A lab where every case starts with a call
Cascadia Data Recovery recovers data for people whose hard drives, laptops and other devices have failed: a drive that clicks, a MacBook that won't turn on, an SD card that was formatted by accident. The lab is in Eugene, Oregon, and clients send their devices in from across the US, with shipping covered both ways. Pricing is flat rate, quoted after diagnosis, and if the data can't be recovered the client pays nothing.
The business started out as Springfield Data Recovery, a name that still serves the local market. Cascadia is the name it uses nationally.
Almost every case starts with a call. The phone number is by far the greatest source of leads for us. Not being able to get to the phone in time has lost us many clients.
The technician is also the one who answers
Cascadia is a small lab, and the person who usually picks up is one of its technicians. That is the whole difficulty. Data recovery is careful work at the bench, and a call that rings while a drive is open on the table is a call that often doesn't get answered. In this business a missed call is rarely a message left for later. It is somebody with a dead drive calling the next lab on the list.
Before Allo, Cascadia ran its phones on Dialpad and paid a human receptionist to catch the calls the lab couldn't. Both cost more than a lab this size wanted to spend, and the receptionist didn't always pick up either.
We were paying for a human receptionist that was expensive and unreliable, so we looked for AI alternatives and found Allo.
One phone system, and an AI receptionist behind it
Cascadia moved to Allo in June 2026. The setup is deliberately simple: calls come in, and follow-up goes out by text. No call center, no complicated routing.
When someone at the lab can answer, they do. When nobody can, the Allo AI receptionist picks up, talks to the caller and takes down what they need, so a call that used to ring out now becomes a case the lab can follow up on.
How a call reaches the lab now
- 1
A client calls
Someone with a failed drive or device calls the Cascadia number.
- 2
Someone always answers
The lab picks up if it can. If everyone is busy at the bench, the Allo AI receptionist answers instead.
- 3
Nothing gets lost
Every call that was answered is in Allo, with what the caller needed.
- 4
A text follows up
The lab sends the next step by SMS from the same business number.
Allo's AI assistant has massively improved our answer rate and, as a result, how many cases we receive.
More calls answered, more cases on the bench
The big change for Cascadia is a much higher rate of answered calls. For a lab whose cases come in by phone, that is the number that matters.
So Alex's advice to another small business owner looking at their phone system is short: the Allo AI receptionist is excellent.
See the AI receptionist Cascadia uses
The Allo AI receptionist answers the calls your team can't get to, on the number you already have. And if a drive of yours ever stops spinning, you know who to call.