Jobs, not leads: getting hired when customers ask an AI assistant

You know the lead bill. You pay for a click, or for a name and a phone number. Sometimes the same lead went to other businesses too. Some never pick up. Some were only pricing the job. The bill comes either way.

That deal was never great. It gets worse when your customer stops searching and starts asking an AI assistant who to hire.

What changes when an assistant does the asking

People are starting to ask ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude instead of searching. Not for most jobs, and not yet in every town. But the way an assistant looks for a business is different from the way a person does.

A person scrolls a page of ads and listings, opens a few and calls two or three. An assistant doesn’t scroll through ads. It asks, checks and picks:

• It asks who can do the job. Which business covers the area, does this kind of work and can come soon.
• It checks what it can verify. Reviews, license, insurance and warranty, as your site and your public pages show them.
• It comes back with one business to call. One name and one number, where a search page gives a list.

Then it wants one more thing, and it wants it now: a firm price. Most local businesses can only give that on the phone or after a form. So the assistant makes do with whatever it can read on the page.

Why paying per lead breaks here

A lead is a contact. You pay for it before anyone knows if there is a job. That made some sense when the customer was the one comparing: more contacts, more chances to quote.

When an assistant compares for the customer, most of that work is done before anyone calls. The customer gets one name. If it’s yours, the phone rings and the job is close to booked. If it isn’t, there was no lead to buy.

So the thing worth paying for moves. It was the contact. Now it’s the job. Ads and lead sites charge at the start of the line, for attention. What you want to pay for is the end of it: a customer who called and booked.

A firm offer from your own agent

haggl.ai gives your business an agent that answers the customer’s assistant. Here is the whole path:

1. A customer asks their assistant to find a plumber, a roofer or a photographer.
2. The assistant reaches your agent. It finds haggl.ai on your site and says what the job is, where and when. With the customer’s OK, it shares what it knows about them.
3. Your agent makes an offer. Money off this job, or an extra you named in its brief: a waived call-out fee, a credit at signing, a priority slot, an upgrade.
4. The customer calls you. The assistant gives them your phone number, or your inquiry form, and a deal reference. You book the job as you always do.

You set the limits first: a monthly budget, and your limit for any one job. Your agent never goes past either. You can read every conversation: what the assistant asked, what your agent offered, and whether the customer accepted.

The customer stays yours. They call your number or fill in your form. haggl.ai never holds their contact details, and no one else gets the job to bid on.

Does an offer change who gets picked? In our door repair case study, run before the business went live, customers’ assistants picked it 96% of the time with haggl.ai, and 46% of the time without. Installing haggl.ai doesn’t guarantee a call.

The fee math

The whole price list: 2% of the job, 6% for priority customers. First 10 free. No monthly fee.

• 2% of the job for a standard booking: at your own public offer, with no money off, or with extras only.
• 6% for priority customers. A priority customer gets a better deal than your own public offer, because they’re worth more than one job, like a landlord or a property manager. Priority bookings pay 2% on the part of a job above $5,000.
• First 10 free. Your first 10 booked customers cost nothing, across all your sites.
• Only when you confirm. You confirm each booking and enter what the customer paid. A deal the customer never used costs nothing.

The job is what the customer paid for it, after any money off. Here is what that looks like on real kinds of jobs:

You pay only when you confirm the booking, and you set a monthly cap. Bookings past the cap in a month cost nothing. On WordPress or your own site, you save a card before your 11th booking, and haggl.ai bills it once a month.

There is a second cost, and it’s yours to set: what your agent gives away. Money off and extras come out of the monthly budget you chose. If you only allow extras, the booking is standard and the fee is 2%.

Compare the two bills. One arrives whether or not anyone booked. The other only has lines for jobs you confirmed yourself. The full terms are on the pricing page.

Three things owners ask

• “I can’t price a job without seeing it.” You don’t. The offer sits on top of your quote.
• “Will it undercut my prices?” It never goes past the limit you set.
• “Who decides what I owe?” You do. You confirm the job and its value.

Where to start

Each trade is different, so we wrote a guide for each:

• Plumbers: urgent jobs and the call that has to come today.
• HVAC: repairs in peak season, and replacements a customer compares.
• Roofers: a firm offer before you’ve seen the roof.
• Wedding DJs and photographers: a date, a package and an inquiry form.

Setup takes a few minutes on the site you already have: the haggl.ai plugin on WordPress, the haggl.ai app for Wix, or one line of code anywhere else. Create your free workspace, or see how it works for home services and for event and creative pros.

Then the next time someone in your town asks an assistant who to hire, your business has an answer ready. And when the phone rings, the caller already has a deal reference and a reason to book.