Frequently asked questions

Start with your business information, voice, number and next steps. The connections you need determine the setup involved. Try a conversation yourself and confirm your configuration before going live.

One of three ways, and you can start with one. A form you paste into your website, your CRM — ActiveCampaign, HubSpot or Zoho send each new contact across as it arrives — or a spreadsheet you upload.

Calendly, HubSpot, Zoho and SavvyCal. It reads your real availability before it dials, so the times it offers on the call are times you actually have, and the booking lands in the calendar you already use.

You can choose a local number through Bludge. Ask us about number availability, pricing and forwarding from your existing business number when we discuss your setup.

Yes. We buy it in our carrier account, so while you are with us it sits under our name, but it is yours to take. You ask whoever you are moving to for a port, we authorise it at no charge, and the number goes with you. Porting is a carrier process rather than something either of us runs, so give it a couple of weeks and keep the account open until it lands. Two things do not travel with the number. Its settings go back to the start, so your new provider sets up the greeting and the routing again. And our record of who has asked not to be called, which stays in our system — ask us for that list before you go and we will send it.

The design target is under thirty seconds from the inquiry landing to a ringing phone, and about five seconds is what we build for. These are targets, not measurements. We publish the measured figures as the pilots run.

Says it is an AI, asks the questions you wrote, answers from the notes you gave it, offers real times from your calendar, books one, and texts a confirmation. If it does not know something, it says so rather than guessing, and offers to have somebody call back.

Inside your business hours it puts them through, if you have switched that on and given it a number. It says one line so the pause does not feel like a dropped call, rings your numbers one at a time, and whoever picks up hears who is calling and what about before pressing 1 to accept. If nobody takes it, or you are closed, it takes their details and the reason and says someone will call back. Either way that lands in your CRM and your notifications like any other lead. If you run your own AI agent, Bludge can check with it instead of interrupting a person, and pass on the answer in its own voice.

It tries once more — an hour later by default, and always inside your calling hours, so a missed call at closing time is retried the next morning rather than that night. After the second unanswered attempt it stops calling, sends a text from your business name, and closes the lead.

Twelve minutes at the outside, and you can set it lower. Thirty seconds before the cap it starts wrapping up, so the call ends with a summary and a next step rather than being cut off mid-sentence.

No call audio is stored. The transcript is, line by line, and you read it on the lead in the admin along with what the call decided and anything it booked.

Yes. Your number rings through to the assistant and the first thing the caller hears is that it is an AI — "This is an AI assistant answering for" and then your business name. From there it works from the notes and the questions you already wrote, answers what it can, offers a real time from your calendar when that is what the caller wants, and takes a message for your team to call back when it is not. Every incoming call is logged with its transcript, the same as an outgoing one.

It still picks up, and it says you are closed rather than pretending otherwise — including whatever you wrote on your after-hours line, so "we are back at seven, and Joe is on call" is said in its own voice. If you have switched booking on it offers a time in your calendar there and then; somebody willing to take a time at nine at night should be given one. Either way it takes their name, their number and what they are calling about, reads the number back, and emails you the message with the transcript as soon as the call ends. That is the same hours setting your outgoing calls obey, so you change it in one place and both follow.

It listens first. A caller we have never spoken to gets the greeting you wrote for an unknown caller, and it lets them say why they are ringing before it asks anything. A supplier, a wrong number or someone after a job gets answered politely and their details taken for your team. It does not push your qualifying questions at somebody who never made an inquiry.

Yes, and that is on by default; you can switch it off. When the number matches somebody you have spoken to, it still opens with your greeting, then uses their first name and a word about the last job. On a mobile it greets them by name once they have confirmed it; on a landline it asks "Is that Jan?" until the same person has confirmed it on two calls in a row. Nothing else from their record, like an address, a price or a booking time, is used until they confirm it is them, and if it is somebody else it apologizes once and carries on as with any new caller.

Our pricing page shows monthly launch plans for Australia, the United States and Canada, with included allowances and additional-usage rates. UK pricing is coming soon. We confirm your setup and availability before billing starts.

An idea of your call volume, how new inquiries reach you, and what happens next. Let us know whether you need messages taken, leads called back, appointments arranged or calls put through, along with the phone and calendar tools you already use.

Yes. You can listen to the scripted examples on the homepage, or request a short demo call in a supported region. Bludge introduces itself as AI. You can also ask us for a walkthrough of your own business setup.

Eleven North American voices today, and more accents for other markets. You hear your own greeting read in each one before you pick, rather than a stock sample of someone else's script.

Bludge is launching for businesses in Australia, the United States and Canada. Other countries are coming later. We confirm number availability and your setup before service starts.

Yes, in the first sentence of every call, before anything else happens. The wording is set per country, it is spoken as its own pre-recorded line so it cannot be talked around, and it is the first line of every transcript. You can add to it. You cannot shorten it, remove it, or switch it off.

Mon to Fri 9 am to 9 pm, Sat 10 am to 6 pm in the lead's own time zone, never on a Sunday and never on a statutory holiday. Those are the Canada defaults and they ship switched on. You can make the window smaller than that. You cannot make it larger without us turning on an override for your account, which we only do with a reason, and we record who asked and when.

They reply "stop" to the text message, or any of the dozen other wordings people actually send — unsubscribe, cancel, remove me, do not call. The number is then suppressed across your whole account, for calls and for texts, not just for the one lead. If they say it on the call instead, it is in the transcript and you mark the number from there. A suppressed number is never contacted again by you, on any of your numbers.

Ninety days. A lead whose inquiry is older than that is not called automatically — the queue cancels the attempt and says why. A spreadsheet upload counts the stale rows and shows you the number and the cutoff date before you import anything.

You are. It calls under your business name, from your number, about inquiries people made to you. We ship the Canada defaults switched on, but the inquiry, the consent behind it and your obligations under the National Do Not Call List are yours. Nothing on this site is legal advice.