Your customers always know where their build stands.
Automatic weekly updates. Instant "it just moved" texts. An assistant that answers "where's my build?" on its own — so nobody puts down a tool to pick up the phone.
Gunsmiths · jewelers · watchmakers · custom knife makers · furniture builders — anyone with custom work in flight.
The work is great. The phone is the problem.
5–10 hrs
a week answering "where's my build?" calls
Every one pulls a maker off the bench mid-job.
$15,000+
a year in lost bench time
Skilled hands doing phone duty is the most expensive receptionist there is.
73%
of negative reviews cite communication
Not the craft. The silence between drop-off and pickup.
How it works
One habit for the shop. Zero new habits for your customers.
You update a dropdown
When a build moves, open the dashboard on your phone, tap the build, change the stage, hit save. That's your entire job here — about ten seconds.
Customers hear it from you first
The moment you save, the customer gets a text. And every Monday, everyone with an active build gets a status update automatically — text or email, their choice.
The assistant answers the rest
When a customer texts "where's my build?", they get an instant, accurate answer straight from your live board. Anything it can't answer gets handed to you with context — never guessed at.
A real exchange · zero shop minutes spent
Three tiers of front-office support
Start with a 14-day free trial — no card. Pay monthly, or annual and get 2 months free. Founding shops lock in founding rates; Pro and Full Team roll out to founding shops first.
Starter
Kill the status-call problem.
$199 /mo
or $1,990/yr — 2 months free
- ✓Build tracker dashboard (phone-friendly)
- ✓Automatic Monday updates, text or email
- ✓Instant "it just moved" texts
- ✓AI answers inbound status texts
- ✓Full message + build history log
- ✓Up to 30 active builds
Pro
Never miss a call again.
$399 /mo
or $3,990/yr — 2 months free
- ✓Everything in Starter
- ✓AI voice agent answers your shop phone
- ✓Build status over the phone, no human needed
- ✓Message-taking + warm transfer on demand
- ✓Call summaries to your dashboard
- ✓Up to 75 active builds
Full Team
The whole front office, handled.
$699 /mo
or $6,990/yr — 2 months free
- ✓Everything in Pro
- ✓New-build intake agent captures specs
- ✓Quote follow-up + lapsed check-ins
- ✓Review requests after every pickup
- ✓Consultation scheduling with reminders
- ✓Unlimited active builds
Fair questions
Who is this actually for? + −
Any shop doing custom, made-to-order work where turnaround is measured in weeks or months and customers ask for updates. Gunsmiths, jewelers, watchmakers, custom knife makers, furniture builders, leather workers — same problem, same fix. We started with gunsmiths because their status-call pain was the loudest, but the platform is deliberately vertical-agnostic.
Do you touch any regulated or compliance data? + −
No — deliberately. BenchNote is a customer-communication tool only. Whatever compliance system you use stays completely untouched. No serial numbers, no transfer records, no card data, no protected health info. Free-text description and notes fields are for the work, not for records.
Do my customers need to download anything? + −
No. They get normal text messages and emails from your shop. Replying works like texting any business. No app, no portal, no passwords.
What do the texts actually say? + −
Neutral, carrier-safe wording by design: "Hey Sarah — order #1042 just moved to Assembly. On track for Aug 14." Full details live in email and your dashboard, never in texts. STOP always works, instantly.
I don't love the idea of an AI talking to my customers. + −
Fair. The weekly and stage-change messages aren't AI at all — they're fixed templates you can read word-for-word before anything goes out. The AI answers exactly one thing: inbound status questions, using your live board. Anything else gets handed straight to you.
What does setup look like? + −
About 30–45 minutes with us on the phone: your stages of work, your hours, your first orders in progress, a test text to your own phone. Your existing phone number doesn't change — you get a dedicated text line for updates.
Join the waitlist
Founding shops onboard in small batches at locked-in early rates. Tell us a little about your shop and you're in line.