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Solution · Customer serviceFrom the VIN list to the closed repair and the completion report, without the spreadsheet
Every affected car found, contacted and closed
Robots match every campaign VIN against the group's customers and workshop history, contact owners within their consent, book, record the repair and report completion per brand and site.
Executive summary
Stop rebuilding each brand's campaign completion report from a printed call sheet, the DMS and the importer portal.
The design starts with a register, not a robot: one row per VIN per campaign in Microsoft Lists with the campaign code, remedy.
Every VIN is accounted for from the first day: matched, contacted, booked, repaired, closed, or handed to a person with the reason.
the workshop diary and repair orders in each DMS; the importer portal for closure and claim; the register in Microsoft Lists
Business problem
Service campaigns
Under Regulation (EU) 2018/858 a manufacturer that finds a vehicle out of conformity must correct it and, where the risk is serious, recall it at its own cost. For a dealer group the obligation arrives as a bulletin: campaign code, remedy, parts kit, VIN list. The importer writes to the owners it knows; everything after that letter belongs to the group: finding the cars, closing the campaign in the importer's system, claiming under the code.
The list names cars, not customers. The owner recorded against a VIN is the buyer of five years ago; the car may since have been sold on or serviced elsewhere. Matching is a VLOOKUP by the brand coordinator, the split by site is a guess, calling is whatever time advisers have between customers, and nobody records that an owner sold the car.
The money runs the other way from most administrative problems: every campaign repair performed is paid work at the manufacturer's expense, and every car that never comes in is a repair lost, a defect still on the road and, in most networks, a line in the standards review.
How it works today
- SystemThe bulletin appears in the importer portal: code, remedy, standard time, parts kit and a VIN list the brand coordinator exports to Excel
- PersonThe coordinator matches the list against a DMS export with VLOOKUP, splits it by site and emails the shares to the workshop managers
- PersonAdvisers call from the printed list between customers; attempts and "I sold that car" are noted on the sheet, or not; some cars are called twice, others never
- Risk of errorThe open-campaign check at reception depends on the adviser opening the portal; a car in for an inspection leaves with its airbag campaign open
- PersonAfter the repair the adviser closes the campaign in the portal and enters the claim; at month end the coordinator reconciles portal, DMS and sheets per brand and site
- Risk of errorThe owner nobody reached writes to the importer; asked for its contact history, the group photographs the sheet
Why the current process costs more than it appears
Time that disappears before anyone measures it.
- Matching by VLOOKUP looks free: an afternoon for the coordinator. Behind it sit a second afternoon at each site, where advisers work out which cars are still customers, and a third at month end reconciling the two.
- Calls from a printed sheet leave no trail. When an owner tells the importer that nobody contacted them, the group cannot show otherwise.
- A car that visits for another reason and leaves with the campaign open is a second visit nobody wanted, for work the manufacturer would have paid for first time round.
- Stale owner data compounds: "sold the car" and "wrong number" are learned by phone and written nowhere, so the next list makes the same calls.
Cost of inaction
Importers keep their own completion figures per dealer, and in most networks a standards review looks at them. A car never reached is an open safety defect on the road, a repair the manufacturer would have paid for, and a customer whose next contact with the brand may be a complaint. The one-in-six reach failure and the €65 per repair are our assumptions, not a manufacturer's figures.
Nothing forces a change on any particular day; what grows is the number of cars nobody can account for, and when the fifteenth campaign arrives, the tails of the first fourteen are still open under the group's name.
A plausible organisation with realistic proportions. The figures are there to be recalculated on your data; they are not a client result.
A dealer group in Poland: four brands, eight sites, one DMS per brand, four importer portals, about 52,000 vehicles with a service history, Microsoft 365 with Teams.
14 campaigns a year, 6,200 affected vehicles, about 517 a month on average, in bursts of 120 to 1,100 per campaign; two thirds are safety recalls.
The coordinator matches the VIN list in Excel and splits it by site; advisers call from printed sheets; closures are typed into the portal; the report is rebuilt from three sources.
About eleven minutes of desk work per vehicle, no record of attempts, cars leaving with campaigns open, and a completion figure nobody can defend.
One register for the group; robots match every VIN, run the consent check and the outreach, book with campaign code and parts kit, flag open campaigns at check-in and close from the repair order; unreached owners become tasks in Teams.
In the modelled case the eleven minutes fall to the exception share, every attempt is on record, the report exists on any day, and cars already in the yard are done on that visit. Illustrative, not a client result.
Proposed solution
The design starts with a register, not a robot: one row per VIN per campaign in Microsoft Lists with the campaign code, remedy, standard time and parts kit, and a status running from matched to closed, or to unreachable, refused, sold on or not ours.
Robots do the matching and the moving. Each campaign becomes a queue of VINs; every VIN is looked up in the brand's DMS and the workshop history, then carried through the outreach sequence approved for that campaign type, consent check first and every attempt logged. A reply or a click books the car with the campaign code and orders the parts kit.
People work in Teams: tasks for unreached and changed owners, the day's arrivals with an open campaign in each site's service channel, and a Power BI completion tab the monthly report comes from. No robot diagnoses anything, no AI is involved, and the recall notice carries nothing but the recall.
UiPath Orchestrator queues, triggers, credential stores and audit; UiPath Integration Service connectors for Microsoft OneDrive & SharePoint, Microsoft Outlook 365 and Microsoft Teams; UiPath Action Center tasks in Microsoft Teams; Microsoft Lists; Power BI as a Teams tab
The register and status model, VIN matching across the DMSs, the consent check, outreach sequences and templates per campaign type and channel, booking, closure and claim, the arrivals list, the completion view and the runbook
Each brand's DMS (vehicle file, workshop history, diary, repair orders) through its API where one exists, otherwise UI automation with the robot's own account; each importer portal (campaign list, VIN lookup, closure, claim) the same way; the group's SMS gateway by API
How the automated process works
- AutomationA new campaign in the importer portal, or its VIN file in the brand's library, starts the queue: one item per VIN
- SystemThe robot looks each VIN up in the brand's DMS and the workshop history: customer known or not, last visit and site, contact channels, stock or customer car
- AutomationBefore any message the robot checks the objection and suppression record and the channel the owner accepted for this car; a VIN with no usable contact or a changed owner goes to a person, the rest get a notice limited to the campaign by email or SMS with a booking link, retried to the agreed count and logged
- SystemA reply or a click books the car into the workshop diary with the campaign code and orders the parts against the visit; each morning the bookings are checked against the register, cars with an open campaign are posted to the site's service channel, and stock cars with an open safety campaign flagged before delivery
- SystemWhen the repair order closes, the robot records the repair against the VIN, closes the campaign in the importer portal, prepares the claim and updates the register
- PersonOwners unreached after the agreed attempts, changed owners and refusals reach the adviser as Action Center tasks in Teams; the completion view is a Power BI tab that generates the monthly report
Human-in-the-loop model
Automation handles
- Matching every VIN against the DMSs and the workshop history, and keeping the register current
- The consent and suppression check, the outreach in the accepted channel, and the log of every attempt
- Booking with campaign code and parts kit, the arrivals list per site, closure in the portal, the claim and the completion report
People decide
- What happens to a car nobody could reach: another route, a letter, a hand-back to the importer or a note that it has left the territory
- What the car needs and what is found on the ramp: the technician, never the robot
- Texts, attempt counts and the lawful basis per campaign type: the aftersales director with the data protection officer; whether a stock car with an open safety campaign may be delivered: a named person
Before and after
Systems and integrations
Everything below runs on licences and systems you already hold, or would need anyway.
Inputs
- campaign bulletins and VIN lists from four importer portals
- the vehicle file and workshop history in each DMS
- the objection and suppression record
- replies and receipts
Automation layer
- UiPath Orchestrator
- UiPath Robots
- UiPath Integration Service
- UiPath Action Center
Target systems
- the workshop diary and repair orders in each DMS
- the importer portal for closure and claim
- the register in Microsoft Lists
- the Power BI semantic model
Human touchpoints: Action Center tasks in Teams; the arrivals list in each site's service channel; the Power BI completion tab; the monthly report
Technologies used
one queue item per VIN per campaign; triggers; retries; the run log behind the contact history
Afile trigger on the VIN library; register rows; outreach email; channel posts
Atasks for unreached owners, changed owners and refusals, completed in Teams
Athe register, one row per VIN per campaign with status, attempts, booking and closure
Acompletion view per campaign, brand and site as a Teams tab; the monthly report
Asystems of record and the text channel; API where offered, otherwise the user interface
CIllustrative economic model
A model, not a promise.
Campaigns arrive in bursts, so the monthly volume is an average: 6,200 vehicles a year across fourteen campaigns is about 517 a month. Eleven minutes per vehicle covers matching, finding the owner, two or three attempts, the portal closure and that car's share of the monthly reconciliation. €22 is a fully loaded hourly cost blended across advisers and coordinators in Poland. Nobody was timed; the cars that never came in are priced below.
Run the numbers on your data
An illustrative estimate from your own inputs. It models released capacity; it is not a promise of savings.
Business benefits
- Every VIN is accounted for from the first day: matched, contacted, booked, repaired, closed, or handed to a person with the reason
- Owners hear from the site that knows their car, in the channel they accepted, with a booking link; nobody is called twice or skipped
- Cars already in the yard for other work leave with the campaign done, removing the second visit and the second courtesy car
- The completion report exists on any day, the claim follows the closed repair order, and a complaint to the importer is answered with attempts, dates and channels
The management view
- Completion by campaign, brand and site on one tab, on any day, with the tail of open VINs named rather than estimated
- The importer's figure and the group's come from the same closures, so a standards review starts from agreement
- Safety exposure becomes visible: stock cars with open campaigns, cars unreached after the agreed attempts, the sites where the tail is growing
Board-level KPIs
Security and governance
Security is designed with the process, not after it.
- Each robot uses its own account in the DMS and the importer portal, limited to the vehicle file, diary, campaign lookup and closure; passwords sit in a vault Orchestrator reads at run time
- The register holds VIN, campaign code, status and attempts; personal data is read from the DMS at the moment of contact and never copied; robots run in the EU region of UiPath Automation Cloud, the register in the group's Microsoft 365 tenant
- Texts, attempt counts and the lawful basis per campaign type are signed off by the aftersales director and the data protection officer before a campaign runs; a recall notice carries no offer, anything beyond it needs channel consent
- The objection and suppression record is checked before every attempt, and an objection stops the electronic channels for that person at every brand and site; every attempt, reply, booking, closure and decision is timestamped: the contact history an importer or a supervisory authority may ask for
Why now
Recalls have a legal spine and a public face: Regulation (EU) 2018/858 has applied since 1 September 2020, obliges the manufacturer to recall at its own cost and gives the dealer, as distributor, duties of its own (Articles 14, 19 and 52); one importer's notification published on UOKiK's site in April 2024 covered 2,059 vehicles in Poland
The desk time, modelled at €2,090 a month, is the small number; the larger is the repair the manufacturer would have paid for on every car that never came in
Nothing exotic is required: Integration Service triggers, Action Center tasks in Microsoft Teams and a Power BI tab are standard; the custom part is the connection to each DMS and importer portal, which the group's other automations reuse
Relevant executive roles
Every campaign is accounted for VIN by VIN, the unreached tail is a list of tasks, and the importer's report is an export rather than a week
Completion figures the importer and the group both recognise, and a contact history that answers a complaint before the standards review
Campaign labour and parts are claimed from the closed repair order without a lag, and the unreached tail is a number rather than a feeling
Common questions and objections
It does, and the letter brings in some bookings; the rest are the group's to find. The letter cannot know that the car was last serviced at your brand-B site, that the owner prefers SMS, or that it is in for an inspection next Tuesday.
The VIN is the one field that is always right: the importer's list and the DMS both carry it. The owner and the phone number are where the data is stale, so a matched VIN with an unusable contact becomes a task for a person, whose findings are written back.
A recall notice is a safety communication about the customer's own car, and the flow keeps it that way: no offer, no reminder for anything else. The objection record is still checked before every attempt, the texts are signed off by your data protection officer, and anything beyond the campaign needs channel consent.
When this is not the right solution
- A single-brand dealer with one site and a handful of campaigns a year: the importer's letter, a diligent adviser and one shared list may be enough
- The DMS keeps no workshop history per VIN beyond the current owner and exports nothing; matching then falls back to the importer's list, and the robot adds little
- The group wants the same flow to carry service offers and event invitations; that belongs to the reminder and consent solutions, and mixing it with recall notices risks their lawful basis
A question for the next management meeting
An owner tells the importer that nobody from us called about the airbag campaign: can this group show, for that car and every car still open, each attempt, its date and its channel, without a spreadsheet exercise?
Implementation approach
The first week looks the same at every client: we look at the data.
We deliver
- Discovery at two brands: bulletins, VIN exports, DMS fields, the call routine and the report
- The register in Microsoft Lists and the queue design: status model, attempt rules, templates per campaign type
- Matching robots per DMS, the consent check, the outreach per channel, booking, closure and claim
- Action Center tasks in Teams, the arrivals list per site, the Power BI completion view and the report
- A pilot on one live campaign of one brand, then rollout brand by brand with hypercare and a runbook
We need from you
- Two recent campaigns per brand: bulletin, VIN list, call sheets and the report sent to the importer
- An aftersales director as owner, a brand coordinator and a senior adviser; robot accounts for each DMS, importer portal, site mailbox and the SMS gateway
- The consent and objection records, and the data protection officer's time for the texts
Stages
Discovery
Bulletins, exports, DMS fields, call routine and report at two brands
Design
Register, status model, consent check, attempt rules, templates, permissions
Build
Queue, matching robots, outreach, booking, closure and claim, Teams tasks, Power BI view
Pilot and rollout
One live campaign alongside the current sheet, then the remaining brands with hypercare
Quick win. Effort depends on how many DMSs and importer portals the group runs and whether each offers an API; the rules are few and the register is a list.
The owner who never heard from you is the one who writes to the importer.
Send us one closed campaign from one brand: the VIN list, the call sheets and the report as it went to the importer. We come back with the cars a robot would have matched, contacted and flagged at check-in, and the completion rate that list would have shown.
Find the cars one campaign never reachedThe neighbouring process usually has the same problem
Stop learning that a customer has left only when the fourth service fails to appear in the diary.
View solution Operations & qualityService slots booked against real workshop capacityStop booking three timing belts on a Tuesday with one qualified technician, and ordering the parts once the car is on the ramp.
View solution Legal & complianceOne customer across three brands, one consent recordA reminder goes to someone who opted out, because the objection lives in another brand's system.
View solutionIndustries we deliver this in most oftenAutomotive retail