Polsia launches ShopRelay

Polsia this week started pitching ShopRelay, an artificial-intelligence back office for electricians and other contractors that handles dispatching and invoicing. (polsia.com) Polsia’s website describes the company as an “autonomous AI system” that plans, codes and markets companies “24/7,” and says more than 6,000 companies are using its broader platform. Product Hunt lists Polsia at $49 a month for one nightly autonomous task plus monthly credits for on-demand work. (polsia.com) (producthunt.com) The new push is aimed at trades where office work still sits beside field work: answering phones, assigning jobs, sending invoices and chasing payment. In the electrical-contractor software market, incumbents such as Housecall Pro and BuildOps already bundle scheduling, dispatch and invoicing into one system. (softwareconnect.com) (buildops.com) Polsia paired that launch with promotion for TradeWind AI, a front-office call-handling tool meant to answer inbound calls and capture leads when crews are on jobs. The sales pitch leaned on a familiar small-business problem: missed calls. (polsia.com) (ruby.com) The company said about 62% of incoming calls go unanswered. That figure appears in marketing across the AI receptionist industry, but other published estimates vary: Ruby says 64% of phone calls to small businesses do not get answered, while ServiceTitan-cited trade marketing has put the rate for electrical contractors at 20% to 30% during peak hours. (ruby.com) (serviceagent.ai) (cleartalk.ai) Phone coverage has become a selling point because many service businesses still win work call by call, especially after hours. Ruby’s 2023 call trends report says its data covers 62.2 million calls received by small-business customers from 2018 through 2022, and a separate Ruby post says after-hours calls rose more than 18% from 2020 to 2021. (ruby.com 1) (ruby.com 2) That has opened a crowded market for automated reception tools that promise 24/7 answering for plumbers, electricians and heating contractors. Dispatchly, for example, markets an artificial-intelligence receptionist for contractors and says it integrates with Jobber, Housecall Pro and Kickserv. (trydispatchly.com) Polsia’s bet is that contractors will buy the whole office stack, not just an answering bot: take the call, book the job, dispatch the crew and send the invoice. That matches the way trade software has been moving, with vendors selling one system for customer communication, scheduling and billing instead of separate tools. (softwareconnect.com) (buildops.com) The open question is whether contractors want a new standalone artificial-intelligence layer or prefer those features inside the software they already use. For now, Polsia is trying to turn a missed-call problem into a broader case for automating the office around the truck. (polsia.com) (ruby.com)