3 things you can do Monday. 1 thing to watch. 1 industry move. No software budget required for any of the first three.
Pro Tip: Find out where your jobs are going wrong before the customer does
Paste your last 10 Google reviews into ChatGPT and say: "What are the 3 most common complaints and 3 most common compliments? What should I train my technicians on based on this?" Two minutes. Most owners have never done this.
The Big One
You have no idea what your techs are saying at the door. That's where you're losing jobs.
A Virginia HVAC company called AllTech started recording their techs' on-site conversations. What they found: consistent patterns in exactly where customers said no. They fixed the script. Revenue went up. They used a tool called Rilla to do it automatically. You can do 90% of the same thing today for free. Ask your lead tech to hit record on their next 5 jobs. Upload the audio to ChatGPT or Claude. Use this prompt: "Transcribe this and tell me: where did the customer hesitate, what objections came up, and what did the tech say in response?" You'll see the same two or three moments repeating. Write a script for those moments.
Bottom line: Record your next 5 jobs with a phone voice memo. Upload to ChatGPT for analysis. Write a script for the objection patterns you find. That's a training program built from your own jobs.
This Week in AI + Trades
80% of after-hours calls go to voicemail. You're leaving $2,000 jobs on the table every night.
A Phoenix plumber was losing 90 minutes every night calling people back. He set up an AI voice agent that picks up missed calls within 60 seconds, qualifies the job, and books it. After-hours capture went from near zero to over 90%. DIY version: Turn on the missed-call SMS trigger in Jobber or HCP. Write this message: Hey, it's [Company] - sorry we missed you. What's the job about? Reply here and we'll get you booked in.
Your best customers are leaving and nobody's noticed. Here's a 10-minute fix.
The average contractor loses 36% of customers every year. Export your customer list. Filter for anyone with no booking in the last 12 months. Send this text: Hey [Name], it's [Company]. It's been a while since your last service. We're doing a 10% loyalty discount this month - want to lock something in? Paste the replies into ChatGPT to identify warm leads.
AI tool prices are about to fall. Don't lock in long contracts right now.
Nvidia announced businesses can run AI locally on their own hardware - no cloud fees. Not relevant today. But it signals where pricing is heading. The $500/month AI receptionist has cloud costs padded into it. That number will look very different in 12 months. Go monthly over annual where you can.
The biggest chip company in the world just spent three hours talking about AI for business.
Nvidia's annual conference drew 30,000 people. The entire keynote was about AI agents - software that handles multi-step business tasks without being told each step. ServiceTitan, Jobber, Housecall Pro are all building toward this. The AI features dropping in your existing tools over the next 18 months are built on exactly this infrastructure.
Weekly Build
Missed Call Auto-Response
Capture after-hours leads without an AI phone agent
Set up a missed-call SMS trigger in your CRM that texts leads within 60 seconds. Manual version costs nothing. Automated version uses Vapi for full voice agent handling.
That's your five for this week. Three things you can act on Monday, one to keep an eye on, one to understand. If you found this useful, forward it to another contractor who's curious about AI but doesn't have time to follow it. - Zac