"How much to fix a grinding noise when I turn left?" Every garage gets that message, and every good service advisor knows the only honest answer is that nobody can say until the car is on a ramp. It could be a wheel bearing. It could be a CV joint. It could be a stone in the brake shield.
The trouble is that a garage website visitor at 9pm wants a number, and the garage down the road may well give them one. So the temptation, for staff and for any assistant, is to offer a ballpark. That ballpark becomes the price in the customer's head, and the conversation at the counter three days later gets awkward.
An AI receptionist for garages earns its place by doing the opposite. It quotes what can honestly be quoted, captures the details a technician needs for everything else and is completely clear about the difference.
What can be priced, and what cannot
Garage work splits cleanly into two kinds. Write it down this way and the assistant's job becomes simple.
| Enquiry | Can the assistant give a price? | What it does instead |
|---|---|---|
| MOT test | Yes, your published fee | Captures registration and preferred dates |
| Interim or full service | Yes, by engine size or vehicle type if published | Asks for the vehicle to confirm which band |
| Tyres | Only if you publish prices by size | Captures tyre size and quantity |
| Brake pads and discs, common models | Only if you publish fixed prices | Otherwise captures vehicle details |
| Air conditioning regas | Yes, if fixed | Captures vehicle and dates |
| A noise, a vibration, a smell | No | Explains diagnostic charge, captures symptoms |
| Warning light on the dash | No | Explains diagnostic check, asks what colour and whether the car drives normally |
| Insurance or accident repair | No | Captures details for the bodyshop or advisor |
The more jobs you move into the top half by publishing fixed prices, the more the assistant can answer outright. That is a business decision, not a software one, but it is worth making.
Be careful with prices that depend on the vehicle. A full service on a small petrol hatchback and on a large diesel estate are different jobs. If your price list has bands, the assistant should ask for the make, model and engine before giving a figure, and say that the final price is confirmed once the team has checked the registration. That one extra question avoids most counter arguments.
The details that save a phone call
When a customer describes a fault, the technician's first questions are always the same. If the assistant asks them, the booking can be planned from the request.
- Registration number, so the team can look up the exact model and engine.
- Approximate mileage.
- What happens, in the customer's words. Grinding, knocking, pulling, juddering.
- When it happens. Turning, braking, accelerating, cold start, at speed.
- How long it has been going on, and whether it is getting worse.
- Warning lights, including colour.
- Whether the car is still being driven, or needs collection.
- Preferred drop-off days and whether they need a courtesy car or a lift.
- Contact details.
That is a long list, so let the conversation flow rather than firing it off as a form. Our guide to asking for contact details politely covers the order that stops people abandoning halfway.
What a good fault conversation sounds like
Visitor: how much to fix grinding noise when turning left, 2017 golf Assistant: I can't price a fault without a technician looking at it, because a grinding noise when turning can have a few different causes. Our diagnostic check is £45, and that's taken off the repair if you go ahead with us. To help the team plan it, does the noise happen at low speed, like in a car park, or at higher speeds too? And is it getting worse? Visitor: mostly slow speeds, bit worse this week Assistant: Thanks, that's useful. Could I take the registration, a rough mileage and a couple of days that suit you for dropping it in? The team will confirm a time.
The assistant did not name a likely cause, even though "wheel bearing" was sitting right there. It gave a real number for something it could price, the diagnostic check, and it gathered what the workshop needs. The £45 figure here is an example; use your own.
Safety beats a sale
Some descriptions mean the car should not be on the road. Spongy or failed brakes, smoke from the bonnet, a flashing engine management light, steering that suddenly feels wrong, fuel smells. The assistant is not qualified to judge whether a car is safe, so the instruction in its persona should be simple: for anything like this, advise the customer not to drive the vehicle and to call the garage or their breakdown recovery service, then capture the details.
Test that with vague wording. "Brakes feel a bit weird" should trigger it. So should "red light came on and it smells hot".
Worked example: fewer call-backs per job
Replace these example numbers with your own.
Say you receive 20 repair enquiries a week through the website and email. Each currently needs a call back to get the registration, symptoms and availability, and roughly one in three calls goes to voicemail first, needing a second attempt.
- First calls: 20 at 6 minutes = 120 minutes
- Second attempts: about 7 at 3 minutes = 21 minutes
- Total: about 2 hours 20 minutes of service advisor time
If the assistant captures the full detail up front, most of those calls become a short confirmation. Even at 2 minutes each with no second attempts, that is 40 minutes. The time saved is useful, but the bigger gain is that the technician sees the symptoms before the car arrives, and parts can be ordered sooner.
Before you switch it on
Start with your price list. Separate every job you can price firmly from everything that needs inspection, and publish the firm prices, including your diagnostic charge. Our post on answering service quote questions goes further on presenting ranges honestly.
Then write the do-not-drive instruction and test it with ten vaguely worded messages. When both are in place, see how a garage setup handles a real enquiry on our automotive page, or use the demo to watch the capture flow from start to finish.