Vehicle health check software

What a health check actually is

It is a fixed list of items checked in a fixed order, recorded with a status and a note, every time, on every car. The fixed part is what makes it worth doing. A technician having a look round is a favour, and the findings vary with how busy the day is. A template is a process, and the findings stay comparable from one visit to the next.

Most garages run two or three templates rather than one. A service check, a longer annual or seasonal check and a short pre MOT look are different jobs, and forcing a forty item list onto a half hour oil service means the list gets ticked rather than performed.

The check is separate from the MOT. An MOT records a pass or a fail against a legal standard on that day. A health check records condition and the direction it is heading in, which is the information a customer needs to plan and budget rather than to react.

Red, amber and green mean nothing without evidence

The traffic light system works because it is instantly readable. Red is needs attention now, amber is monitor or plan for it, green is fine. A customer who understands nothing about brakes understands three colours.

The trouble is that the colours are a judgement, and a customer who has had one garage call everything red is right to be sceptical of the next one. Evidence is what closes that gap. A photograph of the pad against the disc, or ten seconds of video of a split boot with the wheel turned, converts a claim into a fact.

Record a measurement where a measurement exists. Pad thickness in millimetres, tread depth across the tyre, brake fluid moisture content. A number moves the conversation from whether you are right to what it should be replaced at, and it gives the next visit something to compare against.

Be disciplined about amber. Amber is the category that earns the long term work and it is also the category that gets abused. If everything is amber, the customer learns to ignore the colour and you have lost the tool.

How a check becomes approved work

The sequence that works is short. The technician completes the check on the ramp, the priced items go to the customer as a quote with the photographs attached, the customer approves the lines they want on their phone and the approved work lands back on the job card. Nobody has made a phone call.

The reason it converts better is not persuasion, it is timing and proof. The customer is looking at the evidence at a moment that suits them rather than being asked to decide in thirty seconds while somebody waits on the line, and they can approve two items out of four without feeling they have had an argument.

Let them decline. A check that gives the customer a choice of lines, with the reds separated from the ambers, gets more approvals in total than a single figure that is accepted or refused. A declined amber is not a loss either, because it stays on the vehicle record and it is the first thing you raise at the next service.

Get the approval timestamped. What was offered, what was declined and when is the record that settles a dispute if the item that was declined subsequently fails.

Video, and when it is worth the effort

A short video is the most persuasive thing a workshop can send, and it is also the slowest to produce. Thirty seconds, one fault, the technician narrating what is being pointed at, is the format that works. Three minutes of a walk round the whole car does not get watched.

It suits the items that are hard to photograph and easy to demonstrate. Play in a suspension joint, an exhaust blow, a noise, a leak that only appears with the engine running. For a worn pad or a corroded disc, a still photograph does the job in a fraction of the time.

The practical constraints are the ones garages underestimate. Workshop noise, the lighting under a ramp, a technician who hates being recorded and the file size of a video going to a customer on a weak signal. Try it with the phone your technicians actually carry before you build a process around it.

The way it goes wrong

The first failure is the check that nobody performs. If a technician can mark forty items green in eight seconds, somebody eventually will, usually on the day the workshop is drowning. Requiring a photograph on any item marked red or amber makes the check cost something to falsify.

The second is selling on fear. A health check is a genuinely good thing for a customer and it stops being one the moment it is used to manufacture work. A garage that reds an item that has months left in it wins one job and loses a customer who eventually gets a second opinion.

The third is the check that goes nowhere. Plenty of garages perform a thorough inspection, note four advisories on a sheet and hand it over with the keys. Unless those advisories are priced, sent and recorded, the work is done and the value is left on the forecourt.

Youzse ships vehicle health checks with EVHC templates, per item status, photographs on the item and online quote approval with photos, so an advisory can be priced and sent without leaving the job. Garage plans start at £59 a month, with a 30 day free trial and no card required.