Industries / Home services & trades
Home services & tradesPlumbing, electrical, HVAC, roofing, locksmiths, cleaning, pest control. Your phone rings while you are under a sink, up a ladder, or asleep — and the caller rings the next name on the list within about a minute.
Three things are true of nearly every trades business, and together they are expensive.
Hands wet, gloves on, in a loft, on a roof, under a floor. Not distracted — physically unable. A voicemail greeting is not a solution, because almost nobody leaves one for a trade.
An emergency caller has a list. Whoever answers wins the job, and being second by ninety seconds is the same as not existing. This is the least loyal call in any industry.
Burst pipes and lockouts happen at night and at weekends, and they carry the emergency rate. The highest-value calls arrive precisely when nobody is there.
Not "customer enquiries" in the abstract — these specific calls, which are most of what you get.
Open → AI · Closed → AI with the out-of-hours greeting
Quotes, availability, service area, booking
Detected → take address + fault → ring your mobile
Details taken and texted to you with a callback request
Just as important as what it handles. You decide this, and it is a branch in the flow rather than a setting you hope works.
Gas, water, no heat in winter, locked out, no power. Routed to your mobile immediately with the address already taken, so you are deciding whether to go — not gathering facts.
A customer chasing work you are already doing wants you, not an assistant. Recognised and passed straight through.
A caller who is angry gets a person on the first signal. Nothing damages a trade reputation faster than a bot handling a complaint.
Use your own numbers — the point is the ratio, not our example.
| Your figures | Example |
|---|---|
| Calls missed per week | 8 |
| Average job value | $280 |
| Share who would have booked | 1 in 4 |
| Lost per week | $560 |
| Lost per year | ~$29,000 |
| RecreateCX, Pro plan | $69/mo + usage |
Illustrative arithmetic, not a claim about results. Replace every figure with your own — your carrier portal has the missed-call count.
Most one-van and two-van firms land on Pro.
Start free for 30 days: a real phone number, a working AI receptionist and $15 of credit — around 25 answered calls, which is enough to hear how it handles yours before you commit to anything.
Pro is $69 a month for up to ten people, so taking on an apprentice or a subcontractor costs nothing extra. AI answering runs about 28¢ a minute, and a typical booking call is two or three minutes.
The reporting will show you how many calls arrived while you were working — which for most people is the first time they have seen that number.
Google or Microsoft · 30-day free trial · $15 credit · no card required