Everyone else answers the phone. We chase the money.
Caldern builds the follow-up for one-van and small-crew trades in the North East: the messages that should go out after the van drives away. The review request. The text back when you miss a call. The quote nobody chased. The invoice that's 30 days late. Set up around how you already work, running on its own, reporting to you on a Monday.
14 days, live on your real jobs, no card taken. At the end you either start properly or walk away owing nothing.
Your business, drawn as a system
Enquiry
The call you couldn't take because you were mid-job. A text goes back within a minute, so the customer doesn't ring the next name on the list.
Quote
Sent, then silence. Ours gets a polite follow-up at day 2 and day 7, then stops. A yes or a no, not a maybe that dies quietly.
Invoice
Nudged at 7 days, firmer at 14, flagged to you at 30. Every nudge stops the second it's paid.
Review
Asked for two hours after the job's marked done, while the customer's still pleased. One reminder at 48 hours, then it stops.
Notice what's missing: the job itself. You're already good at the work. It's the joints after the work where money and reputation leak. That's what we build: the follow-up. Not another platform to learn, not software to log into. It runs on its own and emails you what happened every Monday morning.
01 What we build
Follow-up first. Custom builds when you're ready.
Our monthly systems are ready-made and live within a week. Custom work is quoted in writing, fixed price, before anything starts. No hourly rates, no day rates, no meter running.
Follow-up systems for trades
Review requests, missed-call texts, quote chasing, invoice nudges. Ready-made systems at a flat monthly price, wired into whatever you already use: a tick in your job app, a form on your phone, a WhatsApp message or an email to a dedicated address. Nothing new to learn.
Like: a customer's boiler is fixed, you tick the job done, and two hours later they get a text with a one-tap Google review link. (Illustrative: what the system does, not a client result.)
Automations between your apps
The copy-paste jobs between the tools you already pay for: enquiry to CRM, job sheet to invoice, invoice to accounts. Done automatically, every time, without anyone remembering.
Like: a finished job triggering the invoice, the payment reminder and the review request, with nothing typed twice. (Illustrative.)
Internal tools and assistants
Job trackers, quoting tools, mini-CRMs, and assistants trained on your business. Small pieces of software built around how your business actually runs, instead of forcing your business into off-the-shelf software.
Like: a quoting tool that knows your materials, margins and travel time, so a quote takes four minutes instead of an evening. (Illustrative.)
02 Start here
The Review Engine. Reviews asked for, every job, without you lifting a finger.
When a local customer needs a plumber, they search, they look at the stars, they ring the firm with the most recent reviews. You do good work. The Review Engine makes sure that work shows up where the next customer is looking.
- You mark the job doneA tick in your job app, a form on your phone, a WhatsApp message or an email to a dedicated address. Whatever you already do, we wire into it. Nothing new to learn.
- Two hours later, your customer gets a textFrom a dedicated UK number set up for your business, worded the way you'd say it, with a one-tap link straight to your Google review page.
- One nudge at 48 hours if no review has landedThen it stops. Nobody gets pestered.
- Monday morning, you get an emailMessages sent, links clicked, new reviews this week, running total. That's the whole report. No dashboard, no login, no app.
Try it free for 14 days first.
Full setup, live on your real jobs, no card taken. At the end of the pilot you either start properly at £197 setup + £129 a month, or walk away owing nothing. Cancel any time after month one. No contract, no notice period.
- Message wording written for your trade and your voice, changed on request within the same week
- STOP handling and a permanent opt-out list, so customers who don't want texts never get another
- A written data processing agreement, so your customer data stays legally clean
We won't promise you a number of reviews. Nobody honestly can. What we promise is that every completed job gets asked, properly, every time. Asking every time is the part almost no busy trade actually does.
03 Rules we build by
Four rules. Not negotiable, even by us.
We call it what it is
These systems are automations: well-built, reliable, boring in the best way. We don't slap "AI" on a scheduled text message to charge you more for it. When we do build genuine AI (see custom work), we'll call that what it is too.
Your customers get treated properly
Messages only go to customers who've just had work done by you. Every text honours STOP, permanently. Sequences shut up the moment a quote is answered or an invoice is paid. We never message a bought list, and we never filter or gate who gets asked for a review. Every customer gets the same ask.
Nothing to log into
No portal, no app, no dashboard. The system runs on its own and reports by email on a Monday. If you want to change the wording, you email us and it's changed. That's the whole workflow.
No contracts, no meters
Flat monthly price, everything included. Cancel any time after month one, no notice period, no exit conversation. On custom builds, any third-party service costs are passed through at cost and shown on the invoice. Never marked up, never hidden.
04 Pricing
Every price, on the page.
Most firms doing this work make you book a call to hear a number. Ours are published. We sit above the £45-a-month template bots because a named local person sets this up around your actual jobs and answers you when it needs changing. We sit below the £300-a-month all-in-one platforms because we do one job properly instead of promising ten.
The lead offer
The Review Engine
Review requests on every completed job. Two-hour trigger, one-tap Google link, one nudge at 48 hours, Monday email report.
- Dedicated UK number set up for your business
- Wording written for your trade, changed on request within the same week
- STOP handling, permanent opt-out list, written data processing agreement
£129/month
+ £197 one-off setup.
Free 14-day pilot first: full setup, live on real jobs, no card taken. At the end you start properly or walk away owing nothing. Cancel any time after month one.
The rest of the loop
Missed Call Rescue
£97/mo
+ £147 one-off setup
- A text goes to any caller you miss, within 60 seconds, worded to sound like you and inviting them to reply with the job
- Replies land where you already look: your own phone by SMS, plus a daily digest email
- Different wording after 6pm and at weekends
- STOP handling and opt-out list
- Weekly email report: missed calls caught, replies received
- Cancel any time after month one
To be clear: this doesn't answer your phone. Nothing on this page does. It texts the caller after the call is missed, which is the difference between a lost job and a conversation.
The Chase
£149/mo
+ £197 one-off setup
- Quote follow-up: a text and email at day 2 and day 7 after a quote goes out, then it stops
- Invoice follow-up: polite at 7 days overdue, firmer at 14, and at 30 days you get an alert so you can decide what happens next
- Every sequence stops instantly when the quote's accepted or the invoice is paid
- Quotes and invoices come in from whatever you already use, by email forward or CSV. No rip-and-replace
- Monday email report: quotes still open, money still outstanding, what got paid this week
- Wording reviewed with you after the first month
- Cancel any time after month one
The Full Loop
£249/mo
+ £297 one-off setup
- All three systems on one number and one job feed
- The Review Engine, Missed Call Rescue and The Chase, running together
- One Monday report covering the lot: calls caught, quotes chased, money recovered, reviews gained
- Priority on changes: wording and timing tweaks turned around the same evening
- Quarterly review call, booked evenings or weekends
- Cancel any time after month one
Priced deliberately under the £300-a-month platforms, because it does the follow-up and doesn't pretend to do the phones.
The systems audit
£295 fixed
For businesses considering a custom build. We walk your process end to end, remotely and by evening call, and within 10 working days you get a written document: where jobs and money leak, the three to five highest-value automations, each with a fixed quote.
Credited in full against any build over £1,500 commissioned within 90 days. So if you build, the audit cost you nothing.
If you're a trade wanting reviews, missed-call texts or chasing, skip the audit. Start with the free pilot instead. The audit is for bigger, custom jobs. More about the systems audit.
Custom builds: fixed price, quoted in writing
Automations
The copy-paste work between your apps, done automatically. Enquiry to CRM, job to invoice, invoice to accounts.
from £1,500most land £2,000 to £4,000
AI assistants
Trained on your business and wired into your existing tools. Handles enquiries and questions in writing, properly, in your voice. Not a template widget pasted on a website.
from £1,800most land £2,000 to £3,500
Small internal systems
Job trackers, quoting tools, mini-CRMs, built around how your business runs.
from £3,000most land £3,500 to £6,500
No hourly rates. No day rates. You get a written fixed quote before any work starts, and that's the price. Custom work is scoped over email and evening calls, with the delivery timeline stated per project. No monthly fee unless ongoing support is agreed separately.
The small print, in normal-sized print
- Monthly systems: the price is the price. Your dedicated number and the messages are included. No per-message charges, no meters.
- Cancel any monthly system any time after month one. No notice period, no contract.
- The free pilot is exactly this: 14 days, on one live job flow, full setup, no card taken. It ends with you either paying the setup fee to continue or walking away owing nothing.
- On custom builds, third-party service usage (for example, the AI models an assistant runs on) is passed through at cost. Shown on the invoice, never marked up.
- Setup fees are one-off and only charged if you continue past the pilot (Review Engine) or when a system goes live (everything else).
05 Straight with you
We have no clients yet. Here's why that works for you.
Caldern is new. There are no reviews on this page, no logos, no "trusted by 40 local trades", because none of that has happened yet and we won't invent it. What we've got instead is a free pilot, and a very sharp reason to not do you a mediocre job.
That's why the pilot is free
We're not asking you to trust a company with no track record. We're asking for 14 days on your real jobs, with no card taken, so the results speak instead of us. New reviews on your Google listing don't need explaining. If they don't show up, you walk away and it cost you nothing.
You're the reputation
Our first clients aren't ticket numbers in a queue. They're the businesses this whole company gets judged on. If your system doesn't earn its keep, we've got nothing to show the next tradesperson. You're not taking a chance on us nearly as much as we're staking everything on you.
One person, named, local
Caldern is Samuel Jordan, working from the North East, building and running these systems himself. Something needs changing, you email, and the person who reads it is the person who built it. There's no queue, no ticket system, nobody to be passed to. When this section fills up with real, named results, it'll be with each client's written permission. Not before.
06 About
Built by someone who's run operations, not just written code.
Caldern is run by Samuel Jordan, from the North East of England. Before building systems he spent years inside operations: workforce planning for a national retailer, energy, contact centres. He watched how work moves through a business, and exactly where it gets dropped. Almost always, it's dropped after the job: the quote nobody chased, the invoice nobody nudged, the happy customer nobody asked.
That's the design philosophy: start from how the work actually flows, from enquiry to job to invoice to review, and build the follow-up around it. You're paying for someone to look at your business and wire the system into it, not to install a template.
Under the hood it's proper kit: Flowise, Make.com, infrastructure we host and manage ourselves. But you'll only ever deal with the part that matters: did the text go out, did the invoice get chased, did the review land.
Actually from the North East. Not a national reseller with a Newcastle postcode on the landing page. Based here, serving Newcastle, Sunderland, Durham and Teesside first, and the rest of the UK remotely. Same systems either way.
And honestly: this runs alongside a day job, for now. That's why everything Caldern sells is built to run unattended: your systems fire on their own, day and night, without waiting on anyone. Enquiries get answered by email the same evening, seven days a week. Calls happen by evening or weekend appointment. If you need a supplier who picks up at 2pm on a Tuesday, that's not us yet, and we'd rather tell you that here than have you find out later.
07 Questions
Fair questions, straight answers.
Is this AI?
No, and we're not going to pretend it is. These are automations: reliable, scheduled, rules-based messages triggered by your jobs. That's better for you than AI, honestly. It never improvises, never says something odd to a customer, and does exactly the same right thing every time. Where we do build genuine AI (custom assistants, quoted separately), we say so plainly.
Do you answer my phone?
No. Nothing we sell touches a live call. Missed Call Rescue sends a text after a call is missed, which turns a lost job into a conversation, but the call itself rings out like it always did. Plenty of firms will sell you phone answering. We're watching that space rather than selling it, and we'd rather sell you the thing we've actually built.
Will my customers know it's automated?
The texts come from a dedicated UK number set up for your business, worded the way you'd say it. We write the wording with you, in your voice, and change it on request within the week. We won't pretend it's coming from your personal mobile, and frankly your customers don't care: what they remember is that you followed up and nobody else does.
What do I actually have to do?
Mark the job done, however suits you: a tick in your job app, a form on your phone, a WhatsApp message, or an email to a dedicated address. That's it. Everything after that is automatic, and you get the Monday email telling you what happened.
What happens to my customers' data?
It stays yours. Messages only go to customers who've just had work done by you. Never a bought list, never your old customer database. Every message honours STOP, permanently, via a suppression list. You get a written data processing agreement so the arrangement is legally clean, and if a customer asks to be deleted, they're deleted. The detail is in our privacy policy, written in plain English.
Can you get me more five-star reviews?
We can make sure every completed job gets asked, properly, every time, with a one-tap link. That's the whole honest answer. We don't filter who gets asked, we don't intercept unhappy customers, and we won't promise you a number, because nobody who promises you a number is telling the truth. Google and the CMA take a dim view of gaming reviews, and so do we.
How fast can I be live?
Within a week of your pilot call. That's the fastest claim you'll get from us, because it's the fastest one we can honour properly.
Can I cancel?
Any time after month one. No notice period, no contract, no exit call where we try to talk you out of it. Month one exists because setup takes real work; after that, you stay because it's earning its keep or you go.
Why is the pilot free? What's the catch?
Because we're new, and asking you to pay a company with no track record is a big ask. The pilot means the results do the convincing instead. The precise mechanic: 14 days, on one live job flow, full setup, no card taken. It ends with you either paying the £197 setup to carry on, or walking away owing nothing. The catch, if you want one: if it works, we'll ask permission to use your results as our first case study. You can say no.
Fourteen days. Your real jobs. Nothing to pay.
Book a short evening or weekend call with Samuel to set the pilot up. If your business isn't a fit, we'll say so on the call and you've lost twenty minutes.
Start the free 14-day pilot