A website chatbot for plumbing companies

Plumbing enquiries split cleanly into two kinds: water is coming out right now, or it is a job that can wait a week. They need opposite handling, and a website that treats them the same loses the second kind while annoying the first. An Allinaa assistant on your website sorts them, answers the fixed questions from information you have approved, and collects job requests your office can schedule from.

Water now, or a job for next week

The first thing the assistant should establish is which of the two it is, because everything after that differs. Configure it to recognise the urgent wording - burst, flooding, no water at all, sewage backing up, water near the electrics - and to put your emergency number on the screen straight away rather than walking somebody through a form while their kitchen fills up. One sentence of practical advice can go in your knowledge if you want it there, for example where the stopcock usually is in local housing, but keep it to what is true in your area and keep it short.

Everything else - a slow drain, a running toilet, a tap that drips, a bathroom you are thinking about, a boiler service - is a normal enquiry, and that is where a web chat earns its place. Those visitors are comparing three plumbers at eleven at night. See after-hours answers.

The call-out charge, in your own words

Nothing costs a plumbing firm more enquiries than an unstated call-out charge. Write the policy into the knowledge exactly as you want it quoted:

Put your real figures in your own knowledge. The assistant quotes only what is written there: it will not estimate the price of a job from a description, and it should not, because the same description covers a ten-minute washer change and a day of pipework.

What a job request should carry

The assistant asks up to three short questions, one at a time, and only the ones still missing:

1. The address or postcode, so your area can be confirmed before anyone is promised a visit
2. What is wrong, in the visitor's own words, and for how long
3. Whether they own the property, rent it, or are the landlord - because that decides who approves the work
4. Whether the water is currently off

Then it offers the inquiry form. The visitor confirms their own contact details and agrees to be contacted, your office gets an e-mail, and the job waits in your inbox with a status, private notes and CSV export. On Premium a visitor can send a photo, which for plumbing is worth a paragraph of description - a photo of the boiler badge, the leaking joint or the shape of the waste pipe tells your engineer what to put on the van.

Landlords, agents and tenants are three different conversations

A tenant reporting a fault, a letting agent raising a job and a landlord asking for a gas safety certificate all arrive through the same chat box and need different answers. Write each path into your knowledge: who you take instructions from, whether you invoice the agent or the landlord, what you need before you attend a tenanted property, and what you do if nobody is home. The assistant cannot look up a tenancy or a previous job, and it should say so plainly rather than guess. See existing-customer questions and property management.

Certificates and the claims not to make

If you hold a gas, water or trade registration, your knowledge can state the registration you actually hold and its number, and the assistant will quote it. What it must not do is describe the firm as certified in anything you cannot evidence, or promise that a job will pass an inspection. Decide these boundaries before you publish: the assistant does not diagnose a fault from a description, does not tell anyone to dismantle anything, does not quote a job price, does not promise a same-day slot, and does not advise on anything to do with gas appliances beyond your own written wording and the emergency number. Then test it by asking the awkward questions on purpose; see the launch checklist.