An answering service that never quotes a price.

Your calls aren't emergencies. They're worse.

A blocked drain calls back. A kitchen remodel calls three builders on Tuesday and picks one by Friday.

That's the difference nobody building software for the trades seems to notice. When a homeowner rings a plumber and gets no answer, there's a decent chance they ring again — the water is still running. When they ring a contractor about an extension and get voicemail, they simply move down the list. You were never in the running, and you'll never know you were called.

Meanwhile you're on a roof, in a client meeting, three towns away on a site walk, or holding a conversation with a building inspector you can't step out of. The calls that decide your next quarter arrive during the hours you are least able to pick up.

• On site. Noise, height, someone talking to you, hands on a tool.
• In a walkthrough. You cannot answer a new lead in front of a current client.
• Driving between jobs. Contracting is a windscreen business.
• Evenings. When homeowners have finally sat down to sort out the extension.

It will not put a price on your work

This is the part built specifically for how you price, and it is not a limitation — it is the point.

Ask most AI receptionists what a job costs and they will happily improvise. For a contractor that is a catastrophe: a caller who hears "probably somewhere around forty thousand" has been given a number you never agreed to, and every conversation after that starts from a figure you have to argue down.

Ours is told, in the strongest terms the instructions allow, that it does not have a price and must never produce one. No number. No range. No "usually around". No per-square-foot rate. Not when the caller pushes, not when they offer their own budget and ask if it's realistic, not when they say another builder already quoted them.

What it says instead is your answer, in your words — the sentence you wrote when you set it up. Something like:

"We don't price over the phone, because it really depends on what's involved. What we do is come out, look at the job properly, and put a written estimate together for you within a couple of days. The visit is free and there's no obligation. Would Thursday morning suit?"

That is a complete, confident answer to "how much?", and callers accept it. What they don't accept is being told nothing.

Listen to it take a contractor's call

A real call, unedited except for one muted phone number. Three minutes, from "I'd like an estimate" to a walkthrough on the calendar — and at no point does it put a number on the job.

Listen to what it never says. The caller asked for an estimate in his first sentence and added countertops halfway through, and the answer both times was the same: someone comes out, looks at the whole thing, and puts it in writing. That is your pricing policy, held under mild pressure, by something answering at eleven at night.

It captures the project, not just the name

A message saying "John called about a kitchen" is nearly worthless. What you need before you spend half a day on a walkthrough is what they actually want, roughly how big it is, when they're hoping to start, and whether they've already had someone out.

It asks, and it writes it down. The scope, the timescale, anything they volunteer about budget, and where the property is. That lands on the booking, so whoever turns up already knows what they're walking into instead of finding out on the doorstep.

Every walkthrough goes straight in the diary

It checks your real calendar and offers real open times, then books the estimate visit while the caller is still on the phone. They get a confirmation text before they hang up — with the date, the time and who's coming.

Jobs run long and site visits slip. When they do, whoever is running late texts one line to the same number your customers ring, and the homeowner is told before they start wondering. That single message is the difference between a client who reschedules and one who quietly rings someone else.

The leads you'd otherwise never hear about

Every call is read afterwards — the ones that booked, and the ones that didn't. Someone who rang about a garage conversion at eight in the evening, asked a question you couldn't answer and hung up shows up in your morning with their number and what they wanted. They're not gone. You just didn't know they existed.

And when a call comes from outside the area you work, you're texted straight away rather than the job being turned down on your behalf. Some of the best work is thirty minutes further out than usual, and that's your call to make, not ours.

Carpentry, remodelling, roofing, groundwork

None of this is specific to general contracting. If your work is priced after somebody looks at it, this fits: carpenters and joiners, remodellers, roofers, landscapers and hardscapers, concrete and groundwork, fencing and decking, painting and decorating, tiling, flooring, custom builders.

The parts that change between trades are the words you write and the calendar it books into. Everything else is the same.

Questions we get from contractors