AI chatbot for garages and trades, so the job does not go elsewhere
When you are under a car or on a roof you cannot pick up the phone, and the caller dials the next firm on the list. How an AI chatbot handles prices, coverage area and opening hours, where it should admit it does not know, and what we are building for booking.
You are under a car, on a roof, or halfway inside somebody's plumbing. The phone rings and there is no way to answer it. The caller waits two rings and dials the next firm on their list. That job is gone, and the question was probably only whether you work on their make and roughly what it costs.
An AI chatbot on your website takes that kind of question the moment it arrives, and leaves you only the ones worth putting the tools down for.
What people want to know before they call
- Whether you work on this make, this boiler, this kind of job
- Roughly what it costs
- How far you travel and what the call-out costs
- When you are open and whether you take Saturdays
- How soon you could get to them
- Whether they need an appointment or can just turn up
You already have those answers in your price list and in your head. The bot can give them for you, including at ten in the evening, when the customer on your website is deciding between you and a competitor.
What the chatbot does today
- It answers from your price list and website. Upload your rates and the bot works from them instead of inventing numbers. The method is in how to train your chatbot.
- It takes enquiries after hours. Most people deal with a broken car in the evening, not at ten in the morning.
- It works on WhatsApp. Trades already message customers there. From the Standard plan you can add WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram on the same knowledge base.
- It passes you the ones that matter. When somebody asks something specific, you take the conversation over. Human takeover (Take Control) is included from the Pro plan and during the trial.
- It reaches you on your phone. The Breezaro Companion app pushes a notification as soon as somebody asks for a person, so you can reply between jobs. It is free with every plan.
- It answers in other languages. It replies in whichever language it was asked, which helps with customers who do not speak the local one.
Where the bot should admit it does not know
In the trades, the fastest way to lose trust is a price nobody promised. So set the limits:
- A rough price is not a quote. The bot should give a range from your price list and say the exact figure comes after an inspection. Nothing more.
- It does not know your job status or your free slots. Without a connection to your system it cannot say when a car is ready or when you have capacity. Asked that, it should hand over to you.
- It does not invent services. What you do not do, it should not offer. Losing a question beats losing an afternoon to work you do not take.
Customers respect a bot that says plainly what still needs a human. It reads better than a confident answer that later falls apart.
What we are building for booking
The natural next step is booking straight from the chat, so the customer never has to call. Two things lead there, and both are in progress:
- Custom actions let the bot into your system, so it can work with current data instead of static text. How that works is in custom actions.
- Webhooks push an event out the moment it happens, so an enquiry can land as a Slack message or a row in a spreadsheet and still be there three days later. There is a worked example in when a visitor asks for a human.
Actions that write to a system, which is what putting a slot in your diary does, are not switched on yet. We want certainty about what gets sent and who confirmed it first. So treat booking inside the conversation as something we are building.
How to start
- Upload your rates, the makes or services you cover, and the area you travel to.
- In the welcome message, say what the bot helps with and that the exact price follows an inspection.
- Turn on phone notifications so an enquiry does not wait until the evening.
FAQ
Will the bot promise prices I cannot honour? Not if you give it your price list and tell it the figures are a range. Leave the exact price to the inspection, and have the bot say so itself.
Can a customer check whether their car is ready? Not yet. That needs the bot connected to your system, which is coming through custom actions.
Is it worth it for a one-person business? That is where it helps most. You have no colleague to answer the phone, so an out-of-hours enquiry would otherwise be lost.
Do I have to sit and watch it? No. It runs on its own and only pings your phone when somebody wants a person.
Jobs are usually lost in the silence between an unanswered phone and the next firm on the list. A chatbot fills that silence until you can get to the phone. The trial runs 30 days with no card, and the plans are on the pricing page.
Related: AI chatbot for small businesses · How to train your chatbot.