For painters: estimates booked while you're on the ladder.
Altitude builds painting companies a website, an AI front desk that answers the phone, texts and site chat in English and Spanish, and a Themis workspace that keeps every estimate moving. We built exactly this for Gambino Paint, a house painter in Colorado.
Your busy months are the months you can't pick up.
Exterior painting lives in the warm, dry part of the year. Where winters are cold that can be four or five months, and most of the year's exterior work gets bid and booked inside them. Interiors fill the rest of the calendar.
Those are also the months your hands are full. You're on a ladder, behind a sprayer with a respirator on, or masking a room with the phone in the truck. The homeowner calling has usually asked two or three painters for a bid, and the one who calls back first tends to get the walkthrough.
Homeowners also plan paint jobs at night and on weekends, when they're looking at the peeling trim. A message left at 9 p.m. on a Sunday is a lead that cools by Monday afternoon.
What missed calls cost you.
Four numbers from a typical week for painters, already filled in as starting points. Change them to yours; the answer is the work that rang and went somewhere else.
In dollars, from $50 to $100,000. For real estate, your side of one commission.
Starting points for painting. Put in your own numbers; the estimate is only as good as they are.
Leaking every month, by your numbers
a month
About $175,500 a year.
About $14,625 a month leaking, about $175,500 a year.
- 16 calls a month go unanswered or come in after hours
- 5 of them would have become jobs at your close rate
Set that against a monthly plan. The plan is quoted in writing after a free walkthrough, and the front desk answers the calls this counts.
An estimate from the numbers you entered, not a measurement of your business and not a promise of results. Every missed call is counted as an ordinary inquiry at your close rate; some would have been spam or a wrong number.
What the front desk asks a painting customer.
We set it up with your services, the towns you work in and the way you like to run an estimate. Then it asks what you would ask, writes it down, and books the walkthrough.
It asks
- 01Interior, exterior, or both, and what's being painted: rooms, siding, trim, a deck, cabinets
- 02The address, so you know the town and the drive
- 03Roughly how big: number of rooms, stories, or the house's square footage if they know it
- 04When they want it done, and why then: a sale, a move-in, a family visit
- 05Whether they've picked colors or want help choosing
- 06A time for you to come see it, on the calendar you actually check
Hi, we need the outside of our house painted before we list it in the spring. Do you do siding and trim?
Caller
We do, siding and trim both. What's the address? Then I can set up a time for the owner to walk the house and write the estimate. Is this week or next week better?
Front desk
Estimate walkthrough booked. Address, scope and listing date in Themis.
An example of how a call can go. Not a real customer.
What a painter's website needs.
A homeowner choosing a painter wants to see the work, know you come to their town and ask for a bid without a phone call.
A gallery of finished jobs
Photos of real houses and rooms you painted, grouped by exteriors, interiors and cabinets, so a homeowner sees work like theirs.
An estimate request that asks the right things
Interior or exterior, what's being painted, the address and the timing, so the request arrives ready for you to quote.
The towns you actually paint in
A clear list of the areas you serve, with a page for a town only where you really work there.
Insurance and licensing where they can see it
Proof of insurance, and a license number where your area requires one, on the page instead of in an email later.
How a job runs
Prep, protecting floors and furniture, cleanup and the walkthrough at the end, written so a first-time customer knows what to expect.
How Themis keeps estimates from going cold.
Most painting work that's lost isn't lost on price. It's lost because nobody followed up.
Every estimate has a next step
The estimate goes out from Themis, and if it hasn't been answered the follow-up is already on your list, so a bid doesn't sit unread for three weeks.
Next summer's exteriors don't get forgotten
When someone says "let's do it next year," Themis keeps the lead and reminds them, and you, when the season opens.
Reviews right after the walkthrough
When the job is done, the review request goes out from Themis while the house still looks new.
Past customers come back
A long, quiet check-in sequence reaches past customers when the trim is due again or they buy the next house.
Built for a painter: Gambino Paint.
Gambino Paint paints interiors and exteriors in Summit County, Colorado. We built its website, its front desk Hazel that answers the phone and site chat, and its Themis workspace. The case study shows what was built and what the owner reported after.
Questions people ask here.
Can the front desk book estimates while my crew is on a ladder?
Yes. It answers the business line, asks about the job and the address, and puts the estimate walkthrough on your calendar while you keep working. You see it in the Themis app.
Will it tell callers what painting a room costs?
Only if you tell it to. Most painters have it book a free estimate instead, so the price comes from you after you've seen the job.
What happens to people who want their exterior done next summer?
They stay in Themis as leads with a reminder for when your exterior season opens, so the job comes back to you instead of the first painter they find in spring.