Missed-call text-back ($99/month, pays back week 1)
When an inbound call goes unanswered, the system immediately texts the caller. Productized SaaS (CallRail, OpenPhone, GoHighLevel, Numa). 2-hour setup. Reply rates 60-70%. For any shop missing 20+ calls per week, this is the first automation to ship. Worked example math is in our Missed-Call ROI post.
Online booking (no more phone tag)
Self-service appointment booking integrated with dispatch. Customer picks a slot, the system creates the job, dispatch assigns the tech, customer gets confirmation. Productized for trades: Housecall Pro, Jobber, ServiceTitan, FieldEdge all include this. Cost: covered in CRM subscription. Setup: 1-3 days.
Why it matters: roughly 30-40% of customers prefer to book online rather than call. Without online booking, those customers either go to a competitor that offers it or never schedule. Hard to measure the loss because the data never enters your system.
Customer reactivation (the Cassidy HVAC playbook)
Pull dormant records from CRM. Use AI to hyper-personalize each outreach against actual service history. Send SMS first, email second. Route replies to human for booking. Cassidy HVAC: 60%+ reactivation in 6 weeks. Build cost $6,000-$12,000. Payback under 90 days for any shop with 200+ dormant customers.
Full playbook in our "How to Reactivate Old Leads" post.
Review request automation
After every closed job, automatically text the customer a review request linking to your Google Business Profile. Productized SaaS (BirdEye, Podium, NiceJob, Housecall Pro built-in). $99-$299/month. The volume of new Google reviews 2-5x's within 60 days for most shops that ship this.
Why it matters: Google reviews are one of the top three local SEO ranking factors and one of the strongest trust signals in pre-call shopping. Every shop should have this.
AI invoicing assistant (HG Oil Holdings pattern)
For shops with high invoice volume from suppliers, vendors, subs. AI reads incoming invoices, extracts vendor/amount/line items, drops them into QuickBooks (or your accounting system) for review. HG Oil Holdings (oil and gas, similar back-office pattern): 75% reduction in manual handling time. Build cost $5,000-$10,000.
Less universal than #1-#4 — only relevant for shops with high enough invoice volume that data entry is a real time cost.
Anything else is usually overhyped
There's a long list of automations contractors get pitched: AI dispatch, route optimization, predictive demand forecasting, AI marketing strategists, AI chatbots. Most of these either:
- Solve a problem most shops don't actually have (you're not running 200 trucks).
- Are productized features already in your CRM (route optimization is in ServiceTitan, Housecall Pro, Jobber).
- Aren't actually AI — they're rules-based products with AI-adjacent marketing.
- Don't have the ROI math to justify the build cost at small-shop volume.