Questions UK garage owners ask.

ReceptionMate is an AI receptionist built specifically for UK garages. It answers your phone calls, captures bookings directly into your garage management system (Garage Hive, Tyresoft and others), confirms the customer by text, and logs everything in a portal you can review. It handles aftersales bookings, sales enquiries and general reception calls.

Independent garages, multi-site service groups, MOT centres, tyre shops, body shops and main-dealer aftersales departments — anywhere in the UK where a workshop is busier than the receptionist can comfortably handle.

Most AI receptionists are general-purpose tools sold across nail salons, dentists, law firms and garages. ReceptionMate was built for UK automotive from day one — it knows MOT cycles, can read UK registration plates spoken the way British drivers say them, understands service vocabulary (interim, cambelt, DPF), and integrates directly with Garage Hive and Tyresoft.

No. You keep your existing number. We provision a ReceptionMate number, and you set call forwarding on your existing landline or mobile: if a call rings 5–7 times without anyone picking up, it forwards to ReceptionMate. Out of hours, every call forwards automatically. Your team still answers first when they can.

Most garages are up and running within an hour. We pull your services, hours and prices from your Google Business Profile and website, you confirm the details, and the call-forwarding rule is configured by your telco the same day.

Yes — we set you up with a live test number so you can call in and throw any tricky booking at the agent. The call, the transcript and any captured booking appear in your portal in real time. If anything is off, you tune the agent's behaviour from the portal before switching the forwarding on.

No. ReceptionMate runs entirely in the cloud. You use your existing phone, your existing garage management system, and a browser to see the portal.

It books the job live during the call. It reads your diary, offers free slots, reserves the chosen one in real time, and confirms by SMS before the call ends. Messages and callbacks are also possible when the customer prefers — but the default behaviour is to capture the booking on the call.

Yes. ReceptionMate is trained on real UK garage calls — Scouse, Glaswegian, Geordie, West Country and everything in between — and captures number plates the way drivers actually phrase them (mixed letters, digit words and NATO alphabet, sometimes in the same sentence).

ReceptionMate hands the call to a human when the conversation goes outside what it can confidently handle — complaints, complex diagnostics, or when the caller asks for a specific person. You configure the handover rules in the portal.

Yes. When the caller gives a registration, ReceptionMate pulls make, model, year, fuel type, tax and MOT status from DVLA in under a second — and uses it to confirm the vehicle and quote the right service.

Yes. ReceptionMate has unlimited concurrent capacity — a Monday-morning spike, MOT season or a lunchtime queue all get answered instantly. Human services queue or miss calls when their lines are full; AI does not.

ReceptionMate is sold as a monthly subscription. Pricing scales with call volume and number of branches — typically less than what a missed booking is worth in a single week. Talk to us via the get-started flow for a quote tailored to your call volume.

No long-term contract. You can stop using ReceptionMate at any time — just disable the call-forwarding rule.

No surprises. Your monthly bill is predictable. We tell you up front what's included and what happens if you exceed the base allowance.

Garage Hive, Tyresoft, and several others — including HubSpot, calendar systems and CRMs. We add new integrations regularly. If you run a system we don't support yet, talk to us — most modern DMS platforms have integration paths we can stand up quickly.

Yes — written into your DMS during the call, with the customer name, vehicle, service and time slot. No CSV imports, no copy-paste from voicemail transcripts.

Yes. SMS confirmations go out as the call ends, and reminders the day before the appointment — reducing no-shows significantly.

Yes. ReceptionMate is built and operated to UK GDPR. Call recordings, transcripts and customer details live in your portal, exportable and deletable on request. See our /privacy page for full details on data controllers, sub-processors, retention and your rights.

In UK and EU data centres. International transfers, where they happen for AI inference, use UK IDTA / EU Standard Contractual Clauses. The full sub-processor list is available to customers on request under our Data Processing Agreement.

No. Customer call data is not used to train third-party models without explicit permission.