Twelve calls a day, and half of them missed
David McHugh set up his roofing business in 1981 and has run it ever since, across Rochdale and Greater Manchester. He is on the tools, out doing the estimates, managing the lads and handling the admin. As he puts it, everything stops with him.
The phone paid the price. Around twelve calls come in on a typical day and he was missing roughly half of them, because he was up on a roof or dealing with something else. In roofing that is expensive. A job is worth anywhere between £6,000 and £15,000, and a caller who cannot get through simply rings the next roofer. He had never used voicemail either, so people would ring back again and again until he stopped what he was doing and picked up.
Why he chose Cyberstaff’s AI Receptionist
David is the first to say he is not a technical man, at least not outside roofing. His daughter got him onto ChatGPT and he has been hooked ever since, so when the missed calls became a real problem that is where he went to research the options. Cyberstaff came back as the standout name on the list, and once he looked he thought the same.
What settled it was the first conversation. Jamie from the support team picked things up, and every question since has been answered quickly. David was looking for a like for like relationship, a supplier who treats him the way he treats his own customers. He says that is exactly what he has had.
He answers what he wants, the AI takes the rest
If David can pick up, he picks up. The rest of the time the AI Receptionist answers, takes the details and emails him a summary he can read between jobs, with the recording a tap away. Cold callers get dealt with before they ever reach him, which he enjoyed enough to play the recording back afterwards.
The small touches have landed well. The AI Receptionist remembers a caller’s name and greets them by it when they ring again. He has changed the voice a few times to get it how he wants it. He is also open with his customers about it, and has posted on his Facebook page that calls are answered by an AI and come straight through to him. The whole thing took a couple of hours to set up.
Around £7,500 booked, and a lot less to juggle
Two weeks in, the AI Receptionist is picking up four to six calls a day, the ones that used to go unanswered. Three or four have turned into jobs, including one he went out to view and won the day before we spoke. That is around £7,500 of work booked, on a £30 a month plan. David does not track it as a conversion rate. He tracks whether he gets more out than he puts in.
The bigger win is a quieter one. He can read a message and respond in his own time rather than taking calls off a roof, and across more than fifty calls not one customer has raised a problem with it. For a man who describes himself as the captain of the ship, juggling everything, having one less thing to juggle is what he values most.