A former KIIS breakfast producer, and a CADA host, launch a tradie app.

Yesterday, in a Sydney studio, on camera, two men rang 100 Sydney trade businesses picked from public listings during working hours.

Thirty-two answered on the first call. Sixty-eight did not. 

Anyone who has rung a plumber at 11am on a Wednesday already knows how that feels.

Which brings us to the brand new Rockmelon AI app.

What is the Rockmelon AI app?

Kian Oliver spent his first career in breakfast radio. From 2016 to 2022 he was a breakfast content producer at ARN on KIIS 1065 and Gold 101.7, behind Kyle and Jackie O and Jonesy and Amanda. 

He then hosted CADA 96.1's national breakfast show, Kian and Yaz with Avneesha, which reached number one on Sydney DAB+. 

His time in radio taught him that the phone gets answered and there is no dead air. 

Oliver eventually left for the trades and found an industry where the phone rings and goes to voicemail.

With his mate Ricky Kocis, Oliver came up with a solution: the Rockmelon AI app.

Before its launch today, the co-founders tested the app. They called 10 plumbers, electricians, builders, concreters, roofers, painters, landscapers, tilers, carpenters and air conditioning installers.

"This isn't a knock on tradies. Sixty-eight of them were on the tools, which is exactly where their customers want them," said Oliver. 

"But every one of those calls was a customer, and most customers don't leave a message. They ring the next bloke. I spent six years making sure a call got picked up on air. Now I do it for plumbers."

 

 

 

 

View this post on Instagram

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A post shared by Rockmelon AI (@rockmelonai)

How the Rockmelon AI app works

The Rockmelon AI App, a $299 a monthly subscription, will run the half of a tradie's business that turns work into money: the missed call, the quote and the follow-up.

Rockmelon is a Sydney business growth agency for tradies. The agency's own call logs, drawn from 4,179 enquiries across 24 trade businesses, show that a tradie who makes contact within 30 minutes wins the job - about three times as often as one who takes more than three days - and that close to half of enquiries never get a logged call at all.

"The job almost never dies at the lead," said Oliver. 

"It dies at the missed call while he's on the roof, the quote he writes at 9pm two days later, and the follow-up that never happens. We've got the timestamps. 

"The tradie did the work fine. He lost the job in the other half. So the app answers the phone for him, writes the quote in five minutes, and sends the invoice the second the customer says yes."

The app gives a tradie their own business number that texts the customer back the moment a call is missed. It drafts a quote from a one-line description in the trade's own language, in about five minutes from the ute instead of the two days it usually takes to get one back, sends it by text for the customer to accept on their phone, and follows it up automatically. 

When the customer says yes, the invoice is raised and sent without the tradie typing a thing, straight into their own Xero.

The Rockmelon AI App is has launched at $299 a month plus GST, with a seven-day free trial, no lock-in contract, and works alongside Xero and ServiceM8. 

It includes a business number with 200 texts and 300 call minutes a month, an AI sales coach that lets a tradie practise a customer call before walking into the house, and the first module of Rockmelon's Way to a Sale training course. 

The founders admit that it is not for everyone: "If you don't have work coming in, we'll tell you it isn't for you yet."

The Rockmelon AI App is available from today at rockmelon.ai.