Why This Remodeler Stopped Treating AI Like a Search Enginge

The home building industry is evolving, and remodeling and design firm KBF Design Gallery is evolving right alongside it. Custom Builder recently spoke with Ashley Sheaffer, principal at the Maitland, Fla.-based firm about how she's putting AI into practice to free up time to focus more on what matters: building strong client relationships. This is an edited and condensed conversation we had with Sheaffer from our Women at WIRC podcast. Listen to the full episode here.

How is your firm implementing AI into daily practices?

Ashley Sheaffer: AI has really helped us with systemizing things that weren't systemized in this industry before.

One of the biggest things that I'm working on right now is our sales intelligence system. A few years ago, we started using Otter AI to record every client meeting that we have or internal meetings or sales meetings. 

I've been able to do is take the knowledge of all of my years in the industry and in the business and aggregate it into a sales playbook uploaded into Claude Cowork. They have this interactive tool where you can upload the client's contract, upload the client conversations and emails and all of the project data along with the sales playbook and ask it to break it down for you. It understands our way of pricing, our way of doing things, so it's really helped me to take a step back out of the day-to-day sales management and more into a leadership role. 

Another thing is that most of our contracts are built either in QuickBooks or in Excel or Word documents.

One of the biggest areas of oversight for us is when a client makes a change that is as simple as their countertop or backsplash, and for most design build companies that I know, that change has to be translated in six different places If that change isn't documented everywhere, it can become downstream a serious issue when it comes time to build.

What we have built is what we're calling our Single Source of Truth contract tool using Claude Cowork. The user interface has one place that I can put all of the material information, and then it parses those details into the different areas of the client's proposal. And then I've prompted it so that when Otter transcripts are uploaded into this tool after the meeting ends, it flags the members of my team to tell them which decisions are still pending and which decisions were made.

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Tell me more about your approach to AI and what it means for your client-first approach to business?

Sheaffer: The end goal is to take the hard stuff off of my employees, the things that cause pain points year-over-year and also to simplify the process for the client so they're not also experiencing things like the project taking longer than it needed to. Historically, when something goes wrong, it's about how you respond to the issue and that's how your reputation is built as a company.

In construction, we work with humans every day. There is going to be something that goes wrong on a project. It's all about the response, but if I can take a portion of those mistakes out of it, the human error, I'm all for it.

What has the reception to these tools been like at your firm?

Sheaffer: I would say it's mixed.

The one thing that we're constantly telling our team is we're not looking at AI as a tool to replace any one of you. We're looking at AI as a tool to take the things that you don't want to do off of your plate so that you can spend more time doing what you do.

We're positioned for growth. The industry is booming right now. This is not about looking to cut costs and overhead, but to scale what each employee is able to do and make them better.

How long have you been working with these specific platforms? How has that [usage] changed over time?

Sheaffer: Late 2024 is when we started getting serious about it. It starts as curiosity...but I think that what really clicked for me is when I stopped treating AI like it was a search engine and started treating it like a team member. So, instead of asking it random questions, I started giving it more of the context. It's not, “write me a follow-up email.” Instead, it's like [vet] my process, [or analyze] this client situation.

Was there anything that you tried initially that ended up not working out?

Sheaffer: Anytime I'm asked that question or I'm talking to a team member about that there's that caveat or that asterisk that goes before what hasn't worked. And that is the "yet."

It's constantly getting smarter, but the things that haven't worked for us yet are a lot of design tools that are coded or classified as construction for AI. With what we do, it’s very custom, and these tools are very generic, and generic doesn't really work for a business where every client is different. We say internally, “We go from builder grade to custom-made,” and AI certainly isn't there yet with any sort of design tools.

MORE: The Rise of the Construction Concierge

How is AI changing how people are working across the industry? Are you seeing negative changes, positive changes? Both?

Sheaffer: Absolutely both, but I think it's overwhelmingly positive for our clients, and I think it's positive for the trades people, too. It takes the administrative work off of them, so they can focus more on their craft.

In terms of workflow, primarily, it's being used in the pre-construction phase, and I think it's going to be a long time before we see anything in construction that's an applicable tool.

I think the biggest change for us was when we started recording our clients’ meetings. Even if you don't do anything fancy with the transcripts right away, just having a searchable record of what was discussed is incredibly powerful.

What's your advice for someone who still hasn't made the jump to using AI in their firm? 

Sheaffer: Don't think of AI as a technology project. Think of it as if it's a hiring decision, like if you could hire someone that works 24-7, doesn't call in sick, they can read 100 documents in 30 seconds, would you hire that person? And you would. It absolutely changes your scalability and what you can accomplish in a day, and also the quality of the output.