Home Services Chatbot: Answer Questions and Collect Enquiries
If you run a plumbing, electrical, cleaning or other home services business, you are usually on a job when customers get in touch. They want to know what areas you cover, which jobs you take, whether you work on weekends and how to ask for a visit. A chatbot on your own website can answer these questions while you work and collect the details of people who want to talk, so you can call them back with the facts in front of you. It does not promise arrival times, quotes or prices, and it should not. Here is how to set it up in five steps.
Step 1: List the questions customers ask before they call
Look at your missed calls, text messages and emails from the last month. Write down what people ask most: which areas you cover, which services you offer and which you do not, opening days and hours, how to arrange a visit, what information you need from them, how they can pay. Write each question in the customer's words. Separate stable questions, which suit a chatbot, from questions about a specific job, which need you.
Step 2: Put the answers on pages the chat can read
The chat answers only from what it can read: your website, documents and pasted text. Make sure your services, coverage area, opening days and contact details are written clearly on public pages. Create your chat, enter your website's address and choose the pages it should learn from. Pages behind a login cannot be read. Each answer comes with a numbered source, and the chat never states a price, date or term that your pages do not state. Leave quotes and arrival times to your team; the chat cannot dispatch anyone or give an estimate.
Step 3: Say what the chat is for, and what it is not for
Write a saved answer for the things that must be worded the same way every time: the areas you cover, your opening days and what to do in an emergency. Add the question the way a customer would ask it, add up to five other ways of asking it, write the answer and choose "Reply with this answer exactly". If you take urgent jobs, put your phone number in that answer and on your site, and tell customers to call it. The chat is not an emergency line. Test it with the questions from step 1 and one it should not answer, such as a question about a specific fault: it should say it does not know and offer a next step.
Step 4: Collect enquiries with consent
A customer who wants a visit should be able to leave their details. The chat can show a short contact form, which needs an email and can take a name and phone number. Each enquiry lands in Contacts with its conversation and the last question asked, so your callback can start from what they said. The chat never records marketing consent on its own; an optional marketing opt-in is stored with the time it was given. A new lead shows in your dashboard and can be emailed to you; an alert shows the name (if given) and which fields were left, never the email or phone number. With handoff turned on, which needs a paid plan, a visitor can ask for a person during the business hours you set; outside them, or when nobody is online, they get the contact form.
Step 5: Add it to your site and review the questions you miss
After you go live, OneType shows your script line, which goes just before the closing body tag; the same line works anywhere you can add custom code. Open your published site in a new tab and look for the chat button in the corner. Within about a minute OneType shows "Live on" followed by your site's address, for example "Live on plumber.example.com". After a week, open the questions the chat could not answer: they are grouped by meaning, with a count and the most asked first. Add the missing information to a page or a saved answer, and it is live from the next conversation.
Let the chat take the questions while you work
See the home services setup: a chatbot for home services, learn how contacts and leads work, or start free.