Designing AI For The Trades

In an era where artificial intelligence is reshaping industries, one of the most surprising frontiers of rapid adoption is the trades. From roofing and home improvement to solar energy and pest control, outside sales teams in these blue-collar industries are embracing AI not out of hype, but to solve real challenges and boost results.

Leading this transformation is Kunal Abichandani, Head of Product and Design at Rilla, and the visionary behind Rick AI, the world's leading AI assistant for outside sales.

"People assume that innovation happens only in Silicon Valley garages," Kunal says.

"But some of the most fascinating AI adoption I've seen is on kitchen tables in Indiana, front porches in Arizona, and driveways in Georgia, where reps are selling services face-to-face. These folks are hungry for technology that actually helps them close more deals and grow their business."

Rick AI is a generative AI-powered assistant trained on millions of anonymized real-world sales conversations. It listens to reps' pitches, timing, technique, and script compliance and then provides instant, targeted coaching to help them improve. For sales managers, it surfaces the exact moments when a deal went off-track, or closed brilliantly, allowing for high-impact coaching without hours of shadowing.

Why Blue-Collar Sales Is an Untapped Goldmine for AI

Outside sales in the trades is an environment where performance variation is high, onboarding takes time, and coaching bandwidth is limited. Reps work independently in the field, meeting customers at their homes or job sites, often without real-time feedback or structured support.

"Traditional sales tech doesn't serve this model," explains Kunal. "CRM tools assume reps are behind laptops. Script compliance tools are built for call centers. But offline i.e. in person sales is a completely different beast: it's high-context, emotional, and time-sensitive."

Despite these complexities, the market potential is massive. The U.S. home services market alone is valued at over $500 billion, with sales teams responsible for driving the bulk of revenue. Small performance gains—just 10–20% improvements in close rates—can lead to millions in new revenue for companies operating in this space.

From Penn to Product Leadership

Born in India and raised between there and Finland, Kunal was captivated by technology from an early age, especially watching innovation unfold at Nokia during its peak, where both of his parents worked. That early exposure to cutting-edge mobile tech inspired him to teach himself to code at just 15 years old, eventually building and releasing his own app on the Google PlayStore while still in high school.

He studied computer science and design at the University of Pennsylvania, where he spent time in the intersection of technical depth and user-centric design. "Engineering taught me what's possible, and design taught me why it matters," he says. That dual mindset has shaped his entire career—from helping build the world's largest private cloud at Facebook to launching ventures at the startup studio Atomic, where he worked across a variety of industries to bring new ideas to life.

Now, he is the Head of Product and Design at Rilla, where Kunal leads the development of Rick AI with a focus on deep user empathy and building an AI tool that "just gets it." He was initially hired as the company's founding engineer, and quickly grew into a leadership role by building cross-functional teams and leading critical initiatives that helped Rilla grow very quickly. Kunal, along with his team, spend significant time and effort shadowing sales reps and managers in the field, observing firsthand how deals are won and lost. This hands-on approach allows the team to develop a level of insight that can't be gleaned from dashboards or data alone.

"We don't build from a distance," Kunal explains. "We sit in trucks, attend team huddles, and listen to calls. We learn how these professionals think, how they react, what pressures they face. That level of immersion allows us to design tools that feel intuitive and actually support their day-to-day work."

Real Impact, Real Lives

Rick AI doesn't just analyze what's said—it understands how it's said. Leveraging cutting-edge natural language processing and conversational intelligence, the platform has quietly become indispensable in a sector not known for early tech adoption. But Rilla saw an opportunity where others saw resistance.

"We didn't try to force Silicon Valley jargon into these conversations," Kunal notes. "Instead, we built Rick to understand the real-world dynamics of a sale, where trust, timing, and empathy matter most."

The results speak for themselves. Sales reps using Rick AI improve their close rates by as much as 40% within weeks. Companies using the tool are empowering sales coaches to help their teams while dramatically increasing sales performance. But what's most meaningful to Kunal is the human impact.

"One of our users told me that, thanks to the raise they got from higher close rates, they were finally able to take their family on vacation for the first time in years," they say. "Another coach helped several members on their team make enough to put a down payment on a house. That's the power of good technology—it can change lives."

The Future of AI Is Personal

"It's easy to think of AI as replacing people," Kunal says. "But what we're seeing is the opposite. Rick helps real people sell better, faster, and smarter. That's the future of AI: not replacing work, but elevating it."

Rilla's growth has accelerated rapidly, and Rick AI has become a staple in the toolkits of some of the fastest-growing service companies in the U.S. For Kunal, this is just the beginning.

"The trades are the backbone of the American economy," they reflect. "They deserve the best tools. They've been underserved for too long. With AI, we're leveling the playing field—and building a future where every great salesperson has the chance to be extraordinary."