Section slipping. Wall about 1.4m high and 9m long, house above it. Council not involved yet.
The first warm Saturday brings eleven calls before lunch
A landscaping answering service that takes all of them at once, sorts the tidy-ups from the design work, and fills your week in the order that makes sense.
9:41
Monday, 31 August9:41
Not priced on the phone. A wall that height may need an engineer.
Spring turns the phone on and it stays on until autumn
Everybody looks at their section on the same weekend. You are on a digger or shifting soil, and the calls that decide your next four months all arrive in the hours you are least able to take them.
All at once
Eleven callers, eleven conversations
Everyone is answered at the same moment, so nobody hears an engaged tone and rings the next name instead. A busy Saturday stops being a row of missed calls and becomes a week that is already booked.
The slip after the rain
A wall that has moved, or a branch down across a driveway, is the one landscaping call that genuinely cannot wait. You set what counts as urgent and those reach your mobile rather than a list.
The commercial site
A property with an inspection or an event this week is treated differently to a homeowner who has been thinking about the back lawn since March. Both get answered, neither gets confused.
Maintenance and construction are two businesses on one phone
A monthly mow and a retaining wall have almost nothing in common except the number they ring. They are taken as two different conversations and kept apart from there.
9:41
Monday, 31 August9:41
Paving and planting, roughly 60 square metres. One-off, not a maintenance round.
900mm side gate. Digger will not fit. Everything barrowed in from the street.
Site visit booked Tuesday 2pm. No price was given over the phone.
Which kind of work
Maintenance, planting, paving or earthworks. It decides everything that follows, and it is the question a general message service never thinks to ask.
How much of it
The size of the section, or the area involved in square metres if they know it. Landscaping quotes are area work, and a message with no area in it is not a quote you can start.
Machine access
How wide the side gate is and whether a digger, a truck or a barrow is the only way in. This one question decides the price of the job more often than the work does.
One-off or ongoing
A single visit, or a round that repeats. An ongoing round goes in as a recurring job with the frequency and the site noted, rather than one appointment nobody remembers to repeat.
Who else is involved
A designer, an architect, a body corporate or the council. On a retaining wall it is the difference between a quote and a job that needs an engineer before anybody prices anything.
When and where
The address, when they want it started and who signs off the spend. On a commercial site, who the invoice goes to is taken there and then.
What it will not do
It does not price earthworks or a retaining wall down the phone, and it will not tell anybody whether their wall needs consent. That is a council question and an engineering one, and guessing at it on a call is how somebody ends up building the wrong wall. It is reception, not a landscaper.
The enquiry lands with the access notes already on it
A name and a suburb is not a job. It counts once it is on the right customer with the property, the area and the gate width written down.
Fergus
The enquiry is written into Fergus against the customer and the property, with the scope, the area and the access notes on it. Existing contacts are matched rather than duplicated, and where you have asked us to, the diary is read before a time is offered so a site visit is never dropped on top of a day already committed.
ServiceM8
The caller is matched to your client list, told what stage their job is at, offered times worked out from your real dispatch board, and the job is lodged with the site address on it. Worth knowing: ServiceM8 sells its own AI phone agent, it is live in New Zealand, and using theirs means moving your number onto their phone add-on. We never ask you to move your number.
Google Calendar
Maintenance rounds and site visits are written into the real diary at the next free slot with the address in the entry, so a run already committed out west does not get a design visit dropped into the middle of it.
Xero
Commercial and body corporate customers are recognised from your Xero contacts the moment they ring, invoice questions get a straight answer instead of a message taken, and the job goes on the right account without anyone looking it up.
Running something else? Tell us what you use and we will quote the integration work.
The weekend is when your customers are home
Homeowners look at their sections on Saturday and Sunday, which is precisely when a landscaping phone goes unanswered.
It knows your hours and it knows the public holidays, so it answers differently at four on a Sunday than it does on a Tuesday morning. You decide whether a weekend caller gets booked straight in or held for you to look at on Monday.
If out of hours cover is the only thing you want, there is a whole site about it at callanswering.co.nz.
Does it sound local
New Zealand calls are answered in a New Zealand voice, Australian calls in an Australian one. You hear yours and sign it off before it answers a single customer, and if you do not like it you pick another.
Get set up
Give us the number and tell us how you want maintenance kept apart from project work. We do the rest and ring you before it answers anything.
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.
Your rounds
Tell us which days you are on maintenance and which days are for project work, and it books into the right ones.
Not a landscaper
Builders
Site, stage, timing and who else is pricing it, taken on the first call.
Handyman
Nine little jobs on one list, sized into a half day rather than an hour.
Carpenters
Decks, doors and fit-outs, sized on the call rather than priced blind.
Every trade is along the top of the page, and why us is the short version of what makes this different from the rest of them.
Book the spring rush instead of missing it
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.