Working example, built for Water Workz Marine

The update that goes out before the customer has to call and ask

A BBB review describes a boat left in for service that "sat outside for about two weeks before work began," then overheating on the first outing afterward. A separate Birdeye review describes issues "asked to be fixed" that "haven't been," with repeated vague excuses instead of a firm date. Both are the same underlying gap: nothing in your current setup tells a customer what's happening to their boat until they call and chase it themselves.

What's real: both reviews above are quoted from your actual listings, BBB (Logan S., describing a two-week wait and an overheating issue on the next outing) and Birdeye (Kurt Troyer, 4.5/5 average across 125 reviews overall, describing unresolved issues and repeated excuses from the service desk). A direct fetch of your live site's contact and service-department pages today found no online scheduling, no customer portal, and no service-status tool of any kind, phone and a single shared email address are the only contact paths, and the service-department page states only that technicians are "on duty during business hours" with no description of how a drop-off is tracked.

What's illustrative: the tickets, customers, and boats below are fictional, not your real service queue. Nothing here sends a real text or email, this shows exactly what a customer would receive at each step. A real build connects to whatever your service team already uses to mark a ticket's stage, and swaps in an actual SMS/email service to send it.

Service desk view: update a ticket

Sample tickets, fictional

What the customer sees

New drop-off: replaces phone-only intake

What I'd flag before you roll this out anywhere else

Nothing here sends a real text or email. This demo shows exactly what a customer would receive at each step. A real version needs an actual SMS/email service (for example Twilio or SendGrid) connected to whichever system your service desk already uses to mark a ticket as diagnosing, waiting on parts, or ready for pickup.
The six-stage flow shown (dropped off, diagnosing, waiting on parts, in progress, ready for pickup, picked up) is a typical marine-service flow, not copied from your internal process. Worth a short conversation before this gets built for real, your service team may track things differently or add a step like a signed estimate approval.
The queue position shown at drop-off is a count, not a promised date. It answers "how many boats are ahead of mine" without promising a specific day, since that's the actual information a customer is given verbally today, just automatically and the moment it changes instead of only when they call.
The "report issue persists" action models the Birdeye review directly, it is not a guarantee every recheck gets fixed. What it changes is that a reopened issue becomes a tracked, front-of-queue ticket with its own notification, rather than a phone call that may or may not get written down anywhere.
The BBB and Birdeye reviews are real and quoted directly; the detailed Birdeye account is from several years ago and your BBB complaint count is low relative to your review volume. This is a reasonable response to a documented, real pattern, not a claim that the problem is currently severe or widespread, your dealer rating overall is strong.