Both bays are full. The phone keeps ringing.
Your techs are under a hood and your advisor is at the counter with a customer. The estimate call goes to voicemail, and the caller drives to the shop that picked up. Wide Awake AI answers, gets the vehicle and the concern, and puts the job on your schedule.
A missed call is a car that went somewhere else
Shops do not lose customers to bad work. They lose them to a phone nobody could get to, on the one morning that customer needed brakes.
First two figures from small business call research, 2026. Sources on request. The third describes our service, not a result.
It asks what your service advisor would ask
You write the questions. It never quotes a price and never diagnoses. It gets the facts, works out how urgent the job is, and books it.
Every shop has a version of the same first four questions. What is the vehicle, what is it doing, can you still drive it, and when can you leave it. Ava asks yours in your words, in English or Spanish, on the first ring and on the fourth call at once.
A brake grind at highway speed gets flagged as urgent and reaches you however you want to be reached. A routine oil change books itself into an open slot without touching you at all.
You get the whole call as a transcript, plus a plain summary of the job before the customer has finished parking.
See it on your own numberVehicle
2019 Honda CR-V, 84k milesConcern
Grinding when brakingStill drivable
Short distances onlyTow needed
No, customer will drive inDrop off or wait
Drop off, needs a ride backThe rest of the business, once the phone is handled
Most people start with the phone because it is the one that visibly loses money. These three are what they ask for next.
Chases the declined work
The customer who said not today in March is the easiest job on your schedule in September. An agent keeps that list, calls at the right time, and books whoever says yes.
Stops the retyping
Inspection photos go to the customer, approved work lands on the invoice, and the invoice reaches your bookkeeper. The same job stops being entered by hand three times.
Reads your own history
Every repair order you have ever written, searchable in plain English. Which cars did we see this fault on, what did the fix involve, and what did we charge for it.
What gets asked before the phone is handed over
If yours is not here, ask it on the walkthrough. You will get a straight answer, including when the answer is that we are not the right fit.
Will it quote a price?
Never. It captures the vehicle, the concern and the urgency, then books the appointment or takes a message. Pricing and diagnosis stay with your advisor and your techs, by design and by hard rule.
What about tow ins and breakdowns?
It asks whether the vehicle is drivable, whether a tow is needed and where it is sitting, then flags the call to you the way you want to be reached. It does not decide an emergency is routine.
We already run a shop management system.
Good, keep it. If it has a way in, the appointment lands there directly. If it does not, you get the booking and the details by email and text, and nothing about your setup has to change.
Will callers know it is not a person?
It says it is an assistant when it is asked, and it never claims otherwise. In practice most callers care that somebody picked up on a Saturday.
How fast can it be answering?
72 hours from kickoff. You approve every word of the script before it takes a single call, and you can change any of it later by sending one message.
Tell us what your phone is doing
How many calls a day, who picks up now, and what happens to the ones that arrive after you close. That is enough for us to tell you whether this is worth doing.
If it is, you get a flat number on the call. If it is not, you will hear that instead of a proposal.
- chris@wideawakeai.com
- Based in
- San Diego, CA