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Plumbing & heating·United Kingdom

SD Plumbing's phone stopped going to voicemail.

We gave SD Plumbing & Heating an AI receptionist that answers the calls the team can't, day or night, captures the job, and emails the office a clean summary. In its first 11 weeks it handled 226 calls, nine in ten of them out of hours.

AI voice agentServiceM8Out-of-hours cover
Headline outcome
226
Calls answered in the first 11 weeks
9 in 10 landed outside office hours
226
Calls answered in 11 weeks
90%
Outside Mon to Fri hours
175
Unique callers logged
225/226
Handled with no human
The challenge

Like most trades businesses, SD Plumbing & Heating could only man the phones during the working day. The calls that came in on evenings and weekends, often the urgent ones, hit voicemail, and a missed call is usually a missed job. Paying someone to answer the phone around the clock was never going to stack up for a team this size.

Where it was hurting
  • Evening and weekend calls went straight to voicemail, and voicemail rarely turns into a booked job.
  • The urgent, high-value calls were the ones most likely to come in out of hours.
  • Round-the-clock human cover was far too expensive for a team this size.
  • Nobody had a clear picture of how many jobs were quietly leaking away after 5pm.
It answers the phone better than we manage to on a busy day, and we wake up to a tidy list of jobs instead of a full voicemail box.
SD Plumbing & Heating
What we built
  • A natural-voice receptionist on the existing number

    An AI receptionist built on ElevenLabs answers on their own number through Twilio whenever the team can't pick up. No number to port, no new line to advertise.

  • Customer context pulled from ServiceM8

    Every caller is looked up in ServiceM8, so the receptionist recognises existing customers and walks into the call with the right history instead of starting cold.

  • Every job captured and summarised

    It captures what's wrong, where, and how urgent on every call, then emails the office a clean summary the moment the call ends, ready to action.

  • Knows its limits, and stays in your control

    Anything it shouldn't handle is handed back to a human, and the whole thing can be switched on or off in seconds.

The system, end to end
AI voice agent
Answers, qualifies, captures the job
Twilio telephony
Picks up on the existing number
ServiceM8 lookup
Recognises returning customers
Email summaries
Office gets an actionable note per call
How it rolled out
Week 1
Listen and map

We mapped how calls actually flow today, which ones get missed, and what a good answer sounds like for this business.

Week 2
Build the receptionist

Voice, script, and ServiceM8 lookup wired together, with the email summary tuned to what the office needs to act fast.

Week 3
Go live, out of hours first

Switched on for evenings and weekends so it covered the gap without touching the working day, then widened from there.

Ongoing
Tune from real calls

We refine handling from real conversations, and the team can flip it on or off whenever they want full manual cover.

What made this different
01
It runs on their world, not ours

The receptionist answers on the existing number and reads from ServiceM8, so customers never know anything changed and the office keeps one source of truth.

02
Out-of-hours first, low risk

We covered the gap that was actually leaking money before touching daytime calls, so there was nothing to lose by switching it on.

03
A human is always one step away

It only handles what it should, hands the rest back, and can be turned off instantly. The team stayed in control the whole way.

The outcome

In its first 11 weeks the receptionist answered 226 calls from 175 different people. More than half came in at weekends and nine in ten outside Monday-to-Friday office hours: calls that would previously have gone to voicemail. Every one was answered, summarised, and sent to the office to action, with 225 of the 226 completed end to end without a human picking up.

Before
Voicemail
Where after-hours calls landed before
After
24/7
Calls answered after we switched it on
Measured results
226
Calls answered in the first 11 weeks
90%
Came in outside Mon to Fri office hours
175
Unique callers, each one logged and summarised
Profile
Client
SD Plumbing & Heating
Industry
Plumbing & heating
Location
United Kingdom
Tech stack
ElevenLabsTwilioServiceM8Email automation
Project details
AI voice agent
Primary system
Existing number
No port, no new line
On / off in seconds
Stays in the team's control

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