Here’s a scenario that plays out in garages across Ireland every single day.
A customer you’ve serviced for years suddenly remembers their NCT is due. Nobody reminded them — the NCTS doesn’t send reminders. You have to book your own test online or by phone, and most people forget until the disc in the windscreen is about to expire.
So they go onto ncts.ie, grab whatever appointment they can get, and then panic about whether the car will pass. They think about getting it checked over beforehand — maybe those brakes felt a bit soft last month — but the test is in ten days and they’ve left it too late to fit in a pre-NCT inspection.
They chance it. Maybe it passes, maybe it doesn’t. Either way, you never heard about it.
Or worse: they do want a check, but you’re fully booked at short notice. The garage down the road has a slot. So they go there. And when their car needs a service next year? They go there again. Because that’s “their garage” now.
You didn’t lose this customer because you did anything wrong. You lost them because you didn’t reach out first. Because you had no way of knowing their NCT was coming up — and neither did they, until it was nearly too late.
This happens constantly. And most garages have no idea how much revenue they’re losing to it.
The invisible leak in your business
Every car over four years old in Ireland needs an annual NCT. That’s millions of vehicles. Millions of pre-NCT inspections that could happen. Millions of opportunities to catch work before it goes elsewhere.
But here’s the problem: most garages operate reactively. They wait for customers to call. They respond to whoever walks in or phones up that day. They have no system for knowing what’s coming.
This is fine for breakdown work and one-off repairs. But for predictable, recurring work like NCT prep? It’s leaving money on the table.
Think about your customer base right now. How many of them have NCTs due in the next 30 days? 60 days? 90 days?
If you can’t answer that question, you’re competing blind.
Why customers drift
When a customer needs pre-NCT work, they don’t automatically come back to you. They go to whoever’s top of mind at that moment.
Maybe it’s the garage they drove past yesterday. Maybe it’s whoever their mate recommended last week. Maybe it’s the place that had Google availability when they searched “NCT check near me” in a panic.
The point is: loyalty only goes so far. If you’re not in front of them when they need you, someone else will be.
And here’s the painful truth: once they’ve been somewhere else for NCT work, the relationship weakens. They’ve now got two garages instead of one. Next time, it’s a coin flip. The time after that, you might not even be in the running.
Customer drift doesn’t happen dramatically. It happens gradually, one missed touchpoint at a time. And by the time you notice — if you ever notice — it’s too late.
The garages that get this right
Some workshops have figured this out. They’re not better mechanics. They’re not cheaper. They’re not in better locations. They’re just more organised about one thing: they know when their customers’ NCTs are due, and they reach out first.
That’s it. That’s the whole competitive advantage.
When you contact a customer six weeks before their NCT, you’re not competing. You’re the only garage in the conversation. You’re the one being helpful. You’re the one who remembered.
“Hi Sarah, just a heads-up that your Tucson is due for NCT on March 15th. Want us to check it over beforehand? We’ve got availability next week if that suits.”
That message takes thirty seconds to send. But the difference it makes is enormous:
- You’re positioning yourself as the obvious choice. No comparison shopping, no Googling around.
- You’re demonstrating that you actually know this customer. You’ve got their vehicle details, their history, their NCT date. That’s relationship, not transaction.
- You’re making their life easier. They don’t have to remember to book something. You’ve already reminded them.
Most customers appreciate this. It’s not pushy — it’s helpful. And it converts at a rate that reactive enquiries can’t match.
What this is actually worth
Let’s put some rough numbers on it.
Say you’ve got 500 customers in your database. On average, each of their cars is four years old or more, so they need an annual NCT. That’s potentially 500 pre-NCT inspection opportunities per year — about 10 per week.
A pre-NCT check might be €50-80 on its own. But the real value is in the follow-on work. Worn pads, dodgy bulbs, tired tyres — small jobs that add up. Average it out and you’re probably looking at €150-200 per customer when there’s work to be done.
Now: how many of those 500 customers are you actually seeing for NCT-related work? If you’re like most garages, it’s nowhere near 500. Maybe it’s 100. Maybe less.
The gap between what you could be doing and what you’re actually capturing? That’s the invisible leak. And for most workshops, it’s thousands of euros per year walking out the door to competitors who happened to be more available at the right moment.
The system problem
Here’s why most garages don’t do proactive NCT outreach, even when they know they should: it’s a nightmare to manage manually.
Think about what’s involved:
- You need to know every customer’s NCT due date
- You need to track those dates against your calendar
- You need to identify who’s coming up in the next 4-6 weeks
- You need to reach out to each of them individually
- You need to do this consistently, week after week, forever
With paper records or basic spreadsheets, this is a full-time job. Nobody has time for it. So it doesn’t happen.
That’s the real barrier. It’s not that garage owners don’t understand the value of proactive outreach. It’s that without a system to support it, the effort outweighs the return.
How software changes the equation
This is where garage management software earns its keep.
When NCT due dates are captured automatically — through integrations like Motorcheck.ie — you don’t have to manually track anything. The system knows when every vehicle’s NCT is due because it pulled that data when you first entered the reg.
From there, the software can:
- Show you a list of all customers with NCTs due in the next 30/60/90 days. One click, instant outreach list.
- Send automated reminders at the right time. Customer gets a text or email six weeks out, no manual effort required.
- Track who’s booked and who hasn’t. Follow up with the ones who didn’t respond.
Suddenly, what was impossible to do manually becomes automatic. You’re reaching every customer at the right moment, every time, without adding work to your day.
Beyond the NCT: building recurring relationships
NCT outreach is just the most obvious example of a bigger principle: the garages that win are the ones that stay in touch between visits.
Service reminders work the same way. So do follow-ups after major repairs. So does simply reaching out to customers you haven’t seen in 18 months to check if everything’s OK.
All of this compounds. A customer who hears from you regularly doesn’t drift. They don’t forget about you. They don’t go somewhere else because that garage happened to be more visible at the right moment.
They come back because you’re their garage. And you’re their garage because you acted like it.
Getting started
If you’re not currently tracking NCT due dates, start there. Even a basic spreadsheet with customer names, vehicle regs, and NCT dates is better than nothing.
Then, commit to a weekly routine: pull the list of who’s due in the next 4-6 weeks, and reach out. Text is fine. Email works too. Just make contact.
You’ll be surprised how many bookings come from customers who were about to go elsewhere.
And if you want to make this effortless rather than another task on your to-do list, MotorWorks handles it automatically — NCT dates pulled from Motorcheck.ie, automated customer reminders, and reports showing exactly who’s due and when. Book a demo to see how it works, or start a free trial to try it yourself.
The revenue is there. The customers are there. The only question is whether you’re set up to capture it.
