Your AI Phone Receptionist for Small Business
A virtual receptionist that answers your business calls 24/7. Sounds human. Captures appointment requests. Handles emergencies. Sets up in 5 minutes.
Key takeaways
- 24/7 phone answering for $199 a month, no contracts and no per-call fees.
- Captures appointment requests, urgency, contact details, and preferred times so you can confirm the job fast.
- Built for solo and small-crew trades: plumbing, HVAC, electrical, contracting, roofing, landscaping, locksmiths, pest control.
- Setup takes about 5 minutes. The first 7 days are free.
The basics
What is an AI receptionist for a small business?
An AI receptionist is software that answers your business phone instead of voicemail. It uses voice AI to talk to callers in real time, the way a person would. It can answer questions about your services, collect job details, capture preferred appointment times, and send you a summary of who called and what they needed.
For a small business, that means you stop losing customers when you cannot pick up. Most calls a plumber, HVAC tech, electrician, or contractor gets are pattern-based: a water heater is leaking, the AC is out, someone needs a quote on a panel upgrade. AI handles that pattern fast and cheap. The calls that need you (a real emergency, an unusual customer situation) get transferred to your cell with a quick brief on what is happening.
Yapper is a 24/7 AI phone receptionist built specifically for trades and small service businesses.
AI Receptionist Features
Everything a human receptionist does, without the overhead.
Built on proprietary voice-AI architecture for zero-latency, high-context conversations.
24/7 Call Handling
Never send another customer to voicemail. Yapper picks up after hours, during busy stretches, or when your team cannot get to the phone.
Appointment Requests
Callers share what they need and when they want service. Yapper captures the request so you can confirm the job quickly.
Full Transcripts
Every word from every call, searchable in your dashboard. Get summaries and action items sent to your email or CRM.
Smart Emergency Detection
Burst pipe at midnight? Yapper detects urgency and transfers the call to your cell with full context.
How it works
Set up your AI receptionist in 5 minutes.
Paste your website URL
Yapper reads your site and learns your business automatically. Hours, services, location, all of it.
Get your phone number
We provision a dedicated number instantly. Forward your calls or use it as your main line.
Never miss a call again
Yapper answers 24/7, captures appointment requests, handles emergencies, and texts you a summary after every call.
Live Demo
See it. Hear it. Get the text.
Here's a real call Yapper handled. Hit play to hear how it sounds, read the transcript, and see the text the business owner got the moment the call ended.
Caller dials
Customer rings your business line. Day, night, weekend, holiday.
Yapper answers
Picks up in three rings. Real conversation, never a recording.
Captures or transfers
Collects the request for follow-up, or routes urgent calls to your cell.
(Calendar sync: Pro plan, requires one-time setup.)
Texts you a summary
Caller, ask, outcome. Hits your phone seconds after the call ends.
Post_Call_Summary
Seconds after the call ends, your phone buzzes.
Every call ends with a summary text: who called, what they needed, what was booked or transferred. No more "how did that call go?".
- Caller name + phone number for instant callback
- What they need, in their own words
- Booking time or escalation status
- Full transcript searchable in your dashboard
- •Service: biweekly house cleaning
- •Address: Westland (3BR / 2.5BA, ~1800 sqft)
- •Quoted: $160 / visit
- •Booked: Thursday 1:00 PM
- •Phone: (313) 555-0118
Inside Yapper
Every call. Every detail. Right where you need it.
A clean dashboard for everything Yapper handles. Pull up any call, read the transcript, replay the audio, and call them back. All in three clicks.
Call Log
Every call, searchable. Filter by callback, info sent, transferred, voicemail, or emergency.
Call Detail
Full transcript, AI summary, one-click callback. See exactly how Yapper handled it.
Inbox Notifications
Every captured lead in your inbox. Caller info, summary, requested time, link to the full call.
Built for Your Business
AI Receptionist for Every Trade
Plumbing Service Agent
Handles emergency calls, captures drain cleaning requests, and collects preferred service times. Detects urgency and routes burst pipe calls directly to your cell.
- Emergency call detection and routing
- Service detail capture
- Appointment request capture
Why trades, specifically
Built for trades, not enterprise call centers.
Most AI phone systems are built for large companies. They route calls between departments, log every interaction in Salesforce, and treat VIP callers differently. Plumbers and electricians do not have departments. They have a phone that needs to get answered while they are under a sink.
Yapper started from that constraint. A few specifics that fall out of it:
- The AI understands trade vocabulary. Water heater, condenser, panel, compressor, GFCI, sump pump, drain snake. It knows what these things are and how they fail, so it can have a real conversation with a homeowner instead of asking them to repeat themselves.
- Emergency detection is tuned for the actual emergencies trade businesses get: burst pipes, gas smell, no heat in winter, no AC in summer, lockouts, electrical sparks. When the AI hears those, it transfers you immediately with a spoken brief.
- Pricing stays honest. Yapper can answer from the business details you provide, but final prices and exact appointment times stay with you.
- The dashboard tracks revenue from booked calls, not just call volume, so you can see whether Yapper is paying for itself.
That is also why every section of this site mentions specific industries: AI receptionist for plumbers, AI receptionist for HVAC contractors, AI receptionist for electricians, AI receptionist for roofers, locksmiths, pest control. Each industry page has scripts and pain points specific to that trade.
Already have a front desk? Yapper is not only for replacing voicemail. It can also act as overflow and after-hours coverage, so calls still get answered when your team is busy, closed, or already on the phone.
If you run a law firm or a medical practice, Smith.ai or Ruby Receptionists are probably a better fit. If you run a service company that gets calls from homeowners with broken stuff, Yapper is built for you.
Pricing
Simple AI receptionist pricing.
Start with a 7-day free trial. Cancel anytime.
- 200 minutes included
- 1 phone number
- Call logs & full transcripts
- SMS summaries after every call
- Calendar integration
- Smart emergency transfer
7-day free trial. Cancel anytime.
- 500 minutes included
- Everything in Starter
- Calendar integration
- Smart emergency transfer
- Priority support
7-day free trial. Cancel anytime.
One missed $500 job pays for 2+ months of Yapper.
The cost of missed calls
See what missed calls are costing you.
Most callers do not leave voicemails. According to Invoca's research on phone behavior, 80% hang up when they hit voicemail and the majority of those callers move on to the next business on Google before you have a chance to call back.
For a plumber, HVAC tech, or electrician, that lost call is usually a job worth a few hundred to a few thousand dollars. Slide the numbers below to see what your own missed calls add up to.
Missed calls per week
Average job value
lost every month
lost every year
per month to stop missing calls
One missed call could pay for a full year of Yapper.
Start your free trialWhat the research says
Phone calls are still the lead source small businesses rate highest.
According to BIA/Kelsey's Local Commerce Monitor, 66% of small and medium-sized businesses rate phone calls as a good or excellent source of leads, ahead of online forms (58.2%), in-person (54.1%), and email (43.7%).
“Calls have always been highly valued by small businesses, and now the notion of calls as currency has accelerated in the smartphone era.”
Speed matters as much as availability. A March 2024 McKinsey customer-care study (Buesing, Haug, Hurst, Lai, Mukhopadhyay, and Raabe) found that customers across every generation prioritize support from a real person, with one financial-services company reporting that Gen Z customers were 30 to 40% more likely to call than millennials.
The lead-response timing research is even older and more brutal. In a 2,241-firm study published in Harvard Business Review, the authors put it plainly:
“Are you confident that your company is effectively handling potential customers' online queries? Think hard. Our research shows that most companies are not responding nearly fast enough.”
Their finding: firms that contacted prospects within an hour were nearly seven times more likely to qualify the lead than firms that waited an hour, and more than 60 times more likely than firms that waited a day.
Yapper exists for one reason. Callers do not wait. The longer your phone rings, the smaller the chance that caller is still your customer when you ring back.
Last reviewed
How we compare
See how Yapper stacks up.
| Feature | Yapper Built for trades | Smith.ai Human + AI hybrid | Dialzara Budget AI |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starting price | $199/mo (200 min) | $300/mo (30 calls) | $29/mo (60 min) |
| Cost per minute | ~$1.00/min | ~$10.00/call | $0.48/min overage |
| 24/7 coverage | |||
| Free trial | 7 days | 7 days | |
| AI or human | AI | Human + AI hybrid | AI |
| Setup time | 5 minutes | Days | 5 minutes |
| Call transcripts | |||
| AI call summaries | |||
| Emergency detection and transfer | |||
| Revenue tracking | |||
| Common issues analytics | Limited | ||
| Trades-specific | |||
| Custom AI instructions | Limited | ||
| Voice options | 6 curated | N/A (human agents) | 50+ |
| Bilingual | Coming soon | English/Spanish | 10+ languages |
| CRM integrations | Coming soon | Yes (many) | Zapier/Make |
Compared Head-to-Head
Stack Yapper against the alternatives.
Honest, side-by-side breakdowns on price, call quality, and how each one handles a real trade call.
From the founder
Why I built Yapper.
I am James. I built Yapper because small service businesses lose real money to missed calls. Not because they do not care, but because they are busy doing the work. The phone rings, nobody answers, and the next job goes somewhere else.
Yapper is not trying to be everything for every company. It is built for small teams that cannot always stop what they are doing to answer the phone. Plumbers, HVAC techs, electricians, contractors, roofers, auto shops, and other service businesses where one missed call can mean one lost job.
A few things you should know before signing up:
- I read every cancellation email personally. If something is not working, I want to hear about it.
- This is a small operation. You can email hello@tryyapper.com and I'll read it.
- No upgrade traps or surprise fees for basic features. The price you see is the price.
If you want to talk through whether Yapper makes sense for your business before you sign up, message me on LinkedIn.
FAQ