Customers

Everything your customers hear from you: the assistant that answers them in their portal, and the automatic emails and texts you send about their repair. Nothing here changes what you see — your own alerts are the bell in the top bar.

Portal address

Your customers' permanent way in. Unlike an emailed sign-in link, this one never expires — put it on invoices, business cards, or a sign at the counter.

Open

Address

/s/

Letters, numbers and hyphens. Changing it breaks any copy you have already given out, so pick one you can live with.

Assistant

Daedalus answers questions in the customer portal using only that customer's own repair orders and vehicles. It does two things: tell them where their car is, and answer general questions about their service. Anything that commits the shop goes to you instead.

Let customers ask the assistant With this on, a customer signed into your portal can ask about their own repair orders, invoices, vehicles and estimates, and where each job stands. Turn it off and the portal still works — they read the same pages themselves — and the chat becomes a way to message your shop, answered by a person. What it may say is set below; this switch only decides whether it answers at all.

What the assistant may share about a repair order These apply when the assistant is on, above. Which vehicle it is and where the job stands are always shared — that is the whole point of the portal — as is why the car came in, in the customer's own words. Everything below is yours to choose, and each is enforced by what the assistant is GIVEN, not merely what it is asked to do: a box left unchecked is information it never sees.

Live progress The expected-ready time and the technician's latest note. Only worth sharing if your team keeps those fields current — a stale ETA reads as a broken promise.

Work detail (recommended) The diagnosis, the work performed, and the services on the estimate. Why the car is in, in the customer's own words, is always shared.

Parts Which parts and fluids are on the job. Turn this off if supply is unpredictable and you would rather quote a date yourself.

Prices and balance Line-item amounts, totals, and any balance due, exactly as they appear on the record. It never computes or predicts a number that is not already there.

Trouble codes Diagnostic codes from a scan. Some shops treat scan output as internal working notes.

One caveat worth stating plainly: these govern what the assistant says, not what a customer can infer. Hiding parts while showing a promised date that keeps slipping still tells them something is on back-order.

Daily message limit per customer Caps AI usage per customer per day. 60 is plenty for real conversations.

What it will not do

It never states or implies a warranty, guarantee, coverage, goodwill, refund, discount, comeback policy, loaner, or towing. Those bind your shop and are a service advisor's call — asked about any of them, it says a person will take care of it and flags the conversation for you.
It does not guess at cost, cause, or how long something will take beyond what is on the record.
It never gives a "safe to drive" verdict.
It cannot approve estimates, take payments, or book appointments — it points the customer at the button on their own screen.
It only ever sees that one customer's data. No other customers, no internal notes, no costs or margins.
When a customer needs a person, you get a notification with the conversation attached.

Messaging

The automatic emails and texts your customers get — the ones that go out on their own, with nobody watching. Sending an estimate or an invoice is something you do, so it always sends. Texts go only to customers who agreed to receive texts, between 8am and 8pm, and say how to opt out; emails skip anyone who has opted out.

What to send

How you appear The name and reply address on your outgoing messages, prefilled from your shop profile. Change one only if outgoing mail should differ from it. The From address is fixed: mail is sent from our domain so it passes SPF, DKIM and DMARC and reaches inboxes instead of spam folders. Your customers see your shop name, and their replies reach you through Reply-to.

From name (email) Reply-to (email) From number (SMS) Set in Settings › SMS, with the Twilio credentials it belongs to.