Talkify is an AI receptionist for trades running ServiceM8. It answers on the number you already have, with the carrier you already use. It knows your customers from your ServiceM8 client list, tells them what is happening with their job, and puts the next one on your board with the address on it. Nothing is ported. Nothing is diverted onto somebody else's phone service.
It is in early access: built and tested against ServiceM8's published API, and we are switching it on one business at a time so we sit with you while it goes live. Everything that writes into your ServiceM8 is a switch you control, and the two that matter, lodging a job and booking a visit, both start off.
ServiceM8 sells one of them and we sell the other. They are not the same product, and the differences are worth understanding before you pick either.
To use the agent inside ServiceM8 you take their phone add-on and move your business line onto it, by diverting it or by porting it. That number is on your van, your signage, your invoices and ten years of search results, and moving it is a bigger decision than it looks. We never ask. Talkify answers on call forwarding from the line you already have, with the carrier you already pay, and you can switch the forwarding off in the time it takes to make a coffee.
No port, no divert onto usAn agent built inside ServiceM8 knows what is in ServiceM8. Most of what your phone gets asked is not: whether you do commercial, what your call-out area is, whether you take card, what you charge to come out, when you are back after Christmas. Ours answers from what you have told it about the business, and treats ServiceM8 as one of the places a call goes rather than as the whole world.
One agent, everything you knowCalls and texts, one agent, one set of knowledge, one bill. Somebody who texts the business number gets the same answers as somebody who rings it, and the conversation reads like a conversation rather than a form. It is not a second product bolted on beside the phone one.
Voice and text togetherIf the agent did not get the unit number, the gate code or a second contact, it texts the customer afterwards, reads the reply and puts it on the job. A message that is missing the one thing you need is a message somebody has to ring back about, which is most of the value gone.
Follows up by textThe call is a lead with the recording, the transcript and a summary on it, and from there it can ring somebody, text somebody, hit a webhook, push into your CRM or post into Slack or Teams. The write into ServiceM8 is one destination among those, not the only one.
Leads, CRM, Slack, TeamsTheir agent is a real product and we are not going to pretend otherwise. On their phone add-on it answers, screens the obvious rubbish, leaves a message in your ServiceM8 inbox, texts the caller a booking form link and can take an online booking. If your phone only ever gets asked to book something, and moving your number does not bother you, that may well be enough.
Worth comparing properlyEverything it does, on the mornings when the phone goes four times while you are under a house.
Six things happen while your hands are dirty. You do none of them.
Before it says a word, the number is matched against your ServiceM8 clients. A regular is greeted by name and does not have to spell their surname again. Somebody new is treated as new, properly, rather than guessed at.
01The commonest call a trade gets is somebody chasing. The agent reads back the stage the job is at and when somebody is next booked to be there, in plain words rather than in a status label, and says plainly when nothing is booked instead of guessing a day.
02ServiceM8 will tell you what is booked. It will not tell you what is free, so we work that out: everything on the board, everybody on leave, the hours you work and travel time either side. What is left is what the agent may offer, and nothing else.
03A job without a site address is a job somebody has to ring back about, so the agent asks for it before it gets anywhere near a time, and puts it on the job where the person driving there will look for it.
04A conversation happens between offering a time and booking it, and somebody in the office can fill that slot in the meantime. So it asks again at the moment it books, and if the time has gone it says so and offers what is left rather than double-booking you.
05The job lands on your board with what the caller described in their own words, the site address, how urgent they said it was, and the caller attached as the job contact. You get the whole call as a text and an email within seconds.
06Your clients, your jobs, your board and your hours, working the phone at the times you cannot.
A regular is greeted by name because the agent found them in your ServiceM8 before it spoke. Worth knowing how: a ServiceM8 client record carries no phone number, so we keep a small index that turns a number into a client. It holds no names and no numbers, only a one-way code, and it expires on its own.
"Where are you up to", "did you get my quote", "is that finished", "when are you coming". The agent reads the job and its next booked visit and answers from that, and if the caller reads out a job number it uses that one rather than assuming the most recent.
Not a guess at your gaps and not a list of days you are open. Everything on the dispatch board, everybody away, your working days and hours and travel time either side, all netted off. The agent offers two or three of what survives and never a time it was not given.
On your board with the caller's own description, the site address, how urgent they said it was, and them attached as the job contact so you ring the right person back. New callers become real ServiceM8 clients with their number saved where it can be found again.
Nothing is offered that did not come out of your own board, and the chosen time is checked again in the second before it is written. If it has gone, the agent apologises and offers what is left rather than putting somebody in a slot you have already given away.
It does not quote and it does not take payment details over the phone, whatever it is asked. A number invented on a call is one you have to honour or argue about. It takes what the job is and leaves the pricing to you.
Connecting ServiceM8 does not hand your board over. Every ability is its own switch, and the two that write start off.
Recognising a caller from your ServiceM8 clients, and writing what the call was about onto their record afterwards. Neither changes anything on your board, and both are useful from the first call.
Nothing written to a jobAnswering job questions and offering real times come on when you switch the mid-call abilities on. Both are read only, so you can listen to it work before anything is written anywhere.
Read onlyLodging the job is its own switch and starts off, so nothing can appear on your board by accident while you are still testing. When it is on, a lodged job commits nobody to a day.
Puts a job on the boardBooking the visit is another switch again. It is worth knowing that ServiceM8 has no diary entry that is not attached to a job, so booking a visit necessarily lodges the job as well. It is the biggest thing the agent can do, so it is the last one you turn on.
Fills a slot in your diaryRing our agent and put it through its paces. Describe a job, change your mind halfway, ask it something it will not know, try to catch it out. Most people ring expecting a robot and hang up having had a conversation. No sign-up, no card, answering around the clock.
Everyone worries about the answering machine at night. That is not where the work goes missing.
One of them is a burst pipe, one is somebody chasing a quote, one is a supplier and one is a wrong number, and you find out which at five o'clock. The agent answers all four at the moment they ring, in your name, gets the address off the one that matters and puts it on your board before you are back in the van.
Somebody with water coming through a ceiling rings three trades and books the one that picks up. That is the job, plus everything it turns into, decided by who answered rather than by who was better. Work out what yours are worth on the missed call calculator.
The same agent, the same knowledge of your business, pointed in the other direction. Every one of these is live today.
Reminders the day before, win-backs to the customers you have not seen in two years, follow-ups after a big job. You load the list, it makes the calls.
Connected to your Xero, the agent rings the invoices that have gone past due, in your name and your wording, and writes the outcome and any promise to pay onto the invoice. No commission, no collection agency.
The same brain in a chat widget on your site, in text or voice, from $49 a month. It knows the same jobs and the same rules as the one on the phone.
After-hours emergencies handed to whoever is actually on call, chased by notification, text and phone call until somebody accepts, then escalated down the list.
The morning after a storm, or the week the hot water cylinders all go. Call centre plans answer five, ten or fifteen callers at the same moment, with no queue and no hold music.
The Personal Assistant answers one person's own line rather than the business number, screens the rubbish and texts you what mattered. From $89 a month.
To start building your agent, complete the form, or ask our agent to get you started. No card needed for the demo.
The questions we hear most. If yours isn't here, ring our live demo agent on 03 242 1262, it'll either answer or queue a callback from a human.
How the agent handles a day on the tools, from the Saturday burst pipe to the quote nobody got round to ringing back about.
Same story, different van. Callouts, quotes, compliance questions and the ones that should have gone to the supplier.
What Talkify connects to today, and what your agent can do once it is connected.