An AI Booking Agent for HVAC, Plumbing and Electrical Companies

What does an AI booking agent do for a trades company?

It does the first five minutes of every service call by text, at any hour: works out whether it is an emergency, gathers what your dispatcher needs, and gets routine work onto the schedule. Your office still owns the schedule, the pricing and the people; the agent makes sure no request sits unanswered at 9:40 PM until someone opens the inbox at 7:30 the next morning.

On ZeroSettle you get a dedicated iMessage number, running on Apple hardware we operate for you in a server facility. Put it on your trucks, website, invoices and Google profile as the number to text. Then switch it to Managed by AI Agent in the console's Messaging tab (or managed_by: "zerosettle" with PUT /api/imessage/agent), and ZeroSettle's hosted agent answers every inbound text from a business context you write. The console walkthrough covers the switch step by step, and how the hosted agent works explains its behavior in depth.

Customers who text your number first never count against your new-contact limit; they share the number's 10,000 messages a day with known contacts. In the trades, most conversations start with the customer: a leak, a dead furnace, a breaker that won't stay on.

How should the agent separate emergencies from routine calls?

By a written list of emergency signs in its business context, and one fixed instruction: send those customers to your emergency phone line right away, before asking anything else. The agent texts; it does not call, dispatch or judge danger, so it should not try to work an emergency by text.

The point of the list is consistency, not diagnosis. When in doubt, the instruction should lean toward "call us".

Word the emergency reply yourself and put it in the context exactly as you want it sent. For a gas smell, use the safety wording your gas utility publishes, not something the agent composes. Then tell the agent to stop asking intake questions until the customer says they have called.

What should it collect before a job is booked?

Everything your dispatcher would otherwise call back to ask: where, what, which equipment, a photo, and when someone can let the tech in. Ask for it one or two questions at a time; a single text with eight questions reads like a form and gets half answered.

1. Service address with ZIP. Also confirms you serve that area.
2. What is happening and since when. Error codes on a thermostat or furnace board help.
3. Equipment. Furnace, heat pump, boiler, tankless or tank water heater, panel brand, rough age if they know it.
4. A photo. The data plate, the leak, the breaker panel. Photos customers send are stored in the conversation with the file, where your team sees them in the console inbox (if you later switch to your own code, your webhook receives them too). Don't tell the agent to diagnose from a photo; tell it to say the tech will look.
5. Access. Who will be home, pets, gate codes, where the unit is (attic, crawlspace, closet).
6. Preferred days and times. Ask for windows, then hand off to the booking link or your scheduling tools.

Text-a-photo quotes for the trades shows how to use those photos when pricing work.

What goes in the business context?

Everything the agent is allowed to know and say: your service area, hours, emergency line, triage rules, intake questions, the fees you publish, policies, and a list of things it must never say. The agent knows only what you write there (up to 40,000 characters) plus files you connect, and it never invents facts the context doesn't give.

You are the texting assistant for Northgate Heating, Plumbing & Electric.
You answer people who text our number about heating, cooling, plumbing
and electrical work. Sort emergencies from routine work, collect what
dispatch needs, and get routine jobs booked. If anyone sincerely asks,
say you are Northgate's automated assistant.

EMERGENCIES (never book these by text). Signs: gas smell, carbon monoxide
alarm, sparking or burning smell from an outlet or panel, water actively
leaking or flooding, sewage backing up, no water at all, no heat below
freezing, no cooling in a heat wave with a baby, an older person or
anyone medically fragile at home (ask about this on every no-cooling
request). Reply first with exactly: "That needs a person right now.
Please call our 24/7 line, (217) 555-0142." Ask nothing else until they
say they have called.

ROUTINE WORK. Ask one or two at a time: service address with ZIP; what is
happening and since when; equipment and rough age; a photo if easy; who
will be home, pets, gate codes; preferred days. Then send the booking
link: https://northgate.example/book

PRICES YOU MAY QUOTE (only these):
Service call / diagnostic: $89, credited toward the repair if they go ahead.
Evenings after 6pm and weekends: $149 service call.
AC or furnace tune-up: $119. Water heater flush: $139.
Northgate Club plan: $15/month, two tune-ups a year, no service call fee.
Anything else: "The tech gives you an exact price on site before any
work starts."

NEVER: promise an arrival time or a same-day slot; guess what is wrong;
say a repair is covered by warranty; give DIY gas or electrical steps;
quote a price not listed above.

HOURS: office Mon-Fri 7am-6pm, Sat 8am-2pm. Emergency line 24/7.
SERVICE AREA: ZIPs 62701-62712 and Chatham. Outside it, say so kindly
and suggest they search for a local company.
A PERSON: office (217) 555-0100 during hours.

Long lists (every ZIP you serve, your full flat-rate menu for maintenance work, membership terms) can go in a connected file instead: PDF, Excel, CSV, Word or text, up to 10 MB each and at most 10, sharing a space limit of 20,000 (estimated the same way as the business context's tokens). A scanned PDF with no selectable text has nothing to read, so export the price sheet from your software instead. The agent reads every file before every answer. The AI agent docs list the limits.

How does the agent actually book the job?

Two ways: send your online booking link, or let it use the tools of an MCP server connected to your scheduling system. Start with the link; add MCP when you want the agent to see real availability.

Option 1: a booking link

Put the link in the business context with the instruction to send it once intake is done. The agent's goal setting accepts purchase, trial_start or demo_booked with a link, such as a calendar booking page; the default is purchase, so change it. For service bookings, either use demo_booked with your booking page or turn the goal off (goal_enabled: false) and describe booking in the context. Because the customer texted first, the link is tappable. Links only show as plain, untappable text to people who have never texted the number.

Option 2: an MCP server for your scheduling system

If your field service or scheduling software offers an MCP server, or your developer puts a small one in front of its API, connect it under Messaging → Connectors. ZeroSettle lists every tool the server offers and turns on only the ones that just read (readOnlyHint). Any tool that can change something starts off.

# connect the server: read-only tools come on, the rest stay off
curl -X POST https://portal.zerosettle.io/api/imessage/agent/mcp \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $ZEROSETTLE_TOKEN" -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"url": "https://schedule.northgate.example/mcp", "token": "YOUR_SERVER_TOKEN"}'

# later, turn on one write tool you are comfortable with (id from the response)
curl -X PATCH https://portal.zerosettle.io/api/imessage/agent/mcp/mcp_9c1e… \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $ZEROSETTLE_TOKEN" -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"enable_tools": ["request_appointment"]}'

Why write tools start off: as the docs put it, “anyone who texts your number can ask the agent to use it, so turn it on only if that's fine.” A prank texter, a confused customer or someone who isn't the account holder could fill your Thursday with fake jobs or cancel a real one. Decide tool by tool:

At most 5 MCP servers per line group. The token is sent as Authorization: Bearer; OAuth sign-in isn't supported here. If the server can't be reached, the agent answers without its tools.

Design read tools to return as little as possible: open windows, yes or no on a ZIP. A tool that hands a customer's address and job history to anyone who texts is a privacy problem, whatever the agent is told.

What must the agent never promise?

Anything a technician has to stand in front of the equipment to know. Those promises turn into one-star reviews.

Then test it. Text your number from your own phone with each of those questions and with each emergency sign, and fix the context until every answer is one you'd sign. The console guide suggests exactly this: ask something the context doesn't cover and check that it says so instead of guessing.

Which settings fit a trades company?

Instant replies, a professional or friendly voice, no fixed first message, and one follow-up rewritten for service calls.

A once trigger never fires when the customer wrote last, and it resets with every message, so it goes once each time a conversation goes quiet.

Where do voice messages from your techs fit?

In recordings the agent sends for you, and in voice notes your team receives. First, an MCP tool can hand the agent a recording to send: a link to an audio file (m4a, mp3, wav and similar, up to 6 MB) on the same host as the MCP server, served publicly. Say in the business context when to send it, and the agent sends it as an iMessage voice message after its texts, one per answer, for one credit. Voice messages go only to people who have texted the number, which every inbound customer has. A 30-second note from your lead tech on "what to expect at your first tune-up" or "where your water shut-off usually is" sounds like your company, not a bot.

Second, voice messages sent to the number (by customers, or by techs who talk faster than they type) arrive in the conversation as recordings your team can play. With your own code, turning technicians' voice notes into job reports shows how to turn them into write-ups.

When should you connect your own code instead?

When booking needs your dispatch system's logic: matching skills to techs, zones, parts on the truck, membership priority, creating the job record. Then set the line group to managed_by: "api"; every inbound text, photo and voice message is POSTed to your signed webhook, and your code (and your own model, with your keys) decides what to reply with POST /api/imessage/send. Building iMessage agents walks through that loop in TypeScript, and the webhook guide covers signatures and retries. No developer? A Zapier Zap on New iMessage Received can create a lead in your field service tool (see CRM integrations).

There is a middle path: keep the hosted agent answering and let your dispatch system send the operational texts. POST /api/imessage/send still works on a line group the agent manages, and the agent reads those texts in the thread as its own and answers what customers reply. That is how appointment reminders and technician on-the-way texts with a photo fit alongside the booking agent: your system sends them, the agent fields "can he use the side gate?".

Two constraints to plan around. While the agent manages a line group, the console composer is off and sends from Close or HubSpot are refused with 403 managed_by_zerosettle. And switching to Managed by API hands back every conversation on that group, not one. For bigger jobs with several people, one iMessage group per job keeps homeowner, project manager and crew together. Every member must have agreed to hear from you, each member the number has never messaged counts as a new contact, and the agent answers in a group only when a message is meant for it (its follow-ups never fire into a group).

What does it cost to run?

The subscription for the number, plus one credit for each text the agent sends. Credits pay only for the hosted agent's texts (and videos); a number your own code answers uses none for texts.

Free credits come once per account and never refill. Packs: 1,000 for $50 or 5,000 for $200, and they never expire. The subscription has a 30-day money-back guarantee.

The booking conversation above is five agent texts, so five credits, plus one for any follow-up it sends. At zero credits the agent goes quiet until you buy a pack; texts still arrive in the inbox. Inbound booking requests never touch the new-contact limit; it only matters if the agent starts conversations with web-form leads. Speed to lead for home service businesses covers that side, and growing a home service business with iMessage puts it all together. When you're ready, get your number.