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NewEraAI

Client work · Service and maintenance

Echo One answers the service and maintenance line at 21 Degrees

21 Degrees runs Echo One on their service and maintenance line, and retains New Era AI for consulting. What was deployed, why the calls came first, and how the advisory work sits alongside it.

Running
Echo One
Line
Service and maintenance
Also retains
AI consulting
Engagement
Ongoing
21 Degrees

Running

  • Echo One
  • AI consulting retainer

The situation

A service and maintenance line has a particular shape: the calls that matter most arrive at the least convenient moments. Breakdowns do not wait for office hours, and the caller on the other end is rarely in a mood to leave a message and hope.

That makes the line a good candidate for the first piece of work, because the cost of a missed call is unusually easy to reason about. It is not a productivity abstraction: it is a job that either got booked or did not.

What was actually done

  1. 01

    The line came first, not the software catalogue

    The starting question was which call types recur often enough and predictably enough to be worth handling automatically, and which must always reach a person. That list is written down before anything is configured, because an agent can only be as clear as the rules it is given.

  2. 02

    Echo One handles the repeatable calls

    Greet, establish what the caller needs, capture the details a scheduler would ask for, and write the outcome somewhere it will actually be seen. Repeatable service and maintenance enquiries complete in the agent.

  3. 03

    Anything outside the rules goes to a person

    Complaints, anything urgent or unusual, and any caller who asks for a human are transferred immediately, with no retention attempt. That boundary is a commercial decision, not a technical limitation, and it belongs to the client.

  4. 04

    The consulting retainer sets the order of work

    Voice was the first job, not the only one. The retainer exists so the next piece of work is chosen from evidence rather than from whatever is most interesting that quarter, and so the roadmap gets revisited as volumes change.

Why this order

The consulting relationship and the platform are deliberately separate lines. The retainer covers Discover, Roadmap and Support; anything built is scoped and quoted on its own. That separation matters more on a live client account than it does in a proposal, because it is what stops advisory days quietly becoming development hours.

It also means the advice can point away from our own products. If the next constraint at 21 Degrees turns out to be a scheduling or integration problem rather than a call-handling one, that is what the roadmap should say.

Questions

21 Degrees, answered.

Does the agent handle every call?

No. It handles the repeatable service and maintenance enquiries it has been given rules for. Complaints, urgent or unusual situations, and anyone who asks for a person are transferred.

Is the consulting retainer required to use Echo One?

No. Echo One can be taken as a product on published plans. 21 Degrees retains consulting as well, which is what decides the order of work beyond the phone line.

What does Echo One cost?

Published plans are £49, £149 and £300 per month. Configuration and integration beyond the standard setup is scoped separately. Full detail is on the Echo One page.

Next step

Start with the free AI Opportunity Assessment.

A short, no-obligation conversation about where enquiries, hours and revenue leak today. You do not have to pick a tier to have it, and what comes out of it feeds Discover, so the first paid day starts from evidence rather than a blank sheet.