The latest changes have been rolled out to CustomerVue, our franchised workshop management system. We know that in a busy workshop environment, keeping customers updated is hugely important, so in this release we've made some usability improvements to the great customer communication tools already in the system as well as some changes to VHC which will further increase the efficiency of your service team.

A more focussed inbox

Inbox is a key part of how busy technicians, parts staff and service advisors communicate both with each other and with customers. We’ve made some simple usability improvements that make it much easier to see when messages arrived and who they're from. From today, the most important messages are easier to find and easier to respond to, making your aftersales team more efficient.

Easier to see customer messages

It’s now easy to see, at-a-glance, which messages have come from customers as they're highlighted grey to distinguish them from internal messages. This makes it easier to engage with your customers and not miss one of their all-important messages. 

Easier to reply to customers

We've made it even easier to reply to customers via CustomerLounge straight from your inbox, and in the same way that you already reply to internal messages. CustomerLounge is now more flexible too with no need to have a customer mobile number and email address, meaning you can engage with more of them directly from inbox.

Better inbox timestamping

We know that your focus is generally going to be on today’s jobs in the workshop… so we’ve simplified how today’s messages are timestamped in the Inbox. We’ve removed the date from today's messages so that it’s easier to see the time they came in – this helps you be more efficient and focused on your priorities today.

Powered up VHC

This week we've made some great usability improvements to VHC by making it easier to access and print your reports faster, and giving greater control of how parts line items get added in.

Print VHC reports from advisor page

For service advisors, being able to generate and print VHC reports is a frequent and important part of how they engage with customers about their vehicles. We've made it much easier for them by adding the ability to print customer VHC reports directly from the advisor tab of the VHC page, removing the need to go back out to the VHC Overview page.

Improvements when adding and saving parts

We've improved the process of adding part line items in the Parts tab of the VHC now, so  that when you use the '+' button to add a new part to a repair line, any already-added parts data is automatically saved. So you can now be confident that when adding any new parts to a VHC that you won't lose any data.

Want all the knowledge? Here are the full CustomerVue release details in all their glory.

Release v2.5 B

• 5 New features
• 5 Bug fixes

New Features: 

VHC:

• VHC reports can now be printed from VHC page
• Using the '+' button to add a new part to a repair line now updates all existing parts for that repair line

Messaging and Inbox: 

• It is now more obvious that a message in the Inbox has come from CustomerLounge
• Improved UI when using the Inbox to initiate a reply to a consumer via CustomerLounge
• The Inbox message date/timestamp is now more user-friendly

Bug fixes:

• Fixed an issue with CustomerVue group reporting for VHC and consumer engagement
• Resolved an intermittent issue where the SMS part of an 'SMS/chat message' from CustomerVue to CustomerLounge didn’t arrive
• Improved the stability of the CustomerVue > CustomerLounge integration
• Fixed an issue whereby a CustomerLounge SMS invite wasn’t being sent if a consumer email address was not present
• Fixed an issue where a VHC repair classified as green on VHC Technician page was being changed to amber when updated on the VHC Advisor page