AI for appliance repair

One truck to five

This chapter is the plan, not the practice. It is one of the two labeled exceptions to this site’s no-roadmap rule (the other is chapter 7); see PUBLIC-IDENTITY.md. Every line carries one of three words: in use, building, or planned. If a line has no word, assume planned.

What this does for a shop

Everything before this chapter is in use in my shop today. This chapter is where it goes, and I’m writing it down in public so you can watch which lines change their word and which don’t. I run one truck. The plan is five technicians on the same system: the phone agent takes the calls, the shop’s memory from chapter 5 coaches the techs who don’t have thirty years yet, and the office work stays with the AI so the people stay on the tools.

The five-tech plan: building. The charter is written, the pieces are in the chapters above, and no one has been hired. When the first tech starts, this chapter gets a date.

Outbound calls, in the order I’d build them

The phone agent answers today. Making calls is the other half, and the line can already dial out; the first outbound calls from it went out on September 17, 2026, as tests. None of the jobs below are built yet. In order:

  1. Day-before reminders: planned. The agent calls the day before, confirms the window, asks them to have the dogs put up, and tells them they’ll get a text when the tech is on the way, with a fifteen to thirty minute heads-up. The on-the-way text already exists; my CRM sends it. The call that sets it up is the new part.
  2. Estimate approvals: planned. The agent calls with the quote already on the job, walks the customer through what’s on it in plain words, and takes a yes, a no, or a question for me. Nothing gets ordered until the yes is on the job.
  3. Invoice follow-ups: planned. Unpaid invoices get a polite call on a schedule, with the amount and the ways to pay, and a rule for when to stop calling and hand it to me.

Each of those needs the same four things, and they’re the reason none of it is built yet: a list of who to call pulled from the CRM, not typed; the words in code where they can be tested, not in a prompt; a rule for when not to call, in code, that the agent can’t talk itself out of; and the recording and consent rules for outbound calls, which are stricter than for answering.

The part that needs a second check before you build it

Calling customers with an AI voice is regulated in a way that answering the phone is not. In the United States the federal robocall law treats an AI-generated voice as an artificial voice, and calls with an artificial voice to a cell phone need the customer’s prior consent. A reminder call to a customer who gave you their number for that exact appointment is on much firmer ground than anything that sells. Estimate and invoice calls sit in between. And whatever your state’s recording rule is, the agent says it’s recording at the top of every call. Before you build any of this, get your own second check from someone who does this for a living. This paragraph is what I know, and it is not that.

Hiring, and letting go

Hiring: building. The screening questions for a first tech are drafted, and the research on hiring a first employee in my state landed this week and is being checked. The plan is that the system runs the paperwork and the checklists, the phone screen is a script the agent can read, and the interview and the decision are mine.

Letting go: planned. Same shape, and the shorter list: the paperwork and the checklist live in the system, dated, so nothing is missed and nothing is done in anger. The decision is a person’s, and it always will be. I’m not writing more than that until I’ve done it once.

What goes wrong first

  1. You build the outbound call before the do-not-call rule, and it calls someone at 6 AM.
  2. The call script lives in the prompt, and one day the agent decides a customer sounded like they wanted to hear about a service plan.
  3. You hire the tech before the shop’s memory has enough tech sheets in it to coach them, and they’re on the phone with you anyway.
  4. You read this chapter in a year and half the words still say planned. If that happens, the chapter was a wish, and it should say so.

What I’d do

Build the reminder call first. It’s the smallest, the customer already expects it, it touches no money, and it teaches the outbound path before anything that does. Then estimates. Then invoices. Then hire. And change the words in this chapter as each one changes, with the date next to it.

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