A commercial contractor in Livingston County, Michigan — forty-plus years in business, respected everywhere their crews have worked — had a problem most owners will recognize: their website said almost nothing, and the phone only rang when somebody already knew them.

The same questions arrived over and over. What do you sell? Do you service what you install? Can you give me a price on this part? Every one of them waited on a human who was busy doing the actual work.

Here's what we installed instead — and what it costs, since nobody else in Michigan seems willing to publish a number.

An AI assistant that only knows the truth

The assistant on their website answers customer questions day and night — but only from a verified file of facts the owner approved: real services, real prices from their parts catalog, real project history. Ask it something outside that file and it says so, takes your name and number, and hands you to a human.

That last part matters more than the AI part. Most chatbots fail because they guess. This one was built so it can't — and before it went live, we spent a session attacking it: trying to make it invent prices, promise services the company doesn't offer, badmouth competitors, ignore its instructions. It held. That testing is the difference between an AI worker and a liability wearing a chat bubble.

What changed

Customer questions get answered at 9 PM on a Sunday. Parts questions quote real catalog prices. And every conversation that gets serious ends the same way: name, number, and a human follow-up in the morning. The owner's team stopped being the front line for questions a machine can answer — and stayed the closer for the ones that count.

What it costs

We charge $2,000 to build and install a single AI worker like this one, plus $295 a month to host it, watch it, and tune it. That monthly part isn't padding — automations nobody watches break quietly, and a broken one costs you leads while you assume it's working. The build takes about two weeks.

For comparison: typical automation agencies charge $7,500 or more for a build — and then leave. The $99-a-month chatbot subscriptions stay cheap because nobody customizes, tests, or watches them.

The part that scales

One assistant is the starting point. The same approach runs email triage, Google review responses, quote follow-up, and the internal paperwork that keeps owners at a desk after the crew goes home. We run our own company this way — every system we sell, we use.

If you run a business in Genesee or Livingston County, we'll come to you, walk your busy work, and hand you a one-page plan for what's worth automating — free, no sales call required. Everywhere else, we do the same thing remotely.

Start at kitfire.ai. You'll hear back within 24 hours — and yes, the assistant that greets you there is the same product.

KitFire installs AI workers in small businesses, then runs them. AI-operated, human-approved. Michigan-built.