AI phone assistant for trades and call-outs
A burst pipe does not ring twice. Tel-Agent sorts the emergency from the quote, takes the address, and puts urgent calls straight through.
- Is it an emergency
- Address
- Emergency to a person
Why a trades phone has to sort emergencies in four seconds
A plumber's phone carries somebody standing in water and somebody pricing a new bathroom, and the first four seconds of both are a person saying hello. One needs an answer now; the other needs an answer this week. Out of hours the realistic alternative is a phone that rings out, and a burst pipe does not ring twice.
How the AI receptionist handles an emergency call-out
It answers at any hour and takes a callback number first.
It asks whether water or power is doing damage right now.
On an emergency answer it transfers immediately - the business sets which answers those are, not the model.
Otherwise it takes the address, the access details and what needs doing.
A quote request lands as a written job ready to price, without interrupting the job in progress.
What the agent is told to ask
Written by you, in your own words, as the assistant’s instructions.
What a trades phone assistant should and should not do
What it does
- Answers at night and at weekends
- Asks the damage question before anything else
- Transfers emergencies to a person immediately
- Takes the address and access details for a call-out
- Keeps job records on the business's own machine
What it never does
- Decide whether something counts as an emergency on its own
- Quote a call-out fee that was not given to it
- Advise a caller to touch a stopcock, a fuse box or a meter
- Promise an arrival time
- Send customer addresses to a third-party server
Electricians
Sort a dangerous fault from a quote request before anyone picks up.
- Smell or smoke
- Whole house or one circuit
- Consumer unit
Heating engineers
Ask about carbon monoxide first, and about who is in the house second.
- Smell of gas
- Anyone vulnerable
- Heat or hot water
Locksmiths
The caller is standing outside. Ask the three things that matter.
- Locked out now
- Anyone inside
- Door or car
Plumbers
Ask about the stopcock before anything else, at any hour.
- Is the water off
- Stopcock found
- Address and access
Questions
How does it tell an emergency from a quote?
It asks whether water or power is doing damage right now, before anything else. That answer decides everything after it, and it is the business - not the model - that sets which answers mean transfer immediately.
Does it work at two in the morning?
That is when the difference shows. The realistic alternative out of hours is a phone that rings out, and a burst pipe does not ring twice.
What does it take for a non-emergency?
The address, what needs doing and a number, so a quote can be prepared before anybody rings back. Those calls do not need to interrupt a job in progress.
What counts as an emergency?
The business decides, not the model. The usual line is whether water or power is actively doing damage, and the answers that mean transfer are configured as rules that run before anything else.
Can it dispatch an engineer?
It takes the address, the access details and what is happening, and reaches a person for anything urgent. Deciding who goes and when is a scheduling decision that belongs to whoever knows where everybody is.
Does it help with quote requests?
Those are the calls that do not need to interrupt a job. The assistant takes what needs doing and the address, and the quote is prepared later from a written note rather than from memory.
Does the EU AI Act allow an AI to answer an out-of-hours call?
Yes, under Article 50 of Regulation 2024/1689, which asks that the caller be told they are speaking to a machine - that line belongs in the greeting you configure. Nothing about this work falls under Annex III, the list of high-risk uses. The distinction the Act draws is between assisting and deciding, and this agent assists: it never decides on its own that a job is or is not an emergency. Austria's KI-Servicestelle at RTR publishes the same reading of the transparency duty.
Who is the data controller for what a caller to a trade business says on the phone?
You are. An out-of-hours call is ordinary personal data, plus an address a stranger now knows is empty, and Tel-Agent is self-hosted with your own model keys, so the recording, the transcript and the record it writes stay on your server and never reach Dpro GmbH. There is no processor agreement to sign with us because we never receive the data, and the source is AGPL-3.0, so you can check that rather than take our word for it.
Can a trade business run this in the United States?
There is no single federal AI statute to comply with, but a phone line carries older rules. The TCPA governs automated outbound calls, and consent to record is set state by state. Consent to record is set state by state, and California and Illinois among others want every party to agree. Running the software yourself makes you the caller of record, so the disclosure and the recording switch are yours to set.
Not usable yet. The day it answers a real call will be a release, not a newsletter.
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