If you're a heating engineer, plumber, sparky, roofer, or builder in the UK, you probably know TrustATrader well. Homeowners from London to Leeds use it to find someone they can trust with a boiler swap, a rewire, or a 2am emergency call-out. A strong profile there brings in exactly the kind of high-intent enquiries every trade business wants.
The catch is what that profile costs. Between membership and premium placement, you're looking at £1,200 to £3,500+ a year. That money only pays back if enquiries turn into surveys and invoices. And here's the part nobody warns you about: when a homeowner asks two or three traders for a callback at once, whoever responds first usually wins the job. It's a race, whether you signed up for it or not.
Picture the usual losing version. An enquiry lands at half ten while you're soldering pipe in a loft, up scaffolding, or stuck in traffic. You can't exactly down tools to make a sales call. By the time you're back at the van at half four, a competitor has rung them, scoped the job, and booked the survey. Your enquiry is dead. Plug TrustATrader into Susan AI on WhatsApp and the story changes: the homeowner gets a warm, professional message within about a minute — trade questions asked, photos requested, survey offered — while you're still on the tools.
⚡ Key Takeaways
- Most homeowners simply hire whoever gets back to them first with a proper answer — and Susan does that in about a minute, round the clock. That alone stops your membership fee leaking away through missed calls and unread emails. It works because people blank unknown numbers but open WhatsApps (roughly 98% within 90 seconds). Before you ever drive over, she's already collected the photos — boiler codes, fuse boards, damp patches, floorplans — and the survey books straight into whatever diary you run, Google Calendar through to ServiceM8.
Ask any seasoned trader how directory leads slip away and you'll hear the same three complaints. First, speed genuinely decides it — ring back within five minutes and you convert dramatically better than at thirty; after a couple of hours the homeowner has either hired someone faster or gone back to work and stopped answering. Second, cold calls barely land any more. Voicemail callbacks run under 15%, while a short branded WhatsApp gets read and answered. Third, even when you do get through from a noisy site, you spend ten minutes scribbling addresses and boiler models on scrap paper — then still need an unpaid visit because you've seen nothing of the actual job.
With Susan running your front desk, each TrustATrader enquiry kicks off a proper WhatsApp conversation on your behalf, immediately.
How it hangs together in practice: TrustATrader fires an email or webhook with the homeowner's details, postcode, and job summary. Say it's 'Emergency boiler breakdown in Guildford'. Within a minute Susan messages them — using your business name, introducing herself as your coordinator, asking for the boiler make and model, a photo of any error code, and whether they need someone today or tomorrow would do. The reply comes back in minutes: 'Worcester Bosch Greenstar 30i, error EA 229, photo attached, tomorrow morning please.' Photos logged, diary checked, two morning windows offered, survey reserved. You never touched your phone.
Setup is under ten minutes and involves no code:
| The job | Ringing back yourself | TrustATrader portal | Susan on WhatsApp |
|---|---|---|---|
| Speed | 1–4 hours, job site permitting | 30–90 mins, after you log in | Under a minute |
| Channel | Calls and voicemail nobody answers | Portal messages and email | Direct WhatsApp, ~98% opened |
| Job detail | Scribbled phone notes | Plain portal text | Photos, video, postcode up front |
| Booking the survey | Phone tag for days | You cross-checking the diary by hand | Synced live, customer picks a slot |
| Deposits | Chased after you've been | Nothing built in | Link in chat, paid before you drive |
| Evenings and weekends | Voicemail, job gone | Dead until Monday | Answered on the spot, day or night |
| Enquiries turning into surveys | Around a fifth | Around a quarter to a third | Roughly two-thirds and up |
It keeps working after that first message, too. Emergency call-out on a Saturday? Deposit collected over a Stripe link before you've even loaded the van — a no-show stings a lot less when the fuel was already covered. And none of the admin lands on you. Customer file, job card, photos: all sitting in Jobber, Tradify, ServiceM8, Xero, or QuickBooks by the time you're done. Plumbers get plumbing questions, sparkies get electrical ones — cleaning, accounting, repairs, general building, all the same deal.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Is messaging people on WhatsApp actually allowed?
Think about what happened: a homeowner gave TrustATrader their number and asked traders to contact them. A WhatsApp reply — where they can fire over photos and lock in a time — is the most helpful thing you can do with it.
And out of hours?
That's when it earns its keep. Phone off, feet up on Sunday — enquiries still get answered in seconds, details and photos collected, surveys slotted into your next working day.
What about time-wasters outside my area?
Set your patch and your red lines once. Anything beyond them gets a courteous no automatically. A fridge plant enquiry when you're domestic heating? Declined politely, zero minutes of your day spent.
Will I have to retype everything into my job software?
No. Whoever you run — Jobber, Tradify, ServiceM8, Google Calendar, Outlook — bookings, notes, locations, and photos appear there by themselves.