Can AI agents for landscaping companies answer the phone while my crews are out?
Yes, on your own Twilio number. The agent hears and speaks in real time, using your provider's fastest model so it does not leave silences, and works from the script you saved: your service area, your services, your starting prices and how soon an estimate visit can happen. It offers the real open slots on your connected calendar and books the one the caller picks while they are on the line. Every call leaves a transcript and a recording in the inbox. Answering and dialling are separate switches, so it can pick up the inbound line without ever placing an outbound call if that is all you want.
How does it book the estimate visit, and what goes into Jobber or Housecall Pro?
You connect the calendar the estimator runs from, whether that is Google Calendar, Microsoft 365, Calendly or Cal.com, and the agent is given the slots that are genuinely free for the week ahead. It offers a few, the homeowner picks one, the choice is checked against what was offered, written to the calendar and confirmed in the reply. It cannot book a time that was not free and it cannot cancel a visit it was not shown. The booking, the address and the notes are written back to the CRM against that customer.
Can it sign customers up for weekly mowing?
It does everything up to the signature. It answers what the weekly service includes and what it starts at, from your material; it follows up the quote by email, text and call until the homeowner answers; and when they say "yes, let's start" it offers the real open slots for the first visit and books it. The sign-up itself, the agreement and the payment details, is done by you or on the page of your own site you allowed the agent to link to. It links to that page and nothing else, and it tells you in the inbox when a customer has said yes.
Can it send aeration, fall cleanup and snow reminders to past customers?
Yes. Pull a segment out of the connected CRM, such as everyone on the route last year or everyone who had aeration two seasons ago, into a contact list, and run a campaign at it: a text and an email on the days you set, inside the sending window, with a Reply STOP line. When a customer replies "yes", the agent offers the real open slots and books the visit. When they opt out, the sequence ends on every channel and anything queued is cancelled. The campaign reports how many booked and what it was worth, so you know by October whether the aeration run paid.
Will it follow up quotes by text?
By text, email and phone, on the days you set. Build a campaign with the steps you want, each with its own delay and send condition: an email on day one, a text on day three if the email was not opened, a text on day seven, a call on day ten. It runs inside the days, hours and time zone you allow, and stops the moment the homeowner replies, books or opts out on any channel. With the CRM connected it reads what was quoted for that property before it writes, and the text step carries an hourly pace per number and the Reply STOP line.
What about the enquiries that come in on Facebook and Instagram?
The same agent answers them. Connect Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp and the other platforms with your own app credentials, and every DM is answered from the same knowledge base, inside each platform's own reply window, with the same estimate visit offered from your real open slots. The Messenger handle is attached to the same contact as the email address and the phone number, so a homeowner who messages about a photo and then calls the truck is one person with one history. Every DM lands in the same inbox as the calls and the texts.
What happens with a question it cannot answer, like a price for a big install?
It says what you told it to say, and fetches you. The agent answers only from the material you gave it: your documents, your Q&A pairs, your data points and the pages you allowed. A patio or a full design-and-build is exactly the kind of enquiry you write a rule for: it takes the details of the property and the project, tells the homeowner an estimator will be in touch, and lands the thread in your inbox with the agent standing down. You reply yourself or book the visit, and hand the thread back when you are done. It never invents a price.
What do AI agents for landscaping companies cost in the off-season?
The same as in March: $25 a month or $200 a year for the whole account, with a 7-day free trial. That includes unlimited agents, so one for maintenance and one for design and build, or one per branch, costs the same as one. There are no per-seat, per-agent, per-channel, per-message, per-call or per-conversation charges, so the three weeks of the spring rush cost no more than a quiet January. You hold the account with your AI provider and paste in your own key, and the model usage is billed to you at cost, usually a few dollars a month. Your carrier bills you for the calls and texts as it does now.