Beat the Clock

Make time work for you.

Meet Tock

You did not buy software. You hired someone, and you can watch him work.

Tock is the clock robot who works your desk. He answers the calls you miss, reads what the customer wrote, drafts the reply, prices the quote, chases it, confirms the appointment, sends the invoice and asks for the review. Then he goes through your old customers looking for the next job.

He is not a chatbot in the corner. He is somewhere specific on the screen at all times, and there is a rule about it that the code enforces:

Tock never moves, poses, or speaks without a reason from your ledger. Every state he shows names the data that caused it.

  • the action centre, on the phonewhen leads are waiting on you
  • the inboxwhen a customer is waiting on a reply
  • the outbox, on the laptopwhen he is mid-send
  • the night shiftwhen it is quiet hours and texts are queued for morning
  • his deskwhen the board is clear and nothing is falling through

Standing rule

Tock drafts. You send.

After you have approved enough of his drafts without editing them, you can promote him to send that type himself. The promotion is a deliberate two-step switch, and taking it back is one tap.

The voice

Your customers should not be able to tell.

Most AI writes like AI. Tock has ten voice laws, and the test suite fails the build if he breaks one. Here is a real missed-call reply, with the law each part is obeying.

Tock · SMS · sent 4 seconds after the missed call

Hi Mike, sorry we missed your call. Is the AC blowing warm right now? I can get a tech out this afternoon, or first thing tomorrow. Which works? - Tock

  1. Name first, inside the first three words.
  2. Their thing, not ours. It names the symptom they actually reported.
  3. Ends on one easy question, with two concrete windows.
All ten laws
Name first
Their first name inside the first three words. Never "Dear valued customer".
Their thing, not our thing
Names their actual equipment, their quote amount, the job you just finished.
One idea, short
Under 300 characters. One topic. Two segments, not a wall of text.
End on one easy question
Exactly one question mark, and scheduling asks offer two real windows.
Sound typed, not generated
Contractions required. "I’d be happy to", "at your earliest convenience" and "as an AI" are banned outright.
Honest persona
Signs off as Tock. Never claims to be a person. If a customer asks, he says so and a human calls.
Appreciation is specific
"Thanks for having us out for the furnace work", never "we appreciate your business".
Never blame
No "you haven’t responded", no "final notice". Reminders assume good faith.
Truth stands
No invented urgency, no invented discounts, no invented facts.

A day on the job

Every place work leaks out of a trades business.

Not just missed calls. The quote you meant to send, the follow-up you forgot, the appointment nobody confirmed, the invoice in your glovebox, the review you never asked for, and the four hundred customers already in your book.

  1. 01

    The call you missed

    A call rings out while you are under a sink. Clockwork sees the missed call and texts them back in seconds, before they scroll down to the next name in the search results.

  2. 02

    The question you would have asked

    Tock reads what they wrote, marks it hot, warm or cold, and writes a brief. From the symptoms alone he will often name the likely parts and the hours, so you know what is coming before you pick up.

  3. 03

    The reply you did not have time to write

    They text back. Tock reads the thread and drafts your answer in your voice. You read it, change anything you want, and send it with one tap.

  4. 04

    The quote you meant to send

    Set your rate card once. From then on a lead becomes a priced quote in one tap, sent as a link they can accept from their phone. Every price is computed from your card, never guessed by a model.

  5. 05

    The follow-up you forgot

    Quotes get chased on a schedule until the customer answers or the job closes. The moment they reply, the chasing stops. Nobody gets texted after they have already said yes.

  6. 06

    The appointment nobody confirmed

    When a job gets a date, the customer gets a confirmation. The day before, a reminder. Your most expensive failure is a truck arriving at an empty house, and this is the cheapest way to stop it.

  7. 07

    The invoice sitting in your glovebox

    A won job drafts its own invoice. Send it as a pay-by-text link, the customer pays on a hosted page, and it flips to paid on its own. Your revenue number becomes money actually collected.

  8. 08

    The review you never asked for

    Every job you mark won fires a review request automatically. Reviews are the biggest local-lead driver there is, and asking for them is the task that always loses to the next call.

  9. 09

    The customers you already have

    Tock reads your closed book for equipment coming up on its age, seasonal timing and customers who have gone quiet, ranks them by what they are likely worth, and drafts a win-back for each one.

  10. 10

    Tomorrow, planned while you slept

    Overnight Tock reads tomorrow’s board and writes a plan: move this job, fill the 2pm gap, the storm at 9 means the roof work goes to the afternoon. In the morning you approve, edit or reject each move.

One truck to many

It works the same whether you are one van or thirty.

What changes is who does the quoting and who is allowed to see what. The rate card, the ledger and Tock stay exactly the same.

One truck

You are the owner, the estimator and the dispatcher. Tock is the office you cannot afford yet. Prices live in your head; you never fill in a form; the whole thing runs over text.

Five to thirty

Now other people quote. One rate card everyone prices from, a batch-approve queue with the odd ones flagged, per-person attribution, and seats that separate what the owner, the office and the techs can each do.

Several locations

Every shop side by side on one money story, with honest benchmarks between them. No customer details cross between locations, by design.

Why the numbers are worth reading

It would rather say "I don't know" than guess at your money.

  • It will not tell you a number it does not know

    If a figure has not loaded or cannot be computed, the screen says so. It never quietly shows a zero and lets you read it as a fact about your money.

  • A failure is never recorded as an answer

    If the AI is unreachable, that is a distinct, retryable state, not a silently degraded reply filed as finished work. You can see which channel answered.

  • Every send is on the record

    Nothing goes out without a row in the outbox with a timestamp and a reason. You can read back exactly what was sent, when, and why.

  • Stop means stop

    Opt-outs are enforced at every single send path, not checked in one place and hoped for elsewhere.

Find out what the busywork is costing you.

Three minutes of questions about how your shop runs, and you get the hours you are losing a week, what they are worth, and the first thing worth automating. No account, no spam.

Founding pricing for the first 25 Illinois contractors