Photo-to-quote — letting customers send a picture of the job
Enable photo upload in your Voxinly widget so a customer can snap a picture of the leaking tap, dodgy fuse box or rotten window frame and get a more accurate ballpark quote on the spot.
Half the questions a tradesman gets are unanswerable without seeing the job. 'My boiler is making a banging noise' might be £200 or £3,000 depending on the boiler. 'My fuse box looks old' might mean a tidy-up or a full consumer-unit replacement. Photos turn 'we'll need to come and look' into 'looks like a Worcester Bosch from 2008, probably needs a pump — £350-£500'. Photo-to-quote lets the chat widget collect that photo before the customer even rings.
Step 1 — Enable photo upload
Navigate to /admin/chatbot → Quote tools
Find the 'Photo upload' toggle. Switch it on. A paperclip icon appears in the chat composer for visitors — they can attach up to three photos per conversation, each up to 8 MB.
Step 2 — Configure when the bot asks
Voxinly is trained to ask for a photo when it would actually help. The default prompts are:
- 'A photo of the boiler badge would help — can you snap one?'
- 'Could you send a picture of the fuse box / consumer unit?'
- 'A photo of the leak would let us give you a tighter quote.'
- 'If you can, send a wide shot of the room and a close-up of the damage.'
You can tune which prompts the chatbot uses, or write your own. The point is: customers don't realise a photo would help until you ask. Once you ask, 70%+ send one.
Step 3 — Configure the alert email
Decide how photos arrive in your inbox
By default, photos are attached inline to your lead-alert email. Toggle 'Photos as attachments' if you'd rather they came as file attachments — easier if you save customer files to Drive or Dropbox.
Step 4 — Photo-aware quoting (optional)
If you turn on 'Photo-aware quoting', Voxinly uses the photo to refine its quote. For boilers, it identifies the make and model from the badge and adjusts the range. For fuse boxes, it spots whether you've got an old wire fuse setup (likely replacement) or a modern RCD board (likely fixable). For windows, it estimates frame count and material. Always with the caveat that the final price is subject to a site visit.
Step 5 — Test it
Try on your phone
Open the widget on your phone, ask 'how much to replace my old fuse box?', wait for the chatbot to ask for a photo, take one of any fuse box and send it. Confirm the photo arrives in your lead-alert email.
What customers get out of it
Customers love photo-to-quote because it short-circuits the 'we'll have to come and look' phase. They get a tighter ballpark on the spot, they don't have to describe a problem they can't put words to ('it's like a knocking sound but more of a thud'), and they don't waste a half-day on a site visit if the photo reveals the job is outside your scope. From our user data, photo-using chats convert about 40% better than text-only chats.
Privacy and storage
Photos are stored encrypted in our infrastructure and are accessible only to you and your team. They're retained for 90 days then auto-deleted. You can pull a customer's photos manually from /admin/conversations before that. Customers see a 'photos will be shared with [your business name] only' message before the upload — no surprises.
FAQ
What file types are supported?
JPG, PNG, HEIC (iPhone format), WEBP. We auto-convert HEIC to JPG so you can open them on any device. Videos are not currently supported.
How accurate is photo-aware quoting?
On clean, in-focus photos of standard items (boilers, fuse boxes, window frames), the refined ballpark is within +/- 25% of the eventual site-visit quote about 70% of the time. Always a ballpark, never binding.
What if the photo is unclear or off-topic?
Voxinly says so. 'That's a bit dark — could you send another with better light?' or 'I can't quite see the boiler badge — could you snap that close-up?' It doesn't pretend to see something it can't.
Can I disable photo-to-quote for specific job types?
Yes — in Quote tools you can restrict photo prompts to specific job categories. Useful for trades where photos rarely add value (e.g. straight cleaning jobs).