TL;DR (too long, didn't read)
FrontPorch was losing a third to half of its inbound vendor calls to voicemail, most of them after hours. We built an AI coordinator that answers at any hour, handles what a sales coordinator would, and books straight onto rep calendars. Live in under a week, and more than 20 of the first 60-odd calls became appointments that used to be voicemails.
The problem
FrontPorch sells service businesses a spot as the preferred provider in their own neighborhood. Pest control, HVAC, roofing, chiropractors, personal trainers, anyone who sells a service to a household. Most of them are working a job during the hours a sales rep is at a desk.
So they called at seven at night. They called Saturday. Under a hundred calls a month came into that line, and a third to half of them never reached a person.
Monday, a rep opened a stack of voicemails from Friday and started dialing back. Most went unanswered. The owner was on a job again.
Both sides only had time to talk when the other one didn't.
What we built
An AI coordinator that answers the vendor line at any hour and picks up whatever a rep doesn't.
- Answers what a prospective vendor actually asks: what the listing includes, how a community gets assigned, what it costs, how fast they'd go live.
- Books on a rep's calendar during the call, against real availability. The caller hangs up with a time, not a promise.
- Routes the calls that need a person, with the detail attached instead of a name and a number.
- Writes down every call.
What changed
Sales: A rep used to reconstruct what a caller wanted from thirty seconds of voicemail, then spend the morning chasing him. Now the qualifying questions are answered and the time is on the calendar before the rep hears about it.
Ops: After-hours calls were a leak nobody owned, because owning it meant paying a person to sit on a phone at eight on a Tuesday. Coverage runs the clock now. A Friday-evening call stops waiting until Monday.
Every call comes back as a written record, so a rep can read what the agent promised before picking up the account.
The efficiency math
The numbers, and where each one came from:
- A third to half of inbound calls never reached a person. Measured on their line: under a hundred calls a month, 30 to 50 of them going to voicemail. That gap is what the build was pointed at.
- All of them get answered now. Not an estimate of coverage. It is the coverage. The agent picks up daytime overflow and everything after hours.
- More than 20 of the first 60-plus calls became appointments. Measured. Roughly one in three calls the agent handled produced a booked meeting, drawn from the pool that used to go to voicemail.
- What we won't claim: the close rate on those meetings. Nobody measured whether a vendor the agent booked signs at the same rate as one a rep booked live. It may be lower. A booked appointment still starts ahead of a voicemail.