Not "sometime Thursday". Talkify is an AI receptionist for Workshop Software workshops: it answers your phone in a real Kiwi voice, reads your booking diary live, and offers the times that are genuinely open once your hours, your holidays, what is already booked and how long the job takes have all been taken off. Then it gets the rego and what the car is doing in the customer's own words and sends the booking through for you to accept.
The Workshop Software connector is in early access. It is built and tested against Workshop Software's published booking API, and we are switching it on one workshop at a time so we sit with you while it goes live rather than leaving you to it. The time it offers is real; what it sends is still a request you accept, the same as one off your own website booking form.
Everything it does, on the days when three people ring while you are torquing a wheel and the parts van is at the roller door.
Six things happen while your hands are dirty. You do none of them.
On the first ring, in a genuine New Zealand voice, using your workshop name and your greeting. No hold music, no menu, no "press one for parts". Five people can ring at once and all five get answered.
Customers say warrant, cambelt, regas and full service. Your appointment types say WOF, timing belt, air conditioning and something more specific. The agent matches everyday words to your wording, and asks which one you mean rather than guessing between your major and your minor.
Not a list of days you are open. The actual free slots, with your hours, your holidays, the bookings already in and how long that particular job takes all worked out first. A half-hour warrant and a four-hour cambelt do not get offered the same gap.
Never the whole list, and never a time it was not given. The caller picks one, and the agent books that exact slot rather than something near it.
The rego first, read back to check, because Workshop Software will not take a booking without it. Then make, model and year where they know them, and the fault: what it sounds like, when it started, whether it does it cold, what light came on. In their words, because that is what saves you a diagnostic phone call.
After one last check that the slot is still there. It lands in Workshop Software as an online booking request for you to accept, and the caller is told you will confirm. You get the whole call as a text and an email within seconds.
Your appointment types and your booking diary, working the phone at the hours a workshop cannot.
The agent already knows your appointment types before the phone rings, in your exact wording and with the hours you allow for each, so it offers work you actually do instead of inventing a menu. It is kept current for you rather than retyped whenever you change something.
This is the part most phone answering cannot do. Availability comes out of your own booking diary on the call, already netted against what is booked, your company holidays, the length of the chosen job and how full you are willing to let a day get.
The time, the rego, the caller, the vehicle and the fault in their own words, sitting in your online booking requests when you come off the tools. Nothing to re-key at five o'clock, and the note says it came in by phone.
Workshop Software online booking runs on requests, so the agent sends one and says you will confirm shortly. It is told never to say a caller is confirmed and never to invent a booking reference, because there is not one to give.
It does not quote. Pricing a job on a noise the customer has described is how workshops end up eating the difference, so it takes the detail and leaves the number to you.
"Is my car ready", "can you move me to Friday", "how much was that bill". Those are not on the booking connection, so the agent takes a proper message with the name, the rego and what they wanted, and the urgent ones are warm-transferred to whoever is free.
Worth reading before you decide, because we would rather you knew now than found out on a call.
Not a limit we chose. Workshop Software's data API cannot be searched by phone number or by registration, so there is no way to turn a ringing phone into a customer record on the spot. Talkify still recognises repeat callers from its own phonebook, built out of the calls it has already taken for you, so nobody spells their surname twice. Reading your Workshop Software customers is what we are building next, and it needs a proper sit-down about your data rather than a switch.
Same reason: job status, invoices and history are on the side of Workshop Software the booking connection does not reach. So the agent takes a message with the name, the rego and the question rather than guessing, and you get it as a text and an email within seconds. It also cannot move or cancel an existing booking, so those come to you as a message too.
Ring our agent and put it through its paces. Book a fake WOF, describe a noise badly, try to catch it out, ask it something it will not know. Most people ring expecting a robot and hang up having had a conversation. No sign-up, no card, answering around the clock.
Everyone thinks about the answering machine at night. That is not where the work goes missing.
Drop-offs are queued at the counter, the parts rep is waiting, two cars are on hoists and the phone has gone four times. One service adviser cannot absorb that, and the overflow used to be a busy tone or a voicemail nobody listens to until lunchtime. The agent answers all four at the same moment, in your name.
Somebody whose warrant expires on Friday rings three workshops and books the one that picks up. That is a job, plus the tyres, plus the brake pads it turns into, decided by who answered rather than by who was better. Work out what yours are worth on the missed call calculator.
The same agent, the same knowledge of your workshop, pointed in the other direction. Every one of these is live today.
Service reminders when a WOF or a logbook interval is due. "Your car is ready" calls. Win-backs to the customers you have not seen since the last warrant. You load the list, it makes the calls.
Connected to your Xero, the agent rings the invoices that have gone past due, in your name and your wording, and writes the outcome and any promise to pay onto the invoice. No commission, no collection agency.
The same brain in a chat widget on your site, in text or voice, from $49 a month. It knows the same services and the same free times as the one on the phone.
Phone surveys that ring your customer list after a service, ask how the car has been and report the answers back, without anyone at the counter sitting on hold.
The Monday after a long weekend, or the week the cold snap kills every battery in town. Call centre plans answer five, ten or fifteen callers at the same moment, with no queue and no hold music.
The Personal Assistant answers one person's own line rather than the workshop number, screens the rubbish and texts you what mattered. From $89 a month.
To start building your agent, complete the form, or ask our agent to get you started. No card needed for the demo.
The questions we hear most. If yours isn't here, ring our live demo agent on 03 242 1262, it'll either answer or queue a callback from a human.
How the agent handles a workshop day, from the eight thirty rush to the after-hours breakdown.
There is a connector for that too. It offers your open days rather than set times, because that is as far as the MechanicDesk booking API goes.
What Talkify connects to today, and what your agent can do once it is connected.