When Jay Mahaffey was seven years old, he was already on the payroll at Tuck & Howell.
“I got fired twice by my uncle as a teenager for showing up late,” he says with a laugh.
The story of Tuck & Howell Plumbing, Heating, and Air began in Jay’s grandfather’s garage in Greenville, South Carolina. In 1969, his uncle Jerry took over the business and partnered with his friend Hayden Howell. As Jay puts it, “They ran a business on a handshake for about 57 years.”
But when Jay and his wife Amanda took over the family business in 2023, it was struggling.
Calls on nights and weekends went unanswered. “We’d come in on Monday morning and have to figure out which voicemails needed our attention.” The business was generating roughly $4M in revenue at -11% net income. “We had this joke that we were running a charity,” says Jay.
Amanda, who has an accounting background, almost walked away given the numbers. But Jay pushed to turn it around. They prided themselves on their dedication to their customers, people Jay had grown up with and known his whole life. Jay and Amanda wanted to find a way to support their customers even better by always having someone to pick up the phone, no matter what.
“When it’s 98 and the phones are slammed, you still want to make sure the customer is taken care of.”
The Broccoli Difference
Jay and Amanda looked into several AI solutions, but ultimately what sold them was the quality of Broccoli’s AI voice as well as the personal and human touch they experienced from Broccoli’s team, especially Broccoli CEO AJ Jain.
They decided to implement Broccoli to assist with after-hours and overflow and to support their CSR team.
“Broccoli has answered about 2,200 calls in the past year. Those are calls we never would have taken before.”
Growing Without Losing the Personal Touch
Since Jay and Amanda have taken the reins, Tuck & Howell has scaled fast, from $4M to $19M in revenue in roughly three years. That kind of rapid growth means more customers, more marketing, and more calls. Broccoli provides an extra layer of support that helps Tuck & Howell absorb that growth without sacrificing the customer experience that helped build the business in the first place.
Broccoli’s Impact in the Last Year
2,254
calls answered
375
jobs booked
$405.7K
in revenue
65.46%
of leads converted to booked jobs
“Bringing Broccoli in has allowed us to deliver that same level of service to each and every customer at any time of day.”
Built on Family Values
Even as Tuck & Howell continues to grow, the values that have guided the company for generations remain firmly in place.
“Growth is important to us, but one thing we always go back to is that it’s a family business.”
The systems will keep evolving. The company will keep growing. But whether the first touchpoint comes from a longtime CSR or Broccoli answering an overflow call on a scorching summer afternoon, the goal is exactly the same as it was in 1969: Take care of the customer.
