Everything you need to know about the engagement.
27 questions about how we work with Utah repair shops, used-car and aftermarket dealerships, and franchise rooftops, answered in plain text, no accordions to expand, no gates. If your question is not here, request a Service-Drive Audit and ask it directly.
What is Auto Advisor?
Auto Advisor is an automotive performance-consulting firm for independent auto repair shops, used-car and aftermarket dealerships, and name-brand franchise dealerships. We diagnose your operation, install an operating system we call the Autonomous Service Drive, four flagship AI agents (Front Desk, Parts Desk, Insights, Diagnostics) plus an Owner Command Center, inside a full roster of fifteen specialist agents across eight departments that runs your sales floor and your service bays, and coach you and your team to run it. The platform is included in the engagement, not sold separately.
Who is Auto Advisor for?
Three kinds of automotive operation, treated as equal audiences: independent auto repair shops, used-car and aftermarket dealerships, and name-brand franchise (new-car) dealerships, sales floor to service bays. It fits general repair shops, European and import specialists, fleet and commercial operations, independent used-car and BHPH lots, and franchise rooftops whose owners want to scale without adding overhead or losing control of the floor. Based in Eagle Mountain, serving the Wasatch Front and statewide.
Do you work with car dealerships, including franchise new-car stores?
Yes, dealerships are a first-class audience, not an afterthought. Used-car and aftermarket lots and name-brand franchise rooftops run the same fifteen-agent crew as a repair shop, with the Sales and Showroom agents on: the Sales agent drafts a first-touch reply for every lead in minutes and proposes test drives, Appraisals puts estimate bands on trade-ins and finds high-equity units to buy, and Inventory drafts listing copy and flags aged units and price-band drift, while the Service Drive runs your fixed-ops side. It sits on top of your dealer DMS and CRM (DealerCenter, Frazer, DealerSocket IDMS, Wayne Reaves, AutoManager), nothing ripped out, so your salespeople sell and your advisors write service instead of operating another dashboard.
Is this software or a consulting engagement?
A consulting engagement. You are hiring an automotive performance consultant, not buying a SaaS login. We assess your operation, repair shop, used-car or aftermarket lot, or franchise rooftop, install the Autonomous Service Drive as your operating system, and work alongside your team to run it. The platform, the four flagship agents and the full fifteen-agent roster behind them, across sales and service, is the deliverable we install. It is included, never billed per seat. You can also self-serve the platform from $997/month if you want the system without the coaching.
How does the Service-Drive Audit work?
It is a positioned consult, not a sales call. We review how your operation handles after-hours calls, sales leads, parts, reporting, and diagnostics today, then map exactly where the operating system recovers time and revenue across your sales floor and service bays, on your numbers, shown as a live demo on sample data. You leave with a clear picture whether or not we work together.
What do you install in the engagement?
We install the Autonomous Service Drive: the Front Desk after-hours booking agent, the Parts Desk reorder engine, the Insights morning briefing, the Diagnostics agent with the Turnkey Intelligence Bundle, and the Owner Command Center, plus the full roster of fifteen specialist agents across eight departments (sales and showroom, finance, people, dispatch, documents, and strategy). For dealerships, the Sales, Appraisals, and Inventory agents run the showroom side alongside the Service Drive. We migrate your data, connect your phone, CRM, and dealer DMS, configure everything to your shop or lot, and train your team to operate it, without ripping out the systems you already run.
What are the four flagship agents you install?
Front Desk answers after-hours calls and books appointments. Parts Desk forecasts part shortages and drafts purchase orders before you run out. Insights compiles your KPIs into a plain-language morning briefing. Diagnostics unifies Identifix and Mitchell 1 ProDemand in one search for technicians on the bay floor. Together these four are your Service Drive, and they lead a fifteen-agent roster that also covers sales, finance, people, dispatch, documents, and strategy.
What is an AI receptionist for an auto repair shop?
An AI receptionist is software that answers your shop’s phone in a natural voice, checks availability, and books the appointment without a human picking up. It matters because up to 21% of automotive service calls go unanswered (Marchex), and most of those callers dial the next shop. Auto Advisor’s version is the Front Desk agent: it books on real bay and technician availability, logs every call with a transcript, and hands anything outside policy to a human.
What’s the Best AI Receptionist for an Auto Repair Shop?
The best one is built specifically for shops, not adapted from a generic answering bot. Auto Advisor’s Front Desk agent checks your real bay and technician availability before it books, so it books a real appointment instead of taking a message, answers 24/7, and hands off anything outside its booking policy to a person. It rides on top of the shop software you already run (Tekmetric, Shopmonkey, Shop-Ware, AutoLeap, Mitchell 1) and is bundled in the 15-agent crew from $997/month self-serve or a $3,000/month installed Performance Partnership.
Can AI answer my shop’s phones after hours?
Yes. An after-hours AI agent answers the call in a professional voice, offers real open slots, and books the appointment while you are closed, which is exactly when the most calls slip. Auto Advisor’s Front Desk agent does this on your real bay and technician availability, with every booking logged and approval-gated by default. The booking lands on your Command Center schedule, so the repair order you used to lose to voicemail is waiting when you open.
What does AI cost for an auto repair shop?
Single-purpose AI phone-answering tools typically run around $109 per month at the entry tier (AgentZap’s published pricing), and each covers one job. Auto Advisor is the whole crew: fifteen agents across the front desk, parts, diagnostics, retention, finance, people, and the sales floor, at $997/month self-serve with no contract, or $1,500 to $8,500/month with hands-on consulting, data migration, and coaching included. Pricing is plain and public on the pricing page, no quote required.
Will AI replace my service advisors?
No. In Auto Advisor, every customer-facing artifact is a draft a human presents or sends: the Service Advisor agent drafts estimates with gross-profit floors checked in code, and the Retention agent drafts follow-ups, but your people make the call and take the credit. The point is fewer hours lost to busywork, not fewer advisors. Digitally documented, well-presented work pays: digitally authorized repair orders average about 50% higher value (PartsTech 2025).
How does the after-hours Front Desk agent book appointments?
When a call comes in after closing, the Front Desk agent answers in a friendly, professional voice, checks real bay and technician availability, offers open slots, and books the appointment onto your Auto Advisor schedule, one-tap approval by default, immediate in Auto mode. Every state change is logged, and anything outside policy is handed to a human, it never guesses. Write-back into your shop software’s own calendar is on the roadmap; today agent bookings live on your Command Center.
How does automated parts reordering work?
The Parts Desk agent watches your inventory and the parts your upcoming booked services will consume. When projected stock dips below a threshold, it drafts a purchase order to the right vendor. Each order carries an idempotency key, so a re-run can never double-order. You approve, or let it submit automatically, we tune the policy with you.
What is in the morning executive briefing?
The Insights agent runs nightly and compiles the numbers that move the shop, Average Repair Order, technician efficiency, bay utilization, car count, and revenue your agents drove, into a dated snapshot and a short, plain-language summary, measured against honest public benchmarks. Your Command Center shows those same numbers every morning before you open. No spreadsheet to build, no report to chase.
Which diagnostic databases does the Diagnostics agent unify?
The Diagnostics agent searches the professional databases your shop is entitled to, plus vetted open-web research with capped confidence, from one query. The Turnkey Intelligence Bundle targets the two sources that matter most, Identifix Direct-Hit and Mitchell 1 ProDemand, and we stand those entitlements up per shop during install, on your subscriptions or ours, with the bundle included in the Performance Partnership and Dealer-Grade engagements. One search instead of separate tabs, and when nothing confirms, it escalates to a tech rather than guessing.
What are the engagement tiers and what do they cost?
Three monthly consulting engagements, platform included, plus a self-serve tier. The Performance Partnership is our flagship at $3,000/month, most established shops start here, and it includes the complete Autonomous Service Drive: the four flagship agents and the full fifteen-agent roster, plus your Identifix and Mitchell 1 ProDemand subscriptions if you don’t already have them. The Foundation Engagement is $1,500/month for shops building the foundation. The Dealer-Grade Transformation is $8,500/month for owners who want a fractional COO with weekly one-on-one access to our founder. The Service Drive, Self-Serve is $997/month for the system without the coaching. Pricing is plain and public.
Is there a setup or install fee?
Each coaching engagement includes a one-time Service-Drive Install, the front-loaded engineering to stand the system up on your stack. The setup runs $4,500 on The Foundation Engagement, $7,500 on The Performance Partnership, and $15,000 on The Dealer-Grade Transformation, and it is included at no charge with your engagement, so what you pay is $0. The Service Drive, Self-Serve has no install fee either, you install it yourself, with our guides. The monthly is the ongoing partnership.
What does the Service-Drive Install include?
We engineer the Autonomous Service Drive onto the tools you already run, connecting your DMS, CRM, phone, parts, diagnostics, and calendar, then seed your organization, tune all fifteen agents to how your shop actually works, and train your owner and staff. Every agent starts in Approve mode so a human signs off on each action, and graduates to Auto once you have watched it work. The install carries thirty days of tuning and is backed by the 90-Day Performance Guarantee. You also get a direct line into founder-led engineering, so feature requests and bug reports go straight to the people who build the platform.
Do I get access to the people who build the platform?
Yes, directly. Auto Advisor runs founder-led engineering: your feature requests and bug reports go straight to the people who build the platform and ship in the product, not into a support ticket queue. When something needs to change to fit how your shop runs, it gets built. The Dealer-Grade Transformation adds weekly one-on-one time with our founder; every engagement has the same direct line into what gets built.
Why are the engagements priced on a monthly retainer?
Because this is hands-on consulting, not a software subscription. Each month we are diagnosing, tuning the operating system, coaching your team, and accountable to your numbers, with the platform fully included. You are paying for the transformation of how your shop runs, not for seats or features, so the relationship is measured in results.
What is the 90-Day Performance Guarantee?
By day 90, three things are true or we keep working at no additional cost until they are: the four flagship agents are live on your shop, your customer, vehicle, and inventory data is migrated, and your team is trained and running the Command Center. Each item is checkable by name, so the guarantee is a measurement, not a mood. It protects your time and reputation, not just your invoice.
How long does onboarding take?
We install the system, migrate your existing customer, vehicle, and inventory data, connect your phone and CRM, and stand up the four flagship agents, and the wider fifteen-agent roster you turn on as you need it, for you. Most shops are running within their first two weeks, with coaching continuing through the engagement. You work with a dedicated consultant, not a help-desk ticket queue.
How is my shop data kept private and isolated?
Your shop data stays isolated to your account and is never used to train a public model. Every record is tied to your shop at the database level, so one shop can never read another’s data. Authentication fails closed, a missing credential is denied, not allowed. The platform is built multi-tenant from the schema up.
Will this replace my current shop-management software or dealer DMS?
No, it works with whatever you run. Your shop-management software (Tekmetric, Shopmonkey, Shop-Ware, AutoLeap, Mitchell 1) or dealer DMS and CRM (DealerCenter, Frazer, DealerSocket IDMS, Wayne Reaves, AutoManager) is a system of record, you still answer the calls, work the leads, order the parts, and read the reports. We install a system of action on top: the agents do that work and write the results back into your existing system, so your team operates the business instead of operating another dashboard. Nothing gets ripped out.
Can you support multiple Utah locations and combined sales-and-service operations?
Yes. The Dealer-Grade Transformation engagement rolls every location and rooftop into one command center, compare shops and lots side by side, see group-wide KPIs across sales and service, and let each location run its own agents while you watch the whole portfolio. It fits multi-store repair groups, used-car and aftermarket dealers, and franchise dealerships running both a showroom and a fixed-ops department. Per-location data stays isolated; the roll-up is a read layer on top, with fractional-COO coaching across the group.
Where does Auto Advisor work, and how do we get started?
The platform is software, so The Service Drive, Self-Serve is available to any U.S. shop or dealership. The hands-on coaching engagements are delivered from our Eagle Mountain, Utah headquarters, where we work shoulder to shoulder with teams along the Wasatch Front and statewide. To begin, request a Service-Drive Audit. We review your operation and show you where the operating system recovers time and revenue, with no obligation.
Still have a question about your shop?
Request a Service-Drive Audit. We will answer it against your actual operation, after-hours calls, parts, reporting, and diagnostics, in a live demo on sample data.
No obligation · no high-pressure pitch · plain, public pricing