The first 30 days with an AI receptionist, explained

Here is how the first month goes on a Forge line. You set it up online: give us your website, check what we found, choose a number and a voice, and talk to the agent in your browser. Start your free trial and the line is live within minutes of checkout. For the first 30 days we go over your calls and fix what we hear, usually the same day. After day 30, script changes are still included in your plan.

The rest of this post walks through each stage: what the setup asks you, what to test before you start, what we listen for once real callers reach the agent, and what you should check yourself at the end of the month.

Why the first month matters

A demo call is clean. Someone asks a tidy question, the agent gives a tidy answer, everyone hangs up happy. Your real calls are not like that.

Real callers say "my unit is making that noise again" and expect you to know which unit. They ask for Mike by name because Mike fixed their furnace two winters ago. They call from a blocked number, hang up halfway through, give a subdivision name instead of a street address, or open in Spanish. A script written from a template cannot know any of that about your business. It learns it from your calls, and only if someone does the work of listening and fixing.

That is why the first 30 days are part of setup, not a launch you are left alone with. Every Forge line comes with a script our team writes with you and tunes for those 30 days.

Today: you set it up online

Setup starts with your website. We read it and draft an agent from what we find: your services, your hours, the towns you serve and the questions customers ask. You check the draft, fix anything we got wrong and fill in what is missing. No website? You can type the details in yourself. It goes faster if you have answers ready for these:

• Your service area. The towns you cover, and just as important, the ones you do not.
• Your job types and what counts as an emergency. No heat on a January night is not the same call as a spring tune-up. Tell us how you sort them.
• Where urgent calls should go. The setup asks for your cell, and urgent calls transfer there. Everything else is taken down for your team to follow up.
• How calls reach you today. Your carrier, and whether you want to keep your number and forward calls to the agent or take a new local number.
• How you handle price questions. Do you give ranges on the phone, or send someone out first? If you want the agent to answer from your own price sheet, service area and policies, we set that up on request.
• The names callers ask for. The owner, the office manager, the tech everyone likes.
• Languages. Your agent answers in English and Spanish and switches to the caller's language on its own.
• The software you run the business on. Where we stand on syncing with field service software today is in this post on integrations.

Before you pay: talk to your agent

You pick a voice and set the first thing callers hear. Then you call your draft agent from your browser, before you add a card. Each test call runs up to 3 minutes. You check the details and hear the agent before a real caller does.

Use the test call to try to break it, with the kinds of calls real callers make:

• The caller hangs up before leaving a number. Does the agent get the number early enough to matter?
• The caller asks for a tech by name. Does it take a message for that person instead of stalling?
• The number is blocked. Does it ask for a callback number rather than assume it has one?
• The caller wants a firm time. The agent takes an appointment request: the job, the address and the time the caller wants. It tells them your team will confirm. It does not promise a slot it cannot see.
• The caller asks if it is a robot. It says it is an AI assistant for your business. We never tell it to pretend to be a person, and the greeting says the call is recorded.
• A question the script does not cover. It takes the caller's name, number and question, and tells them someone from your team will call back.

At checkout: your line goes live

You pick a plan and start your 7 day free trial with a card. We do not charge it during the trial. Your line is live within minutes of checkout. You choose how calls reach the agent: answer on a new number from us, or forward your main line to it when you are busy or closed. If you forward, we show you the steps for your carrier. Your callers do not have to learn anything new.

If you would rather start small, send the agent only the calls you miss. Your phone still rings first, and the agent answers when nobody picks up. Every call the agent takes is recorded from the first one, so you can listen to exactly what your callers heard.

Through day 30: fixing what we hear

For the first 30 days we go over your calls and fix what we hear, usually the same day. We listen for four kinds of problems.

Missed intent

The caller wanted something the script did not expect. A landlord calling about three units at once. A homeowner who called about a water heater but mentioned the kitchen drain on the way out. When the agent handles those awkwardly, we add them to the script.

Wrong or missing details

A name spelled wrong, a callback number cut short, a subdivision name where you needed a street address. Details are the whole point of the call.

Dead air and loops

Long pauses, or the agent asking the same question twice. Callers hang up on both.

Questions it could not answer

Every time the agent had to say "someone will call you back" for a question you answer ten times a week, we add the answer to the script so it knows next time.

Your side of this matters as much as ours. If your hours change, a tech leaves, or you stop taking a kind of job, tell us and we change the script. And if a written summary of each call is set up for you (our team does that on request), it lands in your inbox, so you can spot a problem yourself.

After day 30

The first month is when most of the fixing happens, but businesses change all year. The first cold snap brings a different kind of call than July does. You add a service, raise a price or change your hours. Script changes are still included in your plan after day 30. Just ask.

At the end of the first month, set aside an hour and check the agent yourself:

1. Listen to a handful of calls from different times of day, including at least one at night or on a weekend.
2. Count what you could act on. How many calls ended with a message or an appointment request you could follow up, and how many ended in a hang-up?
3. Check the details. Were names, numbers and addresses right when your team called back?
4. Look at your minutes. Each call counts as at least 1 minute. We round each call up to the next full minute. Unused minutes do not carry over, so compare a real month against the plans on our pricing page.
5. Write down what you would change. Then send it to us. That list is the next round of tuning.

Why we set it up this way

We are a small team in Calhoun, Georgia. A script is only as good as the calls it has been tested against, and nobody knows your calls until they start coming in. That is why setup is quick and the tuning takes a month.

You can see the whole setup, step by step, on the Forge Voice page. Or skip the reading and call the agent on our own line to hear what your callers would hear.