We automate
AI automation for small businesses.
Your staff spends hours every week on work a machine should do: answering the same questions, chasing the same invoices, retyping the same information into three systems.
We find that work, automate it, and keep the automation running. A person stays in the loop wherever judgment matters.
What gets automated.
Concrete examples, because "workflow optimization" means nothing:
- Intake. A lead emails or calls at 9pm. They get a useful reply and a booking link before your competitor opens in the morning.
- Scheduling. Appointments booked, confirmed, and reminded without anyone playing phone tag.
- Follow-up. Every quote gets a polite nudge at day 3 and day 10. Nobody has to remember.
- Invoicing. An automation that chases your unpaid invoices so you don't have to have that awkward conversation.
- Review requests. The customer who just told you they're thrilled gets a review link while they still mean it.
- Quoting. Job notes and photos in, a draft quote out. You review it, you send it.
- Reporting. Monday morning, one email: last week's jobs, revenue, and the three things that need your attention.
If your version of this list looks different, good. The build is scoped to your business, in plain language, before we write anything.
How an engagement works.
1. Audit
We map how work actually moves through your business and put the three to five highest-value automations in writing, each with an honest return estimate. This is the AI Roadmap. If the numbers say don't bother, the report says don't bother.
2. Starter build
We build the automation with the best return first. Fixed scope, fixed price, agreed in plain language. Human-in-the-loop by default: the machine drafts, your person approves, until you trust it enough to loosen the leash.
3. Retainer
Automations break silently. An API changes, a form field moves, and the follow-ups quietly stop. Someone has to own that, and it should not be you at 11pm. The retainer exists because maintenance is real work, not an afterthought.
What the retainer covers
- Monitoring and alerts on every automation we run
- A committed response time when something breaks
- A monthly report: what ran, what saved time, what failed
- An expansion backlog, so the next win is always scoped
Fixed-price starter
Websites that book work.
We don't sell websites. We sell a website that answers, books, and follows up while you're on a job.
It looks like a website. It behaves like a front desk: a clean small business site with booking built in, an AI-answered contact flow that responds to inquiries in minutes with answers about your actual services and hours, and automatic follow-up so no lead goes quiet because you were on a ladder. This is the small version of our automation work, not web design.
- Fixed price for the build, agreed before we start
- A modest monthly care plan: hosting, monitoring, and tuning
- Every inquiry logged, answered, and followed up
- Grows into the bigger automation work when you're ready
Pricing, in honest ranges.
Exact numbers depend on scope, but you deserve an anchor before you pick up the phone:
| Engagement | Typical range |
|---|---|
| Websites that book work | $4,000–$7,000 build, plus $200–$400/mo care plan |
| AI Roadmap audit | $1,500–$2,500 fixed fee |
| Starter automation build | $3,000–$10,000 fixed scope |
| Automation retainer | $500–$1,500/mo |
If a project doesn't pencil out at these numbers, we'll tell you before you spend a dollar. We value partnerships more than profit.
Automation questions, answered plainly
What can actually be automated in a business like mine?
More than you would guess, less than the ads promise. The reliable wins are the repetitive ones: answering new inquiries, booking and confirming appointments, chasing unpaid invoices, asking happy customers for reviews, turning job notes into quotes, and pulling weekly numbers into one report. If a task follows roughly the same steps every time, it is a candidate. If it needs judgment every time, it stays with a person.
Will this replace my staff?
No. We build human-in-the-loop by default, which means the automation drafts and a person approves. The goal is to take the typing and chasing off your staff so they can do the work customers actually pay for. In a five-person business, nobody is redundant. They are just buried.
What happens when an automation breaks?
It will, eventually, and usually silently. The software it connects to changes something on their end and the emails just stop going out. Nobody notices for three weeks. That is exactly why we sell the retainer: we monitor every automation we build, we get the alert before you notice, and fixing it is our job, not yours.
Do we need to replace the software we already use?
Almost never. We build around what you have: your scheduler, your accounting software, your CRM, your spreadsheets. Ripping out working systems is expensive and usually unnecessary. If a tool genuinely cannot do what you need, we will say so and name a replacement, but that is the exception.
What does this cost?
Honest ranges: a starter automation build typically runs $3,000 to $10,000 fixed scope, and the monthly retainer runs $500 to $1,500 depending on how much we are monitoring and expanding. The AI Roadmap audit is a fixed fee before any of that. We put numbers in writing before we build anything.
Do you only work with businesses in Asheville?
Our home turf is Asheville, Hendersonville, and the surrounding Western North Carolina towns, and we like working with people we can sit across a table from. We also take remote clients nationally. The work travels fine.
Find out what's worth automating.
A short call. You tell us where the hours go, we tell you what a machine can take off your plate and what it can't.
or call (828) 201-4226 / email hello@aitako.com