An AI front desk that captures the revenue lost after hours

A heavy-duty truck dealer was sending every call after 5 pm and every weekend call to voicemail, and most of those callers never called back. Here is how a Torque voice agent turned that dead air into a prioritized lead list waiting for reps each morning.

Where it started

It is 6:40 on a Thursday evening. A fleet manager for a regional hauler has a service truck down and needs two things: does the dealer have a comparable unit on the lot, and when can the shop look at the one that failed. He calls the main line, gets voicemail, hangs up without a message, and dials the next dealer on his list.

From the rep side, Friday morning meant a dozen voicemails and twice as many hangups showing only a number on caller ID. The first hour went to calling numbers back, mostly reaching other people's voicemail. By the time the fleet manager picked up, he had already been quoted somewhere else.

The sales manager pulled the carrier's call logs and found that roughly a third of inbound calls landed outside business hours. Municipal buyers called late afternoon after site visits; owner-operators called on Saturdays. Almost none left a message, so there was no way to know what they wanted or where they went. An answering service had not helped. It took names and numbers, but it could not tell a caller whether a unit was in stock or book a service slot, so the caller still waited until morning for a real answer.

What we built

Torque deployed a voice agent as the dealer's digital front desk. It picks up the main line after hours and on weekends, and takes daytime overflow when every rep is on a call. Here is what happens on every call.

• Answers 24/7. The agent picks up within a couple of rings, introduces itself as the front desk, and asks whether the caller needs sales, parts, or service.
• Knows inventory and hours. It reads live inventory from the Platform, so it can confirm whether a unit with a given spec is on the lot, and it knows store hours, location, and the parts counter schedule.
• Qualifies the caller. It asks what unit or part the caller is looking at, how many, when they need it, their company and role, and the best number and email to reach them.
• Books service or a callback. For service it picks an open slot on the shop schedule. For sales or parts it books a callback at the caller's preferred time and captures the spec so a rep can start a quote without a second call.
• Texts a confirmation. The caller gets a text with the appointment or callback time and a reference number before they hang up.
• Logs everything. Contact, company, inquiry type, unit of interest, urgency, full transcript, and a recording link all land in the Platform CRM as a lead record, attached to the existing account if there is one.
• Routes urgent calls. If the caller says a truck is down, a bid is due this week, or a fleet is waiting, the agent texts and calls the on-call rep. The rep can join the call or let the agent finish booking and pick it up from the record.

The guardrails are simple. The agent never quotes a price; it captures the ask and hands it to a human. Outside its knowledge, it books a callback rather than guessing. The sales manager reviews the escalation rules weekly, and reps mark each lead as qualified or not, which is how the routing gets sharper over time. Every morning reps open one prioritized list in the Platform, with a summary and transcript behind each item.

What changed

• After-hours inquiries are no longer lost. Every caller gets a real answer and a confirmation text. The hangup-without-a-message problem went away, because there is nothing to hang up on.
• Faster first response. First response moved from the next morning to within minutes. Urgent callers reach a human the same evening instead of the next business day.
• More quotes started. Reps start the day with the spec, quantity, and timeline already captured, so quotes go out the same morning instead of after a round of phone tag.
• Fewer unqualified calls reaching reps. During the day, hours, directions, parts availability, and early-stage questions are handled before they hit a rep's desk. Reps see the conversations worth having.

What it took

About four weeks from kickoff to live on the main line. In week one, the sales and service managers mapped the call types they actually get, what counts as urgent, and who is on call when. In week two, Torque wired up phone forwarding for after-hours and overflow, pulled DMS inventory into the Platform, and linked the service scheduler. Week three was internal test calls and listening to recordings to tune how the agent talks. Week four went live after hours only, then extended to daytime overflow.

On the dealer side it took the sales manager, the service manager, one rep as champion, and an IT contact for phone forwarding. Systems connected: the existing phone carrier, the DMS inventory feed, the shop scheduling calendar, and the Platform CRM where everything now lives.

If your phones go quiet at 5 pm but your customers do not, we can show you what this looks like on your call volume. Reach us at torquemode.com/contact.