We did not start with a product. We started with the trades.
Before CloseCrew had a name, it was a lot of reading and a lot of listening: building codes, load calculations, pipe sizing, and long conversations with the people who do this work for a living.
We wanted to understand how an HVAC, plumbing, or electrical shop actually runs, not how software companies imagine it runs. So we did the slow version. We worked through the codes properly and asked contractors to walk us through their week: the jobs, the crews, the trucks, and the evenings that disappear into paperwork.
Those conversations were meant to be about the work. They kept drifting somewhere else. A call missed while someone was under a house. An estimate that never got its follow-up. A customer who booked the next company down the road because that company picked up first.
A one-truck shop can be excellent at the trade and still lose work to a phone that rang while everyone was on a job.
Nobody we spoke to described that as a software problem. They described it as the cost of being small.
The gap between the work and the booking
Big operations solve this with an office: dispatchers, a call centre, someone whose whole job is follow-up. Small shops solve it by working later. We started CloseCrew to close that gap, so a shop with two trucks can answer, follow up, and book like a shop with twenty, without hiring an office to do it.
Why we are called CloseCrew
Close, because the work small shops lose is rarely lost on the job. It is lost somewhere between the first ring and the booking. Crew, because nobody in the trades does the work alone, and we would rather be part of your crew than one more login in your toolbox.
Where we are now
We are still a small team, and we mean to stay close to the shops we work with. Each one is set up around how that shop already runs, and we keep learning from the techs who film their own jobs with us through our Creator Program.
We are not trying to turn contractors into software people. We are trying to give good small shops the back office they never had the time to build.
About CloseCrew
CloseCrew is a customer communication and service management software platform developed and operated by SOFTAIMS AI TECHNOLOGIES LLC, a US-registered software development company.
CloseCrew is designed for HVAC, plumbing, and other home service businesses to manage customer inquiries, two-way SMS conversations, missed calls, technician scheduling, appointment confirmations, and service updates.
We develop and test CloseCrew’s communication features using authorized participants before making them available to individual service businesses.
