How I Finally Delegated Estimating (Without Hiring Another Person)
For years, estimating was the one thing I couldn’t take off my plate. We changed the org chart. We hired roles. Delegated everything we could. But estimating? That was always me. Even if I wasn’t doing anything else in the business... I was still stuck quoting jobs. It was the bottleneck I couldn’t fix—until now. I built a ChatGPT-powered estimator trained with my systems, my pricing, and my language. It asks the right questions, runs the math, and delivers estimates like I would—without me being involved. Now I’m no longer the bottleneck. Customers get quick answers. I get my evenings and weekends back. Want to build your own? Map out your estimating logic. Plug it into ChatGPT. Test and refine. If you're stuck working all day and doing estimates at night and on Saturdays anddddd, sometimes even Sunday mornings when everyone's sleeping—this might be your way out. Heres my direct Zoom link if you'd like to learn more: https://calendly.com/ryaan-besthandymancompany/bh-plan-phone-consultation
🚨FEATURE REQUEST: Tiered Pricing on Products & Services 🚨
Hey Jobber Team and Fellow Pros, Let’s talk about a feature that could seriously boost close rates and make Jobber even more competitive for all of us who quote services, manage inventory, and work in price-sensitive markets. What we need: Tiered Pricing on Products and Services — customizable pricing where the unit cost automatically adjusts based on quantity ordered. Why this matters: We already price materials like mulch, sod, and stone this way in real life. It would speed up quoting, improve estimate accuracy, and help us win more jobs. It mirrors how customers expect to see pricing — more they buy, less they pay per unit. How it would work: Let users define pricing tiers for any product/service: 1–10 units = $10/unit 11–50 units = $8/unit 51+ units = $6/unit These price breaks should auto-calculate during estimate creation and carry through to invoicing. Why Jobber Should Care: Makes Jobber more competitive vs. other platforms offering advanced pricing features. Helps your users convert more jobs = more usage and more loyalty to Jobber. Reflects real-world pricing logic we already use outside the app. If you'd use this — drop a comment or like to help get this in front of Jobber’s dev team. Let’s get this done together!What has improved customer retention the most in your business?
One thing I underestimated early on was how much customers pay attention to consistency. I’ve had customers mention things I never thought they were noticing: whether the gate was fully latched whether we showed up around the same time how quickly we responded to a text whether communication felt organized That we would clean up some trash debris in the yard or bring their garbage cans from the curb A lot of customer trust gets built in the small operational details. For us, a few things helped reduce complaints and cancellations: sending “on the way” texts before arrival taking gate photos after service documenting issues immediately instead of waiting in our Job Forms having clear onboarding expectations from the start We also stopped assuming customers understood our process automatically. Most don’t. Any time confusion showed up repeatedly, we tightened the process around it. I’m curious what other owners have noticed. What specific change improved retention or customer trust the most in your business?
Best way to handle inbound calls to company line?
Curious yalls thoughts. Looking to not just grow, looking to scale and improve / continue to implement systems. Currently have myself, 1 outside sales rep, and field labor crew (fence install company) current process: customer calls into company # (my cell phone). I try to answer as if it were an office line to answer asap. From that, I confirm I can Text them, I then send a request form via jobber that has basic info / few questions to answer. If / when they fill it out, I add to the schedule for a confirmed day / time to quote on site. etc…… I feel this part is a lot of back and forth, and until I have an in house admin office worker that can answer these calls the first ring - I won’t be able to truly grow / stay efficient. (If I’m tied up, I don’t like calling them back 2 hours later, etc) but also - I love having them fill out the form bc the way I have questions on it, it turns it from a warm lead, to a warmer lead. Any way to streamline this, get more efficient, improve this current process? ANY thoughts or advice - real thankful.Are you using AI in your business yet or still “just curious”?
Where are you at with AI right now? A) Not using it at all B) Using it for basic stuff (e.g., emails, replies) C) Using it for ops (e.g., estimating, training, reporting) D) “We run everything through AI” level—share below how you’re using it! In this episode of Masters of Home Service, PhilRisher and ryaantuttle share real-world ways home service pros are using AI to: Speed up estimating and hiring processes Create ready-to-use marketing content Prep for the shift from traditional SEO to AEO and GEO Want to put these tips into action? Download our free AI starter toolkit (includes scripts and pro tips). Never miss an episode of Masters of Home Service. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
42% of home services companies we scanned have flagged caller ID numbers
We have been checking the phone lines of home services companies across 15 metros — Phoenix, Dallas, Houston, Tampa, Atlanta, Miami, Orlando, Charlotte, Nashville, Denver and others. The result surprised us: 42 percent run their main business line on non-fixed VoIP. That is the same number category robocallers use, and it is the category carrier spam filters downgrade most aggressively on caller ID. What that means in practice: when your CSR calls back a lead you paid $80-300 for, there is a real chance the homeowner's phone shows "Suspected Spam" or just an unknown number. They do not pick up. You assume the lead went cold. Most owners have never checked this because there is no dashboard for it. The carriers do not notify you. If you want to know what your own line is registered as, comment or DM me and I will run the lookup. Takes two minutes, free, no strings. I will just tell you what category your number is in and what that means.When should you stop saying yes to every customer?
In the beginning of my business, I said yes to almost everyone. If someone was 1+ hour away and wanted service, I would try to make it work. At that stage, every customer felt important. I wanted the revenue. I wanted the reviews. I wanted the experience. I wanted proof that people would actually pay for the service. That helped us get started, but it also created problems later. After a while, the drive time started catching up with us. Too much windshield time. Too many miles on the vehicles. Too much energy spent servicing areas where we were not gaining any real density. The crazy part is that some of those customers looked profitable on paper. But once you added the drive time, route disruption, fuel, vehicle wear, and the fact that we couldn’t build enough customers around them, those stops did not make as much sense as I wanted them to. Eventually I noticed most of our best customers were coming from specific cities in our service area. That changed how I looked at growth. Instead of trying to serve everywhere, we started focusing more of our advertising and energy into our top 7 most profitable cities. That helped us build tighter routes, reduce drive time, and make the day more efficient for our technicians. Another thing I had to learn was that not every customer who is willing to pay is a good fit for the way the business needs to operate. For us, a good example was service frequency. We used to allow more flexibility with every other week and monthly service. The issue was usually customers with 3 or 4+ dogs choosing the lowest frequency possible. Even when those jobs were priced correctly, they could still take 30–45+ minutes per visit. That created a capacity problem. Our technicians could spend almost an hour in one yard, or they could service multiple weekly customers in that same amount of time. So we changed the offer. We removed monthly service as an option. We also stopped offering every other week service to customers with 3+ dogs. If someone has 3 or more dogs, they need weekly service. That change made the routes cleaner, reduced heavy yards, and helped technicians get in and out more consistently. It also forced us to stop building the business around customers who only wanted the bare minimum version of the service. That was a hard shift mentally. Because early on, saying yes feels like growth. Later, too many bad-fit yeses create operational drag. When did you realize it was time to stop saying yes to every customer? Was it based on service area, pricing, job type, customer behavior, or something else?What tech tool actually made your team more productive?
What’s something that genuinely saved time or made your team better? Did it help with quoting? Payments? Share your take below. In this episode of Masters of Home Service, ryaantuttle and Rob Soper get into: Why many owners are still stuck with manual processes How tech can act like extra admin (without hiring) Simple ways to start using tech without overhauling everything Never miss an episode of Masters of Home Service. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
