Detail Connect
July 2026
Designing Client Messaging Within the Booking Workflow
Overview
Detail Connect is a SaaS CRM platform that helps mobile auto detailers manage bookings, clients, scheduling, invoicing, payments, and day-to-day business operations.
Keeping clients informed during appointments often required detailers to manually call or message them, interrupting their workflow and creating inconsistent communication. Since detailers were already managing appointments inside the app, there was an opportunity to make client communication part of the booking experience.
I designed an end-to-end client messaging experience by introducing On My Way and I've Arrived notifications while extending the existing Cancel Appointment workflow with client messaging. The experience also allowed detailers to control automated messaging preferences and customize message templates within the existing notification settings.
The Problem:
Keeping clients informed during appointments often required detailers to manually call or message them. They needed a faster way to notify clients when they were on the way, had arrived, or needed to cancel an appointment.
The Goal:
Design a client messaging experience that allows detailers to communicate with clients without interrupting their booking workflow.
Users:
Mobile auto detailers.
My Contribution:
End-to-end UX/UI design, interaction design, message template design, prototyping, developer handoff preparation, implementation review.
Challenge
My challenge was to integrate client communication directly into existing booking workflows while keeping messaging quick, flexible, and optional. Detailers needed to notify clients without leaving the booking experience, while still deciding when messages should be sent and how they should be written.
The experience also needed to support:
Automated messaging preferences
Customizable client message templates
On My Way updates
I've Arrived updates
Client messaging for existing appointment cancellations
Booking-level communication actions
while allowing detailers to decide when client notifications should be sent.
Solution
Key Design Decisions
Giving detailers control over client communication:
I designed client messaging as part of the existing Automated Messaging settings, allowing detailers to choose which updates they wanted to send and customize how those messages were delivered. Detailers could enable or disable client messages based on how they preferred to communicate with their clients.
Design Impact:
Giving detailers control over client communication allowed the feature to support different business workflows instead of enforcing a single communication style.
Integrating client communication into bookings
Client communication was integrated directly into booking actions. I introduced On My Way and I've Arrived as new booking actions while extending the existing Cancel Appointment action with the same messaging experience.
Design Impact:
Keeping communication within the booking workflow reduced unnecessary navigation and made it easier to notify clients during active appointments.
Final Experience
The final experience allowed detailers to notify clients directly from booking actions while managing communication preferences and message templates through existing Automated Messaging.
Outcome
The Automated Client Messaging feature was successfully implemented as part of the Detail Connect application.
What shipped:
Automated messaging preferences
Customizable client message templates
On My Way workflow
I've Arrived workflow
Client messaging for appointment cancellations
Booking-level client communication
Result
Since its release, approximately 50% of detailers use the Automated Client Messaging feature.
