AI Employee: How Home Service Businesses Are Scaling Without More Staff

Recorded live at AHR Expo 2026, this episode of Service Business Mastery features host Tersh Blissett in conversation with Podium co-founder Dennis Steele about how AI has moved past simple chatbots into agents that work like real employees for HVAC and plumbing companies. Dennis traces Podium's path from a 2014 Google-reviews point solution to a full communication platform, and explains how that decade of infrastructure now powers Larry, Podium's AI employee, which answers calls, texts customers, and books jobs straight into the calendar.

The two dig into real customer stories — including an angry driver who ended up booking a service call after Larry handled his complaint over text — plus how AI can scale to unlimited simultaneous calls, cover after-hours shifts, mine customer data for new revenue, and be customized through Podium's AI Studio playbooks. They close on why onboarding an AI employee should look like onboarding a human one, and what service business owners should know about AI security and voice cloning.

Key takeaways

• Podium spent three years and fifty million dollars building its own phone system before AI agents existed, which is why its AI employee, Larry, can already text, talk on the phone, and book appointments straight into the calendar.

• A ten-truck HVAC company in Utah turned an angry driver's complaint into a booked estimate when Larry responded calmly over text instead of escalating, turning a bad moment into revenue.

• Podium, founded in 2014 and now at 1,100 employees, is preparing to launch outbound AI calling that analyzes ServiceTitan accounts for open estimates and lapsed memberships and automatically reaches out to close them.