GarageDoorBossPro Blog — Tune-Ups & Maintenance Plans

Tune-Up Reminder Texts and Emails That Get the Garage Door Opened on Time

A tune-up tech who pulls up to a closed garage with nobody home has two choices: wait, or skip and come back. Neither is good for the route. Most of those wasted stops have the same cause. The customer forgot the visit was today. A few well-timed reminders fix that.

Reminders Protect the Charge Too

Charging the card on file is covered in Auto-Charging Garage Door Tune-Up Plans on Completion or on a Schedule. A reminder before the visit does double duty. It gets the garage ready, and it means the charge that follows is never a surprise.

GarageDoorBossPro sends automated reminders and alerts by text and email. For a plan customer, that means they hear from you before the visit, as the tech gets close, and when the tech arrives, all without anyone in the office sending a message by hand.

The Alerts Customers Choose

Customers pick their own alert preferences in the customer app. There are three:

• Night before. “Your garage door tune-up is tomorrow.” Time to make sure someone can open the garage, or to move the car out of the bay.
• When they're next. The tech has finished the stop before theirs and is heading over.
• When the tech arrives. The van is in the driveway.

Some customers want all three. Some only want the night before. Letting them choose keeps the messages welcome instead of annoying.

Automatic on-the-way and arrived texts go out from the tech app as the tech works the route, so the timing follows what is really happening on the road, not a guess made that morning.

What a Good Reminder Says

Tune-up reminders work best when they are short and answer the questions the customer will have:

• What is happening: your yearly garage door tune-up.
• When: tomorrow, or the tech is on the way.
• What to do: make sure the garage is accessible, and let us know about any gate code or pet.
• How to reply: just answer the text.

Skip the long paragraphs. A text that fits on one screen gets read. Also watch your characters. Plain punctuation keeps texts short, and short texts use less of your monthly allowance.

Two-Way Texting for the Replies

Reminders invite replies. “Can you come after 2?” “The side door will be open, garage remote is on the shelf.” “We moved, the new owners might want the plan.” GarageDoorBossPro has two-way texting with customers from the office, so those replies come back to the office, not to a tech's personal phone.

Useful replies should end up somewhere permanent. A note about the side door belongs in the access notes on the house, so next year's tech sees it on the job card. A new owner belongs on a new client record.

Your plan includes a monthly text allowance of 500, 1,000 or 2,000 texts sent and received on Start, Pro or Crew, across the US and Canada. Replies count as received texts, so a busy reminder season is worth keeping an eye on.

Reminders for Due and Overdue Visits

Before a visit is even scheduled, it shows on the Waiting List as due now when its minimum days run out. That is a good time for a friendly heads-up: “It's been a year since your last garage door tune-up. We'll be in touch to set a day.”

For visits that have slipped past the 7-day grace into overdue, a personal text works better than another automated one. Ask for a good day, offer a slot when a van will be nearby, and note the answer on the client. The weekly routine is in Due Now or Overdue: Working the 7-Day Grace Period on Garage Door Maintenance Visits.

The Live Map on Visit Day

On the day of the visit, the customer app shows today's route on a live map: “You're stop 12 of 20 — the tech is 5 stops away.” Customers who want to be home for the visit can plan around it, and fewer people call the office to ask when the tech will show up.

The live map also helps on tune-ups where the customer wants to talk to the tech about a noise or a sticky remote. They can come home in time to point it out, which leads to a better inspection and, often, a better recommendation.

Combined, the night-before reminder, the when-they're-next alert, the arrived text and the live map turn a tune-up from “sometime Tuesday” into a visit the customer is ready for. The next guide looks at what happens a year later, when it is time to renew. For reminders alongside the rest of the tune-up program, see the garage door maintenance software page.