AI receptionist · Canberra
Canberra tradies: frost, Mr Fluffy, and a border you cross twice a day.
Fifty-nine frost mornings a year, a thousand houses with a loose-fill asbestos history, and Queanbeyan ten minutes away in a different state with different rules. Receptly answers every call you can’t, knows the districts and the ACT rules, and books it in.
1300 556 520Ring it now and say a pipe’s split overnight in Kambah. See what it asks.
The Canberra problem
Winter mornings are the busiest hour of your year, and you’re already under a house
Canberra Airport averages fifty-nine days a year at or below zero, and has recorded minus ten. Frost work is not a novelty here, it’s a season. The calls come in a block between six and nine in the morning: split pipes, dead heat pumps, ducted systems that ran all night and gave up. That is exactly the hour you are already on the first job, and every call you don’t take goes to the next name on the list.
The rest of it is a government town’s rhythm. Property managers with work orders, embassies and agencies with their own access rules, tenants who can’t authorise anything, and a building stock that runs from 1960s ex-govvies to Molonglo estates finished last month. Each of those is a different set of questions, and voicemail asks none of them.
Local knowledge
It knows Canberra
It’s set up for Canberra before it takes a call. Not a generic script with the city name dropped in: the suburbs, the 02 numbers, the way work is spread, and the things a caller from Canberra will ask.
- The districts, not just the suburbs It asks the suburb and works out the district: Belconnen (Bruce, Kaleen, Evatt, Macquarie), Gungahlin (Harrison, Franklin, Casey, Amaroo), Tuggeranong (Kambah, Wanniassa, Calwell, Conder), Woden and Weston Creek (Curtin, Mawson, Holder, Duffy), Molonglo Valley (Wright, Coombs, Denman Prospect), the Inner North (Dickson, Braddon, Lyneham, Ainslie, O’Connor) and the Inner South (Kingston, Griffith, Narrabundah, Yarralumla). You tell it which districts you cover.
- The border Queanbeyan, Jerrabomberra and Googong are New South Wales. Different licensing body, different rules, and for a lot of Canberra businesses a different rate. It asks where the job is before it books anything, and if you don’t cross the border it says so politely instead of booking you into another state.
- The age of the house Canberra housing splits hard by decade. It asks when the place was built, because a 1968 ex-government house in Page and a 2024 townhouse in Whitlam are not the same job. Where the answer is the sixties or seventies it makes a note about loose-fill asbestos so you know before you’re in the roof, and it never tells a caller their house is or isn’t affected, because that isn’t a phone call’s job.
- Who to ring when it’s not your job No water in the street is Icon Water on 02 6248 3111. Wires down or the whole block dark is Evoenergy on 13 10 93. A gas smell is Evoenergy’s gas line on 13 19 09. Storm damage is the SES on 132 500. The receptionist sends the caller there first and still takes their details, because they’ll want a tradie once the network’s finished.
ACT rules
The ACT rules it respects
Licences
Builders, electricians, plumbers, drainers and gasfitters in the ACT are licensed through Access Canberra under the Construction Occupations (Licensing) Act 2004. Callers ask for the number and the receptionist reads yours out when they do. It never claims a licence you don’t hold and never promises a certificate it can’t issue. A job in Queanbeyan is NSW Fair Trading’s patch, and it knows the difference.
Recording calls
The ACT’s Listening Devices Act 1992 makes it an offence to record a private conversation even when you’re a party to it, unless an exception applies. We don’t rely on the exceptions. Every call opens with a short announcement that it’s an automated receptionist and the call is recorded, so the caller knows before they say anything. Details in our call recording disclosure.
Quoting
It doesn’t quote. It captures what you need to price the job properly, tells the caller you’ll confirm, and never guesses a number on a frost morning when you’ve got thirty of them waiting.
Your trade
Set up for your trade, in Canberra
Every Canberra setup starts from a trade script we’ve already built, then gets your suburbs, your hours and your rules on top. See how it works for plumbers, electricians, air conditioning, roofing, painters, landscaping, pest control, locksmiths, builders.
How it works
One call. We do the rest.
- One call with usWe’re in Sydney; setup is a phone call wherever you are. We learn how you run: the jobs you take, the suburbs you cover, what’s urgent, what gets quoted.
- Your number stays the sameKeep the number on the van. Calls you don’t pick up in a few rings divert to the receptionist.
- Live within the weekWe listen to the first month of calls and tune it. Anything it can’t handle, it takes a message and texts you.
Pricing
Less than one missed frost-morning callout
Starts the day it goes live. Nothing charged until it’s answered your calls for a week. Cancel inside the week and you pay nothing, setup included.
Less than one missed frost-morning callout. A lot less than a receptionist.
No surprise bills: go over two months running and we tell you before we move you up. Full pricing and what’s included.
Book a setup callWork out what missed calls are costing you with the missed call calculator. Other cities: all locations.