By business type
The first job on a plumbing site is telling urgent from routine
Every message to a plumbing and heating firm is one of two things wearing the same clothes. Either there is water coming through a ceiling right now, or somebody is pricing a bathroom for next spring. Getting that sorted in the first reply is most of the value, because the two need opposite handling: one needs a phone number in two seconds, the other needs an honest explanation of how you price.
What people actually type
Not the questions on your FAQ page. These are the phrasings that arrive in a chat window, lowercase and unpunctuated, and the material has to answer them in those words rather than in yours.
- do you charge a call out fee
- what is your hourly rate
- i have water coming through the ceiling
- how much to replace a boiler
- do you cover my area
- my boiler is showing an error code
- how much is an annual service
- can you do a landlord gas certificate
- do you work weekends
- how long does a bathroom fit take
- my radiators are cold at the bottom
- do you give free quotes
What to feed it
In rough order of how much work each one takes off the front desk. Every one of these is a document you almost certainly already have.
| Your call out charge and rate card | The call out fee if you have one, the first hour rate against the rate after it, the different evening, weekend and bank holiday rates, and whether parts are on top. This is the question every caller has and the one most plumbing sites answer with a contact form. |
|---|---|
| What counts as an emergency to you | Your own written definition, not a general one: an uncontrollable leak, no heating in winter for a vulnerable customer, a suspected gas smell, a burst pipe. Publishing the definition lets the assistant sort a message in one step instead of a conversation. |
| The area you actually travel to | Towns and postcodes rather than a radius, and any different rate or minimum charge for the outer edge of it. A firm that turns down half its enquiries on distance is spending its own time doing that by phone. |
| Boiler installation and service terms | What an installation quote includes, typical lead time, the manufacturer warranty lengths you register, and the condition most people miss: that the warranty usually depends on an annual service being carried out and recorded. That condition is the reason for a large share of your service bookings. |
| Your service plans and any contract terms | What a plan covers, what it excludes, the response time it promises, and how it renews. Plans are sold on the exclusions, so index those rather than the brochure page. |
| Certification and insurance you hold | Your gas registration or equivalent, any water regulations or renewable heat qualifications, and public liability cover. Customers ask because they have been told to ask, and a straight answer removes a real objection. |
What has to reach a person
Any smell of gas, or a suspected carbon monoxide problem
This is the one message that must never receive a normal reply. A gas smell, a headache that clears when the household leaves the house, soot marks around an appliance, an alarm sounding: each needs an immediate call to the national emergency line and the appliance turned off, not a conversation about availability.
Put that wording inside the refusal message itself so it does not depend on composition. The right outcome is that within one reply the customer is looking at an emergency number rather than at your booking process.
Live water escaping now
A ceiling coming down or a burst pipe is a clock, not an enquiry. The assistant can say where a stop tap usually is and give your emergency number immediately, then take a phone number. What it should not do is work through a pricing conversation while the water is still running.
Any request for a fix on gas work
Boiler error codes, pilot lights, a lockout, a leaking gas appliance. In many countries work on gas appliances and pipework is legally restricted to registered engineers, and an assistant that tells somebody which button to press or which valve to turn has stepped into that territory in your name.
Resetting the appliance once may be in the manufacturer's own instructions, but that is a decision for a person who has heard the whole story, not a paragraph generated from a page.
A firm price for a boiler or a bathroom
Both depend on what is actually there: the existing flue, the pipework, whether the cylinder stays, the state of the floor. The assistant can give your published from price and describe exactly what the survey looks at, then take the enquiry. A number given before the survey is a number the customer will hold you to.
The wording when it cannot help
This is the message the assistant returns when nothing in the material covers the question. It is written by you rather than generated, which matters here more than anywhere: it is the sentence a stranger reads at the worst moment.
If you can smell gas or think you may have a carbon monoxide problem, stop reading this and call the emergency gas line now. I cannot give advice on fixing a boiler or any gas appliance, because that work is for a registered engineer. I can help with our rates, our coverage area, servicing and what a quote involves, and I can take your number for a call back.
It names what it cannot do, gives the route that can, and offers to take a message. A refusal that only apologises leaves the person exactly where they started.
Rules and duties that shape the answer
Gas work is restricted to registered people in many countries
Most countries require anyone working on gas appliances or pipework to hold a specific registration, and doing that work without it is an offence rather than a technicality. That makes a friendly troubleshooting suggestion the most dangerous thing an assistant on a heating site could produce.
Keep the indexed material describing what you do rather than how it is done. A page explaining how to bleed a radiator is fine and is not gas work. A page walking through resetting a boiler's gas valve should not exist, let alone be indexed.
Some work has to be notified or certified
Depending on where you operate, replacing a heat producing appliance, altering a flue, or unvented hot water work may need building regulations notification or a certificate lodged after the job. Customers do not know this until they sell the house and a solicitor asks.
Index what you issue and when, because it is a genuine differentiator and it is also the answer to the question a buyer's conveyancer will eventually ask.
Warranty conditions are the quiet source of complaints
A long manufacturer warranty is normally conditional: registered within a period, installed by an approved installer, serviced annually and recorded. A customer who was sold the headline number and later discovers the condition blames the installer, not the manufacturer.
Have the assistant state the condition every time it states the length. That is a documentation decision rather than a settings one: put both facts in the same paragraph of the indexed material.
Never, whatever the documents say
Out of bounds
- Any instruction for working on a boiler, gas appliance or gas pipework.
- Whether a smell of gas or a suspected leak is safe to leave.
- A fixed price for a boiler swap or bathroom before a survey.
- Whether an engineer can attend today or at a given time.
- Whether a specific fault is covered under a warranty or a service plan.
Playbooks for this trade
One page per recurring question, written for a plumbing and heating firm rather than in general. Each carries the phrasings, the material that answers them, a reply worth copying, and the line where it has to stop.
- The message that arrives at midnight, and the sort it has to get rightAt eleven at night the assistant is the only thing awake. Its job is to tell a burst pipe from a bathroom enquiry in one reply.
- The four numbers a caller is adding up before they ringThe call out charge, the first hour, the rate after it and the weekend uplift are four numbers, and most plumbing sites publish none.
- The guarantee length everybody remembers and the condition nobody doesA long manufacturer guarantee normally depends on a service being done and recorded each year. Give the condition whenever you give the length.
- What a customer should know before an engineer sets offA plumbing appointment is a time window, an access requirement and a charge on arrival. All three can be explained without seeing a diary.
- When taking a name is the wrong thing to doA live leak or a carbon monoxide worry cannot wait for an email to be opened. Here the handover is a number in the first line.
- The number they want is on the other side of a surveyA survey settles the flue, the gas pipe from the meter and whether the cylinder stays. Until then a from price is the only honest number.
- Two different questions arrive under the same wordWhether a firm is registered and insured is published. Whether a home emergency policy pays for this repair is a question for the insurer.
- Some of these dates cannot simply slide a fortnightA landlord record with an expiry, a service tied to a warranty anniversary and a part ordered for one day all resist being moved.
- The leak is back and it is now an accusationWhether the fault came back, a new one started or the work was wrong is a judgement for an engineer standing in the room.
- Open until five does not mean an engineer starts at fiveThe office phone, the last hour an engineer will start a job and the overnight rota all stop at three different times.
- Nobody visits a plumbing yard, so this is about your streetA van needs to unload near the door, and a flat with the meter in a communal cupboard needs somebody who can open it.
- One total, built from two entirely different pricing methodsLabour, parts and the call out charge are separate lines, and a landlord gas safety record is not the same document as the bill.
- The boiler was ordered against your address a fortnight agoA cancelled fitting week is a lost day and often an appliance that cannot go back to the supplier. The terms set what that costs.
- The deposit is not holding a slot, it is buying a boilerA deposit buys the appliance and holds the fitting week. A no access charge is what a journey to a locked door costs.
- They want money back and what they need is heatHeating firms mostly put work right rather than hand labour back, and a part fitted during a diagnosis was still genuinely bought.
- The useful answer is what to write down, not what to pressThe same three digits mean different things on two appliances, and everything behind the case is work for a registered engineer.
- The answer is in the house, not in the productA combi, a system boiler with a cylinder and an old vented setup answer this three different ways, and only a survey separates them.
- Somebody who has never had gas work done in the houseThe card the engineer carries, what happens before work starts, and the documents that should be left behind at the end.
Questions
- Will it try to diagnose a fault from an error code?
- Not if the indexed material contains no fault fixing instructions, which for a gas business it should not. The refusal is yours to write, so you set exactly what it says when somebody types a code, and the caution level can be raised so it declines a weak match rather than reaching for the nearest page.
- Can it tell somebody an engineer is free this afternoon?
- No. It has no view of your diary and cannot promise a slot unless you connect a data source that holds one. The useful version is that it confirms you cover their area, states the call out charge, and takes a number so the office is calling somebody who already knows the price.
- What is the highest value thing to index?
- The rate card, including the out of hours rates. It is the question in every enquiry, most firms do not publish it, and the calls it saves are the ones that end with the caller deciding not to book anyway.
- How should the emergency wording be set up?
- Put the emergency number and the gas safety instruction into the refusal message itself rather than relying on the assistant to assemble it. A customer in a panic reads the first line of the first reply and nothing else.
Keep reading
- For a electrical contractorCall out charges, EV charger enquiries and landlord certificates are answerable. A described electrical fault is an escalation, not a question.
- For a removals companyPrice depends on volume and access, so a survey comes first. Insurance limits are what customers misunderstand most, so say them plainly.
- For a car dealershipStock moves daily and finance adverts are regulated, so this is mostly about what a dealership assistant must never claim to know.
- Every business typeWhat an assistant has to know before it can answer for a trade.
Try it on your own material
Upload a document or point it at your site, paste one line of HTML, then ask it something only your business could answer.