Nobody wants a chatbot. What people want is for the four phone calls not to happen. Here is exactly what gets done for you, and what never does.
For customers
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5 min read
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Updated 8 August 2026
Everyone who owns a house has had this afternoon. The hot water has gone. You search, you get a page of forty names in no order, and you start ringing round. Two don't answer. One is booked until October. One asks a string of questions you can't answer while standing in the garage, says he'll ring back, and doesn't.
None of that is really a technology problem. Everyone involved is good at their job. The plumbers are good at plumbing, and busy doing it. The trouble is that getting a price takes a lot of back and forth, and both people have to be free at the same moment for every bit of it.
So what does the agent do?
It has the back and forth for you. That is the whole idea, and it is less exciting and more useful than it sounds.
You type what's wrong. It works out that this is a plumber and not an electrician, asks you the four things a plumber needs to know, then asks every plumber in your area at once. Your answers are already attached, so nobody has to ring you back to find out how old the cylinder is.
What you'll see in the app
Plumbing
Answer a few questions to find the right providers
How urgent is it?
ASAP
Today
This week
Flexible
Back
1 of 4
Next
Four questions. Answered once, sent to everyone.
There is one on the other side too
A request is only half of it. The reason a quote normally takes three days is that the person who has to write it is under a house until six.
So businesses here have an agent as well. When your request arrives, it drafts a quote from that business's own numbers, their call-out fee and their hourly rate, and shows it to them. They read it, change what they want, and send it. Often in the two minutes between jobs.
What you'll see in the app
Burst pipe under the kitchen sink
Quote for Jordan Hale
Drafted from your rates
Drafted from your call-out fee of $80 and your usual $95/hr, allowing two hours for a burst pipe under a sink.
Call-out
Your visit fee — optional
Labour
Hours on the job × your rate
hrs ×
Subtotal
$270.00
Service fee — the customer pays it
$8.13
Card rate. If they pay by bank transfer it is $0.15.
They'll see
$278.13
You keep, after the 1% fee
$267.30
When you could come
Offer a few times — it makes accepting easier.
Add a note
What a tradesperson sees. Their numbers, drafted for them, waiting for their OK.
That is why replies come back in minutes here and in days elsewhere. Nobody is working faster. Writing the quote out just stopped being a job someone had to find an evening for.
What never happens on its own
Anything to do with money, on both sides.
No quote goes out in a tradesperson's name until they have read it and sent it. No quote is accepted until you have tapped accept. No booking exists until you have picked a time. And for a service, no invoice is even raised until the business has marked the job finished.
What you'll see in the app
💳
Payment
Burst pipe repair
Invoice INV-000418
Subtotal
$270.00 NZD
Bank transfer fee
$0.15 NZD
GST (15%)
$40.50 NZD
Total
$310.65 NZD
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PAY WITH
You save $9.09 NZD paying by bank transfer
Pay $310.65 NZD by bank transfer
Payments are processed securely by Stripe & Akahu
The last step, and it is a button a person presses.
When you do pay, the money goes to the business. NovaPay is not an escrow service, and there is no account of ours it sits in. A card payment goes to their Stripe account, and a bank transfer goes to their bank. The platform fee of 1% comes out of their side automatically, and only once they have actually been paid.
The short version
An agent here is not a personality, and it is not a chatbot to talk to for the sake of it. It is the four phone calls, made for you, by something that doesn't mind making them. Then it gets out of the way and lets two people agree on a price.
Related
Will an agent spend my money without asking?
2 min
What it costs to use NovaPay
3 min
Nothing is booked until you say so
2 min
Still stuck?
Ask us in the chat. A real person reads it, usually the same day.