The AI receptionist for electricians that answers, quotes, and books the job
An AI receptionist is software that picks up your business line and does real front-office work: it talks to the caller, prices the job, and puts it on your schedule. Mercateer is one trained for the trades, running on a construction-estimating engine with your price book inside. Call it yourself before it ever takes a live call, and judge it the way you’d judge a new hire.
11:38 p.m. · Incoming call
“Half the house just went dark and the breaker won’t reset.”
What it does when your line rings
Not a phone tree and not a website widget: a receptionist that works the call end to end, with your prices and your rules.
Price book
Service call: diagnostic
$89Panel breaker replacement
$250Whole-house surge protector
$400After hours: troubleshooting $189
Speaks real prices from your book
Underneath the voice is a construction-estimating engine with your price book loaded as line items. Ask what a diagnostic costs and it says $89, because that’s what your book says. Mark panel work as look-first and it books the estimate visit instead of guessing a number.
Dispatches by your rules
You write the escalation logic in plain language: which words wake the on-call tech, which calls hold until morning, who gets the transfer and when. The agent runs that logic the same way on call one and call one thousand.
Escalation rules
Live
Burning smell or sparks
Wake the on-call now.
No power after hours
Offer tonight or 8:00 a.m.
Anything else
Book the first open slot.
On the line around the clock
A breaker that won’t reset at 2 a.m. gets the same pickup, the same triage questions, and the same booked slot as a Tuesday-morning service call.
Texts back the calls you miss
A caller who gives up before pickup gets a text within seconds, and the conversation continues there: same price-book quoting, same booking, same record.
30+ languages on every call
It hears the caller’s language and answers in it, with no transfer and no separate line. 30+ languages come with every plan.
Transcripts of everything
Every conversation ends as a full transcript plus a short summary, so you can audit any call it took and see exactly what it said in your name.
An AI receptionist vs. a chatbot vs. you
| Mercateer | A generic AI chatbot | Answering it yourself | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Answers the phone | Yes: voice, plus web chat and text | No, it lives in a website widget | When both hands are free |
| Quotes electrical work | From your price book, by your rules | Dodges the question or invents a number | The best quote in the business, when you pick up |
| Books the job | Into real open slots, confirmation text sent | Points the visitor at a contact form | Yes, between jobs and after dinner |
| Knows who’s on call tonight | Runs your escalation rules every time | Has no idea what a rotation is | You are the rotation |
| Judgment on a strange call | Escalates the moment a call leaves its rules | Keeps chatting regardless | Unbeatable; nobody reads a caller like the owner |
| What it costs | $99–399/mo, or per booked call | Often cheap, but doing a different job | Unpaid, and it spends your evenings |
Chatbot capabilities vary by product. This column reflects typical website chatbots, which handle typed chat on a webpage rather than phone calls.
Built so you can check its work
Trusting software with your phone line starts with being able to verify every word it says.
Read any call back
Transcripts and summaries land seconds after hang-up. If you ever wonder how it handled a caller, you read it, word for word.
You set the script
Your greeting, your triage questions, what it quotes firm, what it ranges, and what it never prices. Change any of it whenever you want.
It knows its limits
When a call goes past its rules, it doesn’t wing it: it transfers to you or your on-call tech and texts the context ahead.
On and off when you say
Run it after-hours only, on overflow, or full-time. Take your line back at any point, with no contract holding it hostage.
From sign-up to your first live call
Load the book and the calendar
Bring in your price book and your schedule. Set which items get a firm spoken price, which get a range, and which get flagged look-first so the agent books an estimate visit instead of pricing blind.
Price book
Service call: diagnostic
$89Panel breaker replacement
$250Whole-house surge protector
$400After hours: troubleshooting $189
Write the rules in plain language
Your greeting, what counts as an emergency on your line, who’s on call which nights, and when after-hours pricing applies. The rules read like instructions to a new hire, because that’s what they are.
Escalation rules
Live
Burning smell or sparks
Wake the on-call now.
No power after hours
Offer tonight or 8:00 a.m.
Anything else
Book the first open slot.
Call it before your customers do
Dial the number and try to trip it up: push on price, interrupt it mid-sentence, switch languages mid-call. When you run out of ways to break it, forward your line, after-hours first or all day from day one.
11:38 p.m. · Incoming call
“Half the house just went dark and the breaker won’t reset.”
AI receptionist questions, answered straight
Keep researching
The pages owners usually read next.
Hear it handle an electrical call before your customers do
Load your price book, write your rules, and dial the number yourself. If it doesn’t answer like your shop, don’t forward the line.
No credit card required