A custom voice assistant, built to fit
Off the shelf, an AI voice agent answers the phone. Built to fit, it knows what you sell, what you charge, when you are open and who to ring at ten past six on a Friday.
What custom actually means here
Most things sold as custom are a form with your business name in it. These are the five things that are genuinely yours, and each of them changes what a caller hears.
Your words
The greeting, the way it describes a job, the way it says no. If your people answer with "gidday, Watson's, what can we do for you", that is what it says. It is not going to ask how it may direct the call.
Your services and what they cost
Your list, in your language, with your prices. A callout is a callout and a warrant is a warrant. Where a price genuinely depends on the job it says that, rather than picking a number that sounds about right.
Your hours, kept on the number
Open, closed, half day Saturday, shut between Christmas and the middle of January. The clock sits on the phone number, so an Australian line keeps Australian time. Every day it offers or confirms carries the weekday and the date, so nobody books Monday thinking it is Tuesday.
Your documents
The price list, the terms, the service area, the warranty, the answers you keep retyping into emails. It answers out of those and nothing else, which is the whole reason it can be trusted on a live call.
Your diary and your software
It books into the diary you already keep, not a second one it owns. The customer lands in your CRM, the job lands in your job list. There is nothing waiting to be re-keyed in the morning.
Your rules about who gets what
Which callers go straight through and which never do. Who is on after five. What happens when nobody picks up. Written as rules, not as hope.
The build is a board, not a settings page
Everything the assistant can do is a card on a board. Add a card and it gains the ability. Take the card off and the ability actually goes, right through to the phone system. Nothing is hidden and left running.
Cards you are likely to have
Trading hours. Transfer to a person. Caller rules for the regulars. Service area and travel time. Address book lookup. Booking. Payment link. Text follow up.
Cards you are likely not to
If you do not take payments over the phone, the payment card never goes on and the assistant has no way to try. Restraint is a build decision, not a warning in a prompt.
Your documents are the only thing it knows
Upload the price list, the terms of trade, the service area, the warranty, the list of things you do not do. From then on those documents are the source of every answer it gives about your business.
It is not reading the internet and it is not filling gaps in from general knowledge about your trade. When the documents do not cover something it says so, takes the question and passes it to you.
One thing worth knowing before you start
A document is a snapshot. Editing the file on your own computer changes nothing on the phone. The change has to be published to the live assistant, and until it is, the assistant keeps quoting the old version quite happily.
That is the single most common way one of these goes stale, so it is worth saying out loud rather than leaving you to find out from a customer.
Rules it cannot talk its way around
A rule written into the wording is a suggestion. A locked rule is merged in when the assistant is built, sits underneath everything else it is told, and cannot be edited out by a caller being persistent.
Never
Quote for work that has to be looked at first. Give advice that belongs to someone qualified. Confirm a time that is not actually free. Say you are open when the clock on the number says you are not.
Always
Get the rego before booking a car in. Read the address back. Say what it is if a caller asks. Take a message when it cannot help, rather than leaving the caller to work out what to do next.
On the record
Every call has a recording, a transcript and an outcome. If it says something you would not have said, you can see exactly what it said and the rule gets tightened the same day.
A worked example: a plumber's line at ten past six
Trades are where the difference between answering and finishing shows up fastest, because the calls that pay best come in when nobody is near a desk. Same sequence works for a clinic or a workshop, with different nouns.
6:11pm
The phone rings and it is a burst pipe
The caller is not going to leave a voicemail. They are going to ring the next plumber. The assistant picks up on the second ring and says the business name.
6:11pm
It knows the number that is ringing
Existing customer, house in Hornby, hot water cylinder replaced in March. Greeted by name and asked whether it is the same property, with nobody looking anything up.
6:12pm
It sorts a real emergency from a dripping tap
Your rule, not its judgement. Water you cannot stop is an emergency and goes through. A dripping tap gets the first free slot on Thursday and a text to confirm it.
6:12pm
It sends a link for a photo of the fault
Mid-call, by text, while the caller is standing in front of it. You get to see the job before you get in the ute.
6:13pm
It rings whoever is actually on
Not a list of numbers in order and a shrug when none answer. An on-call roster keeps ringing round until somebody accepts the job, and the caller is told what is happening rather than left on hold. On-call rosters can be connected.
6:14pm
The job is in the system before the call ends
Address, fault, photo, caller, time. In your job management system, not in a summary email you have to type up on Sunday night.
Thursday first thing is the slot it just wrote in, while the caller was still on the phone. It offered Thursday because Thursday was free, and it said Thursday the fourth rather than only saying Thursday.
If you are on the tools and this is the whole reason you are here, the trades version of all of this lives on tradieansweringservice.com, with the job management software covered properly.
What it will not do
Every limit here is deliberate. Saying them out loud is the only way the rest of the page is worth believing.
It is reception, not a clinician or an engineer
It will not diagnose, it will not advise on a repair it has not seen, and it will not talk a caller through something that ought to be looked at by a person.
It never hears a card number
Payments go out as a link by text and the caller pays on the payment page. The assistant is told whether the payment went through, and nothing else. Card details are never read out over the phone. Payments can be connected.
It will not pretend to be a person
Asked directly, it says what it is. You can choose the voice and the wording, but not a lie about what is on the other end.
It will not answer what you never gave it
No document, no answer. It takes the question and passes it on rather than reaching for something plausible.
What a custom voice assistant costs
Custom wording, documents and call rules are part of the standard build. You do not pay a mystery setup fee for being specific.
NZ$129 a month for three months, then NZ$199
200 minutes, 50 texts, up to three agents on the number and three calls at once.
NZ$10 a month, then NZ$1 a minute
The monthly amount keeps the number live. You start with NZ$10 free call credit.
Custom API work from NZ$499
Quoted before work begins, based on the system involved, on a 12-month contract.
How long a custom build takes
Account instant. Assistant built, trained and tested within 24 hours. Connecting a booking system or a job management system can add a day or two, depending on the system.
Tell us what it needs to do
Write it the way you would say it out loud. "Book warrants and services, never quote a repair, put anything about a fleet account through to me." That sentence is worth more to the build than a page of requirements.
If you already run something specific, say so. Whether it connects, how far it goes and where it stops is the first thing we will tell you.
What you send is used to ring you back about a voice assistant. It is not sold, shared or added to a mailing list.