Here are 11 ways that service businesses can use AI to improve their productivity, increase customer satisfaction and retention, and grow their business.
Service businesses do physical work in the real world. AI, on the other hand, operates strictly in the technological ether. It can’t install a countertop, replace siding, or service an HVAC unit, so how can it support your business?
It’s this stark difference in ways of working that makes AI a valuable tool for service businesses. Your work is face-to-face and with your hands, but keeping a business afloat requires a lot of behind-the-scenes work that diverts you from your real area of expertise.
AI can take some of that other work off your (literal) hands and be a virtual helper in essential business functions like sales and marketing, customer service, and logistics.
When you can tap AI to assist in support roles, you create more time for you and your skilled team to do what you all do best: Engage with customers and deliver top-notch service.
AI can help service businesses:
Lets take a closer look at each of these ways in which AI can help service businesses improve efficiency, increase customer satisfaction, and more.
AI can be used to talk to customers and set appointments for your business. This is done by evaluating the needs of your customer and comparing your services as indicated by your business profile or the data source you've connected your AI to.
Hatch Assistant, for example, can take your leads and proactively set them into an appointments funnel for your sales rep to schedule a time with. (In the future, Hatch Assistant will be able to integrate with your calendar system and book appointments for you!)
This improves your ROI for both your AI and whatever lead generator your business uses. With the help of AI tools turning more leads into appointments and connecting leads to reps who can schedule time for your customers, you can quickly increase your returns on software investments.
Curious about what Hatch Assistant looks like for your customers? Give it a try!
Google’s suite of advertising products is incredibly effective in connecting new customers with home service providers. One analysis found that when Local Services Ads are present in search results, they receive 25.3% of all clicks.
Google has integrated AI throughout its ad platform to connect businesses with the right audience at the right time. AI assists with ad placement, bidding, and more.
And now, it can take a more active role in the creative process. Google recently announced a new AI chat feature to create visuals and copy for your Google Ads.
Simply share some existing marketing materials with the AI chat tool, and it will generate suggested keywords, descriptions, copy, and images.
Minor tweaks to your sales process can make a big difference for your business. Research shows that a robust codified approach to pipeline management can positively impact growth and revenues.
The faster and more efficiently you can move prospective customers from that first outreach to a purchase decision, the more deals you close–and the more space you create for your team to nurture even more prospects!
AI can support a variety of sales-focused initiatives. It can analyze data to identify your most promising leads. It can also crunch the numbers on your close rate and highlight weak spots within your process.
On the customer-facing side, AI can automate essential prospect communications. You’re 900% more likely to hear back if you contact a lead within five minutes of their first outreach. AI can help ensure you’re always the first business to respond to inquiries.
Identifying the optimal pricing structure for your services is one way to stay competitive in a crowded marketplace. But in a field like construction, where multiple variables impact your operating costs and your competitors’ pricing strategies aren’t publicly available, it can be difficult to find your sweet spot.
AI tools can narrow it down. Settling on a price that works for you and your customers is often a matter of diving into data. Analyzing stats like:
Will help you home in on the right approach. AI can be a fantastic aid in crunching numbers and generating visuals like charts and graphs–critical elements of the data-driven decision-making process.
The proposal and estimate stage is complicated. You need to understand a project’s true scope to quote it accurately. Then, you need to communicate your proposal in an elegant, digestible format.
AI can support both sides of the equation. New tools are entering the market that can automatically scan and measure spaces, making it easier for service businesses to estimate labor and materials costs.
ChatGPT’s outline goes on to include headers for design concept, budget, timeline, payment schedule, “why choose us,” client responsibilities, and next steps.
Once you understand the project’s scope, generative AI tools (like ChatGPT) can help you draft cogent written proposals or create impactful visual presentations. While an AI tool can’t write the entire proposal, it can provide a template outlining the sections to include in your document.
If you're looking for help in this area, you might also be interested in our service contract templates:
Customer communication is essential in the construction industry. You’re going into people’s homes, and they want to feel confident that you’re doing the work correctly.
If you already have a customer service team, they may worry that AI is here to replace them. Not so! The best way to leverage AI in your customer service work is by asking it to support and enhance the efforts of your human team.
Far from making humans obsolete, experts contend that generative AI tools will automate the repetitive tasks that pull your customer service team away from face-to-face client engagement.
AI can help with tasks like:
A multi-faceted marketing strategy is essential to growing a business. A killer website, enticing social media channels, and attention-grabbing ads (whether digital or physical) are vital tactics in a successful strategy.
But to produce all of the necessary marketing outputs–website copy, blog posts, social content, email newsletters, Google ads, printed collateral, and more–takes time and expertise.
AI can accelerate the process and elevate the quality of your output. You might:
Want even more suggestions? Check out our post on 13 free AI tools to try. Many of them can assist with marketing tasks!
When your team is out doing service calls, an inefficient route means less money earned on jobs and more money spent on gas and paying employees to sit in traffic.
With the explosion of AI, we’re seeing many companies crop up that optimize routing and dispatching. These tools:
Ensure every client gets the prompt service they expect while optimizing your team’s day!
Dispatch is one of many use cases for AI. Image source
Just because AI doesn’t have hands doesn’t mean it can’t support your technicians at the job site.
The idea of the Internet of Things (IoT) is not new, but new AI innovations are enhancing it further. The IoT is what powers smart devices. Any two real-world objects that share data and interact in the cloud are part of the IoT. (Like our ServiceTitan + Hatch integration, for example).
AI is enhancing sensors in the IoT and making it easier for service businesses to optimize system performance and predict issues before they happen. If something does go awry, AI is there to review the data logged in the system, identify likely causes of the issue, and offer suggested fixes to your human team.
When you’re working on a more complex project, perhaps one that involves other professionals and subcontractors, it doesn’t take long for project management to get unwieldy.
An AI-enhanced project management tool can get everyone on the same page and keep projects on track. Tools like ClickUp are integrating AI features to adjust dependencies based on progress, automatically remind team members about upcoming deadlines, and more.
When you have a shared source of truth for your team, things don’t fall through the cracks, and anyone is empowered to provide your client with an accurate update on the project.
Clients of service businesses may struggle to communicate their wants and visualize a project’s end result, especially if they’re not working with an interior design team.
You can introduce these clients to an interior design app that lets them build an AI-enhanced 3D model of the space. They can virtually select everything from tiles and paint color to furnishings and decor. If they realize the backsplash tile they loved as a 5”x 5” physical sample looks overwhelming in the virtual kitchen, you can course-correct before materials are ordered and installed.
They may not all apply to your business, but chances are that a handful of these tools could help. When you can remove rote, low-value tasks from someone’s plate, you free them up to focus on more critical work and deliver better results for your clients.
AI may be able to assist as you:
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