Customer communication
Every message, every channel, one inbox.
Your customers don’t all communicate the same way. Some call. Some text. Some want WhatsApp. Some just want to check a link on their phone without talking to anyone. Torqueflow meets them where they are – and keeps everything in one place for your team.
UK number
Voice AI answered
Two-way replies
Magic-link login
What it does
Torqueflow brings together phone calls, WhatsApp messages, SMS, and portal messages into a single unified inbox that updates in real time. AI handles the routine triage on every channel – including the customer portal. Customers get transparency through their own portal, with quote approvals, photo uploads, and online payments. Your team stops juggling apps to stay on top of communications.
Why this matters
Chloe can handle one thing well. The rest get delayed, forgotten, or half-answered.
Right now, Chloe’s got the desk phone ringing, a WhatsApp message on her personal phone, and a customer walking through the door. She can handle one of those well. The rest get delayed, forgotten, or half-answered.
It’s not a staffing problem – it’s a channel problem. When messages come in from multiple places, things slip through. The WhatsApp message about the quote approval sits unread because Chloe was on the phone.
Torqueflow puts everything in one stream. Every customer interaction, regardless of how it arrived, appears in the same inbox with the same context. Nothing gets lost in the gaps between apps.
How it works
Four things that take communication off your plate.
A WhatsApp AI that answers the easy ones, a portal that handles quote approvals without phone tag, a unified inbox that threads every channel, and AI triage that routes the rest.
WhatsApp AI channel
Your garage gets a dedicated WhatsApp Business number connected to Torqueflow.
Customers can message it just like they’d message anyone else.
The difference: Torqueflow’s AI reads and responds to routine messages automatically.
- “Hi, is my car ready yet?” The AI checks the work order, sees the job is in quality check, and replies:
“Hi Mrs Chen – your Civic is nearly done. Dave’s just finishing the final checks. We’re expecting it to be ready for collection by 2pm. Shall I send you a message when it’s good to go?” - “Can I book an MOT for my Focus?”
The AI checks the scheduler and offers available slots. - “I want to speak to someone about my bill.”
The AI recognises this needs a human, tags it as a billing query, and routes it to Chloe’s inbox with full context.
SMS & payment links
For customers who don’t have WhatsApp, SMS works the same way.
The AI replies to status enquiries, quote questions and simple requests, and passes anything else to you. Your team picks up anything more complex from the unified inbox.
SMS is also where payment links land. Send a customer a Pay Now link from any unpaid invoice and the link arrives on their phone in a single text. They tap, they pay, the payment posts itself against the invoice. See Online payments for the full payment flow.
The same channel works well for MOT reminders too – a short message with a direct booking link is far more likely to be acted on than a generic reminder email.
Customer portal with AI auto-response · NEW
Now the portal answers too. And accepts photos.
Every customer gets a portal through a magic link – no passwords, no app to install. They tap a link sent by SMS, and they’re in.
From the portal, customers can:
The portal is white-labelled with your branding, hosted on your subdomain.
Real-time unified inbox · NEW
Every channel, threaded by customer, updating live.
Every inbound message – phone call transcript, WhatsApp message, SMS, and portal message – lands in one inbox that updates live. New messages appear at the top of the list as they arrive, status pills (Sent → Delivered → Read) tick over in front of you. No refresh button.
Each conversation is threaded by customer, so you can see the full history regardless of which channel they used. Mrs Chen might have called on Monday, WhatsApp’d on Tuesday, attached a photo through the portal on Wednesday. It’s all in one thread.
Your team can reply from the inbox and Torqueflow routes the response back through whichever channel the customer used. Filter by channel, by status, by customer, or by AI-assigned category. Star important conversations. Assign conversations to specific team members.
If the live connection ever drops for an extended period, a small “Real-time updates paused” banner tells you to refresh. The connection re-establishes automatically.
Transparent quotes with severity badges
Severity badges, photos, per-item approval – the approval is already done.
Each quote line item can include:
Each quote line item can include:
When a customer can see the corroded brake pipe in a photo, alongside a clear explanation and a red severity badge, the approval conversation is already done. No hard sell. No suspicion. Just evidence.
Approved items feed straight into the work order. Declined items are recorded for future reference – useful for the next service when you can say “We flagged those bushings six months ago.”
AI triage & intent detection
Not every message needs the same response or the same person.
Torqueflow’s AI reads incoming messages and categorises them automatically:
Status enquiry
“Is my car ready yet?”
↳ gets checked against live data and auto-responded.
Booking request
“Can I book a service?”
↳ gets routed to the scheduler.
Quote response
“Go ahead with the work”
↳ gets flagged for approval processing.
Complaint
“I’m not happy about…”
↳ gets priority-flagged and routed to a human immediately.
General enquiry
“What oil do you recommend for a 2019 A3?”
↳ gets handled or escalated based on complexity.
The AI handles what it can, flags what it can’t, and makes sure nothing sits in a queue unread. Your team deals with the conversations that matter, not the ones a machine could handle in seconds.
A note on email
Torqueflow sends email – invoices, quotes, statements, magic-link logins, AI alerts. It does not accept inbound email as a conversation channel. We made that choice deliberately: garage email is a graveyard of warranty PDFs, parts catalogues, and supplier marketing. Customer conversations belong on WhatsApp, SMS, the portal, or the phone, where the right person can pick them up in minutes. Inbound email-to-customer-record support is on the roadmap for organisations who genuinely need it.
The real difference
Most garage systems treat comms as an afterthought.
Maybe an SMS reminder bolt-on. Maybe a basic email template. Torqueflow treats communication as core to how a modern garage operates.
Your customers expect the same responsiveness from their garage as they get from their bank or their delivery driver. Instant answers, clear information, no phone tag. Torqueflow makes that possible without hiring an extra person to sit by the phone.
Frequently asked
Common questions, answered.
The things garages most often want to know before they switch. Anything we’ve missed? Ask the team on a 20-minute walkthrough.
Quick summary
The one-page version.
|
What |
How |
|---|---|
|
|
AI-powered responses on your business number |
|
SMS |
AI handles routine; payment links via SMS to mobile |
|
Customer portal |
Magic-link access for quotes, messages, invoices, payments |
|
Portal attachments NEW |
Customers can send photos and PDFs via the portal |
|
Portal AI auto-response NEW |
AI replies to portal messages the same way it does on WhatsApp |
|
Unified inbox NEW |
Every channel in one threaded view, updating live |
|
AI triage |
Automatic categorisation and routing of messages |
|
Quote transparency |
Severity badges, photos, per-item approval |
|
Channel routing |
Replies go back through the channel the customer used |
Stop juggling apps.
Start answering customers.
One inbox. Every channel. AI handles the easy ones – your team handles the ones that matter.