SCOTTISH construction businesses are being tipped to benefit from a new Artificial Intelligence (AI) receptionist service designed to make missed calls a thing of the past.
Whoza.ai has been built by Perth-based Dru McPherson. According to Whoza.ai’s own research into missed calls across UK trades, 62% of business calls go unanswered during working hours, resulting in thousands of pounds worth of business potentially being lost every year. That’s because most customers who don’t get an answer first time will simply phone a competitor rather than leave a voicemail or call back later.
Dozens of businesses have been taking part in successful trials of Whoza.ai in recent months, with the platform now live. The AI service can answer calls, take detailed notes, qualify leads, and book appointments – prioritising emergencies and filtering out time wasters.
Businesses pick a named assistant and voice – the default is a female voice called Katie – from a choice of 12 UK options.
Dru told Project Scotland the platform has been built specifically with the construction sector and tradespeople in mind. He has spent almost five years studying and practicing various iterations of AI and has now arrived at agentic AI, which involves systems that can execute outcomes with little human input.
“We noticed a gap in the market where the white van man or tradespeople have a real problem answering their phones when they’re working,” Dru explained. “Billions of pounds per year are just disappearing out of a revenue stream that businesses need to capture.”
Most people are already familiar with the concept of automated voice call handling systems, used by organisations such as banks and hospitals to handle high call volumes and routine requests. Dru revealed one of the limitations of traditional AI call handling systems has been a struggle to understand regional accents. To address this, Whoza.ai has been trained to recognise 300 regional accents and roughly 40 Scottish dialects.
“The system works 24/7, doesn’t take holidays, and doesn’t get sick,” Dru added. “It pre-qualifies jobs by taking all the necessary details like customer name, postcode, phone number, email if required, and then it talks to them about what the problem is. The AI is trained on your business. It knows all the terminologies that tradespeople use and all the technical information. It knows absolutely everything that you tell it.”
Once the AI answers a call, the tradesperson receives a WhatsApp message with all the information. There is then an option to either accept the job, decline it, or call the customer back to discuss further. Once a job has been completed, the AI gets back in contact with the customer to ask them if they are happy and if they’d mind leaving a review. That feedback is used to build AI visibility, so it becomes a self-feeding loop.
Businesses can sign up for a free seven-day trial on the entry-level Starter plan. After that, prices begin at £59 per month, with various tiers above that depending on how far clients wish to involve AI in their business. Tradespeople pay per booked job, not per call answered. Dru revealed that a missed emergency call-out is typically worth around £340 to a trade, so a single captured job covers several months of the service. Every plan includes a monthly competitor analysis report, while the higher tiers add weekly AI visibility actions, with suggestions made on potential improvements.
At the time of interview, live pilots were being conducted with a number of businesses. Dru described feedback from those who have been experiencing it as extremely positive.
“The system works perfectly,” he said. “It’s doing what it says on the tin. The people using it have a lot more captured calls.
“People won’t leave a voicemail. Let’s say you’re looking for a plumber because you’ve got a leak; you’re going to get a list of plumbers and it’s basically the first one who answers that gets the work. That’s the gap we’re trying to address. Within seconds they know someone has called, they know what they’ve called about, they know what the job estimate is potentially worth, and they have an immediate opportunity to respond.”
Dru claims the system can provide the perception of professionalism for even the smallest of businesses – without those firms having to spend fortunes on technology.
With AI evolving all the time, customers paying a monthly rental fee have the added advantage of Whoza.ai keeping up with technology on their behalf and introducing and integrating new advancements as they come along.
While Dru admits that some people don’t like the idea of a machine answering their phone, in an era where search is changing dramatically, businesses that don’t embrace technology risk finding themselves at a major disadvantage compared with competitors who are automating and reducing their overheads accordingly.
“This is not something that’s going to go away,” Dru stated. “It’s coming at you like an express train. In Scotland particularly, we need small businesses to be thriving in the current climate, not just getting battered into a box because the smart guys are taking advantage of it.”
And what about customers who may be reluctant to speak to an AI system?
“We’re trying to get a conversational AI where most people are quite happy chatting to a nice sounding person on the phone,” Dru concluded. “Better to capture the information within three rings – no matter how you do it – than to not capture it at all. Do I care what people think of AI answering the phone? It’s a tool to do a job that makes your business more efficient.”
• For more information, visit www.whoza.ai
