Answering service for contractors
Search for an answering service for contractors and most of the companies you find will not tell you what they charge until you talk to sales. Two publish a rate card, and one of those advertises $65 a month on a plan its own pricing page shows includes zero minutes at $2.30 each. Meanwhile your phone rings while you are under a sink or up on a roof, and the caller moves on to the next number in the search results. EveryDial answers in your business name, takes the caller's name, the property address and what the job is, then books the work.
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What your receptionist does for you
Answers while you are on the job
You cannot stop mid-repair to take a call. A contractor who rings back at six has usually lost the job to whoever picked up at two. Your receptionist answers every time, in your business name, including evenings and weekends.
Gets the address, not just a name and a number
It takes the caller's name, the property address read back to them, their phone number and what the job is. Most services hand you a name and a number, which leaves you making the same call twice. You get what you need to price the work and put it in the right day.
Books a time instead of promising a callback
Your receptionist works from the hours you are open and agrees a time with the caller. The details reach you by email while you are still on site. Your evening is a list of booked work, not a list of people to ring back.
Urgent work still reaches your phone
Switch on urgent transfers, give it the number to ring, and a caller with water coming through a ceiling gets put straight through to you. Leave it off and everything comes to you as a booking or a message instead.
A price with the minutes and the rate next to it
Starter is $49 a month with 100 receptionist minutes. Pro is $149 with 400. Minutes past your plan are $0.49 and $0.37, and a spending cap keeps a busy month from running away. Both plans are month to month, and you cancel in the billing portal whenever you want.
One truck or five crews
The economics are not the same. A one-van shop is buying back the calls it drops while driving. Work out your own minutes before picking a plan: 40 missed calls at three minutes each is 120, which is already past the smaller plan. Five crews means an office phone ringing all day, and that is a bigger plan or a person. Start where your own call log puts you, not where a sales call does.
Common questions
- How much does an answering service for contractors cost?
- Several will not say without a sales call, and the two that publish a full rate card are worth reading closely. Posh advertises $65 a month to contractors; that plan includes zero minutes at $2.30 a minute, so 120 minutes of calls is $341, and its 100-minute plan is $215. AnswerConnect's entry plan is $350 for 200 minutes plus a $49.99 setup fee, then $2.50 a minute. EveryDial is $49 a month for 100 receptionist minutes or $149 for 400, with minutes past your plan at $0.49 and $0.37.
- Is an answering service worth it for a contractor?
- It comes down to how many calls you miss and what one job is worth. Pull your call log for last month, count the missed calls from numbers you did not recognize, and be honest about how many of those you would actually have won. On $400 service calls, winning one a month covers the Starter plan several times over.
- How do I choose an answering service?
- Ask four things before you sign anything. What does it collect from my callers, does it agree a time or only take a message, how is a part-minute counted, and what does my bill look like in a busy month. Read the answers on the pricing page rather than the landing page, because the two often differ.
- What does a contractor answering service ask my callers?
- With most services, whatever your script says, which in practice is a name, a number and a short note. Your receptionist works through the caller's name, the property address read back for confirmation, their phone number and the work they need, then checks they are inside your service area. You control what it knows about your business: your services, your service area, your hours, your prices, and whether it books jobs, takes messages, screens spam, or puts urgent calls through to your phone.
- Is this for general contractors or for the trades?
- Both, though the calls look different. A trades shop gets service calls that need an address and a time today. A construction answering service handles project inquiries instead, which need qualifying before anyone drives out to quote. It also handles the insurance and subcontractor calls that come with bigger jobs.
- Do I need this if I only miss a few calls a week?
- Maybe not. Add up what those calls would have been worth over a month and put it next to the plan price. If a few missed calls a week is a few hundred dollars of work, the math is easy. If it is not, keep answering the phone yourself and come back to this when you are busier.
Stop sending work to voicemail.
EveryDial picks up, books the customer in, and sends you the details. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
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