What should an AI call handler never be allowed to do?
When owners first consider letting software answer the phone, the worry is rarely “will it sound odd?”. It is “what if it says something it shouldn’t?”. That is the right worry, and the answer is to decide the limits before the first call is taken. These are the ones we consider non-negotiable.
1. Never guess a price
A fixed call-out fee or a standard service price can be quoted, because you have set it. Anything that depends on seeing the job cannot. A confident wrong price is worse than no price: you either honour it and lose money, or argue about it on the doorstep.
2. Never diagnose
Callers ask “what do you think it is?” all the time. The system should collect symptoms, which are useful to your engineer, and leave conclusions to the person who will see the fault. “It sounds like the battery” over the phone sets an expectation the visit may not meet.
3. Never improvise on safety
Gas, electrics, brakes and anything where someone might be at risk should follow wording you have approved, and then escalate. For a smell of gas, that means giving the National Gas Emergency number and alerting you, not offering a view. The rule should trigger on the mention, not on the system’s judgement of how serious it is.
4. Never promise what it cannot see
If the system has access to your diary, it can offer real slots. If it does not, it must not invent them. The same goes for “he’ll be with you in twenty minutes”. Promises should come from live information or from a person.
5. Never pretend to be human
Callers are generally fine with an automated assistant that is quick and useful. They are much less fine with discovering they were misled. Saying what it is at the start costs nothing and avoids the only version of this that damages trust.
6. Never keep going when it should stop
Complaints, distress, confusion, repeated misunderstanding, or a request to speak to a person are all signals to hand over. A good handover takes the details gathered so far, tells the caller plainly who will contact them, and notifies that person straight away.
7. Never discuss another customer
A caller asking about “the job at number 14” may be the customer, a neighbour or someone else entirely. Information about a job belongs to the person who booked it.
Turning limits into rules
A limit only works if it is written down in a form the system follows every time. In practice that means three lists you should be able to read in plain English:
- Always hand to a person: the topics, caller types and job sizes that never stay automated.
- Never say: prices that are not fixed, diagnoses, guarantees, arrival times without diary access.
- If unsure: take name, number and a short description, say who will call back, alert them.
The test of an automated call handler is not how much it can do. It is how reliably it stops.
Ask any provider to show you where these rules live and how you change them. If the answer is vague, so is the control you would have.