Frankie AI Receptionist for Tradies & Contractors

Frankie is built around the calls a trade business actually gets — new enquiries, existing customers following up, and the occasional complaint — and handles each in a way that fits the situation:

• Answers calls in your business’s name, using the services and business hours you’ve set up.
• Answers common questions about what you offer, and pricing where you’ve chosen to share it.
• Captures the caller’s details and what they’re calling about, so nothing gets lost between calls.
• Checks availability and can put a job straight into your calendar where it’s connected.
• Sends a follow-up text message, such as confirming a booking or a quote request.
• Hands the call over to a real person when it’s something Frankie isn’t set up to answer.

Rather than a one-size-fits-all script, Frankie is configured around the specific business it’s answering for — the services on offer, business hours, and whatever pricing detail you’re comfortable sharing over the phone.

It can also draw on information already on your business’s own website, so it has a working knowledge of who you are and what you do without you having to type it all in from scratch. If you’re closed when a call comes in, Frankie mentions that naturally and offers to take a message or arrange a call-back, rather than pretending you’re available around the clock.

That setup is something you keep control of, not a one-off form you fill in and forget — as your services, pricing or hours change, you update Frankie the same way, so the answers it gives stay current rather than drifting out of date.

Not every call needs the same response, so Frankie tags each enquiry by what it actually is, which makes it far quicker to see what’s waiting and what genuinely needs your attention first rather than scrolling through an undifferentiated call log:

• New customer — a first-time enquiry with no prior relationship to the business.
• Quotation request — someone specifically asking for pricing or a formal quote.
• Standard job — a caller wanting to book or schedule a service.
• Urgent — a call that explicitly mentions urgency, an emergency or a time-sensitive need.
• Complaint — dissatisfaction or an issue with work already carried out.
• Follow-up — a reference to a previous interaction or an existing job.

Every call Frankie takes becomes a record you can review — who called, what they wanted, and any details captured — instead of a missed-call icon with no context behind it. That gives you, or whoever manages enquiries for the business, a clear list to work through rather than a pile of voicemails to transcribe.

A complaint is handled with a different tone entirely: Frankie is set up to acknowledge the issue, apologise for the inconvenience and focus on capturing the details accurately, rather than trying to resolve it on the spot, so nothing gets lost between the call and a callback from you.

Frankie can also help with email enquiries, replying in the business’s name and drawing on the same information it’s been set up with, so a written enquiry gets a timely response even outside a phone call.

Frankie suits sole trader tradies who are on the tools all day and simply can’t get to every call, as much as it suits a growing contracting business fielding enquiries across several jobs at once.

It’s also useful for covering the calls that come in outside business hours — evenings, weekends, during a job that runs long — where the alternative is usually a missed call and a customer who rings the next name on their list instead. A business running Frankie alongside My Trade Hub’s estimating and tendering tools gets a fuller picture of a new enquiry, from the first call through to the tender it might turn into.

Voicemail captures that someone called, but nothing more — no answers to their questions, no sense of urgency, and a caller left to decide whether to leave a message or try someone else. A traditional answering service can talk to a caller, but typically has none of your business’s specific detail unless you brief it constantly, and usually comes with the cost and hours of a human service.

Frankie sits between the two: it’s available whenever your phone would otherwise go unanswered, and it’s set up with your actual services, hours and pricing, so it can give a caller a genuine answer rather than just taking a name and number.

Frankie is only as good as the information it’s given, so it’s worth treating its setup with the same care as briefing a new staff member:

• Keep your services, pricing and business hours current — Frankie answers from what you’ve told it, not what it assumes.
• Have a clear path for genuine emergencies, so an urgent call doesn’t just sit in a general enquiry list.
• Review captured enquiries regularly rather than assuming Frankie has closed the loop on every call.
• Expect Frankie to hand over or flag anything outside what it’s set up to answer — it’s built to capture and triage enquiries, not to replace every conversation with a customer.