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Let an AI voice agent answer after-hours and overflow HVAC calls, with trigger words like 'flood' or 'emergency' that route the call to the on-call tech
Chris Plunkett, owner of Plunkett Home Services (formerly Tailored Mechanical), an HVAC company in Tucson, Arizona, on the Service Business Mastery podcast (the episode was made in partnership with Breezy, the voice-AI vendor he uses)
Breezy's AI voice agent answers the company's after-hours and overflow calls and books them. Plunkett set specific trigger words, such as "flood" or "emergency", that are required before a call is escalated to a live person after hours. A caller who just demands "a human" without describing an urgent problem doesn't get an automatic override. Emergency calls now route to whichever technician is on call that day, and Plunkett gets the call notes afterward. Separately, his team uses MeasureQuick's AI-assisted diagnostic reports for home inspections.
Medium · or we set it up for $197
Breezy (AI voice agent for home services), MeasureQuick (HVAC diagnostics)
The problem
After-hours and overflow calls used to ring straight to the owner. He wanted every call answered without being the bottleneck himself, and without a tech being woken up for calls that aren't real emergencies.
What happened
Customer feedback has been "largely positive", per the podcast's write-up: one customer told his wife she didn't realize she was talking to an AI until a few minutes into the call. When an early version gave an awkward, obviously-a-bot reply, Breezy's support fixed it quickly. No call or booking numbers given. Told on a vendor-sponsored podcast episode (Breezy), so treat it as a customer story.
Quoted in the source: Chris Plunkett, owner, Plunkett Home Services. Source: Service Business Mastery: AI Diagnostics and AI Voice in HVAC (episode with Chris Plunkett, made in partnership with Breezy) (2026-08-05) · Added 2026-11-07.
How to set it up yourself
- What Plunkett Home Services uses: Breezy's AI voice agent for after-hours and overflow calls. Any AI receptionist that supports call transfer rules can be set up the same way.
- Write your escalation list: the words and situations that mean a real emergency (flood, water leak, no heat with a baby or elderly person in the home, gas smell, emergency). Only those calls go to a person after hours.
- Set the on-call rotation so emergency calls ring that day's on-call tech, not the owner, and send the owner the call notes afterward.
- Decide what happens when a caller just asks for a human without an urgent problem: take a message and promise a callback at opening time. Paste the prompt below into the agent's instructions.
- Listen to a handful of recordings each week for the first month and fix any answer that sounds robotic or wrong.
Copy-paste prompt
You answer the phone for {COMPANY NAME}, a heating and air conditioning company in {TOWN}, after hours and whenever the office can't pick up. Be warm and let the caller finish talking. Collect: name, address, callback number, the problem, and whether anyone in the home is at risk. If the caller describes a flood or water leak, a gas smell, no heat or no cooling with a baby, elderly or sick person at home, or uses the word emergency, tell them you're connecting them to the on-call technician now and transfer to {ON-CALL NUMBER}. If they just want a person but the problem isn't urgent, take a detailed message, offer the first appointment tomorrow from {BOOKING OPTIONS}, and say the office opens at {OPENING TIME}. Never quote prices or diagnose the system.We set up one AI automation in your tools, live within 48 hours of getting access, for $197. No call needed. Founding price for our first 10 customers (regular $297).
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