General contractors
Megan answers while you are walking a site or in a meeting, tells a subcontractor from an inspector from a new client, and makes sure the call that would have stalled a trade reaches you today.
He wanted to know whether Thursday was still on, because the drywall delivery had slipped and he had heard something. It was a ninety-second question with a one-word answer.
You were in a client meeting. He left no message — subs almost never do — and by the time you rang back he had taken two days on somebody else's job to fill the gap. Now Thursday is not on, the drywall crew you booked behind him has to move, and the inspection you scheduled for the following Tuesday is in jeopardy. One unanswered call, and a week has quietly slipped.
This is the thing that makes a general contractor's phone unlike any other in this library. Everywhere else in the trades, a missed call is a lost lead. On your line, most calls are not leads at all — they are a framer confirming a day, an inspector's office moving a slot, a supplier saying the windows are three weeks out, an architect with an RFI, and a client asking whether they can still change the island.
So the cost of not answering is not a job you never won. It is a job you already have, running slower, with a schedule that has to be rebuilt around a conversation that did not happen.
And the sales calls — the actual new work — arrive on the same number, unannounced, from homeowners who found you through a referral and are ringing two other builders that afternoon. Those get buried underneath the operational traffic, which is precisely backwards: the highest-value call of the month is indistinguishable from the ninth supplier call of the day until somebody picks up.
You cannot answer it. You are on a site, in a meeting, under a house, or driving between two of them. That is not a discipline problem — it is what the job is.
This is the caller mix that defines the trade, and knowing it is most of what a good office manager does. Treat a sub like a prospect and you have wasted the only ninety seconds that mattered.
A framer, an electrician, a tile setter, checking whether Thursday holds. They will not leave a message and they will not chase — they will book somebody else's work into the gap. This is the call whose cost is measured in schedule, not revenue.
Moving a slot, or asking for something before they will sign off. Time-bound, procedural, and if it sits in voicemail over a weekend a whole trade sequence waits behind it.
Windows pushed three weeks, a cabinet order short, a truss delivery that needs a different access. Nobody enjoys these calls but they need to reach you today, because everything downstream is built on the date you were given.
They want to move a wall, upgrade the tile, or ask why the framing looks like that. Not a lead — an existing relationship with money already committed, and the fastest way to damage it is to make them feel like a stranger.
A detail that is not on the drawings, or a conflict between two sheets. The trade waiting on the answer is standing still while this call sits unreturned.
A homeowner with a referral and a renovation in mind. The single highest-value call you will take this month, arriving with no warning, and they are ringing two other builders this afternoon.
A full kitchen and bath for a figure that is not real. Worth establishing kindly and early, because a site visit to a job you will never take costs you an afternoon you did not have.
A door sticking, a hairline crack, a year-one snag. They are a past client and a referral source, and how this call is handled decides which of those two they remain.
A general contractor's phone runs on the construction day, which starts a long way before an office does. Subs call between six and seven-thirty in the morning, because that is when they are deciding where to take their crew. Suppliers call early too, when the loads are being planned. If your phone is not answered before seven, the operational half of your day is being decided without you.
The middle of the day belongs to inspectors, architects and clients — all of whom expect a same-day answer and none of whom will chase twice. And the new-business calls, the ones that actually matter to next year, arrive scattered through the afternoon from homeowners taking a break at work.
Then there is the evening pattern that catches most builders out: clients ring after dinner, once they have talked to each other about the thing that has been worrying them. Those calls are frequently the ones that prevent a small concern hardening into a formal complaint, and they land at seven when nobody is answering.
What answers today is a mobile in a pocket on a site with a saw running, or an office manager who is also doing takeoffs, invoicing and payroll and cannot be on the phone continuously. Both are doing exactly what they should be doing. Neither can be a switchboard.
Megan answers from six in the morning in your company's name, sorts the sub from the inspector from the new client, and gets each of them to the right place. The schedule-critical ones reach you today; the enquiry gets booked while the homeowner is still interested.
Every other page in this library prices a missed call as a lost job. On a GC's line that undercounts it badly, because most of your calls are operational and their cost lands somewhere a spreadsheet does not look.
Start with the one you can price. You know your average project value and roughly how many enquiries become contracts. Pull inbound against connected for last month — your provider will break it out by hour — and apply an honest conversion rate to the new-business share. That is the visible loss.
Now the invisible one, which is larger. When a framer's call goes unanswered and he takes two days elsewhere, the cost is not his ninety seconds. It is every trade stacked behind him, the inspection that has to move, the client who now sees a project running late, and — if you carry liquidated damages or a rate-locked construction loan — a genuinely expensive number attached to a week that slipped for no good reason.
You cannot compute that as neatly as a lead. But you can ask yourself a question you already know the answer to: how many of the delays on your last three projects began with a call that did not get returned in time? Most builders, asked that honestly, name at least one per job.
There is a third cost worth naming because it is the one that ends relationships. Subs work for the GC who is easy to reach. The good ones have a choice of work, and being unable to get an answer is the most common reason a reliable sub quietly stops making your jobs a priority. That is not a phone problem you can see on a report; it shows up two years later as a bench that is not as strong as it was.
Against all of it, answering is billed by the second Megan is on a call. Most of these calls are ninety seconds — a confirmation, a delivery note, an inspection slot. That is close to the ideal shape for per-second pricing, and it costs a small fraction of an office manager's day being interrupted forty times.
Pay As You Go is $29 a month plus $0.88 for each minute Megan spends on calls, with no included minutes. Professional is $199 a month and includes 500 minutes, then $0.45 a minute. Growth is $499 a month and includes 1,500 minutes, then $0.38 a minute. Enterprise is priced by conversation. Every plan includes the entire product — the plans differ by included minutes only — and calls are billed in real seconds, never rounded up to the next minute.
Wednesday, 6:40am. It could be a sub, a supplier, an inspector or a new client.
MeganThanks for calling Hallam Construction, this is Megan, an AI assistant. How can I help you today?
Morning — it's Danny, I'm doing the framing over on the Corbett job. I heard the drywall got pushed and I need to know if you still want me Thursday, because I've got someone asking me for two days.
MeganThanks Danny — that's exactly the sort of thing Rob needs to see this morning rather than this afternoon. So I've got it right: framing on Corbett, you're asking whether Thursday still holds, and you need an answer before you commit those two days elsewhere. Is there a time today after which it's too late for you?
Yeah, I need to tell them by about ten or they'll get someone else.
MeganUnderstood — I'll mark it as needing an answer before ten and get it to him now, not in his end-of-day summary. Best number's the one you're calling from?
That's the one. Cheers.
An illustration of how Megan handles this kind of call, not a recording of one. Her opening line is the disclosure she actually speaks.
Megan opens neutral and lets the caller say who they are. A sub confirming a day gets a message routed to whoever runs the schedule, with the job named and any deadline attached. A homeowner with a renovation gets a proper enquiry conversation and an estimate slot. Running the framer through a qualification script would be absurd, and it is exactly what a generic answering service does.
"Needs an answer before ten" is a different message from "call back when you can," and the difference is a week of schedule. You define which caller types and which phrases escalate — most builders set subs with a deadline, inspectors, and anything involving a delivery window.
A client who has already signed and is ringing about a change or a concern is transferred or reaches you as a message the same day. Being asked what sort of project they are considering, by the builder currently working on their house, is the kind of thing people repeat to their friends.
A homeowner with a referral is ringing two other builders that afternoon. Booking the site visit while they are on the line is most of the sale — and it puts your enquiry into the slot you actually want rather than the one left after two callbacks.
Transcript, recording and summary per call. A builder can go through the morning's traffic at a red light or over coffee and know what needs a call back before ten, which is a very different thing from twelve missed-call notifications and no context.
She does not price work, give a ballpark, or tell a homeowner what a kitchen costs. Construction estimating is not a phone activity and a number said early follows you all the way to a contract negotiation.
She does not commit your schedule. She will capture that a sub needs an answer by ten and get it to the person who can give one — she will not tell Danny that Thursday is on, because she does not know what else moved this morning and a wrong confirmation is worse than a delayed one.
She does not authorise changes. A client asking to move a wall is captured and routed; nobody's change order gets agreed on a phone call with a receptionist.
And where a call describes something unsafe on a site — an injury, a structural failure, a gas line struck, a fall — the instruction is 911 first and the site supervisor second. That is not a message to be summarised; it is a call that stops being about scheduling.
The 2am burst pipe goes to whoever picks up — and it is rarely the company with the best reviews.
Read more →You cannot answer a phone with both hands inside a live panel — and that is when it rings.
Read more →The hail stops at four. By Saturday there are out-of-state trucks on the street.
Read more →Pay As You Go is $29 a month plus $0.88 for each minute Megan spends on calls, with no included minutes. Professional is $199 a month and includes 500 minutes, then $0.45 a minute. Growth is $499 a month and includes 1,500 minutes, then $0.38 a minute. Enterprise is priced by conversation. Every plan includes the entire product — the plans differ by included minutes only — and calls are billed in real seconds, never rounded up to the next minute.
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