Customer Success Story

From Message-Taking to Real Resolution — Every Peak-Hour and After-Hours Call

Home Guard Home Warranty's overflow and after-hours calls used to end with a message for staff to follow up on the next business day. Now an AI agent verifies coverage, opens a real claim, and collects payment the moment the call comes in — any time of day.

Overview

A home warranty company's call volume doesn't spread out evenly across the day. Some calls come in when every staff member is already on another line; others come in well after everyone has gone home. Both kinds disproportionately involve real urgency — and what actually happens on that call matters, not just whether someone picks up.

This case study outlines how Home Guard Home Warranty (HGHW) partnered with Zudo to put a voice AI agent behind both its peak-hour overflow and its after-hours line — one wired directly into the same NetSuite account its own staff already work from.

The Problem

Before working with Zudo, HGHW relied on an outsourced team to answer calls its own staff couldn't get to — both overflow during peak hours and everything after hours. Every one of those calls was genuinely answered by a real person. But that team's role began and ended with collecting the caller's information and passing it along:

No access to the caller's actual contract, so coverage and eligibility questions couldn't be answered — only noted for someone else to answer later
No ability to open a real claim or collect a service fee — every genuine request still waited for HGHW staff the next business day
No underwriting judgment at all — whether an item was even covered was never something the intake team could determine
A message, however accurately taken, was still just a message — staff had to reconstruct and act on every single one from scratch

Every overflow and after-hours call was being answered — but none of them were being resolved.

The Solution: An Agent With Real Access, Not Just a Script

HGHW's peak-hour overflow and after-hours calls now route to an AI agent built specifically around this client's own policies, contracts, and underwriting rules — reading and writing to the same NetSuite records daytime staff use, rather than working from a static script.

On a real call, the agent can:

Look up the caller's real policy and read their actual contract to answer what's covered — not a generic summary

Lead with safety guidance first on anything urgent, like a reported gas smell, before discussing coverage at all

Open a genuine, fully-detailed service request in NetSuite — ready for staff to review and arrange service

Collect and verify the service fee on the call itself, by card on file or a texted payment link, before the request is opened

Check on an existing claim's status and relay it in plain language — never internal staff jargon

Recognize when a reported issue may qualify as a free recall of recent work, instead of billing a new fee

Resolution, not just a message. Arranging the actual technician visit is still a staff-handled step — what changed is that by the time staff pick it up, coverage is already verified, the fee is already collected, and a complete, accurate record is already sitting in the same system they use, instead of a note to piece together.

Why This Worked

The same approach applies to any business whose overflow or after-hours calls involve real judgment, not just message-taking:

A Better Experience For Every Caller

No hold music, no voicemail, no waiting for a callback — every caller gets a real, immediate answer the moment they call, whether it's the busiest hour of the day or 2am

Protects Every Service Fee

No request opens until the deductible is confirmed collected — a busy overflow call never quietly costs you a missed fee

Consistent Coverage Decisions

The same policy gets the same answer every time, reducing disputes over claims handled differently depending on who took the call

Customer Safety First

A caller reporting something dangerous, like a gas leak, hears safety guidance before anything about coverage — protecting your customers and your liability

Fewer Surprises for Your Team

Refined against real customer calls, so what happens on the phone matches what your staff expect the next morning — not something they find out the hard way

Comprehensive Notes, Every Time

Every call leaves behind a complete, consistent record — what was discussed, what was resolved, what's still open — so whoever picks it up next knows exactly what to do, instead of piecing it together from a half-finished message

Calls that used to only produce a message now hand staff a resolved, ready-to-act-on record.

Call RecordExample — not real data

Caller

Jordan R.

Property

123 Example Lane

Coverage VerifiedFee CollectedClaim Opened

Staff Note

Spoke to homeowner re: dishwasher not draining, noticed two days ago, no prior issues. $90 fee collected. Ready for dispatch.

Looking Ahead

AI Workers as the Future of Warranty Workflows

The goal was never to replace HGHW's staff — it was to give them a copilot for the part of every call that repeats identically no matter who picks up the phone: confirming the account, checking what's covered, collecting the deductible, and writing down exactly what happened. A disputed denial, an unusual underwriting call, deciding which vendor to send out — those still belong with a person. What doesn't need a person every single time is everything that leads up to that decision, and that's the work the agent owns.

That's the direction we think warranty workflows are heading generally — not an AI that runs a call end to end on its own, but one that shows up to every call already having done the repeatable part correctly, so your team's time goes to the calls that actually need a person.

Expansion With HGHW

Given the results so far, two extensions are next on the roadmap: bringing the agent into business-hours coverage directly, rather than peak-hour overflow and after-hours only, and extending it into dispatch — helping route an opened claim to the right vendor, instead of that staying an entirely manual step for staff.

Ready to Transform Your Customer Support?

If your business handles complex, high-stakes customer interactions—especially involving contracts, claims, or regulated workflows—Zudo can help you deploy AI that actually understands your domain. Schedule a consultation to explore how we can help you achieve similar results.

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