An answering service for plumbers that takes the whole job down

The phone rings when your hands are wet

You're on your back under a kitchen sink, basin wrench in one hand, a trap full of gray water in the other, and your pocket starts buzzing. You've got about four rings to decide. Wipe off and answer, or let it go and hope they leave an address?

An answering service for plumbers exists for that exact moment, and a good one does more than say you're busy. It picks up as your company and asks what a decent dispatcher would ask: what's leaking, where in the house, how bad, since when, what's the address, when can someone be home. It quotes your trip charge if you've allowed that. Then it puts all of it in writing, so the job is sitting on your phone when the trap is back on.

Ours is an AI line that works this way, and we'll describe it as we go. But most of what follows is about what to get out of a caller, and that applies whoever answers your phone.

What people ask a plumber on the phone

After a few years you could recite the list in your sleep. It hardly changes.

Four of the five below have an answer that doesn't need you. The diagnosis one does, and nobody who isn't looking at the pipe should be guessing at it. A good line says so, takes the symptoms down in the caller's own words, and leaves the verdict to you.

• "How much to come out?" The trip charge or the diagnostic fee, and whether it comes off the repair.
• "Do you come out to us?" They name a town, and half the time it's the one just past your boundary.
• "Can you get here today?" Often the real question, asked before they've said what's wrong.
• "Is it the water heater or something else?" They want a diagnosis from someone who can't see the tank.
• "Do you do tankless, gas lines, sewer cameras?" A yes or a no from your list of services.

Rates and service area come from your sheet, not from guesswork

Here's an opinion: say the trip charge on the phone. The caller who hangs up over it at 2pm was going to argue about it on the doorstep at 4pm, after you'd driven there.

Our line quotes only from the rate card you give it, and only if you've told it that it may. Say your card reads $95 to come out, drain clearing from $185, a standard 50-gallon gas water heater installed from $1,900. Those are the numbers a caller hears. Ask it about something that isn't on the card (a slab leak, a repipe) and it says you'll call back with a price. It doesn't invent a number and it doesn't invent a start date.

Service area works the same way. Give it the towns or zip codes you cover and what to do at the edges. Some plumbers want a flat no past the county line. Others want the address taken anyway, because a water heater install is worth a longer drive than a running toilet. Your call, written down once.

An emergency is whatever you say it is

Water coming through a ceiling is an emergency. A faucet that's dripped since March isn't, even at 9pm, even if the caller uses the word. So the rules have to be yours. Something like: active leak that won't stop, no water to the house, sewage backing up into a tub, those are urgent, tell the caller I'll ring straight back. Everything else, take the details and promise a call in the morning.

We'll be plain about what happens next. The line can't put a caller through to you, and it doesn't ring your mobile while they wait. When a call meets your rule it takes the address, what's happening and a callback number, tells the caller honestly that you'll call them back, and the written summary reaches you as soon as the call ends. Then you ring, already knowing which house and which pipe. If you're in a crawlspace (it happens), the note is there when you crawl out.

What it won't do is play plumber. It doesn't tell anyone how to stop a leak or whether something is safe to use. It asks whether the water is off at the main, yes or no, because you'll want to know that before you drive. Then it passes everything on.

After hours, most people forward only the calls they miss. On Verizon that's *71 plus the line's number. On AT&T and T-Mobile it's *61*1 plus the number, then #. There's more on replacing voicemail this way.

The note you read when you climb out

Every call ends with a written summary. Not a recording to replay in the van with the engine running. A note.

Say someone calls at 10:40 while you're mid-job. When you check your phone it reads something like this. New customer, Dana, callback number, address on Alder Street, inside your area. Water heater in the garage is leaking from the bottom, pan is full, noticed this morning. Water is off at the heater. Gas unit, about twelve years old by her guess. Quoted the $95 trip charge, she's fine with it. Home all day, would like someone before five. Next step: call Dana with a time.

That's the whole job taken down. You know what to load on the truck before you've spoken to her. Overnight calls arrive together in one morning email, so you read them with coffee and not at 3am. The home services page has a sample set of instructions you can copy and change.

It also calls the supply house

This is the part an ordinary answering service can't do. The line dials out.

You tell it what you need, by calling it or texting it from your own mobile. "Call the supply house, ask if they've got a 50-gallon gas heater, short model, and what time I can pick it up." It makes the call, works through the phone menu, waits on hold, asks the counter, and writes down the price, the stock and the pickup time. It never gives out a card number, so anything that needs paying for stays with you and your account.

Same goes for customers. When the part lands, it can call the homeowner and offer the windows you've given it. We say call and not text on purpose: texts from the line to other people are limited for now, so anything that has to arrive goes as a call or an email.

There are recorded calls on the demo page, one of them with a plumber on the other end, if you'd rather listen than read. Either way, that's one fewer reason to climb out from under the sink.

Common questions

More on home services

• HVAC answering service: handling the first hot week of summer
• Answering service for contractors: quotes, callbacks and site visits
• Answering calls as a one-truck electrician
• Roofing calls after a storm: what to do with all of them