How Handy Bros answers every call at peak
A 65-year-old family company consolidated five AI vendors onto one platform, from the first call to the final follow-up.
“Craft isn't just a tool; they're a strategic partner helping us scale our entire operation.”
Kaleena Cryderman
VP of Operations, Handy Bros Home Comfort
Handy Bros has been selling home comfort since 1959. Mitch White and his brother Nick are the third generation of brothers to own the company, which has grown from 62 people to more than 200. Then there are the days nobody can staff for, and five separate AI vendors that each handled one slice of the operation.
Before Craft
Peak days that no staffing plan could absorb. Five AI vendors across the contact center, field coaching, and follow-up, with no shared data between them. Slow support, where simple changes needed engineering time on Handy Bros' end. And a contract ending on a hard deadline.
With Craft
One platform from the first call to the final follow-up. Every call into the building picked up, through nights, weekends, and heat waves. A dedicated technical contact who knows both their trade and the software, and tunes the AI to the way Handy Bros works.
The problem
Nobody can staff for the peak
Demand in home comfort arrives in spikes. A heat wave lands, and the phones go from busy to unanswerable in an afternoon. Handy Bros could hire against the average, and the average was never the problem.
“I don't think there's an HVAC company in the world that can handle the peak of demand. You will never be able to capture the peak because it's just that large.”
June 2025 was the proof. Handy Bros took 3,000 phone calls in a single day, the craziest day in company history, as Kaleena Cryderman describes it, and they did not have Craft at the time.
Many of those calls were emergencies. “No AC in the dead of summer, that's an emergency,” Cryderman says. When a customer in that state waits for an answer, a percentage of them are gone for good.
The stack
Five tools that couldn't book a job
Handy Bros had already tried to solve it with AI, one vendor at a time. The contact center, the field team, and the follow-up team each ran a different system, and none of them shared context with the others.
“Before Craft, we had tried a couple other AIs,” Cryderman says. “The problem was that nothing was all encompassing the way that Craft is.” The tools could talk to a customer and then stall at the part that matters. As White puts it, “they might be able to interact with a customer, but they can't book it.”
Support made it harder. Simple changes required engineering coordination on Handy Bros' end, and tailoring the AI to their own workflows meant jumping through hoops. With their existing contract ending on a hard deadline, they had to decide fast.
The decision
A partner who picks up
When Handy Bros evaluated their options, it came down to who would answer when things got hard.
“We know what we want, we know what works, and sometimes we just want a partner that will actually listen to us and get it done. These guys came in, they actually cared.”
The product had to cover the whole operation on its own. “We've landed and stuck with Craft because they're able to consolidate as much of that as possible and offer it as one service,” White says. Five vendors became one platform, with one team behind it.
Cryderman found the same thing on the build side. Tell the Craft team this is not how you want it to act, and “they're going to build it and they're going to tweak it to what works for your business.”
The platform
Five tools, one partner
Handy Bros deployed Craft across their entire operation, from the first customer call to the final follow-up. Every touchpoint now runs through a single, unified platform.
- AI Voice Agents. Handle inbound calls and book appointments 24/7, so no lead goes unanswered.
- Speed to Lead. Instant outbound follow-up on every web lead before competitors can respond.
- Virtual Ridealongs. Real-time coaching for field sales reps during every appointment.
- AI Follow-Up. Personalized follow-ups on every unsold estimate.
- Coaching & QA. Every customer service call scored and coached, so every rep gets better.
The team named their voice agent Jessie. Jessie picks up calls and emails when nobody on the team is free to. “The beauty about Craft's AI speed to lead is that it never sleeps,” White says. “And truthfully, you'd never know the difference.”
The result
Every call gets picked up
The peak still arrives. What changed is what happens when every person in the building is already on a call.
“This just means that absolutely nobody gets missed, every customer gets handled, every phone call that comes into this building is picked up.”
Booking rates followed. Handy Bros has seen an 11 percent increase in booking rates since partnering with Craft. “The booking rates definitely increased across the board,” White says, “because you're able to interact immediately and you're taking out the human error of the follow-up.” If a customer asks to be called tomorrow at noon, the AI calls tomorrow at noon.
The team got hours back. With chats answered automatically, Cryderman says, “I have an entire body back to actually taking the phone calls.” That was the point of the whole exercise for her: “We have never used AI to replace anybody. We use the AI as an aid, as a tool to be able to help us be more successful.”
Handy Bros now runs their entire customer journey through one platform, from contact center to field sales to follow-up. White's verdict: “Craft is the best of all worlds.” Cryderman's is the one every operator will recognize. “You're going to be like, man, why didn't I have this sooner?”
