AI-Driven Efficiency Is Supercharging HVAC Contracting

“The best time to learn AI was over two years ago.”

That was the line Tersh Blissett, founder and co-host of the Service Business Mastery Podcast, opened with during his educational session about AI during the Southeast Michigan Air Conditioning Contractors Association (SEMIACCA) Trade Show with Josh Crouch, founder and CEO of Relentless Digital. The event was held right in my backyard in Farmington Hills, Michigan, in May. 

“The second-best time is right now,” he added. “If you’re not using AI, you will get left in the past — it’s not even an option anymore.”

The two industry leaders discussed how to create AI automations to handle mundane tasks and free up time for business owners and managers to focus on more important responsibilities. For example, Zapier is a platform that’s a bridge between two platforms.

“In a nutshell, it's a way to take data from one place and automatically move to another so another action can happen,” Blissett said. “Think of it this way: we've automated over 260,000 tasks this year. And if you really do the math on that, let's say the average task takes like five or 10 seconds, we're saving hours, tens of hours per month on things that we don't need to be doing. We were just looking at it, it’s just over 120,670 hours of manual work saved. A normal administrative salary of $25 an hour came to like $18,000-$19,000.”

Blissett and Crouch noted that some of the Zap automations that contractors can create to save time and money include automated Google review responses, automated posting of reviews to social media channels, writing invoice summaries, following up on leads, and more.

The very first Zap is called a trigger, and then each one of the boxes afterwards is called an action step,” Blisset explained. “Your trigger happens, then it causes the action. For example, you get a new lead in the CRM. Then you send it to ChatGPT to write an email. The AI writes the email, it gets put inside of Gmail, and you can put it inside of a draft folder, or you can send it directly if you trust it enough. Then, there is an immediate follow up. Zap sends that follow-up on day one. Then, you can have it create an SMS text message and send that. Afterward, you can schedule another message three days later. Then, after seven days, another message is sent. After 14 days, it can add a tag in the CRM that no customer has responded in that time period. This is an example of an automation. There’s a stop function as well, so if the customer responds to the text, it stops the automation.”

Both presenters also stressed that doing something just because it’s the way it has always been done is not a valid reason to avoid AI — especially when your competitor is already gaining an advantage by using the technology.

“We all know that time is the one finite resource on the planet,” Crouch said. “You don’t get it back after that hour’s gone. It’s never coming back. If we can do more with those hours — focusing on more revenue-producing things that actually engage our brain that we actually want to do, your business is going to be that much better for it. You’re going to be a better team member, a better leader.”

Don’t miss Blissett’s CB Influencer column this month as he dives deeper into the AI and automation topic.

We’re in the middle of the AI revolution. Now is not the time to bury your head in the sand. As the HVAC landscape grows ever more competitive and customer expectations climb, AI isn’t just an optional upgrade — it’s your new co-pilot. HVAC professionals who ignore AI risk watching their rivals steal the advantage. The future is automated — don’t let it pass you by.