Family Ties Air, Plumbing & Drain, a residential HVAC and plumbing company serving Southern California, said it has partnered with UpSmith to roll out an AI-powered technology platform across its operations.
The partnership focuses on what Family Ties calls its AI Tech Pack, which the company described as a company-wide operating system intended to improve visibility, feedback, accountability, and access to information for employees ranging from call center staff and field technicians to managers and executive leadership.
Rather than replacing existing systems and processes, the platform is designed to work alongside the company’s current technology infrastructure and operating procedures. Family Ties' goal is to strengthen operational performance, employee development, customer experience, and revenue capture.
Owner Jeremy Prevost, has spent more than 25 years building, growing, acquiring, and operating HVAC, plumbing, electrical, and other residential service businesses. He sees artificial intelligence reshaping home services operations.
"AI isn’t about replacing great people. It’s about giving great people better tools", said Prevost.
"The companies that win over the next decade are going to be the ones that combine great people, great processes, great technology, and great data. That is exactly what we are building with the AI Tech Pack."
The Family Ties platform is designed to identify opportunities across the customer journey, including incoming calls, booking opportunities, dispatch, technician performance, estimate follow-up, customer communication, cancellations, memberships, training, coaching, and management oversight.
Its focus is not solely on automation, but on execution. By using AI to continuously analyze activity throughout the business, leadership says it can spot opportunities and potential breakdowns faster than with traditional reporting. That includes missed calls, unbooked opportunities, estimates requiring follow-up, coaching opportunities, customer-service concerns, conversion trends, and operational inconsistencies before they grow into larger problems.
Prevost said the amount of daily information created in home services has historically gone largely unanalyzed in real time.
"Home service companies generate an incredible amount of information every day, but historically most of that information disappears almost as quickly as it is created", Prevost said. "Calls happen, technicians run jobs, estimates get presented, customers make decisions, managers coach employees - but very little of that activity gets analyzed in real time. AI changes that."
Family Ties said the AI Tech Pack is intended to add a layer of intelligence across the organization to help employees and managers make better decisions while giving leadership clearer visibility into the business.
Wyatt Smith, CEO of UpSmith, said the partnership reflects how his company believes AI should be used in home service organizations.
Family Ties is already a high-performing, forward-thinking home services company. Our role is not to fix a problem - it’s to help an already strong operator become even better. By combining Family Ties’ commitment to operational excellence, employee development, and customer experience with UpSmith’s AI technology, we believe we’re creating a best-in-class platform for how modern home service companies can operate.
UpSmith develops AI-powered technologies and workforce solutions for trade-service businesses. Founded in Dallas Texas in 2021, UpSmith was started by former Uber executive Wyatt Smith. It was originally in the market as a workforce productivity and talent-matching platform, but has increasingly morphed to AI solutions for field service professionals.
It seems like Smith and Prevost both view AI as something broader than a standalone software tool. Prevost had this to say directly on that topic:
"The mistake would be thinking AI is another piece of software. I believe AI becomes part of the operating system of the company. It should help the CSR. It should help the dispatcher. It should help the technician. It should help the manager. And ultimately it should give leadership a much better understanding of what is happening inside the business. Five years from now, I don’t think people will talk about AI-powered home service companies. It will simply be how the best home service companies operate."
As AI adoption increases in the skilled trades, Family Ties and Upsmith intend to be at the forefront of that shift.
