How One Prompt Saved 3 Hours of Back-and-Forth

(Real Talk: This Is What AI Should Feel Like When It Clicks)

Author

William Tygart
May 26, 2025

Why this matters:
Every contractor has tasks they hate — the ones that drain energy, cause delays, or feel like a game of email ping-pong. This is where AI earns its keep. Not by doing something flashy, but by solving something stupid. Here's a real-world example of how one simple AI interaction saved hours and moved a project forward.

The Problem: Too Many Emails for One Simple Update

A water damage job was stuck in limbo.
The homeowner had questions. The adjuster was unresponsive.
The team was frustrated. The admin had 5 half-written drafts trying to say the same thing:

“Here's where we are, here's what we need, and here's what happens next.”

Nobody had time to sit down and word it right.
So it kept getting delayed.

The Fix: One Prompt to Draft the Update

Instead of writing from scratch, we dropped this into ChatGPT:

Prompt:
“Write a clear, professional email from a restoration contractor to a homeowner.
Explain that we’re waiting on insurance approval to proceed.
Be empathetic, confident, and give next steps. Keep it under 200 words.”

30 seconds later, we had a ready-to-send draft.
2 tiny edits.
Send.

Done.

The Win: Clarity + Confidence Without the Drain

This wasn’t about being clever.
It was about saving time and sounding better without overthinking it.

  • No more blank screen

  • No more group edits

  • No more bottlenecks

Just clarity. Fast.