Services

An answering service for builders

Your phone answered in your business name while you are up the scaffold or cutting blocks. New projects sorted from the job you are already on, suppliers and customers dealt with properly, and every call in writing by the time you down tools. Plans from £59 a month.

Where does an answering service for builders fit into your day?

If you are on site by half past eight, the phone spends the rest of the day in a pocket under a hi-vis or on the dashboard of the van. That is the day an answering service for builders is built around. Your business number is answered by a real person in your business name, from South Yorkshire, and each caller is dealt with according to who they are: somebody with a project, a merchant, a customer whose job you are on. The details reach you by text and email, and you carry on working.

The trouble with a building firm's phone is not only the calls you miss. It is the ones you answer at the wrong moment, with a grinder in one hand, catching half of the address and none of the name.

Who is actually ringing a builder during the day?

Hardly any two calls want the same thing. Once your rules are set, this is how each kind gets dealt with.

Somebody with a project

An extension, a loft, a garage conversion, a wall that needs to come out. These calls carry the most work and take the longest to turn into it, so the job on the phone is collecting what you need to decide whether a visit is worth your time:

What they want built or changed, in their own words.
Whether drawings exist yet, and whether planning or building regulations approval is already in hand.
The postcode, so you can see at a glance whether it sits inside your patch.
When they hope to start, and whether anything fixes that date.
A budget, if they are willing to share one.

The customer whose job you are already on

When the skip is being collected, what time you are back tomorrow, whether the tiles they picked have arrived. None of it is new work and all of it matters, because it is their house you are standing in. They get the message taken properly and passed to you the same day, rather than three missed calls and a worried voicemail.

Merchants, drivers and building control

A driver who cannot find the site, a merchant confirming a delivery slot, an inspection being arranged. These are the calls with a clock running. You decide at setup which of them deserve to interrupt you. On any plan they can reach you as a text straight away, and from Growth up they can be put through to you while the caller is still on the line.

The calls that are not for you

Small repairs when you only take on bigger jobs, work far outside the area you cover, a sales call about van leasing. On Growth and Premium callers are qualified first, so a job you would never quote for is declined courteously and does not reach your phone. On Light and Essential it is written down and sent like any other message, so nothing is lost and the decision stays yours.

What does a day of messages look like?

Each call reaches you as it happens and each one is logged, so by the time you pack up the day is written down rather than scattered across missed calls. As an example of the shape of it, and not a real customer:

10.14, new enquiry. Single storey rear extension, drawings done, planning approved. Hoping to start in spring. Site visit booked for Tuesday at 4pm.
11.02, merchant. Blocks arriving between 1 and 2 today, driver will ring twenty minutes out.
2.37, current customer on the kitchen job. Asking whether the skip can come off the drive before Saturday.

The booked visit on the first line is a Growth plan feature. On Light or Essential the same caller would arrive as a request for you to ring back, with all of that detail attached.

Can site visits go straight into your diary?

From the Growth plan up, yes. We work in the calendar you already keep, using the slots you have said are free for visits, so the person planning an extension ends the call with a day and a time instead of a promise that you will ring. A job that runs for weeks gets priced from a visit, not from a phone call, which makes the visit the step that matters.

Growth and Premium also come with out-of-hours options. That matters when the person planning an extension has a job of their own and can only ring once it is over.

Who chases the quote you sent three weeks ago?

Pricing a big job can eat an evening. Then the quote goes out, and sometimes nothing comes back. Following it up is the part that gets dropped, not because it does not matter, but because by then you are on the next job.

On Premium that follow-up call is made for you. The customer is rung, asked whether they have had a chance to look at the quote and whether there is anything they want to go through, and what they say comes back to you in writing. A quote that has gone quiet might be a lost job, or it might be a customer waiting for somebody to ask. Either way, you find out which.

Which plan suits a building firm?

Every plan is priced on how many calls come in each month.

Light, £59 a month, 30 calls. For a smaller firm that mainly needs the phone picked up and the messages sent on.
Essential, £129 a month, 50 calls. The same answering as Light, for a busier phone.
Growth, £249 a month, 100 calls. Site visits booked, callers qualified, urgent calls put through, out-of-hours options. The one to look at if new projects are how you grow.
Premium, £399 a month, 150 calls. Everything in Growth, plus quote follow-ups, callbacks to customers, your records kept up to date and two hours of admin support a month.

Calls beyond the allowance are charged individually. Setup is a one-off, from £49.50, normally £99, and it is where your greeting, your questions for new projects and your rules for suppliers and customers get written down. The full detail of each plan is on the plans and pricing page.

How do you get started?

There is a free seven-day trial, with no card to hand over. Before you start, it is worth knowing three things about your own phone: which calls get missed, which you would rather never take, and when in your week a site visit can actually happen. Those answers are what the setup is built from. If you want the general mechanics first, the telephone answering page explains what happens on every call, whatever the trade.

Ring 01709 222834 to talk it through, or use the contact page and say when is a good time to ring you back.

Common questions

Can you tell callers when I am able to start?

Only what you tell us. Give us the wording, something like "booking larger jobs from the spring", and that is the answer callers get. Change it whenever your diary moves. Nobody on our side commits you to a start date you have not given.

What about a customer reporting a problem after the job is finished?

It is taken seriously and taken down in full: what the problem is, where in the house, and when it started. The customer is told when to expect to hear from you, so a crack in the plaster does not turn into a customer who feels ignored.

Another contractor rings offering me work. What happens?

It is treated as new work with its own questions: the site, the dates, the scope, and how and when they pay. You can say yes or no from one message rather than a twenty minute call in the middle of your day.

What if a neighbour rings to complain about the site?

They get a calm and polite response, their complaint is written down in their words, whether it is noise, parking or dust, and they are told you will be in touch. Nothing is argued and nothing is promised on your behalf.

My number is on the van and the board outside every job. Does that change?

No. The number on the van, the site board and the website stays exactly as it is. Calls to it come through to us only when you divert them, so the advertising you have already paid for keeps working.

The rest of what we answer

Hear it for yourself, free, for a week.

Seven days of a real person answering in your business name. No card, no contract, and nothing to cancel if you'd rather not carry on.

Start your free trial Book a callback

Or call us on 01709 222834