An AI receptionist for restoration companies that books into a real CRM
Designed for the 3am water-loss call: loss type, address and carrier captured, a dispatch note written, and every active loss transferred to a person.
- On the roadmap, not available today
- Active losses always transfer
- Consent gate part of the design
Restoration is the trade where answering the phone is not part of the sales process, it is the whole of it. A property manager or a plumber calls at three in the morning, and the company that picks up and puts a truck on the road is the company that keeps the loss. This page describes an agent designed for that call. It is on the roadmap and answers nothing today.
The call a restoration company actually loses
Twenty-four hour intake is not a nice-to-have here, it is the product. Every competitor advertises it, so the differentiator is not whether someone answers but how fast the truck follows. A caller standing in an inch of water in a commercial lobby rings the next number after two rings.
The caller is also frequently not the homeowner. It is a plumber who has just stopped the leak, an agent relaying a policyholder, or a property manager with a tenant on the other line. Those callers are your referral channel, and how the call goes decides whether they use you next month.
That is why the escalation rule here is stricter than on any other trade page. For an active loss the design does not triage, book or qualify. It transfers. Water spreading through a structure is measured in minutes, and nothing a script says is worth spending them on.
The call flow it runs
A short flow, because an active loss ends it early. None of this ships today.
- 1
Establish whether the loss is active
The first question. If water is still spreading, if there is active smoke or fire damage from tonight, the design transfers immediately and captures nothing else. Everything below applies only when the loss is stable.
- 2
Classify the loss type
Water, fire, smoke, mould, storm or biohazard. Each pulls a different crew and different documentation, so it is recorded as a value rather than a description.
- 3
Capture the site properly
Full address, whether it is residential or commercial, the affected area, and access details at night. A gate code missed at 3am costs an hour.
- 4
Identify who is calling and why they called you
Homeowner, plumber, agent, property manager or administrator. The referral source is the most valuable field on the record in this trade, and it is only available during the call.
- 5
Take the insurance position
Carrier, whether a claim number exists, and whether this is program work through an administrator or direct. Program and direct work follow different rules from the first hour.
- 6
Write the dispatch note and alert
A structured summary for the on-call crew chief: loss type, what stopped it, access, and who is on site. Plus a contact, a claim record and the referral source in the pipeline.
What it will do, and what stays with a person
An active loss is never handled by a script. That is the rule the rest of the design hangs off.
| Situation | The planned agent | A person |
|---|---|---|
| Any active loss, water still spreading or fire tonight | None. Immediate transfer, no qualifying questions | Takes it and dispatches the crew |
| Water stopped hours ago, drying not started | Loss type, site details, carrier and referral source, then alerts the on-call chief | Decides the equipment and the arrival time |
| A plumber referring a job they have just stabilised | Captures the plumber as the referral source and the site details | Calls the plumber back to keep the relationship |
| "Will my insurance cover this?" | None. Declines and transfers | Answers carefully, because this is a coverage question |
| A third-party administrator assigning work | Captures the assignment details and transfers, since program rules govern the response clock | Accepts or declines the assignment |
| Biohazard or trauma scene | Immediate transfer regardless of when it happened | Handles the call directly |
Rows describe the intended behaviour of a roadmap feature. Nothing here answers a call today.
Why a voice agent needs a CRM behind it
A receptionist that books into nothing is an answering machine with better diction. In restoration the cost of that is measured in referral relationships rather than in single jobs. The plumber who called you at three in the morning is worth more than the loss he called about, and the only way to know he called is a record with his name on it in the referral source field.
The second reason is the claim itself. A loss becomes a claim, a claim goes to an adjuster, and adjusters go quiet. Without a pipeline that flags a claim sitting past its expected date, stalled work looks like work in progress until somebody notices the money never arrived.
Both need a database, not a transcript. That is why the claim stages, the partner cadences, the knowledge base and the approval queue are live now, and the receptionist will write into them when it ships rather than to run alongside them.
Worth deciding early. Disclosure that a caller is speaking to an AI, and whether the call may be recorded, both depend on jurisdiction, and these calls often involve a third party rather than the property owner. Take your position to your own counsel. This is not legal advice.
What restoration owners ask about this
- Will it sound like a robot?
- Current platforms handle the voice itself well. The failure mode is delay and mishearing, and both are worse here than anywhere else, because your caller is often a professional under time pressure rather than a patient homeowner. That is why the design ends the call fast when the loss is active. The best-sounding agent on a 3am water loss is one that stops talking.
- What happens when it cannot answer something?
- It refuses and transfers. The facts it may state come from your knowledge base: service area, response commitments, whether you handle biohazard work. Coverage questions sit outside that list. Telling a policyholder their insurance will cover something is a claim your company then has to live with, so the design never lets a script say it.
- Will it say it is an AI?
- Yes. It is designed in and we would not advise switching it off. Several jurisdictions are moving toward requiring disclosure, and in a trade where a referral partner may be listening it is also simply better practice. Confirm the rule that applies to you with your own counsel. This is not legal advice.
- What will it cost per minute?
- No published number. It depends on your voice provider, your model class and your call length, and the mix here is unusual: many calls are designed to end in under a minute with a transfer. The components are a platform fee, the model, speech to text, text to speech and telephony, and our calculator page publishes the formula.
- Is it legal to record the calls?
- It depends where the parties are, and some jurisdictions require every party to consent rather than one. A consent line at the start of the call is part of the design for that reason. Restoration calls frequently involve someone other than the property owner, which is another reason to settle this with your own counsel first. This is not legal advice.
- Can it transfer to me?
- Transfer is the primary behaviour here rather than the exception. Any active loss transfers unconditionally, as do biohazard calls, administrator assignments and coverage questions. The triggers are literal phrases rather than a judgement, and if the on-call phone does not answer, it falls back to an alert and a task so a 3am call is never lost.
Put your referral partners in a database first
Partner cadences and claim stages run today. The 3am call will land in the same records when it ships.