AI Receptionist vs Outsourced vs Owners

For our clients (tree company here), the AI receptionist has been at best average; and often annoying. In Jobber, it would mismatch clients, or not link to an existing client, or create strange tasks at strange times. It resulted in more dropped balls for us, and the clients didn't seem to keen on it. And honestly, it was confusing for our older clients. We turned it off after trying it quite a bit.

We use CallRail, so it is easy to have a voicemail with a transcript. It takes about 10 seconds to get the gist when we review the transcript, then the call back is straightforward. No one seems surprised to get our voicemail when they call after hours.

Hi Alice, 
Welcome to the community! At Sarcon LLC we’ve tried handling calls ourselves, outsourced teams, and AI. Nothing beats the human touch, especially when building a new business,  but once calls stack up, AI is a solid second line if you choose the right system. We use Supportiyo (not perfect, but the best so far): no missed calls, spam filtered, and it learns our terminology fast. Hope that helps as you find what works best!
Fraz, Sarcon LLC.

So our experience so far is for the ai receptionist to act as a voicemail while giving the client the option to leave a message for a human. 

We tried doing the first line of defense thing and although it freed up some admin workload it does create some friction. In home services friction equals lost sales. 

When we are able to answer the phone great things happen. When the ai answers the wheels begin to fall off a bit. 

So what we do now is answer when available, let the jobber ai act as a voicemail that can do some quick easy task, and follow up like mad with the clients. It’s not perfect but we are a small team and can only afford so much overhead. 

AI is a very valuable tool but it cannot replace a human, setting it up and plugging in outside of jobber is also not really needed. There is no ai answering service that is able to replace a human on the phone yet. So we use the native one and it works well enough to do what we need it to do! 

hopefully you find some value in what I’m telling you and it helps guide you the right way. Keep crushing it! 💪

** side hack - forward your phone to the admin # don't take any calls. People will email you or text you or whatsapp/facetime call you if they really need you. This will free up your time during the day to work on more important things. 

My personal opinion. Most people are going to call during the day / have an in-house admin that is super chatty and very comfortable on the phone taking these calls and getting people booked in for work or quotes. (Your clients will start to love this admin!) Make sure to have them heavily using the request + scheduled assessments in Jobber. These are forgotten sometimes with Jobber users but they are really powerful along side the data that you can get from them. 

For days off or after hours - full send on Jobber AI Receptionist. It's good enough and only getting better. It's easy to set up / built right into jobber / it will make tasks for your admin right inside of jobber as well.

I would also combine this with the online booking on your website + the request form. Remember people want to book many different ways so let them choose their own path. 

I hope that helps and reach out if you need any more help.