The promise
If Avidra doesn't recover 3 booked jobs in your first 30 days, I refund everything and disconnect you myself.
No forms. No retention call.
Asad
HVAC · CHICAGO
After-hours call answering for Chicago HVAC contractors
Phone rings first4.2s response30-day guarantee
It's the first heat advisory of June and you've already got six service calls booked across Chicago. The phone keeps ringing. You can hear it from the attic where the condenser fan is dead.
A Tuesday in Chicago
Tuesday at 9am you're loading the truck in Chicago. The first call of the day is a thermostat showing the right temp but no heat coming through. You're already booked solid by the time it's transcribed and sent back to your inbox. The phone's ringing in the truck cab and you're 14 feet up on a ladder.
The 4pm call is a homeowner whose AC stopped on the hottest day of the year. You can't take it. By 6:30pm there's an after-hours job too, a no heat at 2am in February with kids in the house. Two missed calls, one half-day of revenue, no way to triage from a ladder.
What changes
Avidra is a text-back system that runs the second you miss a call. The caller gets a real reply, not a voicemail loop. You get a structured lead with the basics filled in.
The Tuesday morning call still happens. You still can't answer mid-job. Now the homeowner gets a text in under five seconds asking the basics. By the time you're back in the truck the lead is qualified and sitting in your inbox.
Pick a pickup mode
You decide who picks up first. Run the human-first mode: your phone rings, and Avidra only steps in if the call goes unanswered. Or run the AI-first mode: Avidra picks up live and transfers when the caller wants a human. Most shops start human-first because the customer relationship still flows through you. AI-first makes sense once the volume is past what one person can handle.
Free tier includes both. AI voice and SMS text-back are both in the $0 floor, so neither pickup mode costs extra.
What it costs
Free for 14 days. No card to start. Plans after the trial run from a flat monthly rate, not per-call. Most HVAC contractors pay less per month than the value of one recovered job. See the pricing page for current numbers.
Where Avidra stops
Avidra handles the intake call, the back-and-forth qualifying, and the relay messages you ask it to send to your customers. The phone is the part it owns. The work past it stays with you and your existing tools.
The script will disclose your service-call fee if you tell it to, but it won't volunteer a price you haven't approved. It won't diagnose a no-cool by symptom. It won't tell a homeowner whether their compressor is shot. Equipment make and model gets captured. What you do with that information is your call.
The math on your missed calls
The numbers on a hvac shop your size.
8 calls/week missed$600 avg job$4,800 / week$20,800 / month$249,600 / year
73% of homeowners don't leave a voicemail. They call the next HVAC contractor on Google.
Avidra catches them in 4.2 seconds.
Run the shop from the road
Text the Avidra number from a job site. 'Tell Mike I'll be there in 10' and the AI sends Mike an SMS as your shop. Same for 'how many leads today' or 'call Sarah Linton back at 4.' Avidra picks up the phone for your customers. It also picks up for you.
Calls HVAC contractors in Chicago actually take
You probably recognize these patterns by now. New homeowner asking for a tune-up before winter. Low refrigerant suspected after a long cooling run. Condensate line clogged and dripping onto a hallway floor. Furnace short-cycling every few minutes. Each one is a job you'd close if you could pick up the phone.
After-hours patterns are tighter. The urgency is higher and the timeline is shorter. Elderly homeowner without working heat overnight. No heat at 2am in February with kids in the house. Whoever answers first books it. Everyone else gets the voicemail tone.
What the year looks like
Two peaks. Heat advisories drive AC emergency calls May through August. Cold snaps and first-frost weeks drive no-heat calls late October through February.
Most HVAC contractors can predict the peaks. The trick is keeping pickup steady through them. Avidra doesn't surge-price during your busy weeks and doesn't go quiet during the slow ones.
Setup is short
Setup is a 10-digit phone number and a short script. You forward your missed calls to the Avidra number that gets assigned at signup. You edit the default intake script to match how you talk to a new lead. That's the whole setup.
Most owners run their first real test inside an hour of signing up. The honest test is to miss a call on purpose from a friend's phone and watch what happens. The text fires. The follow-up questions land. You see the lead summary on your phone.
The five-second window
Speed is the whole game. A caller who got voicemail and then got a confirmation email twenty minutes later has already booked the next number on the list. A text-back inside five seconds reads as a real reply. The caller responds while they're still mentally on the call. The human callback then lands into a warm conversation, not a cold one.
Common questions
Can it capture make and model of the equipment?
Yes. The script asks for the equipment make, model, and rough age. The answer is in the lead summary.
Can I quote a service call fee in the script?
Yes. The flat trip charge or after-hours rate can be disclosed in the intake message.
What if the caller is on a maintenance contract?
Recognized numbers route straight to your phone. The text only fires for cold calls.
Will it handle warranty questions?
It captures the warranty claim details and routes them to the office. Warranty answers come from your team, not the bot.
Does it handle no-heat panic differently than a quote request?
Yes. The script branches on urgency. Emergencies get a faster acknowledgement and a 'we're on the way' style intake.
Try Avidra on your own number
Avidra answers your missed calls starting today. Free for 14 days, no card up front. See pricing for what comes after. Avidra reads the same whether the call comes from Chicago or from the next market over.
Start free for 14 days