Too Many Good Businesses Lose Leads They Should Have Won. We Built Viking to Fix That.
Viking Marketing is an AI appointment setter and CRM platform built by an Arizona entrepreneur who spent over a decade running local businesses, watching good companies lose customers at the edges of their operations. We are not a venture-backed software company. We are a lean team based in Chandler, Arizona, building tools that solve real problems for real service businesses.
Built in Chandler, Arizona. Rated 5.0 from 21 Google reviews.
The story behind Viking
Charles DeFelice, known to most as Charlie, spent more than ten years building businesses in Arizona. He started in the solar industry, growing sales organizations in the Phoenix area from the ground up through direct effort and high-volume outreach. Over that decade he worked with and alongside dozens of local service companies across the Valley.
The same problems kept showing up. A lead texts or messages in while the owner is on a job and the reply doesn't go out for hours. The customer books with whoever answered first. A follow-up runs for a week then stops when life gets busy. An estimate goes out and nobody ever checks back on it. A great customer finishes a job happy but never gets asked for a review, so they never leave one.
None of these businesses were failing because of bad work. They were losing customers at the edges, in the gap between a lead arriving and someone responding, between a job finishing and a review being requested, between a good customer going quiet and someone remembering to reach back out.
Most of the tools that existed to close these gaps were built for large corporate sales teams. Expensive, complicated, and impossible to operate without a dedicated marketing department. Local service businesses needed something different. Something that ran on its own, communicated like a real person, and did not require anyone to babysit it.
That is the gap Viking was built to close.
What Viking does
Viking is an AI appointment setter and CRM platform built specifically for local service businesses. It replies to every lead by text, web chat, and social the moment they reach out, follows up on leads automatically, tracks every contact through a visual pipeline, sends branded invoices by text and email, collects reviews after every job, and reactivates dormant contacts from your existing database, all from one platform, at one flat price.
The businesses we serve are HVAC companies in Scottsdale, dental practices in Mesa, med spas in Chandler, gyms in Phoenix, home service contractors across the Valley, real estate agents, and salons and barbershops. We know their problems because we built this in the same market they work in.
Who runs Viking
Charles (Charlie) DeFelice — Founder
Charlie is an Arizona entrepreneur with over ten years of experience building and running businesses across the Phoenix area. He started in solar sales and spent years growing high-volume outreach organizations before turning his focus to AI automation and digital marketing.
He founded Viking Marketing to bring the same AI-powered systems that enterprise companies use down to the local service business level, without the enterprise price tag or complexity. His areas of expertise are AI automation, CRM strategy, and online reputation management.
Charlie is not just a platform operator. He is recognized within the AI automation community as a hands-on expert. CloseBot, one of the leading AI conversation tools for service businesses, selected Charlie as an early-access beta partner for their Agent Node launch and featured him in a case study on their YouTube channel. When CloseBot's co-founder and CEO Bryce DeCora was asked who businesses should call for done-for-you help, the answer was Charlie.
Charlie is based in Chandler, Arizona, where Viking Marketing is headquartered.
The team
Viking is run by a focused team of operators, marketers, and builders who believe local businesses are the backbone of their communities and deserve tools that actually work. We are Arizona-based and serve businesses across the United States and beyond.
Recognized by leaders in the AI automation space
Charlie was featured by CloseBot as an early-access case study for their Agent Node launch, one of the first operators in the field to test it with real campaigns. In the interview, Charlie describes building live database reactivation campaigns that were handling conversations with over 2,000 people a day.
What Real Businesses Say About Viking
What we believe
Local businesses deserve enterprise tools at local prices. The AI that replies to leads, follows up, and collects reviews for large companies should be just as available to the HVAC contractor who does excellent work but loses customers because no one replied fast enough.
Speed wins the customer. Businesses that respond to a new lead within minutes are dramatically more likely to win them than those who respond an hour later. Viking makes the first response instant, every time, even at 11 PM on a Sunday.
Your best lead is one you already own. Every service business is sitting on a database of past leads and old customers who never got consistent follow-up. Reactivating that list costs a fraction of buying new leads and converts far better because those contacts already know your business.
One system beats ten tools. Every app you add is another monthly bill, another login, and another place for things to fall through the cracks. Viking replaces the stack with one connected platform.
Built in Arizona, working for businesses across the US
Viking Marketing is headquartered in Chandler, Arizona, in the heart of the Phoenix metropolitan area. We serve local service businesses from Arizona to across the United States.
Our clients span industries from dental and med spa to home services, gyms, real estate, and salons. What they have in common is that they do good work, care about their customers, and want a system that helps them grow without adding more to their plate.
4240 S Arizona Ave #1063, Chandler, AZ 85248 (480) 360-4644 [email protected]
