As a growing home services business, you’ve likely already considered a call answering service.

Maybe you’ve tried one yourself and been disappointed with the results. Or perhaps mixed reviews and high costs have stopped you from pulling the trigger.

Either way, you’re sick of handling every call yourself, especially after-hours and when you’re out in the field. You need some way to reduce the burden. But it’s hard to put the reputation of your business in the hands of an answering service that has so little context about what you do and how to handle your calls.

Fortunately, there’s another way: AI answering services.

What is an AI answering service?

AI answering services answer incoming phone calls and help customers using the power of artificial intelligence. They typically use voice recognition to understand what the caller wants and perform valuable tasks like:

🤝 Capturing leads

📝 Taking messages

🤔 Answering common questions

Don’t worry if your AI answering service can’t handle the caller’s request, because it’ll grab a message with all the information you need to know to follow-up.

What are the benefits of AI call answering for home services businesses?

Reduced stress of manual call-handling

Chances are, the main reason you’re considering an AI answering service is because you don’t want to handle all those incoming calls yourself — especially while you’re out in the field.

It’s just stress you can do without, right?

Improved cost efficiency

AI answering services aren’t the only option for your business — you could outsource to a human-powered service instead and let third-party agents field your calls.

Trouble is, they’re not cheap. In fact, human answering services run 10x more expensive than Rosie, our AI call handling service.

Which would be fine if human-powered call handling delivered a significantly better customer experience than an AI service. 

But, as you’ll see, this simply isn’t the case…

Greater likelihood to succeed

Not only are human answering services expensive, but they’re often low-quality.

The big problem is that human call handling companies employ a ton of people (and often see high staff turnover).

So your customers will rarely — if ever — speak to the same agent twice, and those agents have little or no knowledge of your business.

All of which results in an inconsistent customer experience.

And, to make matters worse, human answering services still miss calls if you’re on the other line or busy because their calls queue until one of their agents is available. So they might not even do the job you’re paying all that money for.

Compare that to AI call handling solutions, which:

✅ Are trained on the needs of your individual business 

✅ Know which specific services you offer

✅ Provide the same quality service (in the same tone of voice), call after call

✅ Can handle several calls at the same time

And remember — AI solutions are cheaper, too. So you’re essentially paying less for a premium service.

Enhanced lead capture

When an interested customer calls your business, there are some key details you definitely want to capture, like:

🙋‍♀️ Name

🏡 Location

🛠️ Which services they’re interested in

(Plus any other information you want to collect.)

Fortunately, AI answering services can do that for you.

For example, Rosie automatically captures the caller’s name and phone number — plus you can ask your AI agent to request other information specific to your business and services.

👉 We’ll show you how to do this later in the article.

Higher productivity (without growing your team)

You don’t want to employ any more people than are absolutely necessary to keep your business running.

With an AI answering service, you can operate for longer without having to hire a receptionist or office admin — allowing you to be more productive without having to expand your team.

👉 For more reasons to consider AI calling handling, read 10 Benefits of Using an AI Phone Answering System.

Why is Rosie the #1 choice for your home service business?

👍 Rosie knows your business: Our AI learns your business from your Google Business profile and website, allowing Rosie to get up to speed fast, speak to the specific services you offer, and answer questions about them.

👍 Rosie captures essential information: Rosie takes down all the information you need to qualify leads and prioritize follow-up calls.

👍 Rosie keeps you in the loop: Every time Rosie answers a call, you’ll receive an instant notification via email and/or text — plus an AI-generated summary.

👍 Rosie plays nice with the tools you rely on: Connect Rosie to popular home services CRMs like Housecall Pro, Jobber, and Service Titan using our Zapier integration.

Case study: Duct cleaning home services business

One of our customers, a duct cleaning company, was fed up with paying for a human call answering service: 

"50% of the time the calls go horribly wrong because every single call is answered by a different person and they have very high turnover."

That’s when they switched to Rosie.

Rosie handles overflow and after-hours calls for their team, instantly notifying them via email and text when a call comes in so they can get back to the caller via phone, email, and/or text with an estimate and offer to schedule.

When a customer calls the business, Rosie narrows their focus toward one of the company’s two service areas: air ducts and dryer vents. Then she takes a message, asking:

👉 Are they looking for air duct cleaning, dryer vent cleaning, or both?

👉 Is the property commercial or residential?

👉 What’s the service address?

👉 What is the caller’s email address?

It was so easy for them to get started. Once they created a Rosie account, they walked through our Guided Setup:

Here, they entered their training sources (i.e. their business profile and website)…

…and asked Rosie to capture business-specific information in the Message Taking section:

And, because our duct cleaning customer has connected Rosie to Housecall Pro using our Zapier integration, all that essential information gets automatically added to their CRM after the call.

So they can leave call answering to Rosie and get on with what they do best — providing a high-quality service to their customers.

👉 Like what you see? Sign up for free to get your first 25 minutes of call handling on us!

FAQs

How much does an AI answering service cost?

Our AI answering service costs start at $49 per month, including 250 minutes of call answering time. Plus you can get 25 minutes of call handling without spending a single cent — and without adding a credit card — by signing up for a free trial!

👉 Check out our pricing page for more information.

What is the best AI phone service?

Easy! Rosie is the best AI phone service. We’re affordable, easy to use, and highly customizable to the specific needs of your business. So you’ll never miss out on an opportunity again because you couldn’t get to the phone.

How long does it take to get started with AI call handling?

You can get started with AI call handling through Rosie in just a couple minutes. All you have to do is create a free account (no credit card required) and run through our quick Guided Setup. 

👉 Check out this video walk-through with our founder, Jordan, to see how it all works: