A car on a workshop ramp is a small test of faith. The technician sees the worn part; the owner, somewhere else, hears the price. CitNOW’s original proposition was wonderfully literal: show them. A short video lets the person paying see what the person repairing is talking about. It gives an otherwise abstract recommendation something visible to stand on.
That simple exchange now sits inside a much larger business. CitNOW Group supplies video, imaging, messaging, sales management and workshop software to automotive retailers and manufacturers. In May 2026, it reported serving more than 11,000 dealerships globally. Its ambition has widened from helping a salesperson or technician explain one thing to helping different departments keep track of the same customer.
The distinction matters. A dealership can send a polished walkaround and still fumble the next enquiry. A service adviser can explain a repair perfectly, then lose the follow-up. CitNOW’s expanding portfolio addresses the space between those moments. The interesting question is how much of that space software can actually close.
01The camera was the opening act
The group dates its formation to 2021; the video business is older. CitNOW’s founders were Andrew Howells and Donna Barradale. Howells’s retrospective account traces their venture to a kitchen table in Winnersh in 2005, before the company’s registration in 2008. Those dates describe different beginnings, rather than a company somehow ageing thirteen years overnight.
His account also supplies a useful early obstacle: salespeople’s reluctance to participate in video. He describes a competitor, Autos on Show, using a turntable and automated filming to remove human involvement. CitNOW’s approach put people into the communication. That meant adoption depended partly on whether staff would pick up the camera and explain the car.
The current product line still reflects that human problem. CitNOW Sales supports personalised vehicle presentations. Workshop helps technicians show required work and package the explanation with repair information. Features include customer video ratings, prompts and audio enhancement that reduces distracting workshop noise. Even in the age of AI, a drill drowning out the important sentence is a fairly concrete obstacle.
02Buying the rest of the conversation
CitNOW says it formed the group because delivering its wider vision required a broader product portfolio. The subsequent acquisitions make that rationale tangible. Web1on1 brought messaging; RTC brought aftersales technology; Auto Imaging brought vehicle imagery. Each reaches a different part of a dealer’s day, from publishing stock to communicating about servicing.
Livingbridge invested alongside existing backer Tenzing in July 2022 to support acquisitions and European expansion. This is a privately backed software consolidation story, with recurring commercial relationships at its centre. The point of combining the businesses is to make more of a retailer’s customer-facing work available from the same supplier.
Feasa’s acquisition in December 2023 pushed the strategy further into integration. Its GetAUTO platform then offered more than 30 adapters connecting automotive systems with Salesforce. CitNOW’s announcement described retailers potentially operating as many as 150 software solutions. The attraction of another product, in that setting, rests heavily on which connections it improves and which duplicate tasks it removes.
- 01Show the vehicleImaging + personalised sales video
- 02Keep the enquiry movingMessaging + lead management
- 03Prepare for the workshopTriage + aftersales operations
- 04Remember the next stepCRM + follow-up + data
03One customer, fewer repeated introductions
Auto360, announced in June 2025, is the clearest expression of that ambition. Built on Salesforce Automotive Cloud, it brings customer and vehicle data together across marketing, showroom and aftersales activities. CitNOW said at launch that it could integrate with more than 250 third-party dealer systems. Marketing360 supports automated customer journeys; React360 tracks incoming leads and responses.
For a retailer, the practical appeal is continuity. The next colleague should be able to understand the earlier conversation without asking the customer to reconstruct it. Lead status, vehicle information and communication history become useful together. That is a more demanding proposition than storing a video, and it puts integration expertise near the heart of the product.
The market already contains alternatives. Impel, for example, offers automotive merchandising, imagery and video tools. Dealers can also assemble communications around their existing CRM and dealer management systems. CitNOW’s distinctive position is the combination of its video heritage, workshop products and expanding CRM portfolio. Its January 2024 Keyloop agreement illustrates the practical reality: an adjacent software provider can also be an essential integration partner.
04The 400 appointments came with a routine
Toomey Motor Group offers a more instructive example than a feature list. It introduced CitNOW Sales and Workshop in 2015. In the first quarter of 2024, it implemented a process requesting videos for all new digital enquiries arriving through its website. The resulting CitNOW case study reports 400 additional appointments and 180 more conversions compared with the same period a year earlier.
Those are reported customer results from a supplier case study, so they should be read as an example rather than a forecast. The detail worth copying is the operational choice: make video a defined part of responding to enquiries. Toomey also used on-site Academy training for retail and workshop staff. Buying the capability and making it a habit were separate pieces of work.
“We’ve worked with CitNOW Group to bridge the communication gap between our staff and customers”Julian Ingrosso · Group Digital Manager, Toomey Motor Group
Aftersales has its own version of the forgotten opportunity. Robinsons ŠKODA’s case study reports an 86% increase in approved amber work after adopting Amber Follow-Up. Amber recommendations concern work to revisit, making the later contact particularly important. Triage shifts another conversation earlier: customers can submit photos, video and questionnaire answers before a visit, helping service advisers prepare and assess what needs attention.
Triage makes the division of labour explicit. The owner supplies evidence of the problem, including an existing photo or a newly recorded video. The service adviser reviews it before scheduling or prioritising the workload. That can help the workshop order parts ahead of time. The product is selling preparation: move useful information to the point where somebody can still change the plan.
05The bill includes changing the habit
CitNOW operates a business-to-business subscription model. Its terms put recurring charges, product tiers and applicable setup or service fees into the order form. More features or integrations can mean a different tier. The buying decision therefore starts with a defined workflow and the products needed to support it, rather than a single universal package.
There is a useful distinction between price and promised savings. Auto360’s product page advertises savings of up to £450 per site each month through retiring redundant tools. That is a vendor maximum claim about removed costs. A dealer assessing it needs to compare the full new commitment with contracts it can actually retire, plus the staff time required to move.
The same discipline applies to the investment case. Faster replies have value when there is somebody responsible for replying. A joined customer record helps when its details are accurate. My reading of the customer examples is that teams should define the behaviour they want first, then judge software against it. Otherwise, another dashboard can become another place to leave a task unfinished.
CitNOW itself made a similar argument in its April 2026 Zero-Gap article. It proposed a 14-day diagnostic across the enquiry, delivery and service journeys, followed by small improvements with a metric, an owner and a weekly review. Automation comes after the process is stable. A reader can borrow that sequence without buying anything: choose one handover, establish who owns it, and measure whether fewer customers have to chase the next step.
06Now the dealer can question the data
On June 3, 2026, CitNOW launched DataHub AI. It aggregates dealership information and connects it to assistants including Claude and ChatGPT through Model Context Protocol, an open standard for connecting AI tools with data and services. The company describes uses including examining aftersales history, forecasting enquiry conversion and comparing performance with anonymised benchmarks.
This extends the business beyond recording what happened toward helping staff decide what to do next. The appeal is a manager asking a question in ordinary language instead of assembling a report by hand. The dependency remains familiar: the answer can only be useful if the underlying records and connections represent the business well. Conversational access does not remove that work.
CitNOW’s newer tools also return to the original video. Workshop’s Highlights AI marks useful moments, including required work and estimates, while two-way messaging lets customers reply through channels such as WhatsApp and SMS. These features keep the explanation connected to a response. The video becomes part of an ongoing exchange rather than the end of one.
07Somebody still has to pick up the camera
Keeping acquired products and teams working together is an organisational task as well as a technical one. CitNOW’s careers material emphasises learning, teamwork and wellbeing, and advertises remote and hybrid opportunities. It also describes a graduate programme and internal development. The company’s public volunteering photographs supply a less abstract view of the people behind the software.
There are formal listening mechanisms too. Its modern slavery statement describes anonymous staff questions reviewed at monthly management meetings and answered in company webinars. It reports that 76% of the global workforce completed its 2023 engagement survey. These are mechanisms a growing group can use to hear about friction between its stated culture and employees’ daily experience.
The group reported a second consecutive AM Awards Supplier of the Year win in May 2026. Recognition helps, but its proposition is ultimately tested in ordinary moments: whether a technician is understood, whether a prospect gets an answer, whether deferred work receives a sensible follow-up. CitNOW began by giving dealers a way to show the customer. Its larger business depends on helping the next colleague remember what happened.