7 ms·

>and he’s losing thousands of dollars per month because he misses hundreds of calls per week. He’s under the hood all day. The phone rings, he can’t answer, the

>and he’s losing thousands of dollars per month because he misses hundreds of calls per week. He’s under the hood all day. The phone rings, he can’t answer, the customer hangs up and calls someone else. That’s a lost job — sometimes a $450 brake service, sometimes a $2,000 engine repair — just gone because no one picked up. How much does it cost to have an outsourced receptionist? Even if it is 500 a month if we are really talking about thousands of dollars per month lost your ROI is still crazy.

maccard 7mo ago
I have a friend who runs a trade with an outsourced reception - they employ 3 full time people and the reception is about £150/mo for 9-5 manning of calls. He does the scheduling in the evenings. If we take OP’s post at face value, presumably his brother is already at 100% capacity otherwise he wouldn’t be missing all these calls.
- truetraveller 7mo ago
  £150/mo for each? Do these receptionists actually answer? Has he "tested" them with test calls? Any recommended site to get this?
  - mamonster 7mo ago
    Well presumably 150 is what you pay to use the service, and they have like 100+ companies using it. The model is exactly like Planet Fitness or similar gyms: It doesn't work if everyone visits at once, but you plan on most people using it once a week.
    - maccard 7mo ago
      Yeah exactly - I don’t know how many calls he gets but it’s less than an amount to employ a full time person, but more than enough that it’s worth having someone to pick up a phone he can stay on the job.
  - maccard 7mo ago
    No - £150/mo for the service. I asked him and he said they take the calls, write up notes and he handles the callbacks/etc himself. I don’t know if he’s “tested”, but he said he’s happy enough with the service. We don’t always have to AB test every possible option - sometimes good enough is good enough.
  - dqv 7mo ago
    It's called a telephone answering service. Different companies have different billing methods, but the most common billing method is to bill for "work time" - you pay a monthly fee with a set amount of work time and then pay overage fees for any usage in excess of the monthly allotment. It's a good solution if you don't expect to be hammered with calls during your business hours (e.g. you expect to get at most 30 calls a day rather than 30 calls an hour), but it starts to get prohibitively expensive after you reach a certain volume. It's a good idea to keep track of the usage and consider "upgrading" to a full-time staff member once you get to a certain usage amount (then you just direct calls to the answering service when that staff member isn't available). It doesn't work very well if your call length is long. You also need to be realistic about what you want the agents to do. It's not like they can provide top tier support or resolve issues. Expect it to be exactly what it is, which is a telemessaging service. You'll usually get better luck with ones that specialize in specific industries. There are some that only answer for law practices, for example. Some only provide day-time support, while others run 24/7.
tehwebguy 7mo ago
Plus if he’s too slammed to answer the phone he’s too slammed to take on the missing work, most likely.
- keiferski 7mo ago
  That’s not true at all, for any service profession. A barber that stops to answer the phone every two minutes isn’t cutting hair very efficiently.
  - runarberg 7mo ago
    A barber won’t be able to service that many customers anyway. A barbershop which gets a phone call every two minutes probably has several barbers on staff and a receptionist.
- illwrks 7mo ago
  He will still need a pipeline of work to keep himself and his team busy. Someone has to do that job, if clients are self selecting then it makes sense to automate it if possible.
Balgair 7mo ago
A good 'Service Writer' (the term you use for this job) isn't cheap and typically aren't outsourced. Usually because your (local) competition is going to be using them too. And also because customers aren't going to trust a person that is writing service for multiple shops. That said, a good service writer is worth their weight in gold. Also, they are typically going to be the person you end up selling the business to when you retire. Most mechanics aren't good enough at the business side of things to actually buy, but service writers are.
- pavel_lishin 7mo ago
  If I'm calling Joe's Auto Shop, how would I even know whether the person who picks up is writing service for multiple shops?
  - kotaKat 7mo ago
    Related - Monro Muffler Brake apparently switched to an offshore call center model to handle scheduling every single auto shop location. I hear nothing but complaints from both fellow customers as well as the shop managers themselves about their local phone number being ripped away from them and handed off to a call center to try to schedule vehicle service from thousands of miles away.
  - pstuart 7mo ago
    Would redirecting them to a website where they can go through a guided intake and get some confirmation of a callback? A well designed UI that allows them to ID their vehicle (make/model/year) and the issue they're having? HTML5 has decent speech to text out of the gate and they can just talk it out. Obviously that process could happen purely via voice but I think there's not as much love for walking through forms in a phone call. If Joe has a PC in the shop with a tailored UI, he could get pings of pending requests and when he comes up for air, update the intake (via voice to minimize greasy hands) and initiate a call back then and there?
  - Balgair 7mo ago
    Wait, are you not calling more than one shop every time?
rob74 7mo ago
Never mind an outsourced receptionist, some of those calls could be handled simply by the mailbox. Of course, some people will hang up once the mailbox message starts - but then again, some will also hang up once they realize they're talking to an AI chatbot, so...
- toss1 7mo ago
  YES! This is the critical data —» how many people hang up on the AI chatbot vs how many people hang up on the voice message prompt. If it is even close, well, the AI needs to be improved. If the AI is way ahead, but still loses/drops more than a live receptionist (outsourced or in-house), the AI either needs improvement, or to be dumped for a live receptionist, and that's kind of a spreadsheet problem (how many jobs lost in each case, vs costs).
  - throwway120385 7mo ago
    I think the question of lost opportunities versus costs is the best thing to look at here. You could pay a receptionist like 50-60k a year but they have to bring in the work. Maybe the AI dumps a percentage over a real receptionist but they still bring in more than the mailbox. But there's a cost to the AI too. But the real question you should also ask is what else can that human do for you that the AI can't because they have eyes and ears and hands?
    - conductr 7mo ago
      The question is more why employ a full time receptionist when fractional services are available and it’s an old well established industry. A couple hundred dollar a month could employ a human only when the phone rings and to schedule their visit plus any FAQ. I’m sure Ruby.com already has plenty of auto shop customers.
- qup 7mo ago
  Very soon, it will be difficult to tell the difference unless you probe it. I think most folks already wouldn't be able to tell, with the modern TTS. It's like AI photos, they fool you unless you're looking for it.
gedy 7mo ago
> That’s a lost job — sometimes a $450 brake service, sometimes a $2,000 engine repair Christ just hire some local teenager or whomever. There's people who will work for minimum wage.
- linkjuice4all 7mo ago
  Yes - but as others have mentioned you wouldn't have good advertising material for your AI "readiness" courses. More to the point - does this garage even have the time and space to service more vehicles? Generating a bunch of new low-value/low-loyalty customers takes up time and space and might have a lower return-per-hour while making it harder to retain higher value returning customers. Additionally, as "luxury mechanic" (apparently specializing in BMW but servicing other makes) you'll need to appeal to "luxury drivers" and bolting on more crap that makes the experience worse is probably not the way to do that.
gowld 7mo ago
The ROI is whatever the blog is advertising for -- AI training courses and such.
- tclancy 7mo ago
  Big old ad for Mongo right in the middle even with all my ad blocking, so I assume that is it. I hate being One of Those People because the trend toward doubting everything bums me out, but this is not 1982. People with fancy cars are not using some local guy with a lift in his backyard and even if they were, where is Dane located that he is missing 100s of calls for work on the Rolls, Ferrari, Bentley in addition to the ones that are keeping him so dangerous busy?

maccard 7mo ago

I have a friend who runs a trade with an outsourced reception - they employ 3 full time people and the reception is about £150/mo for 9-5 manning of calls. He does the scheduling in the evenings. If we take OP’s post at face value, presumably his brother is already at 100% capacity otherwise he wouldn’t be missing all these calls.

truetraveller 7mo ago
£150/mo for each? Do these receptionists actually answer? Has he "tested" them with test calls? Any recommended site to get this?
- mamonster 7mo ago
  Well presumably 150 is what you pay to use the service, and they have like 100+ companies using it. The model is exactly like Planet Fitness or similar gyms: It doesn't work if everyone visits at once, but you plan on most people using it once a week.
  - maccard 7mo ago
    Yeah exactly - I don’t know how many calls he gets but it’s less than an amount to employ a full time person, but more than enough that it’s worth having someone to pick up a phone he can stay on the job.
- maccard 7mo ago
  No - £150/mo for the service. I asked him and he said they take the calls, write up notes and he handles the callbacks/etc himself. I don’t know if he’s “tested”, but he said he’s happy enough with the service. We don’t always have to AB test every possible option - sometimes good enough is good enough.
- dqv 7mo ago
  It's called a telephone answering service. Different companies have different billing methods, but the most common billing method is to bill for "work time" - you pay a monthly fee with a set amount of work time and then pay overage fees for any usage in excess of the monthly allotment. It's a good solution if you don't expect to be hammered with calls during your business hours (e.g. you expect to get at most 30 calls a day rather than 30 calls an hour), but it starts to get prohibitively expensive after you reach a certain volume. It's a good idea to keep track of the usage and consider "upgrading" to a full-time staff member once you get to a certain usage amount (then you just direct calls to the answering service when that staff member isn't available). It doesn't work very well if your call length is long. You also need to be realistic about what you want the agents to do. It's not like they can provide top tier support or resolve issues. Expect it to be exactly what it is, which is a telemessaging service. You'll usually get better luck with ones that specialize in specific industries. There are some that only answer for law practices, for example. Some only provide day-time support, while others run 24/7.

tehwebguy 7mo ago

Plus if he’s too slammed to answer the phone he’s too slammed to take on the missing work, most likely.

keiferski 7mo ago
That’s not true at all, for any service profession. A barber that stops to answer the phone every two minutes isn’t cutting hair very efficiently.
- runarberg 7mo ago
  A barber won’t be able to service that many customers anyway. A barbershop which gets a phone call every two minutes probably has several barbers on staff and a receptionist.
illwrks 7mo ago
He will still need a pipeline of work to keep himself and his team busy. Someone has to do that job, if clients are self selecting then it makes sense to automate it if possible.

Balgair 7mo ago

A good 'Service Writer' (the term you use for this job) isn't cheap and typically aren't outsourced. Usually because your (local) competition is going to be using them too. And also because customers aren't going to trust a person that is writing service for multiple shops. That said, a good service writer is worth their weight in gold. Also, they are typically going to be the person you end up selling the business to when you retire. Most mechanics aren't good enough at the business side of things to actually buy, but service writers are.

pavel_lishin 7mo ago
If I'm calling Joe's Auto Shop, how would I even know whether the person who picks up is writing service for multiple shops?
- kotaKat 7mo ago
  Related - Monro Muffler Brake apparently switched to an offshore call center model to handle scheduling every single auto shop location. I hear nothing but complaints from both fellow customers as well as the shop managers themselves about their local phone number being ripped away from them and handed off to a call center to try to schedule vehicle service from thousands of miles away.
- pstuart 7mo ago
  Would redirecting them to a website where they can go through a guided intake and get some confirmation of a callback? A well designed UI that allows them to ID their vehicle (make/model/year) and the issue they're having? HTML5 has decent speech to text out of the gate and they can just talk it out. Obviously that process could happen purely via voice but I think there's not as much love for walking through forms in a phone call. If Joe has a PC in the shop with a tailored UI, he could get pings of pending requests and when he comes up for air, update the intake (via voice to minimize greasy hands) and initiate a call back then and there?
- Balgair 7mo ago
  Wait, are you not calling more than one shop every time?

rob74 7mo ago

Never mind an outsourced receptionist, some of those calls could be handled simply by the mailbox. Of course, some people will hang up once the mailbox message starts - but then again, some will also hang up once they realize they're talking to an AI chatbot, so...

toss1 7mo ago
YES! This is the critical data —» how many people hang up on the AI chatbot vs how many people hang up on the voice message prompt. If it is even close, well, the AI needs to be improved. If the AI is way ahead, but still loses/drops more than a live receptionist (outsourced or in-house), the AI either needs improvement, or to be dumped for a live receptionist, and that's kind of a spreadsheet problem (how many jobs lost in each case, vs costs).
- throwway120385 7mo ago
  I think the question of lost opportunities versus costs is the best thing to look at here. You could pay a receptionist like 50-60k a year but they have to bring in the work. Maybe the AI dumps a percentage over a real receptionist but they still bring in more than the mailbox. But there's a cost to the AI too. But the real question you should also ask is what else can that human do for you that the AI can't because they have eyes and ears and hands?
  - conductr 7mo ago
    The question is more why employ a full time receptionist when fractional services are available and it’s an old well established industry. A couple hundred dollar a month could employ a human only when the phone rings and to schedule their visit plus any FAQ. I’m sure Ruby.com already has plenty of auto shop customers.
qup 7mo ago
Very soon, it will be difficult to tell the difference unless you probe it. I think most folks already wouldn't be able to tell, with the modern TTS. It's like AI photos, they fool you unless you're looking for it.

gedy 7mo ago

> That’s a lost job — sometimes a $450 brake service, sometimes a $2,000 engine repair Christ just hire some local teenager or whomever. There's people who will work for minimum wage.

linkjuice4all 7mo ago
Yes - but as others have mentioned you wouldn't have good advertising material for your AI "readiness" courses. More to the point - does this garage even have the time and space to service more vehicles? Generating a bunch of new low-value/low-loyalty customers takes up time and space and might have a lower return-per-hour while making it harder to retain higher value returning customers. Additionally, as "luxury mechanic" (apparently specializing in BMW but servicing other makes) you'll need to appeal to "luxury drivers" and bolting on more crap that makes the experience worse is probably not the way to do that.

gowld 7mo ago

The ROI is whatever the blog is advertising for -- AI training courses and such.

tclancy 7mo ago
Big old ad for Mongo right in the middle even with all my ad blocking, so I assume that is it. I hate being One of Those People because the trend toward doubting everything bums me out, but this is not 1982. People with fancy cars are not using some local guy with a lift in his backyard and even if they were, where is Dane located that he is missing 100s of calls for work on the Rolls, Ferrari, Bentley in addition to the ones that are keeping him so dangerous busy?