Forum Discussion

SibiFirewood's avatar
SibiFirewood
Contributor 2
1 month ago

What do customers think about Jobber's AI receptionist?

We are considering jobbers AI Receptionist for our busy firewood sales & Service business.

My husband is hesitant to use it because our main customer base is rural, conservative minded individuals that are more likely to be distrustful of AI. I also take a lot of time to connect with my customers & explain why we are different or better than other options.

Part of what customers love about us is that we are a family business and we work hard to build connections and relationships.  I feel like ai is everywhere now and people are used to it but I do have people tell me often how nice it is to talk to a person.

On the other hand I do miss a lot of calls and don’t want to miss opportunities.

Has anyone heard feedback from customers on whether they like it or not? 

3 Replies

  • HUGEHomePros's avatar
    HUGEHomePros
    Jobber Ambassador
    30 days ago

    It can be good but only for certain people. For someone like me who is very tech forward, it would be good for me. 

    I look at it as basically a better voicemail. It gets their message, logs the info in jobber. I don't need it to be a subject matter expert. If you have straight forward pricing and a built out price book, it'd probably be amazing (we don't have those things). We just use it for answering calls in the off hours. It's hit and miss with people. I do have it telling them that it's AI, I may turn that off. Right now hardly anyone stays in the call longer than hearing it's AI (even though I have it tell them it's off hours). 

    Jobber did put a lot of work in to it and it is very programmable so I'd definitely recommend trying it and seeing how you like it. 

  • roselvaggio's avatar
    roselvaggio
    Jobber Ambassador
    25 days ago

    This is a mix! We have a few clients who tell the receptionist to let us know to stop using ai (because we’re wasting energy and water) 🤦🏼‍♀️

    It shows turned off or on for certain clients, but we can’t find a rhyme or reason as to how whomever wound up on either list. Another glitch is it offers rescheduling on days we don’t have availability!

    I want to love it so badly, especially outside of office hours!

  • HilltopAdOS's avatar
    HilltopAdOS
    Contributor 3
    25 days ago

    The drop-off HUGEHandyman is describing is almost always a framing issue, not an AI issue. When the first thing someone hears is "I'm an AI," they're being asked to make a decision before they've gotten any value. Most people opt out.

    The setups that actually retain callers lead with the task, not the identity. Something like "Thanks for calling, I can get you taken care of, what's the address for the service?" gets people talking before they've decided whether they care what's answering.

    For your specific situation, the relationship concern is valid but the missed call problem is real too. The middle ground a lot of family businesses use is letting the AI handle after-hours and overflow only, with a clear handoff path to you for anything that needs a real conversation. That way you're not replacing the connection, you're just not losing leads at 9pm.

    The rescheduling on unavailable days issue roselvaggio mentioned is a real gap worth flagging to Jobber directly. That's a calendar sync configuration problem and it should be fixable.