AI phone assistant for garages
Every call starts from a registration. Tel-Agent takes it, the fault and the courtesy-car question without anybody leaving the ramp.
- Registration
- Warning light
- Courtesy car
Why a garage cannot answer its own phone
A garage's calls come from people standing next to a car that has stopped working, 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 to the garage on the next street, and neither outcome is affordable.
How the AI receptionist handles a garage booking call
It answers without anybody leaving the ramp, and takes the number first.
It asks for the registration, because nothing else can be looked up without it.
It takes what the car is doing and whether a warning light is on, and which colour.
It asks whether the car is driveable or needs collecting.
It asks about a courtesy car on this 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 on every call
- Records the warning light colour, not just that there is one
- Establishes booking or recovery before offering a date
- Keeps customer records on the garage's own machine
What it never does
- Diagnose a fault from a description
- Say whether a car is safe to drive
- Quote a repair price before an inspection
- Commit to a completion date
- Send vehicle data to a third-party server
Questions
Why is the registration asked first?
Because a garage cannot look up a service history, a part or a previous job without it. A call that ends without the registration is a call that has to happen again.
Can it say whether a car is safe to drive?
No. It asks whether the car moves and what it is doing, and records the answer. Whether it is safe is a judgement that needs somebody to look at it.
What about a warning light?
It asks which colour, because that is most of the urgency and most callers know it. What it does not do is interpret the light - the same amber light means several different things.
Does it quote for repairs?
Only from the garage's own list, and most repairs are not on one until the car has been seen. The honest version is a price after the inspection, from a person.
Can it handle a garage with several sites?
Which site is asked, and calls route to that site's own list. A courtesy car free at one branch is not free at another.
Does the EU AI Act allow an AI to answer a breakdown call?
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 garage says on the phone?
You are. A breakdown call 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 garage 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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