The Question Isn't "Can I Afford It" Anymore

For the last couple of years, the reason most contractors gave for skipping AI was simple: it costs too much, and it's probably not built for guys like me.

That's changing. ServiceTitan's 2026 State of AI in the Trades report, released September 29, surveyed 1,017 U.S. residential and commercial trades contractors (HVAC, plumbing, electrical, roofing, landscaping and more) through the research firm Thrive Analytics. A few numbers stand out:

High purchase cost as a barrier dropped to 17%, down 12 points from the previous survey.
44% said the barrier is understanding how to use AI in their business.
43% pointed to a lack of clear use cases.
Only 11% place high or complete trust in the AI tools they use. 58% report little or no trust.

Worth saying: ServiceTitan sells software to contractors, so read it as one industry survey, not gospel. But the shift in the numbers is clear: fewer contractors are stuck on "can I afford AI?" More are stuck on "what would I even point it at?" and "how do I know it's not screwing up?"

Both questions have the same answer: start with one small job you can check. For most home-services businesses, that job is the after-hours call.

Why the After-Hours Call Is the Right First Job

The survey asked contractors why they experiment with AI. One of the top reasons was providing off-hours support (34%). That's not a coincidence. The after-hours call checks every box for a good first AI project:

It's a job nobody is doing right now

At 8:30 at night, your phone either goes to voicemail or to your cell while you're eating dinner. Neither is a system. Putting AI on those calls doesn't replace a person. It replaces a voicemail greeting. The bar is low, and that's exactly why it's a good place to start.

It's narrow

You're not asking AI to run dispatch, price jobs, or manage your crew. You're asking it to do four things: answer in your company's name, figure out what the caller needs, book it or flag it, and tell you what happened. A narrow job is easier to set up and much easier to judge.

It's checkable

This is the part that answers the trust problem. Every call gets recorded and summarized. You can listen to what the AI said, word for word, the next morning. You don't have to trust it. You can check it.

The upside shows up fast

A homeowner with no heat or a leaking water heater at night isn't waiting for a callback. They call the next company on the list. If your line answers and books them, that job shows up on your calendar the next morning, and it's a job you would have lost before.

What "Start Small" Actually Looks Like

Here's a simple way to roll it out without betting the business on it.

Week 1: After-hours only. The AI answers when the office is closed. It asks the questions you'd ask (what's going on, address, is it an emergency), books routine work onto your calendar, and texts you anything urgent right away with the details. Everything else lands as a summary you read with your morning coffee.

Week 2: Listen to every call. Seriously, all of them. It takes a few minutes a day. You're checking three things:

Did it get the facts right (name, address, problem)?
Did it say anything you wouldn't say, about price, timing, or warranties?
Did the urgent calls actually reach you?

If something's off, you change the instructions. That's the whole feedback loop.

Week 3 and on: Decide what's next. Once you trust it at night, the next steps are obvious: overflow when the office line is busy, lunch hour, the day the office person is out. Or not. If after-hours is all you ever use it for, that's still every night call answered instead of sent to voicemail.

The Trust Gap Is a Setup Problem, Not an AI Problem

Only 11% of contractors in the survey highly trust their AI tools, and accuracy and reliability was the top concern among AI users (35%). That's a reasonable reaction to tools that got switched on and left alone.

Trust in an answering setup comes from three things you control:

It says what you told it to say. Your services, your service area, how you talk about pricing, what you do and don't promise. A good setup is trained on your business, not a generic script.
It knows when to hand off. When it doesn't know an answer, it should say someone will follow up, not guess. A line that guesses makes promises you never made.
You can hear every call. Recordings and summaries turn "I hope it's working" into "I know it is."

None of that requires you to understand how the AI works under the hood. It requires the same thing you'd do with a new hire: tell it the job, then check its work for the first couple of weeks.

The Bottom Line

The survey's message is that contractors are past the "should we try AI" stage and stuck at "on what?" You don't need a strategy deck for that. Pick the job nobody's doing, that's easy to check, and that pays for itself the first time it books a call you would have missed.

For most service businesses, that's the phone after you go home.

How NDS Handles It

Nipper Digital Solutions sets up an AI voice agent for home-services businesses starting with exactly this: your after-hours and overflow calls. It answers in your company's name, asks the questions you'd ask, books routine work, sends urgent calls straight to your phone, and texts you a summary of everything. You listen to it and approve it before it ever answers a live customer, and every call is recorded so you can check its work.

Nipper Digital Solutions builds AI voice agents for HVAC, plumbing, electrical, roofing and landscaping businesses in Tulsa and beyond. Book a free consultation to hear what an AI receptionist would say on your line tonight.

Source: ServiceTitan, "ServiceTitan Report Finds Contractors Shifting Focus From AI Adoption to Implementation and Productivity," press release, Sept 29, 2026. Survey of 1,017 U.S. trades contractors by Thrive Analytics, fielded May 26–June 15, 2026; margin of error ±3.7 points.

AI for Contractors: Where to Start When You Don't Know What to Use It For