About High Ground Service Pros
High Ground Service Pros (formerly Sanford Temperature Control, Guarantee Plumbing, and C&F Plumbing) is a multi-trade home services company operating across HVAC, plumbing, and electrical in New Jersey, New Hampshire, and Maine. Led by CEO Rich Jordan, the company grew from 2 people to approximately 150 employees in five years.
This case study is based on a live webinar conversation with Rich Jordan, Tim Geisenheimer (CRO, Hatch), and Alec Stevanovski (Editor, HomePros).
The problem
High Ground was scaling fast — and their call center costs and complexity were scaling with it. CSR headcount was growing linearly with revenue, which meant more hiring, more training, and more management overhead — all for an indirect cost center.
Even after adding more CSRs, the abandoned call rate stayed stuck at around 10%. The team was chasing perfection and spending more without getting results.
Other challenges included:
- Human inconsistency across scripts, dispatch fees, after-hours rules, and SOPs
- CSR turnover and constant retraining
- Call center costs ballooning without performance gains
As Rich put it: "We were constantly chasing perfection and adding more CSRs... but we were really struggling to get below 10% abandoned even though we were adding cost."
The solution
High Ground took a phased approach to rolling out Hatch AI Voice on inbound calls.
Phase 1: Backend coverage (overflow and after-hours)
Rather than going all-in, High Ground started by routing calls to AI only when humans didn't answer — replacing voicemail, not CSRs.
- Overflow calls after 15–20 seconds went to AI instead of voicemail
- After-hours and weekend calls were handled by AI
- The team monitored every call and continuously updated the knowledge base
Rich's logic was simple: "Even if AI's not perfect, it's better than missing the call entirely."
Because High Ground already had detailed SOPs in a Notion knowledge base, onboarding the AI was a cleaner lift. They ran backend AI for about a year — and couldn't imagine operating without it.
Phase 2: Gradual frontline rollout
Once voice AI improved enough, High Ground moved it to 100% of inbound calls — but did it gradually:
- One day a week: AI handles all calls. CSRs off the phones. Team reviews every booking and non-booked lead.
- Two days a week: Same process, more volume, more refinement.
- Five days a week: AI now answers every inbound call. If needed, AI escalates to CSRs with a live call summary so customers don't repeat themselves.
How the system flows today
1. Calls hit ServiceTitan first
2. ServiceTitan forwards to Hatch
3. Hatch answers, books directly into ServiceTitan, or escalates to humans
4. High Ground created a "Hatch AI" employee in ServiceTitan for reporting parity
An early fix: the AI loop
One issue they caught early: customers who asked for a human could accidentally hit AI twice if the call center missed the escalation. The fix was simple — escalations now route to a separate non-AI line, eliminating loops.
The results
Abandoned calls
- Before: ~10%
- After: ~2%
Booking performance
- Bookable leads booked by AI: 81% (top-tier human benchmark is ~85%; average call centers sit around 60%)
- Total calls booked: just under 20%, very close to the human baseline of 20–24%
Call volume and escalation
- 75% of calls handled fully by AI
- 25% escalate to humans
- High Ground handles ~10,000 calls per month
Team impact
- 36% reduction in CSR headcount
- High performers were promoted or cross-trained into dispatch support, permits, inspections, install coordination, and purchasing
- Some roles were simply not backfilled through natural attrition
Customer impact
- Zero one-star Google reviews attributed to AI
- Booking rate remained stable — their key signal that customers weren't being hurt by the change
- High Ground is upfront with callers that they're speaking to a digital agent
As Rich put it: "If I told them AI was gone next Monday, they'd riot."
Favorite features
Rich highlighted transparency as the differentiator that mattered most: "A lot of voice AI tools are black boxes. With Hatch, you can see and edit your own knowledge base and watch changes appear on the next call."
- Self-service knowledge base: High Ground's team can edit the AI's knowledge base directly and see changes on the next call. No tickets, no waiting on support.
- Warm transfers with live context: When AI escalates, the customer stays on the line and the CSR gets a real-time summary of the conversation so nothing gets repeated.
- ServiceTitan integration: Hatch syncs bidirectionally with ServiceTitan, so AI books jobs directly into the system and everything flows back for reporting.
For a full technical breakdown, check out the High Ground technical explainer.
What's next
High Ground's 2026 focus isn't another big swing. It's refinement: driving the escalation rate lower, tightening routing logic, and continuing to redeploy strong CSRs into areas where they create the most leverage, like purchasing, permits, and coordination.
As Rich put it: "We've culled the team down to strong people. Now we want to deploy them where they create leverage."
