AI Vendor Scorecard Template for Home Services Businesses

Why You Need a Structured Evaluation Process

When you're evaluating AI vendors, it's easy to get swayed by a slick demo or impressive pitch. One vendor highlights their beautiful interface. Another emphasizes their customer support. A third shows impressive speed metrics. Without a structured framework, you end up choosing based on gut feeling, not what's actually best for your business.

This guide gives you a repeatable scorecard framework that removes emotion from vendor selection. You'll evaluate every vendor on the same 8 criteria, weight them based on your specific situation, and arrive at a defensible decision.

The 8 Criteria That Matter for Trade Businesses

1. Call Handling Quality (If relevant to your use case)

What to evaluate: Does the AI answer calls naturally? Can it handle accents and regional language variations? Does it stay on track, or does it get confused by edge cases?

How to score: Request 5 call recordings from their existing customers in your industry. Listen for naturalness, accuracy, and appropriate escalation.

• 5 points: Natural conversation, handles edge cases, understands context
• 3 points: Mostly natural, occasionally off-track
• 1 point: Robotic, frequently confused or repetitive

2. Integration with Your Field Service Management Software

What to evaluate: Does it connect to your specific FSM (ServiceTitan, Jobber, Housecall Pro, Dispatch, etc.)? How tight is the integration? Are appointments automatically synced? Quotes imported?

How to score: Ask the vendor for a technical specification document. How many FSM systems do they integrate with? How complete is each integration?

• 5 points: Native integration with your FSM, bi-directional sync, no manual work
• 3 points: Integration exists but requires some manual steps
• 1 point: No integration, you'll manually transfer data
• 0 points: Doesn't support your FSM at all

3. Scheduling and Booking Capability

What to evaluate: Can the AI actually book appointments? Can it check real-time availability? Can the customer pick time slots? Does it handle no-shows and rescheduling?

How to score: Test this yourself in a demo. Try booking an appointment. Intentionally pick a time that should be unavailable and see if the system catches it.

• 5 points: Full booking capability, real-time availability, customer can pick slots
• 3 points: Booking works but limited, e.g., can only offer specific time windows
• 1 point: Collects information but doesn't actually book appointments

4. Marketing and Customer Communication Tools

What to evaluate: Can the vendor help you market AI-generated leads? Do they offer email/SMS follow-ups? Can they do segmented campaigns (seasonal, geographic, etc.)?

How to score: Check what marketing automation features are included. Are they built-in or integrations with third-party tools?

• 5 points: Built-in marketing, email/SMS, segmentation, automation
• 3 points: Limited marketing, e.g., email only or manual segmentation
• 1 point: No marketing features, you handle follow-up yourself

5. Review and Reputation Management

What to evaluate: Can the system collect customer reviews? Can it automatically request reviews after jobs? Does it integrate with Google Maps, Yelp, etc.?

How to score: Read their feature list and ask for examples of how their customers use review features.

• 5 points: Automated review collection, integration with Google/Yelp, sentiment analysis
• 3 points: Can collect reviews but requires manual steps
• 1 point: No review management

6. Invoicing and Payment Processing

What to evaluate: Can the system generate and send invoices? Can it accept online payments? Does it integrate with accounting software?

How to score: Check if this is included or requires a third-party integration.

• 5 points: Built-in invoicing and payments, integrates with accounting software
• 3 points: Can generate invoices but payments are manual or third-party
• 1 point: No invoicing features

7. Admin Efficiency and Automation

What to evaluate: How much manual work does the system eliminate? Can it generate proposals? Automate follow-ups? Handle data entry?

How to score: Walk through a complete customer lifecycle in the demo. How many manual steps are required from start to finish?

• 5 points: Handles 80%+ of workflow automatically (booking, quote, follow-up)
• 3 points: Automates 40-60% of workflow
• 1 point: Minimal automation, mostly handles one task

8. Scalability and Support

What to evaluate: Can the system scale with your business? How many calls/jobs/customers can it handle? What's the support model? Is there human support, or only chatbots?

How to score: Ask about their infrastructure, typical customer sizes, and support response times.

• 5 points: Scales to 1000+ jobs/month, 24/7 human support, SLA guarantees
• 3 points: Scales to 500 jobs/month, business-hours support
• 1 point: Limited scale, email-only support

Weighting Criteria for Your Situation

Not all criteria matter equally. A call handling system should weight "Call Handling Quality" more heavily than "Invoicing." A marketing platform should weight "Marketing and Customer Communication" more heavily.

Here's how to weight criteria for different use cases:

How to Score and Compare Vendors

Step 1: Create a spreadsheet with vendors as columns and criteria as rows.

Step 2: For each criterion, score each vendor 0-5 based on the scale above. Be honest. If a vendor doesn't support a feature, give it a 1, not a 3.

Step 3: Multiply each score by the weight percentage. So if a vendor scores 4 on "Call Handling Quality" and that's weighted 30%, they get 4 × 0.30 = 1.2 points.

Step 4: Sum the weighted scores across all criteria. The highest total score is typically your best choice.

Example: If vendor A scores 150/200 total and vendor B scores 130/200, vendor A is objectively better (by your criteria and weights). You're not guessing anymore.

Red Flags to Watch For

• Can't integrate with your FSM: This is a dealbreaker. If data doesn't sync automatically, you'll spend hours doing manual entry. Walk away.
• Vague on pricing: If they won't give you a clear price in the demo, expect surprises. Ask for a written quote.
• No trade-specific customers: If they can't show HVAC or plumbing or electrical customers, they're generic. Trade is different. Require proof.
• Demo doesn't show real functionality: If they won't let you test actually booking an appointment or sending a message, they're hiding limitations.
• Only chat support or email: For a business-critical system, you need phone support. If they don't offer it, escalations will be painfully slow.
• No SLA or uptime guarantee: If they won't commit to uptime, they're not serious about your business. Require 99.5%+ SLA in writing.
• Requires you to sign a multi-year contract: Red flag. Good vendors are confident enough to let you month-to-month. Lock-in suggests they're afraid of churn.

The Demo Process

A good demo should take 30-45 minutes and cover:

1. Your specific scenario (5 min): "Show me how this handles a furnace emergency call at 10 PM on a Sunday."
2. FSM integration (10 min): "Show me how an appointment syncs from here to ServiceTitan. Show me it's real-time."
3. Edge cases (10 min): "What if the caller is angry? What if they speak Spanish? What if they're calling for a quote?"
4. Customer experience (5 min): "Let me see what the customer sees. Can I book an appointment? Can I pay?"
5. Your dashboard (5 min): "Show me your analytics. How do I see calls, conversions, revenue?"
6. Q&A and next steps (5-10 min): Ask your detailed questions. Don't leave thinking "I should have asked..."

During the demo, take notes on scorecard criteria. Rate them in real time. A good demo will give you enough information to score fairly.

Decision Framework

Once you've scored vendors:

If there's a clear winner (20+ points ahead): Go with it. The decision is defensible and the best choice is obvious.

If it's close (within 10 points): Request a free trial from your top 2. Use it with real data for 1 week. That real-world test often reveals what the demo hid.

If your top choice is missing a critical feature: Ask if they have a roadmap to add it. If not, and that feature is must-have, eliminate them and move to #2.

The Bottom Line

This scorecard removes gut-based decision making. You evaluate every vendor objectively. You weight criteria based on what matters most to your business. And you arrive at a decision you can defend.

Use this framework every time you evaluate a vendor. It takes 30 minutes, and it saves you from expensive mistakes.