The 12 questions an AI CSR must ask on an emergency plumbing call

Why the order matters

A good dispatcher does not run down a form. She asks questions in an order that stops the damage first, figures out what the job is second, and gets the tech in the door third. The caller is standing in an inch of water and does not care about your service area until the water stops.

An AI CSR has to work the same way, and it has to do it without a plumber's instinct to fall back on. That means the questions have to be written down, the order has to be deliberate, and the shop has to decide in advance what each answer changes.

Below are the twelve questions we think every AI (or human) answering an emergency plumbing call should ask, grouped by what they accomplish. For each one: why it matters, and what the answer changes. If you want the version written as rules you can hand to whoever answers your phone, see emergency triage rules for a plumbing shop.

First, stop the damage

1. Is water coming out right now, and can you stop it?

This is the first question because the answer changes everything downstream. "Yes, and I can't stop it" is a different call from "it was leaking, I shut the valve under the sink, it's stopped." The first is a tonight dispatch. The second may be a first-thing-tomorrow job with a calmer customer and a dry floor.

What it changes: urgency. Active, unstopped water is urgent regardless of the hour.

2. Do you know where your main water shutoff is, and can you get to it?

If the caller cannot stop the water locally, the next move is the main. Most callers do not know where it is. A good CSR walks them there: in a basement, usually on the wall facing the street near where the water line enters; in a slab home, often in the garage, a utility closet, or an outside box near the street; in many homes, near the water heater. Turn clockwise until it stops.

This is the single most valuable thing an answerer can do for a caller before a truck arrives. It also saves the homeowner's drywall and saves your tech a wet crawlspace.

What it changes: damage, and sometimes urgency. A caller who gets the main shut can often be booked for the morning. One who cannot find it or cannot turn it (stuck valve, buried box) stays urgent.

3. Do you smell gas, or is anyone in danger?

Plumbing shops get gas calls, especially around water heaters and furnaces. Any mention of a gas smell, dizziness, or a carbon monoxide alarm overrides the rest of the script. The caller is told to leave the house, call the gas utility or 911, and call back once they are safe. At Contour, a gas smell is a rule that always transfers to the owner or on-call tech, no exceptions.

What it changes: the whole call. Safety first, booking later.

Figure out what the job is

4. Where is the water coming from?

Not "what's wrong," which gets you "I don't know, it's just everywhere." Ask where. A fixture (toilet, sink, tub, washing machine hose). A ceiling (upstairs bathroom, or a roof or HVAC problem that is not yours). A floor or slab. Outside, near the meter. The water heater. A basement floor drain with sewage.

What it changes: job type, and sometimes whether it is your job at all. Water from a ceiling during a rainstorm might be a roofer. Sewage coming up a floor drain is a drain job and may need a different truck or tech than a supply leak.

5. When did it start, and what changed?

"It started an hour ago" versus "it's been dripping for a week and today it got bad." "We just had the water heater replaced last month." "The kids flushed something." "We got back from vacation and found it." Each of these points at a cause and at how fast things are getting worse.

What it changes: urgency and job type. It also catches warranty situations early, which matters for how the job is written up.

6. What kind of home is it?

Single family, condo or apartment, mobile home. Basement, crawlspace, or slab. City water or well. One story or two. Is there a water heater, and is it tank or tankless, gas or electric?

It tells the tech what to bring and what the job might be. A slab leak in a one-story ranch is a different afternoon than a pinhole in a copper line in an unfinished basement.

What it changes: job type, which truck and tech, and how much time to block. In ServiceTitan, it is what determines the business unit and job type the booking lands on.

Can this shop do it?

7. What is the address?

Get it early and check it against your service area before you go any further. A caller who gets through eleven questions and then hears "sorry, we don't go out there" is angry, and rightly so. The AI should confirm the address is inside the shop's area and, if it is not, say so plainly.

What it changes: whether the call becomes a booking at all. It also drives drive time, which affects whether a tonight dispatch is realistic.

8. Are you the homeowner, a tenant, or a property manager?

This decides who can authorize work and who pays. A tenant with a flooding bathroom often cannot approve a repair. The CSR should get the landlord's or management company's number and, if the shop's rules allow, book anyway with a note that authorization is pending. A property manager may have a standing account and a different billing setup.

What it changes: who the customer record is under, what the tech can do on arrival, and payment expectations.

Get the tech in the door

9. What is the best callback number, and what is your name?

Obvious, and often skipped on a frantic call. The number the caller is on may be a neighbor's phone or a landline in the house they are about to leave. Confirm the number, get the name as they want it spelled, and repeat both back.

What it changes: whether the tech can reach them from the driveway.

10. How does the tech get in, and is there anything in the yard?

Gate code. Which door. Whether the caller will be home or someone else will. Dogs, and whether they are friendly or will be put away. Parking on a tight street. A locked crawlspace hatch.

This is the question that separates a dispatcher from a form. Every tech has a story about a 10 p.m. call where nobody answered the door, or where the "friendly" dog was not. Thirty seconds here saves a wasted trip.

What it changes: the notes on the job, and occasionally the timing. If nobody will be home for two hours, the booking moves.

11. Are you comfortable with the after-hours dispatch fee, and would you like someone tonight or first thing in the morning?

Price comes up on every emergency call. The AI must say only what the owner has approved, which is usually the after-hours dispatch or diagnostic fee and the sentence "the technician will quote the repair on site once they see it." It never guesses at the repair cost. A caller who says "no, I'll wait" is booked for the morning. A caller who says "yes, come now" gets the on-call tech paged.

Plenty of "emergency" callers, once the water is off and the fee is stated, would rather have a 7 a.m. slot.

What it changes: urgency (the caller's preference is part of it), payment expectations, and which slot gets booked.

Set expectations and close

12. Is there anything else the technician should know?

Give the caller the floor once. This is where you hear "oh, the shutoff is in the neighbor's yard, we share a line" or "my mother is here on oxygen" or "the last plumber said the pipes are polybutylene."

Then the recap, which is not a question but is where many calls fall apart. The CSR says back: the name, the address, what the problem is, what the caller was told to do in the meantime, whether a tech is coming tonight or at what time tomorrow, and what the fee is. The caller corrects anything wrong. The call ends with the caller knowing exactly what happens next.

What it changes: the quality of the notes the tech reads on the drive over, and whether the caller is still a customer when the truck arrives.

What the answers change

The same list, compressed.

Question	Mainly decides
1. Water out now, can you stop it?	Urgency
2. Main shutoff location	Damage, urgency
3. Gas or danger	Transfer or 911, before anything else
4. Where the water is from	Job type, whether it is your trade
5. When it started, what changed	Urgency, cause, warranty
6. Type of home and system	Job type, truck, time to block
7. Address	Service area, drive time
8. Owner, tenant, or manager	Authorization, who pays
9. Callback number and name	Reaching the caller
10. Access and pets	Job notes, timing
11. Fee and tonight vs. morning	Urgency, slot, payment expectations
12. Anything else, plus recap	Notes quality, caller confidence

Notice that urgency is set by questions 1, 2, 5, and 11 together, not by any one of them. "Water everywhere" alone is not enough to page a tech at midnight. "Water everywhere, can't find the shutoff, started twenty minutes ago, yes please come now" is.

Putting it in your rules

If you are writing this up for an AI CSR, three practical notes.

Keep the wording in the caller's language. "Is water coming out right now?" beats "Is the leak active?" Write the shutoff instructions out in full, including what to do if the valve will not turn. Decide the transfer rules in advance: gas always, and probably anything the AI cannot classify after two tries.

Decide what each answer does in your scheduling system. In ServiceTitan, that means which business unit, which job type, and which priority each combination of answers produces. In Google Calendar, it means which calendar the job lands on and how long the block is. The knowledge base guide covers how to write the rest of what the AI needs to know about your shop.

And listen to the recordings. Every emergency call is recorded and summarized, and ten minutes a week spent on the ones that went sideways will tighten the script faster than anything else. The on-call tech should be getting a text within about a minute of hang-up with the name, address, issue, urgency, and a link to the recording. If the text does not tell the tech what they are walking into, the questions are not being asked right.