AI employees for small business

Every call answered.
Every follow-up sent.
Every evening yours again.

Shippington builds AI employees for small businesses, trained on how your business runs, watched over by real people, and working around the clock. You don't need to understand the technology. That's our job.

Book a 30-minute call

A plain-English conversation about where your business loses time and money. No jargon, no obligation. If we can’t genuinely help, we'll tell you so on the call.

The problem

Good businesses lose money in the gaps.

Not from bad work. From the work nobody has hands free for.

The calls you miss

When you're on a job, in a meeting, or closed for the night, callers don't leave voicemails anymore. They call the next name on the list.

The follow-ups that slip

The estimate you meant to chase. The patient due for a check-up. The lead that went quiet. Every one of them was money, and remembering was somebody's side job.

The evenings of paperwork

Intake forms, scheduling, invoices, insurance calls, status updates. Hours of typing that keep you working long after the paying work is done.

What we build

An AI employee is software that answers, schedules, reminds, drafts, and files. Like a great hire who never sleeps, never forgets, and never quits. We build yours, teach it your business, and keep watching it so you don't have to.

How it works

From first call to first hire in a few weeks.

We talk. You talk.

A 30-minute call about how your business actually runs: where the phone rings off the hook, what gets forgotten, what eats your evenings. You'll know by the end of the call whether this is worth doing.

We build your AI employee.

In two to four weeks we build and train it on your real work: your phone line, your calendar, your forms, your tone. It works inside the tools you already use. Nothing for your team to learn.

It works. We watch.

Your AI employee starts taking work off your plate every day. We monitor it, tune it, and send you a plain-English monthly report of what it handled and what it earned you.

What it actually looks like once it's running:

Comes in

Your AI employee

Goes out

Your phone number stays your phone number. It works with the line, calendar, and tools you already use. Nothing for your team to install or learn.

Worked examples

What this looks like in a business like yours.

Four builds we'd deliver for four very real kinds of business in the DMV.

Law & professional services Fairfax, VA Intake & drafting

A 12-attorney firm stops making new clients wait two days.

The situation. New-client inquiries arrived by phone and web form, then sat until a paralegal had a free hour. Paralegals spent evenings re-typing intake details into engagement letters and first drafts. Some inquiries were answered so late the client had already hired another firm.

The build. An intake employee that responds to every inquiry in minutes, day or night. It asks the right screening questions, prepares the conflict check, books the consultation, and drafts the engagement letter and first-pass documents into the firm's own document system for an attorney to review.

4 minutesmedian response to a new inquiry, down from two days

30 hrs/weekof paralegal time back on billable work

+22%consultations booked from the same inquiries

Home services Montgomery County, MD Phones & scheduling

A 9-truck HVAC company stops losing August to voicemail.

The situation. During peak season, four out of ten calls hit voicemail while dispatchers juggled trucks. After-hours emergency calls, the most profitable work there is, went to whichever competitor picked up.

The build. A phone employee wired into their existing phone system. It answers every call, quotes arrival windows, books jobs straight into the dispatch calendar, and texts the on-call tech the moment a true emergency comes in. The hardware install took one afternoon.

0missed calls, including nights and weekends

~$9,400/moin jobs recovered from calls that used to go to voicemail

24/7booking without hiring a night dispatcher

Dental & medical Arlington, VA Reminders & verification

A two-location dental practice cuts no-shows by two thirds.

The situation. Nearly one in five patients simply didn't show up. The front desk spent hours a day on hold with insurance companies instead of greeting the patients who did.

The build. A front-office employee that runs recalls and reminders by text and email, in the patient’s own language, rescheduling on the spot when someone can’t make it. It also works through the insurance-verification queue overnight, so every chart is verified before the doors open.

19% → 7%no-show rate across both locations

11 hrs/weekof front-desk time back with patients

By 7 amevery appointment verified before open

Property management Baltimore, MD Maintenance & tenant care

A 400-unit property manager answers the 2 am pipe burst.

The situation. Maintenance requests arrived by call, text, and email into three different inboxes. Triage happened the next business day, which is a long time when water is coming through a ceiling. Meanwhile owners called constantly to ask what was going on.

The build. A maintenance employee that takes requests on every channel, asks the questions that separate a drip from a flood, schedules the right vendor, phones a human immediately for true emergencies, and drafts the monthly owner reports nobody had time to write.

3 minutesto triage a request, down from next business day

100%after-hours coverage, every night of the year

Monthlyowner reports drafted automatically

A note on honesty: these are illustrative engagements: representative builds with typical results for businesses like these, not named clients. We're a new studio, and we'd rather show you honest worked examples than invent testimonials. As we complete real projects, real case studies will replace these. Ask us anything about them on a call.

Capabilities

Whatever the job needs. You'll never have to pick a tool.

We're technology-agnostic: we choose what fits your business and your budget, we build it, and we run it. You see the outcome, not the machinery.

AI employees & software

Phone, text & email employees that answer, book, remind, and follow up
Paperwork employees that draft documents, fill forms, and file them where they belong
Custom apps & customer portals built on Google Cloud & Firebase
Autonomous agents on serious open-source platforms (OpenClaw, Hermes, and whatever fits)

Hardware & on-site

Phone-system integrations: your existing lines, answered by your AI employee
Front-desk kiosks & check-in for offices, practices, and shops
Sensors & dispatch for field teams, fleets, and properties
On-premise installs when your data needs to stay in your building

Straight talk

Local, honest, and easy to fire.

Vince Greenfield, founder of Shippington

I'm Vince. I run Shippington, and I build these systems myself, so you'll be talking to the person doing the work, not a salesperson.

I'm local. I work with businesses across DC, Maryland, and Virginia. When a job needs someone on-site, I show up.

I use my own product. The email that brought you here and this page were handled by the same kind of AI employee I'd build for you. If it didn't work, you wouldn't be reading this.

I keep it plain. No jargon on calls, no jargon in reports, no surprise invoices. You'll always know what your AI employee did this month and what it cost.

I'm easy to fire. Month-to-month, no long contracts. If it isn't paying for itself, you should stop paying for it.

Vince Greenfield Founder, Shippington

Fair questions

The things you're probably wondering.

Will my customers know they're talking to software?

When it matters, yes. We don’t trick anyone. Your AI employee answers instantly, says what it can help with, and hands the conversation to a real person the moment it should. What we've found is that customers mostly care that someone picked up, knew the schedule, and booked the job.

What does it cost?

Every build is scoped to the actual job, so you get an exact number on the first call, not a surprise invoice later. The ongoing service is month-to-month, cancel anytime. Our standing rule: if it isn't clearly paying for itself, you should fire us.

What happens when it makes a mistake?

It only does what we've trained and tested it to do, and anything unusual goes straight to a human. We watch its work every day, and you can see everything it said and did, any time. When something's off, we fix it. That’s what the monthly service is.

Do I have to change how my business runs?

No. Your AI employee works inside the phone line, calendar, and tools you already use. There's nothing for your team to install, learn, or log into.

We're not technical people. Is that a problem?

You're exactly who we build for. Every call, report, and invoice is in plain English. Understanding the technology is our job. Yours is telling us how your business actually runs.

How long until it's working?

Two to four weeks from the first call, for most builds. It starts taking real work off your plate the day it goes live.

Next step

Thirty minutes. Plain English. Real answers.

Tell us how your business runs and where the hours go. We'll tell you what an AI employee could take off your plate, what it would cost, and whether it’s worth it. Honestly, either way.