A homeowner with no heat does not leave a voicemail. They ring the next company in the search results. An AI voice agent for HVAC, plumbing, electrical and roofing firms picks that call up, works out whether it is an emergency, and books the job into your dispatch board while you finish the one you are on.
Books into the systems you already use
A trades business answers its phone from a loft hatch, a crawl space or the top of a ladder. The office is often one person who is also ordering parts, chasing invoices and rebuilding tomorrow’s schedule around a van that would not start. Whoever rings at half past two on a Tuesday gets whatever attention is left over.
Homeowners do not wait. Someone with water coming through a ceiling or a dead boiler in February rings three companies off the same search results and gives the job to whoever picks up and gives them a time. They do not leave a message, and they do not ring back.
An AI voice agent answers on the first ring, every time. It works out whether the caller needs the on-call engineer tonight or a slot on Thursday, takes the address, the access notes and the make and model, and puts the job on the board before the caller has thought about ringing anyone else.
Separates a gas smell or water coming through a ceiling from a dripping tap, using the screening questions you approve. It then follows your rule for each: ring the on-call engineer, hold a same-day slot, or read out your safety instruction and book the caller first thing.
Reads live capacity in your job management software and offers a genuine arrival window rather than a vague half-day. The job is written up with the address, access notes, gate code and parking, so your dispatcher gets something bookable instead of a message to ring back.
Asks the things that decide whether the engineer turns up with the right part: make, model, rough age, what the fault actually looks like, whether it is one outlet or the whole house. That reaches the van as job notes instead of being rediscovered on the doorstep.
Takes the ten o’clock call so the on-call phone only rings for the things that genuinely cannot wait until morning. Everything else is booked into tomorrow’s diary and sitting on the board when the office opens.
The first freeze, the first heatwave and the morning after a storm all arrive as a wall of calls at once. The agent answers them in parallel, so nobody sits in a queue or gives up and rings the next company on the list.
Rings back on the estimates that were sent and never chased, and works through maintenance plan renewals, annual boiler services and landlord gas safety certificate reminders. That is steady, already-paid-for work your office rarely finds a free afternoon to go after.
That is the first thing we build, because getting it wrong in either direction costs you. You give us the list: what always wakes the on-call engineer, what gets a same-day slot, what waits for the next working day. The agent asks your screening questions (is water still running, can anyone smell gas, is the property without heat or power) and applies the rule you set, including reading your safety instruction word for word. It does not weigh up urgency on its own judgement, and anything that does not fit a rule is escalated rather than guessed.
Those three, and the other systems the trades actually run on: FieldEdge, Workiz, Service Fusion, simPRO, ServiceM8, AroFlo, Commusoft, Joblogic and Tradify. Where the system exposes an API we write the job straight in with the customer, address, job type and time slot. Where it does not, the agent books into a synced calendar and posts a structured job record for your office to accept, which takes seconds rather than a call-back. We confirm what your particular plan and version actually allow during discovery, rather than promising an integration upfront.
They are all answered at the same time. That is the structural difference between an AI agent and either your office or a call centre: there is no queue and no hold music, because it is not one person taking one call. The first freeze, the first proper heat and the morning after a storm are usually where it pays for itself, since those are the days you lose the most work without ever finding out it happened. Your capacity is still your capacity, though, so the agent books into whatever slots are genuinely open and offers a waiting list or a callback for the rest.
Yes, and it is one of the more common reasons firms buy one. Overnight the agent answers everything, applies your out-of-hours rules, and only rings the on-call engineer for the calls you have said are worth waking someone for. The rest are booked into the morning diary with a confirmation to the customer, so the caller feels dealt with rather than fobbed off to voicemail. You can set different rules for weeknights, weekends and whoever is on the rota that week.
Only the fixed numbers you already publish, such as your call-out charge, your diagnostic fee or a standard annual service. It will not price a repair or an installation, and we would push back if you asked us to, because a number given blind over the phone turns into an argument on the doorstep and your engineer is the one who has to have it. For anything that needs eyes on the job, the agent explains what the visit costs, books it, and leaves the quote to the person standing in front of the boiler. If you keep a published price book for common jobs we can load that, with the same caveats your office would give.
It knows what you tell it: your zones, your postcode or ZIP coverage, which job types each engineer is qualified for, and what your software reports as free. It is not a routing optimiser and it will not rebuild the day around drive time. If your job management software already handles sequencing, the agent books inside those rules and the optimisation stays where it is. If it does not, the honest answer is that a dispatcher who knows the patch will still schedule a day better than this will, and the agent’s job is to make sure the call is answered and captured in the first place.
Yes, and outbound is the half of the system most firms never use. The agent works through the list your software already holds: maintenance plan renewals, annual boiler services, and landlord gas safety certificate (CP12) reminders for UK gas work, booking the ones who say yes straight into the diary. It will also ring back on estimates that were sent and never followed up, which for roofing and installation work is often the largest pile of money sitting still in the business. None of it is difficult work, it is just work nobody in a busy office ever gets an afternoon to do.
We will build a demo agent using your job types, your out-of-hours rules and your service area, then you can ring it from the van and judge it yourself.
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