Ric's Repairs: a one-man handyman business that stopped missing calls

Minneapolis, MN · Live Botlery build

Eric runs Ric's Repairs solo. When you're the one holding the drill, you can't also be the one answering the phone — so calls went to voicemail, and voicemail is where new customers go to disappear. Here's what we built for him, and you can try the actual agent yourself.

The problem

A handyman's day is spent on ladders, under sinks and inside crawl spaces. Every call that rang while Eric was mid-job either interrupted paid work or went unanswered. Homeowners with a leaky faucet don't wait for a callback — they ring the next handyman on the list.

What Botlery built

• An AI agent trained on his real business — his services, service area, typical prices and policies, so it answers like someone who works there.
• 24/7 answering in a natural voice — during jobs, evenings and weekends.
• Lead capture: every caller's name, contact info and job details land in a Google Sheet, with an instant email to Eric.
• Booking: visits go straight onto his calendar.

What Eric says

"I'm out on jobs all day and used to miss calls constantly. Now the bot answers, quotes, and books visits straight to my calendar." — Eric O., Ric's Repairs

What a call to his agent sounds like

Here is the shape of a typical call — try the live agent above and you can run this exact conversation yourself:

"Ric's Repairs, this is the front desk — what can I help you with?"
"Hi, my bathroom faucet is dripping pretty badly."
"I can get someone out for that. A dripping faucet is usually a washer or cartridge replacement — most of those run about an hour of labour plus the part. Are you inside Minneapolis?"
"Yes, in Powderhorn."
"Perfect, that's in the service area. I have tomorrow morning or Thursday afternoon — which works better? And can I get your name and the best number to reach you?"

Two things are happening in that exchange. The agent is answering from Eric's actual services, prices and service area — not generic filler — and it is collecting the name, number and job details it needs before the call ends. Both matter: a caller who gets a real answer stops shopping, and a lead that isn't written down never becomes a job.

How we built it, in three steps

1. We asked Eric about his business. What he does and doesn't take on, roughly what common jobs cost, how far he'll drive, his hours, how he likes to be contacted. No documents to prepare — a conversation was enough.
2. We built a working agent and sent him the link. Not a slide deck or a mockup — the live agent you can call above. He tested it himself, as a customer, and told us where it sounded off.
3. We adjusted and handed it over. A couple of rounds on tone and on which jobs he wanted it to decline, then leads started landing in his sheet and inbox.

He paid nothing until step three. That's how we build every one of these, and it's the whole reason the risk sits with us instead of the customer.

What it costs him

A $300 one-time fee. No monthly subscription, no per-minute meter, no per-call charge — which matters for a trade where call volume is unpredictable and a busy storm week shouldn't produce a surprise bill. The agent runs on Eric's own accounts, so it's his: if he stopped working with us tomorrow it would keep answering.

For comparison, a live answering service for a business like his typically runs a monthly retainer plus per-minute charges, which means the second year costs as much as the first. See what an AI receptionist actually costs or work out your own numbers with the missed-call calculator.

Why one-person trades are a good fit for this

• Your hands are busy. A plumber under a sink, an electrician on a ladder and a handyman in a crawl space all have the same problem: the phone rings at the worst possible moment, and answering it costs you either the call or your concentration.
• The jobs are urgent. Nobody with a leak shops around for three days. The business goes to whoever picks up first, which makes after-hours coverage worth more in the trades than in most industries.
• The questions repeat. Do you cover my area, what does this roughly cost, how soon can you come, do you do this kind of work. That's a narrow, learnable script — exactly what an AI handles well.
• The margin per job is real. When a single booked visit is worth a few hundred dollars, recovering even a handful of missed calls a year covers the build many times over.

A note on results

We're not going to print a revenue figure here. Eric hasn't handed us his books, and we don't publish numbers we can't stand behind — you'd have no way to check them and we'd have no right to claim them. What we can point you at is the agent itself: call it, try to trip it up, and judge whether it would have handled your customers. That's a harder test than a testimonial and it's the one we'd rather be measured on.

What we'd change for your trade

The build is the same shape for any service business; what changes is what the agent knows and what it's told to do.

• Plumbing and HVAC: emergency triage comes first — a burst pipe or no-heat call in January gets flagged to you immediately instead of being booked for Thursday. See the plumbing and HVAC guides.
• Dental, medical and clinics: the agent books and reschedules but stays firmly away from anything resembling clinical advice, and it's told to hand off rather than guess.
• Salons and spas: service menus and durations matter more than quotes, so the agent works from your treatment list and stylist availability.
• Law firms: intake and conflict-check questions up front, no fee quotes, no anything that could read as legal advice. See the law firm guide.

Want this for your business?

We build yours the same way: free working demo first, trained on your real services and prices. You test it live and pay only if you want to keep it — $300 one-time for a phone or voice agent, or a chatbot from $10/month. See pricing or the handyman guide.

Common questions