Questions tradies actually ask

No. You keep the number your customers already call. You set a conditional call forward on your existing mobile so it rings through to your Jessie number only when you don’t pick up, your line’s busy, or your phone’s off.

About ten minutes for the business questions, plus a couple of minutes to dial the call-forward code on your phone. Most tradies are live the same day they sign up.

Yes. Her greeting, the questions she asks, your emergency instructions and the answers to the questions customers always ask are all yours to edit in the dashboard, and the change is live on the next call.

She answers around the clock. You tell her your working hours at signup, so at 9pm on a Sunday she takes the job and says when you’ll be in touch rather than promising someone this afternoon. Urgent jobs are still flagged urgent.

We’re launching with Auckland tradies first. If you’re outside Auckland, join the waitlist on the homepage and we’ll email you when JessieAnswers reaches your area.

A warm, capable NZ-accented receptionist named Jessie. She introduces herself by name and your business name, tells the caller the call may be recorded, and asks the questions your trade actually needs answered.

If they ask, yes. Jessie never claims to be a person. She introduces herself as the receptionist, and when someone asks straight out whether she’s a real person or a robot she tells them she’s an AI assistant and offers to book them in or get you to ring back. Most callers carry on without blinking.

Jessie recognises sales pitches and cold calls, declines politely, and flags the call as spam in your dashboard. Spam calls and anything under 15 seconds never count against your monthly minutes.

On the Pro and Growth plans, yes. She checks your Google Calendar and books a time slot mid-call. On Starter, she captures the job and the time they’d prefer, and you confirm it yourself.

You set your emergency policy when you sign up. When Jessie works out a call is an emergency, she says that policy back to the caller word for word (for example, telling them to turn off the mains), and the text and email she sends you both come through marked URGENT. She doesn’t improvise around your wording, so whatever you want an emergency caller told, put it in your policy, including a line about ringing 111 if you want one.

Yes, on the Pro and Growth plans. When a job sounds urgent she rings your mobile, tells you who’s holding and what it’s about, and you press a key to take the call. Don’t pick up and nothing is lost: she goes back to the caller and takes the details as usual.

She texts them. If someone drops off part way through, Jessie sends a short message asking for their name and what the job is so they can reply in their own time. A job that would have walked often comes back as a text.

Yes, on every plan. Jessie texts the caller a link and they send a photo of the leak, the switchboard, whatever it is. The photos land on the lead in your dashboard, so you can see the job before you quote it.

A text with the name, number, job and how urgent it is, an email with the same, and the full lead in your dashboard with the transcript and any photos attached. All of it inside a minute of her hanging up.

Yes, on the Pro and Growth plans. Fergus is the job management system plenty of NZ tradies already run, and it stays your account: you connect it, we don’t sell it. Once it’s connected, every enquiry Jessie takes is created in your Fergus as well, with the caller’s photos attached, and she can book jobs straight into a Fergus diary. On the Growth plan she looks across your whole team and gives the caller the first slot anyone has free. ServiceM8 is coming next; if you’re on another system, leads still land in your dashboard and by text.

Fergus won’t accept an enquiry without one, and plenty of people won’t read one out over the phone. Rather than lose the job, we put an obvious placeholder on it (it starts with “no-email+”) so the enquiry still lands in your Fergus. Ring them on the mobile number instead.

Multiple staff and multiple numbers are on the Growth plan, so you can route calls to the right person or team. Booking across everyone’s diary is on the Growth plan.

Extra minutes are billed at $0.40/min including GST, on top of whatever plan you’re on. No surprise charges: you can see your usage in the dashboard at any time.

No. Every plan is month to month. Cancel from your dashboard whenever you like, no fee, no phone call required.

Yes. A call Jessie puts through to you is billed like any other call, at the normal per-minute rate. You’re only ever charged for the caller’s side of it, not twice for our leg ringing your mobile. Warm transfer is on the Pro and Growth plans.

Start on Starter if you just want the missed calls caught, Pro if you want jobs booked into your calendar or you run Fergus, Growth if there’s more than one of you on the tools. Every plan gets a 7-day free trial, and you can move up or down from the dashboard. Starter is $99, Pro $169, Growth $349, all including GST.

Yes, calls are recorded and transcribed so you have a record of what was agreed. Jessie discloses this at the start of every call, in line with the Privacy Act 2020.

She will, sometimes. She can mishear a name or a number, or read a job wrongly. That’s why every call comes with a transcript you can read, and why you confirm the details with the customer before you act on them. We say the same thing in our terms rather than burying it: check the lead before you drive across town.

Call recordings, transcripts and lead details, held in Australia (Sydney) under the Privacy Act 2020. We keep them while your account is active plus a reasonable period after you cancel, in case you need a job record for a dispute. Ask us to delete it any time by emailing hello@jessieanswers.nz. Calendar access is different: that’s gone the moment you disconnect it.