An AI receptionist works for a tradie when it is set up around the five kinds of call a trade business actually gets: emergencies, quote requests, existing customers, suppliers and sales calls. Give it a rule for each, a list of the details you need for every job, and a safety line for anything dangerous, and it will turn calls you cannot take on the tools into written job leads. This guide covers each of those, plus the things it cannot do.
Why the phone is a harder problem for trades than for most businesses
A shop or an office can usually get to the phone. You cannot when you are under a house, up a ladder, driving between jobs or talking to the customer in front of you. The calls that matter most are from people who do not know you yet and have a problem right now. Voicemail asks those people to wait, and they have a list of other names to try.
The five calls a tradie gets, and the rule for each
1. The emergency
Decide what counts as an emergency for your trade and write it down in plain words: water that will not stop, no power to the whole house, a sparking switchboard, sewage coming up, no hot water with a newborn in the house. The rule is usually: get the address and a callback number first, then transfer the call to whoever is on call. Decide what happens if that person does not pick up. On KiwiAgent the fallback can be a detailed message or a callback request. Our call transfer page explains how transfers work.
State your after-hours callout fee in the knowledge base so the agent tells the caller before anyone gets in a van. Nobody enjoys that conversation on the doorstep.
2. The quote request
Most calls are this one. The agent should collect the job details below, explain how you quote (free site visit, photos by email, or a fixed price list), and give a realistic time for you to come back to them. If you have "from" prices you are happy to share, put them in. If a job is always quote-only, say so, and the agent will say so too.
3. The existing customer
Running late, wants to reschedule, has a question about an invoice, or the tap you fixed is dripping again. The agent cannot see your job management system, so the rule here is a good message: name, the job address, what they need, and how urgent it is. Warranty and call-back jobs are worth flagging as priority so they do not sit behind new enquiries.
4. Suppliers, other trades and the council
Take a message with the company name and the reference number. If there are people who should always get straight through, such as your main builder or your merchant's rep, give the agent a rule to transfer them.
5. The sales call
SEO, power plans, vehicle finance. Tell the agent to decline politely and end the call. Minutes are what you pay for, so you do not want ten of them spent on a pitch.
The details to capture for every job
A message that says "Dave rang about a leak" is not much better than a missed call. Ask the agent to get these, in this order, because callers sometimes hang up early:
- Name and callback number. Read back to confirm.
- Address, including the suburb. This also tells you whether the job is in your area.
- The problem, in the caller's own words. Plus one or two follow-up questions you would ask yourself: is the water still running, is it the whole house or one circuit, how old is the cylinder.
- Urgency. Today, this week, or whenever you are next in the area.
- Owner or tenant. If it is a tenant, who approves the work and who pays.
- Access. Someone home, a lockbox, a dog, a shared driveway.
- How they found you. Useful when you decide where to spend on advertising.
Write a safety line for dangerous situations
An AI receptionist must not give repair or safety advice of its own. What it can do is read out a line you have written. Keep it short and base it on official guidance.
For gas, WorkSafe's advice on gas leaks is to keep flames and cigarettes away, never operate electrical switches, not use a mobile phone in the area, turn the gas off at the meter or cylinder if it is safe to, ventilate, go outside if the smell persists, and dial 111 in an emergency. A gasfitter's agent can be told to say: "If you can smell gas, please go outside before we carry on, and if anyone is in danger hang up and ring 111." Then it takes the details and transfers the call.
For electricians the equivalent is a line for shocks, burning smells and fallen lines that ends with the same instruction: if anyone is in danger, ring 111. Write the line yourself, because you are the licensed person and the agent is not.
Tell it where you work and what you do not do
List your suburbs or a travel boundary. List the work you turn down: no gas, no commercial, no roofs over two storeys, no jobs under an hour. An agent that says "sorry, we do not cover Pukekohe, you will need someone local" saves you a callback and saves the caller a wait. Our knowledge base checklist has the full list of what to include.
Divert only the calls you cannot take
You do not have to hand over your whole phone. Set your mobile to divert when you do not answer or when you are busy, and you still pick up whenever you can. The AI gets the rest. The codes are different on each network, so use our guide to call forwarding on Spark, One NZ and 2degrees. After hours you can divert everything and let the emergency rule decide who gets woken up.
What it does not do
- It does not connect to trade job software out of the box. KiwiAgent has no built-in connection to Tradify, Fergus, ServiceM8 or simPRO today. Each call arrives as a written summary and transcript in your dashboard, and you enter the job in your own system. There is a webhook that can send every completed call to other software if you have someone who can wire that up.
- Booking needs a connected calendar. The agent can book site visits into a calendar you connect. If you schedule from a whiteboard or your job software, have it take the details and promise a callback time instead.
- It does not diagnose. It can ask the questions you would ask, but it should never tell a caller what is wrong or how to fix it.
- It does not send text confirmations by itself. Follow-up texts and quotes still come from you.
- It will say it is an AI. Your greeting should say so up front. Here are greeting scripts you can adapt.
Test it from the ute
Before you divert real calls, ring the agent yourself with the engine running and the radio on. Try an emergency, a quote request, a suburb with a M膩ori place name, a job you do not do, and a salesperson. Our buyer's guide has a ten-call checklist. Read the summaries afterwards. If you could turn up to the job from the summary alone, it is ready.
What it costs
KiwiAgent's Free plan covers 30 minutes a month. Starter is $49 a month in NZD excluding GST for 100 minutes, which is about 40 calls if a typical call runs two and a half minutes, and it answers up to three calls at once. Pro is $149 for 300 minutes and ten calls at once. Extra minutes are a flat $0.49. If you are weighing it up, our post on whether an AI receptionist is worth it has the break-even sums.
Next step
Hear one first: the demo on our plumber and electrician pages is set up as a trade business, and the homepage demo works too. When you are ready, tell us about your business with your services, area, prices and emergency rule, and we will build your agent for a free pilot.