VoIP for garages and car repair shops: calls with your hands full

The problem: the phone and your hands in the engine

Take a typical garage: the owner, two mechanics and a reception desk staffed in the mornings by a part-time receptionist. Calls arrive all day long: customers asking whether their car is ready, new customers wanting a service or a quote, parts suppliers, the recovery truck bringing in a broken-down car.

The landline phone sits on the desk. When the receptionist is not there, or is with a customer, the call rings into thin air. The owner hears it from the lift, but by the time they have wiped their hands and reached the desk the customer has already hung up. And a customer who gets no answer often calls the next garage on the list.

VoIP does not take the work out of your hands, but it changes where the call arrives and what happens when nobody can answer. With a virtual number and step-by-step routing, the same call can ring on the desk and in your pocket, be taken by an AI secretary that notes the details, or end up in voicemail with a message sent by email.

Ringing the desk and the mobile at the same time

The first move is the simplest: ring the desk phone and the owner's mobile together. On the mobile you install the Vohippo app for iPhone and Android, which uses a SIP account just like an office phone. When a call arrives, the app is woken by a push notification even if it was not open.

In the number's routing there is just one step:

Whoever has their hands free first answers. With simultaneous ringing, the default, nobody has to pass the call on. If instead you prefer the mobile to ring only when the desk does not answer, choose «One after the other»: first the desk, then the mobiles. The two strategies are compared in the guide on simultaneous or sequential ringing.

A few practical tips that apply to any brand:

• A Bluetooth headset paired with the mobile lets you answer with a tap, without picking up the phone.
• A cordless phone connected to the desk account, instead of a corded phone, lets the receptionist answer even while walking a customer through the workshop.
• If there is a computer at the desk, the webphone in the browser uses the same account without installing anything, with mute, hold and a keypad for tones.
• In a noisy environment a phone that supports G.722, wideband audio, is worth having: the voice on the other end is easier to understand. The guide to VoIP phones explains how to connect them.

The AI secretary that takes name, customer and number plate

When nobody answers, the call should not vanish into thin air. The AI secretary answers with an artificial voice, follows the instructions you write and collects the caller's name, contact details, reason and urgency. For a garage, you can also ask it in the instructions to take the car's number plate and model.

An example of instructions in the «What it must ask or say» field:

You are the receptionist of Russo Motors. Ask for first name and
surname, a phone number, the car's number plate and model. Ask the
reason: service, breakdown, tyres, roadworthiness test or news about a
car already in the workshop. Ask whether the car is off the road or can
still be driven. Do not give prices or completion times: explain that
the owner will call back as soon as possible.

While the secretary talks to the customer, you receive a notice with a card: a summary in Italian, the transcribed conversation and two buttons, «Accept» and «Refuse». The notice arrives as an SMS, which is charged, or as a notification in the app, but the notification is available only on Android. If you accept, the call moves to the next step, usually «Ring SIP accounts» to your mobile; if you refuse or do not reply within the maximum wait, the secretary reads the set phrase and hangs up.

The benefit for a garage is concrete: looking at the card you understand at a glance whether it is a car stranded on the road (to call back immediately) or a service request (which can wait for the break). Two things to know: the AI secretary speaks the caller's language, useful with foreign customers, and it can misunderstand or make mistakes, especially with number plates read out in a hurry. Always reread the card and, if needed, confirm the plate when you call back. How it all works is in the guide on the AI phone secretary.

An SMS alert for every call

The «Send an SMS» module sends an SMS to a number you choose, for every call that passes that point in the flow, and then the call carries on. The text can be up to 140 characters and can contain {CALLER}, the caller's number, and {DID}, the garage number that was called. It costs €0.05 per SMS.

An example text:

Garage: call from {CALLER}. If you did not answer, call them back.

Placed at the start of the flow, it alerts you to every call; placed after the ringing, only to the ones nobody answered, which are the ones to call back. It is especially useful for an owner who works under cars: at the end of a job they look at the phone and find the list of people to call back, even if nobody left a message.

Voicemail for the lunch break and the evening

The garage closes for lunch and in the evening, and the platform has no time-based rules: there is no switch that changes the behaviour at 12:30. You do not need one: voicemail kicks in when nobody answers, at any time. When the garage is closed nobody answers, and the call goes to voicemail.

«Voicemail» has a greeting that you write (up to 500 characters, read by a synthetic voice) or a WAV file you recorded yourself, and it sends messages by email. You also find them on the portal's Voicemail page. It is included in the price and is always the last step of the flow. An example:

Russo Motors. We are open Monday to Friday, 8:00-12:30 and
14:30-18:30, and Saturday morning until 12:00. Please leave your name,
number plate and phone number: we will call you back when we reopen.

How to set it up, how long a message can last and where the files go is explained in the guide on VoIP voicemail.

A complete flow for the garage

Putting the pieces together, here is a realistic routing for a four-person garage:

1. «Ring SIP accounts»: desk and mobiles, «All together», 25 seconds.
2. «Send an SMS»: to the owner's mobile, with the number of whoever called.
3. «AI secretary»: collects name, number plate, reason and urgency, with a «Maximum caller wait» of 120 seconds.
4. «Ring SIP accounts»: the owner's mobile, if they pressed «Accept».
5. «Voicemail»: for callers who cannot reach anyone.

If you prefer something simpler, steps 1 and 5 on their own already cover most cases. There are nine modules available and a flow can have up to 20 steps: they are described one by one in the guide on call routing modules. To start from scratch there is also the guide on how to set up an inbound number.

A local number for the garage

A garage's customers are almost always from the area. A number with the city's area code, for example 0532 for a garage in Ferrara, is what people expect to find on the sign, on the website and on the Google Maps listing. With virtual numbers in 232 Italian cities and more than 90 countries you choose the right area code even if the garage's physical line is with another provider.

To activate an Italian geographic number you need the documents the provider requires: for a company, the legal representative's identity document, a registered office in the district and a company registry extract (the Italian «visura camerale»); for an individual, an identity document and proof of address. Verification costs €5.00 one-off and the outcome usually arrives in 1-3 working days.

If the garage already has a long-standing number and you do not want to change it, you can have the platform manage it as an «external number», for €1.00 a month: the number stays with the old provider and it is not number porting. When you call customers back from your mobile with the app, set the garage's caller ID on the account: the customer sees the number they know, not your personal one. How to do it is in the guide on caller ID.

What it costs

The items are few and the prices are those in the rates, excluding VAT.

With the number paid annually, the fee works out at about €9.15 a month. Inbound calls are included; you pay for the calls you make to customers, per second, and for the alert SMS you choose to receive. Credit is prepaid: you top up by card, PayPal or bank transfer, and when it is about to run out you get an alert by email and WhatsApp. To keep spending under control you can set a «Daily spending limit» on the accounts.

The same modules fit any business with few people and lots of calls: you can see them in the examples for the law firm, for accountants and on the page on VoIP for professional firms. If one day you are thinking of recording calls, for example for quotes given over the phone, first read the rules for recording calls.

Frequently asked questions