Fergus was built by tradies, for tradies — job tracking, time sheets, supplier bills, quoting, site management in one place. Thousands of plumbing, heating, electrical, roofing, and building firms across the UK, Australia, and New Zealand run on it. The hole is where customers actually are: 80%+ of enquiries, emergencies, photos, and quote questions arrive on WhatsApp, while your people are on tools or between sites. Answering means stopping paid work; not answering means losing it. Link Fergus to WhatsApp through Susan and the front end runs itself — triage, photos, job cards, diary, deposits — in chat, around the clock, zero retyping.
⚡ Key Takeaways
- WhatsApp text becomes a Fergus job or enquiry with contact attached — seconds, automatically. Emergencies get triaged in seconds with proper diagnostic questions, day and night. Photos and videos pin themselves to the job card. Quotes get chased conversationally with deposits banked — approvals and money, not reminders into the void. And techs update jobs by voice note from site, transcribed straight into Fergus notes.
Job costing only works on clean data, and chat chaos is the enemy of clean data. Four frictions, all familiar. The five-minute rule: most trade jobs go to first contact with a proper assessment and availability — inbox-sitting loses revenue directly. Scattered evidence: "boiler's dead, today please?" costs fifteen to thirty minutes establishing model, codes, address, access. Double-handling: names, numbers, postcodes retyped into Fergus at ten to fifteen minutes a card — twenty enquiries a day burns twenty-five-plus hours a week. And unpaid diagnostics: dispatches with no fee banked mean cancelled visits, wasted fuel, disputed invoices.
So the number becomes an autonomous front desk wired to Fergus. The shape of it: customer messages, Susan chats back naturally — "Apex Plumbing here — emergency repair, routine service, or quote? Postcode and a line on the issue, please." Location given (SW11, cylinder leaking), photo and data-badge requested, zone availability checked, arrival window offered, diary reserved. Job card raised in Fergus — contacts, address, fault notes, photos attached — on-call tech notified. Zero touches from the office.
Five minutes, no code:
Manual mobile versus call service versus chat-run: replies took half an hour to four hours mid-tools, or one to three minutes in a queue — now seconds, always. Photos meant saving and re-uploading, or voice-only impossibility — now requested and attached automatically. Job cards meant ten-plus minutes typing each, or emailed summaries to retype — now created whole, instantly. Deposits meant transfers and chasing, or unsupported — now one tap in chat. Quote chases meant phone calls and spreadsheets, or nothing — now conversational cadences that convert. Site updates meant app-typing, or nothing — now voice notes transcribed to the job. Monthly money ran free-but-bleeding, or £400–900 — now a fraction, multiples returned.
Past capture, trade-specific machinery runs itself. Fault photos and clips requested, categorised, pinned to the card for pre-arrival review. Quotes chased gently ("questions on the boiler quote, John?") with technical answers and Stripe deposits attached. Techs dictate from site — "Job 4012: thermocouple and gas valve on the Ideal Logic 30, ninety minutes, £85 parts, complete" — parsed, card updated, invoice triggered. And the books stay joined: Xero, QuickBooks, Sage, FreeAgent — plus Tradify, ServiceM8, Jobber, Commusoft, Simpro.
Related: Tradify, ServiceM8, Jobber, Commusoft, Simpro, emergency intake, Stripe links — plumbers, electricians, cleaners, repair shops.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Fergus doesn't do WhatsApp natively — true?
True, and that's the gap this fills. Susan bridges it: two-way chat managed, photos captured, job cards and enquiries raised in Fergus live.
Photos — where do they land?
Requested in chat, uploaded as attachments onto the matching job card. Techs open the card and see the fault before leaving the yard.
Nights, floods, gas smells?
Urgent wording triggers triage instantly: safety advice first (stopcock location and the like), access captured, on-call tech alerted — all in the same minutes.
Deposits and quote sign-offs in chat?
Stripe links for diagnostic fees, digital-signature prompts for quote approvals. Money and commitment before vans roll.