Case Study
Precision Plumbing and Drain had grown to the point where the owner could no longer answer every call himself. With four plumbers running service calls across San Antonio, he hired a full-time dispatcher at $18 per hour. She answered the phone, took down the caller's information, asked what the issue was, checked the schedule, and either booked the appointment or told the caller someone would call back with availability.
She was good at her job. Friendly, organized, fast on the phone. But the role had inherent limitations. She could handle one call at a time. When two calls came in simultaneously, one went to voicemail. When she took a lunch break or called out sick, the phone went unanswered. And at 5pm every day, the line switched to voicemail until 8am the next morning. That was 15 hours per day with no coverage, plus weekends.
The fully loaded cost of the dispatcher role was significant: $18/hour times 40 hours, plus payroll taxes, plus the occasional overtime during busy weeks. Total: roughly $3,800/month. For a plumbing company doing $35,000 to $45,000 per month in revenue, that was a meaningful expense. And it only covered 40 out of 168 hours per week.
The deeper problem was not the cost. It was how the dispatcher's time was being used. Roughly 70% of her calls were initial inquiries that followed the same pattern: take the name, get the phone number, ask what is wrong, check the schedule, book or defer. It was repetitive qualification work that did not require her judgment or people skills.
The other 30% of her time was where her skills actually mattered: handling upset customers, coordinating complex multi-day jobs, managing schedule conflicts when a plumber was running behind, and communicating with commercial property managers who had specific requirements. This was high-value work that required a human who understood the business and could make judgment calls.
The owner was paying $3,800/month for a full-time role where 70% of the tasks could be automated and 30% genuinely needed a skilled person. But he could not just eliminate the 70% without a replacement. Those calls still needed to be answered. The leads still needed to be captured. The qualification still needed to happen.
The scheduling coverage was the other pain point. After 5pm, the phone went dark. On weekends, it went dark. Plumbing emergencies do not respect business hours. The owner estimated that 20 to 25% of their inbound leads came outside the dispatcher's hours. Most of those went to voicemail and roughly half never called back.
Avo took over the initial response and qualification layer. Every inbound inquiry, whether it arrived by phone, text, web form, or Google Business message, got an immediate response that asked the right qualifying questions for plumbing: What is the issue? Is it an emergency or can it wait? What type of property is it? Is there an active leak? Have you tried any basic troubleshooting?
The system qualified and categorized each lead before any human touched it. Emergency calls got flagged immediately for the on-call plumber. Routine service requests got booked into the schedule based on availability and service area. Commercial inquiries with specific requirements got routed to the dispatcher for personal handling.
The dispatcher's role shifted dramatically. Instead of spending her day answering the phone and asking the same five questions, she now handled the 30% of interactions that actually needed her: complex scheduling, customer escalations, commercial account management, and quality control on the AI-qualified leads. Her work became more interesting, more impactful, and more aligned with her skills.
The owner reduced her hours from full-time to part-time, three days per week. She was happy with the arrangement because the work was more engaging and she gained flexibility. The company saved $2,800/month in labor costs. And the business was booking 15% more jobs because the 24/7 coverage captured leads that previously went to voicemail.
"My dispatcher was spending most of her day doing work a system could do, and we had zero coverage after 5pm. Now Avo handles the initial response 24/7, my dispatcher focuses on the work that actually needs a human, and we are booking 15% more jobs while saving $2,800 a month. Everyone wins."
The system operates as the first point of contact for every inbound lead, around the clock. During business hours, it handles the initial qualification and routes complex situations to the dispatcher. After hours and on weekends, it operates independently, qualifying leads, booking routine appointments, and escalating emergencies to the on-call plumber.
The escalation logic has been refined to minimize false alarms. The system asks targeted questions to determine severity: Is water actively flowing? Is the issue affecting the main sewer line or a single fixture? Can you shut off the water supply to the affected area? Based on the answers, it either handles the booking directly, schedules a next-day appointment, or triggers an emergency dispatch with all relevant details.
On a typical day, the system handles 15 to 25 inbound contacts. Of those, 3 to 5 get routed to the dispatcher for personal handling. The rest are fully managed by the system from first contact through appointment confirmation. The dispatcher reviews all AI-handled interactions at the end of her shift to catch anything that needs adjustment, but corrections are rare, usually fewer than one per week.
The 15% increase in booked jobs came primarily from two sources: capturing after-hours leads that previously went to voicemail, and faster response times during business hours since the system responds instantly rather than putting callers on hold when the line is busy. The combined effect of cost savings and revenue increase has made this one of the highest-ROI changes the business has ever made.
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