What I Wish I Knew Sooner: AI
Luis Fuentes
If I could go back and tell myself something sooner, it would be this: AI isn’t just about efficiency—it’s about bringing us back to why we started in the first place.
When I entered this trade, like most contractors I know, it was never about paperwork or phone calls. It was about serving people—keeping families comfortable, solving problems in their homes, and doing work I could be proud of. But the reality? Too often, I found myself buried in phones, calendars, and admin tasks instead of serving my customers.
That’s what I wish I had seen earlier: AI isn’t just another tool. It’s the path back to purpose.
How it changes everything
AI now answers phones, checks schedules, and books appointments—without a person stuck at a desk. It integrates with calendars, manages text conversations, and does it so naturally customers sometimes don’t even realize it’s AI.
In my business, I’ve used it to create training videos, morning updates, and even branded avatars. What used to take me weeks, AI now handles in minutes. Marketing, scheduling, customer communication—it’s all streamlined. And that frees my team to do the work that actually matters.
How it changes everything
AI isn’t here to replace skilled labor—it’s here to support it. It gives less experienced techs field guidance and reduces the load on my senior staff. It puts more of our time back where it belongs: inside customers’ homes, diagnosing real problems, and delivering real solutions.
The choice for our industry is simple: resist AI, or embrace it. If we embrace it, we reclaim our time, our focus, and our purpose. We get to serve more people with less friction—and build stronger, healthier businesses.
So here’s what I wish I had realized sooner: AI isn’t just about working faster. It’s about getting back to why we started at all.
If I could give one piece of advice to anyone running a service business, it would be this: never let a call go unanswered. Every missed call is missed revenue—and the cost of those lost opportunities adds up fast.
In the early days, most service businesses rely on hustle—answering phones manually, juggling schedules, and patching together tools that were never really designed for the trades.
But the truth is, no matter how hard you hustle, humans can’t answer 10 calls at once. And every call you miss is another job going to a competitor.
The Lesson
Here’s what I wish I had understood sooner:
- Missed calls are lost jobs. If you don’t answer, someone else will.
- Efficiency drives growth. When scheduling, dispatching, and communication run on autopilot, your team can actually scale.
- AI isn’t the future—it’s already here. The businesses using it today are already miles ahead.
- Scalability matters. AI doesn’t get tired, distracted, or overwhelmed. It can consistently handle demand that people simply can’t.
Why This Matters
AI isn’t about replacing people—it’s about freeing them. Answering, scheduling, dispatching, follow-ups—these are tasks that can run automatically so your team can focus on the work that really matters: serving customers and solving problems in their homes.
The companies that embrace this now will thrive. The ones that wait will fall behind.
So here’s the simple truth I wish I’d embraced earlier: AI isn’t a nice-to-have—it’s the key to growth, consistency, and long-term success in field service.
