Trade page · Garages, mechanics, bodywork
The phone rings while your hands are in an engine. By evening, ten missed calls are waiting that you won't all call back, and then the paperwork starts. I connect automations to your current tools so nothing falls through the cracks, and you keep the workshop.
The numbers behind the trade
A little over €400. That's the average ticket for a workshop job in mechanics, and it's what a customer who got no answer and calls the next garage is worth, on average.
The exact figure is €402.60 in 2025, measured by the Mobilians-Solware barometer across a panel of 1,164 workshops, 796 of them in mechanics. The same barometer shows something more worrying: workshop jobs are declining, 40.8 a week against 41.7 the year before. The ticket is rising, the flow is falling. In other words, every vehicle that comes in matters more than before, and every vehicle that doesn't cost more than before.
€402.60 per workshop job
That's the average ticket for a mechanical repair job in 2025, and jobs are declining by 2.2%. A call that goes unanswered isn't just one less call in the day. It's a line of revenue that goes to the garage next door, and often a service customer who never comes back, along with the servicing and the MOT of the years that follow.
And the phone remains the trade's main point of entry, which makes the gap wider than elsewhere. When 1,500 drivers are asked how they book a garage appointment, 52% say by phone and 32% that they drop in at the workshop directly. A slot booked through a digital channel accounts for only 12% of answers, and online platforms for 3%. So you don't have a website problem. You have a problem of a line ringing while both your hands are busy.
Then there's the paperwork, which starts once the workshop closes. A tradesperson running their own business spends 10 hours a week on admin, on average, that's 22% of a 46-hour working week, according to the survey run by the Asterès consultancy for FAFCEA among more than 1,200 business owners. The survey covers all trades, not just cars, but car repair mechanics are part of it, and you'll recognise the detail: quotes typed up after closing, calls returned between two vehicles, invoices re-entered on a Saturday.
An honest caveat, because it's in the same study: tradespeople who use AI today gain around 2 hours a week from it. Two hours is what ChatGPT gives you, open in the corner, used by hand, when you remember to. My work starts after that: a system connected to your line, your diary and your workshop software, running without you having to think about it, plays on a completely different scale.
Sources: MOBILIANS-SOLWARE 2025 activity barometer, published February 2026 (panel of 1,164 workshops: 796 in mechanics, 368 in bodywork) · Auto Infos, “La prise de rendez-vous au garage résiste à la digitalisation”, based on a Vroomly and Madeinvote study, December 2023 (1,500 respondents aged 18 to 64) · Asterès for FAFCEA, “L'intelligence artificielle et les chefs d'entreprise artisanale”, December 2024 (more than 1,200 respondents, all trades).
What I install
Three things, in this order: the calls you miss underneath a car, quotes and repair orders, MOT and service reminders. The diagnosis, the hands-on work, the words that reassure a customer worried about their car: that stays you, and it has to stay you.
A voice agent picks up when your hands are in an engine. It announces that it's an assistant, gives your opening hours, says whether you take that make, notes the number plate and the reason for the call, offers a slot in your workshop schedule and sends you the recap by text. By evening, instead of ten anonymous numbers, you have ten clear messages, and you call back in the right order.
You dictate the key points as you get out from under the car, the quote is formatted with your hourly rates and your wording, you check it over and send it. If it goes unanswered, a follow-up goes out after a few days, written in your words. An accepted quote becomes a repair order, then an invoice, without anyone retyping a line.
MOT, service, oil change, brake pads: your history knows who's coming up to their due date, and nobody looks at it. The system sends reminders by number plate and date, with a short message and a slot to book. It's the work you'd do if you had someone on reception all day.
How much it costs
From €3,900 to €5,800 excl. VAT to set up, depending on whether you add the phone or not, plus €190/month if you do. Prices published, scope written down, and I almost always advise starting with the phone, because that's where the money leaks away.
€1,900 excl. VAT setup + €190/month
Calls picked up while your hands are in an engine, number plate and reason noted
The voice agent that answers while you're under a car, scripts written for the workshop, connected to your schedule. The technology is included in the subscription, no commitment.
€3,900 excl. VAT
Quotes and repair orders out the same day, due-date reminders running on their own
Quotes and repair orders, due-date reminders, invoices: 3 to 5 automations installed in your current tools, delivered in 2 to 3 weeks. Scope written at the Scan, then a fixed price, 30-day guarantee.
A real case
Nearly one call in three used to end up on an answering machine that nobody called back. A month after installation, every call gets an answer, and he decides who to call back, already knowing why. That's the case of a garage owner who told me, a little sheepishly: “the phone rings while my hands are in an engine, I can't answer, and by evening I'm left with ten missed calls I'll never manage to call all of them back.” He didn't have a customer problem. He had a busy-hands problem.
What got in the way is worth telling. In the first week, someone called about a situation outside the planned scope, and the assistant tried to answer anyway, politely, and missed the mark. So we narrowed its scope instead of widening it: it handles what it handles very well, and the moment things go off the rails, it hands over without pretending otherwise. The gain that struck this garage owner most, in fact, isn't in the figures: he no longer checks his phone every five minutes, bent over an engine, afraid of missing the important call.
Frequently asked questions
Today they get an answering machine, and eight times out of ten they hang up without leaving a message. A voice agent announces that it's an assistant, gives your opening hours, says whether you take their make, notes the number plate and the reason for the call, offers a slot and sends you the recap by text. It doesn't diagnose anything and doesn't promise any price: the moment something falls outside its scope, it hands things over to you. Listen to the demo before you judge it, that's the first thing every client of mine does.
In the vast majority of cases, yes. Workshop software, a tracking spreadsheet, a shared diary, a mailbox: I connect to what you already have, you don't change tools and you don't re-enter your fleet of customers. If your software is genuinely closed off, I'll tell you at the Scan, with the alternative and its cost, before you've signed anything at all.
It isn't cold calling, it's a service your customers expect: nobody remembers their MOT due date. It reminds your own customers, based on a real due date, with a short message that does them a favour and a link to unsubscribe. That's the difference between a useful reminder and a mass mailshot, and it's also what GDPR says.
That's actually the size where it shows the most, because there's no one on reception when the two of you are both under a car. The maths comes down to two lines: the admin hours you get back, and the workshop jobs you stop losing for want of picking up. A workshop job is worth a little over €400 on average: it's up to you to count how many you're missing each week. If the numbers don't add up, I'll tell you at the scoping call and we'll leave it there.
30 minutes on the phone, free of charge, no jargon: you leave with your figures in hours and euros, even if you don't end up working with me. Or count your hours yourself in 30 seconds.
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