AI Receptionist for Australian Tradies
Johnni answers your phone 24/7, rings new leads back before they go cold, and talks to the people on your website, by text or by voice. One AI, built around your business, plugged into the software you already use.
Plans start at $44/mo No contract.
It’s a real Johnni receptionist. Ask it something awkward.
Why tradies lose jobs to the phone
When you are on the tools, the phone is the one job you cannot do. The customer who reaches voicemail rings the next business on Google.
You are on the tools when it rings
Up a ladder, under a house or in a ceiling, answering is not an option.
Johnni answers every call on the first ring in your business name and books the job while you keep working.
Leads go cold while you are busy
Website forms and Facebook enquiries wait until you get back to the ute.
On the Starter plan it rings new enquiries back within minutes and follows up quotes that went quiet.
After hours is when the good work calls
Emergencies and weekend enquiries land when nobody is in the office.
It answers 24/7 and follows your after-hours rules: book it, take the details, or put it through to you.
Not every call is a job
Suppliers, existing customers and tyre-kickers all ring the same number.
It works out who is calling, qualifies new work and handles everyone else without interrupting you.
Trades and service businesses where the phone is the business.
If missing a call means missing a job, this pays for itself on the ones you’re already losing.
Your customers don’t all arrive the same way.
Some ring. Some fill in a form and wait. Some sit on your website at 11pm deciding whether to bother. Johnni covers all three, and it’s the same brain across every one of them: same knowledge, same booking rules, same voice.
Inbound: it answers
Every call, first ring, 24/7. On the tools, after hours, three calls at once. Doesn’t matter.
- Qualifies the job and books it straight into your calendar
- Warm-transfers to you when it should, and catches the call if you can’t pick up
- Knows your prices, your service area, and what you don’t do
Outbound: it rings back
A lead that waits an hour is usually someone else’s job. Johnni rings while they’re still looking at their phone.
- Speed to lead: website and Facebook enquiries rung back in seconds
- Quote follow-up: chases the ones sitting unanswered and books them or logs why not
- Reactivation: rings past customers for servicing and repeat work
Website: it talks
A widget on your site that types and talks. Most visitors won’t ring you. This one catches them anyway.
- Starts as a text chat, switches to a live voice call on one tap
- Carries the whole conversation across, so nothing gets asked twice
- Books the job without the visitor ever leaving the page
Start typing. Then start talking. It doesn’t miss a beat.
Most people on your website at 10pm aren’t going to ring a stranger. They’ll type a question if it’s easy, and leave if it isn’t.
Johnni’s widget answers in text. Then, when it gets to the part that’s quicker said than typed, the visitor taps once and it becomes a real voice call, carrying everything already said. No “can I take your details again?”
You can see everything it did, and change what it says.
This isn’t a black box you rent. Every call is logged, scored and classified, the outbound queue is yours to work, and the training screen is the same one we use.
When the transfer doesn’t get answered, the call comes back.
Every AI receptionist can put a call through to you. The question is what happens when you’re under a sink and you don’t pick up.
Most of them drop your customer into a dead line or voicemail, which is exactly the thing you bought the AI to stop. Johnni notices you didn’t answer, comes back on the line, and carries on like nothing happened.
Customer asks for you by name.
Johnni warm-transfers and whispers you the context first.
You’re on a roof. Phone’s in the ute.
“He’s tied up on a job. I can take the details and get him to call you back.” Books it in. Nobody got dropped.
It knows where you work, and books around where you already are.
You drag a radius around your patch once. From then on Johnni knows instantly whether a suburb is yours. No “let me check with the boss”, no taking a job you’d have to ring back and cancel.
Then it looks at where your day already is. It reads your existing jobs out of ServiceM8, works out what’s near what, and offers three slots that keep your run tight instead of sending you back across town at 2pm.
And it does the lookup inside the conversation, inside the pause a person would leave anyway. No hold music, no “I’ll call you back to confirm”.
Most AI receptionists are set up once and left to rot.
Three things stop that happening here, and all three are ones you can check rather than take on faith.
It remembers your customers
Someone who rang six weeks ago about a hot water system gets asked how it went. Not because you told it, but because it kept the thread.
You can change it yourself
The Johnni Portal lets you edit the voice, the hours, or the knowledge base. Add “we don’t do gas fitting” and it’s live on the next call. No support ticket, no waiting on us.
Every call gets scored
Calls are graded, weak ones get surfaced, and we fix what fumbled. We’ll show you a call it got wrong and the change that stopped it happening again.
Done for you. You’re not building anything.
One hour of your time up front. After that it’s ours to run.
The kickoff hour
We map your actual call flow: what you quote over the phone, what you don’t touch, after-hours rules, who gets transferred. This hour is why it won’t sound like everyone else’s.
We build it
Custom-trained on your business, connected to your CRM and calendar, tested against the awkward calls before it ever answers a real one.
It goes live
Your number, your voice, your booking rules. Inbound answering, outbound follow-up and the website widget all switched on together.
It keeps improving
We watch the scores, fix what fumbles, and push updates. You get a report of what came in and what got booked.
No new software to learn. It plugs into what you already run.
Google Calendar is included on every plan. ServiceM8, Simpro, AroFlo and Tradify, and other job software, connect as a custom integration scoped to how you work.
If your software has an API, Johnni can usually work with it. Ask us about yours.
An electrical contractor runs Johnni on its day line and its after-hours line.
A national electrical and fire compliance contractor uses Johnni on its day line, where regular site contacts are recognised by number, and on its after-hours line, where it rings on-call operators one after another until somebody accepts the job.
Simple plans. No lock-in contract.
Start with phone answering, then add your website and follow-up calls when you need them.
Phone
24/7 answering, Google Calendar bookings, warm transfers and your full call history.
60 minutes included, then 50c a minute
Phone and website
Everything in Pay As You Go, plus a website assistant your visitors can type or talk to.
200 minutes included, then 45c a minute
Phone, website and follow-ups
Adds outbound calls: new lead callbacks, quote follow-ups and reminders.
600 minutes included, then 40c a minute
Every plan has a 7 day free trial and no lock-in contract. Pay annually and plans start at $44 a month. Growth ($899) covers bigger call volumes. Outbound calling is included from Starter, or add it to Pay As You Go or Solo for a one-off $750. SMS confirmations are a $50 a month add-on, and job software connections are quoted to your setup. See full pricing
Straight answers
Will my customers know it’s an AI?
Some will, some won’t, and we don’t pretend otherwise. What matters more is that it doesn’t waste their time. It answers on the first ring, knows your prices and your service area, and books the job.
If you want to know how that actually works under the bonnet, we’ve written a plain-English guide to conversational AI for Australian trade businesses.
Best way to judge it is to ring the number at the top of this page and try to trip it up. That’s the same receptionist your customers would get.
What happens on the calls it can’t handle?
It transfers to you, and if you don’t pick up it comes back on the line and takes the details rather than dumping the caller into voicemail.
Anything genuinely outside what it should be answering, we build a rule for during the kickoff: “don’t quote on commercial”, “always put insurance jobs through to me”. Your call, not ours.
How much does it cost?
It’s a custom build plus a flat monthly, and the build depends on how complicated your call flow is. A one-man operation and a shop with six vans and three service areas aren’t the same job.
We’ve written up what drives the price honestly in our cost guide, and you’ll get a real number on the first call. No lock-in contracts.
Do I have to change my phone system or number?
No. Your number stays yours. We divert calls to Johnni on the rules you choose: everything, after-hours only, or just the ones you don’t pick up in four rings.
How long until it’s answering calls?
Days, not months. The kickoff hour is the only part that needs you; the build and testing are ours.
We won’t put it live until it’s handled the awkward calls in testing. The whole point is that it doesn’t embarrass you in front of a customer.
Can I change what it says once it’s live?
Yes, yourself, in the Johnni Portal: voice, hours, and the knowledge base it answers from. Add a line like “we don’t do gas fitting”, save, and it’s live on the next call.
Most done-for-you AI means emailing support and waiting. This doesn’t.
What about the outbound calls? Is that going to annoy people?
It only rings people who’ve put their hand up: someone who’s just filled in your form, a customer sitting on an unanswered quote, or a past customer due for a service.
It’s the call you’d want to make yourself if you had time at 7pm. It doesn’t cold-call strangers, and anyone who says stop is marked and not rung again.
Do I need all three, or can I start with just the phone?
It comes as one thing. Inbound, outbound and the website widget share the same brain, the same knowledge and the same booking rules, so building one and bolting the others on later costs more and works worse.
Plenty of clients lean on the phone side hardest at first and let the rest tick along. That’s fine. It’s all running either way.
Who am I actually dealing with?
Brodie. Johnni AI is a small Australian company built for Australian trades. You deal with the person doing the work, not an account manager passing messages along.
Hear it answer as your business.
Tell me where to find you and I’ll build a demo receptionist trained on your actual business: your services, your hours, your area. Then I’ll send you a recording of it handling a real call for your trade.
No calendar invite. No sales call to sit through. If it’s not a fit for you, I’ll say so.
Free, and there’s no contract at the end of it. I’ll have it back to you within a day or two. And if you’d rather hear the generic one first, ring 07 4519 7035 any time.