What did Muse actually add, and when?
Two things, eight days apart. On September 17, 2026, Muse started placing phone calls to US businesses for its users. On September 23, Meta announced that every Muse agent will get its own email address. Together they mean some of your calls and emails will come from software acting for a customer.
On September 17, 2026, Meta's Muse agent gained the ability to place phone calls to businesses in the United States. A rival agent shipped the same feature the same day. Meta is rolling it out first to people who ask Muse to make a call, which doubles as a way of measuring demand for it.
On September 23, at Meta Connect, the company announced that every Muse agent will get its own email address. Meta says the agent can use it to get things done, and that you can use it as another way to reach your own agent. There is no date on it yet.
Put those together and the picture for a contractor is simple. Some share of the calls and emails arriving at your business are about to be sent by software acting for a customer, rather than typed or dialed by the customer.
Does Muse answer calls, or only make them?
Only make them. This is the detail most coverage gets wrong, and it is the detail that decides what you should do about it.
Muse calls outward. It phones a restaurant to book a table, phones a service provider to sort out a bill, phones a business to ask a question. It does not sit on your line and pick up when a homeowner calls your shop. Nothing Meta has shipped answers a phone on behalf of a business. Even Muse for Small Business, launched September 29, prepares back-office work and does not pick up your line.
So the headline is not that AI will answer your phone. It is that AI is now dialing it.
What does an agent email address change?
It changes who is on the other end of your contact form and your inbox. Instead of a homeowner writing three quote requests and tiring by the third, an agent writes to every contractor on its list, reads the replies, and compares them on price, availability and next step.
Today, when a homeowner emails three contractors for quotes, they write three emails and they get tired by the third. An agent does not get tired. It writes to all three, it writes at 2am, it reads the replies, and it reports back with a comparison. The friction that used to protect the contractor who replies slowly is the friction that is going away.
There is a second-order effect worth thinking about before it arrives. An agent reading your reply is parsing it. A reply that says "call the office for pricing" gives it nothing to compare. A reply with a clear price range, a clear availability window and a clear next step is one it can act on. The contractor who writes for the machine as well as the person is going to win comparisons they never knew they were in.
Why does an AI caller make a missed call more expensive?
Because an agent working a list does not leave a voicemail and try again tomorrow. An unanswered ring is a row it skips, and it dials the next contractor straight away.
When a person calls three contractors and the first two do not pick up, there is a decent chance they give up for the day and you get another shot tomorrow. When an agent is working a list, an unanswered ring is just a row it moves past. It dials the next one. There is no callback, no second attempt, no voicemail sitting there at 5pm reminding anyone you exist.
We do not have data on how many inbound calls to contractors are currently agent-placed, and anyone who gives you a percentage right now is guessing. Muse launched on September 8 and calling arrived on September 17. What we can say is the direction, not the size.
What we do have data on is the cost of not answering at all, which has not changed. One of our gutter clients took a roofing inquiry through their website at 3am this month. A person, not an agent, awake at 3am with water coming through a ceiling. Nobody was answering a phone at that hour. The site was, and that job was worth more than a month of the service that captured it.
Presets are example averages. Swap in your own numbers. Lost value per call is your average job times your close rate on calls you answer.
Your numbers stay in your browser. Home service calls typically close at 40 to 60 percent. Orion answers every call, from $50 a month.
What should a contractor do about this in the next month?
Make sure something answers at every hour, put prices and service areas in plain text, keep your quote form usable by software, and reply with a number, a window and a link. Here they are in order of how much they cost you.
Make sure something answers at every hour. Whether that is an AI receptionist, an answering service or a form that actually gets read, the requirement is the same and it predates any of this. Agents just raise the penalty for getting it wrong.
Put real information where a machine can read it. Price ranges, service areas, what you do and do not do, and current availability, in plain text on the page rather than locked in a PDF or a graphic. An agent comparing three contractors can only compare what it can read.
Do not make your booking path hostile to software. Multi-step wizards, forms that need JavaScript to reveal the next field, and aggressive bot challenges on first contact all block agents. They also annoy humans on bad cell service, so this is not a trade-off.
Reply in a form that can be acted on. "Thanks, we will be in touch" is a dead end for an agent and, honestly, for a person too. A number, a window and a link beats a promise.
None of this requires you to have an opinion about Meta. It is the same advice whether the thing calling you is Muse, a competitor, or a homeowner with a leaking roof at 3am.
