Blog
Notes from the desk.
How an AI front office handles a parts trader's day: calls, RFQs, suppliers and customers, written from the desk we run ourselves.
All articles
· Voice
Part numbers are where voice AI breaks
Why one pass of speech recognition is never enough for 235-60-35300, and the four things a voice agent for spare parts has to do instead.
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· Procurement
How to answer spare-parts RFQs overnight: from PDF to quotation
An RFQ lands at 06:40: thirty-five lines in a PDF. What it takes to have the order, the supplier requests and the quotation ready before your team is in.
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· Voice
Calling customers on their clock: time zones and the callback ladder
"Call me tomorrow at eleven" means eleven in Chennai, not in Dubai. How an outbound queue keeps promises across time zones, and when it stops.
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· Procurement
One click, every supplier: sourcing spare parts from price lists
Which of your suppliers can quote this order? The answer is in their price lists, and a desk can read 160,000 rows faster than a buyer can open the file.
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· Procurement
Cross-references and equivalents: one part, one card
328-0730 and 3280730 are the same part; a Komatsu number and an aftermarket one may be too. How a parts catalogue keeps one card per part, and says who decided.
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· Voice
Should an AI sales agent say it is an AI? Always.
The EU AI Act's transparency rule has been in force since 2 August 2026. Why our agent says it is an AI in the first sentence, everywhere, and what else it never does.
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· Sales
A CRM for a spare-parts trader: one client, one card
Duplicates, free-mail addresses, three people at one company and a card that never says what time it is there. What a parts trader's CRM has to get right.
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