It's 9:40 on a January night. A homeowner's furnace quit, the house is at 58 degrees, and they're calling every heating company on the first page of Google. The first one that answers gets the job. If your phone rolls to voicemail, that job goes to somebody else and you never hear about it.
An AI receptionist exists for that call. General Dispatch's is called Jack (you can rename it, or have it speak as the business with no name at all). It picks up the calls your team can't, talks through the problem the way your dispatcher would, and books a real arrival window on a real calendar. You read about it in the 7:30 brief.
This page is the long version: what it does on a call, what a call sounds like, where it sits in your phone setup, what it does when someone smells gas, what it will never do, how it compares with an answering service, and what it costs. If you only want to hear it, skip to the setup at the bottom and call your own number.
What an AI receptionist does on a call
A good one does the dispatcher's job, not the answering machine's. On a live call Jack:
- Greets the caller with your business name, and its own name if you want it to use one.
- Finds out what's wrong, where the property is, and how urgent it is. One question at a time, the way a person asks.
- Looks the caller up by their number. A customer you've had for six years gets treated like one, with their address and their equipment already on file.
- Checks the job against the services you offer and the address against your service area. Something you don't do gets a polite no and nothing else.
- Looks at each tech's real calendar (Google or Outlook) and offers a window that's actually open. Two windows out loud, nearest first, never a list of six.
- Books it, reads the booking back (service, day, window, address), creates or updates the customer record, and leaves the call on that customer's thread.
The arrival windows are two hours wide out of the box (8 to 10, 10 to 12, 12 to 2, 2 to 4), with at least two hours of lead time and a two-week horizon. You change any of that. What you can't change is the rule underneath: it never promises an arrival time narrower than the window, and it never invents availability. If your calendar connection has gone stale, it offers nothing and says the office will text a time, because unknown is not the same as free.
It uses the same tools and the same rules whether the customer calls, texts or types into the chat on your website. A caller who books by voice and texts the next day lands in one conversation with one history. Not two systems that disagree about whether Tuesday is booked.
What a call sounds like
Here's a call the way it actually runs, for a shop called Summit Heating and Air with a tech named Mike:
| Who | What's said |
|---|---|
| Jack | Thanks for calling Summit Heating and Air, this is Jack. How can I help? |
| Caller | Our furnace just quit. It's freezing in here. |
| Jack | Oh no, sorry about that. Is any air coming out of the vents at all? |
| Caller | No, nothing. It's just dead. |
| Jack | Got it. What's the address? |
| Caller | 42 Elm Street. |
| Jack | Okay, 42 Elm Street, got it. Mike can be there tomorrow between 8 and 10, or between 10 and 12. Which works? |
| Caller | 8 to 10. |
| Jack | You're booked for tomorrow between 8 and 10 at 42 Elm Street for a no-heat service call. If you'd like a text confirmation, send a quick text to this number and it'll come right back. |
A few things in that exchange are deliberate. It says who it is in the first sentence. It confirms the address back before it acts on it. It never says "let me check availability for you"; it checks and then says what it found. It doesn't read a price nobody asked for. And it ends with one sentence about what happens next.
That last line about the text is the honest bit most vendors skip. Under US texting rules, a business can't text a number that hasn't texted it first, so after a voice booking Jack tells the caller how to get a confirmation by text instead of promising one. CTIA's messaging principles are the carriers' version of that rule, and General Dispatch enforces it on every number: a text to someone who never opted in is refused before it reaches the carrier.
If a caller asks whether they're talking to a person, Jack says plainly that it's automated and that you see every call. It never pretends to be you, and it never says "I'm just an AI" either. It says what it is and who's behind it.
Where it sits in your phone setup
You keep your number. General Dispatch gives the business a line, and you forward to it the calls you want covered: unanswered calls, after-hours calls, or all of them.
When a call comes in, your phones ring first, in the order you set: the office, then the owner's cell, then whoever you add. If a customer is calling back a tech who called them recently, that tech's phone rings first. Only when nobody picks up does the call go to the receptionist. You choose what happens then:
| Setting | What the caller gets |
|---|---|
| Off | A text within seconds offering help by text (missed-call text-back) |
| After hours | The AI receptionist answers outside your hours; during the day it's the text-back |
| Always | The AI receptionist answers every call your team doesn't pick up |
Most shops start with after hours. Some owners like answering every daytime call themselves and want the robot only at night. Others are on a roof all day and want it on everything. Either way it's one switch, and you can flip it from your phone.
Each teammate also gets their own line in the app, so a tech can take a call on any page and call out from the dialer. When that tech's customer calls back, it rings the tech's browser, then their cell, then your ring list. The receptionist is the last stop, not the first.
Emergencies, and what it does when someone smells gas
This is where an AI receptionist earns or loses your trust, so here's exactly what happens, taken from the default HVAC policy that ships with every new business (you edit it in plain English).
Life safety first. If the caller says anything on the life-safety list (gas smell, rotten eggs, carbon monoxide, a CO alarm, dizzy, smoke, fire, sparking), Jack says the safety line word for word: leave the building and call 911 or the gas utility first, and we'll follow up as soon as it's safe. Then it pages you and ends the call. It never troubleshoots a gas smell and it never books that call. You book it after you've talked to them.
Emergencies page you before they book. A no-heat or no-cool call together with a vulnerable condition (an infant, an elderly person, someone on oxygen, below freezing outside, a heat advisory) is an emergency. Jack pages you first, hands you the thread, and books nothing on that turn. If you haven't picked it up after the minutes you set, it offers the earliest same-day window for an emergency service and tells the customer you're still being paged.
Urgent but not an emergency gets moved up. "Leaking," "burning smell," "breaker tripping," "loud bang": these get a same-day or next-day window and a high-priority task on your list, without paging you at 2 a.m. The policy even notes why: a bare "leaking" is usually a condensate drip, and a burning smell on the first cold day is usually dust burning off.
Everything else is a normal booking. You can add phrases to any of those lists, change what counts as vulnerable, or turn the paging off. The point is that the behavior is written down where you can read it, not buried in a prompt.
What it should never do
An AI receptionist that promises a $49 tune-up you don't offer, or books a crawl-space job for a tech who doesn't do crawl spaces, is worse than voicemail. So Jack works inside rules you set, and the rules are enforced by the system, not by the model's good intentions:
- It quotes only the prices in your price book. A "from" price is read as "starts at, and the tech confirms on site." If you'd rather it never mention price, it won't. It never volunteers one.
- Anything your policy says to ask about waits for your yes: a discount, a job outside your hours, a commercial or multi-unit property, a warranty claim, or anything over your ask-first line ($500 by default). Jack takes the details, tells the caller you'll confirm, and writes the request on the customer's record so it's there when you open it.
- You can take over any conversation with one tap and it goes quiet until you hand it back.
- It never texts someone who didn't ask. Consent is tracked on every number, STOP is honored the moment it arrives, and quiet hours are kept.
- It never cancels a booked visit. A customer who wants to cancel gets handed to you.
The honest limit: it's an AI on the phone. Most callers just want the furnace fixed and don't care who books it. A few will ask for a person. Jack says you'll call them back, confirms the number, and ends the call politely. Then it's on your list.
AI receptionist vs answering service vs virtual receptionist
People use these words loosely, so here's how they actually differ.
| Live answering service | Virtual receptionist | AI receptionist (General Dispatch) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who answers | A call center agent reading your script | A remote person working for several businesses | Jack, as your business |
| Books on your calendar | Usually takes a message | Sometimes, if they have access | Yes, against each tech's real calendar |
| Knows your prices and service area | What's in the script | What they've been told | Everything in your setup, kept current |
| Knows the caller | No | Rarely | Looks them up by number: address, equipment, history |
| After the call | A message emailed or texted to you | A message or a booking | Booking, customer record, transcript, reminders |
| Follows up later | No | Rarely | Reminders, estimate follow-ups, review requests |
| Cost model | Per minute or per call | Per hour or per call | Flat monthly, no per-call fee |
A live service is the right choice when every caller must reach a human, say a commercial account whose contract requires it, or a shop whose callers skew older and hang up on anything automated. A virtual receptionist is right when you want one familiar voice who learns your quirks over months. Both cost more per call than you'd guess once the storm week hits.
For most residential HVAC, plumbing and electrical calls, what the caller wants is a booked time. That's the part the AI receptionist does better: it's on at 2 a.m. on a holiday, it never puts anyone on hold, and it writes the booking straight onto the calendar instead of into a message you have to act on in the morning.
For HVAC, plumbing and electrical shops
The receptionist ships with a policy per trade, so "hvac answering service" and "plumbing answering service" aren't two products. They're one receptionist with a different emergency list and a different price book.
HVAC. The emergency list is built around no-heat and no-cool with vulnerable conditions, and the life-safety list around gas and CO. The price book carries tune-ups, diagnostics and the quote-on-site estimate visit, so "how much for a new system" gets the right answer: the tech quotes on site, and here are the windows for that visit. Maintenance-plan visits are an ask-first by default, so plan customers get booked the way you want.
Plumbing. Flooding, water pouring through a ceiling and a main line backing up are the emergencies. Slab leaks and water heater replacements are quote-on-site visits. "Leaking" alone is a high-priority booking, not a page.
Electrical. Sparking, a burning or electrical smell and a breaker that keeps tripping are on the safety and priority lists. Panel upgrades, service upgrades and EV charger installs are estimate visits. Commercial and multi-unit work asks you first, which matters more in electrical than anywhere else.
You edit all of it. The defaults are there so the first call on day one is already handled the way a decent dispatcher would handle it.
How to evaluate an AI receptionist
If you're comparing vendors, these are the questions that separate a receptionist from a voicemail with a personality. Ask them on the demo call, and ask to see the answer, not hear about it.
- Does it book, or does it take a message? Ask to see the booking appear on a real Google or Outlook calendar during the call. "We send you a summary" means you're still the dispatcher.
- Whose calendar? One shared calendar is fine for a one-truck shop. Three techs need three calendars and a receptionist that knows which one is free.
- What does it do when someone says "I smell gas"? The right answer is a safety instruction, a page to you, and no booking. Anything else is a liability.
- What does it do with a price it doesn't know? It should say the tech quotes on site, or hold the question for you. It should never make a number up.
- Can you take over mid-conversation? And when you do, does it actually stop?
- What's the texting story? If it texts callers, ask how it tracks consent and handles STOP. A number that gets filtered by the carriers is a number you can't use.
- Where do the rules live? In a prompt you can't see, or in a policy you can read and change? You'll want to change them in week two.
- What does a storm week cost? Per-minute pricing looks fine until the first heat wave triples your call volume.
General Dispatch's answers are the ones above. The last question is the next section.
What it costs
General Dispatch is free to set up. Going live is $97 a month for the business plus $10 a month for the phone line, and Jack is included under fair use. The line includes 300 outbound texts and 100 forwarded minutes a month, then 2 cents a text and 3 cents a minute. Full details are on the pricing page.
There's no per-call fee for the receptionist itself, so a busy storm week doesn't turn into a surprise bill. If a month runs far past fair use, Jack keeps answering and asks you before it texts, and we talk before anything changes.
If you'd rather run it from your own AI, that's included too. Everything Jack does is a tool that Claude, ChatGPT or Claude Code can use over MCP, and your rules bind them the same way. Use Jack, use your own, or both.
Setting it up
- Sign up free and add your business: services, service area, hours and prices. Or let your own agent do the setup for you over MCP; it imports your contacts, writes the policy and price book, and connects the calendar.
- Connect each tech's Google or Outlook calendar.
- Pick when the receptionist answers: after hours or always.
- Forward your unanswered calls to the new line and call it yourself from your cell to hear it.
Nothing reaches a real customer until you turn the business live. And if you'd rather start smaller, the missed-call text-back is the same system answering by text instead of voice. Shops on a maintenance plan tend to turn the receptionist on first, because plan customers call after hours and expect to be booked, not to leave a message.