Will it sound like a robot to my customers?

It's a natural voice conversation, not a menu tree — callers talk normally and it responds normally. We'd rather you judge that yourself than take our word for it: there's an unedited recording of a tree service call further up this page, and the demo runs on a live number you can call.

Can it handle a genuine emergency call at 2am?

That's the case it's built for. It answers around the clock, gets the address and the nature of the problem, and can flag urgent calls so they reach you immediately rather than sitting until morning.

Does it actually book on my calendar, or just take a message?

It books. It reads your live Google Calendar during the call, offers only times that are genuinely open, and writes the appointment onto the calendar before the call ends. The customer gets a confirmation text with the details.

What if the customer needs to reschedule?

They text back. They get a short list of times that are actually available, reply with a number, and the calendar updates. Nobody at your shop has to touch it.

I only have two trucks. Is this overkill?

Smaller shops tend to feel it more, not less — with two trucks, both of you are on the tools most of the day and there is nobody left to answer. The whole system is one offering with no tiers, so a two-truck shop gets the same thing a ten-truck shop does.

AI Receptionist for Pest Control Companies

The calls you were never going to catch

Pest control is a trade where the caller is frightened, in a hurry, and holding a phone in the room with the thing.

You are under a house in a crawl space, or suited up mid-treatment, or driving between the six stops on today’s route. The phone rings and it is somebody who has just found a snake behind the water heater. They are not leaving a voicemail. They are working down the list of pest control companies until one of them picks up.

The ones that ring at eight on a Sunday evening are rarely the quarterly-service customers. They are the urgent ones, and the urgent ones are the ones that pay.

Under a house. In a crawl space with a torch and a respirator, and no hand free.
Mid-treatment. Suited up and holding a sprayer is not a moment to take a call.
Between stops. A route day is six or eight properties and a lot of driving.
Out of hours. Nobody finds a scorpion in the bath at a convenient time.

None of that is a discipline problem. It is a coverage problem, and it is worst on exactly the calls you would most want to take.

What happens when someone calls

It answers as your business, works out what it is actually dealing with, and books the job onto your calendar — while the caller is still on the line.

The difference in this trade is the order of the questions. A message service takes a name and a number. A dispatcher finds out what the pest is, because that single answer decides whether somebody goes today or on Thursday.

Listen to it take a pest control call

A real call, unedited. The caller asks whether he should deal with the snake himself. Notice what the assistant does not do: it never says whether it is a copperhead.

Inbound call — a snake in a garage, possibly a copperhead 2 minutes 13 seconds · answered on the first ring · ended with an urgent visit booked for the next morning

Nothing is edited. The business name was typed into the demo form by the caller — it is not a customer of ours, and no real business is being represented.

AlexHi there. Thanks for calling Pest Team Pro. This is Alex. How can I help?

CallerHey, Alex. I have a snake in my garage. I’m not able to see clearly, but it kind of looks like a copperhead, and I wanted to see if y’all do snake services. Or should I try to take care of it myself?

AlexI am so sorry to hear that. Please do not try to catch, move, or kill the snake yourself — people are often bitten when they try to handle them, and it is much safer to leave it alone. To keep everyone safe, please keep people and pets well away from the garage. And if you can do so without going near the snake, please shut the door to the garage to keep it contained. I am treating this as an urgent matter. Could I please get your full name and the address where you are located, including the ZIP code? It answered the dangerous question before the commercial one. He asked two things — do you do this, and should I handle it myself — and the second one is how people get bitten. It said no first, gave a reason, then told him what to do while he waits. And it never touched the word copperhead. He offered it, it did not confirm it, did not correct it, and did not soften it into “probably harmless”. You cannot identify a snake down a phone, so it does not try.

CallerSmith. 512 Round Cove, Round Rock, Texas 78665.

AlexThank you for that information, Mr Smith. To make sure I have it right, that is 512 Round Cove in Round Rock 78665. Is that correct? And since this is urgent, I have a few times available tomorrow morning. I have nine AM, nine thirty AM, or ten AM. Do any of those work for you? Address read back, then real times. Those slots come off the live calendar during the call — not a callback list, and not a promise somebody has to honour later. It said “since this is urgent” out loud, which is what stops a frightened caller ringing the next number while they wait.

CallerYes. In the inbox.

AlexI’m sorry. I didn’t quite catch that. Did you mean you’d like to… It misheard, and said so. Left in because it is the honest bit: the caller’s words did not come through, and the assistant asked rather than guessed. A booking made on a guess is a technician sent to the wrong time.

CallerTen AM works.

AlexThat is all set, Mr Smith. I have booked your appointment for tomorrow at ten AM. Swapnil Sharma will be out to assist you with the snake in your garage. Please remember to keep everyone and any pets away from the area until they arrive. Is there anything else I can help you with today? The safety instruction repeated at the end. Booked, assigned, read back — and the one thing that actually matters between now and ten tomorrow said twice, because that is the gap where somebody decides to have a look for themselves.

Read the order back: refuse the DIY, contain the scene, name the urgency, then name, address and a slot the next morning. The species question never gets answered, and it does not need to be — what it needed to establish was that nobody should go near it until a person who knows arrives.

It asks what it is before it asks anything else

Species first, because species decides everything.

The assistant is taught to recognise the ones that change the answer, by description as well as by name — most callers do not know what they are looking at, and are not in a state to look closely.

Snakes. In Texas that means copperheads, rattlesnakes, water moccasins and coral snakes. Anybody who says “snake” is treated as urgent until somebody qualified has looked at it. It will not try to identify a snake down a phone, and it is told not to.
Black widow and brown recluse. Asked about by appearance, because “big hairy spider” is usually neither.
Scorpions, wasps, hornets and bees — and whether there is a nest, which is a different job from one in a window.
Rodents in the living space, which is a health problem and a wiring problem at once.
Termites, which threaten nobody and are eating the building. Urgent in a different way, and booked sooner than a routine treatment.

Ants, roaches, silverfish, the occasional spider: ordinary, booked normally. That distinction is the whole point. A trade where everything is an emergency has no emergencies.

Inside or outside, which is the other half of the answer

A wasp nest on a shed is not a wasp nest over the back door, and a snake in a yard is not a snake in a kitchen.

It asks, every time, before it offers a slot. Then it tells the caller what to do while they wait, if it is one of the ones that matters: keep people and pets well back, shut the door to that room if they can do it without going near it, and do not try to catch it, move it, spray it or kill it themselves. A disturbed nest is far worse than an undisturbed one, and that is how people get stung.

Where it stops, deliberately

Somebody who has already been bitten or stung and is unwell is not a booking.

If a caller says they are struggling to breathe, swelling beyond the bite, or otherwise unwell, the assistant tells them to ring 911 — or Poison Control on 1-800-222-1222 for a bite they are unsure about — and deals with the pest afterwards. It never advises on treating a bite, never guesses whether something is venomous, and never reassures anybody that a bite is harmless.

It will not give a price it has not been given either. You write what your treatments cost, in your own words, and it reads them back. Anything you have not covered, it says the owner will confirm and takes a message rather than inventing a number you would then be held to.

And when they need to move it

A customer who replies to their confirmation text asking to change the time does not get ignored.

The reply lands in one queue with the reason attached, and you get a text about it. A treatment slot stays held until somebody moves it, so silence would mean a technician driving to a property the customer already said they could not make.

Questions we get from pest control companies

Will it tell someone a spider is harmless?

No. It is explicitly told not to reassure anybody that a bite or a species is harmless, and not to guess whether something is venomous. There is an unedited recording further up this page where a caller offers the word “copperhead” and the assistant never once repeats it. It identifies nothing down a phone; it establishes enough to decide how soon somebody needs to go.

What if they cannot describe what they have seen?

It asks them to describe it rather than demanding a name, and works with what it gets. Where the description is ambiguous it errs toward urgency and toward telling them to stay away from it — the cost of being cautious is a wasted slot, and the cost of being wrong the other way is somebody getting bitten.

Does it know my prices?

Only what you write down. You fill in your treatments and what they cost, in your own words, and it reads them back to callers exactly. It never adds figures together, applies one job’s price to another, or estimates.

Can it handle a recurring quarterly customer ringing about an extra visit?

Yes — that is an ordinary booking and gets treated as one. The triage above applies once somebody describes a problem; it is not asked of a person ringing about an invoice or a scheduled service.

What happens out of hours?

The same thing as at eleven in the morning. It answers, triages, and books onto your calendar. Out of hours is when most of the urgent ones ring.

An AI receptionist for pest control that asks what it is first.