AI receptionist for plumbers
Doug books plumbing jobs from your website and inside ChatGPT at any hour. He answers what shoppers ask (trip fee, tankless brands, towns you cover), takes the address and the problem, and books the call with a Stripe deposit. He doesn't pick up the phone, so a burst pipe still goes to your emergency line. From $49 a month.
Updated
Which plumbing calls should Doug handle?
Split your calls into two piles. A burst supply line, sewage coming up in the tub, or no water at all is a phone call, and it should stay one. You give Doug the words that mean emergency (flooding, sewage, no water, gas smell by the water heater), and when a customer types one he gives them your emergency number instead of offering Thursday at 10.
The other pile is most of your week: a dripping kitchen faucet, a toilet that runs all night, a 12-year-old tank heater that started popping, a repipe quote on a 1970s house with galvanized lines. Those customers are shopping. They open three plumbers' sites after dinner and book whoever gives them a straight answer and a time. That pile is Doug's job.
What customers type into a plumber's website
They're on a phone, often with a towel on the floor, and the questions barely change from one house to the next.
- Do you come out to my town, and how soon?
- What does a service call cost, and is the trip fee taken off the repair?
- Do you work on tankless water heaters? Do you do Rinnai or Navien?
- Do you snake main lines, or just sinks? Do you run a camera?
- Can you replace a water heater this week, and roughly what does that run?
- Are you licensed and insured, and do you pull the permit?
How does Doug book a plumbing call?
He answers from your own site, price sheet and the Q&A pairs you write, so the trip fee and the brands you service come from you. If a question isn't covered, he says he doesn't know and takes their number. The miss lands in your dashboard with a drafted answer, and once you approve it he has it for next time.
Then he collects what your dispatcher would ask for: the address, what's leaking or clogged, where in the house, and how old the heater is if they know. He offers real open slots from your Google or Microsoft calendar or the hours you set. Addresses outside the towns or zip codes you list get a polite no.
What deposit should a plumber take?
Set it to your trip or diagnostic fee. The customer pays through Stripe when they book, and it comes off the invoice. That stops the person who booked three plumbers for the same morning, and your tech stops driving 25 minutes to a house where nobody answers the door.
On bigger scheduled work like a 50-gallon water heater swap, set a larger deposit on that service alone. You pick the refund window, and Doug handles reschedules and cancellations inside it. He takes nothing off the payment.
Showing up for 'plumber near me' and 'water heater leaking'
Plumbing gets searched two ways: by the problem ('water heater leaking', 'drain cleaning near me') and by the town ('plumber Round Rock'). Your Google Business Profile carries the Maps result. Service pages carry most of the rest, and they're also what ChatGPT and Gemini read when someone asks them who to call.
Each week Doug checks where you land on Google Maps and whether ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini name you for those questions. Then he writes the pages you're missing and publishes them to a Doug-run site or your WordPress site. For most shops that means drain cleaning, water heater repair and replacement, tankless installs, leak detection, sewer line work and repiping, plus a page for each town you cover. A town page needs one true local detail, like the galvanized pipe in older neighborhoods or hard water scaling up heaters. Our guide to service area pages explains why copied town pages get ignored.
Reviews and listings plumbers get judged on
Google reviews come first, because they feed both the Maps pack and AI answers. Yelp, Angi, HomeAdvisor, Thumbtack, Nextdoor and the BBB all show up in plumbing searches after that. If you run Google Local Services Ads, keep the license and insurance details there current.
Doug asks each customer for a review after a booking and replies to the ones that come in. He also flags listings where an old phone number or last year's hours disagree with your Google profile. That kind of mismatch is a common reason an assistant leaves a business off its answer.
Is it worth it for a plumbing shop?
If nearly every job starts as a phone call and someone answers every call, Doug won't change that part. He covers the website visitor at 11pm, the homeowner asking ChatGPT for a plumber this week, and the searches you don't show up for yet. One water heater install usually pays for a long stretch of the $49 plan.
Start with the free ChatGPT visibility check to see who ChatGPT recommends for plumbing in your town today. Then paste your website into Doug and ask him the six questions above.
Questions
- Does Doug answer my plumbing company's phone?
- No. He answers on your website and inside AI assistants like ChatGPT, Claude and Muse. When a customer types one of the emergency words you've set, he gives them your phone number right away.
- Can Doug quote a water heater replacement?
- He can give the price ranges you've written down and explain what changes the price, like tank size or a switch to tankless. He won't make up a number. If your material doesn't cover it, he takes the details and gets a person.
- Will Doug book jobs outside my service area?
- No. You list the towns or zip codes you cover, and he tells people outside them that you don't go there.
- How much does Doug cost for a plumber?
- Starter is $49 a month for 2,000 messages. Growth is $149 and lets your office jump into a live chat. Extra messages are $10 per 1,000 and roll over.
