1. An AI that answers your missed calls
When you are on a ladder or it is 9 PM, the call goes to a voice assistant instead of voicemail. It asks what the job is, takes the name and address, and can book a visit.
What it costs, from the public price pages we read on October 8, 2026. Vapi, one of the voice platforms, lists $0.05 a minute for its own service, plus the parts it passes through: speech recognition at $0.0095–$0.0099, the AI model at $0.0077–$0.0452 and the voice at $0.0146–$0.0238 a minute. Twilio lists $1.15 a month for a local number and $0.0085 a minute to receive a call. Added up, that is roughly 9 to 14 cents a minute. A three-minute call is about 27 to 41 cents; a hundred such calls a month is roughly $27 to $41, plus the number.
Does it help a small contractor today? We found no independent study of how many jobs it saves, and we will not repeat vendors' numbers. The honest test is your own call log: how many calls went to voicemail last month, and how many of those people you ever reached.
Verdict: worth trying cheaply. You pay by the minute, and the caller chose to phone you. One rule still applies, and it is only the first of three separate ones (see below): the recording. In Washington, RCW 9.73.030 makes it unlawful to record a private telephone conversation without the consent of all participants, and consent counts once one party announces that the call is being recorded and that announcement is itself recorded; several other states have the same all-party rule. So the assistant's first sentence should say the call is recorded. Check your state, and listen to the first twenty recordings yourself before you trust it.
2. An AI that calls people for you
On February 8, 2024 the Federal Communications Commission announced a ruling that calls made with AI-generated voices are "artificial" under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA). It took effect immediately. In the same release the FCC says its rules require telemarketers to get prior express written consent before robocalling consumers, and that AI voices are held to the same standard.
What that costs when it goes wrong: the law lets a person sue for $500 for each violation, and a court may raise that up to three times for a willful one. The FCC can fine, and state attorneys general have their own tools. The law firm Cooley told companies a week later to review any use of artificial voice in phone messages.
In July 2024 the FCC also proposed more: a caller would have to say at the start of each call that it uses AI, and say so when asking for consent. The law firm Wiley noted that the proposed definition covers outbound calls and leaves out inbound tools such as virtual customer service agents. We could not confirm from a primary source that this proposal became a final rule, so treat it as where the rules are heading.
Separately, the FTC's telemarketing rule bars sales calls before 8 AM or after 9 PM in the customer's time.
Verdict: not worth the risk for cold lists, old customer lists or bought leads. For a new lead from your own form, it depends on what that form says. If it does not clearly say the person agrees to an automated or AI call, call them yourself. Not every outbound call is a sales call: under the FCC rules (47 CFR 64.1200) an artificial-voice call that includes an advertisement needs prior express written consent, while a non-sales call, such as a reminder about tomorrow's visit, is held to a different standard, which also differs between cell phones and landlines. That is exactly the line an attorney should draw for you. A number for scale: one hundred sales calls without consent is up to $50,000 in claims at the base amount. That is not an automatic fine; it is what the people you called can sue for.
- Read the consent line on every lead form you use. Show it to an attorney once; it is a short meeting.
- Ask your lead platforms what the customer agreed to when they sent the request.
- Keep AI calls inside daytime hours, and have the assistant say it is an automated assistant.
Three separate questions, not one
A warning that the call is recorded does not make an AI call legal. These are three different questions, each with its own rules, and each is settled on its own:
- Consent to record the conversation: a state law, different from state to state. Washington's RCW 9.73.030 wants the consent of all participants; a recorded announcement at the start of the call counts there. This one applies to the assistant that answers your calls.
- Consent to an automated or AI call: a federal law, the TCPA, with the FCC's 2024 ruling that an AI voice is an "artificial" voice. It is about calls made to people, and it is about whether that person agreed to be called by a machine at all.
- Rules for outbound sales calls: prior express written consent under the FCC rules for an artificial-voice call with an advertisement, and the FTC's hours, no sales calls before 8 AM or after 9 PM in the customer's time. A non-sales call, such as a reminder about tomorrow's visit, is held to a different standard.
Where WorkTime CRM fits, and where it does not
WorkTime CRM has a phone assistant that does both jobs. It runs on your own Vapi and Twilio accounts, so the per-minute costs above are bills you pay to them directly; they are not part of the $99 subscription. Setup is in Settings → Phone → Assistant.
Answering: outside the hours you set a call to your tracking number goes to the assistant instead of ringing your phone. The summary lands in the client's notes and in your Telegram, and an agreed time becomes a calendar event.
Calling: there is an "Auto-call new leads" switch that has the assistant phone a new lead. You turn it on yourself, and it never dials outside your calling hours. What it does not do is decide whether you have that person's consent. The switch does not make a call legal; that question is yours and your attorney's. WorkTime CRM does not check consent for you and does not know your state's recording rules. It is a tool, not a guarantee that a call complies with the law.