6 REAL Reasons Why You Need A Mobile-Optimized Website
We’ve all heard the saying, “If you build it, they will come.” But what about that other saying: “If you build it right, they&...
Most home service businesses pour money into marketing, but still lose tens of thousands in revenue every year because they miss calls, respond too slowly, or simply cannot keep up with the volume of leads. In a world where 78% of customers go with the first company that answers the phone, being available 24/7 is no longer a luxury, it is a competitive necessity.
John Cody, founder of Trailblaze AI and Social Spike, has helped clients add over $20 million in new revenue by solving this exact problem. His journey from building nutrition apps to launching an agency just before COVID, and then developing AI phone and text assistants, is a blueprint for how to turn missed opportunities into booked appointments and real growth.
This show is sponsored by Blue Crocus Solutions, a web design and SEO agency focused on helping home service companies grow.
• Most businesses leave six figures on the table by missing calls or responding too slowly
• AI phone and text assistants can answer, qualify, and book leads 24/7, capturing up to 60% more conversions after hours
• Transparency, telling callers they are speaking with AI, builds trust and improves customer experience
• AI-driven SEO research, including Reddit scraping and competitor review analysis, uncovers real pain points and content opportunities
• Being available 24/7 not only wins more leads, but also boosts Google My Business rankings and local SEO
Most business owners focus on getting more leads, but the real money is in capturing and converting the ones you already have. If you are missing calls, letting web forms sit for hours, or failing to respond after hours, you are losing business to competitors who answer first. John Cody’s agency discovered that even their most successful marketing clients were leaving tens of thousands, sometimes six figures, on the table simply because they could not answer the phone or respond to inquiries fast enough. In many cases, customers would call ten different companies before anyone picked up.
To see how much money you are leaving on the table, start by tracking every missed call, voicemail, and web form that does not get a response within five minutes. Calculate your average sale value and conversion rate, then multiply by the number of missed opportunities each month. The numbers are often staggering. The cost of missed calls is not just lost revenue. It is wasted marketing spend, lower customer satisfaction, and a reputation for being unresponsive.
“They’re just happy that someone picked up the phone. I called 10 different people before someone actually picked up the phone.” – John Cody
The biggest bottleneck for most growing service businesses is not marketing, it is lead response. As your marketing improves, your ability to handle the influx of leads becomes the limiting factor. Calls go unanswered, web forms sit idle, and after-hours inquiries are lost. AI phone and text assistants solve this problem by answering calls, qualifying prospects, and booking appointments directly into your calendar, all day and all night.
A well-designed AI assistant can handle your main phone line, after-hours calls, web chats, and text messages. It introduces itself as your company’s AI helper, asks open-ended questions, answers FAQs, and books appointments. If the question is too complex, it offers to have a human follow up the next day. The AI is trained on your website, FAQs, and unique selling points, so it can answer questions and guide prospects through the sales process just like a real team member.
“We wanted to build a software or SaaS that could handle the phone calls, because we noticed that was the biggest problem our clients were having. It was just the growth, the influx and not being able to handle it.” – John Cody
The effectiveness of your AI assistant depends on the quality of its knowledge base. Start by pulling information from your website, service pages, FAQs, and real customer questions. Include answers to common objections, details about your process, and anything that helps prospects feel confident in booking with you. The more detailed and specific your knowledge base, the better your AI will perform.
Go beyond the basics. Use AI to research competitors’ websites, service pages, and reviews. Identify what customers love and hate about other providers, then address those pain points directly in your website copy and FAQs. Scrape Reddit and other forums for real user questions and pain points. AI can process thousands of posts in minutes, giving you a gold mine of content ideas and long-tail keywords.
Test your AI assistant by calling your own number after hours, submitting a form, and chatting on your website. Make sure it can handle the most common questions and guide prospects to the next step. Ask your team to try it and give feedback. Refine the scripts and responses until the experience feels seamless and helpful.
“The biggest thing that AI really helps with is gathering and sourcing information in data. The old school way of doing a lot of the content creation was, you’d have to go and research every competitor in depth, look at what they’re doing. It could take countless hours per article just to try to gather that information.” – John Cody
One of the most common concerns about AI assistants is whether customers will feel tricked or frustrated. The answer is to always be transparent. The AI introduces itself as an assistant, sets expectations, and offers to connect the caller with a human if needed. Most customers are not looking for a perfect human imitation, they just want their questions answered and their problems solved. In fact, many are relieved to get a quick, helpful response, especially after calling multiple competitors who never answer.
Train your AI to use friendly, conversational language. Program it to say things like, “Hi, this is Michelle, the AI assistant for John’s Junk Removal. How can I help you today?” If the AI gets stumped, have it say, “Let me get a team member to follow up with you as soon as possible.” Transparency builds trust and avoids the “uncanny valley” effect, where AI that pretends to be human can feel creepy or deceptive.
“From what our own experience dealing a lot with the trades businesses in this space, they’re just happy that someone picked up the phone on the first go.” – John Cody
Up to 60% of conversions happen after traditional business hours. People are busy during the day and often do not have time to call until they are home, making dinner, or finally have a moment to think. If your business is not available to answer those calls, you are missing out on the majority of your best leads.
Set your AI assistant to answer calls and respond to web chats after hours, on weekends, and during holidays. Track how many new leads and appointments come in outside of your normal business hours. Many businesses see a 25-30% increase in booked appointments just by being available when competitors are closed.
This is not just about convenience—it is about freedom. Business owners can go to their kids’ games, take vacations, or focus on other priorities, knowing that every call and inquiry is being handled professionally and promptly. You can also use the AI to send follow-up texts or emails to missed calls, increasing your chances of converting every lead.
“I would say about, I, I close to 60% were after hours. And you know, six o’clock onwards, some nine o’clock, like, I mean, it was kinda shocking. But really when you think about it, so many people are working all day. They don’t have time during the day to contact you guys and figure, especially the home service type of calls.” – John Cody
AI is not just for answering calls. Use it to supercharge your SEO and content strategy. Use AI to research competitors’ websites, service pages, and reviews. Identify what customers love and hate about other providers, then address those pain points directly in your website copy and FAQs. Scrape Reddit and other forums for real user questions and pain points. AI can process thousands of posts in minutes, giving you a gold mine of content ideas and long-tail keywords.
Build out your website with detailed FAQs, service pages, and blog posts that answer every question a prospect might have. The more helpful and authoritative your content, the more likely you are to rank in both traditional search and AI-powered answer engines. Use AI to analyze your own reviews and customer feedback to spot trends, recurring questions, and opportunities for improvement.
For example, if you notice that customers consistently complain about slow response times with your competitors, highlight your 24/7 availability and fast response in your content. If Reddit users are asking about specific pricing or service details, create a blog post or FAQ that answers those questions in detail.
“The biggest thing that AI really helps with is gathering and sourcing information in data.” – John Cody
Being available around the clock is not just good for customers—it is also a powerful SEO advantage. When your business can answer calls and chats 24/7, you can update your Google My Business profile to reflect longer hours, which can improve your map rankings and visibility. Google is also rolling out features that allow its own AI to call businesses and book appointments, so being ready for AI-to-AI communication is the next frontier.
Add a chat widget to your website to keep visitors engaged longer, which sends positive signals to search engines. Every answered call, every booked appointment, and every helpful chat is another data point that tells Google your business is active, responsive, and trustworthy.
Make sure your AI assistant is integrated with your calendar, CRM, and other business systems. Test it regularly, update your knowledge base, and stay on top of new features and best practices. The technology is easier and more affordable than ever, and the businesses that move first will capture the lion’s share of new opportunities.
“You have someone that can answer the phone twenty four seven, you’re open technically 24 7. You can have that altered in your Google My Business, which means when you would’ve normally closed at five or six, and maybe your map ranking goes down slightly during that, you know, closed period, you now can be open the whole time and it might keep you in that position of where you know you’re rocking it.” – John Cody
To maximize the value of your AI assistant, integrate it with your calendar, CRM, and team communication tools. This allows the AI to book appointments directly into your calendar, reducing double-bookings and missed meetings. Log every call, chat, and text in your CRM for easy follow-up and reporting. Notify your team when a hot lead comes in or when a human follow-up is needed. Send automated reminders and confirmations to prospects and customers.
Set up workflows so that when the AI qualifies a lead, it can automatically assign it to the right team member, send a follow-up email, or trigger a task in your project management system. Review your lead pipeline weekly to spot bottlenecks and optimize your process.
“If you can have someone taking your calls and answering people’s questions that a person is gonna be answering the same questions on the call and whether they’re just qualifying ’em, I imagine you probably process it out, so if they get stumped, it’s like, Hey, let me hook you up with someone, or get you on the schedule, or I’ll get someone to call you back immediately, or whatever.” – John Cody
The best businesses treat lead response and conversion as a science, not a guessing game. Use analytics and reporting to track the number of calls, chats, and texts handled by the AI, response times for every channel, conversion rates for after-hours and weekend leads, appointment bookings and show rates, and customer satisfaction and feedback.
Set up dashboards to monitor your KPIs and review them weekly with your team. Use the data to identify trends, spot problems, and test new ideas. For example, if you notice that most missed calls happen during lunch hours, adjust your staffing or AI coverage. If certain questions keep coming up, add them to your knowledge base or website FAQs.
Continuously refine your scripts, knowledge base, and workflows based on real-world results. The goal is to create a seamless, high-converting experience for every prospect, every time.
“We realized that’s a huge thing. So it, it kind of fills that gap too. But just to, like I said, kind the, those that don’t wanna jump in full time, we have those measures in place where it might just be after hours and then at some point maybe you’re like, you know what? Whole thing. Just do it.” – John Cody
We are at a new inflection point in business technology. Soon, Google’s AI will be calling your business’s AI to book appointments, ask questions, and handle transactions. The companies that embrace this shift now will have a massive head start, while those who wait will be left behind.
Make sure your AI assistant is ready for AI-to-AI communication by keeping your knowledge base up to date, integrating with your booking and CRM systems, and testing regularly. Stay informed about new features and best practices, and be ready to adapt as the technology evolves.
“Very soon, AI wants talking to Google’s AI is gonna be talking to our AI and having those conversations. You know, we’re at another inflection point here in history where. Soon everybody’s gonna have these, and if you don’t have ’em, you’re gonna be left behind.” – John Cody
Trailblaze AI offers a simple setup process, with a one-time design and onboarding fee and a low monthly cost for ongoing service. The system can handle both phone and text inquiries, integrate with Google Calendar for appointment booking, and be customized for your business’s unique needs. You can try it live at chat.trailblazeai.ca.
Whether you want to cover after-hours calls, add a chat widget to your website, or go fully 24/7, Trailblaze AI gives you the flexibility to start where you are and scale as you grow. The result is more leads captured, more appointments booked, and more freedom for you and your team.
“If you can have someone taking your calls and answering people’s questions that a person is gonna be answering the same questions on the call and whether they’re just qualifying ’em, I imagine you probably process it out, so if they get stumped, it’s like, Hey, let me hook you up with someone, or get you on the schedule, or I’ll get someone to call you back immediately, or whatever.” – John Cody
Want to see how AI can help your business capture more leads and book more appointments?
This Podcast is sponsored by Blue Crocus Solutions, a marketing agency offering website design, branding, AEO (Answer Engine Optimization), and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) services for Home Service businesses.
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