William Adkins owns Adkins Ranch and Land Care, LLC, a land management business in El Dorado County, California. His days are spent operating heavy equipment across rural properties. Tractors, mowers, and brush cutters don't come with a "pause for a phone call" button.
Challenge
When you're running land care equipment, your phone isn't your first priority. It's loud, the work demands focus, and a vibrating pocket is easy to miss.
"I get a lot of calls during the day," William says. "When I'm running equipment, you don't always hear your phone. You don't always feel your phone vibrating in your pocket."
The calls kept coming, and William kept missing them. When he did catch one, it meant shutting everything down.
"Lot of times I'd have to pause what I'm doing and answer the phone," he says. "It just wasn't the most ideal, productive way to handle things."
He needed a way to capture every caller's details without stopping work.
Solution
William found Upfirst and liked what he saw. He wanted something that would greet callers with his business name, gather their contact information, and help schedule follow-ups.
"I wanted something that would answer the phone call," he says. "Something that would be a little bit more catered say like the business name, and try and schedule a follow-up or gather critical information like a person's name, phone number, and email. That's even better."
Other options he looked at felt overbuilt. Upfirst was different. "This was the more easier, straightforward option for me," William says. "That's why I picked Upfirst."
Results
William no longer has to choose between doing his job and catching a phone call. Upfirst handles incoming calls while he's on equipment, and he reviews everything when he has a break.
"I don't have to worry about, 'Okay, if I don't answer the phone I'm not necessarily gonna miss out on critical information from people calling my business,'" he says.
Spam filtering was an immediate win. Before Upfirst, junk calls were mixed in with real customer inquiries. "One big thing that I've noticed is it does filter out a lot of the spam calls," William says.
He tracks his call activity through the dashboard. "I can see how many calls were taken, how many hang-ups there were, how many scheduled texts there were, sent to clients from Upfirst, how many scheduled events, and what the average duration time is of a phone call," he says.
What surprised him most was call playback. He can read a transcript of every call and listen to the actual recording, all from his phone.
"Having that ability to not only get the transcript of the call, but also the ability to hear the call, so there's no questionable doubt about what was said, is fantastic," William says. "And I can do that from my phone. You don't have to have your computer with you."
The AI receptionist also recognizes returning callers. When someone calls back, it greets them by name. "If somebody calls and they leave a message, and then they call like a week later and they left a message with their name, the AI receptionist says, 'Hey, you know, is this Joe again? Good to hear from you,'" William says. "It remembers that person and that number. I think that's pretty awesome."