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Outbound AI Calling

Early Access

Outbound AI calling is part of the AI phone assistant, which is a paid add-on ($79/mo for 250 minutes) — it is not included in any plan, on any tier, and there is no free trial allowance of minutes. See Account and Billing. For dictation-to-estimate features, see Voice Assistant.

In addition to answering inbound calls, your AI phone assistant — Scout — can place outbound calls and follow-ups to your leads. This is useful for reaching out to a new lead who requested a callback, or for gentle follow-ups on an estimate that is still pending.

Scout handles real conversations with homeowners, so outbound calling is built around clear consent, honest disclosure, and sensible limits. This page explains what to expect.

How Outbound Calls Happen​

An outbound call is placed when there is a reason to reach out — most often because a homeowner asked to be contacted (for example, through your website's lead-capture form) or because a follow-up is due on a pending estimate.

On each call, Scout:

  1. Opens by identifying itself as an automated AI assistant — it never pretends to be a person.
  2. Has a real conversation to answer questions, share information, or schedule an estimate.
  3. Logs the outcome so you can see what happened from your call history.

If a call isn't answered, goes to voicemail, or is busy, it is recorded as a failed call (not a completed one), so your records stay accurate.

Consent & AI Disclosure​

Outbound AI calling follows the same honesty and consent rules as the rest of the Voice Assistant:

  • AI disclosure on every call. The first thing Scout says discloses that it is an automated / AI assistant. An honesty rule keeps it from misrepresenting what it is.
  • Consent before contact. When a lead comes from your website form, the homeowner has already agreed to be contacted — including by an automated / AI call — through the TCPA-style consent shown on that form. See Lead Capture Embed Form.
  • Immediate opt-out. If the person says they would rather not speak with an automated assistant, or asks not to be contacted again, Scout stops and marks them do-not-contact.

Calling Hours​

Scout only places a call when it is inside the allowed window in both time zones:

  • Your company's calling window — the working hours you set in Settings → Company Profile. The default is 8am–5pm, and you can adjust the start and end hours (and the days of the week) to match when you want Scout reaching out on your behalf. This window is evaluated in your company's time zone.
  • The callee's legal window — a fixed 8am–9pm window in the time zone of the person being called. This is the TCPA statutory window and is not configurable; it protects you from calling someone at an inappropriate hour in their local time.

A call is only placed when the current time falls inside both windows. So even if your company window is open, Scout will hold a call until it is also past 8am (and before 9pm) where the homeowner lives.

Daily Calling Limit​

To keep your outreach reasonable, there is a daily cap on how many outbound and follow-up calls Scout will place for your company. The default limit is 100 calls per day. Once the limit is reached, no further outbound calls are placed until the next day.

You can adjust this limit, and setting it to 0 disables the cap entirely (no daily limit). The count is shared across your whole company, so it reflects all of your AI outreach for the day — not per user.

Scheduling & Double-Booking Protection​

When Scout books an estimate during a call, it checks your real calendar availability first and reserves the slot before confirming — so it never double-books you.

  • If the time the caller wants is already taken, Scout offers other open times instead.
  • If your calendar can't be reached, Scout politely declines to lock in a time rather than guessing at one.
Scout will never invent an appointment time

Scout only offers times it has actually checked. If it cannot read one of your calendars, it will tell the caller it can't confirm a time right now and offer to take a callback number instead — it will not fall back to plausible-sounding hours.

That is the right behaviour (an invented time becomes a missed appointment and an angry customer), but it does mean two things are worth checking if callers tell you Scout wouldn't book them:

  1. Your working hours are set correctly in Settings → Company Profile. Scout only offers slots inside them.
  2. Your minimum notice isn't too long in Settings → Voice Assistant → Booking rules. If it's set to 24 hours, Scout will not offer anything today or tomorrow morning. The default is 2 hours.

You do not need to connect Google Calendar for booking to work. With no external calendar connected, Scout books against your in-app ContractorScope AI calendar and your working hours, and still refuses to double-book anything already on it.

For details on adding and combining calendars so Scout always sees when you're busy, see Calendar.

Booking rules you control​

Set these in Settings → Voice Assistant → Booking rules:

  • Minimum notice before an appointment — default 2 hours. Stops Scout booking an in-home estimate an hour from now. Raise it if you need more warning to get to a job site.
  • How long is an estimate visit — default 60 minutes. Sets both the length of the slots Scout offers and the end time of the event it books.
  • Which calendars to check for conflicts — by default, every connected calendar counts. Narrow it if only some of them represent real busy time.
  • Also check team members' personal connected calendars — on by default, so a rep's own calendar events block that rep's estimate slots.

See Voice Assistant → Tuning How Scout Talks on the Phone for the full table, including the conversation-behaviour settings.

What Gets Saved​

Any details Scout picks up on a call — such as an address or email it hears — are saved as AI-suggested values for you to review and confirm. Scout does not silently overwrite your saved customer records. You stay in control of what becomes part of the contact's official record.

Next Steps​