AI receptionist for the shop phone
An AI receptionist that knows where the car is.
Most shops lose the call that comes in at ten past six on a Friday. Not because nobody would have answered it — because everybody had gone home. An AI receptionist that can read your board turns that call into a booking instead of a voicemail.
30-day money-back guarantee. No contract.
The phone stops going to voicemail.
An AI receptionist that picks up on the second ring — after hours, on a Saturday, or only when nobody in the shop gets to it. It can see the board, so it tells a customer exactly where their car is, books them a slot, takes a new job’s details, or puts a callback in front of a person. And it dials out as well as in.
- Picks up 24/7 — after hours, or only what your team misses
- Books a real slot on your board while they are still on the line
- Dials out too: missed calls, reminders, and ready-for-pickup
- It never guesses. Nothing on the board means a callback, not a story
Give it as much of the phone as you want.
Five modes, ordered from the one that cannot reach a customer to the one that answers everything. Nobody has to commit on day one: most shops run test for an afternoon, sit in after-hours for a month, and only then decide whether the daytime overflow is worth having too.
One weekday
Open 8am–5pm, Mon–Fri
It takes the calls nobody was there for.
Where most shops startInside your opening hours the phone rings the way it always has. Outside them — evenings, weekends, any day your shop's hours say closed — Carvikon answers instead of the voicemail nobody checks on Monday.
Four decisions about what a caller can get done.
You answer four questions. The receptionist can only do what those answers allow, and the server checks every request against them.
Tell people where their vehicle is
On for a new shop
It checks who is calling, confirms it is really them, then says which stage their vehicle is at.
It never guesses. If there is no status on the board, it says so and offers a callback.
Answer questions about your shop
On for a new shop
Reads your website and anything you upload, so it can answer what you work on, what you charge and how you do things.
It only ever says what you told it. Asked something you have not covered, it says it is not sure and offers a callback rather than guessing.
Take details from someone new
On for a new shop
Records a new enquiry, or a request for an estimate, straight into your CRM.
It will not quote a price or guess a completion date.
Move and cancel appointments
On for a new shop
Looks up your open times, then moves or cancels the appointment the caller already has, after confirming who they are.
On for a new receptionist. It only touches that caller's own booking, and never removes the vehicle from your board.
Book appointments
Off until you switch it on
Books one of your open times on your board while the caller is on the phone.
Off by default — this puts a new time on your calendar.
Text and email people
Off until you switch it on
Sends your booking page, directions or policies, a short note confirming what was agreed, or an email to the address on their account.
Needs text messaging switched on, which comes with your plan. It only ever texts the number they are calling from and emails the address already on file — never one a caller reads out — and a text cannot carry a link.
Four more it always has
These are not presented as choices, because an agent without them is not a receptionist. It can always read out your address and opening hours, always transfer a caller to a person, always leave a callback task when it is unsure, and always write the call up afterwards.
The part everybody actually worries about.
An AI on your phone line is a liability if it can say anything. This one is built the other way round: it can only do things somebody named in advance, and the awkward answers are the ones it is best at.
It never quotes a price
There is no way for it to invent a price. An estimate is a person's job, and a caller who asks for one is offered a callback from somebody who can give a real answer.
It never guesses a status
The vehicle's stage is read off the board. If the board has nothing to say, the agent says so and takes a callback rather than inventing something reassuring.
It cannot be talked into dialling
Transfers and text messages take a named destination the shop set up, never a number or a link a caller reads out. The model never sees the number at all.
Every call leaves a trail
Transcript, AI summary, disposition, and a record of what the receptionist did, filed against the job or the customer. Nothing about the call is only in the model's head.
It will not cold call
Outbound exists for missed calls, reminders and ready-for-pickup. There is no setting for sales calls, on purpose.
You can switch it off in one click
Per location, or across the whole shop. Outbound can be paused on its own, and running out of minutes never stops the phone being answered.
It comes with Elite. $199 a month, and $99 for each extra shop.
One price for the first shop and one for every shop after it, never for the seat and never for the call. Each shop brings its own receptionist, its own number and its own 150 minutes, and the only thing that ever varies is minutes past that.
AI Front Desk
$199per month, per location
The price of Elite, which carries the AI Front Desk. No setup fee, no per-call charge, no contract, and nothing extra for the phone.
- 150 AI minutes every month, for the whole location
- Inbound and outbound, on the same agent
- A number provisioned for you, or forward your own
- Every call transcribed, summarised and filed against the job
- Recording, on or off, per location
- Speaks English, on each location's own opening hours
Past 150 minutes: $0.30 a minute
Billed by the minute and rounded up, the way every telephony vendor in this market bills. A call that rings and never connects costs nothing. Carvikon warns you at 70, 90 and 100 percent of the allowance, so a heavy month is never a surprise on the invoice.
What your month would cost
Drag it to the number of calls you would actually route to the AI. The estimate assumes 2.5 minutes a call, which is a status check and a booking averaged together.
Calls a month
160
- Elite
- $199
- Minutes past 150
- $75
- A month like that
- $274
An estimate, not a quote. Only the calls the AI actually handles use minutes, and the rest of Elite is in the figure above.
Questions shops ask about an AI receptionist.
It can only do what the shop switched on, and the server checks every call against that list. It cannot quote a price and it cannot discuss an insurance claim. If the board has no status for a vehicle it says so and offers a callback rather than guessing, and every caller can ask for a person at any point.
AI Front Desk comes with Elite, which is $199 a month for one shop and includes 150 AI minutes a month per shop. Minutes past the allowance are 30 cents each, billed by the minute and rounded up, the way every telephony vendor in this market bills. There is no setup fee and no per-call charge. An extra shop on Elite is $99 a month and brings its own receptionist, its own number and its own 150 minutes.
No, and it is not sold as one. It takes the calls that were going to voicemail — after hours, on a Saturday, or the fourth call while your advisor is on the third — and hands anything it cannot finish to a person as a transfer or a callback task. Most shops run it in after-hours or overflow mode and never change it.
Yes, if you switch that on. It offers times that are genuinely open on your board and writes the appointment there while the caller is still on the phone. It is off by default, because a booking commits a real slot and that is a decision the shop should make deliberately.
Both. Outbound is triggered by the board: a missed call gets rung back, an appointment gets a reminder, and a car that reaches ready-for-pickup gets the call that says so. Outbound respects quiet hours, a daily cap, and any customer who has opted out. There is no cold-calling mode and no marketing purpose — the option does not exist in the product.
It transfers them. Transfer destinations are set up by the shop as named entries with a phone number attached, and the agent can only ask for a destination by name — it never dials a number a caller reads out. If nobody is there to take the transfer it creates a callback task, which lands in the same notification bell as everything else that needs a person.
Yes. Every call is logged with its transcript, an AI summary, a disposition and a record of what the receptionist did, filed against the job or the customer it was about. Recording can be switched off per location if your state's law or your own policy calls for it.
No. Carvikon can provision a number for you, or you can forward your existing shop line to it — which is what most shops do, because the number on the van and the sign does not change.
English. The rest of Carvikon runs in five languages, but the AI Front Desk answers and calls in English for every shop, whatever language your team's screens are in.
Yes, and this is the mode a new agent starts in. In test mode the agent is provisioned and reachable only from the test console in Settings, so you can call it yourself as many times as you like and no customer ever hears it. Shadow mode is the next step: it answers, transcribes and summarises, then transfers every caller to a person.
Yes, when you start on Elite: AI Front Desk is part of Elite, and your first payment comes with the 30-day money-back guarantee — if it isn't right for your shop, ask within 30 days of that payment and we refund it in full. The guarantee covers that first payment, not a later upgrade from Starter or Pro, so start on Elite if the front desk is what you want to try. It does need a setup of its own — a number, a voice and what the agent is allowed to say — so it starts answering when you finish that rather than the moment you sign up.
More of the product
Know where every car is. Always.
30-day money-back guarantee. No contract.