The phone rings on the job site.
fonea picks up.

Yes. You define keywords that trigger instant transfer: burst pipe, gas smell, power outage, heating failure, pipe burst. "My tap is dripping" stays a normal service inquiry. "The kitchen is flooded" triggers immediate transfer to the on-call number. The distinction is based on your criteria, not generic rules.

fonea answers calls on your business number regardless of where you are. After each call you receive a structured summary via push or email: who called, what they want, how urgent it is. As soon as you have reception, you see everything at a glance and decide whom to call back when.

Yes. fonea understands all Swiss German dialects and replies in High German or Swiss Standard German. Trade terminology (residual-current device, vapour barrier, pipe lining, heat exchanger) is configured during setup. French, Italian, English, and Spanish are also available — useful for callers from Romandy, Ticino, or clients with international workers.

Yes. All persistent data (customer name, address, job details) is hosted in Switzerland at Supabase. Transient voice processing (STT, LLM, TTS) runs on European servers in Germany with DPF or SCC safeguards. The revised FADP (effective 1 September 2023) and the GDPR are fully respected. The complete subprocessor list is at fonea.ch/subprocessors.

Setup takes about 30 minutes. We configure fonea with you: greeting, services, service radius, on-call keywords, and calendar integration. Test calls and fine-tuning happen live — no IT skills required, no hardware, no number change. Call forwarding runs via Swisscom, Sunrise, or Salt.

The math is simple: an average trades job is CHF 800–5,000, a single missed large job is CHF 20,000+. If fonea wins you even one additional job per quarter, you have the annual cost back several times over. Break-even sits below one extra job per year.

Yes. Many trades businesses use fonea selectively for the hours when nobody can be on the phone: during job-site work, lunch, evenings, weekends, and holidays. When your office person is there, you can switch fonea off or run it as overflow when several calls come in simultaneously.

Yes. fonea recognises from context whether a private client or a business customer is calling and adapts its questions. For business inquiries it captures project name, scope, timeframe, and contact person. You receive a structured summary that flows directly into your estimating process.