Best AI phone agents
Best AI Phone Agents for Car Dealerships (2026): Compared
The best AI phone agent for a car dealership is the one that answers your service calls, books into your scheduler and hands the call to your team, tested on your own calls. This page compares ten vendors on what each says on its own public pages, read on 2026-10-28, and Cleo is one of them.
Side by side
Ten AI phone agents on what each says publicly.
| Vendor | What it is | Where it is strongest | Scheduler and integrations it states | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Numa | Describes itself as the “AI Operating System for Car Dealerships,” with Voice AI, Appointment Agent, Smart Inbox, LiveCSI, Operator call routing and a Service Advisor Agent.Source: numa.com | Appointment Agent “answers your service calls, asks what the car needs, and books the appointment in your scheduler before the customer hangs up,” and answers and books after hours. Operator “answers every inbound call, day or night.”Source: Appointment Agent, Operator | Lists CDK Global, Reynolds & Reynolds, Tekion, Dealertrack, PBS, DealerBuilt, Xtime, Dealer-FX, Elead and VinSolutions. Its directory marks Xtime, Dealer-FX and Tekion as service schedulers it reads and books.Source: Integrations | Not published on the pages we read. Numa asks for a demo. |
| STELLA | STELLA Automotive AI: “Intelligent AI Agents” that dealerships can deploy across the store.Source: stellaautomotive.com | Lists 24/7/365 answering with “Every Call, 1st Ring, Simultaneously,” fully customizable messaging, transfers and transports, and omnichannel outreach. Dealer quotes on the page also mention outbound calls.Source: stellaautomotive.com | Has a “Certified integrations” section. In the text we read, Tekion and Foureyes are the integrations named; the other logos carry no names.Source: stellaautomotive.com | Not published on the pages we read. |
| Impel | Voice AI is Impel’s “AI Digital Voice Assistant for Dealerships.” Impel also lists Service AI.Source: Impel Voice AI | “Answers every inbound service call live, day or night,” books appointments, routes by intent and follows up by text. Every call ends in an action: a booking, a transfer, or a saved message with a task and a text.Source: Impel Voice AI | Says it has “100+ integrations” across website, dealer platform and marketplace systems. The pages we read do not name the service scheduler Voice AI books into.Source: Impel integrations | Not published on the pages we read. |
| Podium | Describes itself as “AI for car dealerships”: Jerry, “your AI Employee,” works sales and service leads, and Operator is “the AI agent for GMs.” Podium also lists Podium Phones, a VoIP phone system.Source: automotive.podium.com, Podium Phones | Says “Voice AI answers every call” and that “Jerry answers service calls and books appointments 24/7.” Calls, texts, web chat, social and email land in one inbox.Source: automotive.podium.com | Says Jerry “connects to your DMS” and “Podium connects to the systems you already use.” The pages we read do not name the service scheduler.Source: automotive.podium.com | Not published. Its plans page says “talk to our sales team for details.”Source: Podium pricing |
| Matador | “Five Agents” for car dealerships: AI Engage, AI Reply, AI Follow-Up, Call AI and Chat AI, on one “Matador AI Engine.”Source: matador.ai | Call AI runs four voice agents: Receptionist, Voicemail, Sales and Service. The Service agent is described as “booking straight into your schedule,” and its service page says “100% of service calls answered, 24/7.”Source: Call AI, Service | Lists 62 dealer systems. Its Call AI page names Xtime, CDK Drive and Dealertrack as places booked calls land. Its service page lists DMS reads from Dealertrack, Reynolds and Reynolds, CDK Drive, PBS, Tekion and Titan DMS.Source: Integrations | Not published on the pages we read. |
| Pam | “The AI Workforce for Automotive”: a Receptionist Agent and an Outbound Marketing Agent.Source: pam.ai | Receptionist Agent answers service calls, books appointments, routes customers and makes warm transfers, 24/7, in English and Spanish. The Outbound agent works customer lists such as recall and declined service.Source: Receptionist Agent | Says Pam “books service appointments directly into the dealership scheduler” and shows an “Integrated with the Systems Dealers Rely On” logo strip. The text we read names no scheduler.Source: Receptionist Agent | Not published on the pages we read. |
| CallRevu | Describes itself as “a conversation intelligence platform for automotive dealerships that captures and analyzes every phone call, text and web lead.” Products: a hosted phone system (Connect), lead management (Convert) and analytics (Optimize).Source: callrevu.com | Call capture, tracking and reporting, plus speed to lead across phone, text and web. The home page we read does not describe an AI agent that answers and books service calls.Source: callrevu.com | Says it “connects with leading CRM, DMS, and marketing platforms.” The text we read names none.Source: callrevu.com | Not published on the pages we read. |
| CDK AIVA | AIVA is CDK’s AI Virtual Assistant for service, listed under CDK’s AI for Fixed Ops.Source: AIVA for Fixed Operations, AI for Fixed Ops | Schedules service appointments 24/7 “through phone, web chat or text,” answers multiple calls at once, passes the call to your team when someone needs more help, and works in multiple languages.Source: AIVA for Fixed Operations, AI for Fixed Ops | Says it “is integrated into your scheduler” and uses your capacity settings. The pages we read do not list which schedulers.Source: AI for Fixed Ops | Not published on the pages we read. |
| Kenect | Listed as “AI for Dealerships”: a platform for texting, reviews and AI, with an AI receptionist, AI scheduling and recall campaigns listed as highlighted features.Source: kenect.com | Its Voice AI page lists “AI-powered appointment scheduling,” routing calls by customer need, and “24/7 calls answered day and night, weekends and holidays.”Source: Kenect Voice AI | Says Voice AI can “set appointments and push them to the DMS calendar.” The pages we read do not name the schedulers.Source: Kenect Voice AI | Not published on the pages we read. |
| Cleo | An AI phone agent for dealership service calls. Cleo answers, books service appointments into your scheduler and hands the call to your team when a person is needed. | Answers service calls day or night. At Stevens Creek Subaru, Sept 21 to Oct 20, 2026: 1,678 calls answered, 447 booking-outcome calls and 30 booked while the service department was closed. At El Cerrito Honda in a separate 30 days: 112 appointments booked, 34 while closed. There, if a call is not answered within three rings in any department, Cleo steps in.Stevens Creek Subaru case study →El Cerrito Honda case study → | Books through CDK or Tekion online scheduling, into Xtime at El Cerrito Honda and into OCAS at Stevens Creek Subaru. Dealer-FX lists Cleo in its integrations directory. Cleo asks the scheduler for open times before it offers any and says the appointment is booked only after the booking succeeds. Cleo can be live in under 7 days.Cleo with CDK and Tekion →Cleo with Xtime → | Not published. Ask for a written quote.What to weigh → |
Last updated 2026-10-28. Vendor pages read 2026-10-28.
Vendor details come from each vendor’s own public pages, read on 2026-10-28, and may have changed since. Check each vendor directly. “Not published” means we found no price on the pages we read. Numa, STELLA, Impel, Podium, Matador, Pam, CallRevu, CDK, Kenect, Tekion, Xtime, Dealer-FX and OCAS are trademarks of their owners. Cleo is an independent vendor, and this page does not describe a partnership with, or endorsement by, any vendor named. Cleo figures come from Cleo’s case studies. A booking-outcome call is a call that ended as a scheduled appointment in Cleo’s call log. Booked appointments are not completed visits or revenue, and results are one dealership’s, not a promise of yours.
Sources
- Numa home (read 2026-10-28)
- Numa Appointment Agent (read 2026-10-28)
- Numa Operator (read 2026-10-28)
- Numa integrations (read 2026-10-28)
- STELLA Automotive AI (read 2026-10-28)
- Impel Voice AI (read 2026-10-28)
- Impel integrations (read 2026-10-28)
- Podium for dealerships (read 2026-10-28)
- Podium Phones (read 2026-10-28)
- Podium pricing (read 2026-10-28)
- Matador home (read 2026-10-28)
- Matador Call AI (read 2026-10-28)
- Matador service (read 2026-10-28)
- Matador integrations (read 2026-10-28)
- Pam home (read 2026-10-28)
- Pam Receptionist Agent (read 2026-10-28)
- CallRevu home (read 2026-10-28)
- CDK AIVA for Fixed Operations (read 2026-10-28)
- CDK AI for Fixed Ops (read 2026-10-28)
- Kenect home (read 2026-10-28)
- Kenect Voice AI (read 2026-10-28)
- Cleo: Stevens Creek Subaru case study (read 2026-10-28)
- Cleo: El Cerrito Honda case study (read 2026-10-28)
- Cleo: CDK and Tekion (read 2026-10-28)
- Cleo: Xtime (read 2026-10-28)
Real dealership results
Results from real Cleo dealerships.
1,678
Calls Cleo answered at Stevens Creek Subaru, September 21 to October 20, 2026
447
Of those calls ended as a booked appointment (booking-outcome calls)
A booking-outcome call is a call that ended as a scheduled appointment in Cleo’s call log. It is not a completed appointment and it is not revenue: Cleo does not report whether customers arrived or what work was paid for. Booked appointments and transfers are separate outcomes, not a breakdown of the answered calls. These are one dealership’s results, not a promise of yours.
El Cerrito Honda, in a separate 30 days: 633 calls answered and 112 appointments booked, 34 of them while the dealership was closed.
El Cerrito Honda case study, Cleo dashboard, rolling 30 days captured September 26, 2026
What to compare
Three checks before you pick a phone agent.
01 · What answers the phone
Ask whether the product answers inbound calls live or follows up by text after a missed call, and which departments it covers. Test each vendor after hours and at your busiest time of day, and note which calls end in a booking.
02 · Booking into your scheduler
Confirm which scheduling system it books into, whether it checks open times before offering one, and what it says when no time is available or a booking fails. A message taken is not an appointment.
03 · Handoff and setup time
Ask where a call goes when a person is needed: a transfer, a callback task for your team, or nothing. Then ask who does the setup and how long until it answers real calls, and get the answer in writing.
Count outcomes the same way for every vendor. An answered call is not a booking, and a booked appointment is not a completed visit.
Before you sign
Questions to ask every vendor, Cleo included.
Ask for the same numbers
Ask each vendor for calls answered, appointments booked and after-hours bookings from one real dealership over the same 30 days, and for how it counts a booked appointment. Compare like with like.
Check the term and the exit
Ask what the contract term is, what it costs to add a location, and what you can export if you leave. Confirm your scheduler connection and service rules before launch.
Cleo does not publish a price. To hear how Cleo would answer your service calls and book appointments for your dealership, book a 30-minute demo.
FAQ
Still have questions?
What is the best AI phone agent for a car dealership?
There is no single best one. The best fit is the agent that answers your service calls, books into your scheduler and hands calls to your team, tested on your own calls. This page compares ten vendors on what each says publicly, and Cleo is one of them, so check the sources and test more than one.
Which AI phone agents book into a dealership service scheduler?
How should I compare AI receptionists for a car dealership?
How much does an AI phone agent cost for a car dealership?
Contact
See how Cleo answers your service calls.
Book a 30-minute demo and hear how Cleo would answer your service calls and book appointments.
