Systems for trades, garages and body shops

Before we go on

You have heard this pitch before.

It is fair to assume that most things landing in your inbox with the word AI in them are either software you would have to learn, or an agency that has never been on a site at seven in the morning or under a car at five to six. You are not short of things to do. The last thing you need is a system that makes more work.

So the short version, before you read any further. If all you want is the phone answered, buy that on its own and ignore this page. We sell it for £297 to set up and £99 a month, and it is on the tools page with a demo you can talk to right now. It is a good product and it is a tenth of the price of what is described here.

This page is for when the problem is bigger than the phone. Enquiries arriving five different ways and none of them written down. Quotes that live in your head until Sunday night. Invoices that go out a fortnight late because nobody had an hour spare. That is a system, and a system has to be built and wired into what you already use.

The number that matters

Work out what this is already costing you.

We are not going to quote you an industry statistic. You have been sold things with those before and you know they come from nowhere. Do this instead. It takes about a minute and it uses your numbers, which are the only ones worth anything.

Calls you did not get to last week Not the ones you rang back within ten minutes. The ones you saw at six o’clock, or never saw at all. Most people guess two and find five when they check.
What a job is worth to you on average Whatever your normal ticket is. A boiler service, a full respray, a rewire, a clutch. Use the number you actually invoice, not the one you would like to.
Multiply, then take a third of it Assume two thirds of those callers were never going to buy. The third that is left is what walked out of the door last week alone, and there are fifty-one more weeks in the year.
Now add the hours The evenings on quotes. The Sunday on invoices. Put your own hourly rate against them, the one you charge, not the one you pay yourself.

If that total is smaller than the cost of fixing it, you have just saved yourself a phone call and this page has done its job. Quite a few people get to the end of that sum and find the number is bigger than they expected.

The first system

Catch the enquiry, then keep it.

One system, built first, because it is the one that pays for the rest. Everything else waits until this is working.

It answers when you cannot

A missed call gets picked up or texted back within seconds, whichever suits how you work. The caller gets a real answer rather than voicemail, and they know when somebody is ringing them.

It gets the details down

Name, number, what the job is, where it is, and how soon. Written down properly, the same way every time, so you are not deciphering a voicemail while you are driving.

It lands where you already look

Your phone, your messages, your diary. Not a dashboard you have to remember to open. If you are already using job management software, it goes in there.

It keeps the lead warm

Someone who enquired on Tuesday and heard nothing by Thursday has gone. The system follows up on the ones you have not got back to, so the chasing is not another job on your list.

Then the bits after the job

Optional and usually second: a quote drafted from a voice note you record in the van, an invoice that goes out when the job closes rather than a fortnight later, and a review request that actually gets sent.

And you own all of it

The prompts, the workflows, the connections and every enquiry that comes through it. Nothing is rented, nothing is locked to us, and it does not switch off if you stop paying us.

How it works

Three steps, and the first two are free.

Twenty minutes, on the phone, whenever suits Early, late or from the van. We ask how enquiries reach you now, what happens to them, and what you are already using. No deck and nothing to prepare.
A written recommendation inside 48 hours Where the work is leaking out, what we would build first, what it would cost and what it would not fix. It is yours to keep and to act on yourself, or to hand to somebody else. It costs nothing and there is no call to sit through to get it.
If it stacks up, we build it Fixed scope, fixed price, one to three weeks. You carry on working. We need about an hour of your time in total, and we tell you in advance exactly when.

What we usually find

It is nearly always the same four things.

The phone is not the only leak. Most firms know about missed calls. Fewer have counted the Facebook messages nobody opened, the website form going to an email address that stopped being read in 2023, or the listing site notifications buried under everything else.

The quote is slower than the competition, not worse. Work is lost on the gap between the visit and the number arriving, not on the number itself. Two days is usually enough to lose it.

Nobody follows up. Quotes go out and then nothing happens. A single chase after four days recovers work that was never actually lost, and almost nobody sends it, because by then there is a new week of jobs on.

The admin lands on the wrong person. Usually the owner, usually after seven, usually the one whose hour is worth the most. That is the cost that never appears on any invoice.

What it costs

The number, before you ask for it.

The same reason everything else on this site has a price on it. You should be able to decide whether this is worth a conversation without having to have the conversation first.

One off

Building the system

Scoped and fixed before anything starts.

Everything above, built and connected
Live in one to three weeks
Wired into the diary and tools you already use
Yours outright: prompts, workflows, data
The price is fixed once the scope is

£2,500–4,500 one off

Optional

Keeping an eye on it

Genuinely optional. The system runs without it.

Monitored, so a failure is caught by us
Changes when your business changes
New automations added as they come up
Cancel any month, nothing switches off
Not required, and not padded to look required

£150–350 per month

Put that against the sum you did earlier. For most firms one or two recovered jobs covers the build, which is arithmetic rather than a promise: whether it holds depends entirely on what a job is worth to you and how many you are currently losing. That is exactly what the free look is for, and it is also why the recommendation sometimes says do not bother.

What clients have said

Reviews, left publicly.

These are Google reviews, which means they are public, attributed, and not ours to edit.

His detailed knowledge of both Google and social media ad space is surpassed only by his strategic thinking and his ability to get the maximum return on your spend.

Jim Taylor · Ten-year client · via Google

Have worked with Peter for many years on Google and Facebook. Great knowledge, very efficient.

Gary Johnson · SuiteWorld · via Google

You’ll get expert help and great service. Highly recommend.

Phil Slorick · via Google

Questions

The ones worth asking first.

How is this different from the AI receptionist you sell for £99 a month?

The receptionist answers the phone and emails you the message. That is the whole job, it is genuinely useful, and if it is all you need then buy that instead: it is £297 to set up and £99 a month on our tools page. This is a built system rather than a tool. It takes the enquiry however it arrives, gets the details down, replies while the person is still interested, puts it where your diary already lives, and chases the things that get forgotten afterwards. It is wired into what you already use, which is the part that takes the time and the money.

I have been sold software before and never used it. Why is this different?

Because you are not being sold software. There is nothing for you to log into and nothing for you to learn. The system works where you already work: your phone, your messages, your diary. If using it correctly requires you to change how you run your day, we have built the wrong thing and you should tell us so.

What if I miss the call on purpose because I am working?

That is the normal case, not the exception, and it is what this is built for. Nobody expects you to answer with your hands inside an engine bay or halfway up a roof. The point is that the person on the other end gets an answer in seconds rather than at half past seven that evening, by which time they have rung two other firms.

Will it sound like a robot to my customers?

It will not pretend to be a person, because that is the fastest way to lose someone. It answers, takes what it needs and is straightforward about what it is. Most callers want to know their message has landed and when somebody will ring back. If a caller wants a human, it says so and takes the message rather than looping them.

What does the setup price actually depend on?

Three things, mostly. Whether we are handling voice as well as text, because a phone number and a spoken conversation cost more to run than a message. How many places enquiries currently arrive, since a business taking them through the phone, Facebook, a website form and a listing site has four to join up rather than one. And what has to be connected at the other end: a diary is straightforward, a job management system or a garage booking platform is not always.

Do I have to take the monthly support?

No. It is there because most people want somebody watching it and adding to it, not because the system stops without it. Everything is yours either way: the prompts, the workflows, the connections and the data. If you stop the support the system carries on doing what it was built to do.

What happens if it goes wrong while I am on a job?

Enquiries fall back to what happens now, which is your phone. Nothing is routed through anything that can swallow a job silently, and you get told when something has failed rather than finding out from a customer three days later.

How long before it is running?

One to three weeks from the point we start, depending on what has to be connected. The free look and the written recommendation come back inside 48 hours, and that part costs nothing and commits you to nothing.

I am a two-van firm. Is this overkill?

Possibly, and you will be told if it is. Two vans missing four calls a week is not a small problem, but if the honest answer is that you need a phone answered and nothing else, the recommendation will say so and point you at the cheaper thing. We would rather sell you nothing than sell you the wrong thing and spend six months arguing about it.

Who actually does the work?

Peter Fraher scopes it and oversees it, with twenty-three years behind him in digital, and senior specialists build it. There is no account manager and no junior team. The person who looked at your business is still on it when it goes live.

The call you miss goes to the next name on Google.