For HVAC shops · Owner-operators and small crews
When you’re on a roof till dark, the calls you miss aren’t the routine ones — they’re the emergencies, the jobs that can’t wait till morning and don’t. ExtraHands AI sets up and runs an AI receptionist on your existing line that answers them, books them, and follows the rules you set once.
Free · No card required · One page within 48 hours · No sales call
Your rules run every call. What wakes the on-call tech, how your maintenance-plan members get priority, which replacement leads come straight to you — written down once, followed on every call, and checked weekly by a person.
Your free AI audit — one page
SampleFormat example — your audit covers your own Google listing, your reviews, and what happens when someone calls your shop.
The three biggest gaps, ranked
Illustrative format only — the findings above are examples, not a real shop’s audit. Yours is researched from your listing, your reviews, and your phone setup, and delivered with a short video walkthrough recorded by a person.
The terms we work to
14 days
for setup to be working, or the $497 setup fee comes back. The guarantee is written into the pricing below, with the claim spelled out.
48 hours
from audit request to the one-page summary and video walkthrough in your inbox — the audit is the first deliverable, and it is free.
30 seconds
is all the receptionist gets before it has said what it is: your shop’s automated assistant. It never pretends to be a person.
Every week
a person reads your call transcripts and fixes what the receptionist got wrong. You see the week in a plain text summary — no scheduled calls, ever.
These are the service’s own working terms — each one is stated in full, with its conditions, in the pricing and terms sections of this page.
The problem
The first hard freeze doesn’t book appointments — it makes the phone ring at 9 p.m., when your techs are on the last roof and you’re on a ladder. That caller’s house is cold. They are not leaving a voicemail and waiting; they are calling the next name on Google.
It’s the same on the ordinary days: you can’t staff a front desk at a six-tech shop, and you can’t answer from an attic. So the emergency work — the highest-value calls your marketing already paid for — lands wherever someone picks up.
The shop that answers the emergency call gets the job. Right now, that’s whoever isn’t on a roof.
Four quick questions, your own numbers: what the calls your shop misses in a month are worth — the after-hours ones included. No industry averages; the math is yours.
How this is figured: weekly calls × the unanswered share × 4.3 weeks = missed calls a month. Missed calls × your close rate = jobs. Jobs × average job value = the month’s number. Every figure is an estimate from your own numbers — pre-filled above with example numbers, so change any of them. The free audit compares your number against your real Google listing, your reviews, and your phone setup.
Check this number against the real thing — free, one page, 48 hours.
Three ways HVAC shops carry the after-hours problem today — and who ends up doing the work on each:
| The route | Cost | Who does the work |
|---|---|---|
| Let it ring, and call back later | Your number, from the calculator above | Nobody — the caller decides whether to wait, and some just call the next name on Google. |
| A self-serve AI answering tool | From $49/mo | You do — the setup, the scripts, the weekly checking, the review replies, all of it, in hours you don’t have. |
| ExtraHands AI | $497 once, then $297/mo | Us — your rules written down, the receptionist live on your line, transcripts read weekly, reviews answered, the month reported on one page. |
The self-serve figure is the published starting price of OnCrew (oncrew.ai), a contractor answering tool recorded in our offer research, October 2026 — a market anchor, not a quote; plans and terms vary. The ExtraHands figures are the live prices in the pricing section of this page. The first row is your own arithmetic from the calculator, not our number.
How it works
No sales call, no settings to learn, no dashboard to check. The whole thing runs by email and checkout.
What you do: send one email. We research your Google listing, your reviews, and what happens when someone calls your shop after hours — and you get the one-page summary plus a short video walkthrough recorded by a person, within 48 hours, free. You’ll see your missed-call estimate before the season turns, not after.
What you do: answer one email about how you want calls handled. We put the AI receptionist on your existing business line, set up missed-call text-back, online booking, and review replies, and handle the texting registration your carrier requires. A person writes and approves every script, text template, and review reply before anything goes live. The setup guarantee clock runs from the day we start: working within 14 days, or the $497 comes back.
What you do: read a short weekly text summary. A person reads your call transcripts every week and fixes what’s off. Reviews get replies a person approved. Once a month you get a one-page report: calls answered, texts sent, reviews handled, bookings taken.
Start with the free audit — step 1 shows you what your after-hours callers hear today.
The offer
An HVAC shop’s phone problem isn’t volume — it’s timing. The setup is built around your emergency rules and your members first, then run and reviewed every week.
Prefer to verify first? The checkable details — deliverables, what it runs on, timelines, limits, what we are not are in one place, below the offer.
Every line above is a term of the service, not a slogan — if we ever can’t hold one, the honest move is to tell you and stop, and the care plan is month-to-month so you can hold us to exactly that.
For the owner who verifies
Everything on this page that can be checked, gathered: what arrives, what it runs on, how long things take, where the limits sit, and what this service is not.
Pricing
One setup, one monthly care plan, software at cost — the same published price for every shop. Start with the free audit, or go straight to setup before the season turns.
Free
One page + video walkthrough · within 48 hours · no card
By email — send the request and we research your listing, your reviews, and your phone setup. Keep the audit either way.
$497 one-time
We learn how you want calls handled, set it all up, and test it before it goes live
Working within 14 days of the start, or the $497 is refunded — the claim is spelled out under these prices.
$297 /month
Month to month · cancel anytime · starts once your setup is live
How it starts: the care plan manages a setup that has to exist first, so it isn’t sold on its own. When your setup goes live, the care-plan checkout arrives in your onboarding email — same published price, $297/mo, month to month.
Software is billed at cost, and you see the number before you start. If your scheduling software already has an AI receptionist, we set up and run that one, so you don’t pay twice.
The setup guarantee: if we can’t get it working within 14 days of the day we start, you get the $497 back. Claim it by emailing chiticohq+extrahands@zohomail.com and saying so — the refund goes back to the card you paid with. It is a guarantee about our setup work, and it is the only kind we make: we never guarantee jobs, bookings, or revenue, because those depend on your market, not our settings.
The care plan does not cover answering calls live ourselves, running your dispatch or schedule, or weekly calls — a weekly text summary takes their place. Full terms are in the section below.
In plain words
We promise a process and a paper trail — the things this service controls. We never promise what the work will do for your shop, and any service that guarantees you jobs is guessing with your money.
Setup working within 14 days of the start, or the $497 setup fee is refunded. Claim it by email — write to chiticohq+extrahands@zohomail.com and say the setup isn’t working; the refund returns to the card you paid with. The guarantee covers the setup being live and working as configured. It does not cover call volume, bookings, or revenue.
The receptionist follows the rules and scripts you approve; it can still get a call wrong, which is why a person reads the transcripts weekly and fixes what’s off. We never answer your line live ourselves, never run your dispatch or schedule, and never hold a sales call. Software your setup needs is billed at cost, and you see the number before you start.
The price on this page is the total at checkout; nothing is added after. Payments are processed by Stripe — we never see or store your card number. The setup is a single one-time payment. The care plan bills monthly, starting when your setup is live, and its checkout is sent in your onboarding email.
The care plan is month to month. Email us and say you want to cancel — there are no further charges, no cancellation call, and no exit form. You keep your reviews, your bookings, and your number, and we hand over whatever was built on your accounts.
Questions
The receptionist answers on your existing line, says up front that it’s your shop’s automated assistant, and works the call by your rules: it takes the details, books the job into your schedule, and — where your rules say a call is an emergency — alerts the on-call tech the way you specified, by call or text.
Nothing about that call is improvised. The rules come from you, once, before go-live, and a person reads the week’s transcripts to check the calls followed them.
Yes — because priority is one of your rules, not a feature we’d have to sell you. When you set up, you tell us how members are treated: who they reach first, what they’re promised, what happens after hours. The scripts are built from that, you approve them before go-live, and the weekly transcript review checks they held.
No — that’s the point of the management model. Several of those platforms already include an AI receptionist (Jobber includes one in its Plus plan; ServiceTitan and Housecall Pro have built-ins). If yours has one, we set up and run that one and it books straight onto your board. We charge for the work — the rules, the scripts, the weekly review — not for a second receptionist.
The audit takes 48 hours. Setup carries the guarantee: working within 14 days of the day we start, or the $497 comes back — the carrier texting registration (about a week) sits inside that window and we handle it. If the freeze is your deadline, the audit this week is the honest way to find out what your phones are doing before it hits.
Yes — it introduces itself as your automated assistant in the first 30 seconds of every call. Your members and your emergency callers deserve to know who they’re talking to, and in our judgment a shop that’s straight about it keeps more trust than one that fakes a “hello.”
You keep your reviews, your bookings, and your number, and we hand over whatever was built on your accounts. The care plan is month to month — one email ends it, with no cancellation call and no further charges.
Free AI audit. One page, plain English, 48 hours — what your after-hours callers hear, and what it’s costing. Then decide.
Get my free AI auditNo card required · No obligation · We never share your info
Run a plumbing shop instead? See the plumbing page · Or the overview: ExtraHands AI