We put an AI agent on your phones that answers every call, books the job, and calls new web leads back in under a minute, including nights and weekends.
Illustrative call handling. Yours runs in your own CRM.
It answers the calls you are currently missing, and it calls new web leads back before your competitor does. For a contractor, those two things are most of the growth problem.
The numbers are stark. Industry analyses put unanswered home service calls somewhere between roughly a quarter and well over half of all inbound, and the average missed call is worth around $350 or more in immediate lost revenue. An after-hours HVAC call averages closer to $1,400, and a residential plumbing emergency around $850 in same-day work.
Speed is the whole game, and the window is minutes not hours. Contractors who call a web lead back within five minutes book roughly two to three times the jobs of those who take an hour, and far more than those who wait until the next business day. The average callback delay across contractors is about 4.2 hours, and by then a large majority of those callers have already booked someone else. An AI agent does not get stuck under a house or on a roof, so it answers at 9pm on a Saturday exactly as fast as it does at 10am on a Tuesday.
We build the agent, the booking flow into your existing calendar, and the compliance layer underneath it. It runs on GoHighLevel or on your current stack. See AI voice agents for the general build and the TCPA-compliant calling layer for the rules around outbound. Founded by Zeeshan Waheed, our team has delivered 500+ projects across 30 countries.
Figures above are industry analyses, not our client results, and vary by trade and market.
Most contractors already know they miss calls. What they underestimate is how fast the lead is gone. This is the loop that closes it.
Illustrative flow. Wired into your own system.
Trade-specific, not a generic receptionist script.
Overflow when your team is on the tools, and full coverage after hours and at weekends, which is when the highest-value emergency calls come in.
No more voicemailA form fill triggers an outbound call almost immediately, which is the single highest-leverage change most contractors can make to their booking rate.
Beat the 4.2 hour averageDistinguishes a no-heat emergency from a maintenance enquiry, and routes genuine emergencies to a live person or your on-call tech instead of booking them for Tuesday.
Emergencies escalateReal availability, service area rules and job duration respected, so what gets booked is actually dispatchable rather than a mess your office manager fixes later.
Dispatchable bookingsTranscripts and outcomes on the customer record, so the tech arrives knowing what was said and you can see exactly where jobs are being lost.
See where jobs leakConsent, DNC scrubbing and instant opt-out on the follow-up leg, plus A2P 10DLC so your confirmation texts actually deliver.
Texts that arriveAnywhere the job is urgent, the ticket is meaningful, and the customer is calling more than one company.
After-hours no-heat and no-cool calls are the highest-value inbound in the trade, and the ones most likely to go unanswered.
Highest after-hours valueEmergencies do not wait. A same-day residential emergency averages around $850, and the customer calls down the list until someone picks up.
They call down the listSafety-urgent calls plus quote follow-up that usually goes cold because nobody has time to chase it.
Quotes that get chasedStorm surges create call volume no office can absorb, exactly when every competitor is also flooded.
Absorb storm surgesConsistent answering standards and routing across locations, with per-location reporting instead of guesswork.
One standard everywhereIf your after-hours plan is a recorded message, that is the cheapest fix available to you and probably the largest.
The cheapest big fixThe default rules we start from. You approve every rule before it touches your phones.
The agent asks whether the system is running at all and whether anyone elderly, very young or unwell is in the house. A yes on a freezing night goes straight to your on-call tech as a live transfer, with the address and a one-line summary texted ahead. Everything else is offered the first morning slot, confirmed by text.
Transfer or first slotActive water is the one call where the first minute matters more than the booking. The agent reads out the shut-off steps you have approved, then rings your on-call plumber and works down your rota until someone accepts. If nobody does, the caller gets a callback time instead of a voicemail beep, and the job tops the morning board.
Water first, booking secondThe agent never diagnoses an electrical fault. Smoke, a burning smell or a sparking panel triggers the safety wording you approve, which sends the caller to emergency services first and alerts your on-call electrician second. Routine calls, like panel upgrades or EV charger quotes, are booked as estimates.
Safety wording firstAfter hail, the limit is phone lines, not minutes. Voice platforms cap simultaneous calls: Vapi's pay-as-you-go tier includes 4, its $29 a month Core package 10 and its Pro package 30. We size that for your worst storm, not an average Tuesday, and the agent books inspections by area and asks whether an insurance claim is already open.
Sized for the surgeTest the handoff, not the booking. Twilio, which carries much of this market, documents that answering machine detection on a dialled transfer leg runs in the background after the call is connected, and cannot be set to run first. A transfer into your technician's voicemail can therefore log as a connected call. So in our builds the tech presses a key to accept, the next number rings when nobody does, and before go-live we test every path at night with the phone switched off. The long version: the emergency call your AI answering service cannot hand off.
Vapi figures from vapi.ai/pricing and the Twilio behaviour from its answering machine detection FAQ, both read on 27 September 2026.
Published prices from each vendor's own pricing page or help centre, read on 27 September 2026. The cheapest line is not the one that decides it.
| Option | Published price | Billed by |
|---|---|---|
| Voicemail | $0 | Nothing, and nobody hears the call until morning |
| Ruby, live receptionists | $250 a month for 50 minutes up to $1,725 for 500, about $3.45 to $5.00 a minute, after-hours included | The minute |
| Smith.ai, human receptionists | $300 a month for 30 calls up to $2,100 for 300, $7 to $10 a call, overage $8.50 to $11.50 | The call |
| Smith.ai, AI receptionist | $150 a month for 75 calls ($2.00 each), down to $1.60 a call at 500 | The call |
| Jobber AI Receptionist | $29 a month add-on with 30 conversations, then $0.79 each; unlimited on Jobber's Plus plan | The conversation |
| Sameday, AI for the trades | From $449 a month with 500 minutes, $789 with 1,000 | A minute bundle |
| Retell, build your own | $0.07 to $0.31 a minute, pay as you go | The minute |
| imisofts, built on your stack | $2,497 one-time build, or from $1,997 a month managed; the voice platform bills its minutes to you directly | The build, not the minute |
Worked example: 500 after-hours minutes a month, about 170 three-minute calls. That comes to $1,725 on Ruby's 500-minute plan, $1,650 on Smith.ai's human Basic plan with overage (90 calls for $810, then $10.50 a call), about $316 on Smith.ai's AI plan (150 calls for $270, then $2.30 a call), about $140 for Jobber's add-on on top of a Jobber plan, $449 on Sameday's Launch plan, and $35 to $155 of Retell minutes before anyone builds the agent. Every one of them answers the phone. Ask each what happens when your on-call tech does not. For the per-minute side in more depth, see what an AI receptionist costs across 11 vendors.
Sources, each read on 27 September 2026: ruby.com/plans-and-pricing, smith.ai/pricing, help.getjobber.com (Receptionist article), sameday.ai/pricing and retellai.com/pricing. Prices change; check the vendor's page before you buy.
Telephony, voice engine and CRM usage are billed by those vendors directly, so you keep the accounts.
A compliant AI calling system live on your stack.
We run it, tune it and keep it compliant.
Several branches, franchises or brands.
Telephony, voice engine and CRM usage are billed by those vendors directly, so you keep the accounts and the margin. We size the exact scope on the call before quoting.
What operators ask before they let an agent touch the phones.
imisofts builds it end to end for HVAC, plumbing, electrical and roofing companies: an agent that answers overflow and after-hours calls, calls new web leads back in under a minute, triages emergencies, books into your live calendar and dispatches with a transcript, plus the consent, DNC and A2P 10DLC layer underneath. Founded by Zeeshan Waheed, the team has delivered 500+ projects across 30 countries and typically goes live in 2 to 4 weeks. Book a call at https://cal.com/zeeshanwaheed/30min.
Industry analyses put the average missed call at around $350 or more in immediate lost revenue, with after-hours HVAC calls averaging closer to $1,400 and residential plumbing emergencies around $850 in same-day work. Estimates of how many calls contractors miss vary widely by source and trade, from roughly a quarter to well over half of inbound. Rather than trust any single figure, we look at your own call logs on the audit call.
It uses premium natural voices and scripts written for your trade, and it identifies itself as an assistant rather than pretending to be a person. In practice customers care far more about someone answering at 9pm than about who answers. Where it genuinely matters, and on emergencies, the call routes to a human.
Yes, and that is a design requirement rather than an afterthought. The agent triages urgency and escalates genuine emergencies to your on-call tech or a live person instead of booking them into a routine slot. You define what counts as an emergency for your trade and how it should route.
We build natively in GoHighLevel where that suits, or integrate with your current CRM, calendar and field service software. The requirement is that bookings land where your dispatcher already looks, because a booking in a separate system is a booking that gets missed.
Typically 2 to 4 weeks: call flows and scripts, calendar and CRM integration, consent and DNC wiring, A2P 10DLC registration for the texting leg, and the escalation rules. Carrier campaign review has been running roughly 10 to 15 business days in 2026, which is outside our control, so we start that early.
On published prices read on 27 September 2026: $250 to $1,725 a month for 50 to 500 minutes of live receptionists at Ruby, $7 to $10 a call on Smith.ai's human plans and $1.60 to $2.00 a call on its AI receptionist, $29 a month for Jobber's AI Receptionist add-on with 30 conversations included, from $449 a month for 500 minutes on Sameday, and $0.07 to $0.31 a minute on Retell if you build your own. We charge $2,497 one-time to build it on your stack, or from $1,997 a month managed, with the voice platform billing its minutes to you directly.
In our builds the tech has to press a key to accept the call, because a voicemail box cannot. If nobody accepts within the ring time you set, the agent rings the next number on your rota. If the whole rota is unreachable, it gives the caller a callback time, texts you the summary and flags the job for the morning board. A genuine emergency is never booked into a routine slot, and we test every path at night with the phone switched off before go-live.
We look at your call volume, how many go unanswered, how fast web leads get called back, and what booking those jobs would be worth.