AI phone assistant for plumbers
A leak does not ring twice. Tel-Agent asks whether the water is off, takes the address, and puts a real emergency straight through to you.
- Is the water off
- Stopcock found
- Address and access
Why a plumber's phone cannot ring out at night
A plumber's phone carries somebody standing in water and somebody pricing a new bathroom, and both open with hello. The first has minutes on it; the second has a week. Out of hours the realistic alternative is a phone that rings out, and the caller with water coming through a ceiling rings the next number on the list.
How the AI receptionist handles an emergency plumbing call
It answers at any hour and takes a callback number first.
It asks whether water is running right now, before anything else.
If it is, it asks whether they have found the stopcock - the one useful thing a caller can do while waiting.
An emergency answer transfers to a person immediately; the business sets which answers count.
For a quote it takes the address, the access details and what needs doing, and the job lands written down.
What the agent is told to ask
Written by you, in your own words, as the assistant’s instructions.
What a plumbing phone assistant should and should not do
What it does
- Answers nights, weekends and bank holidays
- Asks the water-running question before any detail
- Prompts the caller to find the stopcock while they wait
- Transfers real emergencies to a person straight away
- Keeps job records on the business's own machine
What it never does
- Decide on its own what counts as an emergency
- Talk a caller through touching a boiler, a valve or a meter
- Quote a call-out fee it was not given
- Promise an arrival time
- Send customer addresses to a third-party server
Questions
What should an assistant ask a plumbing emergency first?
Whether water is running right now. That answer decides whether this is a transfer or a booking, and every other question is worth less until it is answered. The business sets which answers mean transfer, not the model.
Should it tell the caller to turn the water off?
It can ask whether they have found the stopcock, which is a location question. What it must not do is talk somebody through operating a valve, a boiler or a meter - that is advice, and advice from an assistant at two in the morning is a liability.
Does it work for quote requests as well?
Those are the calls that do not need to interrupt a job. It takes the address, the access details and what needs doing, so a quote can be prepared later from a written note instead of a half-remembered voicemail.
Can it give a call-out price?
Only from the business's own list. Out-of-hours rates vary by hour and by job, and an assistant guessing at one is a dispute waiting to happen.
What about tenants ringing about a landlord's property?
Owner or tenant is asked, because it decides who can authorise the work. A tenant reporting a leak and a landlord approving a repair are different calls with different next steps.
Does the EU AI Act allow an AI to answer a burst-pipe 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 plumbing business says on the phone?
You are. A burst-pipe 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 plumbing 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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