Missed Calls Could Be Costing You: Claudia Answers When Your Shop Can’t

If a phone rings and no one in the shop is around to pick up, is it business lost forever?

Not if Claudia has anything to say about it.

You may have heard her name whispered now and again: Claudia. 

She’ll answer your phones. She’ll chat with your customers. She might even bring in more business.

Is she a magical being? A character from Interview with the Vampire? Someone mentioned in that old Boz Scaggs song?

(If you remember that song, congratulations! You’re old. Come, weep with me in a corner.)

Fullbay’s Claudia is none of those things. She is, in fact, Fullbay’s AI Receptionist, and she is burdened with one glorious purpose: to pick up the phones when your team is too busy. She can talk with potential customers, letting them have a warm conversation instead of just asking them to dump their details into a voicemail. So far, folks seem to like her; she’s even helped one shop score 1-2 new customers per week. 

How does THAT work, Fullbay? you might be asking. How can a robot answer my phone? Do I have to install it at the front desk? I don’t have a front desk…

Be of good cheer, friends! We’ll show you how she works.

What Is The AI Receptionist?

Claudia is a Fullbay add-on. If you activate her and set up call forwarding to her, she can answer phone calls your team can’t get to. If you’re a one-person shop, that might mean she picks up when you’re elbows deep in truck guts. If you have an office manager, she might pick up when they’re helping another customer. She can cover your phones when you’re busy and even after hours.  

When you set Claudia up, you can program her with your shop’s hours, the services you offer, and any FAQs you’d like her to be able to answer. Things like:

• What kind of vehicles do you repair?
• Do you work on DeLoreans?
• How long have you been in business?
• What is the meaning of life?

And so on. 

When someone asks these questions, Claudia can answer them. She can then take down their information and forward it to you in an email so you can call them back. 

(PSA: For those of you who saw the word “program” and immediately began backing away from the article — have no fear. No coding required. You’ll type your shop’s info into a pop-up box, and that’s it. We now return you to our regularly scheduled, shamelessly enthusiastic AI Receptionist article.) 

We want to stress here that Claudia is not a replacement for your office staff or anyone else. She can talk with callers, answer the shop-specific questions you’ve set her up to handle, collect their information, and send you the recap. She won’t diagnose their truck or call people back for you, and she will not schedule anything. Those things are still on you, fellow humans! 

But Do People Actually Want To Talk To An AI?

Hey, it’s a fair question and we’re gonna address it. Dylan Parfitt of Parfitt Truck Repair wondered the same thing. In his ideal world, he’d always have a real person answering the phone — and when he can, he does. 

But the reality of running a repair shop is that sometimes you can’t grab the phone because you’re doing one of a zillion other things, or already home for the night. That’s where Dylan found Claudia especially useful: not as Plan A, but as a much better Plan B than plain old voicemail. 

He did find that callers react differently. True, some don’t want to talk to AI. But others are perfectly happy to, and most importantly, the ones that do chat with Claudia actually leave useful information. Before bringing Claudia on, Dylan estimated that only 10% of missed callers left him a voicemail. With Claudia, that jumped to around 90%. 

Rite Wrench’s Claudia experience, as described by co-owner Alejandro Abdala, offered another reassuring data point. His team hadn’t received any negative feedback from customers about interacting with Claudia, but they had started bringing in new customers from calls they otherwise might have missed. 

What Are Your Missed Calls Worth?

Missing a phone call doesn’t feel particularly expensive on its own. OK, sure, it rang. You couldn’t get to it. You’ve got an RV on the lift and life goes on.

Except that missed call might have been paying work. The caller might have needed $500 in repairs. Or $2,000. Or $10,000. 

Yikes. 

Obviously, what each missed call is worth to you will depend on your shop and your services. And maybe not every caller would have ended up working with you, anyway. But if you miss, say, 20 calls a week, there’s likely at least a handful of people in there who would have become your customers. We did some of the math ourselves and plugged it into a calculator, so you can see some of the potential financial loss yourselves. 

You’ll never look at that blinking voicemail notification the same way again. 

And How Can This AI Receptionist Help My Shop?

Hey, we can pop off about Claudia all day, every day, but in this case you don’t have to just take our word for how helpful she can be. Dylan has been using Claudia to capture overflow calls for a while, and he’s been pretty pleased, estimating he saves between 15-30 minutes per day in time lost answering phones. The team at Rite Wrench was equally pleased, with Alejandro stating that since activating Claudia, they’ve averaged 1-2 new customers per week.

Both shop owners commented on Claudia’s ability to collect the right kind of information. Once that recap email arrives, they can look over the caller and suss out who called, what they’re driving, and what they need help with. Honestly, it’s not a bad way to prioritize work.  

How Do I Set Claudia Up?

Very carefully.

We kid. Go to your Integrations page, then toggle the AI Receptionist “On.” You’ll see a pop-up with some terms; read ’em over and click accept. Now click the cog to open the AI Receptionist settings. Click on “Enable Claudia.”

From there, you can set up your shop’s hours, services, and any FAQs you want to add. Then all that’s left to do is set up call forwarding with your mobile or landline — whatever phone you’re using for your shop’s calls. 

And now, friends, you’re ready to rock and/or roll. 

Need some more help? We’ve got you! Visit our Help & Training articles for more detailed instructions on how to get Claudia up and running (note, you must be logged into Fullbay to see these).  

What Else Do I Need To Know About Claudia?

Well, she’s a polyglot. That means she speaks many languages! If someone calls you speaking Spanish, for instance, she will respond to them in Spanish and collect their information. She will, however, send you the email recap in English, if that’s the language you select during setup. 

We also want to stress that she will not answer questions that are not related to your shop’s hours or services. If someone asks her about the meaning of life, she will politely ask them for their vehicle’s information again…unless they set her up to respond to a question about the meaning of life. 

Hey, if your customers routinely ask you that kind of stuff, why not answer them ahead of time? 

She also, alas, does not speak Klingon.

At least, not yet.

As an added bonus, Dylan noticed that spam callers aren’t especially interested in chatting with Claudia. A good chunk of them simply give up, which means fewer pointless interruptions for you. 

Want To See What Claudia Can Do For Your Shop?

We believe Claudia can help your shop, but we wouldn’t expect you to embrace her whole-heartedly without seeing exactly what she can do. So why not head over to our AI Receptionist page to chat with Claudia yourself and see how she works? 

If you like her and want to give her a try, we’ve got a special offer for you: if you head to your Integrations page and activate Claudia before October 31, 2026, you’ll get a full billing cycle of 30 days to see exactly what she can do for your operation. If you aren’t into her at the end of that 30 days, no harm — just switch her off. But we think you might just decide to keep her on. Again, this offer is only good through October 31. 

You don’t have to decide whether AI receptionists are the Next Big Thing or the forerunner to Skynet. You only have to decide whether Claudia is better than a missed call. So give her a month and find out!