How to Write Intake Questions Your AI Receptionist Should Ask

An AI receptionist is only as good as the questions it asks. Get the intake right and your on-call tech rolls out the door already knowing whether they need a capacitor, a compressor, or a full replacement quote. Get it wrong and you have a booking that tells you almost nothing.

Here is how to build an intake flow that works for residential HVAC.

Start with one branching question

Every call should resolve to a call type within the first thirty seconds. The cleanest way is a single branching question:

“Is this about no cooling, no heating, or something else?”

From there the branches carry their own scripts. A no-cool call in July needs different questions than a routine maintenance booking in October.

The no-cool emergency script

For a true emergency, the AI should collect:

1. The symptom. “Is the system running at all, or completely off?”
2. Duration. “How long has it been like this?”
3. Who is affected. “Is anyone in the home elderly, an infant, or with a medical condition?” — this changes urgency.
4. Unit details. “Do you know the age of the system?” and “Is it a heat pump or a gas furnace with AC?”
5. Access. “Will someone be home, and is there a gate code or a dog we should know about?”

Notice none of these require the AI to diagnose anything. It is collecting the details your tech needs, not guessing at the fix.

What to never ask

• Do not ask the homeowner to diagnose. “Do you think it’s the capacitor?” produces noise, not data.
• Do not quote a price. Give a range only if your business has approved one, and always attached to a diagnostic fee.
• Do not ask more than about six questions. Past that, callers get frustrated and hang up. Everything else can be gathered by the tech on site.

Add your house rules

The intake is also where your business rules live. Common ones:

• Only warm-transfer to on-call if the caller has no cooling and it is above a temperature threshold.
• Offer the next available appointment rather than a specific time, then confirm by text.
• For returning callers, look them up by phone and confirm the address instead of asking for it again.

These rules are what turn a generic answering bot into something that sounds like your office.

Test it like a caller, not a developer

Once your intake is set, call your own number and try to break it. Pretend to be a frustrated homeowner. Interrupt it. Give a partial address. Ask it something off-script. The edge cases you find in five test calls are the ones your real callers would have hit next week.

Every plan includes a full transcript of every call, so you can keep tuning the script as you hear what homeowners actually ask.

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