Order status online for your customers: repair shops, workshops, service companies

Where the status calls come from

The customer has handed over a car, a machine, a device, or ordered a service, and does not know what is happening to it. They call, because there is no other way. In the office someone picks up, finds the job, goes to ask on the shop floor, calls back. With dozens of open jobs that can take a few hours a day.

The second group of calls is quotes. The shop calls the customer with a figure, the customer wants to think, calls back tomorrow, the shop has started another job in the meantime. Nobody wrote down what was said, and at collection the customer remembers a different amount.

What a job status portal looks like

A portal is made of modules, meaning self-contained parts. For repair shops, workshops and service companies I usually build these:

The job page for the customer

The customer opens a link from a text or logs in and sees one job: the stage it is at, the expected date, the person handling it, photos from intake and from the work. We name the stages the way you talk about them: received, diagnosis, waiting for parts, in repair, ready for collection.

A quote to approve

When the team issues a quote, the customer gets a notification and sees the lines, the amounts and the photos. They approve the whole thing or selected lines. The answer goes straight to the team, and the job moves stage. If you want, the customer pays a deposit on approval.

Notifications

Text or email at each stage change, when a quote is ready and when the job is ready for collection. The customer learns about the change without looking into the portal.

Payment before collection

The customer sees the amount due and pays online before coming in. Collection often takes two minutes instead of a quarter of an hour with a card terminal and an invoice.

History for regular customers

A company with a vehicle fleet or a park of machines sees all its jobs, invoices and what was done to each unit. They log a new job from the portal, with the unit number already filled in.

Screens for the team

The customer’s portal is one page. The other side is your screens: a job list with stages, a job card with the quote and photos, a tablet on the shop floor where a worker closes a stage and adds a photo. The customer’s status changes on its own when the worker closes the stage. Nobody “updates the portal”.

What it changes in the company

Status calls stop, because status is on the customer’s phone. Quotes get approved in the portal, with a date and a name, so there is no dispute at collection. Payments arrive before collection rather than “I will transfer it tomorrow”. The team closes stages on a tablet where they work, and the office sees the same as the customer.

The customer knows what is happening without calling. They see photos, so they trust the quote. They pay when it suits them.

An example

I worked on the systems of a British repair management platform for heavy industry and aerospace: digital repair quotes, a claims history, a search for costs the customer overpaid. My part was the repair screens in the platform’s second version. The name is under a non-disclosure agreement, and there is more on the page for that project. A workshop with a few dozen jobs a week needs the same principle at a smaller scale: the quote and the repair history in one place you can go back to.

Where to start

With the customer’s job page, stages and text notifications. That cuts a large share of the calls and can usually go live after the first month. Quotes to approve and payments follow in later stages.

Each module is billed separately, once you have accepted it. Prices come in writing when the scope is written down. What else a customer portal can hold and where it gets its data is on the main page of the guide. If your customers also book dates, not only check status, see the page on custom online booking.

Describe in the form below how many jobs you have open at once and how you keep customers informed today. I will get back to you.