AI phone assistant for repair workshops
The call comes from a roadside and needs a registration before anything else. Tel-Agent takes it without anyone leaving the ramp.
- Registration
- The fault
- Courtesy car
Why a repair workshop cannot answer its own phone
A workshop's calls come from people standing next to a car that has stopped working. They are not calm and they are not brief, and the person who could help is under a vehicle with dirty hands. Every call answered is a job paused; every call missed is a booking that went somewhere else.
How the AI receptionist handles a garage call
It answers without anybody leaving the ramp, and takes a callback number first.
It asks for the registration, because everything else depends on knowing the vehicle.
It takes what the car is doing, in the driver's own words.
It asks whether the car is driveable or needs collecting.
It asks about a courtesy car on the first call, so the booking is finished rather than half-made.
What the agent is told to ask
Written by you, in your own words, as the assistant’s instructions.
What a garage phone assistant should and should not do
What it does
- Answers while the workshop keeps working
- Takes the registration and the symptom every time
- Establishes driveable or recovery before booking
- Asks the courtesy car question on the first call
- Keeps customer records on the workshop's own machine
What it never does
- Diagnose a fault from a description
- Quote a repair price it has not been given
- Say whether a car is safe to drive
- Commit to a completion date
- Send vehicle or customer data to a third party
Body shops
Take the claim reference before anybody books an estimate.
- Claim reference
- Accident date
- Insurer or private
Mechanics
Registration, fault and courtesy car - taken without leaving the ramp.
- Registration
- Warning light
- Courtesy car
Tyre shops
Take the size off the sidewall without anybody leaving the bay.
- Tyre size
- How many
- Mobile fitting
Questions
What does it need before anything else?
The registration. Everything a workshop does starts from knowing which vehicle, and a call that ends without it is a call that has to happen again.
Why ask about a courtesy car on the first call?
Because it decides the customer's whole day, and asking later turns one call into two. It is the question most often forgotten and most often the reason a booking falls through.
Can it tell whether a car is driveable?
It asks; it does not judge. The caller says whether the car moves and what it is doing, and the workshop's own rules decide whether that means a booking or a recovery.
Can it give a price for a repair?
Only from the workshop's own list, and most repairs are not on one until the car has been looked at. The safe version is that a price is quoted after the inspection, by a person.
What about a breakdown rather than a booking?
Whether the car is driveable is one of the first questions, because it decides whether this is a booking or a recovery. A recovery is usually a transfer, not a message.
Does it work for a workshop with more than one site?
Which site is asked, and calls can be routed to that site's own list. A courtesy car available at one branch is not available at another.
Does the EU AI Act allow an AI to answer a service booking?
Yes, under Article 50 of Regulation 2024/1689, which asks that the caller be told they are speaking to a machine - that line belongs in the greeting you configure. Nothing about this work falls under Annex III, the list of high-risk uses. The distinction the Act draws is between assisting and deciding, and this agent assists: it never quotes a repair or judges whether a car is safe to drive. Austria's KI-Servicestelle at RTR publishes the same reading of the transparency duty.
Who is the data controller for what a caller to a workshop says on the phone?
You are. A service booking is ordinary personal data and vehicle records, and Tel-Agent is self-hosted with your own model keys, so the recording, the transcript and the record it writes stay on your server and never reach Dpro GmbH. There is no processor agreement to sign with us because we never receive the data, and the source is AGPL-3.0, so you can check that rather than take our word for it.
Can a workshop run this in the United States?
There is no single federal AI statute to comply with, but a phone line carries older rules. The TCPA governs automated outbound calls, and consent to record is set state by state. Consent to record is set state by state, and California and Illinois among others want every party to agree. Running the software yourself makes you the caller of record, so the disclosure and the recording switch are yours to set.
Not usable yet. The day it answers a real call will be a release, not a newsletter.
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