A receptionist for the plumber who's under a house when the hot water dies

A realistic call, the way Giday runs it:

Giday: Giday, you've reached Harbour Plumbing — Verity speaking, on a recorded line. How can I help you?

Caller: Hi, our kitchen drain's completely blocked, water's backing up into the sink.

Giday: I can get someone to that. A blocked drain is from $180 — that's an estimate based on what you've told me, and Dave will confirm on site. He can do this afternoon between 1 and 4, or tomorrow from 8. Which suits?

Caller: This afternoon.

Giday: This afternoon between 1 and 4. Your name, the address and best mobile for a confirmation?

What happened: An arrival window in the diary, the price from Dave's list with Dave's hedge, a text to the customer, a text to Dave. If the caller had said water was pouring through the ceiling, it would have been put through, not booked.

A plumber's calls come in three kinds, and Giday works out which it has early:

• It's urgent. Water through a ceiling, a burst pipe, no hot water in winter. If you've set urgent calls to patch, the caller is put straight through to your nominated number, day or night. If you've left it blank, it takes the details and texts you a priority message. Urgent calls never sit in a queue.
• They want a price. On the Busy plan and up it quotes from your approved price list — one honest number, hedged as an estimate confirmed on site. Anything not on the list becomes a message for you to price. On smaller plans it states any fee you've published and takes a message for the rest.
• They want a booking. The dripping tap, the new mixer, the quote for a bathroom reno: your next real arrival window, in the suburbs you nominate, booked and confirmed by text.

Outside your hours one of two things happens, and you choose which: book for the next day, or patch genuine emergencies to you and book everything else for the morning. No surcharge either way. The 2am call costs what the 2pm one does.

• Overflow. You keep answering; Giday picks up what rings out while you're with a job.
• Before open and after close. Divert at close, divert back at open. The 7:50am rebook is in the calendar before you've unlocked.
• All the time. The one-person business with no front desk.

Bookings land in your calendar through a subscription feed any calendar app reads, and by text. On the Busy plan and up they can go into ServiceM8 too. There's no link into other salon, grooming or job software yet; if you run one, bookings reach you by calendar and by text, not inside it.

Every plan answers 24/7, books into your calendar and takes messages. The difference is minutes and machinery: Starter $49 for a solo plumber with a handful of calls a day, Steady $99 to read your live calendar and keep transcripts, Busy $199 to quote from your price list and link ServiceM8, Flat Out $399 for custom call flows and the on-call roster. All AUD with GST, month to month, no setup fee. The full table is on the pricing page.

Sixty minutes of call time on us, for a week. Card up front, nothing charged, and the clock doesn't start until your receptionist answers its first call. Setup takes minutes: your business name, what you do, your hours, your services with how long each takes, and your receptionist is live on its own Australian number. Divert is one dial code.