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AI Receptionist for Roofers

Roofing demand does not trickle in. It arrives in a burst, on the worst possible day, and it is gone within about 48 hours.

The storm window

A proper gale goes through overnight. By eight in the morning half your town has a slipped slate, a strip of ridge off, a flat roof letting water in or a lifted lead flashing, and every one of them is ringing roofers. By the evening most have booked somebody.

That is also the one day when nobody at your outfit can possibly answer a phone. You are all up a ladder or on a scaffold, in the wind, with gloves on. The demand spike and your capacity to pick up are perfectly, maddeningly inverted.

Then in a fortnight it rains properly, the ones who thought it had stopped leaking ring back, and you are not on the ground then either.

What Aria does while you are on the roof

• Is water coming in right now? Active ingress jumps the queue. A slate on the lawn with a dry ceiling can wait a week and the customer usually knows it.
• Where is it getting in — bedroom ceiling, chimney breast, round a velux, a valley, a flat roof — and whether it only happens in driving rain. That tells you a lot before you have seen it.
• What they can see from the ground. Tiles off, ridge lifted, gutter hanging, flashing loose, debris in the garden. Not a survey, but it tells you what to put on the van.
• Property type and height, and whether access needs a tower or a scaffold — because a three-storey Victorian terrace and a bungalow are not the same quote or the same morning.
• Insurance or paying direct, plus the claim reference if there is one. Insurance jobs run on paperwork and it is much easier gathered on the first call.
• Postcode, name and callback number, read back on the call.

She answers at four in the morning when the wind wakes someone up and they ring there and then. That caller gets a human-sounding answer and a text confirmation instead of a voicemail beep, and by breakfast they have stopped shopping around.

The questions are tuned to roofing

She is not reading one script at every trade. How Aria works sets out that what she asks is tuned to the trade, and on a roofing call that means she asks about water coming in and about scaffold access — the two things that decide whether this is a today job and what it costs to get at.

That is the difference between a message saying “roof leak, please call back” and one you can actually triage from the top of a ladder.

She tells them she is an AI

On every plan, at the start of the call, she says she is an AI assistant answering for your business. That was a deliberate decision and it is not switchable. A customer who works it out halfway through feels tricked, and the name that gets blamed is yours, not ours.

On a storm morning it matters less than people expect. Someone watching a ceiling stain spread wants to be heard, told what happens next and given something in writing. They are not auditioning you on whether a human picked up.

Thirty calls in a morning, one phone, nobody on the ground

She takes calls in parallel rather than one after another. There is no queue and no hold music — ten people ringing at the same time all get answered at the same time, so the thirtieth caller in a morning gets the same answer as the first.

A single phone cannot do that, a mate helping out cannot do it, and voicemail does the opposite: it answers one and loses the rest, on the one day of the year when the rest is the busiest fortnight you get.

What she will not do

Worth being as clear about this as about the rest, because it is where an AI receptionist gets oversold.

• She will not quote. Not a price, not a day rate, not a ballpark. She gathers what you need to price it.
• She will not commit you to a time you have not agreed. On Pro she books only into free slots in your own calendar — which is the only honest answer when the weather decides your day.
• She will not pretend to be a person. She says she is an AI, on every call.
• She will not handle a gas escape herself. If a caller reports a smell of gas she tells them to leave it and ring the National Gas Emergency Service on 0800 111 999 immediately, and flags it to you.

What the three plans actually change

The answering is identical on all three. 24/7, nights, weekends and bank holidays, on the cheapest plan as much as the dearest. What you are choosing between is what happens in the ninety seconds after she hangs up.

• Starter, £59 a month. She texts you the name, the number, the postcode, what the job is and how urgent it sounded. Your diary is untouched and you decide what goes in it. For a small roofing outfit that is usually the right answer, because in a gale the order of the day changes hourly.
• Pro, £250 a month. She books it into your calendar, only into the slots you have actually left free, and confirms the appointment with the customer by text. The pricing page lists Pro as the plan for higher call volumes.
• Multi-Site, £449 a month. The same again across more than one location or team, with routing per site.

Full detail is on the pricing page.

Before you pay anything, get your own number

We would rather you did the arithmetic on real figures than on ours. The free missed-call check rings your mobile and texts you back exactly what happened — no card and no sales call — and this page sets out how to turn that into a number. Then the demo line below is the live system, so you can judge her for the price of a phone call.

After that it is 14 days free before the first payment, no setup fee, no installation, no engineer visit and no minimum term.

Questions roofers actually ask us

Can an AI receptionist cope with a storm rush?

Yes. Aria answers calls in parallel rather than one at a time, so the thirtieth caller in a morning gets the same answer as the first, with no hold queue.

What does Aria ask about a roof leak?

Whether water is coming in now, where it is entering, what the caller can see from the ground, the property type and height, access and scaffold needs, whether it is an insurance claim, and the postcode and callback number.

Will Aria promise a same-day visit?

No. Aria never commits you to a time you have not agreed. On Pro she books only into slots your calendar has free.

Does she ask roofing questions or the same questions as everyone else?

What she asks is tuned to the trade rather than read off one script. On a roofing call that means she asks about water coming in and about scaffold access.

Does Aria tell the caller she is an AI?

Yes, and on every plan. She tells the caller she is an AI assistant answering for your business. That is deliberate and it is not something we switch off: a customer who finds out halfway through that they have been talking to a machine feels tricked, and that lands on your name, not ours.

Does Aria answer out of hours?

Yes. 24 hours a day on all three plans, nights, weekends and bank holidays included. The 24/7 answering is not the part held back for the dearer plans, which matters when a gale wakes someone at four in the morning and they ring there and then.

What happens if several people ring at the same time?

She takes calls in parallel rather than one after another, so there is no queue and no hold music. Ten people ringing at once all get answered at once.

Will Aria quote a roofing job?

No. Not a price, not a day rate, not a ballpark. She gathers what you need to price it and leaves the number to you.

Does she read the callback number back?

Yes. Name, number and address, out loud, on the call. It takes about fifteen seconds and it is the difference between a number you can ring and one digit of guesswork.

What exactly gets sent to me after a call?

On Starter she texts you the lot: the name, the number, the postcode, what the job is and how urgent it sounded. You decide what goes in the diary.

Does she put jobs straight into my diary?

Only on Pro and Multi-Site, and only into the slots your own calendar has left free. On Starter your diary is untouched: she texts you and the decision is yours. Most sole traders prefer that, because the diary is the thing they do not want touched.

Does the customer get anything in writing?

Yes. They get a text, so they have your name in their phone and the job in writing. On Starter that is a confirmation; on Pro it confirms the appointment itself. That is most of what stops them carrying on down their list.

What does she do if a caller reports a smell of gas?

She does not handle it herself. She tells the caller to leave it and ring the National Gas Emergency Service on 0800 111 999 immediately, and she flags it to you.

What is the difference between Starter, Pro and Multi-Site?

The answering is the same on all three. What changes is what happens after the call. Starter at £59 a month hands it to you by text. Pro at £250 a month books it into your calendar and confirms the appointment with the customer. Multi-Site at £449 a month does that across more than one location or team, with routing per site.

Does she follow the conversation or just fill in a form?

She asks in the caller's own words rather than through a phone menu, and follows the conversation where it goes. How Aria works gives the example of a caller saying it is not an emergency but the ceiling is wet — she picks up on both halves of that sentence.

Is there a setup fee, a contract or a minimum term?

No setup fee, no installation, no engineer visit and nobody coming out to see you. No minimum term either: it is monthly and you cancel when you like. The first 14 days are free, before the first payment.

Can I hear her before I pay anything?

Yes. The demo line on this page is the live system, not a recording. She says in the greeting that she is an AI and that the firm is a demonstration, so nobody gets sent out. Give her a leak and see what she does with it.

I am not sure I miss enough calls to bother. How do I find out?

Use the free missed-call check. It rings your mobile and texts you back what actually happened, so the figure you work from is your own rather than ours. No card.

Do I get anything if I decide Aria is not for me?

Tell Aria your business name and she builds you a one-page website and texts you the link. That is free, and it is yours whether you take Aria or not.