AI receptionist for mechanics: the two hours nobody can reach the phone.

Between half past seven and nine the counter has a queue of people leaving cars, and between four and five it has the same people collecting them. Those two hours are when most of a workshop's calls arrive, and they are the hours with nobody free.

In between it is not much better. Whoever runs the counter is also ordering parts, chasing a courier, writing up a job and standing under a car when it matters, and the phone is competing with all of it.

The bigger problem is that the person best able to answer the phone is the worst person to have doing it. A qualified mechanic taking bookings is an expensive receptionist, and every call takes them off a job that is being charged by the hour.

So workshops end up with a phone that is answered erratically. Some calls get a person, some get a machine, and nobody has any idea what the second group was worth.

Can you fit me in, how much is a service, do you do pink slips, is my car ready, and do you work on this make. Almost the entire call volume of a workshop is those five, and none of them needs a mechanic.

That is what makes a workshop different from a trade where every call is a different job. The questions repeat, the answers are known, and the only reason a person is needed is that nobody has ever written them down.

The one exception is the fifth. Whether a workshop works on a particular make, or has the software for it, is a real question with a real answer and it should be answered accurately rather than optimistically.

The is my car ready question is the highest volume and the most annoying, and it is the one that interrupts the workshop most, because the answer is usually with somebody who has their hands inside an engine.

What it can handle without anybody

• Booking a service or an inspection.

  Into the slots you make available, with the details you need taken properly.

• The standard prices.

  A logbook service, a pink slip, a diagnostic fee. Whatever is genuinely fixed.

• Whether you work on a make.

  Answered from what you told it, not from a guess.

• Taking a message about a car in the workshop.

  So somebody rings back rather than the caller ringing three times.

No diagnosis, no estimate for a repair, no opinion on whether something is safe to drive, and no promise about when a car will be ready. All four are the workshop's judgement and all four create real liability if a machine guesses.

The safety one is the most important. A caller describing a noise, a smell or a warning light must be put to a person or told plainly to stop driving and ring back, never reassured by an automated answer.

The estimate one is the most tempting to blur, because customers ask constantly. A repair cannot be priced from a description, and a number said on the phone becomes the number the customer expected, whatever anybody meant by it.

The ready-by one causes the most day-to-day trouble in practice. Parts do not arrive, jobs open up, and a promise made by a system that cannot see the workshop floor is a complaint in a few hours.

Where it stops, deliberately

• No diagnosis of any kind.

  Not a maybe, not a probably. A description of a symptom goes to a person.

• No repair estimates.

  Only prices that are genuinely fixed, like a logbook service or an inspection.

• No safety reassurance.

  Anything that sounds like it is fine to drive is out of bounds.

• No promises about pick-up times.

  It takes a message and somebody who can see the car answers it.

Your prices for the fixed jobs, what makes you work on, how many cars you can take a day, what a loan car costs, your hours, and the four or five things you never want promised. Writing that down is the actual work.

Most workshops have never put this on paper. The prices live in somebody's head, the booking rules are a feel for how full the week is, and the exceptions are learned by whoever answers the phone over about a year.

The booking capacity part is where it either works or does not. A system that books eleven cars into a workshop with six hoists has created a bad morning, so the limits have to be real and they have to be yours.

The conversation to write it all down takes about an hour, and workshop owners usually find it useful on its own, because it is the first time the counter's rules have existed anywhere but in a person's memory.

What gets written down

• The fixed prices.

  Only the ones that are genuinely fixed, and nothing else.

• The booking limits.

  How many cars a day, and which days are already tight.

• The makes and the software.

  What you actually work on, honestly.

• The never-say list.

  Diagnosis, estimates, safety, ready times.

It answers the calls nobody gets to, in the workshop's own voice, books the standard jobs into slots you control, answers the fixed-price questions, and takes a proper message for anything else with the make, model and rego already captured.

The practical effect is that the drop-off rush stops costing you bookings. The person who rang at ten past eight and got a machine now has a service booked for Thursday, and the counter never touched it.

It also improves the callbacks it does not handle. A message that already contains the car, the rego and what the customer thinks is wrong is a thirty-second callback instead of a five-minute one.

It runs on the workshop's existing number, and every call is recorded and readable, so you can see what it said and correct the brief when it gets something wrong.

What it will not replace

• It is not a mechanic.

  It books, it answers set questions, and it takes messages. Nothing about a car is decided by it.

• It is not a parts desk.

  Availability changes hourly and a wrong answer costs a customer.

• It does not run your diary for you.

  You set what it can book and how much, and it stays inside that.