AI answering service that picks up at any hour

Your business line rings while you are under a sink, on a roof, or asleep. DispatchLine answers the calls you forward to it, in your company’s name, at any hour, with no hold queue and no “please leave a message.” The caller hears your greeting, in a natural voice, from a receptionist that can book the job or take the details.

How the AI answering service works on your line

You keep your number. Nothing ports and nothing changes on your trucks or your cards. You forward the line to the local number attached to your account, in one of four ways, and your carrier does the rest.

1. No answer after a set number of rings. Your phone rings first; if nobody picks up after the count you choose, the call forwards and the agent answers. A common starting point for a one-truck shop.
2. Busy. The second caller forwards instead of hearing a busy signal or your voicemail. For a small shop, the calls that arrive while you are already on one are the ones nothing else catches.
3. Always. Every call goes straight to the agent, for a closed office or for owners who want every call logged and booked the same way.
4. After-hours schedule. If your phone system or carrier supports scheduled forwarding, it forwards at closing time and releases in the morning. If not, switch always-forward on at close and off at open.

Codes differ between landline, mobile and VoIP carriers, and some charge for conditional forwarding; the forwarding guide walks through each type. Forwarding is also the last step, not the first: after the setup wizard runs we build the agent and buy you a local number, you press Test call, and the agent phones you. The number starts answering and the forwarding steps unlock once you answer that call and stay on for at least 30 seconds, so you hear it work before a customer does.

Once the forward lands, the agent picks up: no queue, no hold music, no menu to press through. The first thing the caller hears is your greeting.

What the caller hears

You write the greeting in the portal. The default is “Thanks for calling Miller Plumbing, this is Riley. How can I help you today?”, with your company and agent name filled in. Riley is the default name; change it if you like.

Before the greeting, every call opens with one sentence: “This call is answered by an automated assistant and may be recorded.” The recording half cannot be switched off on its own; turn recording off in the portal and the sentence becomes “This call is answered by an automated assistant.” The state-by-state recording guide covers which rule applies to you.

You pick one of four voices, two women and two men, all American English. The agent speaks at a normal pace, pauses for the answer, and handles interruptions the way a person would. It asks for name, address and callback number, and reads the number and address back before it books.

What you control

• The greeting, the agent’s name and the voice.
• Business hours per weekday, in your time zone, so the agent knows what “tomorrow morning” means.
• Whether calls are recorded at all.
• Spam screening, on or off.
• The emergency keywords and what happens when one is heard, explained on the emergency triage page.
• The arrival windows it can book into, explained on the appointment booking page.
• The business facts it answers from: service fee, service area, Sunday surcharge, water heaters yes or no. Anything not written there gets “I’ll have the office confirm that.”

You edit all of it in the portal, without a ticket, and the next call uses it.

The honest-AI answer

The agent is instructed never to claim to be a person. Asked whether it is a robot, it is given a fixed line to answer with: it is your company’s automated assistant, it can book the appointment and get the details to the team, or it can have someone call back, and which would the caller prefer. It does not dodge and it does not pretend. A caller who asks is checking that the message will reach a human, and the callback offer answers that.

Robocalls and sales pitches

With spam screening on, the agent ends the call in the first seconds when the caller is a recording, an automated menu, five seconds of silence after the greeting, or a sales pitch aimed at your business: listings, SEO, merchant services, warranties, loans. It says “Thanks, we’re not interested” and hangs up. The call shows in your log as spam, so you can see what stopped reaching you, and it counts as one minute. Spam and robocalls explains what gets caught and what slips through.

How long a call can run

Every call the agent answers is capped at eight minutes, on every plan and during the trial; for illustration, a booking call of two to three minutes and an emergency with safety instructions of four to five minutes both fit comfortably. During the 3-day trial, what bounds your usage is its 150 minutes rather than the length of any single call. Paid plans have no minute allowance and no per-minute charge. If your line gets bursts, email support@getdispatchline.com and we will tell you what your account does with them.

Minutes and how they are counted

Plans are measured in talk time on calls the agent handles, rounded up to the next minute per call: two minutes and ten seconds counts as three. A screened robocall counts as one. The free trial includes 150 minutes across 3 days, and when they are gone the agent answers with a short message saying the line is paused rather than running up a bill. Your card sits on file from the start, nothing is charged until day 4, and you can cancel before then from your billing page. Canceling during the trial ends it at once and the agent stops answering. Paid plans carry no per-minute charge; pricing has the three plans side by side.

What it will not do

• Quote a price you did not write into the business facts.
• Diagnose the problem or promise a fix.
• Promise a time that is not booked on the board.
• Take a payment or a card number.
• Text a caller who did not agree to a text on the call.
• Claim to be human.

What you see in the portal

Every answered call appears within about a minute: the recording if recording is on, the transcript, a short summary, the outcome, and flags for emergency and after-hours. Booked jobs land on the appointments board; calls that did not book go to the lead list with one-tap callback. One email on Monday gives you the week’s numbers, and team members are unlimited. The recordings page covers what is stored and how to turn it off.

One line for each trade

• Plumbing: the Saturday “water everywhere” call forwards on the third ring, gets the main shutoff instruction, and books the earliest open window while you are still driving.
• HVAC: the first 95-degree day puts your line on busy-forward, and the callers you cannot reach hear a receptionist instead of your voicemail.
• Electrical: a “breaker keeps tripping” call at 9pm is asked about a burning smell or buzzing right after the name and address, then booked into the first open window, which on default hours is the next morning at the earliest.

Limits and honest status

Text confirmations are included and go from one shared DispatchLine messaging number that names your business, to callers who agreed to a text on the call and to nobody else. The window is read back by voice as well. Booking and emergency alerts reach you by email today; owner SMS alerts are optional and need opt-in and program approval. Google Calendar sync and a Jobber connection are in development, and Housecall Pro and ServiceTitan are planned, so today appointments live on the portal board, and call history exports to CSV. That is what 24/7 AI call answering means here: the calls you forward, answered and written down. For the full path from ring to booking, read how it works.

FAQ

Do I have to change my business phone number?

No. You keep your number and forward it to the local number attached to your account. Forwarding is a carrier setting you can turn off at any time.

Does the AI answer on the first ring?

It answers as soon as the forward reaches it. With no-answer forwarding the caller hears your phone ring the number of times you set first; with always-forward the agent picks up right away. There is no hold queue in either case.

What does it say if someone asks whether it is a real person?

It says it is your company’s automated assistant, that it can book the appointment or pass the details on, and that it can have a person call back. It is instructed never to claim to be human and never to avoid the question.

Can I turn off the recording announcement?

Not on its own. Whenever recording is on, the greeting includes the notice. You can turn recording off entirely in the portal, and then no notice is played and nothing is recorded.

What happens when the trial minutes run out?

The trial covers 150 minutes across 3 days. When they are used up the agent answers with a short message saying the line is paused, so the trial cannot run up a bill. Your plan starts on day 4 unless you cancel from the billing page first.

When does my number start answering?

After your test call. Once the setup wizard is done we build the agent and buy a local number for your account, and you press Test call in the portal so the agent phones you. Once you answer it and stay on for at least 30 seconds, the number starts answering and the forwarding steps unlock, so you hear it work before a customer does.

Does a robocall cost me a minute?

Yes, one minute per screened call. The agent ends it within the first few seconds, logs it as spam, and it never reaches you.

Does it speak Spanish?

Not today. The agent answers in English only, in one of four American English voices. Answering Spanish-speaking callers has a routing plan you can set up this week.

Can I listen to calls live?

No. The portal does not let you listen while a call is in progress. When recording is on, the recording, transcript and two-line summary are in the portal about a minute after the call ends, and you can play the call back there. If you want a person on emergency calls, set the emergency action to live transfer to a number you choose.

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