Exceed Plumbing & Air Conditioning started because I kept watching customers get let down by tradies who didn’t show up on time, didn’t explain what they were doing or left a mess and disappeared. I’d been working in the industry long enough to know that wasn’t a standard, it was just what people had accepted. So I started my own business around the idea that the job isn’t done until the customer actually feels good about the whole experience, not just the repair itself.

The difference isn’t a catchy slogan. It’s the stuff that sounds basic but most tradies skip. We show up when we say we will. We walk the customer through what we found, what we fixed and why. We leave the place cleaner than we arrived. And every job we do is backed by a Lifetime Labour Warranty, which tells you something about how confident we are in the work.

In my experience, customers aren’t just comparing prices. They’re comparing how much they trust the person standing in their home. That’s the part we focus on getting right every single time.

Most of our new business comes from word of mouth and that’s something I’m genuinely proud of. When a customer refers us to a neighbour or a property manager recommends us to their landlord clients, that tells me the experience landed the way it was supposed to. Referrals also tend to bring in better jobs because the trust is already there before we even pick up the phone.

We also get solid inflow from Google, particularly from people searching for urgent jobs like blocked drains or burst pipes. Those customers are usually stressed and just need someone reliable to show up fast, and we do well there.

But if I’m being real about where I wish more business came from, it’s the planned and preventative side of things. Maintenance agreements, scheduled hot water system checks, annual gas safety inspections. That kind of recurring work smooths out the seasonal dips and builds longer relationships with customers instead of one-off transactions. I think a lot of homeowners don’t realise how much a regular plumbing check can save them down the track and that’s a gap I’d like to close with better education through our content and partnerships with property managers and interior designers we already work with.

The one thing I’ve genuinely handed over to AI is first-draft content. Job descriptions, service page copy, email follow-up sequences after a job is completed. I used to spend way too long staring at a blank page trying to get the tone right and now I use AI to get something on the page fast and then edit it into shape. It’s saved me probably three to four hours a week that I’d rather put into the business.

The thing I tried and went back to doing the human way is customer complaint handling. Early on I tested using templated AI responses for negative reviews and difficult customer situations and it was a mistake. The responses were technically fine but they felt hollow and customers could tell. A complaint is usually someone who genuinely expected better and they need to feel like a real person heard them. I write every one of those myself now and in my experience the ones I handle personally almost always turn around into a positive outcome. That’s not something I’m willing to automate.

The shift I’ve noticed most is that customers arrive more informed than they used to. A few years back someone would call about a blocked drain and just want someone to fix it. Now they’ve often already looked up what might be causing it, what the repair process involves and roughly what it should cost. That changes the conversation because you’re not starting from zero, you’re either confirming what they found or correcting something they read that wasn’t quite right.

Google is still where the majority of our inbound comes from and that hasn’t changed dramatically. But I’ve started noticing something worth paying attention to. Occasionally a customer will mention they asked ChatGPT or a similar tool what to look for in a plumber or what questions to ask before booking, and then they called us. It’s not a flood of leads yet but the fact that it’s happening at all tells me that AI search is starting to sit earlier in the customer journey than most trade businesses are prepared for.

For me, that’s the part I’m watching closely. If someone asks an AI assistant for a plumber in Adelaide and we’re not showing up in that answer, that’s a visibility problem that doesn’t look like a traditional SEO problem and I think most tradies haven’t started thinking about it yet.

The first thing I’d tell them to do is get their Google presence genuinely sorted before worrying about anything else. Reviews, accurate service pages, fast response times to enquiries. That’s still where most trade jobs are won and lost and a lot of businesses in this industry are leaving work on the table because their online presence doesn’t match the quality of their actual work.

The second thing is to start using AI for the admin and content side of the business now, not later. Job descriptions, follow-up emails, service descriptions, even helping structure quotes. The learning curve is short and the time saving is real. Waiting another 12 months to try it just means 12 months of doing things the slow way.

The thing I’d tell them to ignore is chasing every new platform. TikTok, Threads, whatever comes next. I think trade businesses get distracted by channels that their actual customers aren’t using to find a plumber at 7am on a Tuesday when their hot water system has failed. Attention is finite and I believe the businesses that win over the next 12 months are the ones that go deeper on the channels already working rather than spreading themselves thin trying to be everywhere.

And honestly, I’d tell them to keep answering their phone. In my experience that alone still separates more trade businesses than any marketing strategy.