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Automotive
Starter

Parts Inquiry Handling

Capture every parts request from phone, web and DM, quote it, and chase the answer without tying up the parts counter.

Industry
Automotive
Build effort
Starter
Typical time to launch
1–2 weeks
On this page
The problemWhat gets builtHow it runsAutomations in detailWhat changesBefore you start
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01

The problem

A parts counter runs on interruption. The phone rings while a customer is mid-transaction, a fitter walks up with a VIN scrawled on a job card, and four emails land asking whether something is on the shelf. Every one of those is a buying signal, and most of them get handled from memory. Somebody looks it up, says let me check with the supplier and call you back, writes it on a pad, and then the next interruption arrives.

The leak is not carelessness. It is that a parts inquiry has no record. There is no list of open inquiries, no owner, and no clock, so the inquiry that needed a supplier callback on Tuesday surfaces again on Friday. By which point the caller has already bought the same filter from whoever answered second. Inquiries that arrive after closing, during the lunch rush, or as an Instagram DM evaporate entirely, and nobody knows how many because nothing ever counted them. The parts department is usually the highest-margin line in the building, and it is being run on a notepad.

The second half of the problem is sorting. A large share of these inquiries do not need a human at all: do you have a cabin filter for a 2019 Corolla, what time do you close, do you ship, is that genuine or aftermarket. Those are answerable from a catalog and a stock feed. Mixed in with genuinely hard VIN-level questions, the easy ones consume the counter's attention and the hard ones wait behind them. This build separates the two, puts every inquiry on a board with an owner and a deadline, and lets BO carry the routine ones end to end.

02

What gets built

Pipeline and stages

One pipeline, Parts Inquiries, with eight stages. Every inquiry becomes a card the moment it arrives, regardless of channel.

  • New Inquiry: captured, not yet read by a human or resolved by BO.
  • Identifying Part: vehicle known, exact part not yet pinned down. VIN lookup or catalog work needed.
  • Awaiting Supplier: part identified, availability or lead time requested from the supplier. SLA clock runs here.
  • Quoted: quote sent, awaiting the customer.
  • Awaiting Customer: chase ladder running after the first follow-up.
  • Won – Order Placed: customer confirmed, part ordered or reserved.
  • Lost: coded with a reason before it can be closed.
  • Dormant: no response after the full ladder; revived later by campaign, not deleted.

Calendars

  • Parts Counter Callback: 15-minute slots, round-robin across the parts team, 10-minute buffer, bookable only during counter hours. Used when a customer wants a human to walk them through options.
  • Fitting Bay Booking: 45-minute service calendar, used when the inquiry converts into fit-while-you-wait work rather than a counter collection.
  • Parts Collection Slot: 10-minute slots with a daily cap, so trade customers collecting bulk orders are spread across the day instead of arriving together at 8am.

Custom fields

Created on the contact record, and mirrored onto the opportunity where the same contact may raise several unrelated inquiries.

  • Vehicle Year, Vehicle Make, Vehicle Model, Vehicle Variant / Engine
  • VIN or Chassis Number: free text, 17 characters expected
  • Registration Plate
  • Part Description: what the customer called it, in their words
  • Part Number: what it actually is, filled by the counter or by catalog lookup
  • Parts Preference: dropdown: Genuine / OEM / Aftermarket / Cheapest Available / No Preference
  • Quantity Required
  • Urgency: dropdown: Vehicle Off Road / This Week / No Rush
  • Fulfillment Preference: dropdown: Collect / Local Delivery / Ship
  • Account Type: dropdown: Retail / Trade Account / Internal Workshop
  • Trade Account Number
  • Supplier Checked: which supplier was called or queried
  • Supplier ETA Date: date field, drives the delivery-notification workflow
  • Quote Sent Date: date field, drives the chase ladder
  • Quote Reference
  • Loss Reason: dropdown: Price / Availability / Bought Elsewhere / Wrong Part / No Response / Scrapped Vehicle
  • Preferred Contact Channel: dropdown: SMS / Call / Email / WhatsApp
  • Inquiry Source: dropdown: Phone / Web Form / Web Chat / Facebook DM / Instagram DM / WhatsApp / Walk-In / Trade Portal

Tags

  • parts-inquiry: applied to every contact entering this build, the anchor for all segments
  • parts-vor: vehicle off road, triggers the priority lane
  • parts-trade and parts-retail: routing and tone
  • parts-bo-resolved: BO answered end to end with no human touch
  • parts-escalated: BO handed off
  • parts-awaiting-supplier, parts-quoted, parts-won
  • parts-lost-price, parts-lost-availability, parts-no-response
  • parts-repeat-buyer: applied on the second won inquiry
  • sms-opted-out and email-unsubscribed: hard suppression, checked by every workflow before any send

Forms

  • Parts Inquiry: the public form on the parts page. Fields: name, mobile, email, registration plate, VIN (optional), part description, quantity, parts preference, urgency, fulfillment preference, photo upload. Short and mobile-first; the photo upload does more work than any text field, because customers photograph the broken part.
  • Trade Account Parts Request: gated version behind a trade login or a known-contact link. Pre-fills account number and skips the retail fields.
  • Supplier Check Result: internal form the counter completes instead of typing a note. Fields: supplier checked, in stock yes/no, ETA date, part number confirmed, parts preference actually available. Submitting it moves the card and fires the quote workflow.
  • Loss Reason: internal, one dropdown, required before a card can sit in Lost. This is the field that eventually tells the owner whether they are losing on price or on stock.

BO's role and guardrails

BO answers web chat, SMS, WhatsApp and social DMs on the parts line, and handles the after-hours phone channel as a voice agent.

  • BO does: collect vehicle year, make, model, registration or VIN, part description, quantity and urgency; answer opening hours, location, delivery and shipping questions, and the genuine-versus-aftermarket explanation from the knowledge base; confirm whether a listed catalog item is a stock line; book a Parts Counter Callback; capture a photo of the part.
  • BO does not: confirm availability of anything not on the stock feed, state a price or a discount, promise an ETA, accept an order, or advise on whether a part is the correct fitment for a VIN it cannot verify. Those are counter decisions.
  • Escalation triggers: the word warranty, recall, return, refund or complaint; a safety-critical part category (brakes, airbags, steering, towing); a trade account number present; urgency set to Vehicle Off Road; two consecutive turns where BO cannot progress; any explicit request for a person.
  • Knowledge base: counter hours, delivery radius and cut-off times, shipping policy, returns and core-charge policy in plain language, the genuine/OEM/aftermarket explanation, which part families are stocked versus ordered in, and how to read a VIN plate location by make.

Numbers and channels

  • A dedicated parts number, separate from the main switchboard, so parts volume can be measured on its own.
  • A Parts Counter ring group, simultaneous ring across counter handsets, 20-second timeout, then rollover to the parts manager, then to voicemail-to-text.
  • A whisper message on answer: Parts inquiry, so whoever picks up knows which hat to wear before they speak.
  • Call recording on, with the recording attached to the opportunity, which settles the vast majority of wrong-part disputes.
  • Missed-call text-back on the parts number, enabled during and outside counter hours with different copy.
  • Inbound channels unified into one thread per contact: parts number SMS and voice, web chat, the parts inquiry form, WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram DMs, and the parts email address.
03

How it runs, step by step

One inquiry, from the first message to the collection slot.

  1. 10:42am, Tuesday. A customer sends an Instagram DM to the dealership account: need a front wheel bearing for my 2017 Hilux, how much? The counter is three deep with walk-ins and nobody sees it.
  2. BO picks it up within seconds. It replies in the same thread, identifies the parts department, and asks the two questions that matter most: Happy to help with that. Can you send me the registration plate, and is the vehicle driveable right now or off the road? Registration plate is asked before VIN because people know their plate by heart.
  3. The customer answers. Plate supplied, vehicle driveable. BO writes Vehicle Year 2017, Vehicle Make Toyota, Vehicle Model Hilux, Registration Plate, Part Description “front wheel bearing”, Urgency This Week, Inquiry Source Instagram DM to the contact record.
  4. BO asks the two remaining qualifying questions in one message, not four messages: Two quick things and I'll get this to the counter: which side, and do you want genuine Toyota or are you open to a quality aftermarket option? Answers populate Part Description and Parts Preference.
  5. A card is created in Parts Inquiries at New Inquiry, tagged parts-inquiry and parts-retail, named with the plate and the part so the board is readable at a glance. The contact's whole history (the DM thread, the fields, any previous inquiry) sits on the card.
  6. BO sets the expectation and stops. Got it. A wheel bearing is a fitment-critical part so I'm passing this to the parts counter to confirm the exact number against your vehicle. They'll come back to you today with availability. If anything changes, just reply here. BO does not guess a part number and does not quote. Tag parts-escalated applied.
  7. Routing and the clock. The card is assigned round-robin to a counter person, a task Identify part: HiLux front wheel bearing is created due in 2 hours, and a notification lands on the parts manager's phone. The card moves to Identifying Part.
  8. 11:30am. The counter runs the plate through the catalog, confirms left-hand side, fills Part Number, and queries the supplier. They submit the Supplier Check Result form rather than typing a note: supplier confirmed, in stock yes, ETA tomorrow 9am, aftermarket available. The card moves to Awaiting Supplier and then straight to Quoted on submission.
  9. The quote goes out automatically on the customer's Preferred Contact Channel: here, back into the Instagram thread, with an email copy carrying the formal quote and the Quote Reference. It names both options, the part number, and the collection window. Quote Sent Date is stamped.
  10. The chase ladder arms itself. If no reply in 4 business hours, a soft nudge. If no reply by the next morning, a second. If still nothing at day three, a human call task. Every step checks for a reply first and exits the moment one arrives.
  11. 4:15pm. The customer replies yes, the aftermarket one please. Reply detection moves the card to Won – Order Placed, cancels every remaining chase step, applies parts-won, and creates a task for the counter to place the order.
  12. BO confirms and books the collection. Ordered. It'll be here tomorrow morning. Pick a 10-minute collection slot and we'll have it on the counter with your name on it. A Parts Collection Slot booking link is sent. The customer takes 10:20am.
  13. Next morning, 8:50am. A part-arrived SMS fires off the Supplier ETA Date: Your wheel bearing is in. See you at 10:20: ask for the parts counter. A reminder goes out 1 hour before the slot.
  14. After collection, the card closes and a two-day-later review request goes out on the reputation workflow. The contact now carries a complete vehicle profile, so the next inquiry on that plate skips steps two through four entirely.
04

Automations in detail

Seven workflows. Every outbound step in all of them is preceded by two silent checks: the contact does not carry sms-opted-out or email-unsubscribed, and the current time is inside the send window. Any step scheduled outside it holds until the window opens.

1. Inquiry Capture and Acknowledgement

Trigger: any of: Parts Inquiry form submitted, Trade Account Parts Request submitted, inbound SMS to the parts number, new web chat conversation, inbound Facebook or Instagram DM, inbound email to the parts address.

Branch on Account Type:

  • Trade Account Number present → apply parts-trade, assign directly to the trade desk owner, skip the retail acknowledgement.
  • Otherwise → apply parts-retail.

Actions in order:

  1. Apply parts-inquiry. Set Inquiry Source from the trigger channel.
  2. Create an opportunity in Parts Inquiries at New Inquiry, named [Registration Plate]: [Part Description].
  3. Branch: if the trigger was a form, send the acknowledgement immediately. If it was a conversational channel, hand to workflow 2 instead and exit: BO's own first reply is the acknowledgement, and a second automated message on top of it reads like a malfunction.
  4. Form acknowledgement SMS, no wait: “Thanks [First Name]: got your parts request for the [Vehicle Make] [Vehicle Model]. We're checking availability now and you'll hear back from the counter today. Reply here any time.”
  5. Wait 2 minutes. Email acknowledgement with the inquiry summary echoed back, so a wrong part description gets corrected before anyone phones a supplier.
  6. Assign round-robin across the parts team. Create task Identify part: [Part Description], due in 2 business hours.
  7. Internal notification to the assignee and the parts manager.

Exit: on opportunity reaching Lost or Won – Order Placed.

2. BO Identification and Triage

Trigger: inbound message on web chat, SMS, WhatsApp, Facebook or Instagram DM where the conversation is unassigned.

Conditions: inside or outside counter hours both proceed: only the closing line changes.

Actions:

  1. Hand the conversation to BO with the parts knowledge base and the field-capture list attached.
  2. BO's objective, in order: registration plate, then year/make/model, then part description, then quantity, then Parts Preference, then Urgency, then Fulfillment Preference. Two fields per message maximum.
  3. BO writes each answer to its custom field as it arrives, so a conversation abandoned halfway still leaves a usable card.
  4. Branch: answerable from the knowledge base or stock feed (hours, location, delivery, shipping, returns, a confirmed stock line): BO answers, offers a Parts Counter Callback link, applies parts-bo-resolved, moves the card to Quoted only if a catalog price was genuinely given, otherwise leaves it at New Inquiry for the counter.
  5. Branch: escalation trigger hit (safety-critical category, warranty/recall/return/refund/complaint language, trade account, Urgency = Vehicle Off Road, two stalled turns, or an explicit ask for a person): BO stops, applies parts-escalated, posts “I'm passing this to the parts counter to confirm the exact part against your vehicle: they'll come back to you today.”, assigns, and creates the identification task.
  6. Branch: outside counter hours: same capture, different close: “Counter opens at [opening time]. Your inquiry is first in the queue and someone will come back to you then.” The identification task is due 1 hour after opening, not 2 hours from now.

Exit: conversation assigned to a human, or parts-bo-resolved applied.

3. Supplier Check and SLA Escalation

Trigger: opportunity stage changes to Awaiting Supplier.

Actions:

  1. Apply parts-awaiting-supplier. Create task Chase supplier: [Part Number] on the card owner, due in 4 business hours.
  2. Wait 4 business hours. Condition: still in Awaiting Supplier?
  3. If yes, holding message to the customer: “Quick update: we're still waiting on our supplier for the [Part Description]. No news is not bad news, we just don't want you sitting there wondering. We'll come back as soon as we have an answer.” This single message prevents most of the calls that interrupt the counter.
  4. Wait 4 further business hours. Condition: still in Awaiting Supplier?
  5. If yes, internal escalation to the parts manager with the card link and the age of the inquiry. Task reassigned to the manager.
  6. Wait until the next business morning, 9am. Condition: still in Awaiting Supplier?
  7. If yes, a second supplier is suggested on the card and a decision task is created: Source elsewhere or tell the customer we cannot supply. An inquiry that cannot be filled must be answered, not abandoned. An honest no preserves the next inquiry.

Exit: stage leaves Awaiting Supplier.

4. Quote Delivery and Chase Ladder

Trigger: Supplier Check Result form submitted, or stage changed manually to Quoted.

Actions:

  1. Stamp Quote Sent Date. Apply parts-quoted. Move stage to Quoted.
  2. Send the quote on Preferred Contact Channel, with an email copy carrying the Quote Reference in every case. SMS version: “[First Name]. Your [Part Description] for the [Vehicle Make] [Vehicle Model] is confirmed and available. Part number [Part Number]. Quote [Quote Reference] is in your inbox with both options. Reply YES and we'll order it in for collection.”
  3. Wait 4 business hours. Condition: no inbound reply since the quote?
  4. Nudge one: “Just checking you got quote [Quote Reference] for the [Part Description]. Want me to put it on order, or do you have a question about the options?” Move stage to Awaiting Customer.
  5. Wait until 9:30am the next business day. Condition: no reply?
  6. Nudge two, by email, reply-to the counter: a short restatement of both options and the collection window, plus the Parts Counter Callback link for anyone who would rather talk it through.
  7. Wait 2 business days. Condition: no reply?
  8. Create a call task on the card owner: Call before closing: quote [Quote Reference]. A person, not a message, because at this point the silence usually means a question nobody wanted to type.
  9. Wait 2 business days. Condition: no reply and task not completed? Move stage to Dormant, apply parts-no-response, set Loss Reason = No Response.

Exit immediately on: any inbound message or call from the contact, stage change to Won – Order Placed, or sms-opted-out being applied mid-ladder.

5. Vehicle-Off-Road Priority Lane

Trigger: Urgency set to Vehicle Off Road, by form, by BO, or by hand.

Actions:

  1. Apply parts-vor. Raise the opportunity value weighting so the card sorts to the top of the board.
  2. Immediate notification to the parts manager and the on-duty counter lead: push and SMS, not email.
  3. Create task due in 30 minutes, not 2 hours: VOR: identify and source [Part Description].
  4. Customer acknowledgement, immediately: “Understood: vehicle off road. We've flagged this as priority and someone is on it now. You'll hear from us within the hour, not at the end of the day.”
  5. Wait 45 minutes. Condition: card still at New Inquiry or Identifying Part and task not completed? Escalate to the parts manager's mobile and, after a further 30 minutes with no movement, to the dealer principal. A promise of an hour has to be enforced by something other than goodwill.
  6. On reaching Quoted, suppress the standard 4-hour nudge and replace it with a 60-minute one. A VOR customer is actively deciding right now.

Exit: stage reaches Won – Order Placed or Lost.

6. Missed Call and After-Hours Capture

Trigger: call to the parts number ends with status missed, abandoned, or voicemail left.

Branch on time:

  • Inside counter hours → text-back within 1 minute: “Sorry we missed you: parts counter here, we were with a customer. What vehicle and what part do you need? Reply here and we'll sort it, it's usually faster than holding.”
  • Outside counter hours → text-back within 1 minute: “Thanks for calling the parts counter: we're closed, open again [opening time]. Tell me the registration and the part you're after and I'll have an answer ready for you first thing.”

Actions:

  1. Create the opportunity at New Inquiry with Inquiry Source = Phone. A missed call is an inquiry and gets a card like any other.
  2. If a voicemail exists, transcribe it, attach the transcript and recording to the card, and include the transcript in the internal notification so the callback can be prepared rather than discovered.
  3. On any reply, hand straight to workflow 2 so BO completes the capture.
  4. Wait 15 minutes (inside hours) or until 30 minutes after opening (outside hours). Condition: no reply and no outbound call logged? Create a callback task on the counter ring group.
  5. Wait 1 business day. Condition: still no two-way contact? One final SMS, then move to Dormant with Loss Reason = No Response.

Exit: any inbound reply, or an outbound call connecting.

7. Order Arrival, Collection and Dormant Revival

Trigger A: arrival: Supplier ETA Date reached on a card at Won – Order Placed.

  1. Task on the counter: Confirm [Part Number] received and shelved under customer name.
  2. On task completion, SMS: “Your [Part Description] is in and set aside under your name. Book a 10-minute collection slot here, or just walk in: ask for the parts counter.” with the Parts Collection Slot link.
  3. If a slot is booked: reminder 1 hour before. If not booked within 2 days, SMS reminder; at 5 days, a call task, because an uncollected part is cash on a shelf.
  4. On collection, close the card, apply parts-won, and if the contact already carried parts-won from a previous inquiry, add parts-repeat-buyer.
  5. Wait 2 days. Fire the review request on the reputation workflow.

Trigger B: revival: daily at 7am, every card in Dormant for 45 days whose Loss Reason is No Response or Availability, and which has no open card on the same plate.

  1. One SMS only, never a sequence: “[First Name]. We quoted you a while back for a [Part Description] on the [Vehicle Make] [Vehicle Model]. Still need it? Stock and lead times have moved since then, so it's worth a fresh look. Reply and I'll re-check.”
  2. On reply: create a new opportunity at New Inquiry, hand to workflow 2, and leave the old card closed rather than reopening it, so cycle-time reporting stays honest.
  3. No reply within 7 days: suppress this contact from revival for 12 months. A dormant list is a once-a-year asset, not a monthly one.

Exit: reply received, or the 7-day window closes.

05

What changes

What is different afterwards

  • Every inquiry exists. Phone, form, chat, WhatsApp, both DM channels and after-hours calls all land as cards on one board. The question how many parts inquiries did we get last month has an answer for the first time, and so does how many did we never reply to.
  • The counter stops being the bottleneck for simple questions. Hours, delivery radius, shipping, stock lines and the genuine-versus-aftermarket conversation are answered by BO in seconds, at 11pm as readily as at 11am. The counter's attention goes to fitment and supplier work, which is the part that actually needs a person.
  • Nothing waits on memory. An inquiry in Awaiting Supplier has an owner, a task and an escalation. If it ages past the SLA it goes red on the manager's board rather than quietly dying.
  • Quotes get chased without anyone feeling chased. Three touches across two channels, each one exiting on reply, and a human call before the inquiry is written off.
  • Vehicle-off-road jobs jump the queue by rule, not by volume. The customer who shouts loudest no longer outranks the customer whose van is on a lift.
  • Loss becomes information. Every lost inquiry carries a coded Loss Reason. Three months in, the owner can see whether the business is losing on price, on stock depth, or on response speed: three completely different problems with three completely different fixes.
  • The vehicle profile compounds. Plate, VIN, year, make, model and variant persist on the contact, so repeat inquiries are near-instant and seasonal campaigns can target by vehicle age and known fitment.

Metrics to watch

  • First-response time by channel: median and 90th percentile. Track phone, form and DM separately; they usually look nothing alike.
  • Inquiry-to-quote time: time in New Inquiry plus Identifying Part plus Awaiting Supplier. This is the number that decides most races.
  • Quote-to-win rate, and separately inquiry-to-win rate. The gap between them tells you whether you are losing before or after the quote.
  • Share of inquiries resolved by BO with no human touch: count of parts-bo-resolved against total. Expect this to climb for a month as the knowledge base is corrected, then plateau.
  • Loss reason distribution: the single most actionable report in this build.
  • SLA breach count: cards sitting in Awaiting Supplier beyond the agreed window.
  • After-hours inquiry volume and its win rate: usually the finding that justifies the whole build.
  • Repeat-inquiry rate: contacts with two or more won inquiries, tracked via parts-repeat-buyer.
  • Collection no-show rate: ordered parts never picked up, which is working capital sitting on a shelf.
06

Before you start

Information to gather first

  • Counter hours, including any Saturday or half-day variation, and the public holiday calendar. Every wait duration in this build is expressed in business hours, so the hours table has to be right before anything else is switched on.
  • Which part families are stocked versus ordered in. BO cannot confirm availability without this, and a confident wrong answer about stock costs more than no answer.
  • Your supplier list and their cut-off times. The SLA windows in workflow 3 should reflect when suppliers actually answer, not an arbitrary four hours.
  • Returns, core-charge and warranty policy in plain language. Write it the way a counter person would say it out loud; that version goes into BO's knowledge base.
  • Delivery radius and shipping policy, including which couriers and what the cut-off is for same-day dispatch.
  • Trade account list, with account numbers, so trade contacts are recognized on first contact rather than treated as retail.

Integrations

  • Catalog or parts-lookup system. If it exposes an API, wire the stock and part-number lookup so BO and the counter work from one source. If it does not, BO stays on the knowledge-base-only guardrail and the counter does all lookups by hand. The build still works, it just resolves fewer inquiries without a human.
  • Dealer management system. At minimum, export the contact and vehicle history so existing customers arrive with their plate and VIN already on file. A two-way sync is better but is not needed for launch.
  • Google Calendar or Outlook for the three calendars, so counter staff see collection and callback slots alongside their own calendar.
  • Payment processing if deposits are taken on special-order parts (Stripe or your existing terminal provider) so the deposit request can be sent as a link from the card rather than taken over the phone.
  • Accounting system (QuickBooks or Xero) if the quote reference needs to match an invoice number downstream.
  • WhatsApp Business and the Facebook and Instagram page connections, each of which needs admin access on the business account, not a personal profile.

Numbers and messaging registration

  • Provision the dedicated parts number early. Do this first, because registration is the long pole in the schedule and everything conversational depends on it.
  • A2P 10DLC registration is required before any automated SMS can send reliably in the US. Register the brand and a campaign whose described use case matches what this build actually does: transactional parts inquiry responses, quote delivery and order-status notifications. A campaign registered as marketing and then used for transactional messages, or the reverse, is the usual cause of silent filtering. Allow a week or more for approval and build it into the timeline rather than discovering it on launch day.
  • Carrier filtering. Keep links to a minimum in the first message of any thread, and avoid link shorteners that are not your own domain.
  • Opt-out handling. STOP, UNSUBSCRIBE, QUIT, CANCEL and END must apply sms-opted-out and immediately halt every workflow for that contact. Test this before launch by texting STOP to the parts number from a real handset and confirming the tag lands and the ladder stops. Include the opt-out instruction in the first message of any sequence.
  • Quiet hours. Set a send window. 8am to 8pm local is a reasonable default, and some jurisdictions are stricter. Everything in workflows 3, 4, 6 and 7 should respect it, with queued messages held until the window opens rather than dropped. The after-hours capture in workflow 6 replies conversationally to someone who just contacted you, which is a different case from an outbound campaign, but confirm your own position on it.
  • Frequency. Cap at two automated SMS per contact per day across all workflows in this build, so a contact with two open inquiries is not messaged four times.

Data protection and compliance

  • Registration plates and VINs are vehicle identifiers that link to an individual and in many jurisdictions are treated as personal data. Decide how long you retain them on lost and dormant inquiries, and write the retention period down rather than keeping everything forever by default.
  • Call recording requires notification and, depending on jurisdiction, consent from all parties. Put the disclosure in the greeting on the parts number, keep recordings only as long as you have a reason to, and restrict who can play them back.
  • Photo uploads from the inquiry form frequently include number plates, driveways and occasionally people. Treat the upload store as personal data and limit access accordingly.
  • BO must identify itself as an automated assistant when asked, and some jurisdictions require proactive disclosure. The default greeting should make it obvious.
  • Marketing versus transactional. Quote delivery, supplier updates and collection notices are transactional. The 45-day dormant revival in workflow 7 is marketing, and should only go to contacts with a marketing consent basis, not to everyone who once called about a wiper blade.

None of the above is legal advice. Telecoms registration, call-recording consent, retention periods and marketing consent all vary by state and country and by how the business is structured. Confirm the specifics with the client's own counsel before launch, and keep a written record of what was decided.

Scoping

What this build costs depends on channel count, whether the catalog integrates, and how many suppliers are in the loop. Book a call at bookings.appbo.io to scope it against the actual counter.

Field notes

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