Hey Jodie — AI Receptionist for US Small Businesses

What is Hey Jodie?

Hey Jodie (heyjodie.com) is an AI receptionist service for small businesses, primarily in the United States. When the owner is on a job or simply unavailable, Jodie answers the business phone, holds a natural conversation with the caller, captures the details a receptionist would ask for — name, reason for calling, contact information — and sends a summary straight to the owner's phone. The company positions it against the two alternatives most small businesses actually face: a full-time receptionist (too expensive) and voicemail (callers hang up).

The service is trained on the specific business: owners add their website or Google Business listing, and Jodie learns the services, hours, and tone before ever answering a call. Regional variants of the site serve the US, Canada, UK, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand.

How Hey Jodie Works

Setup takes about two minutes and follows five steps. First, add the business's website or Google listing so Jodie learns what the business does. Second, Jodie provides a phone number the owner can call to hear exactly how she answers. Third, call handling is configured: keep the existing business number and forward calls to Jodie — either only after hours or for all calls, toggled on and off as needed. Fourth, when a call comes in, the owner sees the transcript and caller information and gets notified instantly. Fifth, the summary arrives by text or email with the customer's name, reason for calling, and contact info, alongside the call recording and transcript in an inbox, so the owner can call or email back and book the work.

Main Features

• Natural call answering — conversational AI that the site says most callers take for a real person, trained on the business's own services and phrasing.
• Caller detail capture — name, reason for calling, contact info, and zip codes where relevant, collected during the call.
• Instant summaries — every call produces a text or email summary, with full recordings and transcripts stored in an inbox.
• Existing number retention — no number porting; call forwarding is switched on or off by schedule (after hours or always).
• Industry training — dedicated answering configurations for dozens of US service categories, from plumbers, electricians, HVAC, and roofers to dental offices, salons, law firms, real estate agents, and veterinary clinics.
• Self-serve onboarding — a test-call flow lets owners hear Jodie's exact answers before enabling forwarding.

Pricing

Jodie offers a 7-day free trial with no credit card required. After the trial it costs $49 per month, which the site states includes unlimited minutes — no per-minute charges and no contracts. The pricing FAQ explicitly benchmarks this against per-minute AI receptionist pricing elsewhere ($0.20 to $1.00 per minute), arguing a flat rate wins on busy weeks. Beyond the trial there is no permanent free tier.

Common Use Cases

• Trades and home services — plumbers, electricians, HVAC companies, roofers, locksmiths, and landscapers capturing job requests while on site.
• Clinics and practices — dental offices, medical practices, therapists, chiropractors, and veterinarians handling calls when front desk staff are busy.
• Appointment businesses — salons, spas, auto repair, and detailing shops converting missed calls into bookings.
• Professional services — attorneys, accountants, financial advisors, and real estate agents screening and logging inquiries.
• After-hours coverage — any business that forwards only its off-hours calls to avoid paying for full-time cover.

Limitations

Jodie is a call-answering service, and its scope stops there: the homepage documents no API, no CRM integrations, no outbound calling, and no appointment-booking actions — summaries go to the owner, who completes the work. The operator company is not named on the homepage, and there are no published uptime or SLA commitments, which matters for a business-critical phone line. Call handling depends on manual forwarding, so coverage is only as good as the owner's toggle discipline. The product is documented in English and aimed at English-speaking markets (US, Canada, UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand); pricing beyond the trial has no permanent free tier. How the AI handles edge cases — angry callers, emergencies, or non-English callers — is not documented on the homepage.

Summary

Hey Jodie is a narrowly scoped, clearly priced AI receptionist: answer forwarded calls naturally, capture who called and why, and push a summary to the owner's phone. The 7-day no-card trial, flat $49/month unlimited pricing, and keep-your-number forwarding make it easy to test for any US-style service business. Its limits are the flip side of its focus — no integrations, no booking, no operator transparency, and coverage that depends on the owner's forwarding settings. For trades, clinics, and appointment businesses that lose work to missed calls, it is a low-risk experiment with a concrete payoff; businesses needing deeper workflow automation should pair it with, not replace, their CRM.