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Service Business Mastery for Skilled Trades: HVAC, Plumbing & Electrical Home Service
How Service Business Owners Use AI Voice Agents to Replace CSRs & Book 75% of Calls - Nathan Keller
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- [00:00]
Nate Keller
A lot of business owners just assume that their older clientele are not going to like it. Maybe they've had bad experiences with it, or maybe they're calling you know, AT and T or you know, not to bash AT and T but like you know, the typical hey think you know where it's just slowly and then through something called tree, you know, like an ivr, a dial one and all that. It's not that right? Our scripting is customizable. We do recommend that and some customers use and some don't, but we do recommend introducing it as a digital assistant.
- [00:32]
Podcast Narrator
Are you looking for valuable business advice to reach that seven figure revenue mark? Do you want actionable tips to properly navigate through every business challenge you encounter along the way? Let Tersh Blissett and Josh Crouch be your guide in getting you to the top here at Service Business Mastery. Tune in as they sit down with world renowned authors in business leadership and personal growth who share valuable insights about management, marketing, pricing, human resources and so much more. Let their nuggets of Wisdom Gold Guide guide you in owning a thriving, profitable and ever growing business. Here are your hosts, Tersh and Josh.
- [01:18]
Tersh Blissett
What's up friends? Never miss a call again. So our partners with free to grow their world class AI Voice CSR platform is designed specifically for trades businesses with industry leading integrations, dedicated onboarding team. You'll never have to worry about missing calls or losing leads again. Whether it's booking, rescheduling, answering customer questions or escalating to your internal staff, their AI handles it all 24 7. And not only that, it can book directly into your fsm. So stop wasting time and money on leads that get fumbled. Let free to grow. Turn every call into a book job. Today's episode is brought to you by one of our show partners, upfrog.
- [02:02]
Josh Crouch
Upfrog is the OG when it comes to pricing transparency online. They find system replacement leads through paid ads and have developed an entire system to drive those hard to find system replacement opportunities. Nurture the leads and book them into sold systems before your team arrives to.
- [02:18]
Nate Keller
Help you grow your business.
- [02:19]
Tersh Blissett
Learn more at upfrog.
- [02:20]
Sponsor Voice
I want to give a huge shout.
- [02:22]
Tersh Blissett
Out to Market Storm for sponsoring today's episode.
- [02:24]
Josh Crouch
You've heard of Google Ads, Facebook ads and SEO, but did you know that there's an entire ecosystem system like 80% of the Internet that ads can be served on that you've barely heard about?
- [02:32]
Tersh Blissett
That's where marketstorm operates.
- [02:34]
Josh Crouch
They leverage data science and AI to build customer profiles for your ideal customers and get your ads in front of prospects before they are ready to hire a pro, planting your brand in their minds early and often to chat with.
- [02:46]
Tersh Blissett
A team about how they can help you grow your business. Visit marketstorm AI hello everyone out there in podcast world. Hope everyone a wonderful day. You're listening to or watching the Service Business Mastery Podcast. I am one of your hosts, Tersh Blissett, sitting virtually next to my co host Joshua Crouch. And we have the wonderful Nathan Keller on the show today with Free to Grow. And we're going to talk a little bit about AI voice agents and the mindset around allowing AI to be the or the first representation of your company to a client and people's pain points going into that and how to overcome those things. And we're talking good, bad and ugly about AI and allowing it to affect the operation of your company and and hopefully improve it.
- [03:33]
Josh Crouch
So we have some fun stories to share too. So stay tuned on that. Ter and I both have some fun AI stories that we'll share as we get a little deeper into the conversation today.
- [03:42]
Tersh Blissett
We really do. Welcome to the show, Nate.
- [03:44]
Nate Keller
Yeah, thanks for having me guys.
- [03:45]
Tersh Blissett
It's been a long time. We've we met each other, I want to say, in not Breaking Ridge, Colorado Springs.
- [03:52]
Sponsor Voice
That's where we.
- [03:53]
Tersh Blissett
Yeah. At a BDR event. So yeah, that was good times. If you don't mind, give an introduction of yourself, who you are and not only that, if people have heard of Free to Grow in the past, the difference between the past Free to Grow.
- [04:07]
Nate Keller
To now, wildly different. Yeah. Happy to do so. Yeah. Nate Keller, Chief Sales Officer and co Founder of Free to Grow we're an AI voice answering company. A little bit of history on us. We actually started about six years ago working with trades businesses. We were a live human answering business. So we primarily did overflow and full time CSR work for Trey's businesses. We had agents across the country. We're based in San Luis, Missouri. We started here and we eventually went remote and gave us more access to better qualified people and that sort of thing. And we got up to about 26 agents across the country. And along our journey we started creating some AI tools specifically for our agents so they could find information faster and that sort of thing. So it was like a slack integration that would pull up an SOP or give specific information on on an SOP for a customer so our agents wouldn't have to dig through, you know, you know, a file or whatever else and figure out how they're supposed to answer a phone. And as we were doing that, I was Talking to our developer, who just a wildly smart guy, and this is, you know, dating back three years ago now, and asked him about voice, because I always thought of it either supplementally or, or kind of, that's the direction that things are going to go. The straight answer, and just said, listen, there's not a lot out there yet. It's not great yet, but keep your eyes open, keep your ears open, that sort of thing. And, and sure enough, about six months later, I came across this company called Archer, a one man show guy that went to UPenn. Wildly smart guy, moved out to San Francisco and started a business. Typical tech story right there. Had this great technology, but he was doing the sales and marketing and everything else himself. But at the end of the day, he's a builder, right? He's a developer at the end of the day. So he had this great technology and after a few conversations with him, you know, Charlie and I and my partner and I got together and we just said, you know, this is an opportunity for us. So we, we acquired Jerry's business. Jerry's now our partner, he's our cto. And from that moment on, he started working hard in the integration side of things and perfecting the voice and everything. Along those lines, we went from service business to a technology business. So we completely changed how we were going about things. Our pain points were the same as a lot of the, a lot of our customers, right? We would get busy every summer. We would take on new accounts, we'd have to hire more people even though they were remote. They would be, you know, waking up and, you know, logging on in their pajamas. They get a hangnail and can't like any, any excuse under the sun.
- [06:37]
Chat Participant / Guest
I've heard, right?
- [06:38]
Nate Keller
Hey, my Internet's out now. I'm tracking your Internet. I know it's not out, right?
- [06:42]
Tersh Blissett
All.
- [06:43]
Nate Keller
Anything and everything. And finally I just said, you know what? This could solve a lot of issues for us and at the same time, we can service our customers at scale at a lesser price point.
- [06:56]
Chat Participant / Guest
Right?
- [06:56]
Nate Keller
It was a big leap because the first iteration of the AI was not what it is today.
- [07:02]
Chat Participant / Guest
Right?
- [07:02]
Tersh Blissett
Yeah, that's what I was going to ask you. Like, how has that transition been? And when you have a. And I know a lot of business owners deal with this as well, because especially the, the technicians who become business owners who like, maybe you're in the truck to start with, you're in the van and you do things a certain way and you have a clientele that you're building up and you and the clientele they're doing, they're used to the way you do things. So in my mind, you have this process and everything built out already the way that Free to Grow does things. And then all of a sudden you're introducing something that maybe isn't up to the same standards as what you, you're used to doing. And you know, in the coaching world, we've been told like 80% is better, like as long as they can do it as 80% as well as you do it, then that's, that's good. How did that transition go for you personally for coming from having a. The. What you wanted set up to now something that isn't amazing?
- [08:03]
Nate Keller
We made some tough decisions. You know, we had our client base and just said, hey guys, this is, we feel, you know, and at the time it was a feeling, right? It was not a, it was not like I said, where it is today. We feel that this is the direction that things are going. We're going to set you up on a test account. You're going to be paying us a third or less than what you were paying us before, and AI is going to handle your calls. And we just said, again, it's a tough decision. We had to go to our customers and just say, take it or leave it.
- [08:32]
Chat Participant / Guest
Right?
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Nate Keller
And we had customers that stuck with us and said, yep, we get it. We understand that, you know, it's as bad as it's ever going to be right now. And they kind of knew that things were going to constantly progress. And we had others that just said, I, you know, I want a human doing it. It's like, okay, well that's fine. 30 something clients. We went down to 10. And then it's like, okay, guys, we gotta just start, start getting out there and talking to people that we've known for a long time and, and telling about the benefits of it and that it's 247 and you know, if you want to do an overflow or after hours and weekends, you kind of pick, but it's gonna, it's gonna capture your information no matter what, and the color information no matter what. And it's gonna, you know, it's gonna do what we, what we train it to do at the end of the day. You know, again, it was, it was a tough, tough call to make. And you know, we had a rough, probably month and a half in there. And then all of a sudden, I want to say it was probably a little over a year ago. Things started picking sudden. You know, we, we have Jerry, our cto. We brought Ben in, our chief of science, and he made things even better. And all of a sudden the voice starts getting better and, and they're working hard on these integrations and you're starting to see things book and it just keeps going up and up and up, and you start seeing the, the hangup rate go from, you know, 5050 or, or 6040 to all of a sudden the hangup rate is declining and, and everything's, you know, the information's getting captured. It's. It's transferring calls the way it's supposed to, it's booking things the way it's supposed to. It's been a fun thing to see.
- [10:03]
Josh Crouch
So I, like, I'm actually going through this now because, you know, all these, all these companies focus on, like, the trade. So I have a, a human answering service. We don't get a lot of phone calls for Relentless Digital, but we get enough, a handful, five to 10 a week. And my, my marketing manager was listening to a few of them and she's like, this is really rough. And I know Tersh. Tersh literally has like the biggest pet peeve. He shares this almost every time we get on stage and we talk about this stuff is they don't say that. They don't even say the name of the company, right sometimes because literally you don't know who's going to pick up the phone when it's a human.
- [10:35]
Chat Participant / Guest
Right?
- [10:36]
Josh Crouch
And then they quickly have to pull up an SOP or log in a service titan. Like, there's just so much going on in the background. And then if they're not familiar with your account or their training, like it to go through a doc that's, you know, two, three pages of technicians names, their schedule, what their preferences are. Do they want them on the dispatch board or they want them on the unassigned board? Like, there's just so many unique things like who's the technician on call, what's the on call rotation? It is so hard to keep that stuff updated. And then, you know, so literally you can tell on those calls. Typically, at least in my experience, when we had answering services in the trades and stuff, is that the person was clearly shuffling through something to try to figure out the answer to the question, which isn't really a great user experience. It's not any, any different than AI, just not maybe sounding as human or having some of the emotional tones and some of that stuff, because at least the AI can answer quickly because it's, it, it can go through that information in a blink. Of an eye versus right. Somebody having to read it and trying to find the line or the thing that they're supposed to say and the way they're supposed to greet the customer and all the different things that go through there because not everyone's the same and there's so much that it's such a hard business to scale. And when we need answering services the most is when they're at their worst as a business model it's just like a very flawed like inverse relationship. Like we need them in the summer when it's hot or demand like plumbers. If it's like Thanksgiving to Christmas, you know, Brown Friday and all that stuff, they need them then. But that's when they're worse.
- [12:00]
Nate Keller
What you're saying is what we went through as a live human answering service, right? It's hot in the summertime, people want to take a day or whatever else. And it, you know, we lived that experience for, you know, four summers. It was rough.
- [12:16]
Tersh Blissett
John Gonzalez, in the chat, he, he mentioned that do you feel like the older customers are not liking it and what percentage? And that's a great question because I did an on site a couple weeks ago and the team in the office were like the, our clientele is all old and like they don't like it, they're not going to receive it or they're not going to. Or their, their perception is that, that the older generations aren't going to like it. But I will say like my grandma, she's 80 and is on Facebook every day and so like technology is not something that is adverse as long as it's intuitive. And we actually, I was on a different tech call with, talking about automations for a client and I had them call my phone number, the, the free to grow demo line and halfway through the conversation there were two people in the meeting that were saying when's the AI going to pick up? Because they're like that sounds like human being. And I was like, that's, that's my point. Like even six months ago it sounded completely different than it does right now. But, and I know it improves a lot, but what, what's your take on the older generations? How they're going to perceive it, how they're already perceiving it and what to do as a company if you, if your majority of your clientele are older?
- [13:48]
Nate Keller
I think a lot of business owners just assume that their older clientele are not going to like it. Maybe they've had bad experiences with it or maybe they're calling, you know, at And T or I, you know, not to bash at and T. But like, you know, the, the typical. Hey think, you know, where it's just slowly walking them through something call tree, you know, like an ivr, a dial one and all that. And it's. It's not that.
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Chat Participant / Guest
Right.
- [14:11]
Nate Keller
We are. Our scripting is customizable. We do recommend that, you know, and some customers use it and some don't. But we do recommend introducing it as a digital assistant. I've heard calls that are very evidently are very obviously older clients and they miss that part of the digital assistant and they don't know that they're not talking to a person.
- [14:34]
Chat Participant / Guest
Right.
- [14:36]
Nate Keller
It's something that I would say a year ago at this point it was, it was a problem because the voice wasn't as good. The, you know, a lot of. There were longer pauses and, and there's a lot of like tact sound. Yeah, yeah. It wasn't as natural sounding. But that's something that is becoming more and more a thing in the past. Right. Where a lot of people don't even pick up on it or you know, most cases, especially if someone's using from an overflow or after hours perspective, if it's done the right way, where it's saying, hey, I can answer your questions or get you on the schedule within 30 seconds. People don't care. They just want to get taken care of.
- [15:13]
Tersh Blissett
That's one thing that I've noticed that with your. I don't know if it's the templated. I don't know the rest. The best way to say this. The. The accounts that I know that use free to grow. That's one of the first things that said is like, I'm so and so Marissa, your digital assistant, and I'll get you on the schedule in 30 seconds, I think is what it says or something.
- [15:36]
Josh Crouch
I bet you most people don't even catch that. Like I was sharing with Nate before we went on because I literally had a voicemail that I saved that was like an insurance company or something that reached out to me. I've never done business with them. But like it literally said the only reason I caught is because I'm very familiar with this stuff and talk about it a lot. But they said, yeah, it's so and so like Erica, this is a digital assistant or some. Some name like that. But I. The only reason I caught it because otherwise I've been like, okay, I don't know who this is, you know, whatever. But I think that's a, a smart move because I think there's, there's a, there's the older people, like, people think the older people don't like it, but if they can't. My Michael, I actually got into an argument with a marker. No, I know, terse, you're probably gonna smile because I get into a lot of, I get into a lot of arguments. But he, he was, he was like playing devil's advocate. And my thing was like. Because he was like, well, if they, if they know, they're like, how do you know they're gonna know? Because the technology is going to get to a point that's so good that you like, you're, you're like terse. Like you said, like, you're not even going to know the difference. So like they literally ask you like, well, when is the AI going to start? They didn't even know. They were actually already talking to an AI agent. And I know you've had some experience, Tersh, with AI agents answering your calls. Do you want like. I know, I love the story, I don't want to tell it for you, but. Well, the one where the dog grooming place.
- [17:00]
Tersh Blissett
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So we have a dog grooming client of ours in the H Vac company and she was just raving. I had to go. She was really happy with our service, but I wasn't happy with it. So I went over there and myself and did some follow ups and you know, double checking on things, quality control type stuff. And when I finished up, she was like, hey, you know, do your, do your employees have any pets? Can I give them? Like, because she had a whole slew of treats. And I was like, I don't know. That's a good question. I know some of them do. And then she said, well, what about Haley? And I was like, I don't know about Haley because she lives in the Philippines and. And she was like, really? She's not in America? I was like, yeah, she's great, right? And then she said, well, what about so and so. Our voice? Our voice. And I was like, we don't have anybody that works for us with that name. And I was like, are you sure? And she said it again. And I was like, oh, you're talking about our AI voice agent. She ain't got no, she ain't got no cat, she ain't got no dog. She's AI voice. And she was like, get out of here. Are you serious? I've talked to her a ton of times. Like anytime it's after hours, it goes to her and I was like, yeah, I promise you that that's not a real person at all. She was blown away by it. And I was actually surprised too because like I could tell.
- [18:31]
Josh Crouch
I've had that happen to me. We don't do, like I said, we don't have anything with, with voice but we like with messaging and trying to book appointments through chat and stuff like that.
- [18:39]
Podcast Narrator
We do.
- [18:40]
Josh Crouch
And we had a customer in like the Dallas Fort Worth area where this lady had like a text message conver.
- [18:46]
Nate Keller
Older lady.
- [18:46]
Josh Crouch
An older lady actually had a text message conversation with an AI chatbot. Now obviously it's a lot harder to tell it's AI through chat, but she ended up bringing, because of how empathetic the bot was, she ended up bringing cookies to the office looking for this person. And the person that like was the receptionist or like handled any incoming traffic like it, it took her like a minute or two. She, she ended up playing it off like well that's my nickname. And I've seen other stories like this. It's, it's wild to me because that's really the point that we're getting at with this technology is getting so good. It doesn't have like, you don't need it to replace your team members during the day. But as far as a supplemental technology so you a call, you never miss an opportunity. It can handle a lot of the spam stuff that comes in. Like you can, you can have it handle a lot of stuff so the humans don't have to do it. The humans can do revenue producing activities. They can follow up with open estimates. They can be an inside sales team. Like things that are actually going to grow your business versus just answering the phone.
- [19:47]
Tersh Blissett
You make a good point. But to play devil's advocate, it is a very important position that normally we, we typically will hire like the cheapest person or like the lowest like entry level person. And they are, realistically they're a representation of your company and they're the first impression that people get. You have to make sure that they are doing a good job and they're, they're representing your company properly. So I can see that the, the hesitation people would have in allowing someone or something that they can't like physically see sitting next to them, overhear the conversation real time, have a conversation with a client because that's the present that the representation of the company initially. And I'm sure that you run into that sort of stuff too. I will say that I, I want to preface this with John. He is my friend at this time. Like, he's my good friend now because comments like this are just amazing. Josh is much taller in person, man.
- [20:49]
Josh Crouch
You, like sit up taller in my things and make it look like I'm taller. I don't know, am I slouching? I don't know what John's doing. Talking about.
- [20:54]
Tersh Blissett
John does ask a good question though, because there's, there's a lot of, I wouldn't say confusion in the market space, but just to provide clarity in what's going on, John asked, like, what's the difference between a platform like free to grow and then like other ones in that are in the field? Because there's some that do a little bit this, a little bit that. And so there's a lot of question, a lot of times there.
- [21:22]
Nate Keller
The big one between all of us, you know, all of us that are competing out in the space right now, which it is becoming a noisy space. Right. There's definitely the few that you hear about time in and time out and I feel like we're, we're in that category, which is good. And then you see little ones pop up and then a month later you never hear from them again, which is, which is good too. But the voice is becoming, I wouldn't say the same. We all have different voices, but like we're all using vendors for voices and, and that sort of thing. What it comes into is the, the integration piece for the business.
- [22:00]
Chat Participant / Guest
Right.
- [22:00]
Nate Keller
So depending on what field, field service management tool you're using, how it's going to integrate and how that information is going to get in and actually get relayed over to the technician or the office or wherever it's going the proper way. Definitely, you know, early on, stubbed our toes from an onboarding perspective and we've gone out and we've invested a lot of money into onboarding to make sure that we're doing things the right way and we're not going to sit there and tell someone we'll have them up in a day if it's going to be 10 days. Right. We want to make sure that we're getting all this documentation and going through the knowledge base and making sure that from a general branding perspective that we're answering questions in the same way that a CSR would.
- [22:42]
Chat Participant / Guest
Right.
- [22:42]
Nate Keller
We're trying to be the one to one comparison to the csr.
- [22:48]
Chat Participant / Guest
Right.
- [22:48]
Nate Keller
Because Josh, you said it earlier, the people that you have in the office, the good quality people that you have in the office could should be spending time with more revenue generating tasks. And this is something that you can offload to technology that's going to represent your company well. And that's where we do a lot of that work on the front end as we're getting someone up and running and going through a big thorough testing phase and making sure that we're not putting a go live data out there that shouldn't be out there and saying, okay, you know, we got to get a certain amount of calls tested on our side and on their side.
- [23:23]
Chat Participant / Guest
Right.
- [23:23]
Nate Keller
We want our, our clients to be testing this out before go live.
- [23:27]
Chat Participant / Guest
Right.
- [23:27]
Nate Keller
And, and taking another step back to that knowledge base of saying, okay, if, if this kind of call comes in, how's the AI going to react to it?
- [23:35]
Chat Participant / Guest
Right?
- [23:36]
Nate Keller
This is what the AI should be doing. If someone calls in and says, I need an appointment, says, well, as soon as I have is 3pm I need someone out here sooner. And if that's not available, make sure that you're saying, you know what, let's get you scheduled for the 3pm and I'm going to send a message onto the office to call you back right now or immediately to see if we can get you in sooner. But let's go ahead and get you on the books.
- [23:59]
Chat Participant / Guest
Right?
- [23:59]
Nate Keller
Taking that time and that care. And I think a lot of that is stuff that we learned early on, even before we were in the AI side of things. Of, you know, just that general, hey, this is how we need to be servicing our clients and now just pushing that into the AI side of things.
- [24:13]
Tersh Blissett
Hello, home service professionals.
- [24:15]
Sponsor Voice
Do you want to maximize your marketing budget? Then you need to be using call tracking from CallRail. Let's say you've noticed a spike in new leads this month. To find out what's driving them, you just log into your CallRail dashboard. Is my new Facebook ad outperforming my other ads? Or is paid search knocking it out of the park? Or maybe it's time to retire those newspaper ads. Since CallRail assigns a unique phone number to each of my marketing efforts, I know where my best leads come from and which efforts to scrap. CallRail shows you your most cost effective marketing channels so you can get back to business. Go to CallRail.com sbmpod and try it for free. If you're a contractor with multiple CSRs, check out this service Business Mastery podcast partner, Lace AI. Lace uses Cutting Edge AI to analyze your phone calls, uncover lost revenue opportunities and empower your CSRs to convert more leads. You can significantly increase revenue without spending extra on marketing or hiring. By using LACE AI to boost your conversion rates for the first time you can gain deep insights into customer needs at scale with minimal effort. Elevate your call center to achieve industry leading booking rates and revenue. Visit www.lace.AI to book a demo today. Now back to the show.
- [25:39]
Tersh Blissett
Yo Joshua, really fast. I want to talk about online scheduling for the trades and how they should be affordable, effective and easy to manage. A really quick second here to share a little bit about the latest group of experts that we've teamed up with Autobot AI our team of industry experts experts has developed best in class scheduling of app that seamlessly integrates with your CRM. Now every book job goes directly into your software and becomes one of our advanced marketing analytics which is really cool. We can automatically select the marketing campaign of your choice based on how the customer came to your site.
- [26:15]
Josh Crouch
Yeah terse those industry leading analytics tells you everything that you're going to want to know about your lead. Where they came from, what they did before scheduling and what page they converted on other things. On average about 75% of people who start a booking with our app completed. But we'll give you a more granular reporting that shows conversion rates based on marketing source and medium to help improve your marketing efforts.
- [26:36]
Tersh Blissett
So honestly with no contracts, affordable monthly rates and you really don't have anything to lose. And so it's, it's a great program to try out and if you use SBM when you go to sign up for it, you'll actually save $1,500 on the setup fees. Honestly, give it a shot. Tell us what you think.
- [26:53]
Josh Crouch
Today's episode is powered by Ciro Systems.
- [26:56]
Sponsor Voice
Sir is all about removing the clutter.
- [26:58]
Tersh Blissett
And unnecessary touch points to run your home service business profitably.
- [27:01]
Josh Crouch
They use AI dispatching to get the right tech to the right call automatically and job time efficiency to ensure your entire team runs like a profit generating machine.
- [27:10]
Tersh Blissett
Get a tech upgrade for your business business at Get Sarah Tech service business mastery real fast. Josh I I love the fact that your, the dashboard shows your map and, and how it's laid out. The conversation is laid out like if this then that. Like if, if it says this then then go this route and then the other route and I like that and the ability to, to adjust it too because let's say like I'm, I have, I'm listening to a phone call or somebody says hey blow blah blah said this and I want to make sure that that's right. Then I can go in there and I can adjust it if I want to myself.
- [27:48]
Nate Keller
The big thing for us is obviously the scripting is a huge part of it and our team has really figured out the scripting of making sure that it's working the right way, saying the right things. But it really is, it's that knowledge base too, right. Where you can start giving it, I don't want to say personality, but giving it coaching tips on, okay, if this happens, make sure we're responding in this manner. I did a demo with, with a quite a few dealers based in the Southeast and the guy asked me, he said, can we have it say, you know, Mr. Tersh, right. Just because from. Instead of, you know, instead of just using the first name, I said, oh, let's give it a shot. So I put it in there and all of a sudden he called back and then started responding with Mr. Or Ms. You know, and then, and then if you get a gender neutral name, it just goes with the first name and like, stuff like that where you're getting these little, you know, little details done the right way.
- [28:41]
Josh Crouch
I want to add, because we've had it on the ticker here and obviously right now we're live, so people can see that. But for those that listen to this, once we release it, there is a phone number that Free to Grow has provided us as a demo line for you to test out. So if you're listening to this, first of all, hopefully you're not driving. Don't write this down. If you're driving, pull over. But it's 719-414-9355 and you can try that anytime. So if like at the end of the day you want to try that number or on the weekend, whenever you got down time, try that number because just test it out. Like, I think that's the biggest thing with the technology because especially if you're skeptical about what it could do or what it sounds like, or maybe you're with a provider, maybe it's not going so well. Test out. I mean, it's literally a demo line that, you know, doesn't have all the bells and whistles of maybe your company information, but it's going to give you a taste of what that's going to feel like. So you can ask it. Be your. Be your customer. That's what I would ask. Just like say that the weird questions that your customer has, just ask it and see what happens so you can get familiar with it. Because this technology is not going anywhere. It is if you guys have go to any of these shows and expos and stuff that we go to. Like, literally the halls are getting it Used to be all marketing companies, now it's all tech companies. It's like there's still a lot of marketing companies, don't get me wrong, especially at Serviceable Expo, but there's a lot of tech companies and they're all over the place and this stuff. Like, there's a lot of people investing, especially the big companies in our space are investing a lot of their budget into new technology like this. And it allows them to free up their people to do some of the things that we talked about. So if you want to be able to compete in that space, you're going to have to figure out some, some way of, you know, some things you're gonna add some things if you don't want to end, like, obviously don't add something not comfortable with. But it's, it's important that you start investigating, at least know what's out there. Because a lot of the industry doesn't, like, you get into the manufacturing and distribution world. They barely know what Facebook is. I swear I've had conversations with leads from those, from people like that that are not in like the social media circles and they're five years behind most. Some of them haven't even serviced Titan yet. And I'm like, are you kidding me? Like, it's like, you know, so you're ahead of most of your competition just by paying attention to podcasts like this and episodes like this.
- [31:00]
Tersh Blissett
You know, a fun fact if you want to know if you're talking to an AI agent as they become more and more realistic and you can't really tell if you're having a conversation with an AI agent or not, start screaming at it and see how it reacts. And if it stays calm, you're good. Stays calm? Yeah, definitely AI agent because other. Or, or a very well trained csr because there's times where I'm like, you're way too nice right now. Like, you're just, you're not being, you're not, you're not meeting me on my level.
- [31:35]
Josh Crouch
The only thing I ask is if you call the demo line and you start screaming, we have full permission to put that on our social media accounts. So you're gonna sign a waiver to say, yeah, we could do that so we can have some fun with it.
- [31:47]
Nate Keller
I was on a demo this morning with probably a dozen or so dealers and I just picked one out and I said, hey, I've created a demo line for you. Called in and he, he acted like an upset customer. And then, you know, we played the recording back for everybody. And, and they're all sitting there going, yeah, it was calm, cool, collected. The entire. I'm. I'm sorry that, you know, you're having water come through your ceiling. You know, what's empathetic and everything. But didn't, did not mirror the, the yelling part of it.
- [32:18]
Chat Participant / Guest
Right?
- [32:19]
Nate Keller
And just. Sir, you know, Yep, we'll. We'll get someone out there.
- [32:23]
Chat Participant / Guest
Right?
- [32:23]
Nate Keller
And it's like, it was beautiful. But like, again, he, he was saying he's like, most of our, Most of my CSRs, this is a. I, I would be able to hear this from my office and hear them get flustered.
- [32:35]
Tersh Blissett
Same here. Like, I've had, I've had conversations with like business owners and like, I actually went out and did an on site. Man, this is probably several months ago. This lady didn't know who I was. I didn't tell her that I was the owner of the company. And man, she lit into me like I was a technician. And first off, it pissed me off that she would talk to a technician that way because the moment she found out who I was, she was like, well, let's revisit this conversation. Let's restart this conversation. I was like, of course we're going to restart the conversation now that you know who I am. Like, that pissed me off that my guys would have to listen to this nonsense, though. I was like, we're not a good fit. And like, I, it was everything I could do not to cuss her out because I was in her coffee shop when she wasn't there and she was supposed to be there and I was being patient as I'll get out. And she went off on me and oof. I was not happy. And so like, yeah, for, for. I like the fact that AI just maintains that, that, that's empathy and doesn't lose their cool in situations like that.
- [33:37]
Josh Crouch
Another question. John, you're doing a great job today. Thanks, buddy. I appreciate you asking all these wonderful questions. I feel like we paid you to do this. We didn't. Do you have any, any numbers as far as like average booking rate of the AI when the AI answers.
- [33:52]
Nate Keller
So post onboarding. Once we get everything up and running, we're seeing booking rates as. We've seen them as high as 90%, but we look at that 75% as kind of the baseline of viable book calls.
- [34:03]
Tersh Blissett
And how are you considering if it's booked or not book? Is that based on their.
- [34:07]
Nate Keller
Yeah, we're integrating with the specific FSMs, but like from a service titan side of things, it's going to show as an agent within Service Titan. But then we're looking at it as well through the dashboard that our customers have access to and we're able to see everything that came in. Was it a pricing question? Was it someone that had a question about a bill? That's that anything that gets sectioned is as non viable.
- [34:30]
Chat Participant / Guest
Right.
- [34:31]
Nate Keller
And then we look at viable calls and then, and then pull our booking rate off the bibles and it's showing at books.
- [34:38]
Tersh Blissett
Speaking of that, and you may not know this but like with Lace as a partner of ours on the show and how they they go in and they'll qualify a bookable non bookable call. They listen to calls the same way. Have you seen that any data as far as what a program like Lace would say about the, the AI voice agent.
- [35:02]
Josh Crouch
That's going to be our future though it's an interesting question because it's going to be our future where like what were we? Church? I remember I was talking to you or talking to someone else but literally, oh, Google Business Profile has a new feature where Google, I don't think it's rolled out to the trades so don't panic everybody. But Google has a feature where if you want to find get pricing information you can literally click it and their AI will call your business to get pricing information which of course then the AI is going to pick up and answer the question on the other side for some companies it's going to be a very like the AIs are going to be talking to the AIs who's going to hang up.
- [35:38]
Nate Keller
I know, I can't wait to hear that first call because it's going to happen, right? It's either going to happen where someone's calling us or someone's calling one of our customers and then you're going to have AI talking AI.
- [35:48]
Tersh Blissett
Josh, tell that story about where our phones started talking to each other.
- [35:52]
Josh Crouch
Oh, we were at Business Uncensored last October in Chattanooga like a little smaller, more intimate event and we pulled out chat GBT on both of our phones and turned on the voice mode and I, I don't know, one of us started asking a question with the other one open and as soon as they started answering the question, his phone picked it up, talked back to mine, talked.
- [36:15]
Tersh Blissett
Back, sat them down next to each other and they just had a full blown conversation.
- [36:19]
Josh Crouch
I mean if you want to see two 40 year old men just giggle like school girls. We were giggling because we thought it was like the funniest thing ever but we had a Good time with that. But that's, I mean, it's gonna be our future. AI is going to be helping us with things like this. AI is going to be analyzing the data. AI is going to be giving us feedback and insights on our business. It's just, it is the future and it is the now. Like, it's. I know people, some people don't want to hear it because there's. Some people might be a little more old school or just the way they were raised. Like, no, it's humans, Humans, humans. Like there are, There are definitely place. There is definitely a place for human work, and there's definitely a place for AI work. It's just, it's really up to your preference on what you'd like to do. But just know, like, I have insights to hundreds of thousands of calls a year, and our average missed call rate is 15 to 17%. So think of a hundred thousand. If you just do the easy math. 100,000 phone calls times 15%. Just missed calls. This isn't even the ones that were handled very poorly because a lot of small shops, a lot of small companies.
- [37:20]
Tersh Blissett
Answer out in the field.
- [37:21]
Josh Crouch
I'm not, and I'm not picking anyone's wife here, but I'm just. It's usually the small companies with like a sister answering the phone or a wife or something like that. Yeah, hello. Like, it, it's. They're just rude, they're not friendly. You can't, you, you can tell they're not smiling. And it's just a very awkward conversation when you listen to it. And that, that isn't like an even bigger thing. Like every time the AI does something, it's going to be based on tones and based, how you said it, warm, empathetic, friendly, professional. Like, there's all these different tones and it's gonna stick to what you want.
- [37:50]
Tersh Blissett
That's a good point. So, Josh, really fast, we had our septic tank pumped two years ago. I think it was maybe a little longer now. Time flies. But when I called to set up the appointment, first off, I only, I could only find one septic tank company that would come to our area. In the rural area. He was in the truck, you could tell, like, headed to another call. And he was like, yellow. I was like, I think I got the wrong number. I'm looking for a septic tank company. He was like, oh, this is a septic tank company. I was like, do you come out here? And like, I gave him my address and everything. He's like, yeah, it'd be $200 or $400 or whatever it was. And I was like, it's weird when.
- [38:31]
Josh Crouch
You'Re the customer and you have to lead the conversation.
- [38:33]
Tersh Blissett
Yeah.
- [38:34]
Josh Crouch
Because you're calling to get help.
- [38:36]
Chat Participant / Guest
Yeah.
- [38:36]
Josh Crouch
And the person clearly doesn't know how to like walk you through the normal conversation there. And it's just, it's awkward. Like you, you don't feel confident using that business. You're like, is this really the service?
- [38:46]
Tersh Blissett
I need to call him up again and say, hey, y' all need to sign up for free to grow.
- [38:52]
Nate Keller
Yeah. I always kind of chuckle at too. And I know it's very common where you know someone, they have an office cell phone, they, you know, someone takes that home over the weekend or whatever else. I'm like, so if those calls are coming in over the weekend and someone's at their kids baseball game or they're out of the grocery store or something like that, you like, that's. It's not going to be a good call.
- [39:12]
Josh Crouch
You literally just reminded me of a story. I was back in Wisconsin. I helped coach. I was an assistant coach for our select travel baseball team. We literally. I was also working at H Vac company at the time. So I always had the phone because I, at the time, I didn't have an answering service with this company. Even so, even not even a human answering service. And so I was always answering the phone. And we literally were in the championship game for our league, celebrating the outfield. And I'm literally like, you can see everyone's over here. Like, with. We bought like little fake champagne things and whatever just in case we won. I'm on the other side of the outfield answering the damn phone after we won the championship because I knew that's what I had to do for the business. Like, it was terrible.
- [39:52]
Tersh Blissett
And I'm like, those customers were like, oh, he was excited that I called him.
- [39:59]
Josh Crouch
Like, you, you literally, as soon as you said that, I was like, oh my God. Like, I just like, you. You jogged my memory of this about probably seven or eight years ago now.
- [40:06]
Tersh Blissett
Of just like we used to have.
- [40:08]
Josh Crouch
Challenging things that we overcome first, like.
- [40:10]
Tersh Blissett
Having growing pains and being a remote company. It was like we had two CSRs who would take it because it came to their cell phone. They memorized almost the script of like, what questions they need the input into the CRM. And so they literally were at barber shops, they were at the, the shopping center. And you could pick it up. If you listen closely, like you could pick up the background noise that what they were doing. They were saying all the right questions and everything. And then they weren't even writing it down. They were like, well, the call is recorded. I'll just go back and listen to it to get all the information again to book the call. And I'm like, oh my gosh. Like, anyway, we could have stories like this for, for days.
- [40:56]
Josh Crouch
What's the biggest challenge? So the one thing I wanted to ask you, it comes from the business owner's mindset because I'm sure you guys get people that are maybe poking around, they're interested, they want to demo it. But what is it from a mindset perspective that the business owners have to overcome in order to really fully adopt, not just dip their toe in the water, but actually like jump in and be like, okay, this is the direction we're going. This is what we're going to be doing. Of course that's going to come over to other technologies in the business. But what is the, like the, the struggle that you're seeing from people that really want to move forward with, with AI as an answering mechanism?
- [41:33]
Nate Keller
I think the big thing, we're a provider. At the end of the day, we have the technology and we have the team to get someone up and running. At the end of the day, if someone, you know, our, our best partners are the ones that, you know, understand that even though we're the provider, it's theirs, right? This, we're, we're making this for them, we're building this out for them. If we have someone that comes, hey, I'm ready to sign up and they, they put no time or, or they don't have someone else helping with the onboarding, it's gonna, it's gonna be an abject failure, right? Because they just want like an out of the box, you know, you might as well have an answer machine at that point, right? Because it's not, nothing's going to work. Well, people need to go in there and say, listen, this is, it's here, it's not going anywhere. I can, I can utilize a service like free to grow and make it my own.
- [42:19]
Chat Participant / Guest
Right?
- [42:20]
Nate Keller
And, and make it.
- [42:21]
Tersh Blissett
You mentioned that your best, your best partners are the ones who are going to have, they're going to take full ownership in it and they're going to be available. And you mentioned that. And this goes with any, any tech or business product launch. And the fact that if they're always too busy, can't meet with you, can't respond to emails, can't do the onboarding process properly, it's Going to be an epic failure. You said that. And it's true because, I mean, we see it all the time. And like you're onboarding a new CRM and you think you're going to do it during the middle of the summer when you have them now that's going to fail miserably. You know what I mean? So you have to have somebody there to be the owner of the process in it. Stevedario mentions here. I'll bring it up here because it. Oh, good job title when you do. I think it's a fear of the. The dip where call volume may be down. The A. The AI is no different than hiring a new human. The upside is they never forget. That is a good, good point. Is they don't. They don't forget like, oh, I forgot that we updated that we offer this.
- [43:34]
Josh Crouch
Service or we service this location. Especially if they're maybe they're not familiar. Especially. It's. It's.
- [43:40]
Tersh Blissett
I like that being up there, Josh. That. That's perfect spot for it on the screen.
- [43:45]
Josh Crouch
It's not uncommon for people to hire remote CSRs and stuff like that now where they might not know the geography. Like, it was really important when I was doing. Answering the phone back and they. I didn't know streets and cities and where they're all connected. So I can try to dispatch my, my team and you know, hiring a human, like, if they don't. If they're. Especially if they're not geographically inclined. Like, my wife is not. It's like she forgets she'll go into a store and she'll forget she'll go the wrong way out of the. I'm like, what? We just got here. Like, how did you forget which way to go? It's important, like, you train it once. And I think that's the thing as far as, like time even for the owner or the, the leader of the people leaving the. The csrs, you freeing up that person's time, too. They don't have to keep retraining and retraining and retraining. And then honestly, even on the other side, we talked about Lace, like listening to those calls. I used to listen to those calls. I had to hire someone who, when they weren't answering the phones, that's what their job was, is to literally go back to all the abandoned calls and stuff and listen to them, categorize them properly. There's just a lot of things that I personally think humans are. It's boring, monotonous work. Like, if they love it cool, keep them on the phones. But if it is not something they love doing, find something else for them to do. Find something that's going to help your business and replace it with technology. That would be my opinion on things. And that's what we're always trying to do. I know Tersh feels the same way.
- [45:05]
Tersh Blissett
Typically, but going into that. Playing devil's advocate here, Nate, what do you tell people or like, CSRs who are like, y' all are just out to take my job. Mark your calendars right now. October 27th through the 30th.
- [45:21]
Josh Crouch
Service World Expo is back in Vegas for its 10th anniversary and we're going big.
- [45:27]
Tersh Blissett
The biggest expo hall in the industry. 2000 contractors. We're talking live podcast recordings all week long with the industry's top contractors.
- [45:37]
Josh Crouch
And when you get to Vegas, come find us at booth 2403.
- [45:40]
Tersh Blissett
We're dropping an AI automation keynote that will change how you run your operations. Save a hundred bucks by using our code SBM100.
- [45:50]
Josh Crouch
You and I are doing a keynote on AI and automation. Contractors absolutely need to hear this stuff. This isn't just another trade show.
- [45:57]
Tersh Blissett
It's where contracting businesses transform.
- [46:00]
Josh Crouch
We're not just attending.
- [46:01]
Tersh Blissett
We're taking over the podcast stage.
- [46:03]
Josh Crouch
Don't miss the 10th anniversary. We'll see you in Vegas. Thank you to Company Cam for supporting today's episode.
- [46:15]
Tersh Blissett
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Josh Crouch
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Tersh Blissett
Try that for free for 14 days and get 25% off of your first two months at companycam.com forward/svm.
- [46:32]
Nate Keller
It's an interesting question. I would say, you know, the technology is getting there to the point where, you know, most, most of our customers start in that overflow after hours and weekends perspective. And once they start seeing success, they're like, okay, I can now go replace my ivr because every time someone says press one or something else, I'm getting so many hang ups.
- [46:53]
Chat Participant / Guest
Right.
- [46:54]
Nate Keller
And now it can start taking the front line of calls and everything else. If you're accepting of it and you're showing value in what you do, you're not, you're not going anywhere.
- [47:01]
Chat Participant / Guest
Right.
- [47:01]
Nate Keller
If you can be. If all of a sudden you're getting. Put in a more revenue generating role, as Josh was talking about earlier, your. Your value's there.
- [47:09]
Chat Participant / Guest
Right?
- [47:11]
Nate Keller
I think, I think the people that are truly scared of having their job replaced are also the people that probably aren't showing up every day.
- [47:17]
Tersh Blissett
Yeah. Or they're Showing their late, constantly tardy. They always have some sort of emergency they have to leave work and you know, yeah, they're, they're going to be your B's and C players anyways. And like Steve Adario mentioned in the chat bar there, the chat stream is that there's a, there's always, there's still going to be a need for the, the triage CSR. Yes, that's 100% true. And you're still going to have clients who are calling and they like from the get go they're going to say speak to an agent. Speak to an agent.
- [47:49]
Nate Keller
Speak to an agent like we were talking about earlier. When you get a pissed off customer that does call in and they're yelling and they almost want someone to yell back with them or at least get, you know. Right. And those moments it's like, yeah, it is going to be better to send that on to a person.
- [48:03]
Chat Participant / Guest
Right.
- [48:03]
Nate Keller
Or someone that can say yeah, you know what, I get it. We'll we messed up whatever that is.
- [48:07]
Chat Participant / Guest
Right.
- [48:08]
Nate Keller
The needs gonna be a more core people within the office.
- [48:11]
Tersh Blissett
What if I'm in a coaching organization and they're coaching us to have your CSRs say these things. I'm trying to think of the scripts that we had built out or, or like our buddy Doug Wyatt where he has his wordsmithing where it's like say this, not that. And like in the grand scheme of the LLMs of, of these AI voices there's a, for lack of better term, a metric shit ton of conversations that you have to input to like if, if this, then that type scenario, can we give you that information or do you have like any kind of agreements with groups that it's like hey, we're part of this group and we, we've already built out this group's CSR style or whatever.
- [49:04]
Nate Keller
We're strategic partner with a number of groups out there and, and we know kind of their playbook so we understand, hey, this is a, a client from, that's part of this coaching group. Okay, here's kind of the, the general scripting for them and then let's refine, refine, refine from there. And then the other side of it is going back to that knowledge base of what you can load up with the details around kind of how those calls should be going. Right when you're telling something, hey, use this type of language instead of, you.
- [49:33]
Tersh Blissett
Know, the knowledge base would override any of their previously programmed.
- [49:39]
Nate Keller
Yeah, for us the knowledge base is probably more important than the scripting itself.
- [49:42]
Tersh Blissett
What do you mean by that?
- [49:43]
Nate Keller
The knowledge base will tend to override the scripting side of it. Like the scripting is very important, but it's also the area that can break the easiest. When you start adding in kind of okay, for this type of call, react in this manner, then that's. It's still going to follow that script, but it's going to react in a different way. It may take a conversation in a, in a more positive manner or something along those lines.
- [50:05]
Tersh Blissett
Do you have anything else to add, Josh?
- [50:07]
Josh Crouch
No, I was just going to put the phone number back just so people got this far and they didn't write it down. But the demo phone number, 719-414-9355, we will have that in the show notes and in the video clips and all that kind of stuff too. Testing anytime.
- [50:21]
Tersh Blissett
And that when Josh says the demo phone number, he means like call that phone number and act as if you are.
- [50:27]
Josh Crouch
Act if you're the customer calling.
- [50:28]
Tersh Blissett
Yeah.
- [50:29]
Josh Crouch
To schedule service, ask a weird take. Ask your CSRs for the weirdest question they got this week and start there. Like have, I mean enjoy it, have some fun. But test it, like really test it. Don't just, you know, I need to book an appointment. Don't make it straightforward. Like give it, you know, the normal stuff that you guys, your team goes through. Just so you guys can get a feel for the technology. I think it's important to start opening, especially if you haven't yet open your mind to that technology, entering your business and seeing how it can benefit you and your team.
- [50:58]
Tersh Blissett
Nate, you want to add anything else before we get.
- [50:59]
Nate Keller
Not from my side. This is a great conversation. You know, we, we have things that are coming up, you know, in August we're going to start releasing outbound calls and kind of a controlled manner where we're looking at that maintenance number check ins and that sort of thing.
- [51:12]
Tersh Blissett
What's the legal ramification for outbounding? Because for me, yeah, it has to be clients.
- [51:17]
Nate Keller
Customer has to be like for us, that's why we're starting with maintenance members specifically.
- [51:21]
Josh Crouch
You can't just like upload a list that you bought or like people like homeowners that moved in the last year and started dialing them, stuff like that.
- [51:27]
Tersh Blissett
I don't get it as much anymore. I have really lit into these people but I get these AI. You have to complete your, this loan document to get your $47,000 at such and such interest rate. And it'd be in my voicemail. I mean literally it would I'd have 10 a day. And they're all AI. If you answer the phone, you. It's obvious an agent and it's outbound. And I feel like that's illegal. I've never done business with these people before.
- [51:56]
Nate Keller
It is definitely like there's gray areas to it, right? Without a doubt. You know, doing it in a controlled manner where it is maintenance member check ins someone that is within their database. It can't. Like, you can't just upload a list.
- [52:08]
Josh Crouch
It's human nature. Like, well, let's see if we can break it. Like, let's see how far we can take this thing.
- [52:12]
Chat Participant / Guest
Right.
- [52:13]
Josh Crouch
And that's of course gets everyone in trouble.
- [52:14]
Nate Keller
Yeah, it's going to be costly.
- [52:15]
Josh Crouch
Once you get that part live and have some data and some. Some tests and stuff like that, we can come back and kind of see how that's working because I'm sure a lot of people would be really interested in that because doing those calls from someone who's done those calls, not fun.
- [52:26]
Tersh Blissett
We appreciate you hanging out with us. It's always fun getting to chat with you.
- [52:29]
Nate Keller
Yeah, thanks, guys. I appreciate it.
- [52:31]
Tersh Blissett
Absolutely. Everybody have a wonderful and safe week until we talk again next time. We appreciate y'. All.
- [52:45]
Podcast Narrator
Thank you for listening to this episode of Service Business Mastery. Now that you are equipped with essential business advice from this impactful conversation, you are one step closer to becoming the successful owner of your dreams. If this episode has been helpful to your business journey, don't forget to subscribe to the show, leave a rating and share it with other owners as well. Visit servicebusinessmastery.com to learn more.