This AI Receptionist Can Handle Those Calls You Lost

**[00:00:00]** And today we're talking about virtual AI receptionist. This might sound like something from the future, but I promise you it is not. It is in use that you probably already have spoken with one without maybe even realizing it. So, I'm going to demo one of them today and I'm going to show you some use cases for this. This might not be for everyone, but I'm sure there are a lot of businesses that have an extreme overflow of calls that they just cannot take. So, I'll give some examples. Let's say you are an electrician, a plumber, um any sort of home services business that you get these emergency calls, people call in. If you are a solo practitioner, you might be doing the work and you cannot take the call. So, either you take the calls or you do the work. Or if you have a team, maybe your receptionist is taking that call. Maybe you have to have two receptionists, three receptionists, four receptionist depending on the call volume, especially in storm seasons. So you need a way to handle all those calls. And the current way typically is a little bit of a nuisance for the customer and that's one of the reasons why you lose some of these customers, which is voicemail or messages. So, what happens typically in one of these businesses is that let's say I have an issue and I call because I see some mold or something. I'm going to call in the first person that I see in not the phone book anymore, but online, maybe Google Maps or whatever. I look for something, I find it, and I make a call. So, I make that call and if I get voicemail, it is very unlikely that I'm **[00:02:00]** going to leave a voicemail saying, "Hey, I've got some more what?" No, I'm going to hang up. I'm going to call the next one in the list and see who can get to me faster, especially if there's like a water leak, problem with the electricity, my fridge doesn't work. Right? So, you many scenarios like these require immediate attention, at least get the peace of mind that I've spoken with someone about getting a visit scheduled because even once you get to talking with someone, the problem is when are they available? Can they come today? Can they come tomorrow? Can they come next week in two months? Right? So, so we don't have any clarity at this point with a lot of businesses because if the receptionist is busy, then they're busy. So, what is the solution? A virtual AI receptionist, which is what I'm going to show off in a moment. I just want to make sure that the stream is working. We're live on LinkedIn X, Instagram, and it looks like Facebook as well. So, welcome everybody to this broadcast. If you have any questions, please drop them in the chat and if I'm able to see them, I'll answer them here. If not, I'll answer them after uh the show's over. So, is this expensive? No, it's not expensive. Is this something that takes months to implement? No, it's not. It's actually pretty fast to implement. We've done these in like a week for some businesses, and it's just a matter of having the script, if you will, that you typically use. So if you're used to saying specific things on the calls, your receptionist, your staff is used to taking the calls in a certain way, that's basically what you need because then **[00:04:00]** we can replicate that with a voice agent. We can train it, give it the script and say, "This is what you're going to say. If they ask about this, this is what you're going to tell them. If they ask about this other thing, this is what you're going to tell them. These are the services we offer. These are the prices that we have for all these services." And you can say we will talk to you about pricing when you talk with someone on our team if you want. But for some businesses, pricing is very important and something that's very very prominent and and and visible since the beginning. So if you want you can have a price list. The great thing is you can tell it specific things or also you can give it access to a knowledge base or or a vector store with information. So if you have a very long price list or a long a lot of variations, you can have it determine what the price might be based on a lot of the questions that the person is asking or questions that you ask the person about their specific needs. So it doesn't have to be for something for home services. It could also be a med spa, a nail salon, a dentist office. We've done for endodontists as well. There's a lot of times and I'm sure this has happened to you where you need to make an appointment with a dentist, a foot doctor, a shoulder, whatever, and you you call in and it takes a long time for you to get a response and then once you get the response, then they put you on hold again and then they start capturing their information and then maybe **[00:06:00]** they're capturing it by hand and then some of it gets lost when you get you have to capture it again. So these systems just allow you to do it much better as a business owner because the person just interacts. It's just like talking with you and me just like a regular person. And you you can interrupt them. You can talk with them. You can ask them side questions. It doesn't have to be a specific flow. And the agent will give you the correct responses hopefully if you train it well. And then it will also take the information that you need so that then it can go into your other systems which is the best part. So we then connect them to your different tools. If you have your CRM, your ERP system, whatever you use, we can have it where the agent talks to the person to the potential customer in this case takes everything down and then pushes that data into whatever spreadsheets you use or you need into your processing software into your visit software, your scheduling software, into your calendar directly. It can send out notifications. It can text them. It can text your team. It can have someone actually have a scheduled visit in their calendar with the location where they have to go, at what time. It could dispatch someone directly if it's something like a um more real time kind of thing where you need a lift from uh the truck, right? So, there's many, many, many things that you can do. And like I said, it's a breeze for customers. In this case, in my experience, it's been a lot better when I've interacted with agents like this versus being on hold because I don't really care if **[00:08:00]** I'm talking to a human or if I'm talking to an AI if it's going to help me do what I need to do because I have other things to do. So, the other day I had to wait in a call for one hour. Of course, I left it in speaker and I just there one hour just waiting and then the call itself took like two hours. It was one of those bureaucratic calls. It just took a long time. So all that could have been much faster with an agent that's properly trained for that particular business. So if in your business you have many calls coming in and you don't have enough staff to take all those calls because your staff can be busy with sending customers, then something like this will be very helpful. If you stop taking calls after 6 p.m. or 7:00 p.m., then all those calls get lost and your competitor can get them if they are taking calls later. So if you have a system where you can take calls instead of voicemail, you can actually take calls, have bookings, it could check your calendar, it could schedule accordingly, it's just so much more work that you can have just by opening up your calendar 24/7 for incoming calls and then it'll just schedule accordingly. It won't double book. It won't do anything of that because it can actually talk to your calendar, check requests, and provide the appropriate time slot that should be available for people to actually book. So, it's a lot of fun working with them. And again, in my experience, a lot better than even calling in someone that does have an IVR, a virtual reception in the traditional sense, because those you you go in and **[00:10:00]** it's like press one, two, say, whatever, right? And so you're you're waiting for the thing to tell you what button to press and if you press it before it doesn't respond. Or there's some more advanced ones that came out a couple of years ago that it yeah it talks and it asks you to say something but then it doesn't understand. You say something it's like oh I don't understand what you're saying. Uh could you rephrase that or think because it's it's more of a very structured way of doing it. The since they use LLMs and you say I they can actually understand what you're saying. If they don't, they can they can ask you, of course, to clarify, but it's a much more natural interaction. I'll show you. I'll try to demo it. I just created one right now, just like a blank example with an electrical services company, Mary's Electrical Service. So, we're going to put it through its spaces just to show you what it sounds like and what you can do with it. And you can plug this into your regular business line to receive calls. You can put it so that it goes from voice over IP number. You could do whatever. And of course, this you could then connect it to SMS, WhatsApp, and do all sorts of things. But let's do the demo just so you see what you can do. It's again, it's it's really powerful for any business that has lost calls. If you ever lost calls um because people are busy, this might be something that that's going to be good for you. And there's many ways to do it. So anyway, let's see if if I can show you what it's I'm going to take **[00:12:00]** my headphones, put it here so that we can uh do it. And let me open it up right here. we're ready. There we go. All right. Here we go. >> Thank you for calling Mary's electrical service. I am Sarah, the scheduling coordinator. How can I help you today? >> Hello, Sarah. Um, I I think we have an issue with a light switch. I don't know if it's the light switch or maybe it's the fan circuit. I don't know. It's just that the the lights just flicker. I don't know. >> I understand how frustrating that can be. Flickering lights can be a sign of a few different issues. When did you first notice this problem? And is it happening in multiple rooms or just one area? >> I I think it's mostly one area. >> Got it. So, it's localized to one area. Have you noticed any burning smells or warm outlets in that area? >> No. >> That's good to hear. It sounds like it may be something that can be looked at during our visit. We offer a free discovery visit where one of our licensed electricians can assess the situation and provide you with options. Would you like to schedule that? >> Yes, that's correct. The discovery visit is completely free with no obligation. It's a great way for us to assess the issue and provide you with the best solutions. Shall we go ahead and schedule that visit? >> Yeah. Well, you know what? I just have one more question. I I also have an issue with my AC. Do you work with ACs as well? >> I want to make sure I understand correctly. Are you asking if we handle air conditioning issues? >> Yes, that's what I mean. >> Thank **[00:14:00]** you for clarifying. Unfortunately, we primarily focus on electrical services and do not handle air conditioning issues. However, we can definitely help with the electrical aspects related to your AC like wiring or circuit issues. >> Okay. Yeah, let's let's just go ahead and schedule it. When when can you come? >> Great. Let me check our availability for you. One moment, please. I have availability tomorrow, Wednesday the 8th at 900 a.m. or 1 PEP. Which would work better for you? >> Perfect. Your free discovery visit is confirmed for tomorrow, Wednesday the 8th, at 9:00 a.m. Please make sure someone is home to greet our electrician and show them the issue. I've sent you a text message with the details and we'll send another reminder 30 minutes before your visit. Is there anything else I can help you with today? >> No, that's it. Thanks. >> You're welcome. [Music] >> All right. So, as you can see, it it it's really natural sounding. Obviously, it's not a person, but you don't need it to feel like a person. some in some cases with clients, we've even gone as far as to sort of showcase it and be like, "Hey, it's I don't know, Mary's AI assistant here to help you not lose time with your scheduling needs, right?" And so people are like, "Oh, this it's entertaining." And then people will sometimes chat with it and talk with it and and do all sorts of things. But and you can you can put little jokes inside if you want. But uh it's it's really neat because it can again just respond with with a script if you have a script and that's fine, but then you can have a full knowledge base that can give them very important **[00:16:00]** information related to your industry if necessary. Like if you do carpet cleaning, you can talk about like why steam is such different from everything else because of the way the bug bugs can be like bacteria can be under the I don't know the temperature things like that, right? So you can be very thorough in things with a very big knowledge base or more subtle if you want but then also you can have it call different services. So we're talking about the the pricing, right? So let's say you you even I see shutters here, right? So um maybe you you want to get a pricing quote for some shutters, you can even have your pricing structure like your pricing calculator inside your agent. So if you have enough data, perhaps you have some external services um that are already set up that can price for you. And so you can have it ask it, okay, so what's the width and the height of your window? Okay. No, 30 in uh by 12. Okay, perfect. So, do you want it with hinges on the left or hinges on the right? And what color do you want? And do you want them wood or do you want it uh plastic? And and so it could just go through and then use that external API call or just call your website or call whatever, get the pricing and give it back to the customer in real time and then ask them for their email or or phone number. text them back the an actual quote with the PDF embedded and everything and even a payment link if they want to just check out. So, you can imagine how useful this sort of stuff is because it's not just, hey, **[00:18:00]** okay, yeah, yeah, it'll replace my phone system. It won't. It's just like it's another person that can take your calls to the most basic level. But for some people, maybe that's not their bottleneck. Maybe they can take their calls, but they want someone to help with pricing because it takes a long time. um maybe you sell gravel or um any other building material and it takes a long time to price because you have to do it one by one in the system. So if you have all that logic already there somewhere, then you can have a voice agent actually go in and do all this for you while on the call. So imagine your customers can be driving to the job or whatever and or maybe they're passengers ideally and they they can call in and they can order five yards of gravel if they want and get actual pricing and put the order in and everything without actually having to um wait in line or go on the phone or do anything like that. and your staff can be focusing on other things like fulfillment and not necessarily taking these calls, but also it just opens it up so that so many more people can be doing the calls at the same time. So the possibilities are endless. You can do this with a voice agent. You can also do this with a chatbot on your website. It's the same sort of idea or concept. You can actually have, and we've done this before, you can have the same system be the source for your chatbot that you have on your website. That's also the source for your voice agent. So, if someone calls in, it's just another layer. It's just converting voice to **[00:20:00]** text, talk to the thing, and then back, but it's the same thing as if someone was just chatting with it directly on the website. So, you can have it do two things at a time. And then also, you could do like a third thing, which is an extra channel. So if you have WhatsApp and some countries WhatsApp is very big and so perhaps you want the agent to be able to respond to them WhatsApp. We've done that as well where uh we have a client in India that their a lot of their communication over there is via WhatsApp and so they want to be able to send the course reminders via WhatsApp directly or or want to be able to provide context. If someone is just a lead, they're coming in, they want to send a WhatsApp message instead of having to answer all of them. the agent can help them figure out what is the best course for them or anything like that. So you can build this whole multi-modal approach to or omni channel approach to client communications and it's all possible now. It's not science fiction. It's not the future. It's like literally what is happening right now. And if you're not doing it, you're staying behind. So there I suggest looking into it at the very least. just consider would something like this work for me? And if you think it might, reach out to us. Just send me a message through LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, wherever you found this video, reach out. I'll be happy to talk with you and see like, hey, yeah, yeah, you can do this. You can't do this. Makes sense. It doesn't make sense, do it a little bit later, whatever. Happy to help you out **[00:22:00]** with that because I just see so much opportunity for businesses to do this just from the client side of having been on hold. so many times and then where there's a business that that does have a very good intake flow, it's such a breeze just just that difference and feeling like wow they just resolved my issue so fast. So anything that you have that is ticket based anything ticket I mean like service ticket based um all that can be done with something like this. Um, if you want people to be able to check on their orders, also maybe if you're your manufacturing or whatever, you can have your agent be a way for people to just call in and be like, "Hey, what's the status on my order?" "Oh, it's on the ship." "Oh, okay, perfect." No. Oh, it's already on land. Okay, so it's going to be uh it's going to be on freight soon, right? Or it's already here locally. It's going to be um delivered in the next hour. Things like that. or if you even have it where you have GPS locations, then you can map map everything and actually tell people on the phone or via text message, oh yeah, yeah, they're on route, they'll be there in 30 minutes. So, a lot of this what you would have done in a very complex, robust, big enterprise level application, but that now you can just do with automation. So you can have a voice agent on Vappy that talks to NA10. We have been talking about NA10 here. Uh automations and things like that and then from there talk to your other systems. You don't have to build a big enterprise system. Sometimes you already have the tools that you **[00:24:00]** need and it's just a matter of gluing them together with something like NA10. And so it has become so easy for smaller type businesses and solarreneurs to have access to this level of automation and efficiency that wasn't a possibility before. So it's all very very exciting and there if you are a little bit creative there are so many things that you can do just to help out your team. We were talking about the other day um was talking with a friend and we were talking about WhatsApp specifically and a conversation that he had with with someone on their staff wondering like hey we have all this Google stuff for the chat then we can have save all the conversation etc. Why do you keep using WhatsApp and well they're in Mexico and they say well we use WhatsApp because data is free. So in Mexico with some of the telecoms we'll give you free WhatsApp messaging and so you don't get dinged with all the bandwidth for the messages and so if you're sending images or things like that might actually be a reason for people to just use that versus something else because they don't have to use their data plan. And so there's little things like that that sometimes we don't realize. Um and then if we actually talk to the people who are out in the field, we'll see, oh, okay, so they don't need this very robust application, they could just use WhatsApp and talk to to the system in the system in natural language and the system will understand and then put it in the right place and it just makes the flow easier for them. You can make it so that they can just text a message. You can **[00:26:00]** make it where they can send a voice note and the system can understand it and parse it and then send it back. That way they can do it again on the job. So, it's not a matter of recreating these these advanced interfaces. We're just trying to bring the interface into the regular flow of the person, make it more human with, funnily enough, right? We're using AI to make it more human because we with AI and LLMs, it has opened up the reality of talking to the computer, which is something we've been striving for so many years. The ability of just telling it what you want it to do. We've we've been used to using these interfaces. First, the keyboard and the mouse, that was what was possible. Then the touchpad and the little stylus and then um other interfaces came along and now it's become a possibility for the thing to actually understand language and that's the power a lot of people especially software developers and like no no you shouldn't be telling about you should learn to code right and yeah of course it's very helpful especially if you're building big systems it's very helpful to know how to code and understand logic and um because you can know if it makes a mistake things like that. However, the coding software development not engineering engineering is this whole thing but just software development it's just somebody invented a language many of them but let's say JavaScript Python C++ C.NET net somebody invented these languages so that we could talk to the computer in a language that we sort of both understand right but it's not even the language of the computer the computer speaks assembly right it's not even in that layer there's it's **[00:28:00]** many abstractions lower so yeah is there a problem of when you're talking about like I'm I'm gonna vibe code I'm just telling it the thing what to do no I don't think there's a problem at all because if you are a software engineer, you're still designing everything in natural language. You're thinking in natural language because you're a person and then you put that in a document that explains it and then you give it to someone on your team to then actually implement in that language of choice. So the LLM, if you do that same process and you do it right, if you know what you're doing and you tell it, you give it good instructions like you would give someone who would do it in person, then you're going to get really good results out of it. And that's that's really the power of all this. So going back to agents, the fact that we can now talk to them and they can understand without having a huge budget in order to do so is very empowering for small and medium-sized businesses in my opinion. So, that's what I wanted to talk about today. I hope you enjoyed it. If you have any questions, again, drop them in the chat in any of the channels that you're watching this. I'll answer them afterwards. And if you ever catch me live, I will answer them live as well. All right, thanks for joining. If you have any questions about any of this, please just send me a text message in where do we have sex? LinkedIn, you can send me a message. Instagram, you can send me a DM. X, you can send me a DM. Facebook, you can send me a DM. YouTube, not really, **[00:30:00]** but everywhere else you could just DM. All right, thanks so