Trades and home services
Local services
A job enquiry qualified on location, scope, and timing before it reaches the person on site.
These are illustrative scenarios
An illustrative scenario written to show how a workflow would run. It is not a description of an existing customer.
The situation
A two-person plumbing business answers the phone from the van, or does not. Roughly half the callbacks turn out to be outside the area they cover, or jobs they do not take. Each one costs a call and the time it takes to make it, usually while standing in someone else's kitchen.
How the enquiry runs
Qualification happens before a person is involved, which is the entire point in this sector.
- 1Customer
A call comes in at 11:20 while the team is on a job
The line is busy, so the call routes to the voice agent instead of ringing out.
- 2Agent
The agent answers and asks the qualifying questions
District, type of job, whether it is an emergency, and whether the caller owns or rents the property. Four questions, decided by the business, in the order that eliminates a bad-fit job fastest.
- 3System
Location is checked against the service area
The district is compared against the areas the business covers.
- 4Agent
Out-of-area calls are ended politely and immediately
If the address is outside the service area, the agent says so directly rather than taking details that will lead to a wasted callback.
We do not cover that district, so I would rather tell you now than take your details. Thank you for calling.
- 5System
In-area jobs are classified
Emergency, standard, or quote-only, according to the rules the business set during design.
- 6System
Emergencies interrupt; the rest queue
An emergency triggers an immediate notification to the mobile. A standard job is added to the callback list with a time window the caller was told to expect.
- 7Agent
The caller is told what happens next
A specific expectation — a callback within the stated window — rather than an open-ended promise.
- 8Staff
The tradesperson calls back with context
They open a list of qualified jobs with district, type, and urgency already recorded, and start with the one that matters most.
What ends up recorded
A callback list that is already sorted.
- Name and number
- District and address where given
- Job type and description in the caller's words
- Emergency classification
- Owner or tenant
- Whether the caller is in the service area
- Promised callback window
Where the person comes in
The agent qualifies and schedules the callback. It does not quote a price, commit to an arrival time, or diagnose the fault — a plumbing job quoted over the phone by an automated system is a job quoted wrongly.
What this scenario depends on
- A phone line that can route on busy and no-answer
- A defined service area, by district or postcode
- Job types the business does and does not take, written down
- An emergency definition and the number that should be interrupted
- A destination for the callback list — a CRM, a sheet, or a messaging channel
- Telephony and AI usage costs, billed to the business directly
Other scenarios
The same mechanics, in a different sector.
Beauty and wellness
An after-hours booking enquiry answered, qualified, and turned into a confirmed appointment.
Dental practice
A new-patient enquiry triaged and booked, with anything clinical routed to a qualified person.
E-commerce
Pre-purchase questions answered from live product data, with order issues routed to a person.