Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Guys, I want to welcome you to another episode of
the Franchise Advisory Board podcast, where we're bringing experts in
the franchise community to give you actionable advice that can
help you build memorable and thriving franchise brands. Now, I've
got with me a really good friend of mine, Karen Booze.
And you know, if you don't know Karen, you'll recognize
her blue hair somewhere in a crowd. But she is
(00:22):
the director of business Growth and Partnerships for Answer Connected
Answer Force US, Canada and the UK, and she attends
sometimes thirty to forty five conferences a year. So if
you're at an event anywhere, you will see my friend Karen,
so go say hi. But I got to tell you
about her, and then we're going to talk about the
topic and then I'll let Karen tell you a little
(00:43):
bit more about her and Answer Force. But she's been
in the answering service industry for like thirty years, so
I don't know anybody who knows more about this than
she does. She's been focusing on franchising for just a
little bit longer than I have, for eight years now,
and she's a wife of thirty five years, mom two
oldest sibling of six. She said, blue hair for twenty
five years. I was curious about that, and she shared
(01:06):
that details. I thought some of you would want to know.
But here's something I didn't know about Karen. So she's
actually a classically trained musician that played the clarinet, the saxophone,
and the obo. Obo's her favorite, by the way, but
she has toured globally through thirty five countries. In nineteen
eighty four career highlight, she played on the White House
Lawn with the Beach Boys. That's pretty rad. And her
(01:29):
grandpa was in the Glenn Miller band. When she kept going,
I was like, you've got to be making this up.
But it gets better because she went to high school
and she was in a high school band with Kurt
Cobain and her husband and her met while her husband
was dating Courtney Love, and they showed up at the
same party. Like this is nuts, Like I can't believe this.
So anyway, Karen, I'm so glad you're here. We're going
(01:50):
to be talking today, guys about customer service and answering
the phones properly, and like what are people doing wrong?
What should they be doing to make it work. Well,
But Karen, tell us little bit more about you. Tell
us a little bit about Answer Force, Answer Connected, and
then let's jump right into the topic.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Yeah, okay, Well, first of all, thank you for having me.
I see you all the time, and I just got
to do my first karaoke with you last week, so
that was awesome.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
We'll get you with the mic in your hands. Sometimes
we're not.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
I can play better than I can sing.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
So I've been with answer Connect, which is what I
call the mothership, for seventeen years, and actually got to
help build a couple of other brands, and one of
them was answer Force. And we are a global company
that is human powered because we believe that humans are precious.
We believe that that human interaction, connection and relationship should
(02:49):
be valued in business and in life above everything everything else.
It's the only thing we really have in any fraction
of our life. So we we believe that. And we
are completely human powered twenty four hours a day, three
hundred and seventy five days a year, and we take
(03:09):
over seventy three thousand calls a day wow talking to
humans and there's virtually no wait time. Ninety eight percent
of our calls are answered honor before the fourth ring,
which is extraordinary.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
And we have over we have close to twenty one
hundred plus agents that live in the US, the UK,
and Canada, so that helps support us. And you know,
our growth has been exponential. When I started here, I
was the seventy fifth employee and now there's over you know,
twenty one hundred. So we've grown and it's been you know,
(03:47):
the ride of a lifetime.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
Yeah, well that's incredible. You're you're you certainly come with
a great a certainly reputation as well, I know, and
a lot of people at work with you, not just
you personally, but also you're to answer connect answer for
So the reason why you're here right is is there
so many things swirling around right now. We just we're
just talking about this. We just saw a post to
somebody's like I spent five hundred thousand dollars to build
(04:13):
an AI caller, and both of us were a gas
Like Well, first of all, even if you built it,
you shouldn't have spent a twentieth of that, right, maybe
a tenth of that. But but there's there's I think
a lot of misconceptions and a lot of people are
doing customer service and phone answering wrong right now, there
are ways to do it right, And I thought this
is our gal to share some insights thirty years plus
experience right in this So I thought it would be great.
(04:35):
Why don't we start with what's the status, Like, what's
the trend? What's happening right now in this world of
call answering? That is both scary and exciting for you?
Speaker 2 (04:46):
So for me, it's for me, I think it's the
new big thing. It's the new technology. It's like when
the World Wide Web came out, right now, it's just
the Internet now, it's the you know web now, it's
it's easy. And what I found through that process, just personally,
(05:06):
is that it changed the way we work, but it
didn't replace the people who do the jobs. And what
I'm seeing now, the trend that I'm seeing now is
that some businesses are choosing to bring an AI and
replace remove humans from that position and only providing an
AI option. And unfortunately that's a jetriment because Dave, I'm
(05:30):
going to ask you, when was the last time you
had a relationship with a bot? When was the last
time you wanted to engage with you know, hey, press one,
two or three or choose you know the first three
letters of somebody's last name. And now the bots are
telling us, hey, I can understand you. And when we
say we want to talk to a human, they're directing
(05:51):
us to another bot or better yet, they're asking all
of the questions in such a way that it's a screening.
They're capturing our information, they're verifying our information, and then
they're transferring us to a human who's doing that. Those
are hurdles, and there are some situations that IVRs, which
(06:14):
is an initial voice system and or a bot, can
be utilized. But if you have a business that is
dependent on human relationship, if you remove the initial point
of contact and you remove that human, what is that
(06:35):
going to do? And the reason I say that is
in the eighties, voicemail was a thing, and now you
could have a voicemail system in your home and you
would never miss a phone call. Then it started screening
calls and you went and call back the solicitor and
(06:55):
then you might get back to them or you know.
It's very interesting and we know that eighty five percent
of voicemails on cell phones that we have today are
never replied to think about that eighty five percent. And
people tell me all the time, well, I don't answer
(07:16):
my phone if it's not in my arena, And I said, well,
I'm when I'm in Florida, it's not my same area code.
I hope you answer for me. And I think it's
really important for people to realize that people move and
they take their phone number, so the area codes are
all mixed up now. And it's also very important when
(07:37):
you are working in a business and you don't recognize
the number, there's a chance that that is a human
wanting to work with you. How much business is lost?
Speaker 1 (07:50):
Yeah, it's a challenge. I bet you ninety percent of
my voicemails or bots or voicemail drops right now. It's crazy,
but I can see why the world And there's a
generational thing going on too, right where like these generations,
some of them they don't want to talk on the phone,
they'd rather text and message. But when they do want
(08:11):
to talk on the phone, they want to talk to
someone on the phone. They don't want to they don't
want to talk to a lot. They want to talk
to a human. So how tell me about like, uh,
this this trend, like how are generational gaps also affecting
the way people want to interact with humans?
Speaker 2 (08:27):
Right, Well, my mom doesn't, I mean, she picks up
the phone. She wants to talk to me. She doesn't
text to me. Right, I'm the generation. I grew up
in the eighties. I graduated in the eighties. I'd like
to talk to people, So I'll pick up the phone
and I'll talk to them. And my kids know that
they have to call me if they want to talk
to me. But really interesting, my adult children in their twenties,
(08:49):
both college educated, both professional public speakers in their specific arenas,
don't like to talk on the phone. But they can
google anything, they can read it, they can use chat, GBT, perplexity,
they can ask all of these different web based programs
(09:11):
information and if they can't get it, their very last
resort is calling. And both of my kids have talked
to me and said, we've canceled, and we've canceled our
business with them, and our friends are canceling because one
there's no phone number, so they can't even call. But
(09:32):
two when they call, some of the voicemails are saying, well,
don't come into the office, we'll call you in forty
eight hours if this is an emergency, that that's not
going to work for them. And my son moved his
investments to another company because he's been an hour and
a half trying to get through a bot system. And
he's a very smart, savvy young man, and he moved
(09:54):
ten thousand dollars and he said, Mom, I know it's
not a lot of money to them, but it's a
lo a lot of money to me. And he said,
I'm not even twenty five. What is that going to
look like when I'm your age? What is that investing
going to look like? And all of a sudden, that
does have an opportunity to really affect a business. So
(10:15):
I think with all of the arenas that we can
connect with people. That's text, that's email, that's phone. If
we don't, we are losing. And we also know that
the very hottest lead in the world is somebody who
picks up the call to talk to a human. They're
not texting and they can get back to it. They're
(10:37):
not emailing it and they can get back to it.
They want to talk to somebody, they've shopped your business,
they want to give you money. Don't make it difficult.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
I completely agree, and I love what you're sharing about
about even the younger generation career know that they prefer
non verbal cons right, they like to text and message
and all these things. And but but to the to
the point, like when they want to talk to somebody,
they want to talk to somebody, right, And and they
have the same annoyance with bots as we do. You
(11:11):
mentioned something that when we were chatting off screen about
people just aren't like businesses aren't putting pone numbers on
their websites. Uh, and how bad that's hurting business? So
not only in this context that you were talking about,
is they're ready to buy and now they can't call
you to make it happen fast. Right, Because when when
I when I want something to happen fast, I call.
If I okay with it like lingering for a while,
(11:31):
I'll text if I if I don't care whether or
not to hear back from you, I'll get on your
website and I'll submit a form. Right. So people don't
follow up on those freaking forms either, and it drives
me crazy, but it creates a lot of business for us.
So and you, but why what do I do you
think people are doing that? Why aren't businesses putting phone
numbers on their website, why aren't they opening up the
doors and saying call us.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
So the Franchise Update Media actually did something last year
at the FLDC. They did a secret shopping and that's
secret shopping included how many brands headphone numbers on their
websites and about fifty percent do not. And this is
the really interesting thing is the feedback that they got
and that I get is I don't want to hire
(12:13):
somebody to wait for two calls a month. And that's
in the arena of a franchise development, which is really
curious to me because if you're getting two calls a
month and the minimum buying is fifty thousand dollars and
you get fifty percent of those leads, that's five million
dollars a year or five hundred thousand dollars a year
that you're losing, right, And that's on a fifty thousand
(12:35):
dollars minimum entry, which I don't know many people who are.
So if you don't have a phone number and somebody
can't get a hold of you and they have to
show up at your work or wait for you, if
there's a way for them to cancel we know that
about thirty five percent of businesses are if they can't
(12:55):
talk to you, if you're taking their money, it's an
automatic withdrawal, they will cancel and you're losing that. It's
the customer experience. It should be completely encompassing that person,
because guess what our business has built on people buying
(13:16):
from us and being able to connect with that business
for whatever it is. And they can choose and will
choose to take their money other places.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
And people vote with their wallets right on their feet. Well,
and it's funny to me that they did. They also did.
They will talk about the AFDR a lot the annual
Franchise Development Report at FLDC. And I don't know about you,
but I have been just astounded at the state of
affairs in this industry of how how nineteen eighty ish
(13:51):
people behave right. They don't answer their phones, they don't
follow up on leads, and if you think about the costs, right,
if you're a business and you are generating leads and
they're coming to your website and they're calling your phone
and know one answers or you don't have a phone,
or they fill out a form and then you respond
to one and four, like twenty five percent response rate.
We actually do manually audit. We have manually audit like
(14:15):
the industry, and we were looking to work with a
brand or a brand reaches out to us, we'll have
our team do what we call a lead response evaluation.
And so I can just tell you, like half of
the websites aren't even compliant with like TCPA and ATWOP
registration requirements. Less than half are. But it's insane. Eighty
percent of the people we reach out to, franchise owners
who've spent sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars to start
(14:37):
a business, are spending fifty to four hundred dollars per lead.
The response rate is twenty percent. That's twenty percent of
the people will actually get back to us, and most
of the time it's a freaking email that's all we
ever get.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
And to that point, a couple of years ago, we
had an issue with our furnace and our heat pump.
And my husband actually works in facilities for the City
of Portland, and so he has huge contacts, right and
he said, I don't want to deal with my people,
reach out to yours. And what he meant by that
was reach out to your franchise community. And so I
(15:14):
looked up, you know, in our system and who was
in our area and who could help, and I called
four Dave. One didn't have their lines. These were people
who actually were using us. They didn't have their lines
forwarded to us, and they didn't have a voicemail setup.
One didn't have their phones forwarded to us, and their
(15:35):
voicemail said Joe's bar and grill. You stabbed them, We
slabbed them. Okay. One had a voicemail and I left
my name and number, and then one had a hey,
this mailbox is too busy. So at a certain point
my phone number, my personal phone number, connected with them,
(15:57):
and none of them called me back. And what I
hear all the time is, oh, no, I see the
number and I call back. Well, they didn't the phone
number that I left the voice mail. Two years later,
I still haven't got a call. And the interesting thing
is is it was a twenty five thousand dollars new furnace,
new heat, pomp, new all of this stuff. And if
(16:19):
you're losing twenty five thousand dollars because you're not connecting
with people, and that's just one person in different seasons
you know it's more, but twenty that was one hundred
percent of people that pay me money to answer their calls.
And I think one of the big issues for people
who are picking up their phone is they're not setting
(16:39):
an employment. What's the call to action, what's the next step?
And the next step if you pick up a phone
should be selling or should be setting an appointment, and
whether that's an in person proposition, or whether that is
or proposal, or whether that is you know, a phone call,
(17:00):
you need to do that. And if you're not, guess
what I'm gonna call until I get somebody, which I
did again to the tune of twenty five thousand dollars.
But I called them, they said an appointment, they were
at my house the next day. In a week later,
I was getting a whole new system in and four
businesses lost out on that twenty five thousand dollars. And
(17:25):
they're franchises, so they've bought into a system they're actually
paying and answering service. And I think one of the
things that is really important is that we trust humans
to at least get the information to where it should go,
and we don't know yet what bots are doing with that.
And where is that going? And if there's no call
to action and no appointment set, we continue as humans
(17:49):
to get our need resolved.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
Right, we're the same thing. We needed a deck. We
have an older home. Deck was like I could stand
it and rock back and forth. It's a big deck
and it was like moving, and I was like, this
is bad. We have teenagers, Like we get a dance
party on this deck and it's gonna I won't have
to pay for demo costs. I'll just say that. But
and it's on the second story. So it was a sketch.
So I called I filled out like five lead forms,
(18:14):
called all of them because none of them called me.
And finally one guy, This one guy's an older gentleman.
He got back to me within a reasonable amount of time.
He's like, hey, I only do one job at a time.
I can get you in five weeks. And like he
was super awesome and reasonable to work with. But two
of them were franchises, right, and this is not a
dog on franchises, But like, what on earth are you doing?
(18:37):
I know there's a system here, but there's no follow up,
there's no text, there's nothing. He just I called his
personal sell. He texted me back. We had a convo,
like and it was almost a twenty thousand dollars project.
So I'm like again, like do you guys not want
twenty thousand dollars? Like is it not worth your effort
to have someone answer your dang phones or follow up
on your leads? Like I feel you and you said
(18:59):
someone I want to shift us over to this because
like you know, like what are the best practices in
answering phones? Like what should people really be doing? And
you mentioned you mentioned this a little bit, like you
need to have a purpose, Like there needs to be
a clear objective when somebody calls in talk to us
about even as much as like the opening, like how
do you how do you create an environment on a
(19:19):
phone call that makes people feel welcome and warm and
engage that so that they're even if they're ticked off
about something, they're going to simmer down a little bit.
You can have a meaningful conversation. This is something that
humans can naturally do way better than a bod. So
we're talking about the value of humans over bots is
understanding sentiments quickly, engaging, reading, nuanced stuff like that. But
we're going to talk about this first What are the tips?
(19:41):
How do people make sure their phones are being answered properly,
say the right things and really get things done through
phone calls as a medium.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
Yeah, well, any business that has a phone should have
a script, and that script should start with thank you,
thank you for calling. This is our business name, thank
you for calling ACME, my name is personalize it. How
may I help you? Thank them because they've shopped, they've
(20:08):
chosen you, thank them. They want to give you money?
How can you help them? How can you help them
resolve their problem, whether it's a deck or whether it's
a restoration. Right, if it's a restoration, oftentimes those calls
are happening on somebody's worst day of their life. If
(20:29):
you answer ACME, okay, but script empathy, I mean literally
script out what you're going to say, because your agent,
the person that answers your call, is that first line
of connection, and even if it is read or scripted,
(20:50):
it's going to give them confidence they're going to be
able to lead and direct that conversation as opposed to
having a bunch of questions that they can put not answer.
So what we do is we want to have an
answer phrase, which is the greeting thank you for calling.
How may I help you? And then the caller will
(21:11):
interact and we'll say you've called the right place. I'd
be happy to help whatever it is. May you start
with your name? May get your phone number? Can I
have your email? Tell me a little bit about what
this is. And we can actually even direct that depending
on what type of business it is, And we can
transfer calls to the appropriate person so they don't have
(21:31):
to wait for a callback, or we can set an
appointment for them to get an in person connection. And
if you're not doing that, what are you doing? And
Harvard Business Review, and don't quote me on the year,
but Harvard Business Review said that scripted agents get more
(21:55):
information than nonscripted people. And the reason that is is
I could call and be very gregarious and hey, thanks
for calling, and oh hey Dave, how are you doing.
Hey did you see that game last night? Hey? What
about the weather? Hey, let's talk politics and religion. You
can get off track, but if you have a script,
now all of a sudden, you, as the person answering
(22:17):
the phone, are directing the conversation. You're getting all of
the information that you need to provide assistance to that person.
And without that sometimes the calls run amok.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
Yeah, I can imagine, well kind of like this podcast is.
I'm kidding, No, it's well, we put together not a script,
but just like it's a couple of bullets, so we'd
be able to cover some key topics. But you're spot on, like,
that's why are script so critical? You know, usually you
don't have a seasoned industry veteran answering the phone, right,
(22:51):
So if you especially if you want to semi scatter
brained eighteen to twenty three year old to be consistent right,
and what people are looking for is a consistent, warm experience.
They're not looking for anyone to like solve world peace
problems on the phone, but they their problem is their
biggest problem that they're calling you about. But if you
don't have the right person, the right the right process
(23:14):
in place via script, you know, then I think I
think it's you're you're rolling the dice every time someone calls. So, yes,
you're going to you can do something right and have
a human answering the phones, but you got to do
the right thing right and you've got to do the
right thing right right now, right.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
Well, and another thing that answering services can do is
they can actually follow up on those fill forms. And
with speed to lead being so huge, and as you said,
twenty percent or what we've seen eighty five percent, twenty
percent are not responded to, eighty five percent of calls
are never called back. That's still about twenty percent of
people getting the business. If you have an answering service,
(23:51):
they should be able to call back within five minutes.
And what we know, and what you've said, is that hey,
somebody sent me an email, I didn't get a text,
I didn't get a call. And people are getting lazy
because they don't want to talk on the phone. And
if you have an extraordinary speed to lead, some of
our some of our information correlates to eighty five percent
(24:18):
of new inbound phill forms set to appointments versus thirty percent,
and that is huge. I mean that is a million
dollars a year difference. That is insane. So your answering
(24:40):
service that you should that you work with, or the
people who answer the phone should be able to get
that information into your CRM. They should be able to
set an appointment or transfer to the appropriate person at
the appropriate time. They should be able to follow up
on phill forms, even an email. If you get an
email and somebody's interested in your service, they can follow
up on that and they should be available twenty four
(25:03):
hours a day in the world that we work in
because with Google AdWords it they actually have people and
they finally just posted about it that if they call
you and they will secret shop you, and you say
you're available twenty four hours and you don't answer the phone,
that paid sponsorship actually drops. You will not rate as high.
(25:23):
So if you're not doing those things, if you're not
responding to the fill form that they're secret shopping you want,
you drop in that level and you're paying thousands of
dollars a month, tens of thousands of dollars a year,
and then you're wondering why you're not making money on
your marketing. You don't have the appropriate expectations for the process.
(25:47):
And if you're not getting to it until you have time,
you're losing. So one of the things I hear all
the time is I only have one person. Those are
the people that need us. I have ten people. Those
are the people who need us. Eventually, somebody will have lunch,
they'll be sick, they'll take vacation, or they'll use the
restroom and those calls need to be answered, or.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
Two calls will come in at the same time, or
two calls will come right. Yeah, And franchising is a
beautiful model, right, and it provides so much success for people.
And it's usually it starts off with a solopreneur or
a husband wife team or you know, and so often
you know, Stan is still in the van and he's
driving around and doing service, as he's hiring his crew,
(26:31):
and and like and and or as people are calling
sick and often have like it's still this world of
small business. And uh, and anyone who's operating in small business,
I mean even even us, like we you know, we
have a team of people, we have tech that distributes
the calls, right, but but we've we even like, we
have tons of clients that despite the automated speed delete
(26:52):
the phone call is still the most critical part of that.
We've seen that over and over again. And if our
our clients are using our system, when the texts go
out and the email goes out automatically and then their
phone rings and they don't answer it, we highly recommend
that they use something like an answer connect as a rollover.
And so even having a service like this just to
make sure that what you just spend all that money
on to generate as a lead doesn't get wasted because
(27:15):
you've got three to five minutes, right and frankly, the
faster the better if you look at the data. Also,
Harvard Business Review publish of what was once inside sales
dot com data like there is this steep curve down
and the more minutes you take up to five to call,
you're maximizing your engagement. But after five you drop like
(27:37):
ninety percent likelihood of ever talking to that human if
you don't get engaging with them right away.
Speaker 2 (27:42):
And you said something that I want to follow up
on really quickly, because in the franchise space you should
work with supplier partners that work together. And in our relationship,
you guys at client Tether actually provide a phone number
that can be forwarded to answer connect and then that
information gets pushed back in to client Tether. If we're
(28:04):
the first person, then it gets pushed into client Tether.
But guess what your system then sends out an email,
sends out a text message, cuse it for somebody to
follow up on. I mean, if your partners aren't working together.
It makes it so much more difficult. And that's what
I love about our partnership is that your partners should
be talking to each other and they should be advocating
(28:26):
for each other, and they should then be going to
the franchise system and saying, hey, I work with client tether.
If you're using with clients, if you're using client tether,
guess what we can help. We're available twenty four hours
a day. We can help. And it's not taking from
one and giving to another, it's building both. And that's powerful.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
That is that's one thing I love about the relationship
that our teams have with each other in our tech
But you're spot on. I think about these industries right
that we service. Some of them are you know, nine
to five vers, but most home service brands are actually
technically like seven to nine, right. And most people with
(29:09):
husband and wife are both working single parent in the home,
they're in the office, you know, they're on the road
to the office or in the office between about seven
to six every day. And so when they get home
and you know, they eat dinner with their family and
then they're like, oh, I got to get that HVAC problem.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
Fixed.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
So I show up after they've been gone all day
in their house is ninety degrees in the summer, they
need to make a call, and it's seven o'clock at night.
So the critical nature of having after hours answering services,
especially in home services, and especially in home services that
have any sort of urgency to them mission mission critical stuff,
even painters. Right, I can't remember who I was talking
(29:46):
to about this. It wasn't you, but somebody else. It
was saying, Yeah, the highest volume of calls that come
in that are ready to buy come in after five pm.
Speaker 2 (29:56):
Yeah, yeah, do you know why?
Speaker 1 (29:58):
Tell me why?
Speaker 2 (29:59):
So?
Speaker 1 (29:59):
I was going to pitching you because I've got you know,
way more about that than I do.
Speaker 2 (30:02):
People are home and you go to work. You're at
work Monday through Friday eight to five, and you can
make a call at lunch. But if they call you
back after lunch, does that interfere? And or if you
leave your cell phone number? Are you answering it when
you're doing your job? But most people are shopping after
they get home nights, weekends, holidays, you know, they go
(30:23):
see their mom, they realize she may need home health care.
The you know, air conditioning went out, they're going to
have to deal with it when they get home. So
a lot of calls are coming in after hours. And
when I started thirty years ago, a lot of calls
were drunk dials. That is not the case anymore. This
world works twenty four hours a day. Grocery stores KFC,
(30:47):
all of those are open twenty four hours a day,
three hundred and sixty five days a year. We have
three major schedules in which people work first shift, second
second shift, in third shift, and you need to be
able to accommodate all of those. And if you're not,
(31:07):
you're losing money. And I think that's the biggest thing
is that it's an additional cost, Yes, but the ROI
is exponentially a benefit to you.
Speaker 1 (31:18):
Yeah, cost of an action, right, what was the actual
cost to you? The hard cost of an action. Then
there's the soft costs cost of an action. But if
they choose to not do anything, you know, you're a
business owner, your franchise system, you don't have a solution.
And I recognize, and we both know not every franchise
brank like everyone, you're using this service. It's in the contract.
Go forward and use this service. They can't all do
(31:40):
that because a lot of times they didn't think about
it until after the facts, so they can't write it
into the contract for their first fifty owners until they
were new and blah blah blah. But if you don't
have a solution as the person creating the system to
provide the solutions, then then you're doing a disservice to
your franchise owners because they need a service, They need
to be educated. They don't know. They don't know these
things that we know that you know. So I just
(32:02):
want to encourage everyone listening. I make sure you have
a plan so as your marketing dollars are being spent
to generate leads, those leads are having a discussion with
a human as fast as possible. I could share a
lot of data about that, but the faster the better,
is all I'll say about that. So let's talk about this.
So everybody's talking about AI. We kind of talked about
this right at the beginning, but I feel like we
(32:23):
had we had a wrap on this thought. Now AI.
I'll just say it. AI is not evil, and it's
not bad, and it's got a place right and and
we're even integrating some of those tools into our platform.
Because people want them. But what what is your what's
been your experience as you've been looking at this the
data and the story around AI call answering that that
you want to clarify because I'm sure there's some of
(32:44):
it that's just maybe a little muddied by the by
the hype.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
Yeah, there's there's a lot that's muddied. First, AI and
iv R systems, which is initial voice response systems is
a hurdle. If somebody calls them want to talk to
a human, and in some cases they can provide the information.
But when was the last time you got on a
call with a bot that said I can understand you
(33:08):
and then it couldn't. Did that make you feel good
or bad? Well, it made me feel bad. One of
the things that we know is the more hurdles you
put up, the worse the experiences for the client. And
the other thing is AI phone systems have not been
around long enough to have valuable data. And if somebody
(33:29):
is able to get an AI bot going for twenty
five thousand dollars and they never had a phone system before,
they may see an increase in sales for the ten
percent of people who may engage with that what we
know as a human is that ninety eight percent of
our calls are engaged, with ten percent being AI. If
(33:53):
that's a great increase for you, then by all means,
do it. But one of the things that we've seen
is that if you replace as a human, you're not
going to get that human interaction. And by replacing the
human with AI and AI phone capabilities, you're really putting
a detriment or a hurdle in place for your clients
(34:17):
to overcome. And I guarantee you people are not going
to chase your business to pay you, So don't make
it difficult. Use AI to support those humans and provide information,
even offer quality assurance on the calls, offer a better
(34:41):
understanding and a better way to take care of the
people that are on the phones. Don't replace the humans.
You could lose a lot more than you think.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
Yeah, it's an interesting point. I want to go back
to that. A lot of the data that we're seeing
right now is from people that have no service and
they add an AI calling service and so versus. I
had a human calling service and then I switched to
an AI calling service. And granted, I think costant economies
drive people to think that way. But I think where
(35:16):
a lot of the data is coming from nothing to something,
it's kind of like it's tough to say, hey, AI
is the end all be all here where where it
obviously is better than nothing if you're doing nothing and
you can't afford to have an agent where there are
a lot of affordable programs to help you get agents
that can answer your phones. But if they do that,
of course the data will look pretty good. And I've
(35:37):
seen tests and humans usually went out in the end.
If it's a bot versus an AI, it's the old
John henry Man versus machine like I don't identify as well.
With a bot, we can't joke around about blue hair
as much. They're getting better, though, I will say the
box has gotten a lot better in the last six months.
They've gotten better than they have in the last six
years because speed and the llms and things that are
(35:58):
behind them. But are they are they able to replace
a true human interaction? No, not yet.
Speaker 2 (36:05):
And if your business is based on relationship, which is
what I believe in the franchise community, our businesses are
built on, you need to have a consistent human interaction
and if you don't, you're going to lose business now,
you know with open door and with you know door
(36:25):
dash and some of those that you can schedule online.
And you should absolutely use every avenue that you can
to connect with people, every avenue, apps, texts, emails, But
don't take the humanity out of humans wanting to connect
with humans.
Speaker 1 (36:44):
Agreed, Now, there are I think there are scenarios where
people are calling and they're not looking for a human interaction,
They're not looking for connectivity that they have it. It's
very transactional in nature. Is that where you're seeing, Like,
if you have a highly transactional, quick paced environment, is
that a better spot to be thinking about? Okay, can
AI help augment what we're doing now? Or where do
(37:06):
you where do you see good applications of an exits?
I don't think it's bad. I just think it's misapplied
in a lot of cases, right, I.
Speaker 2 (37:12):
Think it's misapplied in a lot of cases. And I
think if you have a combination of human inn AI
and you're actually driving business by AI. For example, let's
say an oil changing company, you can't get any information
from a human or for a bot until you bring
your car in because they will only know what happens
(37:32):
when they see that. So in a scenario like that,
potentially it's good because the bot can say, hey, come down,
we need to see it. The bot can say hey,
come down, we need to see it. The bot can
send you a link and say hey, come down, we
need to see it. A human can do that as well.
But in a situation where they your potential client has
to come in and see you and there's no other answer.
(37:54):
Potentially that's that's an option. But when people call, they
want to talk to a human, even if that human says,
bring it down, we have to see it. And I
think that's really powerful. AI should be used by the
human to support the human, to provide the human connection.
(38:17):
It should not replace the human.
Speaker 1 (38:21):
Yeah, I love it. I feel like we watch these
sci fi movies where everything's robotic and then there's a
breakthrough and someone has a human experience and I'm like,
you know, I feel like the pendulum swings right, and
it'll swing and AI. AI is a thing, but the
need needs for humans to connect with each other will
never go away, and especially if you're in I think
(38:42):
about all these brands. I think about Danessa with bio one,
I think about like these brands that are like there's
sensitive moments in people's lives, elderly care, Like there are
places where it feels almost like it would be insensitive
and disingenuous to throw a bot in right, where like
the human connection is the value, it is the business,
it is the model, it is the service. Like those
(39:05):
are areas where ICE I see being very high risk
of saying, hey, we're going to swap out humans with AI.
Speaker 2 (39:11):
Well, even any home service if you're inviting somebody in
your home because you need a service, that's still very personal.
And your home is where your most prized possessions are
and that's your family, that's your dog, that's where you live,
that's your sanctuary, and so those those human connections are
just are so so so important.
Speaker 1 (39:33):
Yeah, yeah, well, I think it's what it all comes
down to. I mean, like you and I, like we
have a great human connection. Like I love to see
it because you're also tall, so it's nice because I
can see you, like from as far as run these
crowds like, oh there she comes. Like there's something really
valuable to me as a human about the relationships that
I have with my wife, with my kids, with my
colleagues at work, with my friends and partners in the industry,
(39:55):
with my clients, right, And I think that that connectivity
trump It's like the old Stephen Arcoby made it famous,
but the emotional piggybank concept, where like we as business owners,
we put chips in the jar when we show people
that they're important enough to us that we invest in
the relationship. I think sometimes AI can pull chips out
(40:18):
of the jar when it makes our business feel disingenuous. Right,
But I think you said it best that AI is
going nowhere and it is a valuable tool. But how
do we use AI to augment and support the human interactivity?
And I think you've given some great examples of industries
and spaces where I think it's good here and I
think it's risky there. And Man, Karen, I think we
(40:40):
could talk about this for another hour, but I just
wanted to thank you for all the insights. Great anything
else you'd like to share with people or is there
a way that people could get in touch with you
if they wanted to reach out and learn a little
bit more about how you might be able to help
them increase human connectivity in their business. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (40:56):
Absolutely, LinkedIn is a great way, or just simply Karen
at answerconnect dot com. I would love to chat with
any of you, and yes I do have a phone number,
but I'll give that to Dave and he can probably
add it to the end of this.
Speaker 1 (41:12):
That sounds great, Karen, Thanks again, rockstar Portland grunge Roady.
It sounds like and a famous musician and wizard of
human connectivity through answer Connects. So thanks again for being
with us.
Speaker 2 (41:26):
Karen, Thank you. I had a great time.