Booking requests: confirm, reschedule, decline

A booking request through Carvexia contains a name and email address, a phone number if the customer gives one, usually a preferred date, the car as free text, the service chosen from your price list or “something else”, and a description. It arrives by email at the address in your business profile, if there is one, and appears in the dashboard under “Appointments”, together with the number of unanswered requests and the longest wait.

What is almost always missing is what you need for planning: the exact engine, the chassis number for ordering parts, the mileage for a service, and for repairs a description of the symptom rather than a guess. Add to that whether the customer will wait or leave the car, and whether the preferred date is fixed or just a suggestion. And the request only knows a date, not a time.

Ask before you commit, and ask everything at once. From each request's history you can write the customer a message that goes out by email and stays in the history, so a colleague can see what has already been settled. Three numbered questions get answered more readily than a long paragraph, and saying why you need the information makes a complete answer more likely. Internal notes sit in the same history but are visible only to your team.

“Confirm appointment” automatically sends the customer an email: the garage has confirmed, plus the service, the car and the date. If they reply, the message reaches the email address in your business profile — provided there is one. If the profile also has a phone number, the email gives it. So check that both are correct.

What the automatic email does not contain is everything only you know: the time the car should be there, how long it will stay, what to bring — service book, locking wheel bolt adapter —, whether a courtesy car is possible and how payment works. No payment for workshop work runs through Carvexia. Also say whether the price-list price applies or whether you will quote after a first look. All of that fits in a short message right after confirming. It replaces a phone call and can be reread later, by the customer and by your team.

After the appointment you set the request to “Done”; the customer is told by email as well. If a confirmed appointment cannot go ahead after all, get in touch at once and propose a new date via “Alternative date”. A customer who took time off and finds the door locked will not ask a second time.

If the job fits but the day does not, a refusal is the worst answer. The customer has to start searching again, and you lose work you could have done. With “Alternative date” you propose another date and add what the customer should know; both go out by email. In the dashboard, “Proposal out” shows where you are waiting for an answer.

The appointment is only confirmed once the customer agrees and you then confirm it. The agreement arrives as a reply to the email. Until it does, the slot is neither taken nor free — do not hold it indefinitely, but say in the message until when you will keep it. That is fair to both sides and saves you chasing.

A good proposal is a specific one. “Next week” is not; “Tuesday, drop-off in the morning, collection late afternoon” is. If you can offer two days, name the second in the message. If the proposal does not suit, send another one; it also goes out by email. And if a signed-in customer cancels the request themselves in the meantime, you are told by email as well — the slot is free again.

Sometimes declining is right: you lack the special tooling, the diagnostic access for that make, the high-voltage training, or the job simply does not suit your business. Then a quick, clear refusal is worth more than a proposal that only costs time.

You can leave the reason out, but that is rarely a good idea. The email to the customer says the garage cannot offer the preferred date. If the problem is not the date but the job or the car, they only learn that from your reason — otherwise they request the same job for another day, or give up altogether. The reason goes out word for word, exactly as you write it.

So write it for the customer, not for yourself: no internal shorthand, no blame, and a pointer to where they can go instead. “We lack the special tooling for this model. A brand garage can take this on.” Two sentences are enough. Once something has gone out it cannot be taken back — that applies to the reason as much as to any message to the customer.

A request left unanswered for days does more damage than a refusal. The customer does not know whether it arrived and may not have asked elsewhere because they were waiting for you. The dashboard shows the longest wait of any open request. When it grows longer than you would expect a customer to wait, that is the signal to stop letting more requests in.

In the business profile you switch off “Taking appointments” for that — during holidays, illness, or when you are fully booked. Your profile and prices stay visible, new booking requests are not possible for the time being, and the profile tells customers you are not taking any at the moment. Your price lines on the service pages disappear during the pause, because there they would lead straight into a request.

Open requests are not affected and still need an answer. And remember to switch it back on: a pause nobody ends looks from outside like a business that has closed. A calendar entry for the day after the holidays takes a minute.

In the business profile you state which makes you look after. They appear on your profile under “Makes”, but they matter more in two other places. Under “My vehicles”, owners can look into recalls for their own car; there, “Contact an authorised workshop” lists the garages in the owner's country that name this make in their profile. The booking request then comes pre-filled: with the car, a request to check by chassis number whether a recall or service campaign is open, and — if stored — the number itself.

The second place is the “After you buy” block on car listings. It shows garages in the car's country that name its make in their profile and state an hourly rate, sorted by distance or name. Without an hourly rate in the profile you do not appear there, even if the make matches.

That leads to a simple rule: list the makes for which you have the tools, the diagnostic access and the experience, not every make that has ever been on your lift. The directory does not distinguish between authorised and independent garages. If a recall request comes in and you are not part of that make's network, say so in your answer: recalls are handled through the manufacturer's network, and the customer then needs a different address, not an appointment with you.