The AI receptionist for Australian pest control
Hunter's Receptionist answers calls that reach your number, qualifies the caller, offers real open times from your diary and books them in. Calls that ring out on your own mobile get a text back before the caller has moved on to the next business. Everything it books lands with you to confirm — it never puts an unassigned termite job on a run sheet.
Last reviewed
Replaces front office and after-hours answering. Employing somebody to do this work in Australia costs about $70,000* a year — which is what the figure is, not what we charge.
What the Receptionist does
Answers around the clock, and books into the live diary
The voice agent answers, works out what the caller wants, offers real open times and takes the booking. A caller nobody has a record of can be booked rather than merely leaving a message — and that path is caged: it can write a booking request for the number they are ringing from, and it cannot read another customer's records, edit a customer or create a job. It answers calls that reach Hunter's number, which does not include calls placed straight to a technician's handset.
Texts back every call you miss
Forward your mobile to Hunter and a caller who rings out gets a text while they still have the phone in their hand. The timing is the whole feature: Hunter drops the call sooner than Australian carrier voicemail typically answers, because if voicemail wins the race the call is recorded as answered and nothing happens at all. Set forwarding up and it works; skip that step and it does nothing, which the settings page says in as many words.
Starts on a marketplace lead the moment its email lands
Leads from the marketplaces arrive as email, and the same lead arriving twice cannot become two enquiries. Hunter starts a clock against the response time you set yourself, drafts the first reply to anything past it, and shows you what is still hanging. The clock it reports is our own time to first touch — the delay before the email reaches you belongs to the marketplace, and Hunter does not claim to measure it.
What we do not claim
The offer originally promised: Marketplace leads called within sixty seconds. The connector is an email predicate, not an API. The delay between the marketplace creating the lead and its email arriving belongs to them, and off-platform contact is an unchecked question of their terms.
Online booking that offers times you can actually do
The public booking page offers real open times, filtered by your appointment length, your notice period and your booking horizon. A chosen time is held while the customer finishes the form, and two people looking at the same Tuesday morning cannot both get it. What arrives is a booking request for you to confirm, not a technician silently assigned to a job.
Takes a deposit at booking on the jobs that warrant one
Set a threshold and the booking page asks for a deposit on work above it, before the slot is confirmed. The deposit is a payment against the job like any other, so it appears on the invoice rather than in a separate ledger nobody reconciles.
Booking on your own website, in one line of HTML
The booking page is brandable — your colour, your logo — and embeds in your site with one snippet that resizes itself to the form. It is not a Google Business Profile integration and we do not describe it as one; you can add your booking link to a Google listing yourself, which is you doing it, not us.
What we do not claim
The offer originally promised: Chat-based booking on the website and on Google Business Profile. There is no Google Business Profile booking surface available to Hunter.
The reminder ladder, from confirmation to on-the-way
Confirmation, then a reminder the day before, then the morning of, then on the way. Each rung is a step in one sequence engine rather than four separate features, which is why it knows a customer is already being contacted and does not stack two messages on the same morning. Appointment reminders are transactional, so they carry no marketing and need no consent.
A tracking link, so they stop ringing to ask
Send a link that shows the booked window and whether the technician has set off, is on site or has finished. A rough minutes-away figure appears only when you have tracking switched on, the technician has location sharing on their own device switched on, and their last position is recent — and it is a straight-line estimate that knows nothing about traffic. There is no map on that page, deliberately: a customer-facing route history is a staff-surveillance feature and the operator would be the one explaining it.
Confirm or release — the slot does not sit there empty
Ask for a confirmation, watch which ones came back, and release the slots that did not so the day can be refilled. The unconfirmed list is a screen rather than a feeling, and the release is an action you take rather than something that happens to your diary behind your back.
Call-back promises that are kept
When somebody is told they will get a call back, that promise becomes a record with a time on it. A promise that goes past its time is breached, and it appears in its own folder rather than dissolving into a busy inbox. This is the least glamorous thing on this page and it is the one that most often decides whether a customer rings the next business.
What the Receptionist actually does with a call
A call reaches Hunter's number. The agent answers, works out whether this is a new customer or an existing one, what pest and what property, and whether the work needs a licence the business holds. If it can be booked, it offers real times from the diary — not a request form, and not a promise that someone will ring back.
If the caller is nobody Hunter has a record of, it can still book them, and the toolset it is holding at that moment is deliberately smaller: it can write a booking request against the number they are calling from and it can do nothing else. It cannot look up another customer, cannot edit a record and cannot create a job. That is a caging decision, not a gap — a voice agent that can be talked into reading a stranger's service history is a data breach with a friendly voice.
Everything it books arrives as a request for the office to confirm. That is the deliberate stopping point: a public form that writes straight onto a run sheet is how a pest business ends up with a booked termite job and no licensed technician.
- Answers calls that reach Hunter's number, at any hour
- Offers real open times, filtered by your appointment length and notice period
- Holds the slot while the caller decides, so two people cannot take the same one
- Books unknown callers through a narrower toolset that cannot read other customers
- Hands every booking to the office to confirm
The missed call is the one that costs money
Most pest businesses do not lose work to a competitor's better website. They lose it because the phone rang while somebody was under a house, and the caller rang the next business on the list before the day was out.
Hunter's answer is a text back, and the engineering that matters is the timing. When a call forwards to an operator's own mobile and nobody picks up, the carrier's voicemail is racing to answer it — and if voicemail wins, the network reports the call as completed. Every missed call would look answered, and the feature would silently do nothing at all. So Hunter gives up on the forwarded call sooner than the carrier typically answers, and treats an answering machine as a miss rather than a conversation.
There are two conditions, and they belong in the sales conversation rather than in a support ticket. The first is that Hunter only sees calls forwarded to it — on day one that is conditional forwarding dialled on your own handset, with no number port required, and the app prints the codes. The second is that if your handset's own ring time is long, voicemail answers first and there is nothing to detect. Hunter warns you about that on the settings tab and at the top of the missed-calls folder.
What it will not do
It will not answer a call placed directly to a technician's mobile, because it never sees one. Any claim that Hunter answers every call is false for exactly that case, and it is a common one.
It will not make a marketing call. Under the Australian rules a commercial call made with an AI voice is a telemarketing call like any other — there is no carve-out — and Hunter has no access to the Do Not Call Register. Outbound calling exists in the product, refuses any number with no relationship already on file, and needs a person to approve every call. It is not sold on this site until it has been verified against a real Australian number.
It will not transcribe a call it did not answer. Only the calls Hunter took leave a transcript, so only those can be scored or summarised. A call a person picked up on a forwarded mobile has nothing to score, and every screen that reports on call quality says so.
Where it hands work on
A booking becomes a job on the Dispatcher's board, and the licence gate runs there — an expired licence on file blocks the booking outright rather than warning about it afterwards.
An enquiry that needs a price goes to the Closer, with the photos and the notes attached. A customer who books becomes part of the Retention Manager's world the moment the visit is done: the summary, the review request, the re-treatment reminder next year.
| When this happens | It goes to | And what happens there |
|---|---|---|
| A booking is taken | The Dispatcher | Assigned on licence, skill, availability and how much driving it adds |
| The caller wants a price | The Closer | A quote from the notes and photos, then a follow-up ladder if it goes quiet |
| The visit is finished | The Retention Manager | Summary, review request, and next year's inspection on the planner |
| Nobody could take the call | The call-back promise queue | A dated promise that shows up as breached if it is not kept |
Common questions
- Do I need a new phone number?
- No. On day one you set conditional forwarding on your existing mobile — the codes are printed in the app — so calls you do not answer roll to Hunter. Porting your number across is possible later and needs an Australian regulatory bundle, but nothing about the feature waits on it.
- Does the AI answer every call, or only after hours?
- That is your choice. Most operators start with after-hours and overflow, then widen it once they have listened to a week of recordings. Hunter can only answer calls that reach its number, so a call placed straight to a technician's handset is invisible to it either way.
- What stops it booking a termite job with nobody licensed to do it?
- Two things. Bookings arrive as requests for the office to confirm rather than as assigned jobs, and when a job is assigned, an expired licence on file blocks it. A licence Hunter has no record of is not treated the same as one it knows has lapsed — for termite work it still blocks, but only for a business that actually keeps a licence register.
- Will it call my old customers back for me?
- Not automatically, and not without consent on file for that person. Outbound calling exists, refuses any number with no relationship already recorded, and requires a person to approve each call. It is deliberately not something a routine can be trusted with, however well that routine has behaved.
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