers love it because they get seen faster, and it ensures that you never have open slots due to late cancellations.  

How to Customize an Appointment Reminder

At Reminderly, we offer full customization so that your clients can receive personalized messages without the time and energy on your part. You can create or utilize existing SMS templates to automatically include the customer name, appointment date, and any additional friendly reminder details such as the location of a key drop.

Customer Service: Using appointment reminder software does not need to be hard. At Reminderly, each client is assigned a customer service specialist that you can contact at any time with questions. This might be with help crafting the perfect message, or assistance using our web platform. There is no lengthy wait time to speak to a customer service rep, we are here to help!