The CRM for plumbers whose best jobs come in at 11pm
Emergency calls get answered and booked, and the drain-cleaning customer gets a maintenance reminder next spring.
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- Unlimited seats
- Your own database
- AI waits for your approval
Plumbing is the trade where the highest-value work arrives at the worst hour. A burst supply line at 11pm is a customer with no price sensitivity and no loyalty, and the shop that picks up wins. SalesCrew runs beside ServiceTitan or ServiceM8 and takes the two jobs those tools leave half done: capturing what comes in after hours, and turning a one-off drain call into a water heater quote and then a membership.
Three leaks in a plumbing business that are not water
What breaks, and what gets configured for it.
Night calls go to a voicemail nobody checks
The overflow after 6pm is where the emergency premium lives, and a caller standing in two inches of water does not leave a message. Configure the web form and inbound webhook so anything that does arrive at night is a tracked lead by 7am, with the address and the failure captured on the record.
Water heater and repipe quotes sit unanswered
Service work closes on the spot. The estimate-driven jobs — tank swaps, tankless conversions, whole-house repipes — do not, because the homeowner is getting two more prices. Configure stages for Quote sent, Follow-up 1/2/3 and Won, with a cadence that runs while they shop.
Memberships are sold when someone remembers
The annual inspection plan is the retention lever in this trade, and it is usually pitched by whichever tech happens to think of it. Configure a post-job cadence that offers the plan a few days after the invoice, and a renewal segment twelve months later.
Two jobs, two motions, one database
A plumbing company runs two businesses that look nothing alike. Emergency and service work is dispatch: speed, availability, a truck with the right part. Replacement and repipe work is a sale: a quote, a comparison, sometimes financing, and a decision that takes a week.
Most plumbing software is built for the first one, which is correct — that is where the day goes. The result is that the second one runs on memory. The owner or the office manager knows there are seven open water heater quotes, roughly, and follows up on the two they remember.
Configuring two pipelines is the whole fix. Service jobs move fast and close in a day. Estimate work sits in stages with a cadence attached, and the deal stays visible until it is won or lost with a reason recorded. The reason field is worth more than it looks: after three months it tells you whether you are losing on price, on timing, or on being second to call back.
What we configure for you
A working setup for a residential plumbing and drain company, inside the first 14 days.
- 1
Pipeline stages
A service pipeline that closes same-day, and an estimate pipeline for water heaters, repipes and sewer line work with follow-up stages and a lost-reason field.
- 2
Channels
Your office mailbox connected, the site's emergency form pointed at the inbound webhook, and Calendly bookings arriving as meetings with the source attached.
- 3
Cadences
A quote cadence for estimate work, a post-job membership offer a few days after the invoice, and a spring reminder to the drain-cleaning customers you saw last year.
- 4
Agent policy
The Inbox agent in review mode so it drafts the reply to a homeowner and a person sends it. Guardrails hold sends inside business hours and cap touches per contact.
- 5
Knowledge-base voice
Your service area, your emergency call-out fee, your warranty terms and your membership plan details loaded as knowledge so drafts sound like your office.
Your stack, and what sits beside it
Your dispatch software stays. This table shows what each system owns.
| What you run | What it keeps | What SalesCrew adds |
|---|---|---|
| ServiceTitan | Dispatch, technician scheduling, flat-rate price book, invoicing | The estimate pipeline for repipes and heaters, quote cadences, membership offer sequences |
| Housecall Pro | Scheduling, payments, customer notifications, the tech app | Multi-step quote follow-up, a unified inbox for every reply, lead source on every record |
| Jobber | Quoting, job tracking and invoicing for a smaller shop | Cadences that keep working after the quote is sent, plus outbound to property managers and builders |
| ServiceM8 | Job cards, checklists and the field workflow on iOS | A sales pipeline in front of the job card, and retention campaigns after it |
| QuickBooks | Books, payroll and the financial record | Stays in QuickBooks. |
| Your answering service | Live humans picking up at 2am | The lead record and the follow-up once the call is over, via webhook or CSV |
These connections run through webhooks, CSV import and the API, so a closed job or a new lead moves between systems without retyping.
What each system is built for in a plumbing shop
A configurable CRM (SalesCrew)
- Two pipelines set up for how plumbing actually sells: same-day service and multi-week estimates
- Cadences that run on their own and stop when the customer replies
- Unlimited seats on every tier, so a two-person shop pays the same as a ten-person one
- One Postgres database per company, with a full export whenever you ask
The trade tool (ServiceTitan, ServiceM8, Housecall Pro)
- Dispatching a truck to an address at 11pm is exactly what they are built for
- Flat-rate pricing your techs present from a tablet in the customer's kitchen
- A field app crews already know, with job photos and signatures
- Membership plans as a first-class object with billing attached
The 11pm call, and the lead it should become
Emergency work carries the highest ticket and the lowest close resistance in the trades. It also arrives when nobody is at a desk. The realistic sequence tonight is: the phone rings, it rolls to an answering service or voicemail, and the caller hangs up and dials the next plumber on the search results page.
SalesCrew captures web forms and Calendly bookings at any hour. The customer who fills in the emergency form at 1am is a tracked lead with an address before the first truck rolls. Outbound calls run through Vapi, so the morning callback is logged on the record.
Your plumbing numbers carry inbound routing and business hours, and voicemail is transcribed into the same thread list as email. A missed call gets a text back, and the AI receptionist triages an emergency, captures the address and books the slot. The escalation rule for this trade is simple: an active flood transfers to a human on the spot. No assistant should be collecting a service history while water is running through a ceiling.
The constraint that governs all of it. Every homeowner mobile you text is a consumer number under the TCPA, and an emergency call does not create consent for a spring drain-cleaning promotion six months later. Record the consent when you take the number. SalesCrew enforces suppression and opt-out at freeze and again at send, scrubs the DNC list, and checks consent before a call starts. This is not legal advice.
Where this gets used
Three plumbing jobs described as mechanism, not outcome.
Chasing a water heater quote
The deal moves to Quote sent, and a three-touch cadence runs over ten days while the homeowner collects prices. Any reply pauses it and lands in the inbox. Lost deals record why.
Selling the membership after the job
A segment picks up customers whose job closed in the last week and who have no plan. Suppression is applied when the audience is frozen, the offer goes out, and anyone who signs drops out of the sequence.
Waking last spring's drain customers
A reactivation segment finds everyone whose last visit was a drain call twelve months ago. One seasonal cadence, sent from your own mailbox pool, with unsubscribes suppressed for good.
What plumbing owners ask first
- We are two people. Is this overkill?
- It pays the day quotes start going unanswered because nobody had time. A cadence chases every open quote while you are on a job. Seats are unlimited, so a two-person shop pays the same $299 a month on Core as a ten-person one.
- We already run ServiceTitan. Are you asking us to switch?
- No. ServiceTitan keeps dispatch, the price book, technician time and invoicing. SalesCrew runs the estimate pipeline in front of the job and the retention campaigns after it.
- Will it message customers without us seeing it first?
- No. Every external send defaults to review in the agent policy table. An agent drafts, a person approves. A kill switch stops every agent at once, and an audit log records every action.
- How does it help us sell membership plans?
- It finds the customers who should be on a plan and are not, runs the offer and tracks the renewal date. Plan billing stays in your field service software.
- What happens to our customer list if we leave?
- You take all of it. Each company runs in its own Postgres project, so the export is a full database dump plus CSVs, not a partial report. On churn the instance goes read-only with export available, and it is deprovisioned after 90 days by a human.
Which tier fits a plumbing company
Core runs the estimate pipeline. Outbound adds the phone and SMS pack.
Core at $299 a month covers the pipeline, the unified inbox, email cadences and the data bank, with unlimited seats. Outbound at $699 adds phone numbers, SMS, missed-call text-back and service reminders that send.
Related
Start with your open quotes
Import the water heater and repipe estimates nobody has called back, and put the first cadence in review.
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