Plumbing calls in Niles don't wait for you to finish the job you're on. A water heater leaking into a finished basement, a frozen line at 6 AM, a backed-up main the night before a holiday: the caller wants a person, or at least a real answer, on the first try. If they get voicemail, most call the next plumber on the list.
Connie is an overflow-only AI receptionist for plumbing companies. Your phone rings first. When you can't pick up, Connie answers in your company's name, follows your rules, books the visit into your Google Calendar or hands an emergency to your on-call number, and emails you the job. Here is what that looks like for a shop working Niles and Berrien County.
What's different about plumbing calls in Niles
Niles is the clearest example of why Michiana is its own market. Plenty of plumbing companies on both sides of the state line work Niles, Buchanan, Edwardsburg and South Bend in the same week. Calls from southwest Michigan come from the 269 area code, and Niles stays on Eastern Time like South Bend, so your hours and booking windows line up.
The state line matters for licensing. Plumbing licenses in Michigan are issued through LARA's Bureau of Construction Codes,3 and in Indiana through the Plumbing Commission at the Indiana Professional Licensing Agency.4 If you are licensed on only one side, tell whoever answers your phone, so a Michigan caller isn't booked by an Indiana-only shop (or the other way around). If you work both sides, say so: "We're licensed in Indiana and Michigan" is a reason to pick you.
When frozen-pipe calls start around Niles
The National Weather Service office for Northern Indiana publishes average first-freeze dates for the stations it tracks.1 Niles is in the NWS Northern Indiana forecast area. The closest stations in its table are South Bend (about 12 miles) and Benton Harbor (about 25 miles).
| NWS station | Average first freeze (32°F) | Average first hard freeze (28°F) | Earliest freeze on record |
|---|---|---|---|
| South Bend | October 17 | November 3 | September 21, 1897 |
| Benton Harbor | October 13 | October 26 | September 13, 2017 |
The first freeze kills gardens; it rarely bursts pipes. Burst lines come with the deep cold that follows in December and January, when an overnight low in the single digits finds a supply line in an exterior wall, crawlspace or garage. That's when a Niles plumber's phone rings before sunrise, and when the caller who reaches voicemail calls the next name on the list.
Whoever answers should give the same first-minute instructions every time: shut off the main, stay away from water near anything electrical, open a cold faucet to relieve pressure, and never thaw a pipe with an open flame.2 Then get the address and a callback number, read back digit by digit. Our winter playbook for plumbers has a full script.
How forwarding works with your 269 number
Niles numbers are in southwest Michigan's 269 area code, while most of your Indiana customers are 574 or 219.
You keep your number and your phone. Connie gives you a forwarding number, and you turn on conditional forwarding: calls you don't answer, or calls that arrive while you're on the line, go to Connie. Calls you pick up never touch it. Callers dial your number and see your number; they never see the forwarding number, so its area code doesn't matter to them.
- Verizon cell phones: dial *71 followed by the forwarding number for busy and no-answer forwarding; *73 turns it off.5
- AT&T and T-Mobile cell phones: these use the standard GSM codes, such as **61* (no answer), **67* (busy) and **62* (unreachable) followed by the number and #.6 Some plans block one or more of them; we check yours during setup.
- Office lines, cable or fiber business phones, and VoIP apps: most have “forward when busy / no answer” in the provider's web portal or app. We find the setting with you.
Either way we place a test call together before you count on it, from a phone that isn't yours, to make sure the call reaches Connie and the summary reaches you.
Setup for Niles plumbers
About 25 minutes north of our South Bend office, just over the state line. You set it up yourself online in a few minutes; no visits needed. There is no setup fee on any plan: we build your receptionist from your website and a short conversation about your hours, service area, prices and emergency rules, turn on forwarding on your phone with you, and make a test call. Allow a bit longer if you want to rehearse a few emergency calls.
We're pre-launch and onboarding founding members in small groups. Book a demo to hear it answer as your shop, or join the waitlist.
What we can and can't say yet
Connie has one live site today: the South Bend computer repair shop where it was built. Over 90 days it answered 150 real calls that the counter couldn't pick up, 38 of them after hours or on a weekend (read the case study). We don't have a plumbing customer to quote yet, and we won't invent one. Email summaries work today; text summaries and missed call text back are Coming at launch. Bookings go to Google Calendar; a Jobber integration is planned for Pro and Scale and isn't built yet.