Local business
Who answers when Edmonton's trades are on the tools?
An Alberta project is being built for the calls, quotes and follow-ups that compete with the work itself.
Picture a weekday service call in Edmonton.
The plumber is under a sink. The cupboard is too small, the fitting won't budge, and the phone starts vibrating in a jacket on the kitchen chair.
On the other end, someone has a leaking water heater and a question: can you come today?
Answering means stopping the job in front of you. Letting it ring means another call to return when you finally get back to the van. Then there's the quote from yesterday, the next appointment to arrange, and the customer you meant to ask for a review.
There are two jobs in that picture. Doing the work. Keeping the work coming.
The second one is where Abe comes in.
The beaver with a front-office job
Abe is a project from BlūLion, built in Alberta for home-service businesses.
The character is a beaver. The brief is practical: handle the phone and the follow-through while the owner stays on the tools.
Abe is being built to answer calls, text back missed callers, book work, follow up on quotes, ask for reviews after jobs, and help a business get found on Google. The website is part of that front-office plan too: somewhere a homeowner can find the shop and take the next step towards booking it.
The founder-card site is live. The service is still being built, with Alberta first and no opening date announced yet. The example conversation on the site shows the intended experience; it isn't a customer booking or a performance result.
That distinction matters. A convincing demonstration is a starting point. What an owner will eventually need to see is whether a call was caught, a job was booked and the follow-up actually happened.
Keep the way you run your jobs
Some shops already have software for their schedule and jobs. Others have a phone, a notebook and a system that makes sense to the person doing the work.
Abe's position is simple: "Keep whatever you use for the jobs. Abe brings them."
The aim is to take care of the front office around that working day. For the plumber in our imagined kitchen, that means a caller getting a response while the fitting still gets fixed. For the roofer, it means a quote doesn't depend on remembering to send one more message after coming down the ladder.
For a homeowner, the attraction is equally plain: getting an answer and knowing what happens next.
Alberta gets the first look
Abe is inviting 100 Alberta home-service businesses to claim free founder cards. The plan is to open one service area at a time, with founders going first in line order.
Founders get their free scorecard first. They are also promised a lower monthly price when their service area opens. The teaser doesn't publish a dollar amount.
The card is an invitation to the opening, not a claim that Abe is already answering that shop's phone. Owners outside Alberta can join a separate province waitlist.
For Edmonton's small shops, the idea behind it doesn't need a long technology explanation. You want to do the job well, answer the next customer and still get home for supper.
The question Abe is being built to answer is whether the phone and the follow-up can keep moving while you do.
Meet Abe · Claim a free founder card →THERE Local and Abe are both part of BlūLion Group.