Bunbury Toyota's Phones Don't Go to Voicemail Anymore

When your workshop's booked weeks ahead, losing customer enquiries isn't an option. But a ringing phone does exactly that. An unanswered call is a customer who quietly rings another dealership, and a call left on hold or sent to voicemail is an opportunity that disappears without you ever knowing it was there.

Bunbury Toyota is the largest Toyota dealer in regional Western Australia, so demand was never the problem. Managing the phones across every department was. Staff got pulled off the job by routine enquiries, service overflow calls sat on hold or dropped to voicemail at the busy times, and on Saturdays there was no receptionist at all.

So they put an AI receptionist named Tess on every inbound line.

Tess answers the call, works out what the customer needs, and either handles it or sends it to the right person. For service she pulls the car up in Revolution and books it straight into the workshop diary. The calls that used to slip through, the overflow and the weekend ones, now get answered on the spot, with the customer's details captured cleanly for follow-up.

In a recent 30-day period Tess answered 915 calls across the dealership.

The upshot is simple. Customers get a fast response, enquiries stop disappearing into voicemail, and the team stays focused on the customers in front of them and the work in the workshop.

For a dealer already running at capacity, that's the whole point. Not cramming more into a full diary, but making sure every customer who reaches out gets an answer, and nothing's lost before it ever reaches the team.

"We're booked out months ahead, so the last thing we can afford is to lose the people still trying to reach us. Tess makes sure nobody goes missing on the way in."

- Dean Flaxman, Service Manager, Bunbury Toyota