Leveraging AI Voice Technology with Charlie Felker

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Free to Grow has built a proprietary AI voice tool supporting painting and other home service businesses . Welcome to the podcast , charlie .

I was focused on aging in place and keeping seniors living at home and I used to install those stair lifts that you see , going up and down people's stairs , and ended up selling that business in 2019 and then started Free to Grow shortly thereafter , and this story is relevant because it kind of gets us to the AI component .

But we were a very human-based outsourced CSR company .

I had up to 14 CSRs answering phones for painting companies , hvac , electrical , taking calls , fielding calls , going through a company script , booking within their CRM and then doing outbound calls and happy calls and kind of follow-ups , but I'd always been interested in AI voice kind of follow-ups , but I'd always been interested in AI voice .

We were kind of had feelers in the waters about six months ago and the technology wasn't quite there . What really prompted this , though , our big pivot was like early April , we heard a recording on Facebook through some home service group and my partner and I looked at each other like , okay , this is probably coming .

And so we went out and essentially acquired the intellectual property of our now chief technology officer , jerry Yee . And we said , hey , jerry , nathan and I have a lot of relationships with painters and plumbers and all these home service companies . You've got the technology , let's marry up here . And we did so .

We had the tough task of going to all of our clients in April who were very used to having human CSRs answer their phones , say , hey , we'll give you a demo , we'll give you a trial count , we're going to ease into this , but we're going down the road of AI voice .

We lost half our client base and what was interesting was the clients that left us didn't even want to listen to the demos . Right , there was no interest . They were just very focused on having their one person answer their phone and anything else was kind of you know , not interesting . But the clients that stayed love it and we've never looked back .

We've certainly made up as far as lost revenue . We've made up all the business that we lost just with new AI voice clients , and we've been working with clients that probably wouldn't have entertained working with us in the past . As you've said , the technology is constantly getting better . Yeah , we do have some call recordings on our website .

But our developers we've got Jerry Yee and Ben Brimacombe who these are our developers . We don't kind of white label anything . We listen to a lot of calls and take customer feedback and improve latency and response time and interruptions . There can be a lot of awkward pauses when you're talking to AI , at least now , and I think that's part of the cons .

So we're constantly improving the technology , daniel , um , so yeah , it's been , it's been an interesting road , um , and we're we're looking forward to , to the road ahead yeah , it's .

It's just a mind-blowing pace on how fast things are progressing . And uh , you , I was saying before on the website it sounds really good . You can't tell that it's an AI tool that's actually responding to these live calls that you have on your website .

But it's even better now from what you were saying , and it's just a game changer , because there's so many painting businesses out there that sometimes they don't even have anybody answering the phone .

It just goes to them , and so they're not even picking up the phone to begin with , and so they're missing leads , they're missing customer calls , and so that's the first problem . But then they might eventually get an office person that doesn't always have . They're not always in the office . They're not always in the office .

They're not always answering the phone , and this is a big advantage of AI voice where there's no , they can call at 2 in the morning to book a painting estimate or whatever the case is . So I feel like this is going to take over really quickly and I think the folks that take advantage of it are going to be a step ahead .

And then you get people kind of dipping their toe in the water so they say , okay , we'll start with after hours or overflow , and then you kind of get this bucket like , ah , I'm not , I'm never doing that , I'm okay missing calls , I'm okay for the call to go to voicemail .

Maybe I'll get back to them in a week and I , frankly , I think that kind of mindset you may be left behind . You may be left behind . You know , looking at my crystal ball , I think , with how fast the pendulum swinging , I think this time next year most home service owner operators are going to have demoed , tried , implemented AI voice .

Okay , right now , you know we take a lot of calls and there's there's kind of like this pros and cons list right , where , yes , you can have calls and a homeowner can have a call and kind of figure out they're talking to AI OK , and there's some problems with the technology .

I mean , there can be interruptions sometimes with certain conversations and flexions can be a little awkward , pauses can be a little awkward , et cetera . But look like I said , we had five years . I used to own my own service company and I've listened to some pretty egregious calls myself from humans taking calls , right .

So the cons of that are you've got to have somebody in a seat , they've got to be there , they got to show up to work .

Teaching them to stick to the script can be really tough Not going to talk back to customers , mistakes , inconsistencies so right now I feel like the pros probably outweigh that and as the technology improves , I think where the improvements are going to be is on latency , the speed , the realness of it , and then the big thing is customizing it to your business .

If you listen to some of our recordings , we spend weeks with clients with a script they like scheduling how they like it in windows , that they like it . You know call escalations how they want it , forwarding how they want it . You know booking within their service Titan or their house call pro or Sarah or jobber or service minder .

All these different CRMs that we're integrating with you can make this very customizable over time . I'll share an article with you and you feel free to share it with your audience .

We work with a big HVAC company called Fire and Ice in Columbus , ohio , and we've spent like a month with them before we even went live tweaking it to how they wanted it , testing it . Let's change this script , let's update this . This is how we want this booked in our CRM .

And now the system is running right and they've set it and it's there and it's constant learning and getting better and , I think , over time , home service owners are going to really see that .

I know you said there's some latency , like pauses , awkward pauses , but they're not going to forget the script or go sideways . Yeah , yeah , so they're going to follow the process or like go kind of sideways . Yeah , so they're going to follow the process , pretty concisely and the way that AI works . You know they're going to . You know .

For example , they say can you give me your email and spell it out for me ? Yes , and it's going to be pretty accurate , Like I would imagine that it's going to be very super high , like 99% accuracy .

I don't know what the numbers are , but I would imagine it'd be a lot higher in accuracy than a human doing it , the way that I was listening to those calls .

And that's all being done in real time . I will say this also I think over time , the homeowner is going to expect your point to be talking to AI . I think right now , if a homeowner figures out they're talking to AI , they assume it's like an answering machine . So we've messed around with some prompts .

We say Daniel , this is Joe , I am the AI digital assistant for integrity painting . I can book your call in the next 45 seconds . How can I help , right ? Oh , okay . Well , I want to quote an estimate . Great , the earliest we can come out is tomorrow at 10 o'clock . Does that work ? Can't do 10 . I can do noon . You know what happens . Noon can work

. Let's get it booked . Quick call , efficient call . And guess what ? All that system is now already in your CRM . So I think you bring up some great points , I think getting the homeowner , the end user , and I do think I agree with you .

I think over time they're going to appreciate a very efficient one minute call versus a relatively inefficient three and a half minute call . Yeah , and I can't tell you how many calls we listen to that aren't necessarily smooth , where scheduling can be tough . Right , you know , can't do Tuesday . What about Thursday at three ? Well , can't do Thursday at three .

What about Friday at 10 ? Right , and we used to listen to a lot of calls with a human trying to get into the CRM , figure out I can't do this or this or this , and those are four minute calls . With AI it's turning into a minute and a half , two minutes , far more efficient , which I think , people are going to like and expect .

So I can definitely see how having an AI where the data is right there for it to access and it's just providing those options and is you know ? So , yeah , it seems like that process would go a lot smoother .

And and uh , and folks are probably going to be annoyed , like when they get a human there's like , oh no , I gotta explain this human , you know what ? What , uh , times are available , or when I'm available for scheduling this , oh geez . But yeah , I feel like we're , we're , we're getting , we're going to get close to that here soon . Cool , well , what ?

What other ? So , obviously , answering the phone and scheduling . Are there any other applications that that AI voices been implemented in the companies you worked with , or is it ? Is it pretty much just the in the companies you worked with or is it pretty much just the answering the phone calls and scheduling those leads ?

My business is really trying to separate ourselves . One , we're only focused on home services , okay . Two , we're going to integrate with home service . You know CRMs , which is big . Having the ability to integrate with a CRM is crucial in my opinion .

Right For cataloging , tracking information , booking , following up on estimates okay , where I'm going with this is right now , yes , answering the call , answering questions , escalating calls , getting a quote or an estimate on the calendar and then getting that information auto-populated into a CRM is kind of where we are .

Obviously , core improvements latency , interruption improvements

, response times tweaking those customizable responses is kind of where we are . But where we're focused also is saying , hmm , what are the painting companies going to be interested on the outbound side , right On the lead follow-up side , on , like , recurring maintenance side , like stuff like that that we see a lot of different home service segments focus on .

That's where we're going to be focused on product development , because I think at some point you know you're going to be seeing outbound capabilities from AI voice and , as people get more comfortable with ah , okay , yes , integrity painting was out there on Thursday . This sounds like a happy call . They're soliciting for a Google review .

We're going to be filling like a lot of those kind of mundane tasks that CSRs do . I think you'll start to see AI voice chipping away at here soon . So that's kind of the next hurdle for us is getting the inbound component really good , and there is a big difference between these call center AI models and what we're doing is .

It does take time to get your model how you want it right . Every company has a little bit way of how they want the call to be answered and booked and scripted , and so you know when you do want to work with AI and AI voice . I would keep that in mind because that's going to be a big differentiator .

It's kind of you want this white glove AI versus you know we can get you up in 10 minutes , and I'm sure you see that in , you know , in your industry , where you get some kind of fly-by-night businesses that say , yeah , we can onboard you in 10 minutes and let's go . I think you've got to be a little leery of that , because it does matter .

Yeah , so during the onboarding Okay , so she listens to a lot of calls and a lot of different industries and say you know , if I was a painting company , I'd really want my calls to be answered this way .

So she runs all of our onboarding and then you have direct access to our development team for immediate feedback until the system's how you want it , right . So we do often soft demos , like a soft opening . We get a lot of owner operators that call into the AI .

They had their family call in , they've got their bookkeepers call in and tweak it and make updates and then they say you know what , we're ready to go here , and then we can press the live button .

I frankly like to see when I'm opening up an account and I see the owner and they're demoing it , Because they listen to calls too and they have a good sense of what their customers are going to be calling in for .

So I frankly like to see that owner involvement and those are some of our best clients , where you get owners that kind of become evangelicals for us and they say , man , I really tested this thing out and I feel very comfortable with how these calls are going to be handled . Doesn't mean we're going to have one-off bad calls and improvements .

I think that's going to happen . Whether you've got a stellar CSR or AI , at this point I can tell you that the AI is going to constantly improve and when we make improvements it's kind of set right . I don't have to go out and spend $5,000 to go reteach a CSR how to do that . It's a big advantage .

This is crazy , like uh and game changing , for you know , just setting this up , having it answer your phone , you know , first of all , making sure someone's answering it , booking that , that appointment for you , and having it done in a sustainable way , and then , if there any tweaks , you can simply just change the scripting and it's automatically implemented .

It's not bungled or anything like that by a human . So this is excellent . What else have we not talked about ? I guess I know everything's just changing so far , but what else is on the horizon or like happening now that we haven't talked about ?

I don't want to get ahead of my development team but again , we're so laser focused and a lot of our product improvements are dealing with , you know , those in the industry , like you know , rescheduling , rain delays for lawn care companies .

Right , I know that's an enormous pain , right , it rains on a Tuesday and then you got to go through your eight calls and reschedule . So what I like is our perspective is very , you know , with our head of onboarding and our development team . We love that kind of feedback .

So when we get deeper here in the painting industry , we're going to be leveraging a lot of that feedback of hey , can you guys do this for me ? And we're nimble enough that we'll take a look at that and make those improvements . Most of our product development product improvements come from current clients that have recommended stuff .

For example , we have one of our first AI , one of our first clients , to go from our legacy model to our current AI voice model , kevin Long . I'm a West Point graduate . He's a West Point graduate . We've got a kind of a connected past . He goes God , it'd be great if we could have a repeat customer workflow right .

Customer calls in you know I did a job for him two years ago can recognize the number , recognize the address and take them down a completely different talk track . So we've done that right and it's nice , because I think people get frustrated whether you're talking to AI or you're talking to your . You know your CSR , you know you should know who I am , I .

I I'm a , I'm a member , I'm a maintenance member . You painted my deck a couple of years ago Gosh , darn it . So we've taken some of that to heart and now we've got a repeat customer workflow that we've built in .

I would recommend starting with after hours . The bar right now for after hours coverage with your generic call center is so dang low and you're probably forwarding your number to a call center where it's going to take 30 seconds for somebody to answer the phone .

They're not going to know anything about your business and then you're going to end up dealing with that in the morning . So where we get the biggest aha moments is people like ah , ok , this is pretty cool .

Now I'm taking these calls that come in at 7 o'clock and I show up in the morning and they're on my calendar with all the information populated in my CRM for a fraction of the cost of what I'm paying my call center .

So for anybody that kind of wants to dip in their toe and you're like , okay , I get it , ai is coming , let's try this after five o'clock , where you know you feel like you still have control from eight to five or nine , whatever your hours are . I would really recommend trying after hours .

We've had a lot of success and we've had a lot of clients go from after hours . You know what I feel really comfortable . Let's now let's how . Let's now , you know , do overflow during the day , right Overflow during the day .

And then all of a sudden , a CSR doesn't show up or is on vacation for two weeks , and our AI model is fully integrated , knows how to answer the phone , and so they say you know what you know our CSR is gone . Let's just turn you on from 8 to 5 or 24-7 .

We'll pull products and services where you go , where you don't go , and you can test it . If you're a painting company in Denver and somebody calls in and says , hey , I'm in Kansas City , ai is going to pick up on that and say , sorry , we don't service that area , Right , and so there can be a lot of value in screening those calls too .

Um , but I , I , we , we get a lot of Holy cow . This is cool on these , on these live demos , and you know we can tailor the demo and the model to your business pretty quickly . Yeah , so I would recommend that .

And then you also have some of those those samples as well , which are kind of , which are cool , but I guess they're a little outdated because things are moving so fast that it's even better than what it sounds like on the website . So that's cool , awesome , any . Any last thoughts for the audience before we let you go .

I think ultimately it's getting the phone answered and getting the information tracked and scheduled has been an industry-wide problem in a lot of industries for a long time right , consistent coverage and so I think AI is going to be an important solution to that for a lot of owner-operators .

So if you want to give it a try , no charge , we'll do a demo and you can kind of try it before you buy it .