The answering service for contractors
A contractor answering service exists because you cannot bid a job and answer the phone at the same time. Every contractor knows roughly what a missed call costs and every contractor keeps missing them, because the alternative is climbing down a ladder with a nail gun in one hand. Answerley answers in your company's name while you work, qualifies the caller, and books the estimate.
Type your business name and hear it answer a contractors call in your name. No card needed. It reads your website first, so it already knows your services and hours.
Coldwater Restoration, how can I help?
We had a tree come through the back of the roof last night. There's water in the upstairs bedroom.
That's a rough night, sorry. Is water still coming in now?
It's stopped raining but the ceiling's soaked and it's sagging a bit.
Okay, a sagging ceiling is something we treat as urgent — please keep everyone out of that room for now. What's the property address?
18 Foxglove Lane.
Thank you. And have you opened a claim with your insurer yet?
I called them this morning, they gave me a claim number.
That helps, we'll want that when we come out. Are you the homeowner?
Yes.
Then let me put you through to Ray directly — active water damage with a claim already open is exactly the call he wants to take himself. One moment.
Transferred to you, directly
Answerley’s real voice— the same one that answers live calls, not a voice actor. Only the agent is heard — the caller is an invented example, shown as text rather than voiced with a synthetic human.
The artifact
What lands in your inbox ninety seconds later
Every call ends as a structured summary, not a “someone called” voicemail. This is the same call as above, as the owner receives it — and the same fields arrive whether it was an emergency at 2am or a quote request at lunchtime.
New call — storm damage, 18 Foxglove Lane
Answerley ‹noreply@answerley.com› · Today, 4:44 PM
Priya Raman called about a tree through the rear roof overnight, with water in an upstairs bedroom and a visibly sagging ceiling. Insurance claim already open. She is the homeowner and was available to speak. Flagged urgent under your active-water-damage rule and put through to Ray directly.
Why it is shaped like this
The labelled rows exist so the person picking the job up does not have to listen to a recording to find the address. The prose summary exists so you can triage it from a phone screen without opening anything.
If the caller corrects a detail halfway through — spells their name back, gives a different callback number — the correction wins and the summary is rewritten before it sends. The full transcript and the recording are both one click away in your dashboard.
The maths
Why the missed ones cost what they do
The missed-call rate in the trades is not a discipline problem, it is a physics problem. You cannot answer a phone with a nail gun in one hand from the top of a ladder, and the callers know it — which is why so few of them leave a message. A voicemail box is not a record of your missed calls; it is a record of the small fraction of people patient enough to use it.
What makes it worth fixing is the asymmetry. A missed gutter-cleaning enquiry is an irritating afternoon. A missed full-remodel, insurance-restoration or commercial fit-out enquiry is a five-figure job that went to whoever picked up, and there is no way to know in advance which of the two is ringing. That is the entire argument for answering all of them.
Routing
What gets you woken up — and what does not
The whole value of an after-hours line is that it tells the two apart. You write the list; it follows it exactly rather than exercising its own judgement.
How one contractors call gets decided
Call comes in
Coldwater Restoration, how can I help?
Urgent → you, directly
- Active water or fire damage
- Structural or safety hazard
- Storm damage with a claim open
- Repeat customer or named referral
Everything else → qualified lead + email
- Estimate requests
- Timeline and budget enquiries
- Out-of-area callers
- Work you do not take
The full escalation list for contractors
- Active water or fire damage
Restoration work is won in the first hour. Straight through to you.
- Structural or safety hazard
Immediate, with your safety instruction read to the caller.
- Storm damage with an adjuster deadline
Time-boxed work, so it is flagged urgent rather than queued.
- A named referral or repeat customer
You can flag anyone you want as a straight-through call. Repeat customers rarely enjoy being triaged.
- A job above a value threshold you set
If a caller describes a full remodel, you probably want that phone call rather than an email about it.
Everything else becomes a qualified lead in your dashboard — what they want, where, when, budget signal, and where they came from — plus an emailed summary the moment the call ends.
Intake
What it asks on every contractors call
These are the details we configure it to capture, and every one is editable before you go live. They are what turn a message into a job someone can actually start.
- Type of work
Sorted against the services you actually offer, so a job you do not take gets a polite answer instead of your morning.
- Property address and property type
Decides travel, crew and whether it is even in your area.
- Timeline — emergency, this season, or exploring
The single most useful qualifier there is. It separates the estimate you should drive to tomorrow from the one that is nine months out.
- Whether it is an insurance claim
Changes the paperwork, the pricing and often the urgency. Worth knowing before you call back.
- Rough scope and budget expectation
Asked in your words, as gently or as directly as you want it asked.
- Whether the decision maker is available
Saves the estimate visit where the person who has to sign is not home.
- How they heard about you
Free attribution on every single call, which is more than most contractors get from anywhere else.
Afterwards
What a night looks like afterwards
Every call lands in one list with what it was and what happened to it. Spam is recognized, ended politely and marked — and never counted against your allowance, which is not true of a service that bills you by the minute.
The objection
The objection worth answering
“Most of my calls are tyre-kickers. I don't want to pay to answer those.”
Then have it filter them. You decide the questions, which means you decide what a qualified call looks like — out of area, wrong trade, no budget, a year away — and those callers get a courteous answer and a note in your dashboard rather than an interruption. And because the plan is flat monthly rather than per minute, a long tyre-kicker call costs you exactly the same as a short one, which is not true of any per-minute service.
Honestly
What you are actually choosing between
Four options, including the two that are sometimes the better answer than this one.
Free, and the reason you are reading this. Most callers with an urgent problem hang up rather than leave a message, so a voicemail box is not a record of your missed calls — it is a record of the patient minority.
Real people, typically $250–$700 a month for a small business, almost always billed per minute or per call — so your worst week is also your biggest invoice, and many bill you for robocalls too. Operators work from a script across dozens of unrelated businesses, which is why so many contractorscalls come back as “caller had a problem, please call back.”
The best answer if you have the call volume to justify it. It is also a salary, a schedule, holidays, and no cover at 2am — which is exactly when this trade’s most valuable calls arrive.
Answers instantly, every time, in your name, with your questions and your escalation rules. Flat monthly, no per-minute billing, spam not counted. The honest limitation is that it is not a person: it will not build a relationship with a repeat customer over eighteen months, and it will not talk anyone through a repair. If the calls you care about most need judgement rather than accurate intake and fast routing, a good human service is worth its price and you should buy one.
Setup
How it gets set up
Four steps, one of which is outside Answerley. There is no scripting to write and no onboarding call to sit through.
- 1
It reads your website
Type your business name and it finds your listing, pulls your site, and builds a draft profile — services, hours, service area, the questions your customers actually ask.
- 2
You correct it
Everything is editable, and it flags what it could not work out rather than inventing an answer. This is where you set the intake questions and the escalation list above.
- 3
You hear it before you pay
Talk to it in the browser, or have it call your phone, using your real profile. No card required to get this far.
- 4
You forward your line
All calls, after-hours only, or only when you do not pick up. That is the only step outside Answerley, and it takes a few minutes.
Pricing
What it costs
Flat monthly, from $49. Full pricing is on the plans page.
Traditional answering services bill per minute or per call, which means your busiest month — the freeze, the storm, the burst-pipe week — is also your most expensive one. Answerley charges the same either way, and spam and robocalls are never counted against your allowance.
Questions
Questions about Contractors answering
Do you offer a construction answering service for job-site calls?
Yes. The usual problem is that nobody on a site can answer a phone, so quotes and callbacks are missed all day rather than only after hours. Calls are answered in your company name, qualified, and the ones worth interrupting a job for are transferred.
Is there a roofing answering service option for storm season?
The same setup handles it. Storm work arrives all at once, so the calls you would most want are the ones most likely to ring out. Every one is answered on the first ring, whether that is three at 4pm or thirty.
Can it work as an electrical contractor answering service too?
Yes, and the safety questions matter more there. You configure what the agent must ask and what it must tell a caller before anything else, for example to leave the property and call 911 if there is smoke. It relays your instruction rather than improvising advice.
Do you handle emergency restoration answering service calls?
Yes. Active water or fire damage is exactly the call that cannot wait for a callback, so it is triaged and transferred live to whoever is on call, with the address and whether the loss is still spreading already captured.
Can it turn away work I don't do?
Yes, and it should. You list what you offer and what you do not, and it answers accordingly rather than promising something you would have to walk back.
Does it work for restoration, landscaping, pest control, roofing?
Yes. The pattern is the same across the trades — the difference is the intake questions and the emergency list, and both are yours to write.
Will it call people back?
No. It answers your inbound calls. Outbound follow-up stays with you, which is usually where you want the relationship anyway.
How fast is setup?
About a minute to a working draft. It reads your website, builds the profile, and you edit it before anything goes live. You can hear it answer a test call before you enter a card.
What does it cost?
Flat monthly from $49 — no per-minute billing, so a busy storm week costs the same as a quiet one.
Can I use it only during certain hours?
Yes. Forward all calls, only after hours, or only when you do not pick up — whichever you set at your carrier. Many contractors start with no-answer forwarding and move to full-time once they see what was being missed.
Does it work if I run several trades under one company?
Yes. It answers from your own website content, so if you list roofing, siding and gutters it handles all three and captures which one the caller wants.
Before you choose
How contractors businesses use it
Other trades
Hear Answerley answer a contractors call in your own business's name.
Hear it answer your callsNo card needed to hear it. Flat monthly pricing from $49. Cancel in one click.