Choose the supplier that can demonstrate a controlled improvement in your business—not the most convincing conversation with a chatbot. Score a specific workflow, implementation and support arrangement out of 100. Apply launch-blocking checks separately: a high total must never compensate for unsafe advice, uncontrolled bookings, unacceptable data handling or an untested fallback.
Research date: 27 October 2026.
Scope: UK heating, ventilation and air-conditioning contractors evaluating inbound AI receptionists, enquiry capture, quotation follow-up, maintenance administration and heat-pump survey preparation. The initial audience is established firms with office staff and roughly 5–50 field engineers; that range is a targeting hypothesis, not a proven purchasing threshold.
Recommended buying rule: consider a bounded live pilot at 60/100 or above, with the critical criteria scoring at least 3/5 and every applicable launch gate passed. Consider expansion at 80/100 or above, with stronger operational evidence, demonstrated economics and the additional conditions below. These are this desk’s proposed procurement thresholds—not industry benchmarks or a certification of safety.
No named supplier has been scored in this document. Public product pages establish advertised capabilities, not the quality of a particular agency’s implementation.