85%
Around 85% of people who cannot reach a person never call back.
Contractor Answering Service That Qualifies Every Lead
Project enquiries are worth too much to lose to voicemail, and too expensive to chase without qualifying. ItsBot is a contractor answering service that answers every call, qualifies the job on first contact, routes it by scope and value, and follows up the quote until it closes.
Why It Matters
One Missed Enquiry Can Be a Whole Project Lost.
A single enquiry can be a job worth tens of thousands. Letting it hit voicemail while you are on site is, in pure cash terms, the most expensive call anyone in the trades can miss.
But the reverse is also true, and nobody puts it on a website. The wrong enquiry, unqualified, costs you a day. A site visit, a set of measurements, an evening writing a proposal, and a customer who was never going to spend the money. Do that four times a month and you have lost a working week to people who were browsing.
21x
Respond within five minutes and you are roughly 100x more likely to reach the customer and 21x more likely to qualify the job.
The Qualification
It Asks the Questions You Don't Have Time to Ask.
Every contractor knows what a properly qualified lead looks like. Almost nobody captures one on the phone, because you are on site and the call lasted ninety seconds and you said "I'll pop round Thursday" because it was easier than asking.
What is the actual scope?
A single-storey rear extension is not "some building work." It gets the detail written down.
Have you got drawings?
Architect drawings, planning already in, or a Pinterest board. Three completely different jobs.
Do you have planning permission or building regs sorted?
If not, you are quoting on something that might never happen.
What is your timeline?
"Starting in spring" and "whenever, no rush" are not the same lead, and one of them is not a lead.
Have you had other quotes?
And how did they compare. This tells you what you are up against and whether they are shopping or deciding.
Who is making the decision?
If the person on the phone needs to check with someone, you need both of them in the room, and you need to know that before you drive over.
The Budget Question
It Asks What You're Too Polite to Ask
Here is the most useful thing on this page.
The question that determines whether a job is real is "what have you budgeted for this," and almost no contractor asks it on a first call. It feels rude. It feels like it might scare them off. So instead you drive over, spend two hours, write a proposal, and find out three weeks later that they had twelve thousand in mind for a forty thousand job.
It does not care that the question is awkward, it never has a bad day, and it never decides to skip it because the customer sounded nice. It asks it the way a good salesperson asks it, framed as a range so the customer does not feel cornered, and it writes the answer down.
Then it does the thing that actually saves you the week: it flags the mismatch. Big scope, small budget, and it tells you before you have got in the van, rather than after you have written the proposal.
The Playbook
Built for Contractors, Not a Generic Message Pad.
| The call | What it asks | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Major project, extension, renovation, new build | Full scope. Drawings. Planning. Budget range. Timeline. Decision-maker. Other quotes | Qualifies properly. Books a survey only if it passes your thresholds. Briefs you before you arrive. |
| Small repair or maintenance job | What, where, how urgent, what is the value. | Books it, routes it to whoever handles small works, or declines it if it is below your minimum. |
| "Just getting an idea of cost" | Do you have a budget in mind. Are you ready to proceed. What is the timeline. | Identifies a browser. Captures them, sends information, does not burn a site visit. |
| Budget clearly below scope | Reframes gently, offers a phased option if you have one. | Flags the mismatch. Does not book the survey. |
| Commercial or repeat trade enquiry | Company, project, procurement route, decision process, payment terms. | Routes to whoever handles commercial. Different sale, different person. |
| Work outside your trade or area | Whatever it is. | Declines politely, on the call, and logs it. |
The call
What it asks
What it does
The call
Major project, extension, renovation, new build
What it asks
Full scope. Drawings. Planning. Budget range. Timeline. Decision-maker. Other quotes
What it does
Qualifies properly. Books a survey only if it passes your thresholds. Briefs you before you arrive.
The call
Small repair or maintenance job
What it asks
What, where, how urgent, what is the value.
What it does
Books it, routes it to whoever handles small works, or declines it if it is below your minimum.
The call
"Just getting an idea of cost"
What it asks
Do you have a budget in mind. Are you ready to proceed. What is the timeline.
What it does
Identifies a browser. Captures them, sends information, does not burn a site visit.
The call
Budget clearly below scope
What it asks
Reframes gently, offers a phased option if you have one.
What it does
Flags the mismatch. Does not book the survey.
The call
Commercial or repeat trade enquiry
What it asks
Company, project, procurement route, decision process, payment terms.
What it does
Routes to whoever handles commercial. Different sale, different person.
The call
Work outside your trade or area
What it asks
Whatever it is.
What it does
Declines politely, on the call, and logs it.
The Routing
The Right Job Gets to the Right Person.
A £200 repair and a £200,000 renovation should not land in the same inbox, and they should not land on the same person.
You tell ItsBot how your business is organised. Who takes the big projects. Who handles small works and maintenance. Who does commercial. What your minimum job value is. What scope requires you personally and what does not.
Then it sorts every enquiry against that before anyone sees it. The big one gets to you, fully qualified, with a written brief. The small one gets booked without interrupting you. The one that is not a fit gets a polite answer and never reaches your desk at all.
This is what an answering service for contractors should do. Most of them hand you a list of names and let you sort it out at nine in the evening.
The Follow-Up
Proposals Don't Die. They Go Quiet.
Contracting has the longest sales cycle of any trade on this site. You send a proposal for a substantial project and then nothing happens for a fortnight, because the customer is thinking, talking to their partner, waiting on a mortgage, comparing you with two others, and getting on with their life.
The contractor who calls them in that fortnight wins. Almost nobody does, because you are on site, and calling feels like chasing, and you tell yourself they will get back to you.
The ItsBot Estimate Follow-Up calls at 24 hours, again at 72, and then at whatever interval you set across the weeks it takes. It answers the questions, handles the price objection, offers the phased option if you have one, and books the start date. It also goes back through the proposals from six months ago that never closed, which for most contractors is a list worth more than a year of advertising.
You already did the survey. You already wrote the quote. The expensive part is done.
Hear It
A Project Enquiry, Qualified and Routed.
No New Tool
It Works With the Software You Run
No new system to manage, no double entry. ItsBot captures the enquiry and logs it where you already work, with the scope, the budget band, the timeline, the planning status, and the decision-maker already filled in. Every caller lands in your CRM whether they qualified or not, which means your pipeline is a real pipeline and not a pile of missed calls.
See Integrations
Your AI Front Office
Three Agents. One Contracting Business.
The ItsBot Dispatcher
Answers the line, qualifies the enquiry, routes by scope and value, declines what does not fit.
The ItsBot After-Hours Agent
Takes the evening enquiries, which is when homeowners actually ring about extensions.
The ItsBot Estimate Follow-Up
Chases the proposals through the long weeks it takes, and works the dead list.
Same Voice Agent, three jobs. This is your 24/7 contractor answering service, running across voice, chat, and text on one knowledge base.
Call the AI Yourself
Proof
Don't Take Our Word For It.
Call the demo line and have a real conversation with the Voice Agent. Then decide.
That is the whole pitch. We are not going to show you a statistic about ourselves. We are going to give you a phone number, and you are going to try to break it.
Every founder should use this for their business. It saves time, improves productivity, and makes operations so much easier.
Startup Advisor
Angel Investor
What is a missed project enquiry costing you?
Get StartedYearly number$169,000
FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions
Most of them answer the phone and hand you a message. ItsBot qualifies the enquiry on the first call: scope, drawings, planning status, timeline, budget range, and who is actually making the decision. Then it routes it by value, books the survey only if it passes your thresholds, and chases the proposal until it closes. One takes a message. One protects your week.