The whole thing, including
the parts that don't flatter us.
Cloverly answers the calls you can't, asks the questions you'd ask, and gets the estimate onto your calendar. This page is the mechanics — what it says, what it books, what it refuses to do, and what happens on the night it doesn't work.
Thirty seconds of it will tell you more than this page will.
There's nothing to play you here yet. We haven't taken a customer call, we won't post a script read by an actor, and a demo line you can dial is a thing we're still building. So the honest offer is thirty minutes with Will — he plays you a call, and you decide with your own ears instead of taking our word for it.
Sometimes people can tell. Not always, and it's better than it was a year ago — but nobody here is going to sit and tell you that nobody clocks it. What matters is what it's competing with. Right now that call goes to voicemail, and most people don't leave one.
What actually happens between the ring and the booking.
It rings your phone first.
Nothing changes about your number. Your cell rings the way it always has, and Cloverly only picks up when nobody does — after the ring count you choose, or when the line is busy. That's conditional call forwarding, a setting your carrier already has, and it means you never hand your number over to us.
It says what it is.
First sentence of every call: the shop's name, that it's an AI, and that the call is recorded. In the twelve states where everyone on the line has to agree to a recording, it goes further and offers to take a message instead. That wording lives in our code rather than a vendor's dashboard, so it's identical on every call and we can show it to you.
It asks your questions, in your order.
The same questions every time — what's wrong, how old the unit is, whether the water's shut off, the service address. It only knows the services you gave us, so it can't volunteer work you don't do. Prices come back as the range you set, never a firm number you'd have to honour at the door.
It offers times that are actually open.
It reads your calendar live and applies your rules — how long the job takes, drive-time buffer either side, how much notice you need, how many jobs a day you'll take — then offers up to three real windows. When the caller picks one, it checks the calendar again before it holds anything, because calendars move in the ninety seconds someone takes to decide.
It writes it down and emails you.
Seconds after the caller hangs up you get an email: who called, how long it ran, what they wanted, and the window they asked for. It also files the call — booked, message taken, transferred, spam, or abandoned — so “how many calls turned into nothing” becomes a number instead of a feeling.
“Thanks for calling Rapid Plumbing! This is their AI assistant — just so you know, this call is recorded. If you'd rather it wasn't, tell me and I'll take a message instead. I can get you booked or answer questions — how can I help?”
That is the literal output of the function that writes it, and the second sentence changes by state. It's there because disclosure and recording consent are legal obligations, not because it's a feature we're selling you.
If it can't read your calendar, it doesn't guess.
An unreadable calendar and an empty calendar are different things, and our code refuses to treat them alike. When the read fails it takes the details and tells the caller someone will confirm the time shortly. That costs you one callback. Guessing costs you two trucks in the same driveway.
It only knows what you told it.
There's no general knowledge in there and no improvising. Everything it says traces back to a field somebody filled in on your setup call. This is the whole list.
| Group | What you set |
|---|---|
| Hours | Open and close for each day of the week, your timezone, and the days you're shut. |
| Services | Every service you offer, the price range for each one, and how long that job takes. |
| Where you work | Zip codes or a radius from the shop, plus whatever the map won't tell it. |
| Emergencies | Whether you take them at all, and what counts as one at your shop. |
| Booking rules | Buffer either side of a job, how much notice you need, how many jobs a day you'll take, and whether it holds a window for you to confirm or books it outright. |
| When we reach you | Which events reach you the moment they happen, which ones wait for a summary, and the hours you don't want to hear from anyone. |
| Escalation | Plain-English rules. If they say gas, put them through to me, any hour. |
| What it says | The greeting, in English and Spanish, and the answers to the questions only you can answer. |
Blank fields stay blank. We don't fill in a plausible-looking 8:00 AM you never agreed to, because eventually somebody reads that back to a customer.
Every call, written down the same way.
Every call becomes a row: the number, the time, how long it ran, what it was filed as, and the job it booked if it booked one. Recovered revenue is the booked ones multiplied by what you told us a job is worth — arithmetic with your numbers, labelled as arithmetic. It is not a projection and it is not a result anybody has had yet.
Today that reaches you by email, and we'll pull the report any time you ask. There is no screen you log into. We'd rather write that down than imply a control we haven't built.
The question worth asking is what happens on the bad night.
Anything that answers your phone can take your phone down with it. That's the risk nobody selling one of these wants to discuss, so here is how ours is built to fail.
Two safety nets, and neither one is us being clever.
If our software can't reach the agent — slow, erroring, misconfigured — the call forwards to your cell and the caller can't tell anything happened. If our software is down altogether, the carrier's own fallback forwards the call to your cell with us nowhere in the loop.
We refuse to let the AI own your number.
There's a simpler way to build this, where the voice vendor holds your phone number directly. Less code, and we turned it down. In that design their outage is your phone going dead and there is nothing we could do about it. Your number stays with the carrier; the AI is a leg we dial with a timer on it.
It knows when to stop.
Two failed attempts at the same question and it quits guessing. It hands off — through to your cell if that's the rule you set, otherwise it takes the number and the details and marks the call as needing a person. It will not keep a confused customer on the line to save face.
When something breaks mid-call, the caller never hears about it.
If the calendar won't load, it says someone will confirm the time shortly. Not “I'm having a technical issue.” You lose a callback. You don't lose the job, and the person on the phone never finds out anything was wrong.
The blackout test.
On install day we turn our own side off on purpose and call your number while you watch. Your phone rings. It takes two minutes, it costs nothing, and it's the only way to prove a failure path without waiting around for it to fail.
Every one of those paths has tests behind it. None of them has run on a real customer's line — we're onboarding our first shops now. When one has, we'll say so here.
What it doesn't do.
“I hate getting answering services when I call other contractors.”
That's the bar this has to clear, and it's the reason the list below is as long as it is. Every vendor in this category has one. Most don't publish it. Here's ours, so you can find your dealbreaker now instead of in week three.
It won't quote a firm price.
It gives the range you set — most water-heater swaps run $1,100 to $1,600 — and never a number you'd be on the hook to honour.
The estimate gets booked. You price it at the door, the way you already do.
It won't diagnose the job.
It's a front desk, not a tech. It asks what you told it to ask and writes down the answers, and it doesn't have opinions about your trade.
You get the answers before you call back instead of after.
It won't argue with an angry customer.
Two failed attempts at the same question and it stops trying.
It hands off — through to your cell if that's your rule, otherwise it takes the number and flags the call as needing a person.
It won't replace your office manager.
It rings after your people, not instead of them.
She stops losing the calls she physically can't get to.
It won't sound like somebody who's worked for you nine years.
It says it's an AI in the first sentence, because in half the states we'd be breaking the law if it didn't.
Callers know what they're talking to. Most of them keep talking anyway.
It won't chase a caller who hangs up on it.
Some people will not talk to a machine, and no script in the world fixes that.
You get the number and the time, and you decide whether to call back.
It won't plug into ServiceTitan, Jobber, or Housecall Pro.
We integrate with none of them, and we're not going to imply otherwise with a logo strip.
The details land in your email and the window lands on the calendar you already keep.
It won't work if your carrier can't do conditional forwarding.
Some VoIP and Google Voice lines can't do it at all. That's not a thing we can code around.
We check on the setup call, before you pay. If it can't be done, we tell you and that's the end of it.
If one of those is a dealbreaker, it's a dealbreaker. We'd rather you find it here.
What's coming, and what it's waiting on.
Different list, different reason. Nothing above is coming back — these three are off today because somebody else's clock is running, and we won't put a date on a queue we don't control.
Texting, every last piece of it
Missed-call text-back, the alert to you when a job books, review requests after a finished job, the daily summary. None of it is switched on. Where you see texting promised in this category, assume it needs the same registration ours does.
A2P 10DLC carrier registration. Every US business that sends automated texts has to file it, we haven't filed yours, and we're not going to guess at how long the carriers take.
Email. Every call produces a summary in your inbox seconds after the caller hangs up — who called, how long, what they wanted, and the window they asked for.
Writing to your Google Calendar for every shop
Reading your free and busy time and offering windows that are genuinely open is built and tested. Writing the event for any shop that signs up is the part that isn't cleared yet.
Google's review of our calendar access. Their queue, their timetable, not ours.
It holds the window the caller picked and confirms it with you before anything gets written.
A login of your own
A screen where you'd see every call, every booking, and what the month added up to, without asking anybody for it.
Us. It's the next thing we're building, and we're not putting a date on it from here.
The same numbers by email, and we'll pull the report whenever you ask for it.
None of that is voice. Your phone gets answered either way, and neither clock holds it up.
Eight steps. You're on one of them.
We're not going to quote you a go-live window. You'd be one of our first shops, and a number off a brochure is worth nothing to you — we'll give you a date we can hold once we've seen your line and your carrier.
- 01
The setup call
You and usForty-five minutes. Hours, services, price ranges, the area you'll drive, what counts as an emergency, and who gets woken up for what.
- 02
We write your script
UsYour greeting, your questions, your answers, in the words you'd use.
- 03
We set up your line
UsA number, the routing, and the fallback that forwards to your cell when we're broken.
- 04
We connect your calendar
Us, one click from you - 05
We test it
UsReal calls into the line before it ever meets a customer of yours.
- 06
You turn on forwarding
You — the one step only you can doA short code on your carrier, or a setting in your phone system. It takes a minute and it's the step that usually goes wrong, so we do it with you on the phone.
- 07
We call your real number and let it ring out
UsIf it doesn't answer, ask your questions and hold a window on that call, you're not live. That's the gate, and passing it is our job, not yours.
- 08
Two weeks of tuning
UsWe go through what came in and fix what's off.
The ones we get asked first.
Sometimes people can tell. Not always, and it's better than it was a year ago, but we're not going to claim nobody clocks it. The comparison that matters isn't you picking up — it's the voicemail the call goes to today. Ask on a call and we'll play it for you rather than argue about it.
Your number stays your number. Your cell rings first, always, and we only get the call when you don't answer. If our side is slow, broken, or flat down, the carrier hands the call back to your cell — that's set at the phone company, not in our software, so it holds even if everything we've built is on fire. Worst case is you're back to exactly what you have today.
No, and nothing on this site should suggest otherwise. There is no texting yet — not missed-call text-back, not review requests, not an alert to you. It's waiting on A2P 10DLC carrier registration, which every US business sending automated texts has to file. Until it clears, everything reaches you by email within seconds of the call ending.
Not yet. There's no owner login, and the screen you may have seen elsewhere on this site is what we're building rather than something you have. Today the call record and the numbers reach you by email, and we'll pull a report any time you ask for one.
Straight answer: you'd be one of the first, and we're not going to invent a customer list. What makes that a fair deal rather than a bad one is written down — month to month, setup waived, thirty days money back, founding rate locked for as long as you stay, and one shop per trade per area.
The fastest way to judge it is still to hear it.
Thirty minutes with Will. He writes the scripts and runs the phone numbers, he'll play you a call, and he'll build most of yours while you're on the line. If your numbers don't clear the fee he'll tell you that too.