What to Prepare Before You Hear Your Own Business Answer a Demo Call

A demo call goes better when you walk in with a plan. If you only ask "do you do boilers?", you will hear a polite answer and learn very little. A little preparation lets you tell whether an AI receptionist would handle the calls that actually reach your phone.

Here is what to get ready beforehand.

Write down what you actually sell

List the jobs you want booked and the ones you would rather turn down. An AI receptionist can only work from what it has been told about your services, so the demo is a good test of whether your own information is clear.

Put the list on one page:

• The work you want more of
• The work you do but only reluctantly
• The work you never take, such as a trade you don't cover

Then ask the demo about one from each group. You are checking whether it accepts the right jobs and handles the wrong ones politely.

Know your coverage area, including the edges

Most trade firms don't have a neat boundary. You probably have a core patch, a fringe you will travel to for the right job, and places you refuse.

Pick three postcodes before the demo: one clearly inside your area, one clearly outside, and one on the border. A good receptionist should ask for the postcode and check cover rather than say yes to everyone. The borderline one shows you how it handles a judgement call, and whether you need to give clearer rules.

Decide what it may say about money

If you want callers told your call-out charge, have the figure ready to compare against what you hear. If you prefer not to quote over the phone, decide what you want said instead, such as taking details and promising a call back.

Check that the answer matches your rules. Anything you have told it to quote should come back correctly, and anything you haven't should not be invented.

Define what counts as an emergency

This is the part owners most often leave vague. Write down which situations should reach your on-call person immediately and which can wait for the morning. A burst pipe, no heating for a vulnerable household and a quote request for a new bathroom are very different calls.

Then test it. Play a caller with a genuine emergency and another with a routine problem described dramatically. See whether the receptionist separates them the way you would.

Decide when calls should divert

Your number stays the same. Calls your team can't answer divert after a few rings, and you choose the rules: only when you are engaged, only out of hours, or as overflow. Know which you want before the demo so you can ask how that would work in your day.

A solo operator who is up a ladder all day wants something different from a firm with an office that is staffed until late afternoon.

Prepare your awkward callers

Real callers don't follow scripts. Make a short list of the people who give you trouble:

• Someone who won't give a postcode
• A caller who asks for a price on something unusual
• A customer who is upset or in a rush
• Someone who wants a specific engineer by name
• A caller who asks a question you would normally answer with "it depends"

You aren't trying to trick it. You want to see what happens when a call goes off the path, and whether it takes a proper message when it can't resolve something.

Check the follow-through, not just the voice

The voice is the easy part to judge. The more important question is what lands with you afterwards. Ask to see how a booking, a quote request or a message would reach you by text and email, and whether the details you would need to act on them are there: the problem, the location, the caller's contact details and the time agreed.

Also ask what happens when someone hangs up before the call is answered. Missed-call text back is part of the picture, so check how that exchange would look from the caller's side.

Judge fairly

A demo is a snapshot, not the finished product. The service is described as being built from your website, your Google profile and a short conversation about your business, then tested and signed off by you. So if something sounds slightly off, ask whether it is a gap in the information or a limit in the system.

Keep notes during the call. Mark each test as right, wrong or fixable with better information. Ask about the "fixable" ones before you decide.

When you are ready, you can hear it answer as your company in a free demo, which the provider describes as private and requiring no card. Take your list, your three postcodes and your awkward callers, and judge the answers against your own rules.