Answering service for plumbers in the UK
Pulsemint is an answering service for plumbers that picks up when you can't. It takes the caller's name, number and address, asks what's leaking and whether water is still coming through, and texts you the details within about a minute, so you can ring back before they try the next plumber on the list. It costs £199 a month including up to 50 captured calls, and you can try it free for 14 days with no contract.
The rest of this page covers why plumbers lose more work to missed calls than most trades, exactly what the agent asks on a plumbing call, and how to work out whether it would pay for itself in your business.
Pulsemint at a glance
- What it does
- Answers the calls you miss, takes the caller's details and the job, and texts you a summary within about a minute
- Price
- £199 a month including up to 50 captured calls
- Free trial
- 14 day pilot, no card needed
- Contract
- None. Cancel any time.
- Hours
- Every hour of every day, same price
- Your number
- Stays the same. Unanswered calls divert to Pulsemint.
- Setup
- Done for you, about ten minutes of your time
- Coverage
- Anywhere in the UK
Try Pulsemint free for 14 days
Leave your name and email, then pick a time for a 15 minute setup call. No card and no contract. You keep your number.
Want to hear it first? Talk to the agent now. It answers questions about Pulsemint itself, and nobody will ring you back.
Why plumbers lose so much work to missed calls
Most plumbing calls are urgent in a way that a lot of trade work isn't. Someone has water coming through the kitchen ceiling, a toilet that won't stop running, or no water at all on a Monday morning. They aren't browsing. They search, they ring the first number, and if nobody answers they ring the second one about thirty seconds later.
That's exactly when you can't pick up. You're under a sink unit with a compression fitting half done, soldering a joint, or lying under floorboards with a torch in your mouth. By the time you've washed your hands and called back, the job's gone to whoever answered first.
The calls you miss also tend to be the good ones. An emergency leak is work the customer wants done today and will pay properly for. Routine jobs like a dripping tap or a radiator move can wait for a callback. A burst pipe can't.
What Pulsemint asks on a plumbing call
I set the agent up for plumbing specifically, so it asks the things you'd ask yourself if you'd picked up.
The details you need to ring back
- The caller's name and the best number to reach them on
- The full address including postcode, read back to them to check it
- Whether they own the property, rent it, or are ringing for someone else such as a letting agent
- When they can talk and when you could get access
The questions that tell you how urgent it is
- Is water still coming through right now?
- Have they found the stopcock and turned it off? If you want it to, the agent tells them it's usually under the kitchen sink or where the supply pipe comes into the house.
- Where is the problem: ceiling, under a sink, toilet, cylinder, outside?
- Is it a leak, a blockage, no water, or low pressure?
- Is it a flat? A leak in a flat is often coming from the one upstairs, which changes who you need to talk to.
What it won't do
It won't quote a price, promise a date or agree to anything on your behalf. Those are your decisions, and an agent that guesses at them creates problems. It tells the caller you'll ring them back, and if someone asks whether they're talking to an AI, it says yes straight away.
What a call looks like
A tenant in a first floor flat rings at 6.40pm. Water is dripping through the bathroom light fitting from the flat above. Nobody upstairs is answering the door. She hasn't found the stopcock.
The agent takes her name and number, the address and postcode, and the letting agent's name. It tells her the stopcock is usually under the kitchen sink, and that the electrics near the leak shouldn't be touched. It marks the call urgent. Ninety seconds later this lands on your phone:
URGENT. Active leak through bathroom ceiling light, coming from flat above, upstairs not answering. Stopcock not yet found. Sarah, 07700 900461, Flat 2, 14 Example Road, NR2 3AB. Tenant, agent is Example Lettings. Call back now.
Emergency work and routine work
Not every missed call means stopping what you're doing. The point of the text is that you can tell in two seconds which kind it is.
An active leak gets marked urgent. A quote for a bathroom refit, a new outside tap or moving a radiator gets marked routine, with the scope written down so you can ring back that evening already knowing what they want. Those bigger jobs are often worth more than the emergencies. They're just less likely to be lost in the next five minutes.
You choose what counts as urgent. Some plumbers want every no-water call flagged. Others only want active leaks. Either is a one-line change.
Does it pay for itself?
Use your own numbers, not anybody's industry statistics. Open your phone and count last week's missed calls. Take out the suppliers, the spam and the people who rang back later. Be realistic about how many of the rest you'd have won, then multiply by what a job is worth to you.
Say you miss eight calls a week, three are real enquiries, and you'd win two of them. If a typical job is worth £150 to you, that's £300 a week, or about £1,300 a month walking to other plumbers. Against £199 a month, that's an easy decision.
If the sum comes out small, you probably don't need an answering service. A better voicemail greeting and missed call text back will do. I'd rather you knew that before you sign up for anything. If you want to put your own figures in, the calculator on the Pulsemint homepage does the sum for you.
Setting it up
You keep your number. The number on your van, your website and your Google listing doesn't change. Your phone diverts the calls you don't answer, after however many rings you choose, and Pulsemint picks up instead of voicemail. Most UK networks let you set that divert in a couple of minutes, and I'll walk you through it for yours.
The setup itself takes about ten minutes of your time. I ask what you cover, which areas you work in, what you never want it to say, and what counts as urgent for you. Then I build the agent and you ring it yourself to test it before a single customer hears it.
If anything ever goes wrong at our end, the divert fails safe: calls ring your mobile exactly as they do today. You're never worse off than you are now.
How it compares with the alternatives
Voicemail is free, but most people with water on the floor won't leave a message. Missed call text back is cheap and helps, though it puts the work back on the customer. A human answering service usually starts around £45 a month for a small allowance and gets expensive as you get busier. Hiring someone costs more than all of them. The full comparison with current prices is here, including services cheaper than Pulsemint if you'd rather set it up yourself.
Common questions
Will customers know it isn't me?
It answers in your business name and says you're on a job. If anyone asks whether they're speaking to an AI, it says yes straight away. Most people with a leak just want to know someone is coming.
Can it tell callers to turn off their stopcock?
Yes, if you want it to. I set what it says on urgent calls when we set it up, so it can tell people where the stopcock usually is and to keep away from electrics near the leak.
What about calls from landlords and letting agents?
It takes the tenant's details, the property address and the agent's name and number, and marks who is ringing. Letting agents often have several properties, so one call can be more than one job.
Does it answer at night and at weekends?
Yes, at the same price. There's no extra charge for out of hours calls, which is where a lot of emergency plumbing work comes from.
Can I keep my existing number?
Yes. Your phone diverts the calls you don't answer, so your number stays on your van, your website and your listings.
What if the call is urgent and I want to know now?
The text arrives within about a minute of the call ending, with URGENT at the start, so you can decide whether to ring back straight away.
Who is behind this
I'm Shadman, and I build and run Pulsemint myself from Lowestoft. When you start the pilot, I set the agent up for your business and you deal with me directly, not a support queue. If it doesn't catch jobs you'd otherwise have lost, don't keep it.