Home › Restoration
At 2am the homeowner works down a list. The first company that answers gets the job.
Brimeo answers every loss call on the first ring — water, fire, mold, sewage — checks for the things that make a call dangerous before anything else, dispatches your on-call crew with the address and what they're walking into, and logs program assignments the moment they come in. It will not tell a homeowner whether their claim is covered, and that is deliberate.
"There's water coming through my kitchen ceiling."
Is anyone hurt, or is the water anywhere near an outlet or the breaker box?
No, everyone's fine — the breaker's upstairs, away from it.
Good. I'm sending our on-call crew to you now, and they'll have everything they need before they arrive.
Actions taken
Life safety checked — no injuries, no electrical risk
Dispatched to on-call crew — address and loss details attached
Written back to Encircle
Live demo
Hear how it handles a loss call.
The number below is a working restoration agent. Tell it water is coming through your kitchen ceiling, and listen to what it asks first. Then ask whether your insurance will cover it — it won't answer that, and it will tell you why. Two minutes is enough to judge whether this would work on your line.
Click the mic and talk for up to 60 seconds. Your browser will ask for microphone access.
By using this demo and our AI voice features, you agree to our Privacy Policy. This is a demo — you're responsible for how you use it, and we're not liable for anything it generates.
The short answer
What is an AI receptionist for a restoration company?
An AI receptionist for a restoration company is a voice agent that answers every inbound call at any hour, establishes first whether anyone is in danger, captures what happened in the caller's own words, and dispatches your on-call crew with the address, the loss type and what they'll be walking into. It also recognizes the calls that aren't homeowners — program assignments, adjusters, plumbers referring a job — and routes each one to the person who handles it.
It is not an answering service that takes a message for the morning. In this trade a message taken at 2am and read at 8am is a job that went to somebody else.
It does not tell anyone whether their loss is covered, what their deductible means, or whether they should file a claim. It also doesn't characterize the loss — it records what the caller said and leaves the characterizing to the adjuster.
By the numbers
Three clocks start when the phone rings.
Average claim severity for water damage and freezing, at 1.61 claims per 100 house-years — the second most frequent homeowners claim, behind wind and hail at 2.82. Both are your work. Fire and lightning are far rarer at 0.24 per 100, and average $83,991.
Source: Insurance Information Institute, five-year average 2018–2022, underlying data from ISO, a Verisk Analytics business.The EPA's guidance is unambiguous: "It is important to dry water-damaged areas and items within 24-48 hours to prevent mold growth." The same window appears in IICRC S500, where Category 1 clean water can deteriorate to Category 2 in roughly the same period.
Sources: US EPA, A Brief Guide to Mold, Moisture and Your Home; IICRC S500.Typical emergency response window a managed repair program binds its panel contractors to. Miss it often enough and the panel seat goes to someone else. That clock starts when the assignment is issued — not when somebody gets around to checking voicemail.
Source: industry documentation of TPA panel requirements; specific SLAs vary by program contract.A note on sourcing
The first two figures come from a federal agency and from insurance industry loss data. The third is a range drawn from published descriptions of program contracts rather than a single study, and we've said so — actual SLAs are proprietary and vary. What you won't find on this page is the "$X billion industry" arithmetic or the response-time percentages that circulate in restoration marketing without a traceable source behind them.
What it handles
Built for how a loss call goes.
Life safety before anything else
Before the agent books, dispatches, or asks a single scoping question, it establishes whether anyone is in danger — standing water near electrical, a gas smell after a fire, a ceiling that's sagging, anyone with breathing difficulty. Those calls stop being intake calls immediately.
Category triage without diagnosis
It asks where the water came from — a supply line, an appliance, a roof, a toilet, a sewer backup — because that determines whether your crew brings PPE and containment or a truckmount and air movers. It reports what the caller said. It does not declare a category; your technician does that on site.
It never touches the coverage question
"Will my insurance cover this?" gets an honest non-answer and a reason. The agent captures what happened in the caller's exact words and leaves the characterizing to the adjuster, because how a loss is described on the first call has a way of ending up in the claim file.
Dispatch with what the crew needs
Address and access, loss type, roughly how much water and how long it's been there, whether power is on, whether there are pets or occupants staying, and whether anything upstairs is still leaking. Your on-call tech knows what they're driving to before they're in the truck.
Program and adjuster calls, recognized
An assignment from a managed repair program isn't a lead and shouldn't be qualified like one. The agent knows your programs, captures the claim number, loss address and loss type, and gets it to your coordinator — because the response clock started when it was issued.
Referral partners, routed not screened
Plumbers on a job with a homeowner who now needs mitigation. Roofers, property managers, agents. These calls are your pipeline and they should reach a person, not a qualifying script.
Mid-job calls from active losses
Day three of drying, and the homeowner wants the air movers off because they can't sleep. That call needs your project manager, not a booking flow — and it needs someone who knows why the answer is no.
Commercial and multi-unit losses
A restaurant at 5am or a twelve-unit building takes different questions: who authorises, whether the business can trade, how many units are affected, whether there's a property manager between you and the owner.
Call by call
Which calls does a restoration company get, and what happens to each?
The agent checks the dangerous things first — is anyone hurt, is water near anything electrical, is the ceiling sagging — then asks whether they've found the shut-off and can reach it safely. Once it's clear nobody is at risk, it captures the address and access, how long it's been running, what's above the kitchen, and whether it's still coming. Then it puts your on-call tech's phone in their hand.
Written backLoss created with the address, access notes, the caller's description in their own words, and the safety answers on the ticket, plus a dispatch to the on-call number.
The agent stops. Nobody goes into standing water with live power in it. It tells the caller not to enter the basement, to kill power at the main only if the panel can be reached from dry ground, and otherwise to call the utility or 911. Then it dispatches — but the safety instruction comes first and the call doesn't continue as an intake.
Written backLogged as a life-safety escalation with the timestamp and exactly what was said, plus an alert to the on-call number flagging live electrical.
The agent doesn't answer, and it says why: coverage is the adjuster's call, and water claims turn on whether damage was sudden or gradual — a distinction that gets decided from how the loss is described. So it tells the caller plainly that it isn't going to guess, records what they said happened in their own words without characterizing it, and gets them to someone who can talk them through the process properly.
Written backThe caller's account, verbatim and unedited, on the loss record — no summary, no interpretation, nothing that reads as an opinion on cause.
Not a lead. The agent recognizes the program, takes the claim number, policyholder name, loss address, loss type and date of loss, and gets your coordinator on the phone — because the response window on that assignment is measured in hours and it started before the call connected.
Written backAssignment logged against the program with the claim number and loss details, flagged with the time received so the clock is visible.
Category 3 water, and the immediate answer is that nobody should be in there — not the homeowner, not the kids, not to grab things. The agent says so, asks whether anyone has already been in contact with it, and dispatches with the loss type flagged so your crew arrives with containment and PPE rather than discovering it at the door.
Written backLoss created and flagged as suspected Category 3 based on the caller's description, with an occupant-exposure note and a dispatch to the on-call number.
He's fixed the supply line and the cabinets are soaked. He is often the most valuable inbound call this business gets, and he is not going to sit through a qualifying script. The agent recognizes him, takes the address and what he's looking at, and gets him a person.
Written backReferral logged against the partner record with the address and the loss description, so your referral reporting is real without anyone typing it in.
A fair question with a bad answer. The agent doesn't authorise it and doesn't lecture — it explains that the equipment placement is what the drying record is built on, pulls up which job this is and what day they're on, and gets the project manager to call them back today.
Written backNote against the active job flagging equipment complaint and day of drying, routed to the PM — because if it happens twice the customer may switch it off anyway.
Different loss, different first questions. Is the structure secured, is anyone displaced, is there a hole in the roof or a broken-out window, are there pets unaccounted for. The agent captures those, flags board-up as the immediate need, and dispatches. It does not discuss contents, smoke damage or what can be saved.
Written backFire loss created with the board-up flag, occupancy status and structural notes, and a dispatch to the on-call number.
What does it read and write in Encircle, DASH or Albi — and what it stays out of
What it reads
- Your on-call rotation, by night and by loss type
- Crew availability and who's already committed
- Active jobs: which property, which day of drying, which project manager
- Your programs and named referral partners
- Service area and response radius
- Equipment availability, where you track it
What it writes back
- New losses with address, access, loss type and the caller's own account
- Life-safety escalations, timestamped, with what was said
- Dispatches to the on-call number with the details the crew needs
- Program assignments with the claim number and time received
- Referral contacts against the partner record
- Notes against active jobs, routed to the project manager
Where the write is direct, and where it isn't
| System | What happens |
|---|---|
| Job management — Encircle, DASH by Next Gear, Albi, Restoration Manager, JobNimbus | Where an API is available we read active jobs and on-call rotation and write new losses, dispatches and job notes. Access varies by vendor and plan; we'll tell you which applies on the first call. |
| Xactimate | We don't write to it. Estimating scope is a human's job against carrier pricing, and an AI writing line items into a claim file is not a risk worth taking. We read nothing from it and write nothing to it. |
| Drying logs and psychrometric records | We don't touch these either. Moisture readings are a technician's documented observations and they end up as evidence. Nothing we do goes near them. |
| Program portals — managed repair network systems | We log the assignment and the time it arrived in your system so the clock is visible. We don't submit into the portal, and we don't make the contact call the program requires. |
| No integration available | Dispatch by SMS and call to your on-call number, plus a structured loss record pushed to your coordinator. It works, and it's how most companies start. |
The boundary
What it handles. When a person takes over.
The agent handles
Life-safety triage and the instruction that follows
Capturing the loss: address, access, type, timeline
Dispatching your on-call crew
Logging program assignments and starting the clock
Routing plumbers, adjusters and property managers
Notes from active jobs, routed to the PM
A person takes over
Anything after the caller is safe and on the way to being helped
Declaring a category or class
Deciding scope, equipment and crew size
The contact call the program requires
The relationship and the negotiation
Any decision about drying equipment
What the agent is never allowed to do
It does not say whether anything is covered. Not whether to file, not what the deductible does, not whether the carrier will pay. Coverage is the adjuster's decision against the policy, and water claims are among the most commonly disputed, usually over whether the damage was sudden or gradual.
It does not characterize the loss. This is the subtler half of the same rule and the more important one. The agent records what the caller said happened, in their words, and adds nothing. It will not say "so it's been leaking a while then" or "that sounds sudden." What gets said on a first-notice call has a way of ending up in a claim file.
It does not declare a category or class. It reports what the caller described so your crew arrives prepared. Category is a technician's determination made on site under S500, not a phone call.
It does not tell anyone a building is safe to enter. Not after a fire, not with standing water and live power, not with a sagging ceiling. When in doubt it says stay out and get a person there.
It does not price anything. Restoration scope is estimated against carrier pricing after somebody has seen the property. There is no phone number a price comes out of.
It does not advise on mold. Not whether it's dangerous, not whether it's toxic, not whether the family should leave the house.
It does not authorise equipment changes. Air movers and dehumidifiers come off when the readings say so, and that decision belongs to the person keeping the drying record.
It does not pretend to be a person. If a caller asks, it says no.
These boundaries are written down during onboarding and they're visible in the transcripts. You can read every call it took.
Onboarding
How long until it's answering your phone?
Step 1 — Discovery and configuration
We map your service area and response radius, your on-call rotation by night and by loss type, your loss types and what each one needs at dispatch, your programs and your named referral partners, and your escalation rules for the calls that stop being intake calls. Then we write down the safety script — what the agent says about live electrical, about sewage, about a structure after a fire — and you sign it off before anything goes live. And we listen to your recent calls, because how your coordinator already talks to someone at 2am is the thing worth copying.
Step 2 — Build and test
We build the agent, connect it to your job management system, and run it through the calls that go wrong: the flooded basement with the panel in it, the homeowner asking whether it's covered, the sewage call, the plumber who won't sit through questions, the caller who talks over it. You listen to those recordings before it takes a single live call.
Ongoing — Weekly calibration
Someone reviews transcripts every week and changes the agent as your programs change, your on-call rotation changes, or a caller finds a phrasing that trips it. This is a service, not a login.
What changes by month three?
Three things change on three different timescales, and it's worth knowing which is which before you start.
Every call gets answered, including the 2am ones and the ones that arrive three at once during a freeze event. The first thing most owners notice isn't job volume. It's how many of their overnight calls were never losses at all — wrong numbers, price shoppers, people looking for a plumber — and how much of the on-call tech's sleep was being spent on them.
Real callers describe situations the script didn't anticipate, and the agent will escalate things that turned out to be fine. That's the correct direction to be wrong in, and this is the window where you narrow it — never the other way. Category and loss-type flags get corrected too, because the words homeowners use aren't the words S500 uses. If nothing changes here, nobody is reading the transcripts.
Which referral partners actually send you work, how many overnight calls convert, how long an assignment sits before a human sees it. Those need a quarter of calls and probably a weather event before they mean anything. A chart at week two isn't telling you much yet.
It writes to the systems you already run — and stays out of the ones it shouldn't.
Job management and documentation
Scheduling and general
Deliberately not connected
Xactimate · drying logs and psychrometric records · program portals
Anything else with an API. If a system can't be connected, we'll say so on the first call rather than three weeks into onboarding.
How it hands a call to a person.
When a call needs a person — which in this trade is most of them — the agent briefs whoever picks up first. A tech woken at 2am should know what they're driving to before they're awake enough to ask.
Dispatching to your on-call tech
- Address and how to get in
- Loss type, and what the caller said caused it
- Any safety flag: live electrical, sewage, structural, gas
- How long it's been going and whether it's still active
- Occupants, pets, anyone displaced
- Whether power and water are on
Handing a program assignment to your coordinator
- Which program, and the claim number
- Loss address, loss type, date of loss
- Time the assignment arrived
Whoever picks up already knows. The agent stays on to log what happens next.
What restoration owners ask before they buy.
What does it do first on a 2am water call?
Checks whether anyone is in danger — standing water near electrical, sagging ceiling, gas after a fire — before it captures anything else. Once it's clear nobody is at risk, it takes the address, access, loss type and how long it's been running, then puts it in your on-call tech's hand.
Will it tell a homeowner whether their claim is covered?
No, and it explains why rather than dodging. It also won't characterize the loss — it records what the caller said happened, in their words, without adding "so it's been leaking a while" or "that sounds sudden." Water claims turn on that distinction more than any other, and a first-notice call has a way of ending up in a claim file.
Does it declare a category?
No. It reports what the caller described so your crew brings the right equipment, and flags a suspected Category 3 when someone says sewage — but category is a determination your technician makes on site under S500, and the agent doesn't pre-empt it.
What happens with a program assignment?
It recognizes the program, captures the claim number, loss address, loss type and date of loss, logs the time it arrived so the response clock is visible, and gets your coordinator on the phone. It does not make the contact call the program requires — that's a person's job and it's outbound, which we don't do.
Does it write into Xactimate?
No, deliberately. Estimating scope belongs to a human working against carrier pricing. We also stay out of your drying logs and psychrometric records — those are your technician's documented readings and they end up as evidence.
What about a call from a plumber?
Recognized and routed to a person, no qualifying script. Plumbers are often a restoration company's best referral source and the last people who should be asked how they heard about you.
Can it handle a caller who's panicking?
It's built for it — short questions, one at a time, safety first. But the honest answer is that you should call the demo number and try it yourself, upset and talking over it, because that's the call that separates a working system from a good demo.
Does it make outbound calls?
No. Brimeo answers your phone — inbound only. Automated outbound calling carries consent obligations and carrier registration requirements plenty of vendors market straight past. We'd rather tell you where the line is than sell you into a problem.
Does it work with our existing number?
Yes. Forward your line after hours, on no-answer, or all the time. Nothing about your published number changes.
Can I hear what it said on a call?
Every call recorded and transcribed. Recordings and transcripts are kept for 90 days. On a trade where wording matters this much, that isn't a feature — it's the point.
What if it doesn't know the answer?
It says it doesn't have that and gets someone who does. Handling that well is harder than handling the calls that go to plan, and it's worth asking any vendor about.
How long until it's live?
Within 3 business days of sending us your details in most cases. That includes writing the safety script and having you sign it off before anything goes live.
The next one comes in at 2am.
These boundaries are written down during onboarding, and they're visible in the transcripts.