Never miss a call with the top automotive answering service
Serve customers 24/7 with Sona, OpenPhone’s AI agent. Capture every lead, take detailed messages, and answer routine questions with the best phone system for growing businesses.
Trusted by over 60,000 businesses
.svg)
Get a more effective call handling alternative to voicemail
Voicemail is a conversational dead-end for your callers. Sona tailors responses for every conversation, guiding callers to provide the key information you need to follow up. Customize Sona to your dealership or repair shop by sharing your services, pricing, and more.
Why Sona is a better virtual receptionist for auto repair shops
Here’s why Sona is a better option compared to other traditional live answering services:
1. Integrates directly in your business phone system
OpenPhone is a collaborative business phone system that helps small and growing businesses scale their customer relationships. Businesses can use OpenPhone to make calls, send texts, and keep track of their customer interactions in real time.
Sona works inside OpenPhone’s platform, giving your team access to its call summaries, transcripts, recordings, and messages right after every call ends. For example, your team can review a caller’s vehicle details and history and assign jobs based on repair schedules. By connecting your answering service with your phone system, your team never loses track of a single customer detail.
Traditional answering services offer a completely different experience. Calls happen outside your business phone platform, forcing your team to toggle between multiple apps to follow what customers share with you after business hours. It can lead to a lot of confusion and unnecessary admin work for your team.
2. More cost-effective
Sona helps you save hundreds of dollars a month. Traditional call answering services charge exorbitant monthly plans with limited call minutes. When you go over the limit, they charge you steep per-minute overage fees. If you’re a small business that’s growing fast, your phone bills will quickly add up.
With Sona, you can get straightforward pricing for your AI answering service. Sona's pricing starts at $49 per month for up to 50 calls. Any calls beyond that are just $0.99 each. This per-call structure makes it easy to budget for the number of calls Sona handles each month. Plus, calls under 15 seconds don't count toward your bill, so you won't be charged for spam calls or misdials.
3. Consistent service
For an industry that’s constantly changing, whether it’s new models, certifications, or service offerings, you need an answering service that keeps up with you. Train Sona on your business documents in minutes. Simply upload your policies or add answers to common FAQs manually to Sona’s knowledge base, and it gets up to speed instantly. If you don’t already have files to share, you can give Sona your website URL. Then it generates a knowledge page automatically for you.
Third-party answering services can’t keep up with your business, leading to inconsistent service for your customers. Setting up a live answering service can take weeks of training and onboarding service reps. Even after all that work, mistakes are bound to happen. When staff turnover takes place, you’re back to square one. Sona is your AI receptionist that shows up for work all day, every day, with the same level of performance your team needs to serve your customers.
AI-powered call handling for automotive professionals
Customize Sona and take it for a test drive. Assign it to your calls in seconds.
Build your call flows with Sona
Drag and drop Sona into your call flows with our call flow builder. Get a clear picture of where and when Sona handles calls through our visual canvas. Add Sona in multiple flows during and after your business hours. Use it alongside OpenPhone’s other call routing features, like phone menus, ring order, and call forwarding.
Educate Sona about your business
Give Sona an introduction to your automotive business. Share general information like your locations, services, and answers to routine FAQs. Sona instantly learns about your company so that it shares the right details with callers.
Get vehicle info when a customer calls
Get exactly what you need from new customers when they call you. Sona asks follow-up questions based on specific keywords in its AI phone calls. It can ask customers about their vehicle’s model, year, color, insurance coverage, and more.
Integrate Sona calls with your CRM
See Sona’s call summaries, transcripts, recordings, and messages in your OpenPhone inbox minutes after a call ends. Sync Sona calls with your CRM using our Zapier and Make integrations, or build a custom integration with our API.
Feature comparison
See how Sona compares to traditional call answering services.
Features
.svg)
Sona
Traditional answering services
Starting price per month
$49 for 50 calls, $0.99 per call for additional calls
~5x-7x the cost of Sona
Setup time
Instant
2-4 weeks
Brand voice and tone
Consistent
Highly variable
Monitoring
100% in OpenPhone
Custom solution or daily email summary
Integrations
HubSpot, Salesforce, Zapier, Make, Jobber, and more
Limited integration options
How to set up Sona in four steps
It only takes four steps to get started with Sona:
- Start with a free trial.
- Try our free trial features, including calls and recordings.
- Configure your Sona settings and test Sona in OpenPhone’s call flow builder.
- Once you’ve confirmed it’s a good fit, activate your OpenPhone account and get the Sona add-on.
“Prior to adopting Sona, we struggled with consistently capturing after-hours communications, resulting in missed opportunities. We now have absolute assurance that every incoming call is handled promptly.”
Why thousands of teams choose OpenPhone
See why the automotive industry rates OpenPhone as the #1 business phone provider by customer satisfaction in G2.
%20(1).jpg)
Scalable local and toll-free phone numbers for your team
Get your team members the numbers they need. Give each staff member a dedicated phone number with a local area code that customers can recognize. Sign up for a toll-free number to provide region-wide support to your customers.
Each OpenPhone plan includes a phone number for every user who joins your workspace. You can assign individual numbers to your repair technicians or share numbers for different departments. Team members can choose when to receive notifications during and after business hours with features like work schedules and Do Not Disturb mode.
Need more numbers for your team? Additional numbers cost $5 per number per month.
Better team collaboration
Stay in sync as a team with OpenPhone’s collaboration features. See what everyone is working on with shared numbers. Your team can view all customer calls, messages, and voicemails in a shared inbox. Split responsibility for incoming calls and texts so your customers aren’t waiting for a call back.
Delegate follow-up tasks with internal threads. Tag your team members in a customer interaction and let them know what needs to be done next. Check to see whether they’re caught up with inbox viewers.
Handle incoming phone calls easily
Manage your incoming call volume as it grows with our call routing and management features. Design call flows from scratch in minutes with our call flow builder. See how calls progress and make adjustments in real time in our visual canvas. You can create multiple call flows for your business hours and after-hours flows.
Accommodate every team preference with our call flow steps. Choose how your team receives incoming calls, either as a group or in custom batches, with ring groups. Give your customers the choice to reach specific departments with phone menus; help them get the support they need. If your team is occupied or not accessible, you can redirect incoming calls to a secondary number or direct them to Sona for routine questions.
Put your appointment scheduling on autopilot
Automate notifications and scheduling texts so you can focus on conversations that require your attention. Create automated text message workflows with our Zapier and Make integrations. Manage appointment scheduling duties automatically, including sending confirmations and reminders, as well as following up with review requests once a job is complete.
Provide your team with the tools to send more texts in less time. Automatically reply to calls and texts after business hours with a message using SMS auto-replies. Set the right expectations with customers to prevent them from going to your competition. Schedule repair quotes and estimates for customers at convenient times using scheduled messages. Quickly answer common questions over text with pre-written text templates (snippets).
Automate repetitive admin tasks
Deliver a great customer experience — we’ll handle the paperwork.
Eliminate the need for taking notes during customer calls by using automatic call recording and AI-generated summaries and transcripts. Easily access and review previous calls from Sona and your team with the help of AI call tags. It uses AI to analyze your phone calls and tags them with custom labels according to your business needs. Get valuable business insights that move the needle for your growth.
Automatically sync your call and text data with your CRM and save hours for your team. Use our integrations with HubSpot, Salesforce, and Jobber, or build a custom integration with your CRM platform using Zapier, Make, or the OpenPhone API.
Use OpenPhone in the office or on the go
Call and text from anywhere, with any device, using OpenPhone. Your technicians can bring their preferred devices to make calls with our platform. OpenPhone is available for Mac, Windows, iOS, Android, and on the web. All you need is an internet connection to get started.
Find out how much you’re investing in your business phone solution upfront on our pricing page.
Frequently asked questions
Can’t find the answer here? Check out our Resource Center.
An AI answering service is an AI-powered business phone solution that handles incoming calls for you when your team is busy or unavailable. AI voice agents like Sona can provide basic customer service functions, like answering common questions or taking down messages. They’re a better option compared to live receptionist services because they’re more consistent, cost-effective, and can integrate seamlessly with your business phone.
An automotive answering service transforms frustrated callers into satisfied customers by ensuring no one gets stuck in voicemail limbo. For example, you can answer commonly asked questions like "Do you work on Hondas?" or "How much is a state inspection?" instantly. Callers don’t have to wait on hold or for a call back to speak with your team.
You can also speed up customer intake and share repair estimates faster. Collect important customer information like their car’s make, model, year, and specific issues they might be facing. Your team can quickly review each answering service message, prioritize leads based on urgency, and send quotes without having to call customers again.
Live automotive answering services cost between $180-$400 per month, with additional per-minute overage fees if you exceed their monthly calling minutes.
Sona costs $49 per month and includes 50 AI phone calls — perfect for most auto shops and dealerships. Additional calls are just $0.99 each, and calls under 15 seconds don't count toward your total. It pays for itself by capturing even a couple of service appointments you might have otherwise missed. There are no setup fees, long-term contracts, or hidden charges; just straightforward pricing that scales with your business.
Not to bang our own drum, but we think Sona is the best automotive answering service for growing businesses. Customize it according to your business needs and set it up in minutes. It’s a more cost-effective and consistent option for handling incoming calls and integrates directly into your OpenPhone workspace. No more playing a game of telephone with your live answering service; try Sona for free today.
Explore by industry
See how Sona’s AI answering service can help you grow your business
Ready to improve your team's communication?
Join thousands of businesses already using OpenPhone to communicate better with their customers.
.svg)
OpenPhone was issued a successful SOC 2 report and is actively monitored by Vanta.