This post in 30 seconds.
- What changes: the customer watches the technician point at the worn disc instead of hearing a number over the phone, and authorises from the same page.
- The number: 51% of customers approve recommended work when the inspection comes with photo or video, against 24% without it (J.D. Power, 2024).
- Who it's for: service and aftersales managers at franchised dealers and groups who run a VHC on every car and still watch red work leave unsold.
The call goes the same way every time. The advisor rings at 11:40, the customer is at work, and the sentence "your front discs are below spec and we'd recommend replacing them today" gets the reply every service manager knows by heart: "Let me think about it and call you back."
They don't call back. The car goes out with the red item still on the sheet, the advisory gets printed on the invoice, and the work either goes to an independent down the road or never happens at all.
A video vehicle health check changes what the customer receives. Instead of a description, they get 60 seconds of the technician under the car, showing the disc, the lip on it, the tread on the inside edge. Then a button that says approve.
This guide covers how that works in practice, what to film for red, amber and green items, what it's worth on your workshop, and which numbers tell you whether it's working.
Service managers at franchised dealers know the shape of the call above, and most also know their red conversion rate is lower than the group wants it. We build video for service departments that turns the VHC into something a customer can see and approve on their phone. Book a 15-minute demo and we'll map it onto your existing VHC flow, not a generic one.
In this post:
Why the phone call loses the red work
A customer who declines a brake job usually isn't refusing the brakes. They're refusing a number they can't check, read to them by someone they met for four minutes at 8 a.m. The customer trusts what they can see, and a phone quote gives them nothing to see.
The data on this is blunt. In the J.D. Power 2024 Aftermarket Service Index, 51% of customers who received an inspection with photo or video had the recommended work done, against 24% of those who didn't. More than double, and only 23% of customers got any photo or video at all.
Two years later the gap is still open. J.D. Power's 2026 Customer Service Index found 64% of customers want photo or video evidence with their inspection results, while 26% of mass-market and 44% of premium customers get it. Advisor satisfaction scores were also highest when the evidence was there.
On the UK side, the older numbers are uglier. autoVHC data reported by Motor Trader put the average franchised dealer's unsold red work at £87,600 a year, £429m across the network, and Coachworks estimated around 30% of cars through franchised workshops got no VHC at all. That was 2018 data, and the process problem it describes (red work identified, never shown, never sold) hasn't gone anywhere.
So declined work isn't a pricing problem first. It's a visibility problem. The rest of this post is about fixing that one.
What a video vehicle health check actually is
A vehicle health check is the structured inspection your technicians already do on every car in the workshop: tyres, brakes, suspension, lights, fluids, battery, bodywork, graded red, amber or green. A video vehicle health check adds one thing to that. While the car is on the ramp, the technician films the findings on a phone, and that clip goes to the customer with the estimate.
That's the whole definition. It is not a new inspection, and it is not a marketing video. It's the VHC, shown rather than described.
A few terms worth lining up, because the same thing has three names depending on where you sit:
- VHC / EVHC: the UK term. The EVHC is the electronic record (the tablet checklist, the red/amber/green sheet, the estimate). The video attaches to that record; it doesn't replace it. Venta Video, a product of VentaVid, works with the systems you already use, with standard integrations including Keyloop and EVHC by Autoconnect.
- MPI / DVI: the US term for the same inspection. If your group reports in multi-point inspection language, the video MPI guide covers the American version of this process.
- MOT: not the same thing. The MOT is a legal pass/fail test. The VHC is advisory, has no legal minimum, and is where almost all of your customer-pay opportunity sits.
For context on what customers are already being promised: Ford UK describes its Video Check as a 30-point health check where anything needing repair is captured on video and sent by email or text, with a traffic-light result and no work started without approval. Stratstone tells owners the check takes around 20 to 25 minutes and offers a free amber recheck later.
Your customers have seen these pages. The video is fast becoming the expectation, not the differentiator.
The video vehicle health check in six steps
Most workshops that struggle with video VHCs treat the video as an extra task after the inspection. The ones that convert treat it as part of the inspection. The video gets filmed while the technician is already looking at the fault, in the 30 seconds they'd otherwise spend writing it down.
- Make the video part of the check, not a favour. The VHC sheet has a line for it. Every car with a red or amber item gets a clip. Green-only cars get a 20-second "all clear" clip, and you'll see why below.
- Film on the ramp, on the phone the technician already carries. One take, no editing, 45 to 90 seconds. The technician points at the part, says what it is, says why it matters. Nothing else.
- The advisor adds the estimate and the colours. The service advisor attaches the priced red and amber lines to the video. The customer sees the fault and the price in the same place, which is the combination the phone call can never deliver.
- Send it as a branded page, not a raw file. A loose MP4 in a text is better than nothing, but it's a dead end: the customer watches it and then has to ring you. Venta Video turns the clip into an interactive video page with approve, pay and reply buttons, delivered by SMS, WhatsApp or email, whichever the customer reads.
- Watch the "video seen" notification, then call once. This is the step most guides skip. The advisor gets a notification the moment the customer opens the video, and 85% of service videos sent through VentaVid are viewed within 15 minutes. That's your call window. Ring while they're looking at the disc, not at 4 p.m. when they've forgotten the name of the part.
- Film the amber follow-up too. Amber work comes due in three to six months. A second short video when the customer is next in, or a reminder that links back to the original clip, is the difference between an advisory on an invoice and a booked job. Most dealers never do this step, which is exactly why it works.
The servicing product page walks through the recording and sending flow if you want to see the screens. For a broader picture of where video sits in the aftersales journey, from booking confirmation to handover, there's a separate guide on building personalized video into your aftersales workflow.
What to film for red, amber and green
The colour decides the clip. Red needs proof and urgency, amber needs proof and a date, and green needs 15 seconds of reassurance. Film the same way for all three and customers stop believing the red ones.
Two things about honesty, because the video makes it unavoidable.
On a UK owners' forum, a driver described being advised to replace tyres at 4.7 mm of tread, with other posters adding that dealer groups do this "routinely" and "chase multiple times". Another owner got a ramp video saying his exhaust and tyres were fine and to keep an eye on the discs, and still rated the whole visit badly.
A thin recommendation looks thin on camera, and the customer can pause it. If the advisory wouldn't survive the customer's brother-in-law watching it, don't film it and don't sell it.
I've watched technicians film for the first time, and the instinct is to film only the fault. The clips that got approved fastest in that workshop were the ones that started with ten seconds of "your tyres are fine, your brakes at the rear are fine" before the camera went to the front discs. Green earns the right to sell red.
Owners on the same forum ask dealers for the health-check video as proof the inspection happened at all; give them that proof and the red item lands on a customer who already trusts the person talking.
There's a full playbook on the sales side of this in how to upsell services using video. If you'd rather see it on your own ramp, book a demo and bring a car with an amber list.
What it's worth on your workshop
Walk one advisor. These are example numbers to show the shape of the maths; swap in your own from last month's VHC report.
You won't recover all of it. Some customers are skint this month, some cars are being sold, some ambers are three months away. But the share that declines because the disc was a sentence and not a picture is the share video goes after.
Mohsin Haider Darwish, a Suzuki dealer, took customer approval rates from 68% to 88% after moving the VHC conversation to video, according to Salah Al Rahbi, its Service Manager.
Put your own upsell rate next to that. If you're at 30% on identified work and video moves you towards 40%, run the £784-a-day line again at the new rate and multiply by advisors. The dealership service department statistics page has the wider benchmarks if you want to sanity-check where you sit.
Want to test the maths on real cars rather than a table? Start a free trial and send your first VHC video this week. No credit card, no editing, one technician and one phone.
KPIs to track and the mistakes that kill it
A video VHC that isn't measured drifts back to phone calls within a quarter. Six numbers on the Monday report keep it alive, and the first one matters more than the rest combined.
- VHC completion rate: cars that got a full check, out of cars through the workshop. Coachworks' 30%-missed figure is the one to beat; the best retailers run above 95%.
- Video attach rate: VHCs with a red or amber item that also got a video. Target 100%. Anything below 80% means technicians think the video is optional.
- Video-seen rate and time to view: did the customer open it, and how long after sending. If your median is over an hour, you're sending to the wrong channel.
- Red conversion and amber conversion, separately: identified value approved, by colour. Blending them hides the fact that amber is where the follow-up step is failing.
- Time from send to approval: the number that shows the approve button is doing its job. It should be minutes, not the next morning.
- Hours per repair order and CSI: the lagging pair. If approvals rise and CSI falls, someone is filming ambers as reds.
And the mistakes, in the order we see them:
- Sending a raw video file. The customer watches it, then has nothing to press. Every clip needs the estimate and an approve button on the same page.
- Filming only the fault. No green context, no proof the rest was checked. The customer assumes you're only looking for things to sell.
- Leaving the price off. "Watch this and I'll call you with a quote" puts the phone call straight back in the loop.
- No amber follow-up. The advisory dies on the invoice. The second video is the cheapest job you'll ever book.
- Telling technicians it's extra. If it's outside the VHC time allowance, it won't get done. Put it on the sheet.
- Buying a general video tool. If reps have to edit, upload, and copy links, adoption collapses in week two. The platform checklist lists what a service department needs.
For the broader set of tactics that lift customer-pay work, there's a separate piece on strategies to boost repair sales, and one on video messages for the service department beyond the health check itself.
Frequently asked questions
What is a video vehicle health check?
It's a standard vehicle health check where the technician films the red, amber and green findings on a phone while the car is on the ramp. The clip goes to the customer with the estimate by SMS, WhatsApp or email, and they authorise the work from the same page.
Is a video VHC the same as a video MPI?
Yes, in practice. VHC and EVHC are the UK terms; MPI and DVI are the US terms for the same inspection with the same traffic-light grading. The process in this guide applies to both; only the paperwork vocabulary changes.
How long does a video vehicle health check take?
The check itself takes 20 to 30 minutes, as dealer groups such as Stratstone tell their customers. The video adds 45 to 90 seconds if it's filmed while the technician is already at the fault. If it's adding more than that, it's being done as a separate task, which is the thing to fix.
Do technicians need to edit the video?
No. One take on the phone they already carry, then send. Any workflow that involves trimming, uploading or renaming files gets abandoned by the second week, so pick a tool that doesn't need it.
Does it work with our EVHC or DMS?
Venta Video works with the systems you already use: standard integrations, including Keyloop and EVHC by Autoconnect, and an open API that connects it to any DMS, CRM or BI tool. The EVHC stays your record of the inspection; the video is the explanation attached to it.
How does the customer approve the work?
The video lands as a branded page with approve, pay and reply buttons. The customer watches, taps approve, and the advisor gets the notification. No callback needed, though a call while they're watching still helps on bigger tickets.
Will customers see it as an upsell?
Only if it is one. Filming an amber item as though it were red, or advising tyres with half their tread left, is exposed instantly on video. Film green items too, price honestly, and the same customers who distrust the phone quote will approve the video one.
Talk to us
If red and amber work keeps dying on the phone, the quickest way to see what a video changes is to watch one go out on your own VHC flow. We'll shoot one with your technician on a 15-minute call, attach a real estimate, and show you what the customer sees.
What it takes to start.
- 7-day free trial, no credit card required, so your advisors can send real VHC videos before you commit.
- No editing skills needed. Technicians film on the phone they already carry.
- We'll show it on your own inspection flow, with your EVHC, on the demo.
A real person from the VentaVid team runs these demos on your inventory.