Answering service for contractors
Answering service for contractors that books, not just messages.
Most answering services are message-takers — they answer the phone, write down the homeowner's name, email it to you, and you call back tomorrow. By tomorrow, the homeowner already booked with someone else. Surgepoint's answering service books the inspection on the call.
One roofer per ZIP cluster · No long-term contract · Performance pricing
What's included every month
The full storm-response engine, bundled. You only pay per booked inspection.
Managed paid ads
$2,000–$5,000/mo valueFB, Google, Bing — we run them. Creative, audience, optimization, reporting. You don't touch the ad accounts.
24/7 AI receptionist
$500–$1,200/mo valueEvery call answered. Every missed call rescued. Books inspections directly to your calendar.
30-day SMS nurture
$300/mo valueEvery lead gets timed follow-ups + appointment reminders. Industry avg show-rate 60% — ours hits 85%+.
Exclusive vetted leads
Geographic exclusivityHomeowners with confirmed storm damage in your service area. We don't sell the same lead to 5 contractors.
Performance pricing
Pay per result$50–$150 per booked-and-shown inspection. No retainer. No long-term contract. Cancel anytime.
How it works
- 1
Apply for your ZIP cluster
We work with one roofer per ZIP cluster. 60-second qualifying call. If we have an open slot in your area, you get the territory.
- 2
We turn on the engine
Within 7 days: ads live, AI receptionist routing to your calendar, SMS sequences nurturing every lead. You don't lift a finger.
- 3
You close the inspections that show up
Pre-qualified homeowners with storm damage book directly into your schedule. You inspect. You quote. You install. We handle everything before that.
The hidden cost of a 'message-taker' answering service
The standard contractor answering service charges $300–$800/mo to pick up your phone, take a message, and email it to you. That's it. The homeowner gets put on hold, asked to repeat their info, and told 'someone will call you back.'
Industry data: 78% of homeowners hire whoever responds first after a storm event. If your answering service is taking messages and you call back 4 hours later, you've already lost. The $300/mo answering service is costing you $25,000 jobs.
Surgepoint flips the model. The AI answers in under 1 second, qualifies the homeowner in 60 seconds, and books the inspection directly into your calendar before the call ends. The homeowner doesn't get a callback later — they get a confirmed appointment now.
AI + human escalation (the right hybrid)
Pure-AI answering services miss edge cases. Pure-human services are slow and expensive. Surgepoint runs the standard call (qualify + book) on AI, and escalates to a human only when needed: a confused elderly homeowner, a complex insurance question, a Spanish-speaker if the AI's Spanish flags low confidence, an angry callback about a previous job.
Result: 95% of calls handled by AI in under 90 seconds, 5% escalated to a human who can take 5+ minutes when the situation deserves it. Your cost stays low, your customer experience stays high.
Compare to traditional answering services where you pay flat per-minute or per-call. Their incentive is to keep calls long. Ours is to book the inspection and end the call.
Why this is bundled with everything else
An answering service that doesn't run your ads is fighting blind. It doesn't know that the call coming in is from your $80 Facebook click on the 'April 28 hail' campaign — context that changes how the AI qualifies the lead. A standalone answering service can't tell you which marketing channel is producing booked inspections vs. which is just generating phone calls.
Surgepoint runs the ads, the calls, the booking, and the nurture as one system. Every booked inspection is attributed back to the ad it came from. Your dashboard shows: $80 ad spend → $80 cost-per-call → $50 cost-per-booked-inspection → 1 contracted job. That feedback loop is impossible if the answering service is a separate vendor.
Frequently asked
- What does this cost?
- $0/mo retainer. You pay $50–$150 per booked-and-shown inspection (which includes the answering service plus everything else in the bundle). No per-minute billing, no setup fee.
- Can I just buy the answering service à-la-carte?
- No — we sell the full bundle (ads + AI + nurture + booking) because the channels feed each other. Standalone answering services are a commodity; the bundle is a moat.
- How does this compare to AnswerForce / Ruby / Smith.ai?
- AnswerForce/Ruby are human-only and bill per minute ($300–$1,200/mo). Smith.ai is AI+human but generic. Surgepoint is AI+human escalation with roofing-specific qualification and direct calendar booking — and it's bundled with paid ads and SMS nurture.
- What hours does it cover?
- 24/7/365. AI never sleeps. Human escalation has 99% coverage during US business hours and 90%+ overnight (escalation rate is low overnight anyway).
Claim your ZIP cluster.
We work with one roofer per ZIP cluster. 60-second qualifying call. If your area is open, you get the territory and the engine starts within 7 days.