The terms, in plain English.
Every term a pest control owner meets while fixing the phones, defined in one sentence first and pest control context second.
AI receptionist
An AI receptionist is software that answers a business's phone with a natural voice, asks the business's own intake questions, and books appointments or takes messages without a human on the line.
For a pest control company, the intake is specific: what the caller is seeing, where, for how long, the property address, and whether anyone is being stung or bitten. A good AI receptionist runs that intake the same way on every call, at 2pm or 2am, and hands the office a structured record instead of a voicemail.
AI answering service
An AI answering service is an answering service where the agent picking up is AI rather than a call-center operator, so it answers instantly and never queues callers. Billing varies by vendor; PestLine AI is one flat monthly plan.
The practical difference from a human service is what happens after hello: most human answering services take a message from a script, while an AI answering service built for the trade can qualify the pest and book the job. The comparison to a human service is on the honest side-by-side page.
AI voice agent
An AI voice agent is the underlying technology of an AI receptionist: a system that listens to speech, decides what to say next, and replies in a natural voice, fast enough to hold a normal phone conversation.
Vendors use the terms interchangeably. When a pest control owner searches for a voice agent, receptionist, or phone agent, they are describing the same product category: software that answers the phone and does front-desk work.
Virtual receptionist
A virtual receptionist is a remote human receptionist, employed by a service company, who answers your calls from a call center under your business's name.
Virtual receptionist services staff real people, which some callers prefer, and bill per call or per minute. The trade-offs against pest-specific AI are honest ones: humans improvise better on the truly weird call; AI answers instantly at any hour, never quits, and costs the same in swarm season as in January.
Answering service
An answering service is a company whose operators pick up your overflow or after-hours calls, usually from a shared call center, and deliver messages back to your team.
Answering services predate AI by decades and still run much of the trades' after-hours coverage. The structural limits: operators follow a generic script, rarely book into your calendar, and the message still needs a callback, which restarts the phone tag the caller was trying to escape.
Missed-call text-back
Missed-call text-back is an automation that instantly sends a text to any caller you did not answer, so the lead gets a response before they dial the next company.
It is the cheapest form of missed-call insurance and better than nothing, but it only works for callers willing to move to texting. The stronger version of the same idea is answering the call itself: missed-call-only forwarding to a receptionist that picks up, qualifies, and books.
Speed to lead
Speed to lead is the time between a prospect's first contact and your first response, and it is one of the strongest predictors of whether that prospect becomes a customer.
The research is one-directional: response within minutes converts at a multiple of response within hours, and the decay starts immediately. Phones are the extreme case, because an unanswered call is a lead with a response time of never. The sourced numbers are on the statistics page.
After-hours answering
After-hours answering is coverage for the calls that arrive outside office hours: evenings, weekends, and holidays, when the office is dark but pests are not.
Pest problems get discovered at night and on weekends, which is exactly when most companies route to voicemail. Coverage options run from an on-call rotation, to a human answering service, to an AI receptionist that answers around the clock without a rota.
Missed-call-only mode (conditional forwarding)
Missed-call-only mode uses conditional call forwarding to send only the calls you do not answer to a receptionist, so your team keeps answering exactly as today and nothing changes except the calls that used to ring out.
It is the lowest-commitment way to adopt any answering product: your number stays on the trucks, your office keeps picking up, and the safety net only catches what falls. Every caught call is recorded, so the value is provable job by job.
WDI report (wood-destroying insect report)
A WDI report is a licensed inspection report on wood-destroying insects, usually required during a real estate sale, and almost always needed against a hard closing date.
WDI calls are deadline calls: the agent or buyer on the phone needs an inspection slot before closing, and whoever confirms one first gets the job. Intake that captures the closing date and the agent's contact, then books the licensed inspector against that deadline, is the whole game.
Re-service guarantee
A re-service guarantee is a pest control plan's promise to return between scheduled visits at no charge if covered pests come back.
It is the strongest selling point of a quarterly plan, because it converts a one-time job into standing coverage. On the phone it matters at the moment a caller asks about price: the guarantee is the reason the plan beats paying per visit.
Deeper reading: the sourced statistics, AI vs a human answering service, and how PestLine AI works.