Tilly — AI Receptionist for Trade Businesses

Inside Cortex · Elite

While you're on the tools, Tilly answers the phone.

24/7 AI receptionist for Australian trade businesses. Tilly qualifies callers, books the job, and sends you a summary. You stay on site. Nothing walks out the door.

Talk to Tilly See what missed calls cost you
Tilly, the AI receptionist for Australian trade businesses

The problem

The phone rings. You're under a house. The job walks out the door.

You didn't get into the trade to answer phones. But every call you miss is a customer who moves on. They don't leave voicemails. They don't wait. They scroll back to Google and call the next result.

A sparky on the tools misses an average of 4 calls a week. At $768 per job and a 30% conversion rate, that's $47,923 a year gone while you're doing the actual work your customers are paying for.

And it's not just Mick who feels it. Whoever manages the admin, doing the quotes at the kitchen table at 10pm, already knows what the missed calls are costing. The maths isn't complicated. The fix has been.

Until Tilly.

What Tilly does

Your phone gets answered. Your calendar fills. You stay focused.

Tilly is your AI receptionist. She knows your trade inside out and handles your inbound calls 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Here's what happens when a customer rings.

1

She answers

Tilly answers fast. She introduces herself in your business name as your digital assistant, with a natural Australian voice. The customer gets a professional response straight away. They have no idea you're on the tools.

2

She qualifies

Tilly asks the right questions for your trade. Service area, type of job, urgency, timeframe. She filters out time-wasters and gives you a full picture of the job before you return the call, so you arrive prepared and ready to go.

3

She books

If the customer is ready to book, Tilly locks it into The Diary directly. Confirmation goes to the customer. A summary lands in your pocket. Job done. Literally.

4

She handles the volume

Three calls come in at once after a storm? Tilly answers all three simultaneously. No voicemails. No busy tones. No jobs going to the competitor down the road who happened to pick up.

Same week. Two Tuesdays.

What Tuesday looks like without Tilly. And with her.

Before

  • Phone rings at 9:04am. You're under a house.
  • Caller doesn't leave a voicemail. Goes back to Google.
  • You see the missed call at smoko. No number. No message.
  • That job was worth $1,400. You'll never know.
  • Kitchen table. Laptop. Kids already in bed.

With Tilly

  • Phone rings at 9:04am. Tilly picks up in two seconds.
  • Caller gets a professional answer. Feels like you have a proper office.
  • Tilly qualifies the job and locks in Wednesday at 2pm.
  • You get a summary at smoko. Job's already in the calendar.
  • Kitchen table is just where breakfast happens.

Ready to stop missing calls? Tilly can be answering your phone in 14 days.

Get Tilly working for your business →

The maths

What are missed calls costing you?

Enter your numbers. Takes 30 seconds.

Industry average: 4 per week

Avg job: $768 (ServiceSeeking 2026)

Industry average: 30% (MethodisAI 2026)

Your missed calls are costing you

$47,923

per year in unconverted work.

That is $3,994 per month walking out the door while you are on the tools.

Working: missed calls per week × 52 weeks × average job value × win rate. Conservative estimate. Sources: ServiceSeeking 2026, TradieScaler 2026, MethodisAI 2026.

Part of the system

Tilly is the front door. Cortex is the whole building.

Tilly doesn't work alone. Every call she answers feeds directly into the rest of Cortex. The customer's details land in The Pulse. The booking sits in The Diary. If a quote is sent and goes quiet, The Chase follows it up automatically. When the job's done, Halo sends a review request while it's still fresh in the customer's mind.

That's the difference between a standalone phone tool and a connected system. Tilly captures the enquiry. Cortex closes the loop. Nothing falls through the cracks between answering the phone and getting paid.

Tilly is part of the Elite tier of Cortex, the tier where the whole front office runs itself. See what's included →

Cortex is built on infrastructure ranked in the global Top 100 by G2, named Best Enterprise CRM Solution at the 2025 MarTech Breakthrough Awards, and recognised by Deloitte as one of the fastest-growing technology companies in North America. It's not a startup. It's not a gamble.

Why I chose this platform →

Ready to stop missing calls? Tilly can be answering your phone in 14 days.

See the Elite tier →

Common questions

Questions about Tilly

Will my customers know they are speaking to an AI?
Yes, and that is how we set her up. Tilly introduces herself as your business's digital assistant at the start of every call. Under Australian Consumer Law, presenting an AI as a human when directly asked is considered misleading conduct, so transparency from the first sentence is both the right approach and the legally safe one. In practice, what callers notice is not that Tilly is an AI. What they notice is that someone answered and helped them. That is what earns the booking.
Can Tilly answer multiple calls at the same time?
Yes. Tilly handles concurrent calls simultaneously. If three customers ring at once, one after a storm, one for an emergency job, one chasing a quote, all three get answered at the same time. A human receptionist cannot do that. Tilly can. This matters most during busy periods like storm season or public holiday weeks when call volumes spike and every missed call is a job going to your competitor.
Does Tilly work after hours and on weekends?
Yes. Tilly is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, including public holidays. For routine after-hours enquiries, she qualifies the job and locks it into the calendar as a confirmed booking. For genuine emergencies, she handles it differently. We configure Tilly with your emergency rules. If a caller signals an urgent situation, Tilly can escalate the call directly to your mobile so they speak to a real person straight away. You stay in control of which calls reach you after hours and which ones get booked in for the morning.
What happens if Tilly cannot answer a question?
Tilly is trained on your specific business: your trade, your service area, your pricing structure, your availability, and your most common customer questions. If a caller asks something outside that knowledge base, Tilly collects their details and flags the enquiry for you to follow up. Nothing falls through the cracks. You review the summary and call them back on your terms, not mid-job while you are under a house.
Does Tilly connect to my existing booking system?
Tilly books jobs directly into The Diary, the scheduling component inside Cortex. She does not require you to change your existing job management software. ServiceM8, Tradify, Fergus: Cortex sits in front of those tools, capturing new enquiries and booking them in. Your job management software keeps doing what it does. Tilly handles what it cannot: answering the phone before the customer rings a competitor.
How long does it take to get Tilly set up?
14 days from your onboarding call to Tilly answering your first live call. Your onboarding session is a one-hour call. That is where we capture everything Tilly needs to know: your trade, your service area, your prices, your most common questions, and how you want emergency calls handled. After that call, you do not touch the technology at any point. We build it, test it, and hand it over ready to go.

Right, here's the thing.

Every call you miss today is money you won't get back.

Find out exactly what missed calls are costing your trade business. Takes two minutes. No obligation.

Calculate your missed call cost

Or talk to Tilly directly to hear exactly how she'd answer your phone.