The Playbook · HIRING
How to choose an AI automation company without buying the hype
Choose an AI automation company the way you would choose an electrician: by watching something they wired actually run, and by asking who you call when it stops. Six checks below. None of them needs you to understand the tools. All of them expose the difference between a builder and a subscription with a sales deck.
What should they show you running?
A live automation, on their own phone, right now. Ask them to call their business line and not answer it. If a text-back arrives while you are still on the call, they build things. If you get a slide about workflows instead, keep walking.
Then ask for one they built for a business like yours. A missed-call text-back for a plumber, a review request after a job for a cleaner, a follow-up sequence after a quote for a remodeler. The step-by-step play shows what each of those looks like inside.
Who owns the automation when you leave?
Every account should be in your name: the automation tool, the messaging number, the form, the spreadsheet. The right answer to what happens if you cancel is that the automations keep running and you keep the logins. If the answer is that they switch it off, you are renting, not buying.
What happens when it breaks?
Automations break when a form changes or a service updates. Someone has to notice, fix it and keep the logs. Ask who that is and what it costs. Mine sits inside a care plan, so the person who built it is the person who maintains it, A single workflow automation is $3,500. Care after it is $149, $349, or $749 a month on the plans page.
Does the quote name the tools, the price and the date?
A real quote has five lines: the automations by name, the tools they run on, the build price, the delivery date, and the monthly cost to keep them running. A subscription in disguise has a monthly number and a promise. What AI automation costs breaks down the three cost lines behind any honest number.
Do they tell you what not to automate?
This is the check most owners skip. A good builder says no to something in the first call. An automation that answers a common question is cheap and safe. One that decides whether a complaint is serious needs a human in the loop, and anyone who promises to automate your judgement is selling you a future apology to a customer.
The honest out
Ask whether you need automation at all. Some businesses need a checklist and a part-time hire. If the company never says that to anyone, they are not advising you, they are closing you.
Where does the person you talk to sit?
At most agencies the person selling automation has never built one. The work goes down a chain, and every handoff loses a detail about how your business actually runs. The answer you want is a name. Here the person who wired the game on the homepage is the person who wires your intake, and the person who picks up the phone in month four.
What else do owners ask?
Should I hire an AI automation company or a freelancer?
Hire whoever will personally build it, maintain it, and show you one running on a real business today. Size matters less than who holds the tools and who answers the phone.
What is a fair price for a first automation?
Run the busywork calculator on the free tools page. It prices the hours you lose to admin each month, and that number is the ceiling for what the fix should cost. Most first automations sit well under it.
Do I need AI at all, or just automation?
Most first jobs are plain rules: a trigger, a message, an exception path. AI earns its place when the input is messy, like reading a voicemail or sorting an inbox. A company that leads with the model instead of the job has the order backwards.
Your move. Call or text (847) 387-0244, or price your build in six taps and I call you with the exact number.
← All plays · Free tools: cost calculator, busywork calculator & site audit · Price my build
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