Slow first replies
The firm that answers first usually wins the job, and a small team can’t answer first by hand.
Case study · AI automation · Home services
Every enquiry answered in minutes for a home-services firm
How we make sure a plumbing and heating firm answers every enquiry within minutes, books the job and follows up, without hiring an office team.
- Business type
- Home services · plumbing and heating
- Service
- AI automation
- Starts with
- A free audit
Overview.
When a boiler breaks, the customer contacts three firms and books the first one that replies. This is how we use AI automation to make that first reply come from a small firm whose engineers are all out on jobs.
The challenge.
Engineers can’t answer the phone under a sink. Enquiries arrive by phone, web form, WhatsApp and Facebook, often in the evening, and the reply comes hours later when someone gets back to the van. By then the customer has booked someone else.
Enquiries in five places
Calls, forms, WhatsApp, Facebook and email, with no single list of who is waiting.
Quotes that go cold
A quote is sent and never chased, because nobody has time to follow up.
Our approach.
Foundation first, in this order, so each step makes the next one work harder.
Workflow audit
Every step from first contact to paid invoice, mapped and timed, to find where jobs are lost.
Instant replies
A personal first reply on the channel the customer used, within minutes, day or night, following rules the owner approves.
Qualify and route
Three questions sort urgent call-outs from routine work and send each to the right person.
Booking and follow-up
Routine jobs pick a slot from the calendar; quotes get a reminder; finished jobs get a review request.
Monitor monthly
Replies and hand-overs reviewed every month, and the rules adjusted as the business changes.
What we built.
One flow for every enquiry, with a person stepping in wherever judgement is needed.
01
The enquiry flow
Every channel feeds one flow. The rules are written in plain English, approved by the owner and documented, so nothing happens that nobody agreed to.
New enquiry (form, WhatsApp, missed call)
→ personal reply in minutes, using rules you approve
→ three questions: job type, postcode, how urgent
→ urgent: notify the on-call engineer
→ routine: offer the next free slots from the calendar
→ no reply in 24 hours: one friendly follow-up
→ every step logged in the CRM02
Missed-call text-back
A missed call gets a text within a minute with a link to book or describe the problem, so the job isn’t lost while the engineer is busy.
03
CRM set up for a small team
One list of every enquiry, quote and job, with its status, so the owner can see who is waiting at a glance.
04
Quote and review follow-ups
Polite reminders on open quotes, and a review request after each finished job, sent automatically.
How we measure it.
These are the numbers in the monthly report, each measured against the baseline from the first audit.
- Time from enquiry to first reply, in minutes
- Enquiries that become booked jobs
- Leads lost to no reply (ideally none)
- Quotes accepted after an automated follow-up
- Hours of admin a week no longer done by hand
Your project could be next.
Start with a free audit, then see exactly what we’d build and in what order.
Free audit firstNo obligationPlain-English results