Calls, intake and CBI, the assistant that asks first
Every call, text, email, website request and portal request lands in one inbox. CrewBarn turns calls into text, drafts the job from what the caller said, and keeps every call on the job it belongs to. CBI, the assistant built in, does the reading and the reminding, and never saves or sends anything until a person says so.
The intro, in words
Every call answered, nothing retyped
This is calls and intake in CrewBarn, followed one call at a time, from the first ring to a booked job.
At Harlow and Finch, Kim books the calls, Dana runs the office, and Sam and Jo are out in the trucks.
The call: A call, on the record
Tuesday, just after eight. Mrs. Rivera calls Harlow and Finch. Her water heater is leaking in the garage.
Kim answers. The call is recorded on the company line, and when it ends it lands in Messages as a card: inbound, the time, and how long it ran.
The call: Read in a minute
A minute later, CrewBarn has read the call. What they need comes first: a short summary, the service, how urgent it is, and the area.
Play recording plays the call right there. Read transcript shows who said what: Kim's side, and Mrs. Rivera's.
The call: Checked before it's made
Kim presses Create job from this call. Review and correct opens with what it found: the customer, the address, the service and the scope.
Mrs. Rivera is already a customer, so it says Using existing customer. Nothing has been made yet. Kim checks each field first.
The call: One press, and Sam knows
Kim sets Thursday at ten fifteen and picks Sam. The button changes to Quick create plus send tech.
She presses it. The job is made and linked to the call, and Sam gets a text that it's his.
On the call card, the button now reads View job.
The call: A price first, or a job you have
If she'd asked for a price first, CBI drafts an estimate instead, and the button reads Create estimate from this call. Estimates always open the full form.
And if she was calling about a job they already had, Kim presses Link to an existing job, so the same job is never made twice.
The call: A missed call stays on the list
Now the other way the morning goes. Kim is on another line, and Mrs. Rivera leaves a voicemail.
It waits on the Calls tab, matched to her name, until someone opens it, calls back, or marks it reviewed.
Kim presses Call back. Go to customer or Open thread would clear it too, and Mark reviewed clears one dealt with some other way.
The call: Four minutes, nothing retyped
So four minutes after she hung up, the job exists, Sam knows it's his, and nobody typed her address twice.
The Intake queue: A text becomes a draft
Wednesday. Jess at Bayside Property Group texts the intake line: the lobby door closer is leaking oil, with a photo.
CrewBarn reads it and drafts the job. It lands in the Intake queue as Pending, waiting for a person.
The Intake queue: Check it against her own words
Kim opens it. Up top, Bayside, Pending, and that it looks like a job. Below, Customer, Asset and equipment, Part guess, Job draft, Service address, and the text itself.
The address has no suite number. Kim clicks Ask for missing details, ticks the address, and Prepare wording writes a polite text. She sends it from the conversation.
The Intake queue: Correct it, or teach CBI
The Part guess says a closer arm, but the photo shows the closer body. Kim presses Wrong part? and picks the right one.
Just fix this intake saves the correction for this request. If Kim has permission to teach, she can also choose Also teach CBI, review the lesson, and press Fix it and remember to keep it for future work.
The Intake queue: A person says yes
Jess replies with the suite. Kim presses Create job, and a new job form opens, filled in from the draft. She checks it and saves.
The draft moves to Approved, and its button now reads Open approved job.
The Intake queue: Set aside, or tried again
Another way it goes: the text is a sales pitch. Kim presses Dismiss, and it moves to Dismissed, where Reopen brings it back.
And a draft that couldn't be read shows Failed, with Retry AI extraction. Nothing becomes a job without a person.
The Intake queue: Nothing on a sticky note
From Jess's text to a job took a few minutes of Kim's time, and every detail came from Jess's own words.
Calls on a job: The call writes the note
Thursday morning. Sam calls Mrs. Rivera from the job to say when he'll be there. That call stays with the job.
Once it's transcribed, CBI writes a short note on the job: who was called and what was agreed, and records the arrival time Sam gave.
Calls on a job: Moved only when the office says so
If she'd asked for Friday instead, CBI files a move request from the call.
Kim gets it like any other, and presses Approve or Decline. The schedule never moves without the office.
Running late: The tech hears it first
Now say Sam's first job runs long, and he may be late for Mrs. Rivera.
His phone shows the red Running late pop-up with a Call customer button. On a Twilio line, CBI also rings his cell: press 1 to call Rivera residence now.
He presses 1, and he's talking to her from the company line, on a recorded call kept on the job.
Running late: Then the office, then CBI
If Sam hadn't called her, a few minutes later the job shows on the Schedule page, and the Schedule button flashes.
Kim presses CBI: call customer. CBI rings Mrs. Rivera with the customer script: press 1 to talk to our office, or press 2 to talk to your technician.
Running late: You decide who gets a call
Who CBI may call is set for the company, each customer, and each job: never, only when the office presses CBI: call customer, or automatically if the tech hasn't called by the time dispatch is told.
A customer tagged do-not-call is never called, and on its own, CBI calls about a late job once a day at most.
Running late: The words are yours
The words CBI says are call scripts Dana edits, with tags like the customer's name and how many minutes late it looks.
She picks a voice, and Test call rings her own phone with made-up job details. Nothing is saved.
The whole call: The ring to a booked job
That's one call, start to finish: the ring, the read, the draft, quick create, and the note when Sam calls back.
And every branch had an answer: a missed call, a price first, a job you already had, a missing detail, a wrong guess, a late tech.
No call lost on a sticky note, no job typed twice, and a person says yes before anything is made.
Calls & intake: Every call answered, nothing retyped
That's calls and intake in CrewBarn.
CrewBarn is in beta, and free for life for trades that help test it.
One inbox for every way customers reach you
Calls come in on your own lines through Twilio or net2phone. Each call is recorded and transcribed with AssemblyAI or OpenAI, with who said what. Texts, emails, website requests and portal requests sit in the same place, so the office works one list.
A call or voicemail stays on the Calls list until someone opens it, calls back or marks it reviewed. A caller whose number matches a customer shows up by name. When a customer texts a photo, CBI looks at it and suggests the matching items from your own catalog.
Jobs drafted from what the caller said
When a call or text is a request for work, CrewBarn pulls it apart into who it's from, where the work is, what's wrong and how soon, with any serial or model numbers read from photos they sent, and the original words to check the draft against.
Nothing becomes a job on its own. Someone in the office opens the draft, fixes anything that's off, and presses Create job, which opens a new job already filled in. Corrections are kept, so the next draft comes out closer.
Job notes written from calls
A call made from a job stays with that job. When it's done, CBI reads it and writes what was agreed as a note on the job, with any arrival time given. If a visit should move, CBI asks the office first.
Running-late calls to the tech, and press 1
If a tech may be late for their next job, they hear it first. The field app shows a red Running late pop-up with a Call customer button, and, on a Twilio line, CBI calls the tech's cell on your company number. If they press 1, they're talking to the customer, on a recorded call that's kept on the job. A few minutes later the office's Schedule button flashes, unless the tech already called.
You decide whether the customer gets an automated call too: never, only when the office presses Call customer, or on its own. Set it for the whole company, per customer and per job. Customers marked do not call are never called. When a customer does get a call, pressing 1 reaches your office and pressing 2 reaches their tech.
CBI is careful about who it rings. It calls about a late job once a day at most, even if the warning comes and goes as the GPS wobbles. If the customer was already called or texted about the job just before, nobody is called. If an answering machine picks up, CBI leaves a short message after the beep, and that doesn't count as reaching the customer. If the tech doesn't answer, the late job goes straight to the office. Quiet hours hold back CBI's calls: it doesn't call a tech during their own quiet hours, or customers during the company's. A tech's running-late alert in the app still comes through, even in quiet hours, because they're out working.
Call scripts you write
The words CBI says are call scripts you edit, with tags like the customer's name, how late it looks and the new arrival time. Choose CBI's voice and how it sounds, and press Test call to ring your own phone before a script goes out. In the crew app, techs can say Hey CrewBarn and ask a question out loud.
Ask CBI in plain words
Ask CBI what's on today, what's overdue, or what a customer said on their last call. It answers from your own records, and puts a to-do on someone's list once you confirm. It can learn your pricing from your quotes and invoices, but it never makes, sends or changes an invoice itself. See everything CBI can do, by voice and in the web app.
You write rules for CBI and review what it learns before it counts. It runs on your own AI key, with Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini or Azure OpenAI, and the provider bills you directly.
How it works
- Connect your phone line (Twilio or net2phone) and a transcription provider.
- Calls, texts, emails and portal requests land in one inbox.
- CBI drafts the job from the call. Someone checks it and presses Create job.
- Calls about a job become notes on that job, with any arrival time given.
- If a tech may be late, CBI calls the tech first, and press 1 reaches the customer.
- Anything CBI wants to save, send or move waits for a person to confirm.