AI Phone – Getting Started Guide

AI phone is a fully embedded call-answering tool built into Skimmer. It answers your incoming calls 24/7, even when you're in the middle of a service, after hours, or on weekends. It uses your actual Skimmer data to hold smart, accurate conversations, capture new leads, and pass urgent calls to you with full context.

No separate vendors. No additional technology. No missed opportunities. Happy Pool Owners!

⚠ Important AI phone is designed to work alongside your existing business phone number, not replace it.Do not forward 100% of all calls to AI phone as your only call handling strategy. AI phone is a safety net - it catches the calls you can't get to.

Please spend extra time on the Transfer Rules + Call Forwarding sections in the Setup Wizard

What AI Phone Does

Feature	What it means for you
24/7 call answering	Missed calls or all calls, you choose. AI phone picks up whenever you can't.
Customer recognition	If the caller's number is in Skimmer, the AI agent greets them by name.
New lead capture	Unknown callers get their info captured, and a lead is auto-created in Skimmer.
Warm call transfers	For urgent calls, the AI agent hands off to you with a summary, caller never has to repeat themselves.
Call logging	Every call gets a summary, transcript, recording, and sentiment tag. All in the calls tab.
Business-trained AI	Trained on your Skimmer data and your custom knowledge base.

What AI Phone Does NOT Do

Schedule appointments or create work orders (that still happens manually in Skimmer)
Make outbound calls
Be configured on mobile (desktop only for setup)
Customer recognition may take up to ~4 hours to sync after adding a new customer

How To Get Set Up

Setup takes most pros under 30 minutes. Work through the steps below in order - you can always come back to any of them later from the gear icon in AI phone settings.

Steps	Instructions
Step 1: Enable AI phone	Look at the AI phone option in the left menu nav. Click “Get Started,” and the setup wizard will launch automatically. Follow the setup wizard!
Step 2: Train your agent No website? No worries! Take a look at this video to see how to train your agent from scratch Need ideas? Follow this link to some sample questions to get the juices flowing!	This is the most important step. The AI answers questions based entirely on what's in the Knowledge Base - the more specific and complete it is, the better your AI performs. When setup launches, AI phone automatically scrapes your website and pulls in your services, hours, service area, and contact info. This takes about a minute. Review everything it pulled in for accuracy. Add what's missing by clicking the “Add Knowledge” button.
Step 3: Customize your AI agent 4-hour sync window: Customer data syncs from Skimmer to AI phone approximately every 4 hours. If you add a new customer and they call in right away, the AI may not recognize them yet. This is normal — it will catch up on the next sync.	Give your AI a name, pick a voice, and configure a few key settings. Name: This is how the AI introduces itself on calls. Pick something that fits your brand, a first name like 'Alex' or '[Your Business] Assistant' both work well. Voice: Several options are available. Listen to a few and pick the one that sounds most natural for your business. Discloses AI: When turned on, the AI identifies itself as AI at the start of the call. You choose whether to enable this. Greet by name: When turned on, the AI checks if the caller's number matches a customer in your Skimmer account and greets them by name if it finds a match.
Step 4: Set up your transfer rules Save the AI phone number in your contacts: Transfer calls show the AI phone number as caller ID, not the original caller's number. Save it as 'AI phone transfer' or similar, so you recognize it when it rings.	Transfer rules tell the AI when to stop handling a call and connect the caller to a real person. This is how urgent calls - emergencies, frustrated customers, someone ready to sign up - always reach you or your team. You can add up to 10 transfer rules. Each rule defines a trigger and a destination phone number. If the transfer isn't answered, the AI tells the caller it couldn't reach anyone and offers to take a message.
Step 5: Set up call forwardingiOS only: Before testing, go to Settings > Phone and turn off Live Voicemail and Screen Unknown Callers — these can intercept calls before AI phone picks up. Android users can skip this. To turn off forwarding later: AI phone > Gear Icon > Call Forwarding > follow the deactivation instructions for your carrier.	Call Forwarding is where your existing phone number connects to AI phone. Keep your current business number - customers keep dialing what they always have. Choose your forwarding option : Missed calls only (strongly recommended): Your phone rings first. If you don't answer, AI phone picks up. Transfer rules can route back to your own number in this mode. All calls (NOT recommended): Every call goes straight to AI phone. Transfer rules must point to a different number - routing back to the same number creates an infinite loop. The setup wizard shows activation codes for the most common carriers. If you use a VoIP provider like Dialpad or Aircall, set up forwarding in your VoIP dashboard instead of dialing a code.
Step 6: Test it, then go live Note: the in-app browser test tool lets you hear the voice and test basic responses, but transfer rules and customer recognition don't work in browser test mode. For a full test, call the actual phone number.	Before you activate, call the AI phone number yourself and walk through a few scenarios a real caller might use. Listen to how it responds and adjust your Knowledge Base based on what you hear. Try at least three scenarios: a new lead calling to ask about services, an existing customer question, and an emergency or urgent situation Review the call recording after each test, and you'll spot Knowledge Base gaps quickly Adjust, test again if needed, then activate

After Calls Come In

Every call is logged automatically. Here's where to find things.

AI phone → Calls tab: Full list of all calls with summaries, transcripts, recordings, and sentiment.
AI phone → Statistics: Call volume and performance over time.
Customer activity feed: Call records linked to existing Skimmer customer profiles.
Leads: New callers are automatically created here - follow up promptly.

Pro tip: Check your calls each morning and follow up with any new leads from the day before. The faster you respond, the higher the close rate.

Tips For Getting the Most Out of AI Phone

Keep your Knowledge Base updated — review it monthly or after any business changes
Listen to a handful of call recordings each week to spot gaps in what the AI knows
Check your transfer logs to make sure transfers are being answered
Add your own phone number as a Skimmer contact so internal calls aren't treated as new leads
Clean up duplicate contacts in Skimmer before launch, so customer recognition works correctly
Update the knowledge base any time services, pricing, or hours change