Coming soon: in your ear
On the calls you take yourself, Offsider will listen in and show the job, the next question to ask, free diary times and the quote on screen, with an optional whisper in your ear. Off unless you turn it on.
The AI receptionist for Fergus.
The most extensive phone integration for Fergus in New Zealand and Australia. See everything it does
You cannot take a call with your hands inside a wall. Talkify answers on the first ring in a real Aussie voice, works out the job and writes it into Fergus, so it is waiting for you when you climb down. It can book the visit, raise the quote request and get photos of the job too. Built for Australian and New Zealand trades.
The integrated phone agent for Fergus. See Talkify on the Fergus Marketplace
Join the Fergus trades already running their phones with Talkify and Fergus working together. For Fergus users in Australia. Try it free for 14 days. We set it up for you, connect it to Fergus and walk you through it.
See it work with Fergus.
A missed call becomes an enquiry, a booked visit or a quote request in Fergus, in just over a minute.
An AI receptionist for your Fergus account.
Everything it does, without a lunch break or a sick day.
The callerRings your usual number
Your Talkify agentAnswers and works out the job
Enquiry
Name, number, site, the job
Quote request
Scoped, ready for you to price
Visit on the diary
Only a time that is free
Photos on the job
Sent by the customer after
OffsiderHistory before, the draft after, then a check
Your crew"Add notes to job 4223"
DocketWork done, extras, photos
Job note and PDF
On job 4223 in Fergus
- 1The call. Answered, worked out and written into Fergus.
- 2Offsider. The caller's history before, the draft after, then a check that the enquiry, quote and booking landed.
- 3Docket. Your crew rings in after the job, and the notes become a PDF and a job note on that job.
Twelve things it does, on the call, in Fergus and around it. That is what makes it the most extensive phone integration for Fergus in New Zealand and Australia.
On the call
- Answers 24/7, so a job never goes to voicemail again
- Recognises returning customers from your Fergus contacts
- Speaks 32 languages, including te reo Māori greetings
- Reads back your real prices, hours and service area
In Fergus
- Writes the job into Fergus while the caller is still talking
- Raises quote requests in Fergus with the detail your team needs to price them
- Books visits into your Fergus diary, checking it is genuinely free first
- Gets photos of the job from the customer and files them on it in Fergus
Around it
- Texts and emails the caller their confirmation
- Warm-transfers the urgent ones to whoever is on call
- Sits alongside how you already run Fergus, changing nothing
- Costs a fraction of a receptionist, at one flat monthly price
From the phone ringing to the job in Fergus.
Six things happen while you are up a ladder. You do none of them.
- 01
It answers, properly
First ring, your business name, a real local voice. Five callers at once, all answered.
- 02
It knows who is ringing
The number is checked against your Fergus contacts, so regulars are greeted by name.
- 03
It works out the job
Burst pipe or bathroom quote, water off or not, which suburb. Your questions, in your order.
- 04
It writes it into Fergus
A new enquiry with the name, number, site address and the fault in their own words.
- 05
It books the visit
Only times that are genuinely free, inside your hours, re-checked the second before it writes.
- 06
You get the whole call
A text summary in seconds, the recording on the job, and urgent calls put straight through.
See the job before you drive to it.
A photo of the leak tells you which parts to throw in the van. Your agent gets you one without anybody ringing the customer back to ask.
- It asks, once. When a photo would help, the agent offers to send a link after the call. Nobody gets one they did not say yes to.
- They tap, snap and send. The link comes by text or email a minute after they hang up and works for a week. Photos straight off the camera, or PDFs they already have.
- It lands on the job in Fergus. On the enquiry, quote or job the call created, so it is there when someone opens it. You get the photos by email too.
Offsider: every call, into Fergus.
Your agent knows each caller's Fergus history before they say a word. After the call the work is drafted for Fergus and sent with one tap, then Fergus is checked to make sure it all landed.
Offsider makes sure the work actually lands in Fergus.
The receptionist takes the call. Offsider looks after everything either side of it, so nothing a caller was told goes missing between the phone and your Fergus diary.
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Before the call
It knows your regulars
Before a word is said, your agent has the caller's Fergus history: past jobs, what they cost, any open job, and the work that comes round every year.
More
"Is it time for the heat pump service again?" Matched on the number they ring from, never a street address.
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When it ends
After the call, it is drafted for Fergus
Offsider reads the finished call and drafts the customer, the site, the job or quote and the visit you agreed.
More
A price goes on a quote line only where you said it on the call. Anything already done during the call is left alone.
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Your choice
Ask first, or straight in
Ask first and you get an email: look it over, untick anything, and send it to Fergus with one tap, no login. Or let it go straight in.
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Visits are re-checked against your diary, and the caller is texted only what actually went in.
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Afterwards
Then it checks Fergus
If a caller was told they are booked, Offsider reads Fergus back to make sure the visit is there, on the right day and time, and only once.
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If it is not, you get an email straight away, not a cross customer on Thursday.
You decide what it is allowed to touch.
One question sets it up: what should your agent do when someone wants work done? It is only given the tools that answer needs, and a change takes effect on the next call.
Nothing you did not ask for.
A tool your answer does not need is not there at all, so however hard a caller pushes, it cannot be talked into booking, changing a job or quoting a price.
Several properties, one customer.
A landlord or a farm is asked which property the work is at, a new one is added under the same customer, and callers can be found by the job or invoice number on their paperwork. Only a caller ringing from a number on the account hears a street number or their customer number read back.
Fergus is everywhere Australian trades are.
Fergus was built across the Tasman and runs plenty of Australian trade businesses. Your agent works the same way here.
Your line+61
An Australian line, answered in Australia.
An Australian voice on an Australian number, and calls to your +61 line are handled in Australian data centres. Your plan is priced in Australian dollars. Nothing about the call leaves the country it was made in.
Held inAustralia
Your customers' details, under Australian rules.
Recordings and transcripts of Australian calls stay in Australia and are handled under the Australian Privacy Principles.
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There is no single trans-Tasman rule covering both countries, whatever anyone tells you; what makes working across the two lawful is that each country's privacy law treats the other as comparable.
Fergus trades we answer for across Australia
Twenty trades in each, and the Fergus connector works the same in every one.
See it working in your own Fergus.
The part worth seeing is a job landing on your board with the caller already on it. We connect Talkify to your Fergus, set the agent up to match how you work, and go through the first calls with you, so you watch it happen on your own board before anybody relies on it.
The calls you are losing are during the day.
Everyone buys an answering service for the nights. That is not where the work goes missing.
The busiest hour is nine in the morning.
In the call reports our trades customers have shared with us, most calls come in during the working day, while the person who would pick up is already on another call or up a ladder.
A missed call is someone else's job.
A customer with water through the ceiling rings three plumbers and books whoever answers. Work out what yours are worth on the missed call calculator.
Everything that makes Fergus work harder.
The receptionist is where most Fergus businesses start. These are the parts that take the rest of the retyping off your hands.
Offsider
The work from every call drafted for Fergus and sent with one tap, your regulars' history ready before they speak, and Fergus checked afterwards.
Docket: job notes by phone
Your crew ring in and say "add notes to job 4223". The work done, the extras and the photos become a PDF and a job note on that job in Fergus. No forms in the van.
Repeat work, priced from Fergus
A regular wants the same job again. The agent finds the last one like it in Fergus and, if you allow it, quotes from what they paid, on your rule.
Photos on the job
The caller gets a link after the call, and what they send lands on the enquiry, quote or job in Fergus before anyone drives out.
Booked by the day, or the time
Only genuinely free slots from your Fergus diary, re-checked before writing. Or days with room, for crews who plan their own runs.
On-call roster
After-hours emergencies handed to whoever is on call tonight, and chased by text and phone until somebody accepts.
Not on Fergus yet? You should be.
Fergus runs the jobs, quotes, diary and invoices for trades across New Zealand and Australia, and everything on this page plugs straight into it. Start through us and get 90% off your first two months of Fergus.
Get 90% off Fergus gettalkify.com/getfergus
Already on Fergus?
Skip the form.
Sign in with your usual Fergus login and your account builds itself out of the details Fergus already holds.
- Sign in with Fergus. Your business name, your name, your email and your team come across.
- Give us a mobile. The one thing Fergus cannot tell us. We text a code to check it.
- You are live. Your agent is waiting on the board with Fergus already connected.
No form, no card. We never see your Fergus password, and you can cut us off from inside Fergus whenever you like.
And it does rather more than answer the phone.
The same agent, pointed the other way. All live today, alongside your Fergus jobs.
It rings people back
Appointment reminders, win-back calls and review requests. You load the list, it makes the calls.
It chases your money
Connected to Xero, it rings overdue invoices in your name and notes any promise to pay. No commission.
It answers your website
The same brain in a chat widget on your site, in text or voice, from $49 a month.
It asks the questions
Phone surveys that ring your customer list and report the answers back.
It scales on the big days
Storm week, forty calls an hour. Call centre plans answer five, ten or fifteen at once.
It can answer your own mobile
The Personal Assistant screens your own line and texts you what mattered. From $89 a month.
Fergus Assistant does the paperwork. We answer the phone.
Two different jobs, and most Fergus businesses will end up wanting both.
On the phone
We work on the call that is not in Fergus yet.
Someone rings while you are under a sink. The agent answers, works out what the job is, recognises them if they are already a customer, and writes the enquiry into Fergus with the address on it.
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The work only reaches your paperwork if somebody picks up first.
Inside Fergus
Fergus Assistant works on what is already in Fergus.
It lives inside your Fergus account and you type at it. It helps you get through the jobs, the scheduling, the quotes and the invoices you already have, which is the admin that piles up after the work is won.
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It is not a phone line and it was never meant to be one.
Frequently asked.
The questions we hear most. If yours isn't here, talk to us and a person will answer it.
What is an AI receptionist for Fergus?
Software that answers your business phone in a natural voice and works inside your Fergus account. It recognises customers from your Fergus contacts, writes new enquiries into Fergus, raises quote requests for you to price, books visits into your Fergus diary and files photos the customer sends onto the job. Talkify is an AI receptionist for Fergus, built in Christchurch for trades in New Zealand and Australia.
Is this the same as Fergus Assistant?
No, and they are not competing with each other. Fergus Assistant is built into Fergus itself: you type at it and it helps you get through the admin, the jobs, the scheduling, the quotes and the invoices that are already in your account. It is very good at the paperwork and it is not a phone line. Talkify is the other half: it answers the call from the customer who is not in your account yet, works out what the job is, and writes it into Fergus for you. One helps you deal with the work you have got. The other makes sure you hear about the work you nearly missed. Plenty of businesses will run both, and nothing here asks you to choose.
Do I have to change my phone number?
No. Talkify works by call forwarding from the number your customers already have, so nothing is ported and no hardware is installed. You choose when it picks up: always, only when you are already on a call, only when nobody answers within a few rings, or only outside your hours. On an Australian mobile the divert codes are set by your own provider rather than by us, and they differ between carriers, so ask yours for its call forwarding codes (the "busy" and "no answer" diverts are the two you want). It takes a few minutes and you can turn it off just as fast.
How does it connect to my Fergus account?
Through Fergus's own API. You press Connect in Talkify, sign in with your usual Fergus login and approve the connection, the same way you would connect any app. We never see your Fergus password, there is no developer work and nothing to install, and you can revoke us from inside Fergus at any moment to cut the connection off at your end.
What actually lands in Fergus after a call?
A new enquiry with the caller's name, phone number, the site address and a description of the job in the customer's own words, marked as having come from the phone. If the caller is already one of your customers, the agent recognises the number and greets them by name rather than treating them as a stranger. Where you switch them on, a quote request comes through as a job ready to price, and a booked visit goes onto your diary. A note of the call goes onto the customer record either way.
Can I pick which bits it does?
Yes, and it is one question rather than a page of switches: what should the agent do when a caller wants work done. You can say always lodge it as an enquiry for the office, always book the visit in, always take it as a quote request, or let the agent work out which of those the caller actually needs. Whatever you pick is a rule the agent cannot talk itself out of, so a business that wants every job to come through as an enquiry gets exactly that, even when the caller pushes for a time. Recognising callers, answering "when is someone coming" and writing call notes back are separate from it and run either way. Change your answer and your agent is updated within a minute or two.
Will it double-book my team?
No, because it reads before it writes. The agent reads what is already on your Fergus diary, keeps the travel time you set clear either side of an existing job, and offers only times inside the working hours and days you choose. It cannot invent a slot. Before it writes anything it re-checks that the time is still free, so a slot someone in the office took while the caller was still talking gets caught rather than double-booked.
Can customers send us photos of the job?
Yes. When a photo would save a wasted trip, the agent offers to send the caller a link once the call has finished. If they say yes, it arrives by text or email a minute or two after they hang up and stays open for a week, so they can take photos or pick PDFs like an old invoice whenever suits them. Whatever they send lands on the enquiry, quote or job the call created in Fergus, and comes to you by email with the photos attached. Nobody gets a link they did not agree to: whether they said yes is read off the finished call, not left to the agent to remember.
Does it give people prices over the phone?
Not for new work, and it is told in as many words not to. When someone wants a price, the agent takes the scope in detail and raises it in Fergus as a job with an unpriced quote on it, ready for you to price and send. The one exception is repeat work, and only if you switch it on (see below). Nothing goes to the customer until you send it.
Can it quote repeat work?
If you want it to. A regular who rings for the same job as last time, say the gutters cleared again before winter, can be given a price straight away. The agent finds their last job like it at that property in Fergus and reads what it cost, from the final invoice or, where nothing was invoiced, the quote. You set the rule: no pricing from history at all, last time's price, last time's price plus a percentage, or find the job and let your office price it. Talkify works the figure out from Fergus, the agent only reads it out, GST inclusive at Australia's 10 percent, and it always adds that you confirm the final price. The quote then goes into Fergus on a new quote job with that price on a single line, unpublished, for you to check.
Can it book a day rather than a time?
Yes. If your crew sorts its own run each morning, a caller promised 10am is a caller let down, so you can have the agent book days instead. It only offers days your Fergus diary has room on, worked out the same way it works out a free time, and it never names a time of day. The entry it writes is headed DAY BOOKING and says no time was given, the caller hears that your team will be in touch with the time, and you can set the most visits it may book on any one day.
Can the job go into Fergus after the call, even if the agent did not put it there?
Yes, with Offsider. Once a call ends it reads the whole conversation and drafts the work for Fergus: the customer, the site, the job as an enquiry or a quote, and the visit if a day was agreed. Anything the agent already did in Fergus during the call is left out, so nothing goes in twice. You choose whether it goes straight in, or whether you get an email first to look it over, untick anything you do not want and send it with one tap. Quote lines carry a price only where you gave one on the call. Each call it puts into Fergus is $1.00 plus GST; calls with nothing to put in, and drafts you decide not to send, cost nothing.
How do I know the booking actually made it into Fergus?
Offsider checks. After any call that touched Fergus it reads Fergus back and compares it with what the caller was told. If they were told they are booked for Thursday at eight and there is no visit on the diary, or it is on the wrong day, or it went in twice, you get an email straight away and the call is marked, so you can put it right before anyone is let down.
Does the agent know what a customer has had done before?
With Offsider and the Memory card on, yes. Before a regular says a word, the agent has their Fergus history: past jobs, what they cost, any job open now, and work that comes round regularly, like a yearly service and whether it is due. It is read from Fergus ahead of time and matched on the number they ring from. It never includes a street address, so the agent still confirms where the work is, it only says a past price aloud if your repeat-work setting allows it, and nothing is ever used to train anything. Disconnect Fergus and it is erased.
Can my crew add notes to a Fergus job by phone?
Yes, with Docket. A worker rings from their registered mobile and says something like "add notes to job 4223", then talks through the work done, anything extra, materials used and whether someone needs to go back. Talkify checks it, turns it into a PDF, sends it to them and the office, and puts the PDF and a job note on that job in Fergus. If there is no job by that number in your Fergus, nothing is written there and the office still gets the docket.
Does it only answer after hours?
That is the assumption most people start with, and the numbers say otherwise. In the call reports our trades customers have shared with us, the clear majority of calls the agent answers arrive during ordinary business hours, because the phone rings while the person who would pick it up is already on another call or up a ladder. One electrical contractor takes its heaviest volume at nine in the morning. It covers both: the overflow during the day and the calls that used to hit voicemail at night.
Can it deal with an emergency?
It triages first and takes details second, which is the right order. On a leak it establishes whether the water is still running and whether the caller can isolate it. On a gas smell it tells them to leave the property and ring the emergency line before anything else. You set the rules for what counts as urgent, and those calls get warm-transferred to whoever is on call, with the context already gathered rather than starting from scratch.
What does it cost?
Talkify business agents are $129/month at the founding rate for your first 3 months, then $199, including 200 minutes of calls, with extra minutes from 10c each. There is no setup fee, no per-call charge and no lock-in, so a flat-out week costs the same as a quiet one. That sits alongside whatever you already pay Fergus; we do not touch your Fergus subscription.
I use Tradify or ServiceM8, not Fergus.
Talk to us anyway. The phone side is identical no matter what you run your jobs in, and what changes is only how the job gets across. Tradify, for example, gives every account an enquiries email address, so we can send the job straight into your Tradify enquiries inbox off the back of the call. Tell us what you use and we will tell you honestly what we can and cannot do with it.
Do you actually cover Australia, or is this a New Zealand product with an Australian page?
We are a New Zealand company and we will not pretend otherwise, but the Australian side is real rather than a label. Your agent answers in an Australian voice on an Australian number, calls to it are handled in Australian data centres, and your plan is priced in Australian dollars. We run trade pages for Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide, the Gold Coast, Canberra, Newcastle, the Sunshine Coast and Hobart. Fergus itself runs trades on both sides of the Tasman, which is exactly why this connector does too. What you do not get from us is an Australian office, so if somebody in the same time zone as you is the deciding factor, that is a fair reason to buy elsewhere.
Where does my call data live?
Calls to your Australian (+61) number are handled in Australian data centres and the recordings and transcripts stay there, under the Australian Privacy Principles. Audio, transcripts and call details are encrypted at rest with AES-256. There is no single trans-Tasman data residency law covering both countries, whatever you are told; what makes running across the two lawful is that each country's privacy law recognises the other as providing comparable protection. Those recordings are your customers' personal information, which makes them your responsibility rather than your supplier's, so ask any provider for the country in writing.
What if I am not on Fergus yet?
Then you should be, and there is a good deal waiting. Go to gettalkify.com/getfergus for 90% off your first two months of Fergus. It is the job management software most of the trades we work with run on, and everything on this page plugs straight into it. If you would rather not switch, Talkify still answers your phone, books into Google Calendar or Outlook and texts you the summary whatever software you run.
Have a look around.
TALKIFY FOR FERGUS · AOTEAROA NEW ZEALAND · 2026
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