For plumbing, HVAC & electrical shops — the service a Bregstar agency sells
Your phone rang at 6:12 last night. Nobody picked up.
Bregstar answers the calls you can't, and books the job on your calendar while the customer is still on the phone. Not a message service. It books.
Try it before you talk to me
(312) 624‑6997Call it from your truck. Pretend you're a customer whose furnace won't start and see if you can get it to book you in.
- "There's no heat and it's ten degrees out" — see what it does with an emergency.
- Ask for a person. Count how long it takes.
- Try to trick it into quoting you a price it doesn't know.
Example — one Tuesday evening, 3-truck shop
What a night of missed calls costs
Same phone, same Tuesday evening, same callers. On the left, the log as it reads today. On the right, the same night with the line answered.
Without Bregstar
Voicemail picks up
4 calls · 0 booked · ~$3,960 went to whoever answered second
| Time | What happened | Outcome | Job value |
|---|---|---|---|
| 18:12 | Rang 5×, voicemail. No message left. | Lost | — |
| 19:40 | Voicemail. Called two other shops at 19:41 and 19:43. | Lost | ~$1,250 |
| 21:06 | Water heater flooding a basement. Voicemail. | Lost | ~$2,400 |
| 07:02 | Called before the office opened. Hung up at ring 4. | Lost | ~$310 |
With Bregstar
The same night, answered
5 calls · 3 booked, 1 dispatched, 1 screened · $4,270 on the calendar
| Time | What happened | Outcome | Job value |
|---|---|---|---|
| 18:12 | Slow kitchen drain. Booked Thu 2:00pm, 90 min. Confirmation texted. | Booked | $310 |
| 19:40 | Water heater, no hot water. Booked Wed 8:00am. Address and photos on file. | Booked | $1,250 |
| 21:06 | Flooding. Talked them through the shutoff valve, then rang your cell. You answered in 14 seconds. | Dispatched | $2,400 |
| 21:22 | Robodialer pitching Google rankings. Screened, 9 seconds. | Screened | — |
| 07:02 | Asked what the diagnostic costs. Answered from your price list, then booked Fri 11:00am. | Booked | $310 |
The arithmetic
One recovered job pays for the year
Not a projection. Just division. Fill in your own average ticket and the number of calls you already know you miss after five.
What it actually does
Booking, not message-taking
An answering service writes down that someone wanted an appointment. By the time you call back, they've booked with whoever answered second.
- Books against your real calendar
- Checks actual availability, respects job duration and drive buffers, writes the appointment into your Google Calendar, and texts the customer a confirmation. Jobber and Housecall Pro are next.
- Triages emergencies
- Gas smell, flooding, sewage backing up: it gives the one instruction that limits the damage — find the shutoff, turn it clockwise — then rings your on-call cell and texts you the address.
- Answers from your own information
- Your hours, your service area, your diagnostic fee, your license number. If it doesn't know, it takes a message instead of guessing.
- Hands off to a human, instantly
- Anyone who asks for a person gets one — your office during the day, your on-call phone after hours. No deflection, no retention script.
- Screens the junk
- Robodialers and SEO pitches get nine seconds and a disconnect. You see the count, not the calls.
- Says what it is
- Every call opens with the business name, that it's an AI assistant, and the recording notice. No fake names, no pretending.
- Every call, on the record
- Recording, transcript, and exactly what it did — searchable, in 30 seconds, the first time a customer says "that's not what I was told."
- A Monday morning report
- Calls answered, appointments booked, emergencies dispatched, and the dollar value of the work that came in overnight.
How to start without risking a customer
Put it on your after-hours line first
It can't lose you a call it never gets.
For the first two weeks it only picks up what already goes to voicemail — forward-on-no-answer, nights and weekends. You keep answering your days exactly the way you do now. If it books you nothing, you've lost nothing and you turn it off from your phone.
- 15 minutes on the phone with me. Hours, services, pricing rules, service area, where emergencies go.
- You forward your line on no-answer. One setting with your carrier — I'll walk you through it while we're on the call.
- Two weeks. You get a text after every call it takes.
- You decide. Keep it and turn it on for daytime overflow too, or forward the line back. No card until you say so.
Pricing
Flat monthly. No per-minute meter.
You should never have to wonder what a busy week costs.
- One number, 500 minutes
- Booking into Google Calendar
- Message-taking and SMS confirmations
- Call recordings and transcripts
- 1,500 minutes
- Your own pricing rules and knowledge base
- Emergency triage and on-call transfer
- Owner alerts by text for emergencies and messages
- Weekly revenue report
- 4,000 minutes, multiple numbers
- Several locations or crews
- Outbound reminders and no-show recovery
- Priority support
Overage $0.25/min. Setup and knowledge-base build waived for the first ten shops. Month to month — cancel any time.
The questions everyone asks
Fair enough
My customers will hate talking to a robot.
Some will. They hate voicemail more — most people who reach a voicemail box on a service call simply hang up and dial the next listing. And anyone who asks for a person gets one in about two seconds. Call the demo line and ask for a human; time it.
I already pay an answering service.
Ask them what happens when someone wants Tuesday at two. They write it down and you call back — often after that customer has already booked elsewhere. This books the job on the spot, and it's usually less than what you're paying for the message pad.
What if it says something stupid to my customer?
It's built not to guess. Prices, policies and availability come from your own information or it doesn't say them — it takes a message instead. Every call is recorded and transcribed, and you get a summary by text, so you'll know before your customer does.
Does it tell people it's an AI?
Yes, in the first sentence, along with the recording notice. That's required in a growing number of states and it's the right way to run it anyway. It also never pretends to have a name or to be a person on your staff.
I answer my own phone.
You do — and you answered this one from a crawlspace. The question is the 8pm call, the Sunday call, and the call that comes in while you're under a sink with both hands wet.
What happens to my customers' call recordings?
Transcripts and recordings are kept 90 days by default, deleted on request, and never used to train anyone's model. You can set a shorter retention if you'd rather. Details are in our privacy policy.