I’m sure you’ve heard tons about AI.
Some good. Some not so good. And some people freaking out about AI taking over the world.
It may be time to start doomsday prepping, which might also come in handy during the odd cyclone.
Anyway, I wanted to share an example of how we’re using AI; you might have already met him/her.
Alex, our new AI answering bot.
Now, I know what you’re thinking, but it’s actually not that bad.
So far, we’ve used a mix of tools and services to answer calls.
The biggest problem with phone calls is, in my opinion, the sheer number of Spam calls I get every single day. This is annoying enough as it is, but the bigger problem is that it interrupts our flow.
If I am working on any task and the phone rings, it takes me at least 15-20 minutes to get back to where I was—probably more. So, with 5-10 spam calls a day, this adds up.
That is why we had a system where our office phone would ring twice. This gave me the choice to answer it when I was available or ignore it when I was busy.
If I were busy, we used a local answering service that would answer the call and take a message.
That is when they were available. Recently, more and more calls did not get answered, and I was being charged $3 per minute for the privilege.
So I built a basic AI answering bot. Alex.
You may have already had the pleasure of talking with him.
To be fair, there is room for improvement. My biggest beef with him is that he may interrupt the caller or wait too long to speak. But in the big scheme of things, he handles 80% of calls pretty well.
But here’s where my AI Answering bot shines:
- It only cost me about 0.25 cents per minute
- He takes the message, then sends me a Slack message and creates a task for me to follow up on.
And this is just the start. I am currently working on a process where the bot actually knows who’s calling (based on the phone number) before answering the call. Then, it can check my calendar and schedule a time for me to call back or take a message and create a task if it is something small.
Stay tuned, and feel free to let me know what you think.
Or if you’d like to explore getting your own AI answering service.
Johannes Klupfel
