Handing car keys over to customers outside of opening hours

Secure key handover for garages and car dealerships outside of opening hours with the masunt key safe.

When it comes to services, customers’ requirements are forever increasing nowadays. Car dealerships, garages or car rental companies also have to meet the growing demands being placed on them. Professionals in particular appreciate being able to pick up and drop off their vehicles outside of business hours too. This service is now one that many service providers in the industry offer.

The masunt key safe is the ideal solution for handing over keys at a car dealership. Drivers can also use the key safe to collect and drop off their vehicles and car keys at the dealership outside of opening hours. The keys are handed over without any need for staff, cutting costs for the car dealership or garage. This is also convenient for the customer, since they can drop off and pick up their vehicles day and night.

Testimonial – Willms Automobile:

‘The masunt key safe is an ingenious solution for handing over car keys outside of our operating hours. Since our customers are usually very busy at work, problems before or after closing time have always been something we’d have to contend with in the past. Often, colleagues had to work extra shifts just to wait for customers, or we’d had to put customers off collecting their cars until the next day because nobody from our team could stay on.
Thanks to the masunt product, customers can now conveniently hand over their keys during vehicle drop-off and we can subsequently also guarantee key handover at pick-up.’

Olaf Willms
Willms Automobile

Garage: handing over customer keys for cars

To hand over keys outside of opening hours, there are usually two options: either additional staff are needed, or – as is often the case – vehicle keys are handed over by posting them through a letterbox, which is not especially secure. And these solutions only enable vehicle drop-off or receipt of the customer’s key. A practical and, above all else, secure alternative is the use of a key safe – also known as a key repository. So, not only can keys be handed over outside of opening hours; vehicles or rental cars can theoretically be picked up and dropped off 24 hours a day.

The advantage for garages and car dealerships with respect to key handover

To accommodate customers, you no longer need to stay on outside of business hours just so you can hand over vehicle or car keys. You can conveniently use a key safe with online code allocation. The key safe itself is attached directly to the likes of the garage’s outside wall. All you have to do is deposit the required key in the key safe and have a new code generated online so the owner can open it. You can then send the code to the customer with full flexibility – over the phone, by email or by text message, for example. This has another decisive advantage. The codes are time-limited, so you indirectly also have control over when exactly a car can be picked up or dropped off at, allowing you to kill two birds with one stone. To ensure that the customer remains mobile, a key for a potential hire car can be handed over at the same time as the customer deposits their own key.

Depositing car keys securely at a garage

If all those other benefits weren’t enough, using a key safe isn’t just convenient but also secure. In theory, cracking open unsecured letterboxes or similar items and stealing the keys inside is child’s play for potential thieves. If drivers throw their car keys into the garage’s letterbox, they run the risk of not being covered by their insurance policy if their car is stolen. Many garage letterboxes aren’t sufficiently protected. A sturdy stainless steel key safe that is firmly fixed into the wall is more secure. To avoid any inconvenience with car insurers, since they may refuse to pay out due to negligent behaviour, it is advisable not to make savings in the wrong places.

Key handover for vehicle fleets and taxi companies too

Of course, it’s also a good idea to use a secure key handover solution like a key safe in other areas as well. A flexible key handover and practical key management solution is also interesting for vehicle fleets or taxi companies, where different employees often need access to the same vehicles. So the keys needed can be stored centrally and, if required, an opening code can be sent quickly and easily. Another advantage is that only one key is ever in circulation, which minimises risk of a key being lost.