Building an AI Phone Agent for Trade Businesses

One of the most interesting use cases for voice AI isn't in tech — it's in trades.

Plumbers, electricians, and HVAC technicians miss 40–60% of incoming calls during working hours. Not because they're ignoring customers, but because they're literally on a ladder or under a sink. By the time they call back, the customer has moved on.

The Technical Challenge

Building a voice agent for trades is different from building one for, say, a SaaS helpdesk:

1. Urgency classification — A burst pipe at 2 AM needs different routing than a quote request
2. Calendar integration — Must handle variable availability (jobs run long, travel time between sites)
3. Location awareness — "I'm in Blackrock" needs to map to service area coverage
4. Natural conversation — Customers describe problems loosely: "the thing under the sink is leaking" needs to be captured accurately without forcing structured input

The Architecture

Incoming call → Voice AI (STT + LLM + TTS)
  → Intent classification (emergency/booking/quote/info)
  → If emergency: immediate SMS + call escalation
  → If booking: calendar check → slot offer → confirmation
  → If quote: capture details → send summary to tradesperson
  → Post-call: structured summary via SMS/email

The key insight: for trades, the AI doesn't need to resolve the call — it needs to capture enough information for the tradesperson to make a decision between jobs.

Results

Early deployments are showing:

• 0 missed calls (vs 40–60% previously)
• €3,000+/month in recovered revenue from converted missed calls
• 92% caller satisfaction — most people prefer instant AI pickup over voicemail

What I'd Do Differently

If building this again:

• Start with emergency triage — it's the highest-value feature
• Don't over-engineer the booking flow; simple slot offers beat complex calendar gymnastics
• SMS summaries > email summaries for trades (they're on mobile all day)

Curious if anyone else is building voice AI for non-tech verticals. The opportunities in "boring" industries are massive.

Canonical URL: https://voicefleet.ai/blog/ai-receptionist-plumbers-electricians-trades-ireland