Case study · Trades & Construction
Ptarmigan Plumbing & Heating
The furnace dies at 9pm and three heating companies all go to voicemail. Here's the exact stack we'd build — and the sample artifact it produces.
Golden · Deep winter · Illustrative composite — the numbers are typical-pattern estimates, not measured results.
Illustrative scenario. Ptarmigan Plumbing & Heating is a fictional composite of typical plumbing, heating and HVAC operations in the Golden area — not a client account. The numbers are estimates from typical patterns; your audit produces real ones. Founding-client case studies will replace these as they complete.
The day this happens
Voicemail loses at minus twenty
It's –22 on a Tuesday night in January in Golden and a family's furnace has just died with the kids already in bed. They do what everyone does — start down the list of local heating companies, calling one after another. Ptarmigan is on that list, and Ptarmigan is exactly the shop that could take the job. But it's one man, and right now Cal is either asleep after a fourteen-hour day or already elbow-deep in someone else's boiler. The call goes to voicemail.
By the time he plays the message back over breakfast, the family has driven to a motel or found whoever happened to pick up at 9:15. The after-hours, minus-twenty, highest-value job of the week went to whoever answered — and it wasn't him. Meanwhile the routine stuff leaks out the same crack: the "can I get a quote for a spring hot-water-tank swap" calls that ring while he's under a sink and never get returned.
And there's a quieter leak at the other end of the day. When Cal finishes a job and finds extra work — a seized shutoff, a cracked fitting he replaced on the spot — he scrawls it on a carbon ticket in the truck, means to add it to the invoice, and half the time it never makes it. The work got done. The billing didn't.
What we built
The second brain for this business.
The trades bundle: the phone that never sleeps, plus the automation that stops both the emergency jobs and the extra-work dollars from slipping away. It's the same shape as our AI for trades build.
- AI Receptionist — answers every call, day or night. A genuine no-heat emergency gets Cal a callback in minutes; a routine quote gets booked into next week without waking anyone.
- Workflow Automation — turns a photo of a scrawled truck ticket into a clean invoice line, and chases the quotes that used to go cold with polite 48-hour and 7-day nudges.
The artifact
The artifact: the after-hours line, and a truck-cab scrawl that becomes a billed line
The star of the study — the same standard as the AI Receptionist sample call, written out line by line.
The scrawl
"218 Selkirk — ignitor gone, swapped. main shutoff seized, replaced ¾ gate valve + 2× nipples. +1.25 hr. burner cover gasket cracked, temp fix, ORDER gasket. tell them re filter — filthy"
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Job | #4471 — 218 Selkirk Ave, no-heat callout |
| Primary repair | Furnace ignitor — replaced |
| Extra work 1 | Seized main shutoff → replaced ¾" gate valve + 2× nipples |
| Extra work 2 | Cracked burner-cover gasket → temporary fix; gasket on order |
| Added labour | 1.25 hr |
| Parts to bill | ¾" gate valve, 2× nipples (truck stock) |
| Follow-ups flagged | order gasket · book return fit · advise customer to change filter |
| Status | ⏸ Draft — awaiting Cal's tap-to-approve |
The outcome
What changes — in typical-pattern estimates.
Illustrative outcomes — typical-pattern estimates, not guarantees or a promise about your shop.
| Before | After (typical-pattern estimate) |
|---|---|
| After-hours emergency calls reaching Cal | voicemail, found at breakfast → a callback within minutes |
| Routine quotes booked without interrupting a job | rarely → most of them |
| Extra-work tickets that make it onto an invoice | ~half → nearly all |
| Open quotes chased to a yes or no | none → automatic 48-hour and 7-day nudges |
Now the minus-twenty furnace call is Cal's job, not the next shop's — and the extra hour of work he did at 9pm actually shows up on the invoice, because a photo from the truck is all it takes to capture it.
Transparent pricing
What it costs to start.
The trades bundle starts at $3,500 for the AI Receptionist and $2,500 for Workflow Automation (the text-back and quote-chasing), fixed-quoted as one build after a free call. Every build requires a Care Plan, from $299/mo — voice lines usually sit on Growth so the after-hours flow stays well-tuned.
Is it worth it for your business? Let's find out — free.
We'll estimate what it'd recover for your shop, using your numbers.
Prefer to talk now? Call (236) 837-3550 — a real BC-based human picks up. We reply within one business day, usually faster.