That caller had a water heater going out. They didn't leave a message — almost nobody does. They called the next contractor on the list.
Austin, Round Rock, Cedar Park, Georgetown, Kyle, Buda & surrounding.
The part nobody likes to do
Not our numbers — yours. Take what you already know about your shop and multiply it out. Most owners are surprised, and it takes about thirty seconds.
Average cost per lead in HVAC and plumbing. If you run ads, you already paid this before the phone rang.
Answering within five minutes instead of thirty makes you dramatically more likely to win the job.
You know this number better than we do. Multiply it by the calls that went to voicemail last month.
Cost-per-lead figures from LocaliQ's analysis of 3,211 home-services campaigns. Response-time finding from the Lead Response Management study (Dr. James Oldroyd); corroborated by Harvard Business Review, "The Short Life of Online Sales Leads." We don't quote the made-up statistics the rest of this industry passes around — if we cite a number here, you can go look it up.
What we actually do
We build you a phone agent that picks up when you can't — nights, weekends, Saturday afternoons when every tech is on a job and the office is empty.
First ring. Every call. 2am on Christmas, same as Tuesday at noon.
Name, number, address, and what's actually wrong — in your trade's language.
Gas smell, water running, no heat in a freeze — those reach a human immediately. A routine tune-up doesn't wake you up.
Straight into your calendar, then texts you a summary before you've finished reading this.
Start here — it's free
Before you spend a dollar, we call your shop after hours a few times over about a week and write down exactly what happens. Then we hand you the page. That's it — no pitch attached, and no obligation.
Pricing
No card, no commitment
+ $500 one-time setup · cancel anytime, 30 days' notice
Only once the phone is handled
Why us
Every other company selling you AI answering is a support ticket in another time zone. We'll meet you at your shop.
We work with HVAC, plumbing, and electrical contractors in one metro, on purpose. That means the agent we build for you already knows what a condenser is, what a rooter job involves, and that "no AC in August" in Central Texas is an emergency call, not a routine one.
You'll have one person's cell number. That's the whole support process.
Questions we get
Some will, some won't. That matters less than you'd think — what a caller at 9pm actually wants is for someone to pick up, take their problem seriously, and get them on the schedule. We'd rather your customer reach a capable agent immediately than a voicemail box they abandon. And we'll never tell a caller it's a human. Before you sign anything, you call the agent yourself and decide whether it's good enough to represent your name.
Then you're ahead of most shops. The question worth asking is whether they book the job or just take a message. If it's a message, your customer still waits until morning for a callback — and that's the window where they call somebody else. Ours books the appointment on the spot, at 9pm, into your calendar. It's also usually cheaper than a per-call service once volume picks up.
This is the right thing to worry about, and we build for it first. Gas smell, active water, no heat in freezing weather, burning smell on a panel — every one of those bypasses the script and reaches a human immediately, by whatever method you choose. You set those rules during setup. And we review call transcripts with you weekly for the first month so you can see exactly how it's handling real calls, not how we promised it would.
Usually under a week. We need a couple of hours of your time to learn your services, your pricing ranges, your service area, and your escalation rules. After that it's our work, not yours.
Cancel. Thirty days' notice, no penalty, no clawback, and you keep your phone numbers. We'd rather lose a client who isn't getting value than argue with someone about a contract.
Not the intent, and that's not usually what happens. It covers the hours nobody's there and the moments when everyone's already on another line. Most owners find it makes their office person's day better, because the overflow and the after-hours voicemail pile stop landing on them at 8am.
We'll call your shop after hours for a week and send you the page. Free, no obligation, and we'll tell you honestly if you don't need us.
Call or text — (512) 537-2555Or email nate@pilotlightai.com