Tom runs an HVAC shop in Tennessee with two full-time technicians and himself doing most of the calls and estimates. Before helohi, he was averaging around 30 to 40 bookings a month, depending on season and how many calls he let slip to voicemail because he was on a job.
Three months in with helohi, he's hitting 110 new bookings a month.
The number isn't surprising once you think about it. He wasn't getting smarter. His team wasn't working more hours. What changed is simple: every call that came in after 5pm, on weekends, or while he was up a ladder now got answered. By helohi. On the spot. With the appointment locked in before the customer hung up.
The gap between a business that answers its calls and one that misses them is enormous. 62% of calls to small businesses go unanswered. Of the ones that hit voicemail, 85% of callers never try again. In HVAC, where demand is cyclical and intense, missing a July call means losing a customer to whoever picked up second.
helohi doesn't replace anyone. It fills the gaps. On a Friday at 4pm, the owner is still on the phone with the existing customer. A new call comes in. helohi answers and books. At 9pm, when the office is closed, someone calls with an emergency. helohi answers and books. Sunday morning, three calls come in at once. helohi takes all three, books all three, and the owner wakes up to a full week.
Missed call | Lost customer, lost revenue, lost trust Answered call | Booked appointment, confirmed customer, scheduled job
The 110 bookings aren't all from after-hours calls, but a huge chunk are. 46% of all service bookings happen outside business hours. In HVAC, that number is even higher during peak season. Emergencies don't respect the calendar. Air conditioners fail at night. Furnaces break down on weekends. If you're not answering, a competitor is.
What's almost as important as the number is that the bookings stick. They land directly in the shop's calendar. The customer gets a confirmation text before they hang up. There's no game of phone tag, no forgotten voicemail, no trying to remember if they said Tuesday or Thursday. The job is booked, confirmed, and on the schedule. That reduces no-shows and rescheduling chaos.
Customer calls any time | helohi answers instantly helohi checks availability | Pulls from your real calendar Customer picks a slot | Appointment locks in Confirmation text sent | They have proof, you have a job
The economic lift is obvious. One extra job a week is around $300 to $500 in revenue for most HVAC shops. 110 new bookings a month is roughly 27 per week. Even if half of those are smaller jobs or refinishes of existing customers, that's 13 new bookings a week that wouldn't have happened if the phone had gone to voicemail.
helohi costs from $449 to $899 a month depending on the plan. One recovered job covers that cost weeks over. The founding clients aren't paying for helohi out of a fixed marketing budget. They're covering it from the revenue of the calls they would have lost.
That zero is the real outcome. It's not romantic. It's just the difference between a business that answers its phone and one that doesn't.
The other number worth mentioning is time saved. Founding clients report saving around 2.4 hours a day on average. Some of that is not answering the phone. But most of it is not having to field call-backs, not having to type jobs into the calendar by hand, not having to send confirmation texts one by one. The appointment happens, and the system handles itself.
For a shop owner, 2.4 hours a day is eight hours a week. That's time to bid jobs, time to think about hiring, time to actually sleep. That's not a small thing.