Nine low-cost ways a service business can use AI this week
The best place to start with AI is the work you already do every week. Pick the tasks that eat time, then try a general tool like ChatGPT or Claude on them. No developers and no new software purchases.
- Write your customer FAQs. List the ten questions you get most, and have AI draft clear answers in your words. Put them on your website and keep them by the phone.
- Draft follow-up messages. Ask for short, friendly messages for after an estimate, after a job, and for a customer who went quiet. Edit them once and reuse them.
- Reply to reviews. Paste in a review and ask for a two-line reply that thanks the customer and names the job.
- Plan a season's marketing. Give it your services, your area and the time of year, and ask for a simple month-by-month plan.
- Turn notes into social posts. Describe a job you just finished and ask for a short post about it. Add a photo.
- Summarize what customers say. Paste in a batch of reviews or survey answers and ask what themes keep coming up.
- Check a proposal before it goes out. Ask it to point out anything unclear, missing or likely to raise a question.
- Prepare meeting agendas and summaries. Turn rough notes into a clean agenda, or a call recording's transcript into a short list of who does what.
- Test an idea before you spend on it. Ask for the pros, the cons and the questions a skeptical customer would ask about a new service or offer.
Two rules
Read everything before it goes to a customer. And don't paste in private customer details you wouldn't put in an email to a stranger.
When you're ready to look at the part of your business where a faster reply makes the biggest difference, start with our free check.