Answering service · Canada
The answering service for Canadian plumbers
Your hands are wet, you are under a sink, and the phone is a burst pipe in Hamilton. EveryRing answers it, finds out who they are and where they are, books the job into your calendar, and puts the genuine emergencies through to you.
The calls you are missing
The calls that cost the most are the ones that arrive at the worst moment. A January morning after the first hard freeze, three people ringing at once about the same burst line, and every one of them is phoning the next plumber on the list the second it goes to voicemail.
Voicemail loses that job twice over. Somebody with water coming through a ceiling does not leave a message and wait; and the ones who do leave a message have usually booked someone else by the time you finish the job you were on.
What it does on one of your calls
It answers as your business, by the name you gave it, and says the call is recorded if you have recording on.
- It takes the details first. Name, number and address, before asking what the problem is. That order is deliberate: it checks the address is in the area you actually cover before it offers anybody a time, so nobody is booked for a job you would have to turn down.
- It reads the address back, digit by digit. "Eight one seven Dulaney Drive", not "eight hundred and seventeen". A van sent to the wrong street is an hour you do not get back, and this is exactly the mistake a voice on a bad line makes.
- It books onto a van, not onto the business. If you run two trucks, it checks which one is actually free and books that one, with your travel time between jobs taken into account. Two jobs cannot land on the same van at the same hour.
- A real emergency gets you, not a message. It rings your mobile, tells you who is holding and what has happened, and connects them only when you press 1. If it reaches your voicemail it hangs up rather than reciting somebody's flooded kitchen to an answering machine.
- It emails the confirmation with a calendar file when the customer wants one, so the appointment is in their phone and not only in yours.
- A missed call gets a text back in seconds, and the conversation carries on by message if that suits them better.
What it will not do
It will not quote you a price you have not published. Ask it what a callout costs and, unless you have put that number in your profile, it says it will have somebody ring back with the answer and writes the callback down. The same is true of your hours, your service area and whether you take on a particular kind of work. It answers from what you told it and refuses to guess past it, because a plumber who has to honour an invented quote is worse off than one who took a message.
It will not diagnose anything. No opinion on whether a smell is a gas leak, whether a pipe will hold until Monday, or what a repair will involve. It takes what the caller says in their own words and passes it to you.
It answers in English. It sends no marketing messages of any kind, to anybody, because there is no feature in the product that could: the only texts that leave are replies, confirmations and reminders for work somebody asked for. And there is no way to export your customer list, ours or anyone's. Neither is a policy we wrote down; both are things the software cannot do.
Against a human answering service
| What is being compared | A human answering service | EveryRing |
|---|---|---|
| Published rate, Canada | Commonly sold by the minute, with a setup fee | $199 to $399 a month, plus a one-time setup fee |
| At 2am | If you bought the after-hours plan | Always, at no different rate |
| What happens to the call | A message you ring back | The job booked, in your calendar, on a van that is free |
| What it knows | A script you wrote for them | The profile you published, and it refuses to guess past it |
| Your number | Often theirs, forwarded | Stays yours |
Rates for human services vary by provider and by how many minutes you buy. Compare the ones you are considering on their own published prices: ours are on the pricing page and do not change by time of day.
Questions plumbers ask
What happens if somebody rings at 2am?
It answers. If the call is a genuine emergency it tries you first, screened, so you are never bridged to a stranger without being told who they are. If you do not pick up, the caller is told plainly that a message has gone to you rather than being promised a call that might not come, and the job is waiting on your dashboard in the morning.
Can it book into the calendar I already use?
Yes, into Google Calendar, one per van if you run more than one. Bookings appear there within seconds, and if you move or delete one in Google it moves here too.
What if it does not know the answer?
It offers a callback and records it, so the question is on your list rather than lost. It never fills a gap with a guess, and the questions it could not answer are worth reading: they are usually a sign of something missing from your profile that customers keep asking about.
Does my number change?
No. Your number stays yours and stays on your van. You forward it to us when you cannot pick up, and you can stop forwarding whenever you like.
What does it cost?
From $199 a month plus a one-time setup fee, and no long contract. The pricing page has the three plans and what is included in each.
Can I hear it before I commit?
Yes, and it is the only sensible way to judge it. We set it up with your hours and services and you ring it yourself.
Hear it before you decide
The quickest way to judge this is to listen to it answer as if it were your business. We will set it up with your hours and your services and ring you.