Case Study
How AI Website Optimization Helped TJ’s Appliance Repair Generate 46% More Calls
Overview
- Client: TJ’s Appliance Repair
- Location: Scotch Plains, NJ
- Industry: Home appliance repair
- Challenge: Stand out in a crowded local market and improve visibility inside AI assistants like ChatGPT and Gemini
- Strategy: Add FAQ sections to every page, create expanded AI-facing versions of every page, and publish deeper service information designed to be cited by AI tools
- Result: Calls increased from 319 to 467 across the same four-month period year over year, a 46.4% increase!
The Challenge: AI Is Changing The Way Customers Search
TJ’s Appliance Repair is a family-owned and operated appliance repair company that has served Scotch Plains, NJ and the surrounding area since 2003. Like many small local businesses, they were already doing the hard part well: providing strong service, building local trust, and giving customers a reason to call. The problem was visibility.
Traditional SEO is still as important as ever, but the way people find local service businesses is changing. More homeowners are now asking AI assistants questions like, “Who fixes refrigerators near me?” or “What is the average cost to repair a dryer?”
When AI assistants answer those questions, they do not pull information out of thin air. They rely on websites that are easy to crawl, easy to understand, and rich in specific, useful details.
This creates a major opportunity.
If TJ’s Appliance Repair had a website built not just for human readers, but also for AI systems evaluating appliance repair companies, they would be in a much stronger position to be cited and recommended.
In November, Prospect Genius rolled out a full AI-oriented content upgrade across the site.
The Results
After the AI-focused updates went live in November, TJ’s Appliance Repair saw a significant jump in calls compared to the same months the year before. This year-over-year comparison matters because it helps control for seasonality. Instead of comparing random months, we are comparing the same part of the year before and after the AI optimization work.
Across November through February, call volume increased from 319 calls to 467 calls. That is an increase of 148 calls, or 46.4%!
| Month | Calls before AI Optimization | Calls after AI optimization | Change | % Increase |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| November | 77 | 120 | +43 | +55% |
| December | 87 | 128 | +41 | +47.1% |
| January | 97 | 134 | +37 | +38.1% |
| February | 58 | 85 | +27 | +46.6% |
| Total | 319 | 467 | +148 | +46.4% |
What stands out:
Every month in the comparison period showed a strong year-over-year increase. That is important because it suggests this was not a one-month spike or a fluke. The lift was sustained across multiple months.
AI Referral and Crawler Data
Human website users referred by AI:
| Month | Human visitors referred by AI assistants |
|---|---|
| November | 50 |
| December | 61 |
| January | 86 |
From November to January, human traffic referred by AI assistants increased from 50 to 86, a gain of 72%. That is exactly the kind of trend you would expect to see if AI systems were surfacing the business more often.
AI crawler website visits:
| Month | Visits to website by AI crawlers |
|---|---|
| November | 1,163 |
| December | 1,228 |
| January | 1,130 |
The crawler data shows sustained, meaningful AI activity on the site following the updates. While crawler visits did not increase every single month, they remained high throughout the measured period, which supports the broader pattern: AI systems were actively discovering, revisiting, and processing the upgraded content.
What this tells us:
Taken together, the data shows three things happening at once: AI systems were crawling the site heavily, AI assistants were sending more human visitors to the site over time, and call volume increased sharply.
No honest marketer should say that one metric alone proves causation in a vacuum. But when the timing lines up this cleanly and the supporting signals all move in the same direction, the conclusion is strong: optimizing the site for AI played a major role in increasing lead volume.
How We Did It
1. We added FAQ sections to every page.
Each page was updated with a relevant FAQ section designed to answer the kinds of questions real homeowners ask before calling. This helped in two ways: It made the pages more useful to human visitors, and it gave AI assistants clean, direct answers to questions they are commonly asked.
2. We created alternate versions of every page for AI assistant crawlers.
- Average appliance repair costs in Scotch Plains
- The repair process TJ’s Appliance Repair follows
- The specific parts and methods commonly used in repairs
- Authoritative information about how appliances fail
- Detailed explanations of how those problems are fixed
- Customer satisfaction data comparing TJ’s Appliance Repair to competitors
Why This Strategy Worked
The kind of content that local businesses usually include on their website often does not give AI assistants enough to work with. By expanding TJ’s content, we turned the website into a much richer source of information. AI loves it!
#3: Your customers are using AI assistants more every day.
Ready to Replicate These Results?
TJ’s Appliance Repair did not get these results by accident. They got them because their website was upgraded to meet a new reality: customers are using AI tools to find answers, compare providers, and decide who to call.
If your website is not built to be understood and cited by AI assistants, you may already be losing leads to businesses that are.
Prospect Genius helps small businesses adapt to the way customers search now, not the way they searched five years ago. We build content strategies that make your site more useful to real people and more visible inside AI-driven discovery tools.
If you want your business to be the one AI assistants mention, recommend, and send traffic to, call Prospect Genius today:
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