Booking work in
Detail
Takes the registration or equipment, the reason for the visit and contact details, then offers the slots you genuinely have free, given the workload and the type of job.
Workshops and repair services
The phone rings exactly when your hands are full
In a workshop nobody sits waiting for calls: whoever picks up is under a car, at a customer’s site, or halfway through a quote. Elop always answers, books the job in, tells customers when the work is ready, and chases the quotes waiting for approval.
- Answers while the team is on the floor or out on a job
- Books jobs against the workshop’s real capacity
- Tells the customer it is ready without anyone remembering to
What the phone costs a workshop
It is not a customer-service problem: the person who knows the answer is the person producing the work.
Nobody can pick up mid-repair
Detail
Stopping a job to take a call costs the length of the call plus the time to pick the work back up. Which is why a lot of calls are simply left to ring.
Every interruption costs more than the minutes it lasts.
The phone is answered without anyone putting a tool down.
The missed call goes to another workshop
Detail
Someone with a car off the road or a broken installation does not wait: they ring the next name on the list. That is work that never comes back, and usually you never learn it existed.
Lost jobs that show up in no report.
Every call gets an answer, out of hours included.
“Is my car ready yet?”
Detail
The same question dozens of times a day, answered by the most expensive person in the workshop. And when a job finishes, calling each customer piles up until the end of the day.
Finished vehicles spending another night on site.
Status is self-served and the “it’s ready” call goes out on completion.
Quotes sent and never chased
Detail
The quote goes out, the customer says they will look at it, and there it stays. Chasing takes a call that almost never happens, because there is work coming in.
Work already priced that never gets done.
Quote follow-up happens on its own, at whatever interval you set.
The bookings that do not turn up
Detail
A reserved bay sitting empty is not recoverable: the labour was there and so was the ramp. Confirming the day before works, but it is a round of calls nobody has time for.
Capacity you paid for and did not use.
Every booking confirmed the day before, without occupying anyone.
The servicing nobody remembers
Detail
The annual service, the oil change, the MOT running out, the maintenance on equipment installed a year ago. Predictable work lost for want of a timely call.
A customer base going cold on its own.
Service campaigns over your own base, when they are due.
What Elop handles in your workshop
The part of the phone that does not require looking at the part. Diagnosis, technical judgement and the customer relationship stay yours.
Status enquiries
Detail
Answers “how is mine going?” with whatever is in your system — and when there is nothing there, says so plainly and leaves the message instead of inventing a date.
Work-completed calls
Detail
As soon as the job is marked ready, the customer gets the call with collection times and the amount if you have it loaded. It stops depending on someone remembering.
Quote follow-up
Detail
A call at the interval you agree: are they approving it, do they need it explained, would they rather wait. The answer is recorded against the quote.
Authorising extra work
Detail
When a further fault appears mid-repair, the authorisation call goes out immediately rather than at the end of the day — by which point the vehicle has been sitting for hours waiting on a yes.
Booking confirmations and reminders
Detail
A call the day before with the option to confirm, move or cancel, so the slot frees up in time for someone else to take it.
Service and maintenance campaigns
Detail
Outbound calls over your own base: annual services, MOTs about to expire, maintenance on installed equipment. Predictable work that only needs remembering.
Emergencies and out of hours
Detail
A breakdown at ten at night gets an answer, the case is captured and queued for first thing, with an alert to whoever is on call if you run a rota.
What changes day to day
The first thing you notice is what stops being interrupted.
- 24/7
Phone cover
Night and weekend breakdowns get captured, not lost.
- No stopping
Work on the floor
A call stops being an interruption to the repair in progress.
- On completion
Collection call
The vehicle leaves the day it is ready, not the day after.
- No queue
Peak intake
A Monday morning is handled like a Thursday afternoon.
With the management system you already run
If the job status never reaches the agent, the agent cannot answer. So the first thing we connect is your job-card system.
If your management system has no API, a file exchange or an intermediate webhook can work. We check that before committing to anything.
Integrations- Workshop management and job-card software (API or webhook)
- Intake diary and ramp or engineer scheduling
- Customer and vehicle or equipment records
- Quotes and their approval status
- SMS and WhatsApp Business for confirmations and notices
- Phone system and out-of-hours diversion
Hear it answer the workshop phone
Leave your number and call the way one of your customers would. Ask about a job, move the booking, push back.
- The call arrives within seconds.
- Talk normally: interrupt, ask, change the subject.
- No cost, no commitment, and the conversation is not recorded.
What a workshop manager asks us
The real questions, not the brochure ones.
Will it know anything about cars?
It does not need to, and that is not what we ask of it. The agent captures the reason for the visit in the customer’s own words and passes it into your system; the diagnosis is made by whoever opens the bonnet. If the conversation turns technical, it hands over rather than improvising.
Can it give a completion date?
Only one that is in your system. If the job has no date, it says so and leaves the message for you to confirm. Inventing a completion date is the fastest way to lose a customer, so the agent does not do it.
What if the customer wants the mechanic?
They get the mechanic. The agent is not there to hold on to anybody: when someone asks for a person, it hands over with the reason already captured, so whoever picks up is not starting from zero.
We are a small workshop — is this not for big chains?
The opposite. The smaller the team, the more expensive it is for the phone to interrupt. A chain has someone on reception; in a three-person workshop the person answering is the person who was repairing. The saving is more direct there.
How much work is it to set up?
The part we need from you is short: how you want it to answer, what it may and may not say, and access to the job-card system. We configure the rest, and it is reviewed with test calls before it takes a real one.
Can it just cover out of hours?
Yes, and that is the most common start. Covering nights and weekends changes nothing about your daytime operation, and within a few weeks you can see how many calls were being missed.
Start with the calls nobody picks up today
Out of hours and at the workshop’s busiest stretches. It is the section with the least risk in changing, and within weeks it shows how much work was going elsewhere.
Other solutions
