Trades and installers
The shape is narrow and it fits well: catch the call you cannot answer, find out what the job is and where, agree a time to look at it, and chase the quote until it is answered. The hard boundary is the number. Connect will not price a job, because safe_sales refuses any commercial term Knowledge does not support and escalates it to you instead.
The call you were not going to answer#
A trade's worst hour is the one where the phone rings on site. The enquiry that goes to voicemail usually goes to the next installer instead, and there is nothing to review afterwards because nothing was recorded anywhere. A line configured on channel_routes with hours, an assignment and a routing rule answers instead, and what comes out is a calls row with a transcript, a summary, a Person, and a follow-up if a commitment was made.
- What the job is — in the caller's own words, kept as the transcript rather than paraphrased into a form.
- Where it is — checked against your service area if Knowledge carries one, so a job ninety miles away is not accepted on the call.
- Access and timing — when somebody is there, whether there is parking, whether it is occupied.
- How urgent — which is a question about their week, not a diagnosis of the fault.
The visit, and why it is a follow-up#
Connect has no diary. Agreeing to look at a job on Thursday morning produces a dated follow-up with a reason attached, not a calendar entry, and the double-booking problem stays yours. That sounds like a limitation and is partly a feature for a small outfit: the follow-up is the thing that gets chased if the visit does not happen, which a calendar entry never does.
| What happened | The record | What Connect can do next |
|---|---|---|
| You quoted on the spot | A follow-up with the quote's reason | Chase for an answer on the date you set |
| You need to price it later | A task follow-up — work for a person | Nothing is sent; it sits on the follow-ups screen until you do it |
| Customer wants a variation | A reply on the same thread and Person | Collect the detail, refuse to re-price it, escalate |
| Job won | An opportunity moved on the pipeline | Post-sale follow-ups and a support case if something goes wrong |
| No answer at all | The follow-up goes overdue and is visible | A phone chase, drained two per tick under the same call gates |
Phone follow-ups have a deliberate expiry: a row more than 24 hours late is closed as missed and never rung, because a very late call-back is worse than none. If chasing matters more than tidiness, put the follow-up where you will act on it rather than trusting a drain to catch a stale one.
The price question, which will come up on every call#
Callers ask what it costs within the first minute. Connect will say what Knowledge supports — a call-out fee that is written down is a fact and can be quoted — and will refuse to estimate anything that is not. The refusal is the correct behaviour rather than a gap, and it is worth saying out loud to your customers in the wording you set: an estimate given by software and then contradicted by you is a worse first impression than a straight 'I will have somebody price that'.
What is not going to work#
- An 'on my way' text
- Outbound SMS is provider-dependent and the carrier on the live account carries none. WhatsApp can carry the same message where the provider's session-window rules allow it.
- Photos over every channel equally
- Email attachments and images are handled by the file service — PNG, JPEG and WebP among them. WhatsApp media handling is whatever the configured provider supports; Connect exposes it and does not simulate the rest.
- A recording of what the customer agreed
- Recording is foundation and is not enabled on the live carrier. The transcript is the record.
- Passing an angry caller to you mid-call
- Completed human transfer is foundation and depends on a provider capability that is not enabled. The workable version is a call-back follow-up created on the spot.
Where the money goes#
Voice, and specifically turns. A live session bills on audio tokens — four times the model's text input rate, roughly 2.7× on output — and is re-billed for its whole context every turn, so a rambling six-minute call costs many times a focused ninety-second one. A call reporting no tokens is still charged from its own duration. Written follow-up afterwards is close to free by comparison, which is the argument for taking the detail on the call and doing the chasing in writing.
Questions#
Can it quote a job from a photo?
It can read the photo and describe what it sees, and it will not turn that into a price. Pricing is refused unless Knowledge supports the figure, and a photograph of a boiler is not a source for a number. The useful output is a complete enquiry — job, location, access, urgency, image — waiting for you to price.
What happens if two customers ring at the same time?
Both are answered if there is worker capacity. The gate refuses not_ready when every live worker is over a load of 0.85 per core, which is the same number the worker gives its own admission control, so the two agree. A refused call is recorded rather than silently lost, and appears in Needs You.
Can Connect text the customer to confirm the visit?
Not by SMS on the live carrier, which carries none. Email always works; WhatsApp works where the workspace has a provider configured and the provider's session window allows an outbound message. The Phone screen states the messaging readiness rather than offering a thread that cannot send.