Never miss a call at your auto shop

Missing calls is not a sign of a badly run shop. It is what happens when the people who answer the phone are also the people who fix cars and serve customers. Calls arrive in bunches, usually at the moments you are busiest.

We won’t quote a statistic about how many calls shops miss; it varies too much from shop to shop, and you know your own phone better than any survey. What every owner knows is simpler: every missed call is a customer who may call the next shop. Someone with a noise, a warning light or a car that won’t start wants an answer now, and a voicemail greeting doesn’t give them one.

A call back an hour later sometimes wins them back. Often they have already booked somewhere else.

The fix is to make sure a missed call is never really missed. Your shop keeps its number. You pick a local number for the AI receptionist and set your line to forward to it when the line is busy, when nobody answers, and after hours. The calls your team picks up are untouched; only the ones that would have gone to voicemail move over.

The assistant answers in a natural voice, as your shop, and handles the call the way your counter would:

• It books appointments onto your calendar after collecting the caller’s name, mobile number, vehicle year, make and model and the reason for the visit, offering only times that are really open.
• It answers questions about your hours, services and FAQ.
• It takes a message when the caller needs a person, and you are notified by text, email or in the app.
• On full Gearboxly plans, it tells callers on the number on file where their repair is at.

Callers can interrupt and change direction the way they would with a person. If they want a text after the call, it asks first and sends one only if they say yes.

Each call the assistant takes appears in the Phone calls screen with an AI summary, a transcript and a recording kept for 14 days. That makes missed calls something you can manage. You can see who called, what they wanted and whether it is already handled, and follow up on the few that need you.

1. Forward on busy, so a second caller never hears a busy signal.
2. Forward on no answer, so a call that rings out goes to the assistant instead of voicemail.
3. Forward after hours, so evening and weekend callers can still book.
4. Keep your hours, services and FAQ up to date in Gearboxly, because that is what the assistant answers from.
5. Pick how you want to be notified: text, email or in the app.
6. Check the Phone calls screen each day and call back anyone who left a message.

The AI receptionist is $99 a month per location as an add-on to a Gearboxly plan, or $149 on its own, with 200 call minutes either way. The included minutes are a hard cap, so you never get a surprise bill: when they run out, calls go to voicemail until the next month. If you’d rather every call keep getting answered, turn on extra minutes at $0.15 each. Add it to any Gearboxly plan, or get the receptionist-only plan ($149, no free trial, cancel anytime). It is not for emergencies; a caller in danger should call 911.

Want the full picture? Read the AI receptionist overview.