I run a small HVAC business (just me and two techs), and for years I let after-hours calls go to voicemail. I'd check it in the morning, call people back, and half the time they'd already booked someone else. It was costing me jobs, but I wasn't ready to hire someone to answer phones at night or on weekends. A buddy mentioned he'd set up an AI thing to handle his after-hours calls, so I figured I'd give it a shot. Low risk, if it sucked, I'd just turn it off. I only turned it on after 6pm and on weekends. The setup was pretty straightforward: I fed it our most common questions (pricing ranges, service areas, emergency vs. non-emergency), gave it access to my calendar, and set some rules for when to forward calls to me. The AI would answer, ask what they needed, and either: * Book an appointment if it was a standard service call * Answer basic questions (yes we do ductwork, no we don't do appliances) * Forward to me if it got confused or if someone was really upset * Take a message and text me a summary What actually happened was weird. First week was rough. It booked two appointments back-to-back with no travel time, and it once told someone we could do a job we don't actually do. I had to go back in and add more detail to the FAQs and set a 45-minute buffer between bookings. But after I dialed it in, it started working. Over the next 2 months, maybe 70–80% of after-hours calls got answered (vs. zero before). I was booking roughly 8–10 extra appointments per month that I would've lost to voicemail. I stopped spending 20–30 minutes every morning returning calls. The quality of the bookings was solid. People would show up, the time slots made sense, and I wasn't getting complaints. Around week eight, I thought, why am I only using this after hours? I'm constantly getting interrupted during jobs, and half those calls are just "do you service my area" or "how much for a tune-up." So I set it to answer everything. My rules: Routine requests (maintenance, standard repairs, quotes) → AI handles it, books the call. Insurance questions, warranty stuff, or anyone who sounds frustrated → forward to me immediately. If it's not sure, it says "let me get him on the line" and either reaches me or schedules a callback window I take over on anything complicated or when someone specifically asks for me. And I still check the dashboard once a day to make sure nothing weird got booked. Occasionally, I'll move an appointment if I know a job is going to run long. There've been a couple of hiccups, one person said the voice was "too cheerful" for an emergency call, and another time it didn't catch that someone needed same-day service. But honestly, those would've been missed calls before anyway. I'm probably saving an hour a day not playing phone tag, and I'm definitely capturing more jobs. My interruptions during service calls dropped way down, which means I finish faster and don't feel as scattered. It's not perfect, and I wouldn't use it for every type of business, but for a trade where 80% of inbound calls are pretty predictable, it's been solid.