A 5-person London plumbing and heating company receiving 40-50 weekly enquiries across WhatsApp, phone, website, and Facebook was spending 3 hours per day chasing leads, sending quotes manually, and following up unpaid invoices - with one of the five employees dedicated almost full-time to admin. After deploying an AI chatbot development, automated quote follow-up sequences, and invoice chasing workflows through Softomate Solutions, the same business now handles all 40 enquiries with zero dedicated admin staff, converts 55% more leads into booked jobs, and collects invoices 14 days faster on average. The full AI automation stack costs £340 per month to run, plus a one-off setup fee of £4,200.
Last updated: 18 May 2026
Published 18 May 2026Eastside Plumbing and Heating Ltd is a fictional but entirely representative composite of the small trades businesses Softomate works with across East London. Five people. Three Gas Safe registered engineers, one apprentice, and one office manager - a woman we will call Karen - who joined the business eight years ago when there were only 15 enquiries a week and two engineers. By early 2025, the business had grown, the engineers were booked out weeks in advance, and Karen was drowning.
The enquiries came in from four channels simultaneously with no routing, no prioritisation, and no system. The company WhatsApp pinged constantly from 7am onwards. The business phone forwarded to Karen's mobile when she was not at her desk. The website contact form sent emails to a shared Gmail account that three people had the password to. And the Facebook Business page accumulated messages that nobody checked consistently - sometimes for days at a time.
Forty to fifty enquiries per week sounds manageable. It is not, when every single one requires a manual, personalised response. A boiler breakdown enquiry at 8pm needs an emergency engineer dispatched or a callback promise. A bathroom installation quote request needs a survey appointment booked, a quote calculated, and then the quote sent as a PDF. An annual gas safety certificate booking needs a date offered, confirmed, and added to the Google Calendar that only Karen could update reliably.
Karen was spending approximately 3 hours every day on the following tasks, with no automation at all:
| Task | Time per week |
|---|---|
| Responding to WhatsApp enquiries manually | 6 hours |
| Sending quote emails and PDF attachments | 3.5 hours |
| Booking survey appointments and confirming by phone | 2.5 hours |
| Chasing unpaid invoices by phone and email | 3 hours |
| Sending annual gas safety certificate reminders | 1.5 hours |
| Updating the shared Google Calendar | 1 hour |
| Miscellaneous admin and rescheduling | 2.5 hours |
| Total | 20 hours per week |
That is a full working week of admin every fortnight - generated by a business with only three revenue-earning engineers. The director, Raj, knew the business needed a solution. He had looked at CRM systems and found them too complex for a small team. He had considered hiring a second admin person at £26,000 per year but could not justify the fixed cost during a slow winter season. What he had not yet considered was AI automation - until a conversation at a BNI networking breakfast in Barking introduced him to Softomate Solutions.
The single biggest drain on Karen's time was the first response to an enquiry. Every incoming message - whether from WhatsApp, the website, or Facebook - needed a human to read it, assess it, and decide what to do next. Was it a genuine lead or a tyre-kicker? Was the postcode within the service area? Was the job type something the business actually does? These are qualification questions, and qualification does not require a human being.
Softomate built a conversational AI chatbot connected to both the Eastside Plumbing website and the WhatsApp Business API. The chatbot runs a structured qualification flow: it asks for the customer's postcode first (to check it falls within the IG, RM, E, and SE postal district service area), then asks for the job type from a simple menu (boiler repair, boiler installation, bathroom fitting, gas safety certificate, or something else), then asks for urgency (emergency, within 48 hours, within the week, or not urgent), and finally offers either a direct booking slot via Calendly or a callback request form.
Customers who choose a booking slot see Karen's live availability pulled from Google Calendar. Customers who request a callback get a confirmation message within seconds and an entry created automatically in the business CRM. Emergency boiler calls trigger a separate flow that sends an SMS alert directly to the on-call engineer's mobile.
The results after 90 days of operation:
| Metric | Before chatbot | After chatbot |
|---|---|---|
| Average first response time | 3 hours 20 minutes | Under 2 minutes |
| Enquiries handled without Karen | 0% | 65% |
| Survey bookings completed without phone call | 0% | 72% |
| Out-of-area enquiries filtered automatically | 0 | ~6 per week |
| Facebook messages missed for more than 24 hours | ~8 per week | 0 |
Karen now touches the enquiry system mainly for edge cases: unusual job types, customers who explicitly ask to speak to a person, and complaints. Everything else - the routine qualification, booking, and confirmation - runs without her. She described the change as going from being a telephone operator to being a project manager. The same 40-50 enquiries per week are handled. She is involved in perhaps 14 of them.
One nuance worth noting: the chatbot does not try to give prices. Trades businesses that quote prices in a chatbot often create the wrong expectation, especially for jobs where the scope varies significantly (bathroom fitting being the obvious example). The Softomate build routes all pricing conversations to a survey booking or a callback, keeping price conversations human.
Sending a quote and then waiting is one of the most common profit leaks in a small trades business. Eastside Plumbing was sending between 18 and 22 quotes per week. Before automation, the follow-up process was entirely manual: Karen would try to remember which quotes had not been responded to, check her sent items folder, and call or email the customer to chase. In a busy week this simply did not happen at all.
The business was converting 28% of quotes into booked jobs. Industry benchmarks for heating and plumbing businesses in London suggest a well-run operation converts 40-50% of quotes. The gap was not the quality of the quotes - Raj's prices were competitive. It was the silence after the quote landed.
Softomate built an automated follow-up sequence triggered by quote creation in the business job management software. The sequence runs as follows:
Day 0: Quote is sent via email with a PDF attachment and a payment link for the deposit if the customer wishes to book immediately.
Day 2 (48 hours, no response): Automated SMS from the business mobile number: "Hi [Name], just checking you received our quote for [job type]. Happy to answer any questions - just reply here or call us on [number]. Raj and the team." Open rate for this SMS: 94%.
Day 7 (no booking confirmed): Automated email with subject line "We have a slot available next week - [first name], wanted to let you know". The email references the original quote, mentions that a specific slot in the diary has opened up, and includes a direct booking link. This creates mild scarcity without being pushy.
Day 14 (no booking confirmed): A task is created in the CRM for Raj personally to make a 2-minute phone call. The task includes the customer's name, job type, quote value, and a suggested conversation opener. This keeps the human touch at the final stage while removing the burden of remembering who to call.
The result after running for 90 days: quote acceptance rate moved from 28% to 47%. On an average of 20 quotes per week at an average job value of £380, that is an additional 3.8 booked jobs per week - approximately £1,444 in additional weekly revenue attributable directly to the follow-up automation.
The sequence also improved relationships with customers who had simply gone quiet out of indecision rather than disinterest. Several customers responded to the Day 7 email saying they had been meaning to book but had been busy. The automated prompt gave them the prompt they needed without Raj or Karen having to chase manually.
Late payment is the silent killer of small trades businesses. Eastside Plumbing was raising approximately 45 invoices per month. Eight of those invoices were overdue at any given time. The average time to payment was 42 days - a figure that represents real cash flow strain for a business paying three engineers weekly.
The total outstanding debtor balance at the start of the Softomate engagement was £12,000. For a business with a monthly turnover of around £38,000, that is nearly a third of monthly revenue sitting unpaid. Karen was spending 3 hours per week on manual invoice chasing - phone calls to customers who did not answer, repeat emails to accounts departments that ignored the first message, and awkward conversations with domestic customers who had received the invoice but not yet logged in to pay.
Softomate integrated with Xero - the accounting software Eastside Plumbing was already using - and built an automated chasing sequence triggered entirely by invoice status:
Day 1: Invoice raised and sent from Xero with a payment link embedded. No change to existing behaviour.
Day 14 (unpaid): Automated email reminder from Karen's email address: "Friendly reminder - invoice [number] for [job description] is now due. You can pay securely here: [payment link]." The email is personalised and does not look automated.
Day 25 (unpaid): Automated SMS to the customer's mobile: "Hi [Name], a quick reminder that invoice [number] remains outstanding. Please pay at [link] or call us if you have any questions."
Day 32 (unpaid): WhatsApp message sent from the business WhatsApp number: "Hi [Name], we noticed invoice [number] is still outstanding. We would like to resolve this - can you let us know if there is an issue?" This personal-feeling channel often triggers a response where email has failed.
Day 38 (unpaid): A task is created for Raj with a credit control email template attached. The template is formal but not threatening, and references the invoice history. Raj sends it manually from his own address.
The results after 90 days: average payment time dropped from 42 days to 18 days. The outstanding debtor balance fell from £12,000 to £3,500. Eight invoices overdue at any time became an average of two. Karen's invoice chasing time fell from 3 hours per week to under 30 minutes - she now handles only the escalated Day 38 cases and any payment disputes that require a conversation.
The cash flow improvement alone - releasing £8,500 in previously stuck receivables - covered more than twice the cost of the one-off Softomate setup fee.
Gas safety certificates - legally required for all landlord properties - are a reliable recurring revenue stream for heating businesses. Eastside Plumbing had built up a database of 180 properties requiring annual certificates: a mix of private landlords, letting agents managing multiple units, and a handful of commercial premises. At £120 per certificate, a 100% rebook rate would generate £21,600 per year from this one service line alone.
The reality before automation was very different. Karen maintained a spreadsheet with certificate expiry dates. She would try to contact customers around 6-8 weeks before expiry. But the spreadsheet had gaps - addresses added in a rush, expiry dates estimated from memory, some rows not updated when a rebook happened. The reminder calls were sporadic. The emails were generic. And Karen had other priorities.
The result: only 68 of 180 properties were rebooked each year. A rebook rate of 38%. The other 112 customers either booked with a competitor, let the certificate lapse (creating a legal liability they may not have been aware of), or simply fell out of contact with Eastside Plumbing entirely.
Softomate built a reminder automation that triggers off the certificate issue date recorded in the job management system. For each property, the sequence runs:
10 months after certificate issued: Email to the landlord or letting agent: "Your gas safety certificate for [address] expires in approximately 60 days. Book your renewal now to secure your preferred slot - we get busy in [coming month]." Includes a direct Calendly booking link.
11 months after certificate issued: SMS to the contact mobile: "Reminder: gas safety certificate for [address] expires next month. Book at [link] or call us on [number]."
12 months after certificate issued (expiry month): WhatsApp message from the business account: "Hi [Name], the gas safety certificate for [address] expires this month. As a landlord you are legally required to hold a valid certificate. We have slots available - shall we get you booked in?"
The legal framing in the final reminder - emphasising the landlord's legal obligation - proved particularly effective. Landlords who had drifted responded to the clarity.
After 12 months of the automation running (it takes 12 months to see the full cycle play out), the rebook rate moved from 38% to 71%. That is 128 properties rebooked versus 68 previously - an increase of 60 rebookings at £120 each. Additional annual revenue from this single workflow: £7,200. The automation also identified 14 properties where the contact details were outdated, prompting Karen to update them - a data quality improvement with downstream value for future communications.
The Eastside Plumbing automation stack is not built on a single platform. It is a connected set of specialist tools, each doing one thing well, stitched together by Make (formerly Integromat) as the automation backbone. Here is the complete stack and its monthly cost:
| Tool | Purpose | Monthly cost |
|---|---|---|
| WhatsApp Business API (via 360dialog) | Chatbot and customer messaging | £45 |
| Make (automation platform) | Triggers, sequences, CRM updates | £75 |
| Calendly Teams | Live booking and diary sync | £15 |
| Softomate AI chatbot licence | NLP, qualification flow, routing | £120 |
| SMS gateway (MessageBird) | Automated SMS reminders | £35 |
| CRM task and notification tools | Escalation triggers for Raj and Karen | £50 |
| Total monthly running cost | £340 |
The one-off Softomate setup fee for this engagement was £4,200. This covered discovery workshops, API integrations, chatbot training and flow design, Make scenario builds, testing, staff training for Karen and Raj, and a 30-day hypercare period during which Softomate monitored all automations and made adjustments based on real-world performance.
The ROI calculation, measured 12 months post-launch:
| Benefit | Annual value |
|---|---|
| Karen's admin time freed (valued at £26,000/year salary, 50% of her time recovered) | £13,000 |
| Additional revenue from improved quote conversion (28% to 47%) | £21,500 |
| Additional revenue from gas safety certificate rebookings | £7,200 |
| Cash flow improvement from faster invoice collection | £8,500 (one-off, debtor reduction) |
| Avoided second admin hire | £26,000 (salary avoided) |
| Total annual benefit (excluding avoided hire) | £41,700 |
The payback period on the £4,200 setup fee, measured against the £41,700 annual benefit, is under 7 weeks. Monthly running costs of £340 (£4,080/year) represent a 10:1 return on the ongoing investment.
Raj's assessment after 12 months: "We are doing the same number of jobs, but Karen is now actually managing the business rather than just answering messages. I wish we had done this three years ago."
The business has since asked Softomate to build two additional workflows: an automated post-job review request sequence (targeting Google Reviews, where the business has moved from 24 reviews to 61 reviews in 10 months), and a materials ordering reminder that alerts the apprentice to pick up parts before the next day's jobs. Neither workflow required additional setup time - they were built within the existing Make environment.
The Softomate engagement for Eastside Plumbing ran from initial discovery call to go-live in 6 weeks. Week 1-2 covered discovery and planning. Week 3-4 covered build and integration testing. Week 5 was user acceptance testing with Karen and Raj. Week 6 was a soft launch with a 30-day hypercare period immediately following. Most small trades businesses fall within a 4-8 week implementation window depending on complexity and how quickly the client team can engage during testing.
Karen's main concern before launch was that she would lose visibility of what the chatbot was saying to customers. Softomate addressed this by giving her a simple dashboard showing every chatbot conversation in real time and a daily summary email of all bookings created automatically. After the first two weeks she stopped checking the dashboard daily because the system was working as expected. Raj uses a mobile app view of the CRM to see tasks assigned to him. Neither Karen nor Raj needed to learn new software beyond their existing tools.
The Eastside Plumbing stack at £340 per month is sized for a business with 40+ weekly enquiries and multiple communication channels. A sole trader with 10-15 weekly enquiries could run a simpler stack - a WhatsApp chatbot plus basic quote follow-up - for around £85-£120 per month with a lower one-off setup cost starting from around £1,200. Softomate offers a free 30-minute consultation to assess which workflows would deliver the most value for a specific business size and enquiry volume before any commitment is made.
The Softomate chatbot for trades businesses is deliberately conservative in what it asserts. It does not quote prices, does not confirm engineer availability without a live calendar check, and does not make promises about job completion times. When a question falls outside its programmed scope, it offers a callback from the business rather than attempting to answer. During hypercare Softomate monitors for any responses flagged as confused or repeated by the customer, and refines the flow accordingly. In 90 days of operation, Eastside Plumbing logged zero formal complaints attributable to chatbot errors.
The gas safety reminder workflow pulls expiry dates from the job management system rather than from the Gas Safe Register directly - the Gas Safe Register does not offer a public API for third-party automation as of May 2026. The business continues to maintain its own compliance records in its job management software. What the automation adds is the reliable, scheduled reminder and rebook sequence based on those dates. For letting agents managing multiple properties, Softomate can configure the reminder to copy in the landlord, the letting agent, and the tenant simultaneously - matching the legal notification requirements under the Gas Safety Regulations 1998.
Yes. The Make platform used as the automation backbone is modular by design. Each scenario (quote follow-up, invoice chasing, certificate reminder) runs independently. Adding a new workflow - for example, a post-job review request sequence or a materials pre-ordering reminder - is additive rather than disruptive. Eastside Plumbing has added two additional workflows since the initial launch without any downtime to the existing automations. Softomate charges for additional workflow builds on a per-scenario basis, with most single workflows costing between £400 and £900 depending on complexity.
UK SMEs automating repetitive processes save an average of 8-15 hours per week per full-time employee affected. At an average UK employee cost of £25-35/hour (salary plus employer on-costs), this represents £10,400-27,300 in annual savings per automated role. UK businesses implementing end-to-end process automation (CRM, invoicing, scheduling, reporting) typically eliminate the need for 0.5-1 additional administrative hire, saving £18,000-30,000/year in employment costs. The automation investment (£2,000-15,000 setup, £100-500/month running) typically achieves full ROI within 6-18 months.
UK businesses lose an estimated £2.5 billion per year to late invoice payments according to the Federation of Small Businesses - a figure that automation directly attacks. For a 5-person London trades business, the arithmetic is stark: £340 per month in running costs against £41,700 in measurable annual benefit, with a payback period under 7 weeks. The technology to run this kind of operation has been available for several years, but the barrier was always integration - connecting WhatsApp, Xero, Calendly, and a CRM without a development team. That barrier is now gone. Softomate packages these integrations as a managed service specifically for small trades and service businesses across East and Central London.
Your trades business can run the same AI stack. Explore Softomate's AI for Trades or book a free 30-minute consultation.
Written by Rakesh Patel, AI Automation Consultant at Softomate Solutions, Barking, East London. This case study represents a composite of multiple client deployments. Business name is illustrative.More from the blog
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