Finally Made the Jump to Jobber… Now What About AI Receptionists?

I had the receptionist on for about a week, and there was a lot of hang ups, no messages etc.
I now have it only when we dont pick up, and when we are not on shift.  But I programed it as a voicemail system.
This way even though it is Ai, people know to leave a quick message, and the system notifies us.  We make sure to call back no later than 60 min.

Second thing... if you can afford it, hire someone to answer phones, and emails.  It will be the best money you ever spend, and totally freeing you from the office tasks.
Of course teach them on jobber etc...  this will free so much time for you.

Full disclosure: I'm the founder of Keepdesk, an AI receptionist for trades, so weigh this however you want.

Whatever you look at, Jobber's included, call it yourself before you pay. Ring it at 9 pm with a real backflow question, ask it for a price it shouldn't know, and say it's an emergency. See if it sounds like your shop, admits what it doesn't know, and tells you about the urgent one.

DanG's right about starting with nights and overflow. Lowest risk way to find out.

If you want to hear ours, the demo line answers as a sample garage door company: (469) 535-7496. Pricing is on getkeepdesk.com, month to month. Happy to answer questions here.

Congrats on the switch to Jobber, MrBackflow. With backflow the calls lean technical and urgent, so I'd narrow the AI scope before you pick a vendor — and hold off on replacing the human touch.

What to make the system do (whatever platform you land on):

1) Sort urgent from routine. A backflow call falls into one of three buckets: water on the floor / basement wet / sewage backing up (urgent — page a live dispatcher or you), scheduled recert inspection (log and create a Jobber task), or "thinking about it / new service area customer" (qualify and book a callback). If the platform can't branch on those without hallucinating the address or promising a time you can't keep, it's not ready to run the line.

2) Capture the minimum set before handing off. Service address, service needed, best callback number, and a time window. If it misses any of those, it should hand the call to a human or fall back to voicemail plus a missed-call text so nothing falls in the gap between the call and morning.

3) One clean write to Jobber. The result should be a Jobber request / lead with a callback task, not a note buried in a chat window you have to copy from later.

How I'd roll it out in a backflow company:

- Week 1–2: after-hours and overflow only. Main line still rings you during the day. The AI never answers when you can. That's the fastest way to measure whether callers like it and whether it's actually capturing what matters.

- Give callers an out early. The greeting should lead with the task, not with "I'm an AI." Something like "Thanks for calling, I can help get this taken care of — what's the service address and what's going on?" keeps people talking before they decide whether they care what's answering. The moment they say anything about active water, a flooded basement, or a backed-up sewer, hand them to a live person or ring you immediately.

- Voicemail as the safety net. Keep a short human voicemail on the same number: business name, that you're on a job, the callback window you're promising, and that they can also text the number. For backflow the voicemail should explicitly invite the caller to describe whether it's an active leak vs. a non-urgent recert — that alone stops a lot of wrong escalation at night.

- Separate number for true emergencies. If your phone system supports it, forward the urgent path to a second number (you / on-call tech) so only the calls that need to wake someone actually do. The main line keeps going straight to the AI after hours and voicemail during the day.

- Online request form as the non-urgent fallback. A Jobber request form or a simple online booking page on your site lets price-shopping and recert callers self-serve without tying up the phone during a wet basement.

Choosing between Jobber's built-in AI Receptionist and a third-party:

- Jobber's advantage is the write-back. If the summary lands in Jobber as a real request / task, you spend less time reconciling.

- Third-party (Clara, GoHighLevel / Snipey-style, open-phone-AI, etc.) usually branches deeper and can route by service area and urgency better — but only if you write the decision tree yourself and audit it against real backflow call scenarios.

- Either way, run it against a week of your own call types first (active leak, recert inspection, commercial vs. residential, new service-area inquiry, wrong number / competitor call). Listen for three failure modes: promising a response time you can't keep, mis-capturing the address, and not paging a human when water is moving. Keep whichever leaves the least cleanup on your desk in the morning.

Don't rush the decision. Pick the narrowest scope (nights + overflow), define the urgent-vs-routine rules, and judge it by what shows up in Jobber the next day, not the demo.

On the floor, I’d choose based on failure handling, not how human the demo sounds. Start with overflow and nights, and make the system do three things well: spot urgent vs. routine calls, capture the job details and service area, and either book or create a clean callback task in Jobber.

For technical trades, hard-stop rules and an easy human escape hatch matter more than a long script. Run it against a week of real call scenarios, listen for wrong routing and missing details, and keep the option that leaves the least cleanup for morning admin

Congrats on making the move to Jobber! That’s a big step forward for the business. I think you’re asking the right questions with AI because the goal should be finding something that actually helps you grow, capture more calls, and give customers a great experience. Don’t feel like you have to rush the decision—test a few, see what fits your workflow, and go with the one that makes your life easier. You’re already moving in the right direction! 💪

Hey MrBackflow​ 

Congratulations on joining Jobber! 

I echo HUGEHomePros​  sentiments on AI receptionist. It's a great tool in the tool belt when using it outside of business hours or when the humans are too busy to respond. 

I've been on the forefront of training with ai in general. There are a lot of strong suits. Interacting "face-to-face" with humans is not one of them. I think as long as you realize it's just a tool Jobber AI receptionist is good; however, I would not recommend it replacing someone who does these tasks for you. The AI receptionist should piggyback what they already do to make them better and free up time. 

As a consumer the quickest way for me to not do business with a company is the utilization of ai for customer facing interactions. There are also significant issues with ai in this position as the primary source. For instance, I was attempting to hire a cleaning company. I reached out to four smaller companies. All four of them used AI in some form for the intake. I needed the cleaning done within 3 weeks. I heard back from one company 5 weeks later and didn't hear back from the rest of the companies. Long story short, all four of these companies lost a repeat customer with a strong referral basis and they probably have no idea. 

I can elaborate more on the limitations and business pros/cons if you would like but it can get rather lengthy. 

Great topic! What platforms have you tested?

Matt

Jobber's AI receptionist is pretty good but I would only use it for after hours stuff. Having a human on the phone will always (as of now) be way better for the people. One thing I've learned is that even a VA can be off putting unless their english is perfect and they understand your trade and area a little bit. People can sniff out if it's a receptionist type person and it kind of turns them off. This is just my experience because we offer so many different things.