An AI receptionist for HVAC and plumbing companies

For an HVAC or plumbing company, an AI receptionist answers every call and text immediately, works out whether the job is an emergency, captures the address and the problem, and books the visit against your technicians' schedules. It confirms the service area first and never quotes a repair price before someone has seen the job.

The calls you lose

Your technicians are in attics and crawl spaces, and the office is one person, or nobody. A homeowner with no heat in January calls three companies in a row and books the first one that answers. The calls that go to voicemail are mostly not returned by the customer; they have already booked someone else. That is the gap an AI receptionist fills, and it is a bigger gap after 5pm and on weekends.

Emergency or routine, decided first

The first thing the AI establishes is urgency. No heat, no water, an active leak, or a sewer backup gets priority handling and, if you have an on-call rota, goes to the on-call technician. A gas smell skips everything: the customer is told to leave the building and call the gas utility or 911, in the exact wording you approve, and a person is alerted. The AI does not troubleshoot a gas smell, ever.

Routine work (a maintenance visit, a slow drain, a quote for a new system) is booked normally.

Estimate requests

New system quotes need a visit. The AI captures the address, the type of system, the size of the home and what is wrong with the current one, then books the estimate. It gives no price. A ballpark by text is either wrong or binding, and both are bad for you.

Maintenance plans and reminders

Spring and fall tune-ups are predictable revenue that depends on someone reminding the customer. The AI sends the reminder and books the visit in the same conversation, and reschedules by text when the day does not work.

Missed call text back for the trucks

Every call that is not answered gets a text within seconds: who you are, that you saw the call, and a question that starts the conversation. The reply lands in the inbox and the AI takes it from there. For a company whose staff are all on site, this alone recovers a meaningful share of missed calls.

What it must not promise

Arrival times that dispatch has not confirmed. Prices for repairs. Same-day service when the schedule is full. Whether a part is in stock. The AI captures the question and says a person will confirm, and it does not guess to be helpful.

Frequently asked questions

Can it dispatch a technician?

No. It captures the job and books the slot; your dispatcher confirms who goes. The AI tells the customer that the time is being confirmed rather than promising it.

What does it do when someone reports a gas smell?

A fixed escalation runs before any reply is generated: the customer gets your approved safety wording (leave the building, call the utility or 911), and a person is alerted immediately.

Does it work after hours?

Yes. It answers, books against the next available slots, and follows your on-call rules for anything urgent. It tells customers when the office reopens instead of implying a person is about to reply.

What Frontiva does here

The home services page covers the full workflow. In Frontiva today, escalation keywords you set (gas, flooding, no heat) hand a conversation to a person before the AI answers, and every new person who messages becomes a scored lead with an owner. Missed call text back is built and waiting on phone number provisioning, so it is not something you can switch on yet.

For the wider picture of what one of these is and is not, see what is an AI receptionist.