HVAC shops · Cuyahoga County and around it
Your phone rang at 11:40pm. Alexis answered it.
She heard a no-heat call out of Parma, texted the tech on call, and booked the 8am window. You read about it over coffee.
Alexis, your receptionist. She answers every call to your shop, all day and all night, and a person in your time zone listens to your real calls every week and retunes her. You never open a dashboard.
Four sliders, no email needed to see the figure. The demo line opens with the Cleveland pilot; until it answers we will not print a number that rings nowhere.
- 00:02AlexisWexler Heating and Cooling, this is Alexis. This call is recorded. What's going on tonight.
- 00:09CallerFurnace quit. House is down to 54 and my kid has a cough. I'm in Parma.
- 00:16AlexisNo heat, and Parma is inside your service area. Do you smell gas anywhere in the house.
- 00:22CallerNo smell. It just clicks and shuts off.
- 00:28AlexisUnderstood. I'm marking this no heat and texting the tech on call right now.
- 00:34AlexisThe service call is $89, and it comes off the repair if he fixes it tonight.
- 00:41 · on-call alert sentNo heat · Parma · caller waiting · tap to take the callto Dave, 11:41pm
- 00:48AlexisDave has it. If he can't get to you tonight I'm holding 8am–10am tomorrow.
- 00:55CallerTake the 8 o'clock. Thanks for picking up.
- BookedWed 8am–10am · no heat · new customer00:58
- 01:02AlexisBooked. A text confirmation is on its way to this number.
The phone is the business. Most nights nobody answers it.
A 2–10 truck shop lives on inbound calls, and they are answered by whoever happens to be free. Usually nobody. The worst night of the year is the first cold snap, which is also the night the calls are worth the most.
A homeowner with no heat at 9pm in January does not leave a voicemail. He hangs up and dials the next shop on the results page.
$45,000–$120,000
Estimated missed-call losses for one shop over one year.
- 27–62%
- of inbound calls to home-service contractors go unanswered, estimated
- $300–$600
- an average service call, and $5,000–$8,000 on a replacement, estimated
- 100–400
- inbound calls a month at a shop this size, estimated
Every figure above is a published third-party industry estimate, not a RingReady measurement. We publish a refund policy, never an earnings claim.
Put your own numbers in instead
Four of the five ways to cover that call lose it.
Voicemail
free
Where jobs go to die. He is already dialing the next shop.
A family phone
somebody's evenings
Covers 9-to-5 in a good week, and burns out by spring.
An answering service
$245–$700/mo
A stranger reading a script who cannot triage a gas smell or see your calendar.
A front-desk hire
$3,000–$4,000/mo
Plus management, plus payroll, and they go home at 5pm.
A $49 tool you configure yourself
$49–$199/mo
Hands a busy owner a prompt box and a port request. It gets half done.
Alexis, retuned every week by a personRingReady AI
$1,500–$4,000/mo
She answers in under two seconds at 11pm on a Sunday, knows Parma is yours and Medina is not, and never quits. You never open a dashboard.
Competitor figures are their own published list prices at the time of writing and are theirs to change. Hiring and answering-service costs are estimates.
step 1
She answers
Under two seconds, any hour, every call. She says the call is recorded, then handles it: your hours, your service area, the diagnostic fee, which brands you will and will not touch.
step 2
She triages
No heat, no AC, suspected gas. An emergency gets an on-call alert by text to the tech on tonight, and the caller is offered a live transfer instead of a promise.
step 3
She books
From live calendar availability, in windows you allow, with the new customer captured and a text confirmation sent. At 6:10am you get the call summary.
The limits are the product.
A receptionist who oversteps costs you more than one who says she will find out. These are written down because a contractor is right to ask, and because a caller's safety outranks a booking.
She never quotes a replacement price
A furnace replacement is a conversation with you, on your terms. She takes the details and gets you in front of it.
She never treats a suspected gas leak as a booking
She tells the caller to leave the house, touch no switches, and call 911 or the gas utility from outside. Then she alerts you.
She is not a licensed dispatcher
She triages and alerts. A human decides who drives where. We will never call her anything else.
She never calls anyone
Inbound only. No outbound dialing is built, sold or promised, and nobody who dials the demo line gets called back.
A person listens to your calls every week.
The hard part of a phone was never the software. It is the hundred small local facts: which suburbs you cover, what the diagnostic fee is this year, which brands you refuse, who is on call Saturday, and what “the furnace is making a noise” has to become on the schedule.
That is labor, and labor is what a self-serve tool cannot sell at $49. Every call summary carries Tell Alexis: one box, plain words. Your notes queue for the weekly tuning, and on Monday you get a short list of exactly what changed on your line.
Tell Alexis
scripted example
We don't go to Medina. Don't book it.
Diagnostic is $99 now, not $89.
If they say the pilot light, that's a same-day, not a Thursday.
Each note makes Alexis more specifically your receptionist. That is the whole moat, and you are the one who builds it.
One payment for setup and the first 30 days.
Published so you can compare us to the $199 tools and the $3,500 hire. After the demo he names one plan and sends one link — and if you already know which one you want, every plan is on the table here.
Starter
$2,250
$750 setup + $1,500 first month
$1,500/mo after
300 included minutes
Solo owner-operator who answers his own phone.
What Starter includesPro
$4,000
$1,500 setup + $2,500 first month
$2,500/mo after
800 included minutes
2–6 trucks, with after-hours coverage. The one we usually recommend.
What Pro includesElite
$6,000
$2,000 setup + $4,000 first month
$4,000/mo after
2,000 included minutes
6–10 trucks, CRM integration and outbound recall.
What Elite includesThe pilot is refundable in full
Ask inside the first 30 days and you get your money back, processed within three business days. That is the only promise we make about money. We make no claim about recovered revenue, booked jobs or answer rates.
Nothing renews itself
Each month we email a renewal link for the next 30 days, with that month's calls on it and overage minutes on their own line. No card is kept, nothing bills in the background, and stopping is one reply.
- Where we work
- Greater Cleveland at launch: Cuyahoga, Lorain, Medina, Summit, Portage, Geauga and Lake counties. Ohio comes next, one metro at a time.
- Your phone number
- It stays yours. Nothing moves until you say so, we do the paperwork, and it is reversible. Your number is the most conservative asset you own and we treat it that way.
- What you have to do
- One five-minute call with the founder, then about twelve fields about your shop. No dashboard, no prompt writing, no port request to chase.
- Who you talk to
- The founder runs every demo himself: five minutes, no slides, he calls your mobile. He is also the person who answers your text at 7pm.
What is your phone costing you tonight?
Move the four sliders to your shop. The figure updates as you go, and nothing is sent anywhere until you ask for the written report.
Missed-Call Audit · four questions
Your shop's numbers, not ours.
Rough is fine. A 4-truck shop usually runs 150-400.
Estimated at 27-62% across home-service contractors. Count after-hours.
Service, not replacement. Estimated range is $300-$600.
Used only to break the figure down per truck.
Estimated revenue at risk
$11,025
a month, estimated
- Calls nobody answers
- 70 a month
- Jobs behind them
- 25 a month
- Over twelve months
- $132,300
- Per truck
- $2,756 a month
Not every missed call was a job. We count 35% of them as work you'd have booked, on purpose, so the number holds up when you show it to someone. Every figure here is an estimate from your four answers, not a measurement of your line.
opening with the Cleveland pilot
Soon you will dial a number and hear her yourself.
The demo line goes up with the first Cleveland shops, and this page will carry it written out in full, so you can call from the truck and invent the worst call of your week. Until it answers, we will not print a number that rings nowhere.
In the meantime the founder does it in person: fifteen minutes, no slides, he calls your mobile and plays back what Alexis would have said on your line. If it is not a fit he says so on the call.