LotAnswer

Set it up.

Six steps. You need the computer that will stay on at the lot, the Facebook account your buyers already message, and about fifteen minutes.

⏱ About 15 minutes
Prefer to watch? A three-minute walkthrough of steps 1 to 3 is coming — the parts where a screen is easier than a paragraph. Everything below works on its own in the meantime, and the written version is the one that stays current.
1

Install it

Download it from the link in your welcome email, or from your dashboard under Download.

  • Mac — open the .dmg, drag Lot Answer into Applications, then open it from Applications.
  • Windows — run the installer and open Lot Answer from the Start menu.
Your computer will ask once whether you are sure, because you downloaded it. Say yes. The app is signed — on a Mac by Apple's notary service, on Windows with a certificate in our name — which is the check it just ran.

Put it on the computer that stays at the lot, not on a laptop that goes home. Step 6 explains why.

2

Sign in

It opens on Sign in to Lot Answer. Use the same username and password you use on lotanswer.com.

If someone at your dealership set this up, they created a login for you — use yours, not theirs. Everybody gets their own, and each person's buyers stay their own.

No licence key to type and no file to create. The machine gets its own token when you sign in, and that is the only thing stored on it.
3

Connect your Facebook account

Go to Accounts → Add Account, give it a name you will recognise (“Luis’s FB”), then press Log in with Facebook.

A real Chrome window opens. Log in there the way you always do, including the code if Facebook asks for one.

When it asks about encrypted chats, choose Restore

Facebook will show a PIN screen for encrypted chats. Choose Restore and enter your Messenger PIN. If you choose “Don't restore”, some of your buyer conversations become permanently invisible to Lot Answer and it will never answer them — and you will not get a warning that it happened. It asks once per computer, so every new machine will ask again.

When you are done, close that Chrome window. The app notices and the account shows as logged in.

Facebook keeps sending the same code? That is not the code — a new code would be a different number. It means the security check is refusing the browser. In the app, press Security check won't pass? → Open Chrome. That opens an ordinary Chrome with nothing driving it. Finish logging in there, close it, and press I finished logging in.
4

Tell it about your lot

Open Settings and fill in the things a buyer asks for: your address, your phone number, the hours you are there, and how you want visits arranged — booked in the chat, or handed to your phone, or taken as a callback number so you ring them.

Then put your cars in under Listings, with prices. It will not talk about a car it does not have, and it quotes the price you set there — so a car with no price is a car it cannot answer about.

Mark a car sold and it stops offering it — and starts offering whatever else is on your lot to the buyers who were asking about it.
5

Press Start

Back on Accounts, press Start on the account you just connected. It is now watching your Marketplace inbox.

Send yourself a message from another Facebook account and watch it come in under Live. That is the fastest way to know it is working.

6

The first week

Leave the computer on. Lot Answer only replies while that machine is awake and connected. If it sleeps, your buyers wait until somebody wakes it. Turn off sleep in your power settings — this is the single most common reason a lot thinks it stopped working.

Every reply waits for you at first — that is review mode. A new lot starts with nothing going out until you tap send, so you can read what it would have said. Once you have read a day of them and you believe it, turn that off in Settings and the routine answers go on their own. Anything it is unsure about keeps waiting for you either way.

For the first week, also turn on visible browser in Settings. Facebook is more comfortable with a session it can see on hardware it has not met before.

If something is not right

It says the account is not logged in, but I just logged in.
Close every Chrome window first — the profile takes one process at a time — then press Re-login. If it still will not take, use the plain-Chrome route in step 3.
Nothing is being answered.
Three things, in order: is the computer awake, is the account showing Started, and is there anything sitting in the approval queue waiting for you? In the first week it is almost always the third one.
Can I run it on two computers?
Your plan covers five, one per salesperson — but only one machine should run any given Facebook account. Two copies on one account means a buyer gets answered twice, which is how accounts get restricted.
It answered something I would not have said.
Open the conversation in Live and use Marketing → Templates to teach it the answer you want. Next time a buyer asks that, it uses your words.
I am still stuck.
Email jesus@lotanswer.com and say which step number you are on. It comes to a person, not a queue.