← Back to case studies

    Field Services / Multi-Location Franchise

    National Tree Care Franchisor

    A franchisor scaling from 15 to roughly 30 locations without adding customer service headcount, powered by an AI voice agent and a custom drive-time-aware scheduling tool.

    RetellHubSpotGoogle CalendarCustom scheduling algorithmDrive-time API

    Impact

    Annualized impact

    0x

    Roughly doubled franchise locations with no growth in central customer service headcount

    Booking experience

    Tentative day-of-week + field-tech callback2
    Locked-in slot on the first call1

    No callbacks needed

    01

    2,000+

    Calls handled by the voice agent during peak season

    02

    15 → ~30

    Franchise locations supported

    03

    0

    Additional customer service headcount needed to scale

    04

    24/7

    Lead coverage across all franchise territories

    01 // The challenge

    The challenge.

    Scale a franchisor's central customer service team to support a doubling location count, without doubling headcount.

    • 01Centralized franchisor customer service team handled all calls and bookings for every franchise location
    • 02Inbound call volume during storm season created bottlenecks and missed leads
    • 03Schedulers couldn't see field technicians' personal calendars, so they booked vague day-of-week appointments and required follow-up callbacks to lock in times
    • 04This trade is hyper-local: drive time between jobs eats real revenue, but there was no system to optimize routing

    Why off-the-shelf wouldn't work

    Standard scheduling tools don't account for drive distance between appointments, can't pull field tech personal calendars in alongside CRM-booked appointments, and don't connect to a phone-first lead capture flow. The franchisor needed a system designed around the way crews actually work in the field.

    02 // What we built

    What we built.

    01

    AI voice agent for inbound leads

    Answers every call, qualifies the lead, books the appointment, and captures attribution data, all on one call. Transfers location-specific or complex questions when needed.

    02

    Drive-time aware scheduling

    Algorithm pulls existing appointments and field tech personal calendars to surface only appointment slots within a 20-minute drive of nearby work.

    03

    Internal scheduling tool

    Customer service team enters an address, sees real available slots across the closest tech's day, books the appointment in one call. No more callbacks.

    04

    Customer-facing booker

    Lead form on the website lets customers book their own appointments using the same drive-time-aware logic, all tracked back to ad source in HubSpot.

    05

    Voice agent + scheduler integration

    The voice agent uses the same drive-time algorithm, so the times it offers callers match what the internal team would offer.

    06

    HubSpot CRM tracking

    Every lead, booking, and ad source flows into HubSpot for franchisor-level reporting and franchisee handoff.

    03 // Technical implementation

    Architecture overview.

    Three deeply connected systems sharing one scheduling engine. The voice agent runs on Retell, the internal scheduling tool and customer-facing booker share the same codebase, and all three pipe leads into HubSpot. The drive-time algorithm pulls from both Google Calendar (field tech availability) and the CRM appointment system to compute genuine open slots, not theoretical ones.

    technical-highlights.md

    • → Retell voice agent with HubSpot tool calls for live lead creation
    • → Drive-time algorithm using Google Distance Matrix API
    • → Dual-source calendar sync (Google Calendar + CRM appointments)
    • → Shared scheduling engine across voice agent, internal tool, and customer booker
    • → Lead source attribution tracked through to HubSpot deal records
    • → Per-franchise routing logic for territory-aware booking

    04 // What this demonstrates

    AI voice agentsAlgorithm designMulti-tenant architectureCalendar orchestrationCRM integrationCustomer-facing booking flows

    In their own register

    "
    Doubled the franchise count without doubling the customer service team.
    "
    One call, one booking, no callbacks.
    "
    The voice agent never sleeps, which matters when storms roll through.
    "
    The same algorithm runs the voice agent, the internal tool, and the customer booker. One brain, three surfaces.

    Ready to architect your next system?