Answering Service for Contractors
A contractor answering service that books the job while the customer is on the phone: emergencies go straight to the on-call technician, estimates and service calls land on the schedule, addresses are checked against your service area, and every call is written to your field service software. Runs on your existing number, nights and weekends included.
Who This Is For
What the Service Includes
No heat in January, no cooling in July, a burst pipe, a gas smell, a sparking panel: you define what counts as an emergency, and those calls transfer immediately to the on-call technician or trigger a dispatch alert with the transcript.
Routine repairs, maintenance visits, and estimate appointments are booked into your schedule with your job types, durations, zones, and technician availability, followed by a confirmation text.
The caller's address is checked against the ZIP codes and counties you serve, and jobs you do not take are declined politely with a referral message you approve.
System type, symptoms, age of equipment, access instructions, gate codes, pets, and preferred windows are collected so the technician arrives prepared and the office does not call back for details.
Diagnostic fees, service-call charges, and price ranges are stated only where you approve them; everything else becomes an estimate appointment.
Confirmations, technician ETA windows, review requests after the job, and seasonal maintenance reminders sent by text or email.
A homeowner with no heat does not leave a voicemail; they call the next company. A landlord with a leaking water heater wants a time window, not a callback. And the calls arrive when the crew is on jobs and the office is closed: early morning, evenings, weekends, and the first hot week of summer. A human answering service takes a message; an answering service for contractors has to decide whether the call is an emergency, dispatch it if it is, book it if it is not, and put the job into the software the dispatcher runs the day from.
This service is built around that decision. Your emergency criteria, your service area, your job types, and your pricing rules become the agent's script, and your field service software is where every call ends up.
The phone is answered on the first ring with your company name. The agent asks what is going on, where, and since when. If the answers match an emergency rule you defined, the caller is transferred to the on-call technician while the agent sends the address and symptoms ahead; if the technician does not answer, the backup rule runs. If it is a routine repair or a new system estimate, the agent checks the address against your service area, collects the equipment details and access instructions, offers the next available window that fits your zones and technicians, books it, and sends a confirmation text. Commercial and property-management callers get the extra questions you want asked, such as unit numbers and billing contacts.
Callers who ask for a price hear only what you approved. Anyone the agent cannot help by rule gets a message path or a transfer, never a guess.
DPI runs the agent on an Asterisk-based telephony core connected to your phone system or your carrier over SIP; your numbers, including ad tracking numbers, forward to it in the mode you choose, and it can transfer to any mobile or extension. Jobs, customers, and appointments are created in ServiceTitan, Housecall Pro, Jobber, or FieldEdge through their APIs, so the dispatcher sees the booking on the board the same way they would if the office had taken the call.
Speech and language models are chosen per workload: open-source speech models keep per-minute costs down at volume, and the language model can be hosted or self-hosted. Every call is transcribed and logged with its source, outcome, and the job it created.
A dashboard with every call, its category, the jobs and estimates booked, the emergencies dispatched, and the transfers made, plus transcripts you can review. Weekly reviews in the first month refine the emergency rules and the questions the script did not anticipate, often by season. Monthly, we report answered-call rate, booked jobs, after-hours dispatches, and the changes shipped. As you grow, the same agent can send maintenance reminders, follow up on open estimates, request reviews after completed jobs, and cover additional locations or brands.
How It Works
We gather your services, service area, hours, emergency criteria, pricing rules, and the questions your dispatcher asks, and turn them into the agent's script.
ServiceTitan, Housecall Pro, Jobber, FieldEdge, or your scheduling tool connected for bookings and jobs; SMS set up for confirmations and ETAs; on-call rotation configured for transfers.
Your office and lead technicians call the agent with real calls: a no-heat call at midnight, an estimate for a new system, a landlord booking for a tenant. We tune until they approve.
Forwarding is switched on after hours, on overflow, or always. Weekly transcript reviews in the first month, then monthly reporting on calls answered, jobs booked, and emergencies dispatched.
Stack & Integrations
Engagement Models
Dispatch rules, integrations, scripts, testing with your team, and go-live on your number. Fixed scope with a launch date.
Monthly operation: transcript reviews, updates when you add services or zones, seasonal script changes, and reporting on calls, bookings, and dispatches.
Outbound maintenance reminders, estimate follow-up calls, review requests, multi-location coverage, or full call-center automation as you grow.
FAQ
You tell us. Typical rules: no heat below a set temperature, no cooling above one, active leaks, sewage backups, gas smells, or electrical hazards are emergencies; everything else is a booked call. The agent asks the screening questions and follows the rule, and you can change the rules by season.
Yes. Emergency calls transfer live to the on-call number, or the agent sends a dispatch alert with the address, the symptoms, and the transcript. If the technician does not pick up, the agent follows your backup rule.
Yes. Jobs and appointments are created through their APIs with the job type, address, customer record, and notes. Jobber and FieldEdge are supported the same way. Other tools are checked during discovery.
Only what you approve: a diagnostic fee, a service-call charge, or a range for a common job. Anything else is turned into an estimate appointment, which is usually what wins the work.
The address is checked against your zones. Out-of-area callers hear a polite message you approve, and the call is logged so you can see where demand is coming from.
Yes. The tracking number forwards to the agent like any other line, and the call is recorded in your CRM with its source so you can see which ads produce booked jobs.
Setup is a fixed scope. Ongoing operation is a monthly service sized by call volume and integrations, quoted in writing after a short call about your trades and tools.
Related
Next Step
Tell us where calls, tickets, documents, or approvals pile up. We map the workflow, size the impact, and propose a deployment you can measure.
