Why Meridian
A Receptionist Who Never Leaves at Five.
One system from the ring to the order. Here is what it costs against hiring for it, how many recovered jobs pay for it, and the things a person still does better.
Does It Pay for Itself?
Meridian is $2,000–$2,500 a month. It is not the cheapest way to answer a phone. The question worth asking is how many of the jobs you currently lose it needs to recover — put your own numbers in.
Your Numbers
A typical job invoices at with a gross margin.
That puts $203 in your pocket per recovered job, against $2,250 a month.
Counts gross profit, not invoice value — using the full ticket would understate this by your margin.
Pays for Itself At
12
recovered jobs a month
roughly 2.8 a week
Every job past that is profit you weren’t capturing before.
Against Hiring for It
A full-time receptionist costs close to twice as much and covers about a quarter of the week, one call at a time. Meridian covers every hour, takes as many calls as come in at once, and hands the job over already priced.
Estimates, not quotes. Receptionist cost assumes roughly $37,000 salary plus payroll taxes, workers’ compensation and benefits, and covers about forty hours a week.
View as table
| Option | Annual | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Meridian | $27,000 | $2,000–2,500/mo, covers every hour |
| Full-Time Receptionist | $47,000 | ≈$37k salary + payroll costs |
One Platform
The Whole Path From Ring to Order, in One Place.
The gap between a call coming in and a part going on order is where jobs get lost — a message nobody wrote down, a lookup that waits until the car is on the lot, a price guessed from memory. Meridian closes that gap in one system.
What Most Shops Juggle
Phone, voicemail, call forwarding
Rings out after five
Message pad and sticky notes
Only as good as who wrote it
Glass catalogue lookup
Done after the car arrives
Two or three supplier portals
Retyping the same part number
A spreadsheet of your markups
Priced from memory instead
Callbacks to quote the job
They already booked elsewhere
What Meridian Does Instead
The call answered, every hour of the day
Customer, vehicle and damage captured in writing
The exact glass identified during the call
Your markup and labour applied automatically
One-click ordering from every supplier you use
The job booked before they hang up
It keeps your existing phone number and sits behind it — there is no new handset and nothing to rip out. It is not your point of sale and not your accounting, and it does not replace the person at your counter. It replaces the scramble between the call and the order.
Side by Side
The last three rows are the ones we lose. A person is better at them, and if those matter most to your shop you should hire one.
| Meridian | Full-Time Receptionist | Voicemail | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hours Covered | 24/7, every day | ~40 hrs/week | Records anytime |
| Calls Answered at Once | No limit | One | No limit |
| Time to Answer | About 3 seconds | Varies with workload | Never answers |
| Nights, Weekends, Holidays | Same as any hour | Overtime or nobody | Takes a message |
| Sick Days and Turnover | None | Cover and rehiring | None |
| Captures Vehicle and Part | Every call | If they remember to ask | Whatever they say |
| Books the Job on the Call | Before they hang up | Yes | You call back |
| Handles Walk-Ins and the Counter | Phone only | Yes | No |
| Reads an Upset Customer | Hands off to you | Yes | No |
| Works an Insurance Claim | Passes it to a person | Yes | No |
Where a Person Is Still Better
Meridian answers the phone. It does not work the counter, does not chase a claim through an adjuster, and does not read the room when someone walks in upset about a job that went wrong. Those need a person, and they always will.
What it does is take the part of the day nobody is there for — the 7pm call, the third line ringing while two are already busy, the Sunday morning crack — and make sure that job lands with you instead of the shop down the road.
Most shops that use it are not replacing anyone. They are covering the hours they were never covering, and freeing the person they already have to do the work only a person can.
Hear It Answer a Call.
Twenty minutes on your shop’s most common calls. We’ll show you what gets captured and what it costs.