Essex Auto Group has doubled its workshop video output in just four months after switching to CitNOW’s Workshop platform.

The group re-focused its aftersales departments’ teams on recording videos to evidence required work or report a clean bill of health after a full check.

How does video help Workshops?

Following the news that a new car’s MOT will remain at three years, workshops using video to handle and convert work identified from the steady stream of customer vehicles arriving at garage ramps.

Once the customer’s vehicle is in the workshop, video provides a transparent and highly visual way of evidencing work required, communicating required work quickly and conveniently.

This enables customers to make informed decisions about their vehicle and approve work online. Meanwhile, for motorists whose vehicles require no work, customer satisfaction is boosted through an ‘all clear’ video that runs through the checks that have been carried out and how the assessment was made. In 2017, 140,000 aftersales customers rated their CitNOW videos with an average 4.65 out of 5.

Video is also proven to increase workshop turnover, with identified red/amber work more likely to be approved when a video is included as part of the service or MOT.

How CitNOW Workshop helped increase video output

CitNOW Workshop is designed to help garages communicate the results of routine service work, MOTs, repairs and health checks to customers. In place across all sites of the Essex Auto Group, as well of its parent company, the Allen Ford Group, engagement with video has been reinvigorated by CitNOW Workshop’s ease-of-use as well as market-leading training, provided through eLearning in the CitNOW Dashboard, and Masterclass seminars hosted by CitNOW’s Academy. Insightful reporting and customer feedback tools also helped Essex Auto Group’s managerial team monitor video output and quality to ensure expectations and standards were met.

Brett Robins, group general manager at Essex Auto Group said: “The ongoing challenge for all workshops is maintaining customer communication. With CitNOW, customer transparency is easy to achieve as the platform allows us to send high-quality videos reliably. This puts our customers at ease and helps us to offer more value for money by visually demonstrating what work is needed.’’