Glossary

A video retention curve is the graph of what percentage of viewers are still watching at each moment of a video, starting at 100 percent and falling as people leave. It shows exactly where you lose people, which no average can do.

Video SEO is the work that makes a video eligible to appear in search results: the page it sits on, the structured data describing it, the thumbnail, the transcript, and where the file is hosted. It applies to published marketing video, not to videos sent privately to one customer.

A video template is a reusable structure for a video message: an agreed shot order, the points to cover, a length target, and the branding applied to the page around it. The rep still films fresh footage every time. The template decides the shape, not the content.

A video transcript is the full text of everything said in a video, presented as a document alongside the player rather than on top of the picture. It carries no timecodes, so it can be read, searched and copied without playing the video at all.

A video walkaround email is an email that delivers a short recorded circuit of one specific vehicle to one specific customer, usually as a thumbnail with a play button linking to a page where the video plays. The rep films the actual car the customer enquired about.

View rate is the percentage of people who were sent or served your video and actually viewed it, calculated as views divided by deliveries or impressions over the same period. The number means little until you know what your platform counts as a view, because that threshold runs from the first frame to a full watch.

A VIN, or vehicle identification number, is the 17-character code that uniquely identifies one specific vehicle, split into three blocks that encode who built it, what it is, and which individual unit it is. Every title, recall and history record is filed against it.

A virtual camera is a software device that registers with an operating system as though it were a physical camera, so any app asking for the camera feed receives whatever that software sends it. Ordinary in streaming and video calls. A recognised risk in remote evidence capture.

A virtual inspection is an assessment of an object, vehicle, property or site carried out through video and images instead of in person. In most industry usage the term points at the live variant, where an expert joins a video session while someone on site moves the camera.

A virtual property inspection is an inspection of a home or commercial unit carried out through video and photos instead of a visit by the inspector. It covers two models: a live video call led by the inspector, and a self-inspection where the tenant or occupier records guided footage in their own time.

Visual inspection is the examination of a component, structure or asset by eye, unaided or with optical aids, to detect surface conditions such as cracks, corrosion, leaks, distortion and missing parts, judged against defined acceptance criteria. It is the oldest inspection method and still the most used one.

Visual support is the category of customer support and service methods in which the problem is shown rather than described, using the camera on a device the customer already has. It covers live video assistance and asynchronous guided capture, which behave very differently in practice.

A void inspection is a social landlord's recorded check of a home that is empty, or about to be, between tenancies. The pre-void inspection scopes repairs and recharges before the outgoing tenant leaves; the post-void inspection confirms the completed works meet the lettable standard before keys go to the next tenant.

A waiter appointment is a service booking where the customer stays at the dealership while the work is carried out and leaves with the vehicle the same visit, usually inside one to two hours. The alternative is a drop-off, where the customer leaves the vehicle for the day.

A walk-in is a customer who arrives at a dealership without an appointment and is greeted on the floor as a fresh sales opportunity. In North America the same customer is usually called an up. In the UK and much of Europe the visit is logged as a walk-in enquiry.

A warranty audit is a manufacturer's review of warranty claims a dealer has already been paid for, checking each file against the published policy and reclaiming money on any claim the file cannot support. The repair is rarely what fails. The documentation behind it usually is.

A warranty claim is a request for payment a repairer submits to a manufacturer or warranty provider for work performed under an existing contract, arguing a named component failed inside the agreed term and conditions. It is contractual, so approval turns on cover, cause and evidence.

Warranty support is the function that handles contacts about products failing inside their warranty period, decides whether the reported fault is covered by the terms, and turns a covered fault into a repair, a replacement, a part, or a refund.

Watch time is the total amount of time people spent watching a video, summed across every view and usually reported in hours or minutes. It is the only common video metric that counts attention as a quantity rather than as a yes or no event.

Water damage is physical damage to a building, its services, or its contents caused by water reaching somewhere it should not, whether from a burst pipe, a failed appliance, a defect in the envelope, or a flood. In insurance terms most of it is handled under the escape of water peril rather than as flood.

White label is an arrangement in which one company's product is delivered under another company's brand, so the end user sees the buyer's name, logo, colours and domain rather than the vendor's. In software it usually means configurable branding rather than a separate build.

A wholesale valuation is the price a vehicle is expected to achieve in a trade sale between businesses, typically at auction or through a B2B marketplace, rather than the price a consumer would pay on a forecourt. It is the number a fleet plans a disposal against.

Workflow automation is the use of stored rules to carry out steps in a process without a person doing them: when a defined trigger fires and the stated conditions hold, the system performs the action itself. It is also called business process automation.

A working at height inspection means one of two things: an inspection task carried out where a person could fall a distance liable to cause injury, or the inspection of the equipment and places used for such work, including scaffolds, working platforms, ladders and edge protection. Both carry duties.

A work order is the formal record that authorises a specific piece of work on a specific asset, sets out what has to be done, and becomes the evidence that it was completed. It names the asset, the task, the priority, the accountable person, and what the job may consume in labour, parts and cost.

Workshop loading is the share of a dealership's available technician hours that is already booked with confirmed work for a future day, shown as a percentage. Service managers read it to see whether next week's diary is full, thin, or oversold before the week starts.

Workshop utilisation is the share of the time a workshop pays for that is actually spent working on vehicles, measured as productive hours divided by attended hours. It is the first of the three workshop time ratios and the one that says how busy the department is, not how good it is.

Wrench time is the share of a technician's shift spent with hands on the asset doing the actual repair or maintenance work, calculated as hands-on-tool hours divided by total available hours. In most operations it lands far lower than managers expect.

Write-off categories are the salvage classifications an insurer assigns to a vehicle it has declared a total loss, recording how badly the vehicle is damaged and what may lawfully happen to it afterwards. The UK uses Categories A, B, S and N. Other markets use different systems entirely.