AI phone receptionist for heating technicians
Quick summary
- You are in a basement with both hands on a burner. That is when the published number rings about a cold flat.
- The first question is oil, gas or pellet — those are three different vans, not one free hour.
- A lockout light is a note and a transfer. The assistant never tells them to press reset, bypass, or keep trying.
- A tenant with no heat in January will not wait on voicemail. They ring the next technician.
- It checks the book you already use before it offers a morning, writes the visit in, and texts the window.
- After the first frost, several people ring at once. It answers every line at once.
TL;DR
You are in a basement boiler room in a Greek block in January. Both hands are on the burner. The phone in your pocket rings. Someone has no heat, or the boiler is making a noise, or a red light is on and they want you to tell them which button to press. They will not leave a message. They will ring the next van on the listing. An assistant answers in the caller's language, asks oil, gas or pellet first, then whether there is heat, a noise, a lockout light or a smell, takes the address and the plant they named, and books a visit only if that morning is free. It never tells them to override a safety lockout. It never invents an arrival from the other side of town. The reset, if any, is yours, in front of the boiler.
Key takeaways
- Put the assistant on the number on the van and the basement door, with a forward-on-no-answer rule, so a free pair of hands still takes the call.
- Teach it the first split: oil, gas or pellet — then no heat, noise, lockout light, smell, or a booked service.
- Give it the sentence verbatim: it cannot tell them to press reset, bypass a switch, or keep trying a lockout.
- Let it book annual burner services and a cold-radiator look. Keep lockout, gas smell, and “come now” as a callback or a transfer.
- After the first frost, and on Monday after a weekend of no heat, shorten the ring-time so the third caller is not listening to a busy tone.
- Mark two kinds of visit: a plant-room job that needs you at the boiler, and a short radiator or thermostat look that does not.
What an AI phone receptionist does on a heating van
You are in a basement in a Greek apartment block in January. The burner is open. Both hands are on the gun. The oil smell is the usual one. The phone in your pocket rings. Across town the other person is on a landing with a radiator key. There is no third pair of hands at the number on the van.
You put the assistant on the number already on the van and on the card taped inside the plant-room door. It answers when you cannot. Then it does one of two things. It takes a no-heat note and puts it in front of a human who knows where the van is. Or it books a service morning that is actually free.
The first question is not “what time can you come?”. The first question is oil, gas, or pellet. A gas lockout is not an oil nozzle. A pellet hopper is not a flue. An assistant that opens with “we can be there this afternoon” will send the oil van to a gas boiler and leave the person with the lockout pressing buttons in the basement.
A caller who rang in English gets the confirmation in English. A caller who rang in Greek gets it in Greek. The assistant works in 70+ languages. The SMS follows the language of the call.
In the basement with the burner, and the phone still ringing
One of you is already under the jacket of a boiler. The other is two streets on, bleeding a top-floor radiator that never gets hot. The published number still rings.
It is a burst. The first real frost. Monday after a weekend of no heat. The afternoon a building manager sends three flats out with your card. A second line with the same two hands still leaves the third caller on a busy tone.
The tenant whose house went cold in the night will not wait on voicemail. They have your number and two other vans in the same search. They hang up and dial the next one. The person staring at a red light, asking which button to press, will not leave a message either.
People whose boilers you already service will often wait. A person who cannot report a lockout, and a person who cannot start the annual clean, will not. If those two wait behind the burner you are already in, the no-heat job is gone, and the service arrives as an angry visit at five — or the next van has already opened that plant room.
Whoever takes the lockout often takes the contract. That is why a missed January call is not only a missed note.
Oil, gas, or pellet — then the light
Oil. Tank in the basement or the garden, burner, nozzle, flue. The assistant asks whether there is heat, whether there is a light, whether they can smell oil in the plant room, then the address. It does not ask them to unscrew a filter. It does not tell them the tank is empty because they described a noise. Empty or not is yours, at the tank.
Gas. Network gas, a wall boiler, or a floor-standing plant. Smell of gas is a transfer, not a booking. A lockout on gas is still a lockout: note and a human, never a reset on the phone. The assistant does not tell them to close a valve, open a window, or hold a button for three seconds.
Pellet. Hopper, auger, ignition. “The hopper looks empty” is a note, not a diagnosis. Filling the hopper is theirs if you have told the assistant that line. Lighting it from a phone sequence is not. Ash that has not been emptied is not a lockout the assistant may clear.
Heat pump. Some of you also run those. Mark it as its own fuel, or the assistant will send an oil morning to a unit on a terrace. An error code read off a display is written down. It is not decoded on the call.
People remember that it is cold. They do not remember whether the plant is oil or gas. Ask the fuel first. Then whether there is a light. Then the address. One fuel is enough to send the right van. None is still a note, not a guess from a photo of a jacket.
A sentence the assistant is not allowed to say
“Which button do I press?” is the question on this phone in January. It comes at 07:10 from a tenant. It comes at 22:00 from a building manager. It comes from someone standing in the plant room with the door open, describing a red lamp.
The assistant does not answer it. Not with “the red one”. Not with “hold it for three seconds”. Not with “if it trips again, just keep resetting”. A lockout is a safety stop. A sentence that talks them past it, said on the recorded line, is a sentence the van now owns, and the assistant cannot see the pressure, the flue, the condensate, or whether the room smells of gas.
The line you give it is short: the technician looks at the boiler. It does not tell anyone to override a lockout.
“Can I tape the thermostat?”, “shall I close the gas cock and open it again?”, and “my neighbour said to jumper the pressure switch” are still override. The assistant names the topic so the callback is useful, and refuses the sequence.
Do not put a reset diagram in the notes. It will read the diagram out.
Frost, Monday, and everyone at once
The first frost is no heat. By eight, people have started ringing. You are already in the first basement. The pad is already a list of addresses.
Monday is a smaller version of the same hour. People report the weekend of cold radiators. People who ignored the annual letter ring about a service they now want today.
The assistant has to treat that burst as several conversations, not as a queue behind your burner. A lockout in that hour is a note and a phone. A service call is a morning or a callback. If the assistant parks the person who wants the annual clean behind the tenth no-heat report, that person rings the next van — and next October they are not on your list.
Shorten the ring-time before forwarding on those mornings. After the first frost the third caller should not hear a busy tone. A Tuesday in August is people asking for a summer check, and one person left with the van.
A price nobody can give from a photo of the plate
When someone photographs a rating plate and asks what a new boiler costs — twenty-four kilowatt, they think, oil, the neighbour paid this much last year — the tempting answer is a number. The assistant does not give one.
Fuel, flue, plant-room access, whether this is one flat or the communal plant, underfloor or radiators, a heat pump instead of a boiler — all of those change the work. A number quoted before anyone has stood in the room is a number you then spend the visit taking back.
It can repeat a published call-out you typed in and marked as speakable. Unseen boiler swaps, a communal plant, a pellet conversion — those do not get a number on this call. The assistant takes the request and books a look. Last year’s neighbour is not this flue. The assistant does not quote it.
If they press — “just a round figure, I have the other van on the other line” — the assistant still refuses. Book them as soon as a morning is free. Flag it if there is no heat today.
Standing in a cold flat
Some of these callers are in a bedroom with a child, or a shop with the door open, or a plant room with a lamp on. They want to know whether to keep resetting, whether they can use the electric heaters all day, whether the building is allowed to leave them without heat.
The assistant is not in the flat. It cannot see the gauge. It cannot decide what the building must do.
What it can take: fuel, light or no light, smell or no smell, the address, floor, tenant or manager. What it can repeat, if you typed the line in: someone from the van will call back as soon as they can see where they are. Come-now or this-afternoon is yours, after you know the next basement.
If they say they smell gas, or a carbon monoxide alarm is sounding, or there is water on the boiler floor, that is a transfer. You give the assistant that short list. It collects a name and a number while it is connecting. It does not tell them which window to open. It does not tell them to go back into the plant room.
A caller who is already warm enough, booking the annual clean, is a service morning if that morning is free.
Communal plant, radiators, and “can you come in twenty minutes?”
Communal heating. The manager rings, or a tenant does, or both on the same morning. The assistant takes who they are, which building, and whether the plant room can be opened. It does not tell a tenant to walk into a locked basement. It does not promise the whole block by lunch.
Cold radiators, hot boiler. That is a look, not a lockout, if they say the plant is running. The assistant still does not talk them through bleeding every floor. It books a radiator visit if you marked that type, or it flags you.
No hot water. Oil tank, boiler, or a separate cylinder. The assistant does not pick which. It takes the fuel and what is missing — heat, water, or both — and writes that down.
Come in twenty minutes. The assistant does not say that. On a lockout or a smell it puts the call in front of a human who can see the van. That person says when they can come, or that they cannot leave the burner they are in. On booked work it offers a window the calendar can honour, and nothing tighter to sound helpful.
August needs its own dates. Some of you close for two weeks. The published number still rings. Set the closure. Do not let the assistant book a service into a week when the van is on a beach.
How CITT handles it
- Your number stays on the van and on the plant-room card. A forwarding rule sends what you do not answer. Calls you pick up never leave, and are never charged.
- Every line is answered at once. A frost morning is several conversations, not a stack of busy tones.
- It knows the van you described. Oil, gas, pellet, heat pump, whether you do communal plant, who is out on Monday.
- It asks oil, gas or pellet first, then no heat, noise, lockout, smell or service, then the address, and only then looks at the book.
- It takes a lockout as a note, never as a reset sequence.
- It checks the real book before it offers a morning, and writes the visit into the same calendar the van already uses.
- It confirms by SMS, in the language of the call — 70+ languages — and can remind them to leave the plant-room key with someone.
- It escalates gas smell, carbon monoxide, water on the floor, and “which button” as a tagged note or a transfer.
- You get the transcript, the summary, the fuel, and the plant the caller named.
What it will not do
It will not tell them to press reset, hold a button, bypass a switch, or tape a thermostat. It will not invent a twenty-minute arrival. It will not quote a new boiler from a photo of the plate. It will not say the tank is empty from a noise. It will not send an oil morning to a gas wall unit. It will not treat a lockout, a cold radiator and an annual clean as the same visit. It will not tell a tenant to open a locked plant room.
What these calls sound like
The order is the fuel, then the light, then the address, then a morning the book can honour or a ring to you, then the refusal said out loud. There is no reset over a boiler nobody is standing in front of. There is no round figure over a plate in a WhatsApp photo. There is no “twenty minutes” to a second-floor tenant while you are still in someone else’s basement.
If the assistant is friendly and still talks them through a lockout, you own that sequence. Put the person who rang about the red light at 11:10 on a no-heat note, not on the next van’s pad.
What you set up first
Put the assistant on the number on the van with a forward-on-no-answer rule, so a free pair of hands still takes the call. Then the fuel split, the lockout sentence, and the list that rings a phone.
Write down what you actually run: oil, gas, pellet, heat pump, and whether you take communal plant this month. Give it the fields you want on every note: fuel, address, floor, tenant or manager, heat or no heat, light or no light, smell or no smell, noise or no noise. Mark two kinds of visit: a plant-room job that needs you at the boiler, and a short radiator or thermostat look.
Give it the same-day phone list: smell of gas, carbon monoxide alarm, water on the boiler floor, lockout with no heat in January. Do not give it a reset sequence it would read out. Write one line that forbids override, bypass, and “keep pressing”. Add the hours you actually drive, who is out on Monday, August dates, how a manager hands over a plant-room key.
Rates live on the pricing section of the home page. They are not repeated here.
AI receptionist, in-house staff, or a call centre
| CITT | In-house | Call centre | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Answers while both hands are on a burner | Always | Only if they can let go of the gun | Yes |
| Several callers after the first frost | Every line at once | One, then a busy tone | Depends who was rostered |
| Asks oil, gas or pellet first | Yes — before it looks at the book | Yes, if they heard the start | Often jumps to what morning |
| Tells them to override a lockout | Never — takes the light as a note | Not on the phone either | Must not; sometimes reads a reset |
| Invents a twenty-minute arrival | Never | Only once they know where the van is | Tempted, if the script wants a time |
| Speaks the caller's language | 70+ languages | One or two | Whoever is on that shift |
| What it will not do | Reset advice, a fuel mix-up, a price from a photo of the plate | Can look at the boiler | Reads whatever is on the sheet |
What one unanswered January morning costs a two-person heating van
Worked from these assumptions — change any of them and the answer changes:
- Two people, a January weekday after the first real frost. Roughly 14 inbound calls before early afternoon.
- About a third arrive while one of you is in a basement and the other is bleeding a radiator two streets on.
- Of the calls nobody reaches, 4 are no-heat or lockout, 2 are annual burner services.
- A same-day no-heat visit that becomes work is worth about €120 here — put your own call-out plus first hour in, this is the number to change first.
- A booked burner service is about €90 of labour on these assumptions. Replace that with what you actually charge for the annual clean.
- This example treats 2 of the 4 no-heat callers and 1 of the 2 service callers as people who never left a message and rang the next van.
- 6 heating calls reach nobody on a normal January morning.
- 3 of them do not call back.
- 2 × €120 + 1 × €90 = €330 of work that morning that never reached you.
- January and February mornings like that, say 16 of them — 16 × €330.
About €5,280 from those two months, on the tickets above. Put your own call-out in. A March week is not the same.
What it costs
CITT is pay as you go: no packages, no minimum, no contract. The current rates — the monthly fee per number and the per-minute rate — are on the pricing section of the home page, which is the only place they are published.
Frequently asked questions
Do I have to change the number on the van?
No. The number on the van, the card in the plant room, and the Google listing stays yours. You add one forwarding rule — every call, or only the ones still ringing after the seconds you choose. If you pick up, the call never leaves and is never charged.
Can it tell them to press the reset on the boiler?
It must not. A lockout is a note — fuel type, whether there is a light, whether there is a smell, the address — and then a transfer or a flagged callback. Pressing reset, taping a thermostat, or bypassing a pressure switch is work in front of the boiler, not a sentence on a recorded line. If they already pressed it twice, that goes on the note. The assistant does not give them a third try.
Can it quote a new boiler from a photo of the rating plate?
No. A photo of a plate is not a survey. Oil, gas or pellet, the flue, the plant room, the radiators, whether this is one flat or the whole block — those change the work. It takes the fuel, the address, and what they want done. You price what you have seen. If a published call-out is speakable, you type that in. Unseen boiler swaps do not get a number on this call.
What if I am already in someone else's basement?
That is the usual January morning. The assistant answers the overflow. A lockout or a gas smell becomes a note and a ring to a phone you hold. A cold radiator or an annual service becomes a morning that is actually free, or a callback. After the first frost, shorten the ring-time so the third caller is not listening to a busy tone.
Someone can smell gas. What does it do?
That is a transfer, not a booking. You give the assistant a short list: smell of gas, smell of oil in the plant room, carbon monoxide alarm, water on the boiler floor. It collects a name and a number while it is connecting. It does not tell them to open a window, close a valve, or reset anything. If they are a tenant, it still takes the building and the floor so you know which plant.
What do we actually see afterwards?
A transcript, a short summary, whether this was oil, gas or pellet, whether it was no heat, a noise, a lockout, a smell or a service, the address and the plant they named, and whatever was booked or left for you. Confirmations go out by SMS in the language of the call.
