How Service Business Owners Use AI Voice Agents to Replace CSRs & Book 75% of Calls - Nathan Keller
Service Business Mastery for Skilled Trades: HVAC, Plumbing & Electrical Home Service
Release Date: 08/27/2025
Service Business Mastery for Skilled Trades: HVAC, Plumbing & Electrical Home Service
How to grow a home service business is usually pitched as one thing: spend more on marketing. Alex Smereczniak has a faster, cheaper answer most owners never consider. As co-founder and CEO of Franzy and a serial entrepreneur who scaled 2ULaundry and sold 118 franchise locations, he has bought, built, and financed businesses more ways than almost anyone. In this episode, Tersh Blissett and Josh Crouch sit down with Alex to unpack how to grow through acquisition instead of ads, why the wrong business partner is the number one reason companies fail, and how to finance a deal using tools most...
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Home services marketing has a hidden battleground, and most owners never fund it. It is the messy middle, the 40 to 100 days a homeowner spends circling a project before they ever search your name. Rick Brown and Carole Lawson of MarketStorm have spent years mapping that window, and what happens inside it decides who gets the call. In this episode, Tersh Blissett and Josh Crouch sit down with Rick, CEO and co-founder of MarketStorm, and Carole, its co-founder and chief data officer and a Harvard-trained data scientist, to break down how buyer behavior changed after the pandemic and why the...
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Service Scout (14 day free trial): This is the toughest year to close a sale in home services since 2008. Equipment costs more than ever, credit is tighter, and the customers calling for a replacement are the hardest ones to sell. The problem usually is not your leads. It is what happens when your technician walks in the door. In this episode of Service Business Mastery, Tersh Blissett and Josh Crouch sit down with Justin Riley, CEO and founder of UpFrog, for a straight read on the 2026 home services market and how the best companies are still closing jobs hand over fist. Justin breaks...
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Most home service businesses keep just 5 to 12% net profit, and most owners have no idea that is where they are. The best run HVAC, plumbing, and electrical shops keep 20%, and the gap almost always comes down to a few fixable mistakes. In this episode of Service Business Mastery, Tersh Blissett and Josh Crouch sit down with Matthew Mooney and Raymond Gong of Profitability Partners, a fractional CFO firm that spent years on the private equity side of the table and now helps owners find the profit already hiding in their business. They break down the real gross profit benchmarks for every...
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Most home service companies do not have a lead problem. They have a missed-call problem. In this episode of Service Business Mastery, Tersh Blissett and Joshua Crouch sit down with Chris Nelson, Senior Manager of Vertical Marketing at CallRail, to talk about why home service leads disappear, how missed calls turn into lost revenue, and what contractors can do to better understand what is happening inside their call flow. This conversation is not just about answering the phone faster. It is about understanding where your leads come from, how they move through your business, and where good...
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Most contractors want more leads, more booked calls, and more revenue. But if your sales process is inconsistent, more leads will only expose the problem faster. In this episode of Service Business Mastery, Tersh Blissett and Joshua Crouch sit down with Josh Martin, Director of Revenue Strategy at 3Four Labs, to talk about how service businesses can grow by building a stronger sales framework, improving technician coaching, and using AI-powered tools the right way. Josh explains why AI and automation are only useful when your company already knows what “good” looks like. If your...
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Welcome to the Service Business Mastery Podcast!
Visit our website for more episodes and insights! https://www.servicebusinessmastery.com
In this episode of the Service Business Mastery podcast, Tersh Blissett and Josh Crouch talk with Nathan Keller of Free2Grow about replacing human call answering with AI voice agents. Nathan shares how AI can sound real, run 24/7, cut costs, and boost bookings, while stressing the importance of proper setup to win customer trust and drive growth.
In this episode, here's what you can expect to learn:
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How AI voice agents can answer calls anytime and boost bookings.
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Why older customers can enjoy AI when it’s set up the right way.
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The value of training and testing to make AI work well.
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How AI frees your team to focus on higher-value tasks.
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Why using smart tech can save money and grow your business.
Timestamps ⏰
[02:50] - Episode Intro & Meeting Nathan Keller
[03:57] - From Human Answering to AI Voice Agents
[07:52] - Challenges and Mindset in Making the Switch
[10:03] - Call Quality Issues with Human Answering
[12:19] - How Older Clients React to AI Calls
[16:47] - Customer Stories Mistaking AI for Real People
[21:07] - Key Differences Between Free2Grow and Others
[28:08] - AI Staying Calm with Angry Customers
[34:42] - Mindset Shift Needed for AI Adoption
[36:30] - Why AI Won’t Replace All Human CSRs
[51:11] - Outbound AI Calls and Legal Rules
If you enjoyed this helpful and insightful talk with Nathan Keller, please leave us a review (5 stars would mean a lot 😉).
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