Penny puts the furnace symptoms on your ticket as your HVAC answering service.

Connect Google Calendar or Outlook for appointments during the call. Field-service connectors capture the intake: a Request in Jobber, a customer and unscheduled job in Housecall Pro, or a Booking intake in ServiceTitan for your team to review and schedule. The symptom, address and priority go with it. A CRM write does not dispatch a technician. Pro adds text confirmations; Zapier and signed webhooks cover custom connections.

Penny starts at $29 a month on Starter with annual billing, with Pro at $99 adding the on-call schedule, text confirmations, and photo-by-text. Paid plans include monthly minutes; usage above the allowance is billed at the plan’s per-minute rate. The answering service cost guide compares plans, included minutes, and usage charges.

She records “clicks, lights, then drops out” in the caller’s words, with the equipment details they know. Your technician can review that starting sequence before the visit and decide what to bring. Diagnosis and parts selection remain with the technician.

She captures the brand, the install year if the caller knows it, and whether you did the install, then books the visit and marks the ticket as a warranty question for your office. She does not tell the caller whether a part or a repair is covered, because that depends on the registration, the labor terms, and who installed it, and that answer comes from you.

Yes. Tell her which callers are on a plan, or have her ask, and she offers those callers the priority slots you have set aside. A plan customer with no cool in July gets the earlier window; a non-member gets the next open slot and a line about the plan if you want her to mention it.

She says the tech will diagnose it on site and that she would rather book the right visit than guess, then she notes that the caller asked about the compressor so the tech arrives ready for that conversation. The same goes for “is it low on Freon?”: refrigerant is a Section 608 job, a loss means a leak to find, and she never promises a recharge as the fix.

Yes, and she sorts them before she offers a slot. A tune-up or a maintenance visit goes into a routine window on the days you run them. A no-cool call gets the symptom questions, the occupant question, and a same-day or emergency slot depending on the answers. A caller who says “tune-up” and then mentions the house is 88 degrees gets treated as a no-cool.

Only the one you set. If you give her a published diagnostic fee, she states it when a caller asks and notes that the tech gives a written quote before any repair. If you have not set one, she says pricing comes from the tech on site and books the visit. She never quotes a repair, a part, a system, or a plan price.

Gas and CO reports interrupt routine scheduling: the caller gets the safety instruction to leave and call 911 from outside, with the gas utility included for a gas report. Penny then alerts your on-call contact. Your shop sets separate temperature and occupant rules for priority service, and she offers only available appointments. See Emergency Rules for the full workflow.