For years I made sure the franchises never lost a lead. Now I do it for you.

We already have an answering service.

Then you’ve solved part of it. An answering service picks up the phone — it doesn’t catch the web form that comes in at 9pm, the Angi or Thumbtack lead, or the second call that rings while the first one’s still going. And an answering service takes a message; this books the appointment. Plenty of shops run both for a while. A fair number end up dropping the service once they see how much of the volume was never phone calls in the first place.

My customers want to talk to a real person.

They do, and they will — you, at the appointment. Here’s the thing though: right now the alternative to a real person isn’t a real person, it’s your voicemail. A homeowner with a water heater problem at 8 o’clock at night isn’t choosing between you and a robot. They’re choosing between your voicemail and the next company on the list. This makes sure the conversation actually happens, and every one of those threads lands on your phone — you can jump in mid-text whenever you want, and most owners do at first.

We’re too small for this.

Small is exactly who I built it for. The franchise across town has a call center answering in nine seconds; you’ve got a phone in your pocket and a job to finish. Big shops buy this to scale. Small shops buy it to stop bleeding. If you’re missing five calls a week and one of them was a $600 job, you already know the math — and you’re the one who feels it, because it comes straight out of your week.

My office manager handles the phones.

Good — keep her. She can’t answer while she’s already on a call, or at lunch, or at 7pm, or when three come in at once during the first cold snap. This catches the overflow and the after-hours, and instead of a stack of voicemails to return she gets appointments that are already on the calendar. In my experience office managers end up liking it more than the owner does, because it takes away the part of the job nobody enjoys.

Will it text people who didn’t ask to be texted?

No, and I won’t build that. It only replies to people who contacted you — somebody who called, filled out your form, or came through a lead source you’re already paying for. That’s a reply to an inbound conversation, not marketing to a purchased list. If what you want is cold blast texting to a bought list, I’m the wrong guy, and honestly you don’t want the exposure that comes with it either.

What if it says something stupid to my customer?

Fair question, and the honest answer is that it can only say what it’s been set up to say. It works from responses built around your business — your services, your service area, what you don’t do, your pricing rules, how you handle emergencies. It doesn’t improvise. Anything outside that gets flagged straight to you instead of guessed at. And you read every response before a single customer sees it, during the build. If it doesn’t sound like your shop, we change it then, not after.

Do I have to change my phone number or my CRM?

No. It works with the number you already have and the software you already use. If you’re on a CRM we connect to it; if you run the business on a whiteboard and your cell phone, that works too — plenty of good shops do. Changing the way you already work is how these projects die, so I don’t start there.

Is this the only thing you do?

No. The text-back system is where most people start, because it’s the fastest thing to prove — you can see whether it works in about thirty days. Veriga builds other AI automation too, and once the lead response is running we usually find the next thing worth taking off your plate. But I’d rather fix a leak you can measure than sell you a platform, so that’s where I start. Ask me on the audit call about anything else you’ve got in mind.