Outreach

Outreach brings customers back without a marketing hire. It watches your records, builds the follow-up lists, and drafts the messages; you approve and send.

One reason per customer

Follow Up shows each customer at most once, with the single best reason for them to come back:

• Work they said no to. Still-open declined work, checked against what actually happened since: if the job was done, billed, re-quoted, or the car is already booked in, the customer never appears. The follow-up goes to the person who was actually there for that visit.
• A service credibly coming due. Based on this customer's own history at your shop and how often your customers actually repeat that service, not a generic chart. A replaced alternator never triggers an alternator reminder.
• Past their own rhythm. Regulars who are later than their personal visit pattern.
• First visit, no second yet. New customers entering the window when your customers typically return.
• Been gone a year. A simple win-back for long-lapsed customers.

If there is no credible reason, the customer does not appear. A customer with a car in your shop or an appointment on the books is never contacted about coming back.

Every row shows what the work is likely worth: the exact quoted price for declined work, or what that customer's last visit for the service actually brought in. The list totals it at the top, so you can see the revenue sitting in Follow Up the moment you open it.

Each row gets an AI-drafted message in your shop's voice (set the style prompt in Settings, Outreach). Edit, send, or snooze. Every message carries a personalized booking link so a reply becomes an appointment in two taps. One-to-one emails (follow-ups and automations) go out looking like a note from you, not a designed campaign, so they're far more likely to land in the customer's main inbox.

Campaigns

Blast a segment when you need to fill the schedule: filter by tags, lifecycle (active, dormant, never visited), or last-visit window, write the text or email with tokens like first name, preview the audience count, and send. Sends respect opt-outs, the nightly quiet hours, your extra quiet hours, the daily cap, and the weekdays-only switch. Every campaign message carries the recipient's own booking link, so you can see exactly who clicked and who booked, not just how many went out.

Automations

The three highest-value follow-ups can also run on their own. Each is a separate switch in Settings, Outreach, Automations, and each is off until you turn it on:

• Declined-service follow-up. Once a decline is old enough (you pick the minimum days, 14 by default), the customer gets one friendly text naming the specific work they passed on, with a booking link. It uses the same list as the Declined segment, so anything you already messaged or snoozed by hand is skipped automatically.
• Comeback reminders. Customers whose last completed visit is older than your chosen gap (6 months by default) get a check-in text, unless they already have a car in the shop or an appointment on the books.
• Birthday texts. A short greeting on the customer's birthday, once a year, no sales pitch. Add birthdays on the client record and the rest is automatic; you can customize the message with tokens like first name.

If a shop's outreach emails start drawing spam complaints or bouncing at a high rate, CarSignal pauses that shop's outreach automatically and shows a notice on the Follow Up tab; inbox replies and transactional email (quotes, invoices) keep working. This protects every shop's email deliverability. Contact support to review and resume.

Automated sends follow every rule manual sends do: texts only go to customers who opted in, emails only to customers who haven't unsubscribed (and never to bouncing or suppressed addresses), nothing sends outside your quiet hours in your shop's own timezone, and all automations draw from the same daily cap as your manual sends, so a busy campaign day pauses them rather than flooding anyone. Every automated message appears in the sent history like any other, and a customer is never followed up twice about the same declined job within two months.

Inbox and history

Replies and reviews land in the Outreach inbox with one-tap re-booking. Answering from the inbox sends on the same channel the customer used; email answers go out as a plain personal reply that threads onto the customer's own email, not a branded blast. History shows each message's journey: for email, sent, delivered, opened, clicked, replied, booked; for texts, sent, clicked, replied, booked (carriers don't report text delivery, so we don't pretend to know). A message counts as booked when the customer uses their booking link, or when their vehicle checks in within 30 days of the send.

Reviews

After an invoice is paid, CarSignal asks the customer how the visit went. Happy customers (4 to 5 stars) are routed to your Google review link; unhappy ones are asked what went wrong privately, so problems reach you instead of your Google profile.

Automatic messages

Appointment reminders ("Reply C to confirm"), booking confirmations, approval confirmations, and review asks all run on their own, each with per-shop switches in Settings, Outreach.

If your technicians never talk to customers (odd-hours mobile work, say), turn on Technician actions don't message customers: every customer message from a tech is blocked. Automatic ones — the ready-for-pickup ping, schedule-change texts, review asks — are silently skipped, and the explicit send buttons (quote, invoice, pay link, texting) answer "Customer messages are handled by the front desk." Admins and service writers are unaffected, and techs can still build quote previews for the desk to send.

Mobile service shops

Outreach drafts follow your direction of service. A mobile shop's follow-ups ask "want us to come take care of it?" instead of "want us to get you in sometime?", and the automated declined-work and comeback texts never ask the customer to come by.