AI Answering Service for Skilled TradesYour phone is ringing. Your crew is on a roof.
Every call answered, every job booked — 24/7 receptionist with a human safety net, plus back-office automation, for skilled trades.
Built for HVAC, plumbing, and electrical companies.
The math
We don't quote industry stats — in a 15-minute walkthrough we'll pull your own missed-call count, and you judge from your numbers.
— what a missed emergency call costs you. That's one lost job, gone to whoever picked up.
Everything after that is money you weren't collecting before.
How it works
- We design your call flow in a week. No new hardware, no new number to give out — we build it around how your office already runs.
- It answers overflow and after-hours, and books straight onto your calendar. A US-trained, plain-English voice — and the job lands in Housecall Pro, Jobber, or Google Calendar, wherever you already run your schedule.
- You listen to recordings and watch booked jobs appear. No dashboards to babysit — and every month you get one honest number: jobs booked that used to go to voicemail.
When it's a real emergency
The assistant does intake, never judgment. Here's exactly what happens when a call sounds urgent:
- Deterministic triggers, not AI guesswork. No heat, no cool, burst pipe, gas smell — urgent keywords trip the escalation path every time, by rule.
- Straight transfer to your on-call tech. The caller is handed off warm, with a private briefing of what the assistant already collected.
- A human calls back within 10 minutes if your on-call line is busy — the customer hears a promise with a clock on it, not "we'll pass along your message."
Why Bullpen
Never miss a job
after-hours and overflow calls get answered and booked, not voicemailed.
Books, not just answers
jobs land on your real schedule (Housecall Pro, Jobber, Google Calendar), with SMS confirmation to the caller.
Done for you
we build, tune, and monitor it; you review recordings, not settings screens.
Common questions
“Will customers hate talking to an AI?”
No — most callers prefer it to voicemail. It identifies itself as an assistant right away, sounds natural — a US-trained, plain-English voice — and hands off warmly to a person the moment a caller asks. Listen to the recordings — the proof's right there.
“What about real emergencies?”
Every real emergency gets transferred straight to your on-call tech — the assistant does intake only, never judgment. Anything that sounds urgent — no heat, no cool, burst pipe, gas smell — triggers an immediate transfer, and if the line's busy, a human calls the customer back within 10 minutes. No AI sits on a real emergency.
“How is an AI answering service different from a traditional answering service?”
The difference is booking versus message-taking: a traditional answering service takes a message and hands it back to you, so you still start the conversation over when you call back. Bullpen asks the right questions for your trade and books the job onto your calendar while the customer's still on the line — with no per-minute meter running. A real answering service running real volume lands around $1,170/mo; Bullpen's flat monthly tiers don't punish a busy week.
“A local human service only costs $200/mo.”
That $200 covers message-taking only — real call volume on a per-minute meter runs closer to $1,170/mo once you're past the first handful of calls. The question isn't the flat fee, it's whether the job gets booked before the customer calls the next name on Google.
“What is Bullpen Works?”
Bullpen Works is an AI answering service built for skilled trades — HVAC, plumbing, and electrical companies. It answers every call, books the job into your Housecall Pro or Jobber calendar while the customer's still on the line, and hands real emergencies straight to a human. Think of it as the front desk you don't have to staff yet.
“Does an AI answering service replace my office staff?”
No — it's built to fill the gap, not replace anyone. Most shops start it on overflow and after-hours calls, the ones nobody's picking up today, so it sits between no office help and being ready to hire a full-time CSR at $40k/yr.
“What if it messes up?”
It only touches calls you're not already answering — it starts on overflow and after-hours calls only, so nothing you're already handling gets changed. You review every recording in the first few weeks, so you see exactly what it says before it earns more of your call volume.
Pricing
| Tier | Setup | Monthly | What's included |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | $750 | $300/mo | Nights, weekends, and overflow only. Up to 60 answered calls/mo. Most shops outgrow it in 60 days. |
| Core | $1,000 | $500/mo | After hours, weekends, all-lines-busy — with room to run. Up to 100 answered calls/mo. |
| Growth | $1,500 | $900/mo | Everything above, plus first-line answering during business hours. Up to 250 answered calls/mo. |
| Scale | $2,500 | $1,500/mo | Everything above, plus one back-office automation per quarter. Up to 500 answered calls/mo. |
Month-to-month — cancel anytime after the first 90 days. Compare it to the $40k/yr CSR seat, not an answering service: see the full pricing sheet for the math and what's included at each tier.