Why tradies miss so many jobs
If you're a plumber, sparkie, chippy or builder, your day looks like this: you're under a house, on a roof, or elbow-deep in a switchboard when the phone rings. You can't answer. The caller doesn't leave a message — they ring the next name on Google. By the time you call back at smoko, the job's gone.
This isn't a discipline problem. It's physics. You can't hold a grinder and a phone at the same time, and customers with a leaking hot water system or a dead power point are not going to wait. Research into how people search both "virtual receptionist" and "AI receptionist" in Australia shows hundreds of searches every month — most of them from service business owners trying to solve exactly this.
The maths is brutal, and you can run it with your own numbers. Say you miss five calls a day while you're on the tools. Say one in five of those would have turned into a job, and your average job is worth $400. That's one missed job a day — $400 a day, roughly $2,000 a week, over $8,000 a month walking to the competitor who picked up. Even if your real numbers are half that, an answering solution that costs $199 a month pays for itself with a single captured job.
What a good AI receptionist must do for a tradie
Not every AI receptionist is built for trade work. A generic chatbot that says "thanks, someone will get back to you" is useless when a customer's ceiling is dripping. Here's the checklist that actually matters:
- Answers every call, 24/7. Nights, weekends, public holidays, and the 7am emergency calls before you've had coffee.
- Captures job details properly. Name, number, suburb, what the problem is, and how urgent it is — not just "someone called."
- Books into your calendar or job system. The good ones integrate with your calendar and tools like ServiceM8, so the job lands in your schedule instead of your voicemail.
- Sounds Australian. Your customers are in Brisbane, Melbourne and Dubbo. An obvious offshore or American voice erodes trust in the first five seconds.
- Handles after-hours triage. It should know the difference between "no hot water, kids in the house" and "quote for a reno next month" and treat them accordingly.
- Sends you a clean summary. A text or email with the caller's details so you can call back between jobs, not a rambling voicemail.
The three main options in Australia
There are three AI receptionist products Australian tradies actually compare. Here's an honest look at each — including where the others are strong.
Miyai
Miyai is built in Australia for Australian service businesses, and it's the one we make — so take this with the appropriate grain of salt, but the facts are checkable on the public pricing page.
- Chat from $19 AUD/month, AI voice receptionist from $199 AUD/month.
- No setup fee on the current public pricing. Cancel anytime.
- Chat and voice come from the same product, so your website enquiries and phone calls are handled in one place rather than stitched together from two vendors.
- No-code deploy — you can have it answering without a developer.
- Integrations with calendar/booking systems, and ServiceM8 and HubSpot on the Growth tier.
- Australian-accented voices, 24/7 answering, call transcripts and summaries.
If you want the deep dive, see AI receptionist for tradies and the broader AI for tradies guide.
Johnni
Johnni is another Australian AI receptionist product and a legitimate option. Pricing is often in the ~$250–$400 per month range depending on the plan. Johnni is well regarded for its phone answering focus and natural voice quality. Where it can be less flexible is entry price — there's no low-cost chat-only tier, so if you want to start small with website chat and add voice later, you're committing to the voice spend up front.
Sophiie
Sophiie is the third name that comes up constantly in Australian trade and small-business circles. Pricing is often around ~$300 per month plus a setup fee around $800, depending on configuration. Sophiie has a solid reputation and a polished product, and for some businesses the onboarding support justifies the setup cost. The trade-off is the higher total first-year cost compared with a $199/month, no-setup-fee option.
Side by side
- Miyai — voice from $199/mo, no setup fee, website chat from $19/mo, no code, Australian voices, calendar/ServiceM8.
- Johnni — voice-focused, often ~$250–$400/mo, no code, Australian voices.
- Sophiie — often ~$300/mo plus ~$800 setup, no code, Australian voices, strong onboarding support.
Pricing for competitors changes, so check their current pages — we compare in more detail at Miyai vs Sophiie and Miyai vs Johnni.
What setup actually looks like
The fear most tradies have is that "AI" means a three-month IT project. With a modern no-code product it doesn't. A typical setup looks like this:
- Tell it about your business. Services you offer, suburbs you cover, your hours, what counts as an emergency.
- Connect your calendar or job system. So booked jobs land where you already work.
- Forward your calls. Either all calls, or overflow only — many tradies start with "answer when I can't" and move to full-time once they trust it.
- Test it. Call your own number, pretend to be a customer with a blocked drain, and listen to how it handles the call.
That's genuinely it. No developer, no hardware, no new phone number unless you want one.
The after-hours question
A huge share of trade enquiries happen outside 9–5 — people notice problems when they get home from work. If your phone goes to voicemail at 5:01pm, you're invisible for the exact window when customers are most motivated. An AI receptionist doesn't knock off. It answers at 9pm on a Sunday the same way it answers at 9am on a Tuesday, captures the details, and either books the job or flags it as urgent. You wake up to a list of jobs instead of a list of missed calls.
FAQ
How much does an AI receptionist cost for a tradie?
Miyai's AI voice receptionist starts at $199 AUD per month with no setup fee, and website chat starts at $19 AUD per month. Other Australian options typically run from around $250 to $400 per month, sometimes with setup fees of several hundred dollars. Compare that to one missed job a week at your average job value.
Does it sound Australian, or will my customers cop a robot?
Modern AI receptionists use natural, Australian-accented voices. Most callers can't tell — and the ones who can generally don't care, as long as they get an answer and a booking instead of a voicemail. Try the live demo and judge for yourself.
Can it actually book jobs into ServiceM8?
Yes — on the Growth tier, Miyai integrates with ServiceM8, HubSpot and calendar/booking systems, so job details flow straight into the tools you already use rather than sitting in an inbox.
What if a call is genuinely complex or the caller is upset?
A good AI receptionist knows its limits. It captures the details, reassures the caller, and flags the call for a human callback. You set the rules — including which calls should always come straight through to you.
Should I get voice, chat, or both?
If your website gets traffic, both — a lot of younger customers would rather type than talk. Miyai lets you start with $19/month chat and add $199/month voice when you're ready, which is the cheapest way to test the waters.
The bottom line
Every missed call is a job for someone else. For less than the value of a single average job each month, an AI receptionist answers every call, takes the details, and books the work while you're on the tools. Try the live demo to hear it handle a call, or view pricing to see the plans.