Customer status updates

Fleet customers want to know where their trucks stand without calling or emailing your advisors. Meridian can tell them in two ways:

• A daily fleet status email: once a day, each customer with a unit on an open ticket gets one email listing those units.
• A status-change email: a short email when a ticket moves into a status you chose.

Both are off until you turn them on. Nothing goes to a customer before that.

Who gets them

The customer's status contacts: contacts with Gets status updates ticked on the customer's page, and portal users who turned on status emails for themselves. A portal user who can see only some of the customer's units is told only about those.

The customer's main email address gets them too only if you turn on Also send to the customer's main email address.

Anyone who used the Stop automatic emails link in an earlier email gets no more of them. Invoices and anything you send by hand still go.

The daily email

Go to Settings → Status updates.

• Send it to every customer: the shop default. You can also turn it on or off for one customer on their page, whatever this says.
• Send at: the hour, on your shop's clock: 7:00 AM unless you pick another. If it falls inside your quiet hours (Settings → Messaging), the email goes out when they end.
• When nothing has changed: Skip that day (the default) sends only when a status, promised date or part date moved. Send every day sends anyway and says nothing has changed.
• Show each ticket's total so far: off by default. Your cost is never shown either way.

The line at the top of the page says what goes out right now.

Each unit in the email shows:

• the unit, its status and promised date ("Unit 12 — Waiting on parts · promised Wed, Oct 21"), with any tags you show customers beside the status ("Unit 12 — Waiting on parts (Unit down) · promised Wed, Oct 21");
• the vehicle, the end of the VIN and the ticket number;
• the parts it is waiting on and when each is expected: "expected Wed, Oct 21", "ordered, no date yet", "being ordered, no date yet" or "being sourced, no date yet";
• updated or new today when something moved since the last email.

Above the list, a short Since our last update section names what changed. Portal users get a link to sign in and see their units; when you also send to the main email address and the customer's portal is on, that address gets the customer's portal link. Status contacts get no link, since the portal link opens the whole account without a sign-in. Units waiting for the customer's approval come first, then finished work, then the rest by promised date. The expected date is the one on the purchase order.

A status reads in the customer's words: "Checked in", "Being worked on", "Waiting on parts", "Waiting for your approval", "Work finished". If a ticket has a sub-status you show to customers, the email uses that sub-status's customer wording. Sub-statuses for your team only never appear. Tags work the same way: only the ones you show customers, in the wording you chose for customers. Adding or taking off one of those tags counts as a change ("Unit 12: now marked “Unit down”"), so it can send the next daily email on its own; a tag for your team only never does.

Emails on a status change

In Settings → Status updates → Email when a ticket changes status, tick the statuses that should email the customer. In Settings → Sub-statuses, you can also tick Email the customer when a ticket enters it on any sub-status customers can see.

The email says where the unit stands now, with any tags you show customers beside the status ("is now: Waiting on parts (Unit down)."). Adding or taking off a tag doesn't send one by itself.

A ticket sends at most one of these every two hours, so moving a card back and forth doesn't flood anyone. Meridian's own moves count too: a ticket going to Waiting Parts, or back, when parts arrive. Reopening an invoice sends nothing.

These go to every customer's status contacts, whether or not that customer gets the daily email, unless the customer is set to Off.

On the customer's page

The Status emails card has three choices for that one customer:

• Shop default: follows Send it to every customer.
• On: gets the daily email even if your shop default is off.
• Off: gets neither email.

The card says who will get them. See today's email shows exactly what would go out today, to each person, and whether it will go out. Nothing is sent from there.

Tell customer it's ready

Tell customer it's ready on a ticket now lists the unit's status contacts under the email address, ticked. For a customer set to Off they're listed but not ticked.

Wording

Both messages are in Settings → Customer emails & texts: Daily fleet status (under Reminders) and Ticket status update (under Estimates, invoices and statements). Change the wording there. They have text-message versions too, for when texting is turned on.