SMS for garages — "your car is ready"
The classic garage day: you call a customer to say the car is ready, they do not pick up, you call again later. Meanwhile the car occupies your premises and the invoice stays unpaid. One text message replaces three call attempts and is read within minutes.
The same goes for maintenance or vehicle inspection reminders: customers postpone them until someone reminds them. A message at the right moment fills your schedule without anyone having to hang on the phone.
Where does it go wrong today?
Customers who do not pick up
Every call attempt costs time and often yields nothing. A text message always arrives and the customer responds when it suits them.
Cars left standing
A ready notification that does not get through means an occupied spot and an outstanding invoice.
An empty schedule after the peak
Maintenance and inspections get postponed until someone brings them up. A timely reminder fills your calendar.
This is what it looks like in practice
The examples below are illustrations. The parts between percentage signs are tags: you fill them in from an Excel list or through the API, so that every recipient gets their own version.
Your car %plate% is ready. You can pick it up until 6pm. Garage %name%.
Reminder: your maintenance is scheduled for %date% at %time%. Please bring the service booklet.
Your car %plate% needs additional work (%amount%). Reply YES to approve.
The inspection of %plate% expires on %date%. Call us for an appointment or reply with a preference.
Time to switch. Book your tyre change via %link% — from next week our schedule fills up.
How do you send customer notifications from a garage?
Prepare your standard texts
Save the notifications you send every day as a template, with tags for the licence plate and the amount.
Choose how you send
One customer at a time via the dashboard, or a daily list from your garage software via an Excel import.
Let customers reply
Send from a virtual number so an approval for additional work or an appointment preference reaches you.
What you use for this
Message templates
The notifications you send every day, written once and always correct.
Replies per customer
The back-and-forth about a car as one continuous conversation.
Appointment reminders
Fewer no-shows in the workshop schedule.
From your garage software
Export the day's customers and send personalised messages.
Good to know
A ready notification or a request for approval is operational: it belongs to the job the customer commissioned. A tyre-change campaign or a promotion is not — for that you need the customer's prior consent.
At SMSBOX you pay per message sent, from €0.06 per SMS to Belgium (excl. VAT). No subscription, no setup costs: a month without any sending costs you nothing. All processing takes place on Belgian servers, within the GDPR.
