41 Rakaia Street, Papanui. Rear extension, around 40m², on a 1930s bungalow.
Nobody rings a builder at midnight
They ring at ten on a Tuesday while you are on a roof, they get voicemail, and they ring the next builder on the list.
9:41
Monday, 31 August9:41
Plans drawn; consent not lodged. Hoping to start after Christmas. Two other builders pricing.
Details ready in your connected job system.
Make the first call a useful job brief.
The useful part is what your crew receives after the call. Build a reusable question list here, then keep actual customer details in your own system. This does not create a job or connect to any software.
How to use this well
- Ask for the site, scope and person who can approve the work before discussing a visit. Never promise a price or start date that the crew has not approved.
- Distinguish an enquiry, a requested visit and a confirmed booking. They are different outcomes.
- The output is a blank template. There is no reason to enter a real customer’s address or number into a public planning tool.
Published by Talkify, the provider behind this website—not an independent review or certification service. These are planning examples, not customer results. You can use the guidance to evaluate any provider.
Building is not an emergency trade, and that is the problem
A plumber gets a second chance because the water is still coming through the ceiling. You do not. A missed builder call is not urgent to anybody except you, so it never rings back.
The person ringing about an extension has been thinking about it for two years and has just worked up the nerve. They have three numbers off a website and about ten minutes on their break. Whoever picks up gets the site visit, and the other two never learn they were in the running.
That call is worth more than anything else that happens to your phone all week, and it is the one you are least able to take.
The seven o'clock enquiry
Homeowners ring builders in the evening, after work, once the kids are down. Almost nobody covers that hour, because everybody assumes a building company only needs answering in office hours. It is the quietest, cheapest hour to be the one who answers.
A normal Tuesday, and what each call actually needs
Five different people ring you in a day and they want five different things. Only one of them is a customer, and it is not the loud one.
9:41
Monday, 31 August9:41
7:10 am · Plasterboard delivery. Driver needs access instructions.
9:25 am · Electrician asks when the frame will be ready.
10:40 am · Plans drawn, consent not lodged. Callback requested.
07:10 Supplier
A truck at the gate with a load of gib and nobody on site yet. It needs a yes or no and a place to put it, not a message taken.
09:25 Subbie
Your electrician asking whether the frame is up and when he can get in. He is scheduling his week around your answer, and if he does not get one he books someone else.
10:40 Homeowner
A rear extension on a bungalow. Plans drawn, no consent yet, hoping to start after Christmas. This is the call. It gets the site address, the stage and the scope, and it gets to you inside the hour.
13:15 Inspector
Council ringing to move a pre-line inspection. A time changing is useless to you tomorrow. It goes in the diary and you are told.
15:50 Old client
A door sticking on a house you finished eighteen months ago. Not urgent, but it is a warranty call and it needs to be on the record rather than in somebody's head.
19:05 Homeowner
A new build enquiry from someone who could not ring during the day. Answered properly at seven at night, which is the whole reason they got through to you and not to somebody else.
An example day, written the way the notes actually arrive.
What a construction answering service has to get right
A name and a number is not a lead on a build. You need to know whether this is a job you would even quote before you spend a Saturday on it.
The site
Where it is. The street address of the site, not the billing address, because the two are different more often than anyone expects.
What stage. An idea, a sketch, drawn plans, a consent granted, or already underway with someone else. It changes whether you ring back today or in three months.
New or existing. New build, extension, renovation, or a repair on something you did. Four different conversations wearing the same first sentence.
The people
Who is asking. The owner, an architect, a project manager, or a tenant with no authority to spend anything.
Who else is involved. Whether there is a designer or an engineer already on it, and whether other builders have been asked to price it.
When they want it. In their words. Never a date promised on your behalf, and never a price. It does not quote and it does not commit you to a site visit you have not agreed to.
It plugs into the things you already use every day
No new system to learn and nothing to install. The work turns up where you already look for it.
Simpro
Match the caller to a customer and site, then capture the job details.
Explore the connection →
Fergus
Put new enquiries and customer details into the job workflow your team already uses.
Explore the connection →
Tradify
Send the enquiry into Tradify by email. No customer lookup or direct diary booking.
Explore the connection →
iTrade
Capture the details and request a visit. Your team confirms the schedule.
Explore the connection →Your job system comes first. Talkify also connects to calendars, accounting tools and CRMs. Actions vary by system; we confirm the exact workflow with you. See more connections →
Connect the tools you already run. No need to change job software.
Running something else? Tell us what you use and we will quote the integration work.
The enquiry is in your system before they ring the next builder
A message on your phone is not a lead. It counts once it is in your system with nothing to re-key, and once it is still there in March when they finally get their consent.
Fergus
The customer is created or matched, and the enquiry is opened with the site address, the stage and the scope written into the notes. Where you have asked us to, a site visit is held in the real diary while the caller is still on the phone.
Simpro
Where the commercial work and the bigger contracts tend to live, and the default for a lot of Australian firms. The call is lodged against the right customer and the right site rather than opened as a stranger.
Tradify
One way, by email. The enquiry arrives in Tradify after the call. It cannot look a caller up in your Tradify customers and it cannot read or book your Tradify diary, because Tradify does not open that up to anybody.
Xero and MYOB
Your contacts are the phonebook. The architect who sends you four jobs a year is known by name the moment she rings, and a client ringing about their own progress invoice gets a straight answer instead of a message taken. Card details are never read out over the phone.
Google Calendar
If your week lives in a shared calendar rather than a job system, that is the diary it reads and writes. Site visits land in the real diary, so it is never a guess at whether you are free on Saturday morning.
Running something else? Tell us what you use and we will quote the integration work.
Get set up
Give us the number and tell us what a job you would actually quote looks like. We build it, you hear it, then it goes live.
Your number
You keep it. You divert your existing number to us and you can turn that divert off from your own handset whenever you want.
Set up
Your account opens straight away. Your agent is built and trained within 24 hours, and we walk you through it first.
Evenings
Most builders switch it on from five until nine, and Saturday mornings. That is where the enquiries are.
Stop losing the evening enquiry
Your account opens straight away and your agent is built within 24 hours. No card, and nothing answers your phone until you have heard it and said yes.