The method
How it works
Your phone rings. Nobody gets there. We do.
Your phone rings the way it always has. Your techs get first crack at it. If nobody picks up in about twenty seconds, or you are closed, the call rolls to us. Your customer hears one more ring, then a voice.
Your shop name. That it is an automated assistant. That the call is recorded. Then it asks what the system is doing. People keep talking. At nine at night in a house with no cool air, they want the appointment, not small talk.
Name. Address. What the unit is doing and how long it has been doing it. When you can come. It reads the window back before it books, so nobody gets promised a slot you do not have.
Not everyone who rings your shop is a customer. Robocalls. The companies selling you leads and advertising. Vendors. Wrong numbers. The ones who hang up on the greeting. The desk answers all of them because it has to, and none of them reach your phone. Every one is recorded and logged, so you can look whenever you want to. What rings through is a customer with a problem and an address, or an emergency.
Gas smell. Burning smell. Water coming through a ceiling. No cooling in a house with someone elderly or a baby in it. Anyone who asks for a person. It stops taking the booking, your phone rings in seconds, and the caller stays on the line while it does. That is the in-hours path and it works today. Out of hours the hand off is a text to your mobile, which waits on the carrier approval of our sending number.
The refusals
What it will not do
No diagnosis down the phone
It does not guess whether it is a capacitor or a compressor.
No price you did not give it
It does not put a number on a repair you have not priced.
No arrival time you did not offer
It does not promise same day when you did not offer same day.
No pretending to be a person
It is told to say it is an automated assistant whenever anyone asks, and we listen for the times it gets that wrong.
After the call
Where the booking goes
Into your calendar
Google Calendar today, connected while we set you up. Jobber and Housecall Pro are written and waiting on our developer keys, and Housecall Pro's API needs your MAX plan. ServiceTitan on request, and we will tell you straight whether we have done yours before. The job lands with the address, what the AC is doing, the customer's number and a tag, so a month later you can still tell which jobs came from us.
The customer gets a text
Your shop name, the day, the window. If they need to move it, they reply and it moves.
Recorded and linked
Every call is recorded, and the caller is told so in the first sentence. The recording and the transcript hang off the booking they produced. Open the job, hear the call.
Who can hear it
You and us. The customer's name, address and number go into your calendar and nowhere else. Ask for any recording and we send it.
The shortest way to judge it
Hear it answer a call.
Talk to the assistant in your browser and hear what your customers would hear.