Google is building a way for homeowners to have it call local shops for pricing and availability. Seven steps so your shop gets the call answered, priced and booked.
Google is rolling out a way for homeowners to have Google call local shops for them, starting with categories like home repair, to check price and availability. Whether you get those jobs or miss them comes down to one setting in your Google Business Profile, answering the phone (especially at lunch and during the busy season), and knowing ahead of time what to say when the caller on the line is a machine.
That’s the whole thing. Now let me walk you through it without telling you to buy anything first.
What actually changed
Back in May 2026 at Google I/O, Google said that “for select categories like home repair, beauty or pet care, you can ask Google to call businesses on your behalf,” and that this would roll out to everyone in the US over the summer. They haven’t come out and named HVAC, plumbing or electrical, and they haven’t confirmed the home repair rollout is finished. But if you run a trade shop, home repair is your lane, and everything below is worth doing whether the calls start next week or next spring.
Google’s help page talks about two kinds of automated calls. One is Google calling on a customer’s behalf to book or to confirm price and availability. The other is Google calling to verify stuff on your profile, like hours or services offered. If you give a price, Google says the customer gets that quote by email or text, and if you use an online booking provider, Google may book through them instead of calling. They also say these calls are monitored and recorded, that they limit repeat calls, and that they try not to call late at night or early in the morning. One more detail: automated calls are available in every US state except Indiana, Louisiana, Minnesota, Montana and Nebraska. And they note it’s only in select regions and languages for now.
What happens if nobody picks up? Google hasn’t said. But my read is pretty simple. A homeowner who asked Google to find someone today is going to hear about the shops that answered, not the one that rang out to voicemail. I’d plan like that’s true.
1. Check the setting
Open your Google Business Profile. Go to More, then Business Profile settings, then Advanced settings. You’ll see a section called Google automated calls and text messages with three switches: Bookings and inquiries from customers, Keep your profile up to date, and Post to your profile on your behalf. Your profile has to be verified before you can touch any of them.
I’d leave bookings and inquiries on unless you have a real reason not to. Google doesn’t spell out exactly what turning it off does to how homeowners find you, but the plain reading is you’re opting out of the calls that bring the job. Even with it off, Google says they may still occasionally call to confirm your business information. And glance at that third switch while you’re there. With it on, info from these calls can get posted to your public profile, and Google will email you when that happens.
2. Make your profile say what homeowners actually ask for
The agent is matching a homeowner’s words to your profile. “HVAC services” is vague. People ask for “AC repair,” “furnace replacement,” “water heater replacement,” “drain cleaning,” “24-hour emergency service.” That’s the language you want on there.
- List each service you want booked, in plain words.
- Put your real hours in, including emergency hours, and keep holiday hours current.
- Set your service area to the towns you actually drive to.
- Make sure the phone number on the profile rings somewhere that gets answered.
3. Answer every call
This was true before agents ever existed. It matters more now, because a homeowner who handed the job to Google isn’t sitting around waiting for your callback.
Look at three windows first: lunch, the first hot week of the season, and after hours. Google says it avoids calling late at night or early in the morning, so for their calls, lunch and the busy season are the gaps that matter most. Homeowners still call after hours on their own. If calls ring out in any of those windows, fix that before anything else. A person, an answering service that can actually book, or an AI receptionist tied into your dispatch board all work. An answering service that just takes messages doesn’t.
Sometimes the answer here is just moving people around. You think you don’t have enough staff, but it’s really a staffing organization problem. Get a good grounding in how your phones actually work before you buy anything.
4. Decide what you’ll say about price
Google says these calls can ask about price and availability. Your best CSR already knows how to handle a price question on the phone. Write it down so everybody, and any AI on your phones, answers the same way. This matters more than a normal phone quote, because Google says the price you give goes to the customer in writing, by email or text.
Decide ahead of time:
- Your diagnostic or trip fee, and whether it’s waived with a repair.
- Whether you give ranges over the phone for common jobs, and what they are.
- What you never quote on the phone (replacements, anything that needs eyes on it), and what you say instead: “We’d need to see it. We can have someone there Thursday morning.”
A good answer sounds like this: “Our diagnostic is $89, and it’s waived if you go ahead with the repair. We have a 1 to 3 window tomorrow.” Service, price, availability, all in one breath. (The fee is an example. Use yours.)
5. Write the never-promise list
Whoever answers, human or AI, needs a short list of things they never commit to on that call. Exact replacement prices. Same-day service you can’t staff. Warranty terms. Anything about permits. Five lines on a page is enough. Google says these calls are recorded, and the quote goes to the homeowner in writing, so what your CSR says on one is on the record.
6. Track it like a lead source
Train your CSRs to recognize an automated call from Google and tag it, and set those up as their own campaign or lead source in your field service platform. Google says their calls will tell you they’re from Google and why they’re calling.
Two more things for the script. If a CSR or an AI receptionist blows it off with “please stop calling” or “take us off your list,” Google treats that as a request to stop calling your business. Make sure nobody says that by reflex. And Google says they’ll never ask for payment, card details or passwords. A caller who wants money to keep you on Google is not Google. If a real call goes wrong, there’s a form on Google’s help page for reporting problems with automated calls.
Then watch two numbers for a month: how many came in, and how many booked. If these calls book at half your normal rate, that tells you exactly where the script needs work.
7. Ask an AI about yourself
Open ChatGPT, Google AI Mode or Perplexity and ask the question your customers ask: “Who can fix my AC today in [your town]?” Don’t type your company name. See if you come up, and what it says about you. If the hours, services or reviews it describes are wrong, fix them at the source, starting with your Business Profile.
The short version
Leave the setting on. Make your profile say what homeowners actually ask for. Answer every call. Decide your price answer and your never-promise list ahead of time. Track these calls as their own lead source. Check what AI says about you once a month. None of this needs new software. It’s the front-office discipline that wins calls anyway.
If you want help figuring out where AI should actually go in your shop, starting with the phones, that’s what an AI Strategy Sprint is for. Even if you don’t move forward with a full implementation, you walk away with a roadmap of things to address.
Sources: Google: Search I/O 2026 updates, Google Business Profile Help: About automated calls and texts from Google to your business, and Google Business Profile Help: Identify calls from Google, all checked October 7, 2026.