Front Desk · Front of House

Who answers my shop's phones after hours?

Auto Advisor's Front Desk agent answers after-hours calls in a natural professional voice, checks real bay and technician availability, and books the appointment onto your Auto Advisor schedule, or hands the caller to a human. Booking and escalating are its only two moves; nothing a caller says can widen them.

Up to 21% of automotive service calls go unanswered, and the average service department misses 20 to 30% of inbound calls. (Marchex, multi-location automotive service call analytics.)

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The bottleneck

After 5pm the phone goes to voicemail, and a missed call is a repair order that drives to the shop down the street. The owner can’t answer every ring, and an answering service just takes a message.

What it does

What does the Front Desk agent actually do?

Answers the after-hours call and books a real open slot, so a missed call stops meaning a lost repair order.

Answers an inbound voice call, treats everything the caller says as untrusted input, and either books a real open slot or hands the caller to a human. Those are its only two moves.

Checks real bay AND technician availability before offering a time. A free bay with no free technician is never offered.

Queues the booking for a one-tap approval by default; in Auto mode it books immediately with a claim-first guard so a retried call can never double-book.

Creates or updates the customer by phone number, links the vehicle when a VIN is on file, and stamps the appointment as agent-created.

Logs exactly one call record per answered call: transcript, duration, recording link, and the outcome.

What it reads to do the work

The inbound call transcript and caller ID from the voice line
Your bays, business hours, technicians, and existing appointments
The autonomy mode you set for it (defaults to Approve)

What it writes back

A system of action, with a logged trail.

Front Desk does not just surface information. It writes the result into your Auto Advisor record with a logged trail and a human gate on anything outside policy.

A booked appointment on your Command Center schedule with customer, vehicle, and service summary.
A logged call record and transcript on the customer timeline.
A flag to staff when a request falls outside booking policy.

How you stay in control

How do I stay in control of what it does?

Every agent runs in the mode you choose, Off, Approve, or Auto, and every agent starts in Approve so a human signs off before anything happens. Here is what Front Desk can do, with the gate on each action, and the rails that hold in code, not in a policy document.

The actions, and their gates

Book the appointment on your Auto Advisor scheduleYou approve it
Log the call record and transcriptRuns logged, no tap needed
Hand the caller to a human with a spoken hand-offRead-only

The guardrails, held in code

A closed action set, book or escalate; untrusted caller text can never widen it.
Prompt-injection screening on the caller name and requested service; anything suspicious fails closed to a human.
A stable idempotency key per caller, slot, and day, so a retried webhook can never double-book.
The autonomy dial is enforced in the execution path: Off is read-only, Approve defers the write to your tap.
It never quotes repair prices; no pricing path exists in the agent.

What it will not do

What does Front Desk not do yet?

Every claim on this page maps to shipped, tested code, and the same discipline applies to the limits. Here is where the edge of the product is today, stated plainly, so nothing on your shop rests on a promise.

It books onto Auto Advisor's own schedule. It does not yet write the booking back into Tekmetric or an external calendar, so if your day runs out of your shop software, agent bookings live on the Command Center.
The voice line is provisioned per shop during install. Until it is configured, the call webhook refuses traffic entirely; it never half-works.
A missed-call recovery rate is not computed for you; the calculators use your own numbers.

The numbers it moves

Which numbers does Front Desk actually move?

Only measured numbers are listed here; a metric the product does not compute does not get claimed.

After-hours bookings created (counted on your Command Center)

Agent-driven revenue, estimated as agent bookings times your average repair order and labeled as an estimate

Questions about Front Desk

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.

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.

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.

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