About High Ground Service Pros
High Ground Service Pros is a multi-trade home services company operating across HVAC, plumbing, and electrical in New Jersey, New Hampshire, and Maine. Led by CEO Rich Jordan, the company grew from 2 people to approximately 150 employees in five years.
As Rich describes it: "Our mission is to give the trades a good home, provide a workplace where tradesmen and women can take pride in their work, take care of customers, and work on a great team that they enjoy coming to every day."
The problem
High Ground was scaling fast, and the problems were stacking up.
Rising costs and complexity. CSR headcount was growing linearly with revenue, which meant more hiring, more training, and more management overhead, all for an indirect cost center. A higher headcount also made it harder to maintain consistency and service quality across the team.
Most calls aren't even leads. In home services, only one out of every four or five inbound calls is actually a lead. The other 75–80% are status checks, vendor calls, spam, and general inquiries that still consume CSR time and attention.
"The 75 to 80% of calls that are not leads for service take up a ton of the CSR's time."
Abandoned calls weren't budging. Even after adding more CSRs, the abandoned call rate stayed stuck at around 10%. High Ground had been working for years to get it below 4%, which they considered acceptable, but adding people wasn't solving it.
"Even though we were adding more CSRs, we only got the abandoned call rate to where we wanted it when we actually brought AI onto the phones."
CSR burnout. When every call that reaches a human is an escalation or an upset customer, the job gets harder and less pleasant, leading to turnover and constant retraining.
Fragmented tools. High Ground had already started experimenting with voice AI from other providers, but running a separate voice AI tool alongside a separate SMS tool created its own complexity. There was no shared context, no shared interface, and no single place to manage it all.
The solution
High Ground took a phased approach to rolling out Hatch AI Voice on inbound calls.
Phase 1: Backend coverage (overflow and after-hours)
Rather than going all-in, High Ground started by routing calls to AI only when humans didn't answer, to replace voicemail, not CSRs.
- Overflow calls after 15–20 seconds went to AI instead of voicemail
- After-hours and weekend calls were handled by AI
- The team monitored every call and continuously updated the knowledge base
"It can be kind of scary to put AI on your phones. Phone answering is a critical part of a home service business. We felt better about that risk because we were going to miss the call anyway."
Phase 2: Gradual frontline rollout
Once voice AI improved enough, High Ground moved it to 100% of inbound calls, but did it gradually:
- One day a week: AI handles all calls. CSRs off the phones. Team reviews every booking and non-booked lead.
- Two days a week: Same process, more volume, more refinement.
- Five days a week: AI now answers every inbound call. If needed, AI escalates to CSRs with a live call summary so customers don't repeat themselves.
How the system flows today
- Calls hit ServiceTitan first
- ServiceTitan forwards to Hatch
- Hatch answers, books directly into ServiceTitan, or escalates to humans
- High Ground created a "Hatch AI" employee in ServiceTitan for reporting parity
"Inbound call comes in, goes to AI. AI is able to handle it, book the call for a job, or provide any context the customer is asking for. For escalations, like an upset customer or some sort of issue that needs to be handled, it escalates to a CSR."
Outbound campaigns across the customer journey
In addition to voice AI on inbound calls, High Ground runs outbound campaigns across the full customer journey:
- Speed to lead: Outreach to new leads to increase booking rates
- Estimate follow-up: Personalized follow-up on estimates to increase close rates
- Lead nurture: Re-engagement of aged leads and canceled appointments to maximize conversion
- Customer recontact: Outreach to past customers and members to promote memberships and recurring services
- Marketing blasts: One-to-many outreach to drive seasonal demand and fill the schedule
When a customer responds, the AI agent engages, qualifies, and moves the conversation toward a booked appointment.
The impact has shown up across every part of the operation, from call handling to revenue to team experience.
Conversion impact
Abandoned call rate. After years of trying to push it below 4%, adding more CSRs still wasn't getting it done. With Hatch AI on the phones, it dropped to 2%.
"Our abandoned call rate with Hatch voice AI is 2%. I was just looking at the data earlier this morning."
Booking performance. Hatch AI is outperforming the industry standard on bookable leads.
"An average call center will book like 65% of calls, and right now Hatch AI is booking at 81% for us."
Recovered leads. High Ground is also capturing revenue from calls that would have previously gone unanswered entirely.
"Just over the last month, we booked 123 leads that we otherwise would not have answered with Hatch AI. That's real revenue on the board."
Revenue impact
Beyond inbound call handling, the outbound SMS campaigns have become a significant revenue driver.
"On the outbound SMS efforts, we're generating at least $100,000 a month off of those SMS broadcasts, sometimes as much as $250,000 a month."
Operational cost savings
Rather than cutting headcount, High Ground took a different approach. AI absorbed the volume growth that would have required new hires, saving an estimated $250K–$300K per year.
"We have not had to reduce headcount in the call center because we brought on AI. What it's allowed us to do is just really invest in the people that we have and carry that team forward as we grow, as opposed to having to add a new CSR every month as we grow."
That investment in existing people has meant new roles, new responsibilities, and raises.
"We've actually been able to give people raises or give them increased responsibility outside of just answering the phone and booking jobs."
Customer and CSR experience
Customers have responded better than expected. Rather than frustration, the reaction has been curiosity.
"Surprisingly, customers have been amused or intrigued. They're like, 'wow, that was really good, that's better than I expected.'"
CSRs have benefited too. With AI handling the bulk of volume, the calls that do reach humans are more manageable, and CSRs have time to do the work they couldn't before.
"They have the time now to take the notes on the job that they wish they could have taken, do the wrap-up. It's just a more pleasant experience."
Favorite features
Rich highlighted transparency and control as the key differentiators:
- Self-service knowledge base: The team can edit the AI's knowledge base directly and see changes on the next call. No tickets, no waiting on support.
"Hatch, for lack of a better term, is like open source on the prompting. If we see something weird happen on the phone, we can go in, adjust its knowledge base, adjust its script, and see that change on the very next call."
- Warm transfers with live context: When a customer needs a human, they don't have to hang up and wait for a callback. AI transfers them on the same call, briefing the CSR with a live summary so nothing gets repeated.
- Single platform: Voice, SMS, and email for both humans and AI, all in one interface with shared context, rather than switching between siloed tools.
- Spam call filtering: Hatch automatically filters spam and quick-hangup calls, keeping CSR queues clean and ServiceTitan data accurate.
"For folks like us that are watching phone performance closely, our ability to actually have our hand on the tools — for me, that was a huge selling point."
For a full technical breakdown, check out the High Ground technical explainer.
The bottom line
High Ground's approach to AI wasn't a big bang. It was methodical: start with overflow, build confidence, expand gradually, and invest in the people you already have. The result is a leaner, more capable operation that books more leads, saves $250K–$300K a year, and generates six figures a month from outbound campaigns.
"For anyone thinking about implementing AI on their phones, I would encourage the way we went about it, where you have AI roll in lieu of voicemail. You're just missing less calls, actually monetizing from the calls that you would have otherwise missed."
