If you run a trade business on your own, you already know the feeling. You're up a ladder or under a sink at half two in the afternoon, and your phone buzzes with an enquiry. By the time you get a chance to reply, it's evening. By morning, they've rung someone else. It happens constantly, and there's not much you can do about it when your hands are literally full.
What you can do is set up a simple automated system that catches those enquiries and gives people something useful straight away, without you having to touch your phone at all. It doesn't have to cost much. Some of the tools that do this well have free tiers that are more than enough for a sole trader.
What we're actually talking about here
The setup we're describing is a chatbot on your website or Facebook page that responds automatically to incoming messages. When someone contacts you outside working hours, they get an instant reply, some helpful information, and a way to leave their details. You check it when you're free. No missed leads sitting in silence.
The two tools we've found most accessible for this are Tidio and ManyChat. Tidio works well if you have a website, even a basic one. ManyChat is better suited to Facebook and Instagram. Both have free plans with enough features to get started, and both let you build simple automated replies without writing a line of code.
Step one: Pick your platform and sign up
If most of your enquiries come through Facebook Messenger, go with ManyChat. If people tend to find you through your website, use Tidio. If you genuinely don't know, Tidio is probably the safer starting point because it sits on your site and catches visitors who might not bother messaging you on social media.
Sign up for a free account, connect it to your site or your Facebook page, and follow their setup guide. Both platforms walk you through the basics in a way that's fairly straightforward. You don't need a developer.
Step two: Write your welcome message
This is the message someone sees the moment they start a chat. Keep it short and warm, and make it sound like you, not like a robot. Here's an example that works well for an Irish plumber or electrician:
Hi there, thanks for getting in touch. I'm out on a job right now but I don't want to leave you waiting. Tell me what you need and I'll come back to you as soon as I can, usually within a few hours. If it's urgent, leave your number and I'll try to ring you back before end of day.
That's it. Friendly, honest, sets expectations. Customers in Ireland tend to respond well to that kind of plain talk. They know you're a sole trader. They're not expecting a call centre.
Step three: Build a short question flow
After the welcome message, you can set the bot to ask a couple of simple questions so you have the information you need when you follow up. Something like:
- What kind of job is it? (You can give options: repair, new installation, quote for bigger work, something else)
- Roughly where are you based? (County or town is enough)
- What's the best number to reach you on?
Both Tidio and ManyChat let you set these up as button options or free-text replies. Button options are easier for the customer and give you cleaner information to work with. Three questions is about the right amount. More than that and people drop off.
Step four: Set your out-of-hours trigger
In Tidio you can set the automated flow to activate only outside certain hours, so during the day it just shows you as available and you can reply yourself. Outside those hours, the bot kicks in. ManyChat works similarly. This means customers always get a response of some kind, and you're not replacing yourself with a bot when you're actually at your desk.
Step five: Write a few follow-up replies for common questions
Think about the three or four things people ask you most before booking. For a lot of trades it's something like: do you cover my area, how quickly can you come out, do you give free quotes, are you registered or insured. Write honest, simple answers to each of these and load them in as automated responses. It saves time and it reassures people while they're waiting to hear from you.
This is a similar principle to what Irish small business owners are figuring out about AI tools generally, which is that the value isn't in the flashy stuff, it's in the small repetitive tasks that eat up time you don't have.
One thing to keep in mind
Don't promise things in the automated messages that you can't deliver. If you can't always reply within two hours, don't say two hours. People forgive a slow reply. They don't forgive being misled by a bot. Keep the language honest and the expectations real, and the system will actually work in your favour.