We Are Not a BPO. That’s Why We Need One
A Melbourne contractor’s approach shows how AI can handle a first pass while trained people protect quality, judgement and skilled time.
A business that is not a BPO can still need one: a trained team can take on information work that pulls skilled tradespeople away from their core jobs. For Melbourne arboriculture and landscaping contractor Trees Landscaping & Cultures (TLC), the idea is to use AI for an initial pass and put a knowledgeable person at each important handoff.
Source: We Are Not a BPO. That's Why We Need One. | BPOAI.ai
The work is there, but the hours are not
TLC works with chainsaws, chippers and site visits, but its operations also depend on administrative tasks: enquiries, quotes, follow-ups, reports, subcontractor onboarding, council paperwork and invoices. Each requires someone who understands what a good result looks like.
“The agent proposes. The person decides. The log records the process.”
For co-founder Bobby Pallier and his partners, Matthew Fittell, who leads Operations, and Arielle Bustos, who leads Brand and Media, that creates a capacity problem. Back-office work can land after a crew finishes on site or take time away from the next job. As Pallier puts it: “Arborists and landscapers do hard, skilled and necessary work. They keep our streets safe and our yards alive. They should not lose their evenings, their weekends and their families to admin.”
Slow follow-up can leave a job unquoted or an enquiry cold, while ongoing admin can wear down capable operators. The proposed fix is to move suitable tasks to people trained to handle them—not to make tradespeople into office workers. The aim is to protect time for core work while retaining the expertise that makes it safe and valuable.
A country short of trades
TLC’s concern sits within a wider workforce challenge. Jobs and Skills Australia’s 2025 Occupation Shortage List found 29% of assessed occupations were in shortage, down from 33% in 2024. The source article reports that nearly half of trade roles remained short. Conditions vary by occupation and location, but skilled hours can be difficult to secure and worth using deliberately. Employers can consult Jobs and Skills Australia’s workforce information for official labour-market and skills data.
The source article also cites research commissioned by OpenAI and reported by Dynamic Business: 62% of small business owners said quoting, invoicing or scheduling took up more of their week than the work itself. Among construction respondents, 45% said they had lost work because they were slow to respond. Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry research, reported via the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman, found 39% of small businesses spent more than six hours a week dealing with red tape.
These findings are not a forecast for any particular employer; they illustrate how administrative work can compete with delivery time. GWS has outlined strategies for addressing skills shortages.
What scarcity means for customers
When qualified trade capacity is constrained, customers may face longer waits and higher costs. The source article points to a HIA report recording trade prices rising 5.1% in the first half of 2026, the fastest six-month increase since the shortage peak in 2022. This is reported context, not a prediction of future prices or an estimate of what an individual customer will pay.
Homeowners, councils and property managers feel the impact when work waits for an available crew. A responsive administrative process cannot create more qualified arborists, but it can help ensure incoming work is assessed and followed up rather than lost through delay.
“We are not a BPO. We are the kind of business that needs a trained human at every checkpoint where AI hands work back.”Bobby Pallier · Co-founder, Trees Landscaping & Cultures (TLC)
Where AI can protect skilled time
AI cannot replace the practical skill of a climber or licensed operator. TLC says more people need to enter the trade; its proposed role for technology is narrower: reduce avoidable administration so qualified people can spend more time on trees and landscapes.
The source article cites Thryv’s 2025 Business Index, in which 36% of Australian small business owners named administration as the most time-consuming part of their week. It treats this vendor survey as indicative, not definitive. TLC’s aims are to keep up with incoming work, respond and quote promptly, complete jobs on time and maintain consistent standards and prices customers can live with.
The model is not “AI does everything”. An agent might draft a quote, assess an enquiry, summarise a call or check a form. A trained person reviews and corrects the output, then approves it before a consequential message or decision goes out. Pallier describes the principle this way: “We are not a BPO. We are the kind of business that needs a trained human at every checkpoint where AI hands work back.”
TLC is developing this approach with LYRIQ as its technology and AI partner; the source article says the missing piece is people. Automation can handle a first pass, but someone who understands the customer, work and process limits must own the result. As Pallier says: “What AI can do is protect the skilled hours we already have. Every hour a qualified person spends on quoting, chasing and paperwork is an hour not spent on a tree or a yard.”
TLC has mapped functions around this human-review principle:
- Customer sales: An agent qualifies enquiries, drafts quote packs and prepares follow-ups; a person applies pricing judgement, checks tone and approves the final send.
- Contractor onboarding: An agent screens applicants, schedules calls and drafts packs; a person vets candidates, checks referees and decides.
- Marketing and branding: An agent drafts posts and listing updates; a person protects the brand voice and checks accuracy.
- Legal and compliance: An agent flags possible clause gaps and tracks documents; a person reviews against relevant standards and sends legal questions to a qualified lawyer.
- Tenders and registrations: An agent finds notices, extracts requirements and tracks deadlines; a person decides whether to bid and approves pricing, declarations and submissions.
- Finance: An agent matches invoices, reconciles information and drafts reports; a person handles exceptions, approvals and tax-sensitive decisions.
- Customer service: An agent answers routine questions and sorts requests by urgency; a person handles complaints, safety concerns and unusual situations.
- Operations and scheduling: An agent proposes crew and job sequences and prepares run sheets; a person makes dispatch decisions and considers site-specific risks.
- Quality and reporting: An agent checks job photos and paperwork against a checklist; a person signs off on what the client receives.
In Pallier’s words: “None of these roles needs a chainsaw. All of them need someone who understands the work.” The examples show why automation needs an owner who can spot when an output needs correction or escalation.
When a business is not a BPO: design the handoff
TLC says it wants people with relevant skills who are vetted and continuing to learn, rather than anonymous labour. The source article describes BPOAI.ai’s model as linking training badges to completed learning and checking for evidence of actual AI use rather than relying on claims alone.
It identifies the Philippines as a source of experienced customer, back-office and compliance professionals, some of whom may develop towards supervising AI agents. A role could progress from carrying out a task to checking machine output and helping shape the workflow. For TLC, the proposed value is operational support without creating a large head office.
This is a workforce design idea, not a claim that every business needs the same arrangement or every candidate has the same experience. Employers considering a Philippines-based team should define the work, decision rights, oversight and engagement structure first. GWS has published context on working with Filipino professionals and on using a placement company for hiring needs.
Guardrails come first
For AI and human review to work responsibly, the structure has to be clear. TLC identifies approval gates as a core safeguard: consequential actions pause for human sign-off. The source describes LYRIQ’s AgentConnect platform as supporting this approach with execution traces and audit logs.
Engagement terms also need to be explicit. The source says people should be engaged through a compliant structure, with fair pay and proper contracts. TLC describes its own model as outcome-based and says it is not labour hire by another name. Those statements explain TLC’s intended arrangement; they do not settle another employer’s obligations or determine which structure suits a different business.
Plan data handling too. Customer and contractor information should be scoped according to role, with cross-border handling aligned to applicable Australian and Philippine requirements. The article distinguishes compliance support from legal advice: questions requiring legal judgement should go to a lawyer.
The working rule is simple: the agent proposes, the person decides, and the log records the process. Document what an agent may prepare, which actions need approval, who reviews exceptions and where sensitive issues are escalated. Faster processing alone is not a sufficient measure of a sound workflow.
A question for BPO leaders
The source article closes with a useful test: if a client’s AI agent gets something wrong on a Monday morning, who will catch it? If nobody is ready to do so, the gap is also a training opportunity. As clients ask AI to produce first drafts, people who can review, correct and take responsibility for those outputs may become central to the service they need.
For an employer that is not a BPO, the practical workforce question is which information tasks are taking skilled people away from core work, and which could be prepared by AI and safely reviewed by a trained person. Map the process from enquiry to completed job, identify where delays or errors occur, and assign a human owner to each consequential handoff. The original BPOAI.ai article about TLC’s approach provides the source context.
Bobby Pallier is a co-founder of TLC, a Melbourne arboriculture and landscaping contractor. His career included work at Uber and Deliveroo, private practice at national law firms and in-house General Counsel roles. He co-founded TLC after seeing opportunities to improve efficiency, communication and workflows in the trees industry.
Start by listing the recurring tasks that compete with skilled delivery time, the capabilities needed to review them and the decisions that must stay with a person. Contact Global Workforce Solutions to discuss your recruitment need or submit a workforce brief so roles and oversight requirements can be defined before hiring begins.