TechMan points out two big wins with automated ‘reminders’

TechMan, the garage management system built by an independent garage, acknowledges that streamlining customer reminder processes may not be the most exciting job for most garages but they argue it can be one of the most profitable. The TechMan management system is designed to make it simple to quickly automate the customer ‘reminder’ systems that drive in repeat business.

“Firstly, we save staff time and production cost,” said Leo Freebairn, TechMan’s national sales manager. “Sending a couple of hundred printed reminders by post and following up by phone will typically be costing a garage £300 or £400 a month.”

TechMan believe all the associated costs like printing, stationary, postage, phone bills and staff time are often just absorbed within ‘general business overheads’  and therefore all too easily get overlooked.

“We can build a digital process based on texts and emails that performs at least as well as the old paper-based way, but is fully automated at a fraction of the cost per customer reminder,” said Leo.

Whilst promising to cut costs from £300 or £400 to £20 per month typically gets attention, the benefits don’t end there according to TechMan.

“MOT and service due dates are the absolute key times for communicating with customers,” said Freebairn. “But we’re finding big problems with data accuracy that are really undermining customers’ success.”

Since launching their MOT data-cleanse services in November last year, TechMan has found over 40 per cent of the customer records analysed had the wrong the MOT date, an expired date or none at all. TechMan’s data cleaning service can identify changes of keeper too, removing another key hurdle around retaining customers.

“It’s about using time most productively,” said Freebairn. “Instead of contacting the customer at the wrong time, about the wrong vehicle and then having to manually update records, we can instead ensure the available time gets spent on taking customer bookings because all that admin overload has been minimised.”

TechMan say ‘lack of time’ is the most commonly given reason for not contacting customers around service due or MOT renewal dates, so getting efficient unsurprisingly delivers strong results.

“That customer that’s producing two hundred reminders a month is aiming for 2,400 customers a year,” said Freebairn. “At £45 per MOT and £100 for a service, there’s £348,000 of regular business potentially.”

TechMan recently cleansed 1,400 records for an existing customer and within 3 months they’d sold 113 extra MOTs with total invoice values of £13,000 and an estimated £8,300 profit using TechMan’s reminder service.