December 23, 2025 • 45 mins
AI isn’t coming.
It’s already here.
And the trades who ignore it are going to get smoked by the ones who adopt it.
In this episode, Wayne & Andy dive into the truth about AI in the plumbing, heating, and electrical world — stripping out the sci-fi nonsense and showing exactly how real tradesmen can use AI TODAY to save time, win more work, and look more professional than 90% of their competitors.
Inside this unfiltered episode:
🔥 How Wayne went from “AI’s a novelty” → to fully embedding it in two businesses
🔥 Why AI won’t replace tradesmen — but WILL replace slow, old-school businesses
🔥 The biggest game-changer: AI phone answering (live demo included)
🔥 How AI can answer calls, book jobs, send links, collect customer info & upsell… all while you’re under a boiler
🔥 The shocking increase in online bookings once AI handles your first contact
🔥 Why customers prefer AI speed over human small talk
🔥 How AI helps single-man bands COMPETE with companies that have full offices
🔥 Why the older generation actually prefer AI more than you think
🔥 How AI + automations can reduce your office workload by 50–80%
🔥 Why manual call handling is losing you customers every single day
🔥 The one mindset shift that stops tradesmen sabotaging their own growth
🔥 How AI protects your business from “giving away the diagnosis” over the phone
🔥 Using AI for website chat, content creation, customer service & more
🔥 Why “not answering the phone” is the #1 reason customers leave their old tradesman
🔥 The harsh reality: customers want SPEED, not excuses
PLUS:
Real examples from inside Wayne’s business — including a live walk-through of his AI call handler and chat bot, how it collects data, how it routes calls, and how it pushed online bookings up by 50%+ almost overnight.
If you’re a one-man band, small team, or even a growing company with office staff — you NEED to hear this.
AI isn’t a threat.
It’s a tool.
And the ones who pick it up will dominate the next decade of the trades.
Want us to build your AI call handler or chatbot?
Email Wayne or Andy — links in the description.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:14):
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Off the Tools
podcast. Myself, Wayne Bettis and Co host
Andy Jones. How are you doing, Andy?
Good, good, good, good. AIAI.
Let's get straight into it. You know what I'm talking about.
Wow, So AI, what does? What is AI?
(00:36):
Artificial intelligence answers my own question because I don't
know why. I think it's a rhetorical
question, I guess. So this subject is back.
We could probably talk every week on AI because it's changing
so much. But I think to put a bit of
(00:57):
context to the episode, I just want to share a little bit first
about where I've been with AI and what my thoughts were say a
year ago, 18 months ago to wherethey are now.
So when I first started hearing about AI, well, it's got to be a
(01:18):
couple of years ago, I guess like the first sort of like
levels of it were were starting to come out.
I sort of saw it as a, as a bit of a novelty, you know, using
ChatGPT was fantastic. Throw in some information, get
some, some content out of it. And I, I was sort of using it ad
hoc. It didn't, I never really
(01:39):
thought much about it. Then it then probably about 18
months ago, I started to take ita little bit more serious and I
started to see, you know what? This, this could actually be
really, really helpful. Anyone that like, So I, I'm 38,
most of our listeners are between sort of 24 and 44.
(02:02):
When I was younger, I presumed that any sort of like, IE sort
of thing like that you used to watch would be like physical.
I thought it'd be like robots. I thought it would be like shelf
stacking. I thought it would be in
factories. I never even like thought about
it from a sort of business aspect, from a small business.
(02:24):
I just want, well, small businesses.
It's never never really going tobe a thing until I started to
notice how AI could sort of dealwith phone calls.
Was, was probably the first likewake up call and the first level
of it was, was was quite primitive.
(02:44):
But I sort of thought, you know what, this, this has some
serious, serious legs. This is going to grow.
And and I took a strategic decision to wait sort of six
months to nine months before sort of doing anything major
because I felt it was like very too new.
To, to, to. Invest any time or money in back
(03:05):
then and then since then I've sort of fallen in love with it.
I'm using it in, in, in my business.
I, I, I always believe, just a quick caveat, there is always
going to be a place in this industry, especially the next
20-30 years for, for humans, right?
You, you know, from a physical aspect, obviously you're not
going to be getting robots come round and pick taps and service
(03:27):
boilers and even even in the office answering phones, there's
always going to be a need for, for humans.
So I'm not, I'm not one of thosepeople that feel that it will
take over. I feel it was just like a tool.
You know, if you're, if you're atradesman, you've probably got
an impact driver because it's 10times fucking easier to screw a
(03:48):
screw in with an impact driver than it is to use a manual hand
screwdriver. All of the risks of the old
school tradesman from like the 70s, They, they, they've still
got strong forearms and wrists. US modern day people just get
vibration fucking problems rather than strong risks.
But the the reason I mention that is because I see AI in in
(04:09):
the trades industry as another tool.
So I don't think it replaces something.
I think it's just a tool that you have in your toolkit,
metaphorically, obviously, that you can then use where you feel
appropriate. So as it stands right now, I'm
(04:30):
actively using AI across both businesses, my my plumbing
business and also within off thetools I'm actively learning, I'm
actively building stuff with AI and I feel a bit like an
explorer at the moment. I'm like dipping my toe over
here, digging a little bit, seeing what that does, digging
(04:52):
over here, seeing what that does.
And it's moving so fast. It's so hard to keep, keep
bandwidth available to, to keep on top of it.
But that's where I'm at with AI.Obviously we're going to dive
deeper into to, to to that in a minute.
But what what's, what's your story with AI Andy?
(05:13):
So obviously I'm a bit newer into it than than yourself,
being much newer to business. However, I can see that it's now
filtered down into almost everything and it's probably far
more prevalent than people perhaps realise when they ask
something to do something or they put in a search and you
(05:34):
know, whatever it might be for us, the big one.
And then this particular industry in the trades and
construction industry, it's likeyou say, it's a tool, isn't it?
There was a time where, you know, it wasn't that long ago
where plumbers were still havingto cut copper pipes with a
hacksaw and then the pipe slice came out.
What a phenomenal invention thatwas.
(05:56):
Like, like you say, it is just atool and a big one we've spoke
about before is how answering the phone yourself as a
tradesman can devalue your business.
You can leverage something like AI to elevate it.
And AI from a call handling perspective has been around over
(06:19):
a decade, hasn't it? Like in, in the oh, you know, we
used to, you know, Ranga in big insurance company 10 years ago
when you'd have come through to a very primitive AI, whereas
that technology is not only as it moved, it would have cost
millions back then probably, butit's moved, moved forward
exponentially, but it's now integrating into so many things.
(06:41):
We spoke on the last episode about software and our service
mate is our preferred job management software service may
have a lot of AI built into thatitself.
So it's, it ranges from really simple things that I find
intriguing that so for example, as a way of booking annual leave
(07:04):
off your staff in service mate and all you need to do now is
talk to it like a person. You can just say, Oh yeah, Wayne
wants to take the 20th of November off in the afternoon
because he has a you know, he's he's got a gym session booked
in, whatever it might be and then that's it and it will just
(07:25):
go away and do that for you. On top of that, the, the more
later stuff that it's it's done is an out of hours call
answering agent. This is kind of the hot topic
really, isn't it? In the trades at the minute is
the the AI call answering capabilities.
(07:45):
We've got one guy in the group with a multi 7 figure business
who's really gone to town on it.He's got the real top of the
line stuff for us. We're using the in built one.
And what's really intrigued me is is starting to learn the code
inside of it. I say code and it's it's
(08:07):
relatively basic coding slash prompt slash FAQs and you can
basically teach it to be able toanswer almost anything and then
basically can populate the job form.
So if you look at it from the perspective of how much most
guys are either losing a shit load of work by not getting back
(08:31):
to customers in the evenings andweekends, or they're losing a
shit load of time by doing it byhaving the AI capture that data
out of hours. What, what you can find is
whether it's yourself or someonein the office, they can come in
the next morning to a populated job card with name, address,
(08:52):
e-mail, phone number and an explanation of what's the issue
is, you know, no heating hot water, whatever it might be for
Janice or you know, whatever, making it really easy to get
back to them. And you're also aware of the
situation for that. So that's where we're at in our
business currently is really starting to delve into the
(09:16):
realms of leveraging the the call handling side of things.
And what I think it might allow some guys to do is perhaps
leapfrog to a more professional level of business.
And by and by leapfrog, I mean leapfrog over having to make a
(09:36):
full time office person as your next step.
You can, you can do it the otherway around.
Now you can get the AI call handling first and then move to
someone in in an office space setting because as you say,
there's always going to be a need for a customer service
outbound type person in that position.
But you can change the order of which you do that.
(09:58):
And for us, you can, in my opinion, cut down the amount of
people you need in the office byprobably 75%.
You know, we've only got 2 ladies in the office.
Had we, had there not been the power of automations like we
were talking about in previous podcasts and the and the AI
(10:19):
running, we would probably need,I would say 5-5 or six.
We can do it with two now. Yeah.
And that's the again, the interesting times of it as
things progress rather than going to need #3 or we increase
the AIS capabilities. That's the choice.
(10:39):
The choice is now rather than one, you know, I know a local
competitor to, to the, to our heating business has five people
in the office because he still does it in an old school way.
So that's I think for the guys who maybe have, don't even have
any software yet, this could be an interesting thing for them to
start thinking about. It's a very quick and cheaper
(11:04):
way arguably to, to, to elevate your business, isn't it like,
you know, thinking, oh, I'm going to have to pay someone
2530 grand a year. I'm going to have to get an
office space and get, you know, buy all the computers.
And that you can push the business forward quite a bit
just by implementing that job management software and the CRM
software with with AIII. Think right before we carried on
(11:29):
this conversation, we show show some some all right, So before I
this will be the first time I'vedone this live.
So hopefully it will work and hopefully it will you'll be able
to hear it all through through the screen.
I'm pretty sure you will. So fingers crossed.
I'm just going to give you some guidelines to what I've built.
(11:49):
So this is live in my business. It handles every single phone
call. I've built it to encourage
online booking. OK.
What I wanted to do was push people rather than to call up
and, and, and book in manually. I wanted them to have the option
to book online. We have seen since implementing
(12:11):
this, we have seen in excess of 50% increase on online bookings.
So for those that don't know what an online booking,
basically it's hands free. You know, the customer books
online, they put their details in, they, they choose the job
that they want and they scheduleit into the live diary.
So it is a very efficient way torun a business and and that that
(12:34):
50% plus is going up more and more every single day and
deciding to book online. And a big part of that is
because of the way we're handling our calls at the very
beginning. So let me try and share my
screen. I'm just going to add this.
So my my AI is on the optimals sales line software.
(12:56):
OK, so there are alternatives. There are other ones.
Service mate now has it built inas well.
But for this example, I want to show you my one and remember
what I've said about what it's built for.
So what I'm going to try and do now is initiate a call and
basically it's going to treat melike a customer.
OK, so let me start the call. No pressure.
(13:19):
Yeah. Hello.
You've reached Warmer Home by WBGas Limited.
Can I take your first name please?
John. Thanks John, would you like me
to 1 text you a link to book online, 2 connect you to the
office, 3 or take a message for a call back?
Can you send me the link please?The booking link.
(13:44):
OK, a text has just been sent for you to book online hassle
free. Thank you and goodbye.
It seems I couldn't send the text just now.
Do you have a mobile number I can try sending it to?
Yes, Oh yes, because I've done aweb call.
So yeah, the phone number is 07970333999.
(14:06):
Got it. Let me send the link to that
number for you. 1 moment. It seems the text still couldn't
go through. No worries.
Would you like me to connect youto the office instead or take a
message for a? Call back, Yeah.
Can you connect me please? I'm connecting you right away.
Thank you and goodbye and. Then what will happen?
(14:31):
So this is in Tesla. So yeah, so it's not, it's not
going to actually connect us. But when that's a live call that
will have sent us the message that would have even put us
through to the office. And like I said, that is
increased in our online booking well over 50%.
So that's just a very primitive version, you know, and it's also
(14:55):
just another note on that. When it's out of hours, it
doesn't give the option to sent to the office.
So it removes that option. So it will only say book online
or leave a message and we'll getback to you.
And then on the back end of that, we get a full transcript
of that conversation come through via e-mail.
So if they have left the message, the message will be in
(15:18):
that. And also, obviously we can just
keep on track of who's called and and what's what.
And that's just a simple version.
So you imagine if you're plumberand or electrician and it's just
you in a van, you're always busy.
You know what a first level to start doing.
(15:39):
So we route all of our calls from that first.
So every call that comes into our business goes to that AI and
then obviously gets actioned according to what the customer
prompts and what, what I found is or what contradicted my view.
I thought old people wouldn't use it, but because we sort of
(16:02):
engage them in the in the conversation, so we ask them
their name and then we give themchoices.
It seems like the older generation are embracing it as
much as the younger generation, which was was a bit of a shock
for me. I thought that I would struggle
a lot of my clients as 60 plus, but they are happily using it.
(16:24):
Naturally, the older generation are opting to get put through to
the office more than the youngergeneration, but it is steadily
changing. So yeah, that that was just a
live example. Like I said, because I did it in
test mode, it didn't send the test.
(16:44):
The Service Mate 1 is a very similar process, but the, I
guess the bigger bonus to the Service Mate 1 is that it
actually sort of creates a job in the system, which this can do
with more technical building. But it it, yeah, it it courses
(17:04):
for courses, you know? Because yeah, I would thank you
that. Our group is usually one that
books it in and everything, so there's all different levels,
but obviously at every level it goes up in cost, doesn't it?
So. I would say what you've built
there on sales lighting is probably going to be the best
thing for for people to dip the toe in the water with it.
(17:25):
That that's what I built it for as a starter package, you know,
just as a first stage, you know,see how you get on, see if it's
something that you want to progress further with.
Imagine that running, obviously we're moving into, you know,
we're a week away from two weeksaway, whatever it is from
official UK winter and that imagine being lying under a
(17:51):
boiler or whatever you're doing and that dealing with it for
you. Yeah, that's that's what I say
to a lot of the newer lads that we speak to.
Like that's usually aside from the the regular conversations
about pricing and things like that, the call answering side of
things is almost always the biggest issue, isn't it?
(18:13):
Like I'm too busy and that's why.
But you can, a lot of businesseslose out or a lot of the sole
traders lose out to companies that have got office staff
because they just can't compete.When you're busy on the job and
you don't answer the phone, the company with the office staff
are going to secure that customer.
(18:35):
This is a good way to try and compete, let's say with them,
isn't it? You're going to be able to take
enough information from them, get that booking like link out
to them or if it's urgent then they can be connected to you.
And what I think that can allow the sole trader lads to do is
(18:58):
they're going to know then at this point that if the phone
does ring, it's going to be important and someone needs to
speak to them. So rather than being like, I'm
not answering my phone because I'm fixing this, you know, I'm
on a right hand hydro block on aWorcester and it's in a shit
location. I'm fighting with her and it's
15 year old and everything's allseized up and you're in a shit
mood for it. You can just think, well,
(19:20):
actually my phone's ringing. It does.
It is important. So therefore I need to, I need
to grab this everything else that's maybe non urgent or
people do want that online booking, then they're just going
to deal with deal with the AI onit's own.
Yeah, and then there's a whole whole other part of that AI as
(19:42):
well, which I forgot to mention is the is the chat AI.
So within within the sales line software, you can excuse me, I'm
going to sneeze 2. Sorry about that gents.
And and ladies and gentlemen, I'm going to sneeze again.
Two question. I've got a bug going around the
(20:03):
house. I reckon I'm getting it.
So with the chat AI, let me let me show it.
Sorry, Let's let's let's show. It Yeah.
So again, I'll use my business as an example.
So in here on my website we've got this pop up.
I've asked it how much boiler service is and obviously I've
(20:24):
trained the AI to answer and it's given me the price that we
that we charge for a service. And then let's say what's it
asking me? What's my name?
So my name is plain. Can I, can I book in please?
And basically it will reply autonomously, but based on the
(20:47):
training that we've done. OK, So it's just asking for some
info. Hopefully you can all see this.
You should be able to see it. Yeah, you can just check in.
(21:10):
So for those listening, basically I've asked it can I
book in? It's now just gathering some
information. So it's asked me for my e-mail
address, my phone number. And now what it should do is
there we go. So it's it's told them they
can't book it in directly through the chat, but they can
book online. So it's sent me the link to to
book online. So again, this is all happening
(21:31):
without you having to, to do it.So customers that go on your
website can get information, they can ask how much things are
they get and then obviously can can get pointed to where to book
online so that that the phone and the chat AI is where I'm
using it most in, in my plumbingand heating business.
But I'm also using it in contentcreation.
(21:55):
So I'm, I'm using it to prompt and get ideas for posts and
social media stuff. Yeah.
So are you using the chat as well, Andy?
I think you are on your site as well, aren't you?
Yeah. So currently we've got we've got
the chat bot running on the website which again essentially
(22:15):
does the same thing. It will guide them to the online
booking. And then we've got the out of
hours AI running from again to try and serve the same purpose
that is that particular. So we've got the chat bot, which
is powered by a sales Lion. And then we've got the out of
(22:36):
hours AI call handling, which ispowered by service Mate, which
we have did have the sales Lion 1 running.
We're just trialling out the service Mate one at the minute
because it's it's only just beenreleased.
So we're just testing that. And then in terms of other AI
stuff running, again, obviously we use it enough the tools, but
(22:59):
for the purpose of the listeners, we've got some of the
internal stuff. So it can do things like this is
probably probably a bit more prevalent for the guys that are
already using job management software.
But another thing that Service Mate now has in place is an auto
(23:22):
route tracking an auto route guidance system, which
essentially is powered by the Mac system, but it's then got
the live AI which factors in theroad networks and which routes
are busier and things like that.It's a bit more intuitive than
it perhaps looks at face value or sounds at face value, but you
(23:44):
can if you are using the the principle of giving customers a
larger booking window. You can then use the AI routing
system, which can constantly change and you can then plan
your let the AI plan your route for the day.
And this is again becomes extra valuable if you've got a team of
(24:04):
engineers because you can shuffle Diaries round.
Let the AI choose the, the orderof the jobs for them and get the
most out of your engineers or the most out of yourself.
If it's just you. I'm trying to think what else
we're using it on at the minute.I think I'm very, we're all
quite focused on the, the chat bot and the, and the call
(24:26):
handling really, aren't they? Because that's again, like we
were talking about in the last episode about most guys are very
focused on being the best engineer and as a result are not
going to be the most efficient on the phone, perhaps not be
able to answer the phone even. And this is the, the two ways
that a customer's going to try and find your business, aren't
(24:48):
they? They're going to either come
through to your website or they're going to ring you.
So if you can automate an AI power, one of those or both of
those two things, you're going to free up enough time for you
to just get your head down. And we've got to go back a
little bit and say, obviously, even though we've spoke about
you should learn the business side of things, a lot of guys
(25:11):
who pride themselves on being a phenomenal engineer want to
continue down that route for themost part.
So this gives a different, different way of growing and
scaling your business. If you want to continue to be a
brilliant engineer, then you want to try and work on
outsourcing all of the other stuff that you probably pretty
(25:32):
shit at. Like most lads are very good at
answering the phone, you know what I mean?
They're probably not doing any upselling, they're probably not
converting the job over the phone.
They're just, and I would argue that they're probably giving too
much value over the phone as well.
And this is, this is maybe goingoff on a little bit of a
tangent, but the guys that are answering the phone and maybe
(25:56):
giving advice over the phone andpotentially losing money because
of it. You know what I mean?
Like, like people say, people might ring up and say, oh, I've
got this fault on my boiler and you might diagnose it over the
phone and say, I don't know, it's a, it's a Worcester and
(26:17):
it's leaking from the right handside.
You know what I mean? You're going to say, OK, well,
that's either the flow slog spacer or the right hand block.
And what I'll do, I'll come out with golf parts or whatever.
Whereas in my opinion, from a, from a business viewpoint, that
should be booked in as a fault find diagnostics visit first.
If you don't book that in as a fault find, you're going to
lose, you're losing the job there.
(26:39):
The AI is going to strive to do that.
It's going to want to book them in as a diagnostics visit, isn't
it? Whereas.
Again, because there's no emotion there, is there?
It's just doing what what you'vetrained it to do, isn't it?
You're you're losing, you're costing the business money by
answering the phone as an engineer, wouldn't you say?
(27:00):
Wouldn't you agree? Oh, 100%.
And just from a time perspective, you know, your time
as the, as an engineer is a lot more valuable than something
that can answer the phone. So like the, the sales line AI,
you can have that sort of systemfor say 2, three, ÂŁ400 a month
some somewhere in that sort of region.
(27:20):
It's only got, it's only got to get a couple of jobs over the
line and it's paid for itself. But think about the time that
you've saved by not having to deal with all of that day-to-day
stuff. It's it's really is a no brainer
to have some level. Not not saying you have to fully
dive in and and you know and andhave it do everything, but you
can have it do some stuff at a fairly cost effective rate.
(27:44):
So an extension of what we spokeabout in the one of the last
podcasts of Season 1 of how implementing a job management
software freeze up enough time to generate far more revenue
than the software cost you to, to, to, to have it in the first
place. And again, to continue with
(28:05):
that, you know, focusing on being an engineer side of
things, that's what it allows you to do, doesn't it?
You can implement that out of hours AI, sorry, the the AI
automated call handling service.And you can just crack on doing
what you're best at and generating the most money out.
And like, say it. When you look at it from that
perspective, it's pretty cheap when you think about it.
(28:26):
It's an investment again, isn't it like, like the, like the job
management system? If you, if you use it correctly,
it's, it is an investment, it will make a return, whether it
be money or time or both. You know, you, you're going to
see some one or if not bunk savings and, and yeah, it's, it
really is then. And, and you've got to remember,
(28:49):
right, this is all still very new in, in the scheme of
technology. You know, when you think about
how long Internet and social media have been out AI in, in,
in it's current sort of form, is, is, is, is basically a baby
still. So where, where it will be in a
year's time, 2 years time, who knows, you know, but all I know
(29:11):
is it's like a train, you know, if you're not getting on and,
and learning and, and implementing some of it, you're
going to be miles behind similarto like the reviews.
You know, if you didn't start collecting reviews five years
ago, you're a long way behind someone that did and, and AI is
going to going to be a a similartrend.
I'm. Going to, I'm going to say
(29:33):
something that might be a bit controversial and might trigger
some conversations, but if you're not on this, getting on
this trade with all the stuff wespoke about in the last one and
this one, you're going to get left behind because you cannot
compete anymore. I believe quite strongly of this
and obviously This is why we tried to help so many, so many
(29:53):
lads in the trades is because just that example that I've used
before, you're under a boiler, you don't answer the phone, They
will customers are, are ruthless, aren't they?
Nowadays? They will ring the next guy, the
next guy, the next guy. And the company that's going to
secure them is the company that either has the AI or has someone
(30:14):
in the office or a combination or whatever it is, but has
someone who will always pick up the phone there and then.
And that's the the thing that's going to kill off the lads who
are sole traders because the customer loyalty is not what it
once was in the in the trades industry at all.
People are impatient as fuck. They they want someone now like
(30:34):
you don't we like it's our business has picked up a lot of
customers who have previously used a sole trader type guy for
a few years, but he's not pickedup the phone.
That's what we get. Well, I've got a normal guy, but
I can't get hold of him. It's like.
And most, most people just want to be dealt with.
(30:54):
So even if it's a booking for a few days down the line, at that
point of time, they might be on their lunch break, they might
have 10 minutes where they just need to get a resolution plan.
It doesn't mean you have to be able to get there in an hour.
You know, it just means that that customer has basically
ticked it off their To Do List, haven't they?
They're like I've booked in the boiler service.
(31:16):
I've I've, I've sorted out the repair for the electrics or
whatever it might be. It's getting that resolved.
And like you, like you, you justsaid, you know, the company that
has the capacity to deal with that the quickest is going to
win and going to thrive. And the person that doesn't, the
person that's busy as hell, you know, heading in a consumer
(31:40):
unit, head under a boiler that can't answer that phone is going
to lose out. And short term, you might not
see a big impact. But over the next two to five
years, that will compound like anything does.
You know, every lost job is not only money out of your pocket,
it's money into the person that you're competing with directly
(32:02):
or indirectly competing with, you know, and then they're
growing, they're getting stronger, they can invest in
better systems because they havetheir extra customers that
you've lost because you weren't willing to throw a few ÂŁ100 a
month into it. Yeah.
But I think the gap between the normal, the the traditional
trades businesses and the ones that are moving are getting on
(32:24):
the train. Let's let's use your analogy
before is getting bigger and bigger and bigger because the,
the top end stuff, there's more and more stuff out there and
that you say everything compounds, doesn't it?
So not only you are going to lose that customer because you
don't answer the phone people. If you've still, if you've got
that mindset like you were saying about reviews and
(32:47):
marketing, you're also going to lose, you're not going to gain
any new customers. So you're going to lose what you
had. I'm not get anything new because
you know what I mean? So that that gap is just getting
bigger and bigger and bigger because the traditional way of
doing things no longer works. And even the guys that are well
established because they they were operating from, you know,
(33:08):
20 years ago, they're going to see us arguably a slower
decline, but a decline nonetheless.
Because if like say you're because I say customers are a
bit savage. If you missed that call and they
go to someone else, but someone else is doing it better than you
because you're an old school, then the likelihood is you're
(33:31):
going to, you're never going to get that customer back, even if
the other company is more expensive because people value
the time a little bit more. As you just said, people's
trying to get something boxed off in their lunch hour or when
they've got 5 minutes when the kids are quiet, they want to get
it dealt with there and then. So I think we're in really
interesting times and there's going to be guys that have been
(33:52):
maybe struggling for the last year or so or more.
If they don't take action now, they're going to struggle,
they're going to end up with no business left.
You know, it's like, you know, when we've touched on pricing,
the guys that are charging ÂŁ6070for a boiler service and that
response is, well, my customers won't pay any more, but it's
like, well, how can you elevate and add value to your business
(34:16):
so that they will? And you say, and that's, you
know, just putting something like this in place, you know,
we've now implemented a 24/7 call handling service.
So if, if I, you know, if I, if it's a single guy, one man band
guy, if I'm busy or if you've got lads, if the team is busy,
then we can still take your call.
(34:37):
We might not get back to you straight away, but be safe
knowing that you call information has been logged and
one of us will pick it up like you say.
So then it's served that purpose.
So absolutely something needs tobe implemented.
And to, to play devil's advocateas well to, to hear about some
of the talk on the forums about the other side, people say, no,
(34:59):
no, I need to move into an industry where I can make some
money from AI and maybe I need to stop being a tradesman
because I don't make enough money.
What other areas can I operate in?
I would say this is right up there with one of, if not the
safest industries out there. Anything that's physical, like
you said earlier on the what youmight have conceptualised
(35:20):
previously, like, you know, I robot is going to be one of the
last things because it's too expensive for anything like that
to be too implemented. And The funny thing, I was
listening to a podcast with MO Gowder on who, for those who
don't know, he used to be the CEO of Google X.
(35:44):
He invented the infinite scroll,didn't he?
I think that was that was one ofhis inventions.
So you can blame him for a. Lot and he was saying that like
same thing really, the trades type stuff, the hands on stuff
is going to be one of the last because even though you see a
lot of like robotics within likethe industrial realm, so you
(36:08):
know like robots welding car panels together, for example,
That's because that's a specificthing designed for that job in a
static location, whereas to create something like an eye
robot to go out to someone's house and fix a boiler, the
costumes of that, because the human body is designed to be a
(36:31):
very good all rounder, isn't it?So it's not and this this is
getting a little bit in the depths of it.
AI wants to be as efficient as possible, doesn't it?
So to create a human body to go out and fix the boiler is not
efficient. So it will drive efficiency into
other realms like robotics within industries or what's even
(36:52):
more efficient software, which is what we've just been talking
about. So I would say for the guys that
are perhaps wondering what will happen to the jobs or Korea, I
would say this is definitely oneof the safest places you can
operate. If you're a graphic, if you're a
graphic designer, then it's a different conversation, isn't
it? Like whereas like, you know what
(37:13):
I mean? Whereas even things like, you
know, anything that's that's working on the other side of the
screen and not using it to leverage the business is
probably a little bit itchy foottime.
Whereas the physical stuff, you know, the trades, you know what
(37:35):
I mean, that sort of thing. You I would say it's just one of
the safest things out there. Like used to talk at least the
next 20 years. Yeah, yeah, at least I, I, you
know, like Elon Musk recently, Iremember listening to a podcast
and he he said that he thinks that by 2050 every house will
(37:58):
have a robot like, like everyonehas a phone.
He believes that that that, but that is going to be like as an
assistant, probably more. It's not ever going to cost wise
in the next 50 years. Realistically.
It's never going to be able to get to that point where it can
like do tasks that humans can doin a physical situation, you
(38:22):
know, like under a sink, you know, doing all this sort of
stuff. It's just, yeah, robotics, of
course, but. Robotics is a very different
conversation to AI, isn't it? Like AI is the the back end of
it, isn't it? Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Very true.
That's the brain inside of the the the the robot, isn't it?
And what you know what happens when the robot tries to fix that
(38:43):
boiler and gets wet? And.
The brass was out. One of the lads had a an
interesting job the other day and just just to chat about the
robot getting wet, the customer was getting the no hot water
from a comedy boiler. The boiler wasn't firing for hot
(39:07):
water as if it wasn't detected. This particular boiler uses a
flow turbine so the lads understand the turbine must be
shot. So we isolated the flow going
into the boiler and so I'm goingto pull the turbine out.
As he pulls the turbine out, a turbo jet of water at mains
(39:30):
pressure is spraying him in the face, which again would have
killed the the robot off. But that had happened because
the customer who was doing his own bathroom had crossed the
floor round boiler was actually he's actually going back up
through the flow. So an AI robot wouldn't have
(39:51):
known that and then it would have got soaked and then it
would have been ruined. But it's a little, little funny
story there. Use user error.
The robotic AI could not counteract the user error of
that scenario. But yeah, I think this yeah.
Just to get back on track, I think guys who are wondering
what will happen to the the job because the trades are so much
(40:17):
based on physical aspect to it. I do genuinely believe this is
one of the even the AIAI expertsare saying these are the safer
industry. Yeah, it's, it's, it's any
anyone that like works on a screen really.
That's, that's where the risk is, isn't it, You know, So is it
as data analysis, web design, design, you know, Yeah, yeah.
(40:43):
Which is so surreal when you think like growing up, you know,
they were like even, even like doctors.
And that I, I, I listened to something about, I believe an,
an anaesthetist is the highest paid role in a, in a hospital
because it's so highly like tuned or something.
(41:04):
But this AI guy was saying that like we're going to get to the
point where the AI computer system will they'll only need
one real person to oversee the robot that can anaesthetize
better, you know, and quicker, you know, and and like where it
goes in the medical, the medicalseem like like is going to be
(41:29):
good for for everybody. Do you do you know what I mean?
Like even to the point where like back in the day, I think
this is live now. If they cut cancer out of
someone, right that that would then have to be sent off to a
lab, then it would get analysed and then it would come back.
Oh no, there's still traces on the on the peripheral of what
you've cut. So you need to go back in.
(41:49):
So that poor person would then have to go back get another
operation. Now some hospitals have got
devices that they can just put the the, the, the, the cut out
in and it analysis it in in minutes, you know, and gets a
live feedback is yeah. And if we're going to think
about everyone wearing, wearing wearables like wood bands and
(42:11):
Apple watches, and that once they start to integrate that
with real medicine and medical and, and like, oh, it's just
going to, it's just going to change what we know of, of
healthcare, I think. Well, to to go back what we were
saying about the robotics side, again, the hindrance of robotics
in the real world is that the the very good at being static
(42:36):
robotics certainly like the factory side of things.
Well, you're static on an operating table, aren't you?
So that's, you know what I mean.And arguably you can design
robotics that are far better than carrying out a surgery on a
singular machine than having a surgeon who's bound by just a
(42:59):
pair of hands, you know what I mean?
Like if you have one, one big robotic machine that can, as you
know what I mean, cut someone open.
It does this and does that, you know what I mean?
And holds this. And yeah, the the that, that's
where I think it'll it'll blow up.
But yeah, we could definitely talk about the interesting side
of it outside of the industry all day for sure.
(43:20):
But yeah, from to we do like a tangent, but for to bring it
back on topic for us, I would goas far as I said before too, if
you don't get on that train, I think you're just going to get
left behind like because and I mean, it doesn't have to be a
big business like you know, likelike me and you have got it
(43:41):
doesn't have to be at that level.
It can be the one man band in a van.
Just by adding that, you've elevated your business to what a
few years ago would have needed a couple of people in the office
just by imprinting some softwarefree sales line to take that
call and ping them out a bookinglink.
That's like, you're going to relevant your business so much
(44:03):
by doing such a small thing because you're leveraging AI
rather than fighting against it.Because if you don't, the guy
down the road does it and that'sit.
He's got all your customers anyway.
Yeah. On that note, I'll, I think
we've said enough for today's session on that.
Any closing thoughts? No, yeah, just if it's something
(44:26):
that's perked your curiosity, get in touch again.
We'll definitely, I imagine thiswill be a regular touch point
among because it crosses over from other stuff as we've found
before and it's getting drip fedinto the industry.
Obviously we've talked about what's accessible to us now.
(44:47):
That's changing on a weekly basis really isn't it?
So yeah, there's going to be a future touch touch point.
So yeah. Have you got any questions
around it and how it can help your business?
Then just just get in touch withone of us and we can either
answer direct or we'll do a moresessions on it.
(45:08):
All right. Have a good one guys.
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Off the Tools
podcast. Myself, Wayne Bettis and Co host
Andy Jones. How are you doing, Andy?
Good, good, good, good. AIAI.
Let's get straight into it. You know what I'm talking about.
Wow, So AI, what does? What is AI?
(00:36):
Artificial intelligence answers my own question because I don't
know why. I think it's a rhetorical
question, I guess. So this subject is back.
We could probably talk every week on AI because it's changing
so much. But I think to put a bit of
(00:57):
context to the episode, I just want to share a little bit first
about where I've been with AI and what my thoughts were say a
year ago, 18 months ago to wherethey are now.
So when I first started hearing about AI, well, it's got to be a
(01:18):
couple of years ago, I guess like the first sort of like
levels of it were were starting to come out.
I sort of saw it as a, as a bit of a novelty, you know, using
ChatGPT was fantastic. Throw in some information, get
some, some content out of it. And I, I was sort of using it ad
hoc. It didn't, I never really
(01:39):
thought much about it. Then it then probably about 18
months ago, I started to take ita little bit more serious and I
started to see, you know what? This, this could actually be
really, really helpful. Anyone that like, So I, I'm 38,
most of our listeners are between sort of 24 and 44.
(02:02):
When I was younger, I presumed that any sort of like, IE sort
of thing like that you used to watch would be like physical.
I thought it'd be like robots. I thought it would be like shelf
stacking. I thought it would be in
factories. I never even like thought about
it from a sort of business aspect, from a small business.
(02:24):
I just want, well, small businesses.
It's never never really going tobe a thing until I started to
notice how AI could sort of dealwith phone calls.
Was, was probably the first likewake up call and the first level
of it was, was was quite primitive.
(02:44):
But I sort of thought, you know what, this, this has some
serious, serious legs. This is going to grow.
And and I took a strategic decision to wait sort of six
months to nine months before sort of doing anything major
because I felt it was like very too new.
To, to, to. Invest any time or money in back
(03:05):
then and then since then I've sort of fallen in love with it.
I'm using it in, in, in my business.
I, I, I always believe, just a quick caveat, there is always
going to be a place in this industry, especially the next
20-30 years for, for humans, right?
You, you know, from a physical aspect, obviously you're not
going to be getting robots come round and pick taps and service
(03:27):
boilers and even even in the office answering phones, there's
always going to be a need for, for humans.
So I'm not, I'm not one of thosepeople that feel that it will
take over. I feel it was just like a tool.
You know, if you're, if you're atradesman, you've probably got
an impact driver because it's 10times fucking easier to screw a
(03:48):
screw in with an impact driver than it is to use a manual hand
screwdriver. All of the risks of the old
school tradesman from like the 70s, They, they, they've still
got strong forearms and wrists. US modern day people just get
vibration fucking problems rather than strong risks.
But the the reason I mention that is because I see AI in in
(04:09):
the trades industry as another tool.
So I don't think it replaces something.
I think it's just a tool that you have in your toolkit,
metaphorically, obviously, that you can then use where you feel
appropriate. So as it stands right now, I'm
(04:30):
actively using AI across both businesses, my my plumbing
business and also within off thetools I'm actively learning, I'm
actively building stuff with AI and I feel a bit like an
explorer at the moment. I'm like dipping my toe over
here, digging a little bit, seeing what that does, digging
(04:52):
over here, seeing what that does.
And it's moving so fast. It's so hard to keep, keep
bandwidth available to, to keep on top of it.
But that's where I'm at with AI.Obviously we're going to dive
deeper into to, to to that in a minute.
But what what's, what's your story with AI Andy?
(05:13):
So obviously I'm a bit newer into it than than yourself,
being much newer to business. However, I can see that it's now
filtered down into almost everything and it's probably far
more prevalent than people perhaps realise when they ask
something to do something or they put in a search and you
(05:34):
know, whatever it might be for us, the big one.
And then this particular industry in the trades and
construction industry, it's likeyou say, it's a tool, isn't it?
There was a time where, you know, it wasn't that long ago
where plumbers were still havingto cut copper pipes with a
hacksaw and then the pipe slice came out.
What a phenomenal invention thatwas.
(05:56):
Like, like you say, it is just atool and a big one we've spoke
about before is how answering the phone yourself as a
tradesman can devalue your business.
You can leverage something like AI to elevate it.
And AI from a call handling perspective has been around over
(06:19):
a decade, hasn't it? Like in, in the oh, you know, we
used to, you know, Ranga in big insurance company 10 years ago
when you'd have come through to a very primitive AI, whereas
that technology is not only as it moved, it would have cost
millions back then probably, butit's moved, moved forward
exponentially, but it's now integrating into so many things.
(06:41):
We spoke on the last episode about software and our service
mate is our preferred job management software service may
have a lot of AI built into thatitself.
So it's, it ranges from really simple things that I find
intriguing that so for example, as a way of booking annual leave
(07:04):
off your staff in service mate and all you need to do now is
talk to it like a person. You can just say, Oh yeah, Wayne
wants to take the 20th of November off in the afternoon
because he has a you know, he's he's got a gym session booked
in, whatever it might be and then that's it and it will just
(07:25):
go away and do that for you. On top of that, the, the more
later stuff that it's it's done is an out of hours call
answering agent. This is kind of the hot topic
really, isn't it? In the trades at the minute is
the the AI call answering capabilities.
(07:45):
We've got one guy in the group with a multi 7 figure business
who's really gone to town on it.He's got the real top of the
line stuff for us. We're using the in built one.
And what's really intrigued me is is starting to learn the code
inside of it. I say code and it's it's
(08:07):
relatively basic coding slash prompt slash FAQs and you can
basically teach it to be able toanswer almost anything and then
basically can populate the job form.
So if you look at it from the perspective of how much most
guys are either losing a shit load of work by not getting back
(08:31):
to customers in the evenings andweekends, or they're losing a
shit load of time by doing it byhaving the AI capture that data
out of hours. What, what you can find is
whether it's yourself or someonein the office, they can come in
the next morning to a populated job card with name, address,
(08:52):
e-mail, phone number and an explanation of what's the issue
is, you know, no heating hot water, whatever it might be for
Janice or you know, whatever, making it really easy to get
back to them. And you're also aware of the
situation for that. So that's where we're at in our
business currently is really starting to delve into the
(09:16):
realms of leveraging the the call handling side of things.
And what I think it might allow some guys to do is perhaps
leapfrog to a more professional level of business.
And by and by leapfrog, I mean leapfrog over having to make a
(09:36):
full time office person as your next step.
You can, you can do it the otherway around.
Now you can get the AI call handling first and then move to
someone in in an office space setting because as you say,
there's always going to be a need for a customer service
outbound type person in that position.
But you can change the order of which you do that.
(09:58):
And for us, you can, in my opinion, cut down the amount of
people you need in the office byprobably 75%.
You know, we've only got 2 ladies in the office.
Had we, had there not been the power of automations like we
were talking about in previous podcasts and the and the AI
(10:19):
running, we would probably need,I would say 5-5 or six.
We can do it with two now. Yeah.
And that's the again, the interesting times of it as
things progress rather than going to need #3 or we increase
the AIS capabilities. That's the choice.
(10:39):
The choice is now rather than one, you know, I know a local
competitor to, to the, to our heating business has five people
in the office because he still does it in an old school way.
So that's I think for the guys who maybe have, don't even have
any software yet, this could be an interesting thing for them to
start thinking about. It's a very quick and cheaper
(11:04):
way arguably to, to, to elevate your business, isn't it like,
you know, thinking, oh, I'm going to have to pay someone
2530 grand a year. I'm going to have to get an
office space and get, you know, buy all the computers.
And that you can push the business forward quite a bit
just by implementing that job management software and the CRM
software with with AIII. Think right before we carried on
(11:29):
this conversation, we show show some some all right, So before I
this will be the first time I'vedone this live.
So hopefully it will work and hopefully it will you'll be able
to hear it all through through the screen.
I'm pretty sure you will. So fingers crossed.
I'm just going to give you some guidelines to what I've built.
(11:49):
So this is live in my business. It handles every single phone
call. I've built it to encourage
online booking. OK.
What I wanted to do was push people rather than to call up
and, and, and book in manually. I wanted them to have the option
to book online. We have seen since implementing
(12:11):
this, we have seen in excess of 50% increase on online bookings.
So for those that don't know what an online booking,
basically it's hands free. You know, the customer books
online, they put their details in, they, they choose the job
that they want and they scheduleit into the live diary.
So it is a very efficient way torun a business and and that that
(12:34):
50% plus is going up more and more every single day and
deciding to book online. And a big part of that is
because of the way we're handling our calls at the very
beginning. So let me try and share my
screen. I'm just going to add this.
So my my AI is on the optimals sales line software.
(12:56):
OK, so there are alternatives. There are other ones.
Service mate now has it built inas well.
But for this example, I want to show you my one and remember
what I've said about what it's built for.
So what I'm going to try and do now is initiate a call and
basically it's going to treat melike a customer.
OK, so let me start the call. No pressure.
(13:19):
Yeah. Hello.
You've reached Warmer Home by WBGas Limited.
Can I take your first name please?
John. Thanks John, would you like me
to 1 text you a link to book online, 2 connect you to the
office, 3 or take a message for a call back?
Can you send me the link please?The booking link.
(13:44):
OK, a text has just been sent for you to book online hassle
free. Thank you and goodbye.
It seems I couldn't send the text just now.
Do you have a mobile number I can try sending it to?
Yes, Oh yes, because I've done aweb call.
So yeah, the phone number is 07970333999.
(14:06):
Got it. Let me send the link to that
number for you. 1 moment. It seems the text still couldn't
go through. No worries.
Would you like me to connect youto the office instead or take a
message for a? Call back, Yeah.
Can you connect me please? I'm connecting you right away.
Thank you and goodbye and. Then what will happen?
(14:31):
So this is in Tesla. So yeah, so it's not, it's not
going to actually connect us. But when that's a live call that
will have sent us the message that would have even put us
through to the office. And like I said, that is
increased in our online booking well over 50%.
So that's just a very primitive version, you know, and it's also
(14:55):
just another note on that. When it's out of hours, it
doesn't give the option to sent to the office.
So it removes that option. So it will only say book online
or leave a message and we'll getback to you.
And then on the back end of that, we get a full transcript
of that conversation come through via e-mail.
So if they have left the message, the message will be in
(15:18):
that. And also, obviously we can just
keep on track of who's called and and what's what.
And that's just a simple version.
So you imagine if you're plumberand or electrician and it's just
you in a van, you're always busy.
You know what a first level to start doing.
(15:39):
So we route all of our calls from that first.
So every call that comes into our business goes to that AI and
then obviously gets actioned according to what the customer
prompts and what, what I found is or what contradicted my view.
I thought old people wouldn't use it, but because we sort of
(16:02):
engage them in the in the conversation, so we ask them
their name and then we give themchoices.
It seems like the older generation are embracing it as
much as the younger generation, which was was a bit of a shock
for me. I thought that I would struggle
a lot of my clients as 60 plus, but they are happily using it.
(16:24):
Naturally, the older generation are opting to get put through to
the office more than the youngergeneration, but it is steadily
changing. So yeah, that that was just a
live example. Like I said, because I did it in
test mode, it didn't send the test.
(16:44):
The Service Mate 1 is a very similar process, but the, I
guess the bigger bonus to the Service Mate 1 is that it
actually sort of creates a job in the system, which this can do
with more technical building. But it it, yeah, it it courses
(17:04):
for courses, you know? Because yeah, I would thank you
that. Our group is usually one that
books it in and everything, so there's all different levels,
but obviously at every level it goes up in cost, doesn't it?
So. I would say what you've built
there on sales lighting is probably going to be the best
thing for for people to dip the toe in the water with it.
(17:25):
That that's what I built it for as a starter package, you know,
just as a first stage, you know,see how you get on, see if it's
something that you want to progress further with.
Imagine that running, obviously we're moving into, you know,
we're a week away from two weeksaway, whatever it is from
official UK winter and that imagine being lying under a
(17:51):
boiler or whatever you're doing and that dealing with it for
you. Yeah, that's that's what I say
to a lot of the newer lads that we speak to.
Like that's usually aside from the the regular conversations
about pricing and things like that, the call answering side of
things is almost always the biggest issue, isn't it?
(18:13):
Like I'm too busy and that's why.
But you can, a lot of businesseslose out or a lot of the sole
traders lose out to companies that have got office staff
because they just can't compete.When you're busy on the job and
you don't answer the phone, the company with the office staff
are going to secure that customer.
(18:35):
This is a good way to try and compete, let's say with them,
isn't it? You're going to be able to take
enough information from them, get that booking like link out
to them or if it's urgent then they can be connected to you.
And what I think that can allow the sole trader lads to do is
(18:58):
they're going to know then at this point that if the phone
does ring, it's going to be important and someone needs to
speak to them. So rather than being like, I'm
not answering my phone because I'm fixing this, you know, I'm
on a right hand hydro block on aWorcester and it's in a shit
location. I'm fighting with her and it's
15 year old and everything's allseized up and you're in a shit
mood for it. You can just think, well,
(19:20):
actually my phone's ringing. It does.
It is important. So therefore I need to, I need
to grab this everything else that's maybe non urgent or
people do want that online booking, then they're just going
to deal with deal with the AI onit's own.
Yeah, and then there's a whole whole other part of that AI as
(19:42):
well, which I forgot to mention is the is the chat AI.
So within within the sales line software, you can excuse me, I'm
going to sneeze 2. Sorry about that gents.
And and ladies and gentlemen, I'm going to sneeze again.
Two question. I've got a bug going around the
(20:03):
house. I reckon I'm getting it.
So with the chat AI, let me let me show it.
Sorry, Let's let's let's show. It Yeah.
So again, I'll use my business as an example.
So in here on my website we've got this pop up.
I've asked it how much boiler service is and obviously I've
(20:24):
trained the AI to answer and it's given me the price that we
that we charge for a service. And then let's say what's it
asking me? What's my name?
So my name is plain. Can I, can I book in please?
And basically it will reply autonomously, but based on the
(20:47):
training that we've done. OK, So it's just asking for some
info. Hopefully you can all see this.
You should be able to see it. Yeah, you can just check in.
(21:10):
So for those listening, basically I've asked it can I
book in? It's now just gathering some
information. So it's asked me for my e-mail
address, my phone number. And now what it should do is
there we go. So it's it's told them they
can't book it in directly through the chat, but they can
book online. So it's sent me the link to to
book online. So again, this is all happening
(21:31):
without you having to, to do it.So customers that go on your
website can get information, they can ask how much things are
they get and then obviously can can get pointed to where to book
online so that that the phone and the chat AI is where I'm
using it most in, in my plumbingand heating business.
But I'm also using it in contentcreation.
(21:55):
So I'm, I'm using it to prompt and get ideas for posts and
social media stuff. Yeah.
So are you using the chat as well, Andy?
I think you are on your site as well, aren't you?
Yeah. So currently we've got we've got
the chat bot running on the website which again essentially
(22:15):
does the same thing. It will guide them to the online
booking. And then we've got the out of
hours AI running from again to try and serve the same purpose
that is that particular. So we've got the chat bot, which
is powered by a sales Lion. And then we've got the out of
(22:36):
hours AI call handling, which ispowered by service Mate, which
we have did have the sales Lion 1 running.
We're just trialling out the service Mate one at the minute
because it's it's only just beenreleased.
So we're just testing that. And then in terms of other AI
stuff running, again, obviously we use it enough the tools, but
(22:59):
for the purpose of the listeners, we've got some of the
internal stuff. So it can do things like this is
probably probably a bit more prevalent for the guys that are
already using job management software.
But another thing that Service Mate now has in place is an auto
(23:22):
route tracking an auto route guidance system, which
essentially is powered by the Mac system, but it's then got
the live AI which factors in theroad networks and which routes
are busier and things like that.It's a bit more intuitive than
it perhaps looks at face value or sounds at face value, but you
(23:44):
can if you are using the the principle of giving customers a
larger booking window. You can then use the AI routing
system, which can constantly change and you can then plan
your let the AI plan your route for the day.
And this is again becomes extra valuable if you've got a team of
(24:04):
engineers because you can shuffle Diaries round.
Let the AI choose the, the orderof the jobs for them and get the
most out of your engineers or the most out of yourself.
If it's just you. I'm trying to think what else
we're using it on at the minute.I think I'm very, we're all
quite focused on the, the chat bot and the, and the call
(24:26):
handling really, aren't they? Because that's again, like we
were talking about in the last episode about most guys are very
focused on being the best engineer and as a result are not
going to be the most efficient on the phone, perhaps not be
able to answer the phone even. And this is the, the two ways
that a customer's going to try and find your business, aren't
(24:48):
they? They're going to either come
through to your website or they're going to ring you.
So if you can automate an AI power, one of those or both of
those two things, you're going to free up enough time for you
to just get your head down. And we've got to go back a
little bit and say, obviously, even though we've spoke about
you should learn the business side of things, a lot of guys
(25:11):
who pride themselves on being a phenomenal engineer want to
continue down that route for themost part.
So this gives a different, different way of growing and
scaling your business. If you want to continue to be a
brilliant engineer, then you want to try and work on
outsourcing all of the other stuff that you probably pretty
(25:32):
shit at. Like most lads are very good at
answering the phone, you know what I mean?
They're probably not doing any upselling, they're probably not
converting the job over the phone.
They're just, and I would argue that they're probably giving too
much value over the phone as well.
And this is, this is maybe goingoff on a little bit of a
tangent, but the guys that are answering the phone and maybe
(25:56):
giving advice over the phone andpotentially losing money because
of it. You know what I mean?
Like, like people say, people might ring up and say, oh, I've
got this fault on my boiler and you might diagnose it over the
phone and say, I don't know, it's a, it's a Worcester and
(26:17):
it's leaking from the right handside.
You know what I mean? You're going to say, OK, well,
that's either the flow slog spacer or the right hand block.
And what I'll do, I'll come out with golf parts or whatever.
Whereas in my opinion, from a, from a business viewpoint, that
should be booked in as a fault find diagnostics visit first.
If you don't book that in as a fault find, you're going to
lose, you're losing the job there.
(26:39):
The AI is going to strive to do that.
It's going to want to book them in as a diagnostics visit, isn't
it? Whereas.
Again, because there's no emotion there, is there?
It's just doing what what you'vetrained it to do, isn't it?
You're you're losing, you're costing the business money by
answering the phone as an engineer, wouldn't you say?
(27:00):
Wouldn't you agree? Oh, 100%.
And just from a time perspective, you know, your time
as the, as an engineer is a lot more valuable than something
that can answer the phone. So like the, the sales line AI,
you can have that sort of systemfor say 2, three, ÂŁ400 a month
some somewhere in that sort of region.
(27:20):
It's only got, it's only got to get a couple of jobs over the
line and it's paid for itself. But think about the time that
you've saved by not having to deal with all of that day-to-day
stuff. It's it's really is a no brainer
to have some level. Not not saying you have to fully
dive in and and you know and andhave it do everything, but you
can have it do some stuff at a fairly cost effective rate.
(27:44):
So an extension of what we spokeabout in the one of the last
podcasts of Season 1 of how implementing a job management
software freeze up enough time to generate far more revenue
than the software cost you to, to, to, to have it in the first
place. And again, to continue with
(28:05):
that, you know, focusing on being an engineer side of
things, that's what it allows you to do, doesn't it?
You can implement that out of hours AI, sorry, the the AI
automated call handling service.And you can just crack on doing
what you're best at and generating the most money out.
And like, say it. When you look at it from that
perspective, it's pretty cheap when you think about it.
(28:26):
It's an investment again, isn't it like, like the, like the job
management system? If you, if you use it correctly,
it's, it is an investment, it will make a return, whether it
be money or time or both. You know, you, you're going to
see some one or if not bunk savings and, and yeah, it's, it
really is then. And, and you've got to remember,
(28:49):
right, this is all still very new in, in the scheme of
technology. You know, when you think about
how long Internet and social media have been out AI in, in,
in it's current sort of form, is, is, is, is basically a baby
still. So where, where it will be in a
year's time, 2 years time, who knows, you know, but all I know
(29:11):
is it's like a train, you know, if you're not getting on and,
and learning and, and implementing some of it, you're
going to be miles behind similarto like the reviews.
You know, if you didn't start collecting reviews five years
ago, you're a long way behind someone that did and, and AI is
going to going to be a a similartrend.
I'm. Going to, I'm going to say
(29:33):
something that might be a bit controversial and might trigger
some conversations, but if you're not on this, getting on
this trade with all the stuff wespoke about in the last one and
this one, you're going to get left behind because you cannot
compete anymore. I believe quite strongly of this
and obviously This is why we tried to help so many, so many
(29:53):
lads in the trades is because just that example that I've used
before, you're under a boiler, you don't answer the phone, They
will customers are, are ruthless, aren't they?
Nowadays? They will ring the next guy, the
next guy, the next guy. And the company that's going to
secure them is the company that either has the AI or has someone
(30:14):
in the office or a combination or whatever it is, but has
someone who will always pick up the phone there and then.
And that's the the thing that's going to kill off the lads who
are sole traders because the customer loyalty is not what it
once was in the in the trades industry at all.
People are impatient as fuck. They they want someone now like
(30:34):
you don't we like it's our business has picked up a lot of
customers who have previously used a sole trader type guy for
a few years, but he's not pickedup the phone.
That's what we get. Well, I've got a normal guy, but
I can't get hold of him. It's like.
And most, most people just want to be dealt with.
(30:54):
So even if it's a booking for a few days down the line, at that
point of time, they might be on their lunch break, they might
have 10 minutes where they just need to get a resolution plan.
It doesn't mean you have to be able to get there in an hour.
You know, it just means that that customer has basically
ticked it off their To Do List, haven't they?
They're like I've booked in the boiler service.
(31:16):
I've I've, I've sorted out the repair for the electrics or
whatever it might be. It's getting that resolved.
And like you, like you, you justsaid, you know, the company that
has the capacity to deal with that the quickest is going to
win and going to thrive. And the person that doesn't, the
person that's busy as hell, you know, heading in a consumer
(31:40):
unit, head under a boiler that can't answer that phone is going
to lose out. And short term, you might not
see a big impact. But over the next two to five
years, that will compound like anything does.
You know, every lost job is not only money out of your pocket,
it's money into the person that you're competing with directly
(32:02):
or indirectly competing with, you know, and then they're
growing, they're getting stronger, they can invest in
better systems because they havetheir extra customers that
you've lost because you weren't willing to throw a few ÂŁ100 a
month into it. Yeah.
But I think the gap between the normal, the the traditional
trades businesses and the ones that are moving are getting on
(32:24):
the train. Let's let's use your analogy
before is getting bigger and bigger and bigger because the,
the top end stuff, there's more and more stuff out there and
that you say everything compounds, doesn't it?
So not only you are going to lose that customer because you
don't answer the phone people. If you've still, if you've got
that mindset like you were saying about reviews and
(32:47):
marketing, you're also going to lose, you're not going to gain
any new customers. So you're going to lose what you
had. I'm not get anything new because
you know what I mean? So that that gap is just getting
bigger and bigger and bigger because the traditional way of
doing things no longer works. And even the guys that are well
established because they they were operating from, you know,
(33:08):
20 years ago, they're going to see us arguably a slower
decline, but a decline nonetheless.
Because if like say you're because I say customers are a
bit savage. If you missed that call and they
go to someone else, but someone else is doing it better than you
because you're an old school, then the likelihood is you're
(33:31):
going to, you're never going to get that customer back, even if
the other company is more expensive because people value
the time a little bit more. As you just said, people's
trying to get something boxed off in their lunch hour or when
they've got 5 minutes when the kids are quiet, they want to get
it dealt with there and then. So I think we're in really
interesting times and there's going to be guys that have been
(33:52):
maybe struggling for the last year or so or more.
If they don't take action now, they're going to struggle,
they're going to end up with no business left.
You know, it's like, you know, when we've touched on pricing,
the guys that are charging ÂŁ6070for a boiler service and that
response is, well, my customers won't pay any more, but it's
like, well, how can you elevate and add value to your business
(34:16):
so that they will? And you say, and that's, you
know, just putting something like this in place, you know,
we've now implemented a 24/7 call handling service.
So if, if I, you know, if I, if it's a single guy, one man band
guy, if I'm busy or if you've got lads, if the team is busy,
then we can still take your call.
(34:37):
We might not get back to you straight away, but be safe
knowing that you call information has been logged and
one of us will pick it up like you say.
So then it's served that purpose.
So absolutely something needs tobe implemented.
And to, to play devil's advocateas well to, to hear about some
of the talk on the forums about the other side, people say, no,
(34:59):
no, I need to move into an industry where I can make some
money from AI and maybe I need to stop being a tradesman
because I don't make enough money.
What other areas can I operate in?
I would say this is right up there with one of, if not the
safest industries out there. Anything that's physical, like
you said earlier on the what youmight have conceptualised
(35:20):
previously, like, you know, I robot is going to be one of the
last things because it's too expensive for anything like that
to be too implemented. And The funny thing, I was
listening to a podcast with MO Gowder on who, for those who
don't know, he used to be the CEO of Google X.
(35:44):
He invented the infinite scroll,didn't he?
I think that was that was one ofhis inventions.
So you can blame him for a. Lot and he was saying that like
same thing really, the trades type stuff, the hands on stuff
is going to be one of the last because even though you see a
lot of like robotics within likethe industrial realm, so you
(36:08):
know like robots welding car panels together, for example,
That's because that's a specificthing designed for that job in a
static location, whereas to create something like an eye
robot to go out to someone's house and fix a boiler, the
costumes of that, because the human body is designed to be a
(36:31):
very good all rounder, isn't it?So it's not and this this is
getting a little bit in the depths of it.
AI wants to be as efficient as possible, doesn't it?
So to create a human body to go out and fix the boiler is not
efficient. So it will drive efficiency into
other realms like robotics within industries or what's even
(36:52):
more efficient software, which is what we've just been talking
about. So I would say for the guys that
are perhaps wondering what will happen to the jobs or Korea, I
would say this is definitely oneof the safest places you can
operate. If you're a graphic, if you're a
graphic designer, then it's a different conversation, isn't
it? Like whereas like, you know what
(37:13):
I mean? Whereas even things like, you
know, anything that's that's working on the other side of the
screen and not using it to leverage the business is
probably a little bit itchy foottime.
Whereas the physical stuff, you know, the trades, you know what
(37:35):
I mean, that sort of thing. You I would say it's just one of
the safest things out there. Like used to talk at least the
next 20 years. Yeah, yeah, at least I, I, you
know, like Elon Musk recently, Iremember listening to a podcast
and he he said that he thinks that by 2050 every house will
(37:58):
have a robot like, like everyonehas a phone.
He believes that that that, but that is going to be like as an
assistant, probably more. It's not ever going to cost wise
in the next 50 years. Realistically.
It's never going to be able to get to that point where it can
like do tasks that humans can doin a physical situation, you
(38:22):
know, like under a sink, you know, doing all this sort of
stuff. It's just, yeah, robotics, of
course, but. Robotics is a very different
conversation to AI, isn't it? Like AI is the the back end of
it, isn't it? Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Very true.
That's the brain inside of the the the the robot, isn't it?
And what you know what happens when the robot tries to fix that
(38:43):
boiler and gets wet? And.
The brass was out. One of the lads had a an
interesting job the other day and just just to chat about the
robot getting wet, the customer was getting the no hot water
from a comedy boiler. The boiler wasn't firing for hot
(39:07):
water as if it wasn't detected. This particular boiler uses a
flow turbine so the lads understand the turbine must be
shot. So we isolated the flow going
into the boiler and so I'm goingto pull the turbine out.
As he pulls the turbine out, a turbo jet of water at mains
(39:30):
pressure is spraying him in the face, which again would have
killed the the robot off. But that had happened because
the customer who was doing his own bathroom had crossed the
floor round boiler was actually he's actually going back up
through the flow. So an AI robot wouldn't have
(39:51):
known that and then it would have got soaked and then it
would have been ruined. But it's a little, little funny
story there. Use user error.
The robotic AI could not counteract the user error of
that scenario. But yeah, I think this yeah.
Just to get back on track, I think guys who are wondering
what will happen to the the job because the trades are so much
(40:17):
based on physical aspect to it. I do genuinely believe this is
one of the even the AIAI expertsare saying these are the safer
industry. Yeah, it's, it's, it's any
anyone that like works on a screen really.
That's, that's where the risk is, isn't it, You know, So is it
as data analysis, web design, design, you know, Yeah, yeah.
(40:43):
Which is so surreal when you think like growing up, you know,
they were like even, even like doctors.
And that I, I, I listened to something about, I believe an,
an anaesthetist is the highest paid role in a, in a hospital
because it's so highly like tuned or something.
(41:04):
But this AI guy was saying that like we're going to get to the
point where the AI computer system will they'll only need
one real person to oversee the robot that can anaesthetize
better, you know, and quicker, you know, and and like where it
goes in the medical, the medicalseem like like is going to be
(41:29):
good for for everybody. Do you do you know what I mean?
Like even to the point where like back in the day, I think
this is live now. If they cut cancer out of
someone, right that that would then have to be sent off to a
lab, then it would get analysed and then it would come back.
Oh no, there's still traces on the on the peripheral of what
you've cut. So you need to go back in.
(41:49):
So that poor person would then have to go back get another
operation. Now some hospitals have got
devices that they can just put the the, the, the, the cut out
in and it analysis it in in minutes, you know, and gets a
live feedback is yeah. And if we're going to think
about everyone wearing, wearing wearables like wood bands and
(42:11):
Apple watches, and that once they start to integrate that
with real medicine and medical and, and like, oh, it's just
going to, it's just going to change what we know of, of
healthcare, I think. Well, to to go back what we were
saying about the robotics side, again, the hindrance of robotics
in the real world is that the the very good at being static
(42:36):
robotics certainly like the factory side of things.
Well, you're static on an operating table, aren't you?
So that's, you know what I mean.And arguably you can design
robotics that are far better than carrying out a surgery on a
singular machine than having a surgeon who's bound by just a
(42:59):
pair of hands, you know what I mean?
Like if you have one, one big robotic machine that can, as you
know what I mean, cut someone open.
It does this and does that, you know what I mean?
And holds this. And yeah, the the that, that's
where I think it'll it'll blow up.
But yeah, we could definitely talk about the interesting side
of it outside of the industry all day for sure.
(43:20):
But yeah, from to we do like a tangent, but for to bring it
back on topic for us, I would goas far as I said before too, if
you don't get on that train, I think you're just going to get
left behind like because and I mean, it doesn't have to be a
big business like you know, likelike me and you have got it
(43:41):
doesn't have to be at that level.
It can be the one man band in a van.
Just by adding that, you've elevated your business to what a
few years ago would have needed a couple of people in the office
just by imprinting some softwarefree sales line to take that
call and ping them out a bookinglink.
That's like, you're going to relevant your business so much
(44:03):
by doing such a small thing because you're leveraging AI
rather than fighting against it.Because if you don't, the guy
down the road does it and that'sit.
He's got all your customers anyway.
Yeah. On that note, I'll, I think
we've said enough for today's session on that.
Any closing thoughts? No, yeah, just if it's something
(44:26):
that's perked your curiosity, get in touch again.
We'll definitely, I imagine thiswill be a regular touch point
among because it crosses over from other stuff as we've found
before and it's getting drip fedinto the industry.
Obviously we've talked about what's accessible to us now.
(44:47):
That's changing on a weekly basis really isn't it?
So yeah, there's going to be a future touch touch point.
So yeah. Have you got any questions
around it and how it can help your business?
Then just just get in touch withone of us and we can either
answer direct or we'll do a moresessions on it.
(45:08):
All right. Have a good one guys.
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The Burden
The Burden is a documentary series that takes listeners into the hidden places where justice is done (and undone). It dives deep into the lives of heroes and villains. And it focuses a spotlight on those who triumph even when the odds are against them. Season 5 - The Burden: Death & Deceit in Alliance On April Fools Day 1999, 26-year-old Yvonne Layne was found murdered in her Alliance, Ohio home. David Thorne, her ex-boyfriend and father of one of her children, was instantly a suspect. Another young man admitted to the murder, and David breathed a sigh of relief, until the confessed murderer fingered David; “He paid me to do it.” David was sentenced to life without parole. Two decades later, Pulitzer winner and podcast host, Maggie Freleng (Bone Valley Season 3: Graves County, Wrongful Conviction, Suave) launched a “live” investigation into David's conviction alongside Jason Baldwin (himself wrongfully convicted as a member of the West Memphis Three). Maggie had come to believe that the entire investigation of David was botched by the tiny local police department, or worse, covered up the real killer. Was Maggie correct? Was David’s claim of innocence credible? In Death and Deceit in Alliance, Maggie recounts the case that launched her career, and ultimately, “broke” her.” The results will shock the listener and reduce Maggie to tears and self-doubt. This is not your typical wrongful conviction story. In fact, it turns the genre on its head. It asks the question: What if our champions are foolish? Season 4 - The Burden: Get the Money and Run “Trying to murder my father, this was the thing that put me on the path.” That’s Joe Loya and that path was bank robbery. Bank, bank, bank, bank, bank. In season 4 of The Burden: Get the Money and Run, we hear from Joe who was once the most prolific bank robber in Southern California, and beyond. He used disguises, body doubles, proxies. He leaped over counters, grabbed the money and ran. Even as the FBI was closing in. It was a showdown between a daring bank robber, and a patient FBI agent. Joe was no ordinary bank robber. He was bright, articulate, charismatic, and driven by a dark rage that he summoned up at will. In seven episodes, Joe tells all: the what, the how… and the why. Including why he tried to murder his father. Season 3 - The Burden: Avenger Miriam Lewin is one of Argentina’s leading journalists today. At 19 years old, she was kidnapped off the streets of Buenos Aires for her political activism and thrown into a concentration camp. Thousands of her fellow inmates were executed, tossed alive from a cargo plane into the ocean. Miriam, along with a handful of others, will survive the camp. Then as a journalist, she will wage a decades long campaign to bring her tormentors to justice. Avenger is about one woman’s triumphant battle against unbelievable odds to survive torture, claim justice for the crimes done against her and others like her, and change the future of her country. Season 2 - The Burden: Empire on Blood Empire on Blood is set in the Bronx, NY, in the early 90s, when two young drug dealers ruled an intersection known as “The Corner on Blood.” The boss, Calvin Buari, lived large. He and a protege swore they would build an empire on blood. Then the relationship frayed and the protege accused Calvin of a double homicide which he claimed he didn’t do. But did he? Award-winning journalist Steve Fishman spent seven years to answer that question. This is the story of one man’s last chance to overturn his life sentence. He may prevail, but someone’s gotta pay. The Burden: Empire on Blood is the director’s cut of the true crime classic which reached #1 on the charts when it was first released half a dozen years ago. Season 1 - The Burden In the 1990s, Detective Louis N. Scarcella was legendary. In a city overrun by violent crime, he cracked the toughest cases and put away the worst criminals. “The Hulk” was his nickname. Then the story changed. Scarcella ran into a group of convicted murderers who all say they are innocent. They turned themselves into jailhouse-lawyers and in prison founded a lway firm. When they realized Scarcella helped put many of them away, they set their sights on taking him down. And with the help of a NY Times reporter they have a chance. For years, Scarcella insisted he did nothing wrong. But that’s all he’d say. Until we tracked Scarcella to a sauna in a Russian bathhouse, where he started to talk..and talk and talk. “The guilty have gone free,” he whispered. And then agreed to take us into the belly of the beast. Welcome to The Burden.