Effiqo AI, a Bellevue, Washington-based company building AI voice agents for service businesses, announced on November 11, 2026, that Antonio Akins has joined as Fractional Chief Technology Officer. Akins will oversee the technical direction of the company’s two AI agents, Elise and Xavier, with a mandate to ensure they keep working reliably as they answer calls, book jobs, and follow up with customers for shops in HVAC, plumbing, roofing, electrical, and auto repair.
The appointment matters because Effiqo is targeting a persistent operational pain point for small service businesses: missed calls and unfinished office work that translate directly into lost revenue. According to the company, when an owner is under a sink, up a ladder, or with a customer, an unanswered call often means the caller gives up and dials the next shop. Effiqo’s Elise agent is designed to answer those calls at any hour, listen to the caller’s needs, and book the job directly onto the schedule. Xavier handles the “second shift” of office work by calling back open estimates and reaching out to past customers, with the aim of converting already-earned opportunities into booked jobs.
Akins brings nearly 16 years at Salesforce, most recently as Senior Vice President of Engineering, where he led work on software used by millions of people daily. Before Salesforce, he spent nearly 14 years at Microsoft, including leading quality for Bing Mobile and MSN Mobile. He is a Vanderbilt University computer science graduate, class of 1996. In his new role, he will look after how Elise and Xavier are built, how customer details are kept safe, and what capabilities they improve next—described by the company as keeping them “answering right, booking right, following up right.”
“I have spent my career building software people can count on without having to think about it,” Akins said in a statement. “A small shop should get that same peace of mind. When a homeowner calls in the middle of the night with no heat, someone should answer, and answer well, every time.” He added that when the owner gets home, follow-up calls should already be done, quotes called back, and old customers checked in on—what he called “time back for the owner, good care for the customer, and more booked jobs for the shop.”
Barbara Saunders, Founder of Effiqo AI, said the company’s mission is to give owners their time back. “Owners did not start their shops to live on the phone, or to carry the office home in their heads every night,” she said. “They started them to do good work, to take care of their customers, and to build a better life for their families.” She added that Akins “makes the team behind them stronger.”
The hire signals Effiqo’s intent to compete on reliability and trust in the emerging market for AI-powered customer service tools aimed at trades and repair businesses. For owners, the implication is that the company is investing in engineering leadership to ensure its agents handle calls consistently and safeguard customer data—factors that could determine whether AI adoption reduces administrative burden or introduces new risk. Effiqo maintains that if a caller asks for a person, Elise or Xavier connects them to a human in the shop’s own office, keeping the business in control of its customer relationships. More information is available at www.effiqo.ai.
