Before signing with an AI sales assistant such as Mia, a small dealership should ask five things in writing: what happens to a lead the moment a person is needed, exactly how it writes into your CRM, what it does outside opening hours, what it costs per month and per event, and how you leave.
Most of those answers are not on the public product page. When I read the vendor's site in October 2026 it described the jobs Mia does and the systems it lists, but gave no price, no contract terms and no detail on how a conversation passes to staff. That gap is the shape of your questions: anything a salesperson says aloud should end up in the quote or the order form.
What the vendor says Mia does, and what it leaves out
Mia is sold as a round-the-clock AI agent for dealerships. The page lists reception (answering calls), inbound sales leads such as stock questions and test-drive bookings, service appointments such as an oil change, outbound follow-up such as recall scheduling, and a text channel that chases missed or dropped service opportunities. A parts job is marked as coming soon. It also says the agent detects the customer's language automatically.
It names a long list of connected systems across dealer management, CRM and lead tools, service scheduling, inventory, a phone-system partner and recall management. It carries a customer testimonial about after-hours bookings. That figure is the customer's own claim, not independent data, so treat it as a sales line rather than a benchmark for your lot.
What the page does not give is the useful part for a buyer: price, contract length, notice period, how handoff works, what a conversation record looks like, or how data is stored. Features still marked "coming soon" are not something to buy against. Write down which jobs you are paying for today and make the order form say the same.
A five-minute scoring sheet for the vendor call
Use one sheet for every vendor you talk to, including the ones you will not pick, so the answers are comparable. Score each row 0 (no answer), 1 (a verbal yes), 2 (a yes in writing or shown live).
| Area | What you need to see | Score 0-2 |
|---|---|---|
| Handoff | Named trigger, who is alerted, by which channel, how fast, with what summary | __ |
| CRM write-back | Lead created or matched, source tag, notes, appointment, no duplicates | __ |
| After-hours | What it can book, what it must defer, what staff see next morning | __ |
| Price | Monthly fee, set-up fee, usage charges, minimum term, price rise clause | __ |
| Exit | Notice period, data export, number porting, deletion in writing | __ |
| Testing | Pilot on one job, your numbers, your system, defined success measures | __ |
Anything scoring 0 or 1 on handoff, CRM write-back or exit is a reason to pause, however good the demo voice sounds. A polished demo is the easy part to get right.
Lead handoff: the moment a human is needed
A sales assistant earns its fee by handling the dull part and getting out of the way at the right moment. Ask the vendor to walk through four situations and show each one live on a test number, not on slides.
- A buyer ready to talk numbers. A caller asks about the monthly payment on a specific used car and whether their trade-in is worth anything. Who is alerted, how, and how quickly? Is it a text to a named salesperson, an email to a shared inbox, or a note that waits in a dashboard?
- A frustrated customer. Someone says the last service was done badly. The assistant should stop trying to book and pass the call to a manager. Ask what words or tone trigger that, and whether you can add your own.
- A question it cannot answer. Ask about a finance product, a warranty exclusion or a recall status it will not know. Does it say it will find out and pass it on, or does it guess?
- No one free. It is a Saturday, the floor is busy, and nobody picks up the transferred call. What happens next: voicemail, a callback task, a text to the customer promising a call at a set time?
Then ask what the human sees on arrival. A good summary reads like a note from a colleague: who the person is, which car, what they asked, what was promised, what is still open. A bad one is a transcript of eight minutes of speech that nobody has time to read.
Sample hand-off note to hold the vendor to
Ask the vendor to show a real example next to a standard you set. Something like the following is a fair bar (illustrative wording):
Caller: [first name], mobile ending 482
Interest: used hatchback, listed at $14,900, stock no. 2217
Asked: monthly payment on 48 months, whether trade-in accepted
Promised: callback from sales within 15 minutes
Open: trade-in is a 2016 model, mileage not given
Source: phone call, 7.42pm, after hoursIf the vendor's version is missing the promise or the open question, that is where the customer will feel the gap. A buyer who was told "someone will ring you" and is then asked to start again will not come back to that dealership.
The CRM link: show it, do not take it on trust
A logo list tells you the vendor has some integration with a system of that name. It does not tell you the integration works with your version, your user permissions or the way your team uses the fields. Ask for a live test with a sandbox or a real test record before you sign, and check these in order:
- Does a new lead appear once? Make a test call, then a second from the same number. You want one customer record with two touches, not two records.
- Is the source tagged? Your reporting is only useful if AI-originated leads can be told from web leads and walk-ins.
- Do notes land where staff look? A summary buried in an activity log that nobody opens is the same as no summary.
- Do appointments go into the real diary? Test a test-drive slot and a service slot. Then try to double-book the same slot by hand. If both succeed, the calendar link is one-way.
- Who owns a lead that was already open? If a salesperson is mid-conversation with a customer who then rings out of hours, the assistant must not start a fresh thread or contradict what was agreed.
Ask who does the integration work and who pays. Is it included, a one-off fee, or your own system provider's charge? Some dealer systems charge for third-party access, so ask your own system provider too, before you assume it is free.
A duplicate-record test you can run yourself
Say your CRM holds a customer called "[first name] [surname]" with a landline. They ring the AI from their mobile and ask about a service. Does the assistant match on name, number, vehicle registration, or not at all? A morning of duplicates is tolerable in a trial. A month of them poisons your follow-up lists, so insist on the matching rule being explained before go-live.
After-hours cover: what it can finish and what it must defer
This is the usual reason a dealership looks at an assistant at all: enquiries arrive at 8pm and the first reply comes at 9am the next day. Be clear about what you want finished overnight and what you want queued.
| After-hours task | Safe to complete alone? | What to ask |
|---|---|---|
| Book a service slot | Usually yes | Does it respect bay capacity, loan-car stock, and your cut-off times? |
| Book a test drive | Yes with checks | Does it confirm the car is still available and that the buyer holds a licence? |
| Quote a price | Only what is published | Can it be limited to advertised prices and never negotiate? |
| Discuss finance or trade-in | No, collect details | Does it take details and promise a call, without quoting terms? |
| Recall or safety query | Defer | Which wording does it use, and who reviews it first thing? |
| Complaint | No | Does it flag for a manager and avoid defending the dealership? |
The point of the table is to decide the rule before the vendor does. A default set up for a large group may promise things a four-person service desk cannot keep, such as same-day slots that your workshop never offers.
What staff should see at 8.30 the next morning
Ask for the overnight digest to be shown. You want a short list: booked, waiting for a call, and flagged. If you have to open each conversation to learn which is which, the first hour of every day gets slower, not faster. That is a hidden cost the vendor will not put on the quote.
Price: get every charge on one page
As the vendor does not publish a price, treat the quote as the only source. Ask for these in writing, then put them into a sum for your own volumes.
- Monthly platform fee and what is included in it.
- Set-up or integration fee, and whether it is refundable if the pilot fails.
- Usage charges: per call, per minute, per message, per booked appointment.
- Number of calls or messages included before extra charges apply.
- Minimum term, renewal terms and any price rise clause.
- The charge for extra locations, extra phone lines or extra languages.
Worked example: does it pay for itself? (illustrative figures)
Say a single-site dealership gets about 140 calls a month outside opening hours, of which perhaps 40 are real service or sales enquiries and the rest are wrong numbers, sales calls or people hanging up. Today most of those 40 go to voicemail and maybe a quarter are called back. Suppose the quote is $1,000 a month plus $200 set-up, and suppose in a pilot the assistant books 15 service appointments a month that would otherwise have been lost, with 12 turning up.
If an average service visit brings in $180 of gross profit, 12 visits is about $2,160 a month. Against $1,000 that looks like a win, but check what sits behind the numbers: the 12 only count if they are bookings you would not have got by calling back in the morning. Say half would have been recovered anyway. Then the net gain is nearer $1,080 and the margin over the fee is $80. That is not nothing, but it is a very different decision to the headline. The sum changes again if sales leads convert, which is why you pilot first and count honestly.
These figures are made up to show the arithmetic. Swap in your own call log, your own show rate and your own gross profit per visit, which your service manager can give you from last quarter.
Exit terms: how you leave if it does not work
Most vendor regrets are not about the product; they are about the contract. Ask about the exit before the demo gets you excited about the entry.
- Length and notice. Is it month to month, or twelve months with auto-renewal? How many days' notice, and in what form?
- Pilot clause. Can you run a 60 or 90 day pilot with the right to leave at the end, without paying the remaining term?
- Your phone number. If the assistant answers on your existing number, does a forwarding rule do this, or has the number been moved to the vendor? If moved, can it be ported back, how quickly, and at what charge?
- Your data. Call recordings, transcripts and lead records: can you export them in a usable form, and when are they deleted? Ask for deletion confirmation in writing.
- Price rises. Is there a cap on increases during the term and at renewal?
- Liability. If it books a wrong appointment or says something it should not, who carries the cost? Have your own adviser read this clause if the amounts are significant.
A vendor that is confident in its product will usually accept a short pilot. If every request for a pilot is met with a long term, take note of it.
Wording you can paste into an email to the vendor
Hello [vendor contact],
Before we decide, please confirm in writing:
1. The monthly fee, set-up fee and any usage charges, with the volumes included.
2. The minimum term, the notice period, and whether a 90-day pilot with a right to leave is possible.
3. How a lead is passed to our staff: trigger, channel, speed and what the summary contains.
4. A live demonstration of the link to our [CRM name], with a test lead and a test appointment.
5. How our phone number is handled and how it comes back to us if we leave.
6. How call recordings and transcripts are stored, who can see them, and how they are deleted.
Thanks,
[your name]A test script to run before you sign
Run the test yourself, with two or three colleagues who did not sit in the demo. Do it on a real phone, in a noisy room, and also by text if the vendor supports it. Write down what happened in each case.
- Clean case. Book a standard service for a named car on a named day. Check the diary.
- Messy case. Give a registration with a digit mixed up, change your mind half way, talk over the assistant.
- Out-of-scope case. Ask for a discount, ask about an insurance write-off, ask something about a model you do not stock.
- Accent and language case. If your customers speak other languages, test in them. The vendor says it detects language, so check the booking as well as the greeting.
- Silence case. Say nothing for ten seconds, or hang up part way. What record is left?
- Complaint case. Be annoyed. See whether it hands over or keeps trying to book.
Two points of caution for recorded calls. Check what the assistant says at the start of a call about being an AI and about recording, and ask your own adviser whether that wording meets the rules that apply to your customers. Also keep sensitive details such as full card numbers out of any AI conversation unless the vendor shows how that data is protected.
A realistic failure to look for
One typical trial failure looks like this: the assistant books a "service" for a car that turns out to be a warranty repair needing a different bay and a longer slot. The customer arrives, the workshop is full, and the dealership looks careless. It will not show up in a demo. It shows up when you check booked appointments against what the workshop actually needed. Put a weekly review into the pilot where the service adviser lists each booking that needed rescheduling and why.
Running a 60-day pilot you can judge fairly
A pilot only works if you decide in advance what counts as success. Pick one job, count the before, and agree the measures with whoever will own the result.
| Measure | How to count it | Example target (yours will differ) |
|---|---|---|
| Out-of-hours enquiries answered | Call log versus the vendor's report | Nearly all, with a record of each |
| Appointments booked | Diary entries tagged by source | More than the lost-call estimate |
| Show rate | Booked versus arrived | At least as good as phone bookings |
| Hand-offs with usable summary | Sample 20 a fortnight and rate them | Few that need a second call |
| Complaints or wrong information | Staff log kept at the desk | None that cost a sale or a refund |
In week one, listen to every call. In week three, sample. At day 60, put the sum from above next to your actual numbers and make a decision with the vendor in the room rather than in a long email thread.
When a different tool, or no tool, is the better answer
An AI agent is not the only way to deal with missed calls. A dealership with one site and a small number of out-of-hours calls may be better served by a clear voicemail that promises a callback by 9am, a text reply that sends the booking link, and a rota. If most of your lost enquiries come from web forms rather than calls, a faster first reply from your existing CRM may do more than a voice agent. Read answering a web lead in minutes before you assume the phone is the weak point.
If you are comparing several products, the rules to set before launch help you decide what any assistant is allowed to say, and what a dealership AI receptionist costs gives a way to sanity-check any quote. For a service-led site, whether a voice agent can book service work goes deeper on the workshop side.
If you would rather map the vendor options and the pilot with someone, that is what my AI implementation consultation covers.
Questions for your own team before you ask the vendor
The vendor cannot answer these for you, and they decide whether the answers above are good enough.
- Who owns the assistant day to day: the sales manager, the service manager, or the general manager? A tool nobody owns drifts.
- Which promises may it make? Write a one-page list: opening hours, published prices, slot lengths, loan-car policy, what it must never say.
- Who reviews conversations weekly, and what do they do with what they find?
- What is the manual fallback if the assistant or the phone line fails on a Saturday?
- What will you tell customers? A short line such as "our assistant takes your details and our team will follow up" is honest and sets the expectation.
Settle these first, then take the vendor through the scoring sheet. By the time you are comparing quotes, you are comparing against a standard you wrote, not the one on the demo.
Smaller questions dealers ask about Mia
Does Mia publish its pricing?
Not on the page I read in October 2026. The vendor's site describes the product and its integrations but gives no price, so every number has to come from a written quote. Ask for the monthly fee, any set-up charge, and what is billed per call, per message or per appointment, then check it against your own call volumes.
Which dealership systems does Mia say it connects to?
The vendor lists several dealer management systems, CRMs, service schedulers, inventory tools and a phone-system partner. A logo on a list is not proof that your exact version and set-up work, so ask for the integration to be shown live against your own system, with a test lead and a test booking.
Can I try it on service calls only?
You can ask. The vendor describes separate jobs: reception, sales leads, service booking, outbound follow-up and text recovery of missed service opportunities. Starting with one job, usually after-hours service booking, limits risk and gives you a clean before-and-after comparison before you widen the scope.
What should a trial measure?
Four numbers: calls and leads answered, appointments booked that actually showed, leads handed to staff with a usable summary, and complaints. Count them against the same weeks before the trial. Booked appointments that never arrive, or hand-offs that arrive without context, are the two failures most worth catching early.
Further reads
- AI BDC for Car Dealerships: Does a Small Lot Need One? — Whether a small lot needs an AI BDC at all.
- ChatGPT for Car Dealerships: What Customer Data Never to Paste In — Customer data that must stay out of AI tools.
- Best AI Platform for Used Car Dealerships: How to Choose — A wider way to choose a platform for a used lot.
- How to Evaluate an AI Implementation Proposal or Quote — General checks for any AI quote you are handed.
- AI Booking Systems for Appointment Businesses: What to Check — Booking-system checks that apply beyond car sales.
- AI Marketing for Car Dealerships: A Four-Week Plan for One Lot — A four-week plan once the phones are covered.
- AI Tools and AI Development: The Complete 2026 Guide — the AI hub, including every tutorial in the AI-for-business series.
Sources: the vendor's own product page (mia.inc), read October 2026. Pricing, contract terms and handoff behaviour were not published there.