The phone rings while you're up a ladder.
AI call answering that emails you the lead
You cannot answer and work at the same time. So the call goes to voicemail, and most people do not leave one — they call the next number. This answers instead, asks the questions you would have asked, and puts the whole thing in your inbox with a transcript.
- One module, $950
- Fixed price, in writing
- Yours, including the code
A missed call is not a message. It is a lost job.
Most people who reach a voicemail hang up and dial the next business on the list. You never find out it happened. There is no record of the call you lost, which is what makes this the most expensive problem on this page and the easiest one to ignore.
The usual fixes both fail for a working trade. An answering service costs per minute and the person answering knows nothing about your business, so the notes come back useless. And you cannot answer it yourself, because you are holding something with both hands.
What actually works is something that picks up every time, asks the four or five things you would have asked, and hands you a written record. Not a receptionist. A form that happens to be a phone call.
The transcript is the part that matters. A voicemail is thirty seconds you have to listen to, usually while driving. A transcript is something you can read in six seconds, search later, and paste into a quote.
It answers, it asks, it writes it down.
It picks up
Every time, including the third call at once, at ten at night, and on the Sunday after a storm. There is no queue and nothing to miss.
It asks your questions
The ones you would have asked. Name, number, address, what has happened, how urgent, insurance or cash if that is your trade. You write the list; it never forgets one.
The lead lands in your email
A written summary with the details set out, plus the full transcript underneath. Readable in a few seconds, and searchable in six months when you need to remember what they said.
Urgent gets flagged
Water coming through a ceiling is not the same as a quote for spring. You decide what counts as urgent and those arrive marked, so the inbox is sorted before you open it.
It goes into the same records
If you have the lead inbox built too, the call becomes a lead like any other rather than a separate pile. One list, whatever way the work came in.
What it doesn't do. It does not text, send SMS, or reply to a missed call with a message. I do not sell that. It also does not quote a price, promise a date or negotiate — it takes the details and gets out of the way, because a number said out loud becomes a promise. And a caller who asks for a person is told plainly that they are talking to an assistant.
What it costs to run, which is not nothing
You keep your number. I set up a second line and your existing number forwards to it, so nothing on your van, your cards or your Google listing has to change. If you ever switch it off, calls go back to ringing your phone.
Calls are billed by the minute, by the phone provider and the voice service, not by me. It is cents per minute rather than dollars, and there is a small monthly charge for the line itself. Those are their prices, they are public, and you pay them directly on your own account.
That cost does not disappear because the software is custom, and I would rather say so here than let you find out from the first invoice. What does disappear is the part most services charge on top: there is no monthly fee to me, no per-call fee, and no price that goes up because you had a good month.
Which also means the sum is different from the usual one. An answering service costs more the busier you get. This costs more the busier you get too, but by cents, and the busy is the point.
Some trades feel this one more than others.
Plumbing
Because the call is an emergency, the caller is panicking, and the business that picks up is the one that gets the job.
What I'd build first for plumbing →
Roofing
Because a storm puts three days of calls into one afternoon, which is exactly when nobody is free to answer the phone.
What I'd build first for roofing →
$950 as one module.
On its own, built properly, working by itself. If you want it alongside one or two of the others that's $1,950, and the whole connected Back Office is from $2,995. Start wherever the pain is and add later, or don't.
Half up front to book, half on launch, agreed in writing before anything starts. You own the code and the data whichever step you stop at.
Not sure this is the one to build first?
That's what the audit is for. Send me what you pay for every month and I'll write back with what's worth replacing and which single thing I'd build first, with a fixed number on it.