AI Voice in Action with Ben Brimacombe from Free-2-Grow

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Welcome to the Home Service Hacks podcast, the show for contractors who refuse to settle for average.
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Hosted by Bill Brown, licensed HVAC contractor, AI and automation expert,
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and founder of Service Titan Hacks Community.
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Each episode features real conversations with contractors, tech founders,
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and innovators who are reshaping the trades.
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From AI and automation to pricing, marketing, and management,
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if it's working in the field, you'll hear about it here. Let's get into it.
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Today's episode is all about AI voice, not the hype, but the real stuff that's
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actually working in the field.
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I sat down with Ben from Free2Grow, and we talked about how contractors are
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using their AI to book jobs, never miss a call, and honestly,
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rethink the role of CSRs altogether. So let's jump right in.
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So what made Free2Grow decide to do home services when there are so many other industries?
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What made you decide to do that? Yeah, I think home services is one of the kind of just clearest,
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most important use cases of the technology, just because the number of calls
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that happen and then kind of the repetitiousness of those calls across the entire industry.
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And it's also it's a really good market. It's, you know, very kind of closely
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knit and easy to meet people, kind of move, move across it.
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I think more generally, everybody on the company just has like a certain passion for for home services.
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So the kind of story of the company is Nathan and Charlie, they're our kind
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of original founders. They were running a call center for home services and
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like a traditional call center.
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I think they had 10 CSRs or so.
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And Jerry, who is he was 22 at the time, really, really smart guy.
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He had dropped out of college and he was working in in New York on AI voice
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and was saying, oh, man, like this is going to really change the game in home
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services. He grew up in Queens and his family is kind of in the real estate game.
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So they do a lot of home renovation, plumbing, you know, electrical type stuff.
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So I think he really had his kind
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of finger on the pulse of how big this industry is and how crucial it is.
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And so Nathan and Charlie tried Jerry's technology. I think this is maybe March 2024.
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And they're just totally blown away.
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They're thinking, wow, you know, this is really going to change the game.
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And they were very smart to see that and think, you know, I don't we don't know
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if human CSRs are really going to be a thing in five years.
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So they merge. And at the time I'm traveling to San Francisco,
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I was living in New York and I knew Jerry from New York and I I'm crashing on
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Jerry's floor in San Francisco.
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And he because that's the only way people can afford to live in San Francisco.
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Regardless, you guys are tech geeks.
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It saved you a good amount. What did he charge you? Five thousand a month just
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to sleep on the floor there?
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Just a kidney. And yeah, a hundred hours of work a week. But no,
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he was, yeah, very, very generous to me.
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And he was telling me, yeah, I'm going through this merger. We really need some help.
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And he was just telling me about the kind of space. And I have a great appreciation
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for the trades because my dad ran a campground when I was growing up.
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So he's like a plumber, electrician, kind of wears all the hats.
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So I'd, as a kid, be in like the kind of pool room, helping him with the piping
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or like the chemistry. and I sort of knew how deep and kind of technical this stuff can be.
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And so I call into AI's voice number and it's incredible.
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I was expecting a traditional kind of phone tree or something.
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And this was before OpenAI came out with their advanced voice.
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So it was kind of like cutting edge. He really was ahead of the curve on this.
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And yeah, it was answering my questions. It sort of matched me in terms of its tone and empathy.
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And he said, yeah, we really need somebody else to join as we merge.
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So that's the origin story.
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That's really cool. So everybody seems to have a connection to the home service
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industry, and that's great.
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So Jerry, is Jerry still on with your company? Is he the super,
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super tech nerd behind it at 22 years old? He's almost 24 now.
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There you go. He is. He's our chief technology officer, but he wears many hats.
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He's, you know, leading some of our enterprise sales calls and he's working
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a lot in business development.
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He's just one of those kind of, he might say a Gen Z verbiage.
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He's a giga crusher. He's just, he's really good at everything. So how old are you, Ben?
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I'm only 27. So I'm kind of 27, man.
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Talking about Jerry like he's a kid is maybe not that straightforward.
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But yeah, I think that kind of going back to what you said at the beginning
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of our conversation, There are these moments in history when everything just
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changes all at once, kind of in this massive discontinuity.
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And the insiders in the industry, they usually see it coming,
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coming from a ways away. And then all of a sudden, it goes viral.
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There's this famous quote, I think it's Richard Dawkins, the future is already
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here, it's just not evenly distributed.
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So I think maybe the internet is a good example of this, where it just kind of slowly grew.
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Maybe some R factor just got exponentially bigger and bigger and bigger.
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And all of a sudden, Facebook happens and it's like, oh my God.
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But I think AI was really singular and really different in that I think even
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the AI researchers were very surprised.
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So for the people that aren't familiar, what exactly does Free to Grow do?
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And what specific number one problem are you solving for contractors?
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Yeah, we make sure that contractors never miss a phone call again and provide
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great customer service to callers 100% of the time.
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And we do that with very customized and powerful AI voice CSRs that are designed
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just for home service businesses.
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And you were mentioning earlier in the call, AI, you know, sort of it's really
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good at some things, but some things it's kind of just missing something.
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And that's really where free-to-grow comes in.
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It's easy to spin together an AI voice system today.
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There's hundreds of companies doing it. But to really succeed with callers in
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production, in the wild, and book hundreds of jobs into CRMs a day really takes a lot of work.
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And every day we're finding things. We've been at it. Jerry's been at this for over two years.
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I've been at it here for over a year. And we're still making improvements and
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getting booking rates better. Yeah, yeah, I agree.
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It's so important to get this right.
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Because the value of a call could be $25,000, right?
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It really could be. Just to get rid of all your CSRs and say,
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all right, any AI can do this.
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Eh, no, no, no. So we've seen it where I've had it where a CSR has had to,
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we've been so small, they've gone to the restroom because people have to do that. We miss the call.
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It gets picked up by the answering service. We don't end up getting a chance
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to call that customer back quick enough.
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They use our competition. I know our competition. We talk about it later.
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And it comes up that that customer spent $20,000 with the competition. $20,000.
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That's real that that has happened before. Yeah.
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So just answering all of your calls is necessary and vital. But then how many
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times have my CSRs like blown the call when a customer's asked about pricing
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and they just start making stuff up, right?
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And so what a contractor's doing when they say, okay, free to grow, you guys handle this.
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They're putting $20,000 calls into your hands.
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That's what they're doing. It's a very big, big problem to get right, if that makes sense.
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And I think that's one of the things that I noticed when I was deciding who
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to partner with when it comes to this technology, because there's so many companies.
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I saw that Nextar had trusted you guys to be the official partner of Nextar.
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And Nextar is the most elite coaching organization out there.
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All of the guys who are big are in Nextar.
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And usually they were decent size before they got there. They weren't,
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you know, we weren't starting with guys that had 20 grand in the bank.
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These guys were multi-million dollar businesses and Nexstar helped them grow
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to what are the 20, 40, a hundred million dollar businesses today. And.
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What those companies are putting in the hands of Free to Grow to do is to handle
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tens of millions of dollars worth of calls on a annual basis.
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So that is that's a huge like social proof,
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right, that that your guys's technology has to be somewhere above the other
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guys because that company doesn't just pick anybody to be a partner or you would
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see every single one of your competitors on there.
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So I think that that's really impressive of what you guys have been able to
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do in such a short time to be able to have those guys on board with you.
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It's an honor to work with Nextstar and all the businesses, the incredible businesses they have.
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And yeah, we're very grateful and in general to work with home services.
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As you're saying, you know, these calls are mission critical.
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A call that comes in at 11 p.m. on a Saturday night could be worth $25,000,
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could be crucial to the business's bottom line.
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You know, I talked to a lot of contractors and the ones who haven't adopted
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AI technologies and the older contractors like,
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you know, the guys that are in their 50s and 60s, they kind of see AI as like a glorified IVR system.
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Right. And everybody hates IVR with a passion.
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It wasn't a good, a good technology bridge. We hate it. In fact,
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it still exists today in a lot of organizations.
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I talk to it all the time, doctor's appointments and things. It's terrible.
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It's so bad. And so how is this better for the contractors that are thinking,
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oh, this is just an automated bot?
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How is this better than one of those IVR systems?
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Yeah, it's one of those things where, you know, we could talk about it all day,
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but you just got to try it. And anybody listening who hasn't ever tried AI Voice,
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the latest technology, just give it a call.
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We have a demo number on our website. And if you check it out, free-2-grow.com.
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And you can find some other numbers across the web. Just give it a call and try to break it.
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Try to ask complicated questions. And it's just incredible. It's kind of intelligence.
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I think that's really where it shines right now is just how smart and dynamic they are.
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And it's very similar to a human at this point.
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When we're onboarding customers and we're kind of setting their expectations
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on how we're going to scope the system, exactly the kinds of calls we want it
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to focus on when it needs to live transfer, we often explain,
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you know, this is like a human and we'll train it kind of like a human.
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So we give it call scripts and that call script is not, you know,
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kind of the entire thing.
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It's able to very meticulously navigate off of it and back onto it,
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kind of answer general questions.
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Maybe there's some really particular point it's supposed to make.
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If the caller mentions, you know, propane, then the AI has to say,
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you know, well, we charge $59 dispatch fee, something like that.
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And then actually I get right back on the call script.
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So it's just, it's shockingly smart is what I would. That's awesome. Let's try it.
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Yeah. Right now. Awesome. Let's try it. Okay. So what we're going to do is we're
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going to call Free2Grow's AI voice line.
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I'm going to really put this thing through the ringer and see how good it is.
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I'm going to really mess with it, right? Pretty much how a CSR has to deal with
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it. Let's see what we got. Thank you for calling Free2Grow services.
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My name is Anna. How can I make this easy for you today?
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Yeah, I got up and my air conditioner's not blowing cold air.
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You've called the right place.
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We have expert technicians ready to help. And in many cases,
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we can complete repair at the same day.
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Let's get you taken care of. Could you tell me a bit more about the issue you're
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experiencing with your air conditioner?
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Yeah, I set my thermostat for 72 degrees, and right now it's 79 degrees.
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And I went over to the indoor fan part, and it's just humming.
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I think I just need somebody to come check it out. Thank you for sharing those
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details. It definitely sounds like something we can help with.
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Let's get you on the schedule so we can have a technician take a look.
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May I have your name, and could you please spell out your last name for me?
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Yeah, my name is William Brown. My last name, B-R-O-W-N.
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Schedule this for you. Our student's availability is today, Wednesday,
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May 21st, from 12 p.m. to 5 p.m.
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Does that work for you, or would you prefer a different time?
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No, I'm not going to be home today. What else you got?
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No problem at all. How about tomorrow, Thursday, May 22nd?
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We have availability from 8 a.m. to 12 p.m. or from 12 p.m. to 5 p.m.
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Would either of those work for you?
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Yeah the first appointment tomorrow would
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be good great i've got you scheduled
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for tomorrow thursday may 22nd from 8 a.m to 12 p.m while we don't offer exact
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arrival times we'll give you a courtesy call 30 to 45 minutes before we arrive
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most repairs are completed the same day so you won't have to schedule another
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visit does that sound good yeah how much does it cost for you to come out?
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Great question. For ASAC services on weekdays, the service fee is $114 for non-members,
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and if you are a member, it's $104 with a 20% discount on repairs.
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There's also a $5 fuel surcharge included in the service fee.
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Your technician will provide an upfront estimate for any repairs before moving
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forward. Does that work for you?
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Yeah. What kind of different payment methods do you guys offer?
00:13:59.983 --> 00:14:04.903
We offer several convenient payment options. You can pay using a credit card, cash, or text.
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Payment is due at the time of service. If you're having a new HVAC unit installed,
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we also offer financing options, which the technician or comfort advisor can
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discuss with you during the appointment. Does that answer your question?
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Yeah. Are your technicians certified? I'm going to break.
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I'm going to find out. You're not going to know the answer to one of these. Come on now.
00:14:27.863 --> 00:14:32.063
No, keep going. Sorry. I was talking to someone else. Yes, our technicians are
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certified and highly trained to handle a wide range of HVAC issues.
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They'll ensure everything is done professionally and to the highest standards.
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You're all set for your appointment tomorrow, Thursday, May 22nd from 2 a.m. Well, one other thing.
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Are your technicians afraid of dogs? Because I have two dogs,
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but one of them is a golden doodle. So he's kind of nice.
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Oh, that's a great question. Our technicians are generally comfortable around
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pets, but it's always helpful to let them know in advance.
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If you can keep your dogs in a separate area during the visit,
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it'll make things easier for everyone.
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Your golden doodle sounds adorable, though.
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Anything else I can assist you with? Wow. No, this was actually just a test.
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I was just testing to see how smart you were as an AI voice.
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So I don't want you to actually create a job.
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So just cancel the call and I'll talk to you later. Thank you for letting me
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know. Right. Well, there you go, man.
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That says a lot right there. I told her about my golden doodle and she loved it. I love that.
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I was surprised there. That script you were just talking to is one of our most successful ones.
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That one has a lot of different paths, and it has about a 80% viable booking
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rate with some of our biggest customers. So, well, I obviously know based upon
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that, how it works. That's pretty cool.
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So obviously you guys have done some training for the AI with that.
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Is there any human oversight?
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What happens if a customer actually breaks the AI and the AI doesn't know the
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answer to a question? What happens then? Yeah.
00:16:03.513 --> 00:16:07.793
So sometimes it will live transfer and it can also offer a callback.
00:16:07.973 --> 00:16:12.233
And all of this is just totally programmable. The other thing is that if that
00:16:12.233 --> 00:16:14.373
happens once, usually we'll detect it.
00:16:14.573 --> 00:16:18.133
We have an AI system in the back end that is watching every single call and
00:16:18.133 --> 00:16:19.553
looking for missing knowledge.
00:16:19.793 --> 00:16:22.753
So if we detect missing knowledge, we'll contact our customer,
00:16:22.913 --> 00:16:26.373
our partner, and request that information. Or we'll find it on the website.
00:16:26.773 --> 00:16:32.573
And it never forgets. So it just gets better and better. An AI check and an AI. There you go. Yep.
00:16:32.853 --> 00:16:36.833
We've got lots of different AI systems in the background that look at everything,
00:16:37.013 --> 00:16:41.073
monitor it, classify it. And the call is like, it's kind of a conversion funnel.
00:16:41.373 --> 00:16:44.553
There's the introduction, then there's the information gathering stage,
00:16:44.753 --> 00:16:47.833
then pricing, scheduling, if there's a live transfer.
00:16:48.033 --> 00:16:51.893
And so we have some systems that track every single call as sort of a call conversion
00:16:51.893 --> 00:16:54.353
funnel and try to get them all into the complete bucket.
00:16:54.633 --> 00:16:58.833
So some of our systems are over 90% fully converting.
00:16:58.833 --> 00:17:03.473
Do you have like metrics or reports or dashboards you can show customers where
00:17:03.473 --> 00:17:08.253
they can see the results of what's happened and where these calls are in the
00:17:08.253 --> 00:17:10.973
pipeline or where they fell off, things like that? We do.
00:17:11.133 --> 00:17:15.293
Yeah, we have a platform, we call it Archer, and it has a dashboard of all your
00:17:15.293 --> 00:17:18.813
calls, a graph over time, and how many of them booked into your CRM.
00:17:18.813 --> 00:17:22.813
And times of day calls came in, which can be very interesting if you're using
00:17:22.813 --> 00:17:24.633
the system for overflow or after hours.
00:17:24.773 --> 00:17:29.513
And then we have like sort of other data on, you know, the kind of call conversion
00:17:29.513 --> 00:17:31.613
funnel, how many are complete transfer.
00:17:31.993 --> 00:17:34.933
You can dig into every single call, look at the transcripts,
00:17:34.993 --> 00:17:37.053
listen to the audio, see if it booked.
00:17:37.333 --> 00:17:45.233
Yes, we do have. That's awesome, man. So, you know, one of the things that a CSR can do that an IVR...
00:17:45.790 --> 00:17:51.590
Cannot do. Or from what I've seen, I've never seen an AI voice that's able to do this.
00:17:51.890 --> 00:17:57.750
A CSR can go into Service Titan while they're talking to a customer and look up their history.
00:17:58.050 --> 00:18:02.970
And sometimes if your technician doesn't take good notes, the history is very difficult.
00:18:03.190 --> 00:18:07.190
That's a whole nother subject. But at least you know this is an existing customer.
00:18:07.350 --> 00:18:09.130
This is the last time we've been to their house.
00:18:09.330 --> 00:18:12.710
It's the estimates they have, notes, previous calls, stuff like that.
00:18:12.710 --> 00:18:17.470
Does your AI have the ability to actually go into Service Titan and look at
00:18:17.470 --> 00:18:24.130
this information and kind of keep going, continue the conversation from there? Yeah, absolutely.
00:18:24.450 --> 00:18:28.510
So if you called that number again in production, that's not,
00:18:28.610 --> 00:18:32.590
that one's not totally hooked up, but it would answer by saying.
00:18:33.030 --> 00:18:34.830
Hi, William, or hi, is this William?
00:18:35.050 --> 00:18:38.630
And so we pull all that information kind of at the very beginning of the call
00:18:38.630 --> 00:18:42.870
or live during the call. as we pull, you know, do you have any upcoming appointments?
00:18:43.130 --> 00:18:44.490
When are they? Do you have any,
00:18:44.690 --> 00:18:47.230
you know, what equipment? We pull all the equipment they have on file.
00:18:47.450 --> 00:18:52.310
So if they ask what's the warranty date on this, the app will just know immediately in a second.
00:18:52.510 --> 00:18:55.650
You know, with a human CSR, they'd have to go look it up, figure out what it is.
00:18:55.770 --> 00:18:58.730
If you're a membership customer, and then if you are a membership customer,
00:18:58.850 --> 00:19:00.410
we can warm up the script a lot.
00:19:00.470 --> 00:19:04.030
So we'll say, you know, thank you so much for being a membership customer.
00:19:04.270 --> 00:19:05.990
We greatly love your service.
00:19:06.250 --> 00:19:10.290
We're offering a new discount for you and so on. And so, you know,
00:19:10.530 --> 00:19:15.050
I see a lot of things on the internet back and forth about, you know,
00:19:15.150 --> 00:19:18.510
with this new technology, there's a lot of fear with it.
00:19:18.830 --> 00:19:24.770
Yeah. So when a caller recognizes that this is a bot and they get upset by it
00:19:24.770 --> 00:19:29.250
and they ask to talk to a human, what happens then if they want to,
00:19:29.410 --> 00:19:32.970
like, can they shut the bot off and talk to a human? Yeah.
00:19:33.210 --> 00:19:37.070
So they can ask to transfer to a human and the AI will typically,
00:19:37.210 --> 00:19:40.770
we can program what we want it to do in this scenario, but typically it will
00:19:40.770 --> 00:19:45.270
first just offer value to that caller. So we'll say, I understand you want to
00:19:45.270 --> 00:19:48.070
talk to a human, but you might end up going to voicemail.
00:19:48.270 --> 00:19:50.930
If you'd like, I could book you on the schedule in 60 seconds.
00:19:51.470 --> 00:19:55.610
And so people will say, okay, you know, gosh, I don't really want to talk to
00:19:55.610 --> 00:19:59.330
this thing, but if it can deliver value for me so quickly, that's great.
00:19:59.930 --> 00:20:04.110
That's, so we talked about inbound calls, right? Yeah. And, yeah.
00:20:04.506 --> 00:20:08.946
I see inbound and outbound as being two very different things,
00:20:08.946 --> 00:20:12.606
even though it's usually the same person that does it.
00:20:12.886 --> 00:20:17.786
But outbound is typically going to be an existing customer. And it's a relationship
00:20:17.786 --> 00:20:21.786
that you already have that you can lose, that you can mess up if you do wrong.
00:20:22.266 --> 00:20:27.666
And a lot of companies, especially Nexstar companies, have done and are huge
00:20:27.666 --> 00:20:31.066
proponents of doing outbound calling. But they haven't been,
00:20:31.226 --> 00:20:35.846
I think that they're becoming less and less effective at it because it's a grind.
00:20:36.186 --> 00:20:40.566
You will make a hundred calls. And now they have those robo dialer things you
00:20:40.566 --> 00:20:43.926
can use that are easier for a human to operate.
00:20:43.926 --> 00:20:47.946
But I remember when we were doing outbound a couple of years ago,
00:20:48.046 --> 00:20:52.406
and my demographics is a little bit younger than the rest of the countries,
00:20:52.466 --> 00:20:55.566
like my target customer is about 45 years old.
00:20:55.666 --> 00:20:58.006
So we could not get homeowners to answer the phones.
00:20:58.166 --> 00:21:03.526
And it made my outbound department like they hated it because they're like,
00:21:03.686 --> 00:21:10.026
great, now I have to do this job that I'm just going to call and leave voicemails over and over again.
00:21:10.246 --> 00:21:13.706
So right now I know that Free to Grow does inbound. had
00:21:13.706 --> 00:21:16.926
there been any thoughts or any plans on the roadmap to do
00:21:16.926 --> 00:21:19.826
outbound calls what do you guys think of that yeah we
00:21:19.826 --> 00:21:23.766
do have outbound calling in beta that's something
00:21:23.766 --> 00:21:28.406
we're actually working on actively and about six months ago we we were we developed
00:21:28.406 --> 00:21:32.186
a lot of this about six months ago and we did some tests and we we kind of felt
00:21:32.186 --> 00:21:37.126
like ah do people really want to get a call you know you're drinking your coffee
00:21:37.126 --> 00:21:42.986
in the morning get a call and it's an ai but i think that you know Versus inbound where you have,
00:21:43.086 --> 00:21:45.986
it's very high intent. It's like, I need X right now.
00:21:46.346 --> 00:21:48.686
You're at the bottom of the funnel, right? Right.
00:21:49.481 --> 00:21:52.121
Outbound it like you know to you really want to call from an
00:21:52.121 --> 00:21:55.121
ai but i think there are some use cases where actually it
00:21:55.121 --> 00:21:58.441
makes a lot of sense like maintenance membership to
00:21:58.441 --> 00:22:03.381
you know where it's just it's kind of this nice courtesy thing and the the person
00:22:03.381 --> 00:22:07.081
who receives the call they're they're already a member to the company so you
00:22:07.081 --> 00:22:11.381
know oftentimes so they feel like okay you know there's some trust pre-established
00:22:11.381 --> 00:22:16.841
so yeah i think that's that's what we're doing with outbound so i would say to anybody listening,
00:22:17.041 --> 00:22:20.361
if you're on Service Titan, especially, and you're looking to do outbound,
00:22:20.801 --> 00:22:23.741
we'd love to partner with you to build what you want.
00:22:24.421 --> 00:22:29.481
That's great. I've heard some things, some chatter about setup time,
00:22:29.701 --> 00:22:32.961
about how long it takes to set this up and get it going.
00:22:33.201 --> 00:22:38.721
If I were to call you guys and say, yeah, let's get going, what's that process
00:22:38.721 --> 00:22:44.121
look like from the time that I agree to do it to the time that we can turn this
00:22:44.121 --> 00:22:47.401
on and this thing can start booking appointments. What's that kind of look like?
00:22:47.661 --> 00:22:51.421
Yeah, typically for our customers, it takes one to two weeks just because there's
00:22:51.421 --> 00:22:54.161
kind of a feedback process and an iteration process.
00:22:54.541 --> 00:22:58.441
But really, I mean, we can do it. If a bill, if you wanted, you know,
00:22:58.541 --> 00:23:01.341
an AI for you to book into, if you had a service site and you wanted to book
00:23:01.341 --> 00:23:04.461
into and you had a complex workflow and all these things, I could probably get
00:23:04.461 --> 00:23:07.121
that set up for you in two hours, something like that.
00:23:07.241 --> 00:23:11.421
But it's just, then we would have to take some test calls, you know, live tests.
00:23:11.641 --> 00:23:14.841
It's kind of like training a new employee for your business.
00:23:15.341 --> 00:23:18.641
Okay, that makes sense. Their first month, they might make a couple mistakes
00:23:18.641 --> 00:23:22.121
here and there. Hey, you know, you said this this way, we don't really say it.
00:23:22.241 --> 00:23:25.081
You know, you said manager instead of customer service representative,
00:23:25.341 --> 00:23:27.381
and so on. That makes sense.
00:23:27.881 --> 00:23:32.141
Yeah. So, I mean, when they adopt Free to Grow and they start using it, how do the other...
00:23:33.538 --> 00:23:37.258
CSRs at the company feel about it? Have you guys got feedback from that?
00:23:37.338 --> 00:23:40.818
How do they feel about working alongside a robot, right?
00:23:41.358 --> 00:23:46.438
Yeah, good question. I think typically it's a pretty positive experience, actually.
00:23:46.658 --> 00:23:50.358
I think there's this conception right now in the world, you were saying earlier
00:23:50.358 --> 00:23:53.258
in our conversation, there's a lot of fear around AI.
00:23:53.478 --> 00:23:56.378
I think in reality, AI is just kind of like your co-pilot buddy.
00:23:56.698 --> 00:23:59.858
It's not really this Terminator that comes in and completely takes your job.
00:24:00.278 --> 00:24:04.458
So, you know, I think on the margin, maybe, you know, a call center might reduce
00:24:04.458 --> 00:24:07.818
its headcount a couple percent, you know, as they take more calls,
00:24:07.998 --> 00:24:10.958
maybe it drops a bit, but everybody else, it's a little bit more flexible.
00:24:11.098 --> 00:24:12.998
They want to go to the bathroom. They want to get water.
00:24:13.478 --> 00:24:17.818
The AI is going to take it. I think that, yeah, maybe another thing to add there
00:24:17.818 --> 00:24:21.618
is the best CSR in the world. Let's say they're a 10 out of 10 CSR.
00:24:21.898 --> 00:24:25.058
They're going to have a bad day. And on that a bad day, they might only be,
00:24:25.138 --> 00:24:26.818
you know, a six or something.
00:24:27.178 --> 00:24:30.018
I'd say the AI, it's getting better every day.
00:24:30.158 --> 00:24:34.738
And it's, you know, if we're being really honest, maybe it's a 7.5 or something.
00:24:34.818 --> 00:24:39.598
Like it's a, it's a good CSR. It's not the best, you know, kind of closer in
00:24:39.598 --> 00:24:40.958
the world, but it's good.
00:24:41.558 --> 00:24:47.398
Every minute of every day, it's going to be a 7.5 and it can take a thousand calls simultaneously.
00:24:47.538 --> 00:24:50.598
And in every single one of them, it will be good.
00:24:51.078 --> 00:24:56.498
And then we ship a little software and all of a sudden it's 7.8 out of 10.
00:24:56.858 --> 00:25:00.678
And so this just kind of keeps going. I think, you know, unfortunately at some
00:25:00.678 --> 00:25:04.198
point when it's a 10 out of 10 good 100% of the time,
00:25:04.560 --> 00:25:09.600
I don't know what happens to the people who. To the 10 out of 10 CSR, the top one.
00:25:09.800 --> 00:25:15.440
I'll tell you what, that 10 out of 10 CSR though, I've had a couple of those over the years.
00:25:15.460 --> 00:25:19.560
And I've had some, had some one out of 10 because I did not know what I was
00:25:19.560 --> 00:25:20.700
doing when it comes to hiring.
00:25:20.960 --> 00:25:23.800
I've had some six that I've held on to.
00:25:24.120 --> 00:25:29.120
So if you're six out of 10 CSR right now, this thing is going to fire you.
00:25:29.380 --> 00:25:33.600
That's the reality. It will, because you're not as good as it even close,
00:25:33.820 --> 00:25:36.520
right? And I'm sorry, but that's what's going to happen.
00:25:36.720 --> 00:25:43.140
If you're an eight, you'll probably be good. If you're an eight on your way to becoming a nine or 10.
00:25:43.820 --> 00:25:48.300
Then a business owner, because as a business owner, I would say now I'm starting
00:25:48.300 --> 00:25:52.180
to think about what other jobs this person could do with that company.
00:25:52.380 --> 00:25:55.360
Yeah. Right. That's what I'm thinking about. I never think like,
00:25:55.700 --> 00:25:57.200
oh, how can I get rid of people?
00:25:57.380 --> 00:26:01.000
I only think how can I get rid of shitty people, not people that care.
00:26:01.000 --> 00:26:04.840
So the people that care and put in effort and really want to do a good job,
00:26:04.980 --> 00:26:08.080
there is always room for that person. Yes.
00:26:08.600 --> 00:26:12.940
No matter how much AI is there, the people that care will have a job.
00:26:13.280 --> 00:26:18.320
AI is going to make it so the people that care don't have to do the terrible
00:26:18.320 --> 00:26:20.920
stuff that they hate doing that still needs to be done.
00:26:21.140 --> 00:26:25.100
Because what I found is the people that are really good, if you ask them to
00:26:25.100 --> 00:26:29.760
do monotonous, boring stuff, they don't give 10 out of 10 towards the boring stuff.
00:26:29.960 --> 00:26:36.000
And guess what? but neither do you as an owner. So we find AI as something that
00:26:36.000 --> 00:26:40.000
can say, these are a bunch of things that we need to do because they make the
00:26:40.000 --> 00:26:42.240
business move. They keep turning the gears.
00:26:42.460 --> 00:26:46.300
I don't want to put a 10 out of 10 employee on that stuff, right?
00:26:46.500 --> 00:26:51.820
I would rather take that 10 out of 10 employee and brainstorm with them things
00:26:51.820 --> 00:26:56.580
that we can do to improve customer service in the future and have them maybe
00:26:56.580 --> 00:26:59.800
even work on new projects, higher value things. So
00:27:00.114 --> 00:27:05.634
To be straight up, if I'm talking to all the employees in the future that are
00:27:05.634 --> 00:27:11.734
nervous about AI, if you don't care and you're not really good at your job and
00:27:11.734 --> 00:27:14.254
you're kind of skating by, this is a wake up call.
00:27:14.354 --> 00:27:17.794
You will lose your job to this technology. I don't care if they use free to
00:27:17.794 --> 00:27:20.614
grow. If they use anybody, you're done.
00:27:21.154 --> 00:27:24.614
That's it, right? It's eventually going to come for you.
00:27:24.614 --> 00:27:29.394
If you're somebody who cares and you want to do a good job, you like working
00:27:29.394 --> 00:27:34.374
with people and you're always willing to learn, owners will figure out a way
00:27:34.374 --> 00:27:37.054
to keep you in the company. Yeah, they will do it.
00:27:37.274 --> 00:27:40.654
So that's that's kind of my feeling on it as an owner.
00:27:40.794 --> 00:27:44.574
I'd love to talk to the guys who have 50 and 100 million dollar businesses,
00:27:44.574 --> 00:27:49.434
the big behemoths that have call centers with 30 people in it.
00:27:49.614 --> 00:27:54.194
They're not going to just wipe out all 30 of those. There's five people in there
00:27:54.194 --> 00:28:02.014
that they go, I wish I could, you know, pause their daily busyness to increase what it is they do.
00:28:02.514 --> 00:28:05.654
Now, what happens to the other 25 people?
00:28:06.094 --> 00:28:10.994
I don't know. I don't know. But you know whether or not you're one of those
00:28:10.994 --> 00:28:14.174
five or you're one of those 25. You know that.
00:28:14.374 --> 00:28:17.954
And it really comes down to effort at the end of the day, in my opinion.
00:28:18.214 --> 00:28:21.134
I completely agree. I think if you're a really good communicator and you're
00:28:21.134 --> 00:28:24.354
good with people and you're empathetic, I think there will always be opportunity
00:28:24.354 --> 00:28:27.314
for you in human society at large.
00:28:27.654 --> 00:28:32.534
But I also think that AI is just going to create so many more jobs than it will take.
00:28:32.674 --> 00:28:37.794
Actually, at Free2Grow, one of our customer success team members, she's fantastic.
00:28:38.074 --> 00:28:40.914
She used to be a CSR in this.
00:28:41.394 --> 00:28:44.034
And now she's training AI and helping...
00:28:44.504 --> 00:28:50.584
Other homes. The perfect person to train AI is a 10 out of 10 CSR. Right. Yeah.
00:28:50.964 --> 00:28:54.964
Right. That's awesome. And then we need we need to watch all these calls.
00:28:55.084 --> 00:28:58.064
You know, the human element doesn't really ever go away.
00:28:58.404 --> 00:29:02.504
And I think at that point, it's us. We just live in this bizarre kind of utopian
00:29:02.504 --> 00:29:07.324
world that we none of nobody can even envision right now. Don't we want that, though?
00:29:07.584 --> 00:29:11.124
Don't we want a world where we're not doing monotonous shit?
00:29:11.444 --> 00:29:15.824
Yeah, we do want that. Right. You know, so the future of like,
00:29:15.904 --> 00:29:20.184
like I remember, you know, them, you'll see, especially in politics where they're
00:29:20.184 --> 00:29:24.224
like, these manufacturing jobs left and bring back these jobs.
00:29:24.404 --> 00:29:26.644
None of us want those jobs, man.
00:29:26.864 --> 00:29:30.344
We don't want to do those jobs. We don't want to work in factories.
00:29:30.544 --> 00:29:33.084
We don't want to manually enter data.
00:29:33.304 --> 00:29:38.224
We don't want to robotically outbound customers and ask them to schedule appointments.
00:29:38.224 --> 00:29:42.564
We don't even like when they answer and we're interrupting them from whatever
00:29:42.564 --> 00:29:44.064
it is they're doing, right?
00:29:44.304 --> 00:29:51.244
So the AI is going to do all of the crappy stuff that we're doing right now.
00:29:51.404 --> 00:29:55.944
It really is going to create a bigger purpose for all of us.
00:29:55.944 --> 00:30:00.004
Now, some people are going to be unemployable by this.
00:30:00.164 --> 00:30:03.284
Like they just, they were barely employable as it is, right?
00:30:03.344 --> 00:30:04.864
You can barely get them to come to work.
00:30:04.984 --> 00:30:08.864
When they came to work, they were not good for culture.
00:30:09.204 --> 00:30:12.684
They were just, you know, kind of cancerous. They were right on the edge.
00:30:12.984 --> 00:30:14.824
AI will push those people aside
00:30:14.824 --> 00:30:19.104
and maybe some universal basic income will take care of those people.
00:30:19.284 --> 00:30:24.844
I don't know. That's a whole nother story. But I really, there's a lot of people,
00:30:24.864 --> 00:30:29.304
if you go into a company today, that are just like going through the motions.
00:30:30.304 --> 00:30:35.004
And maybe 90% of the job that they have is monotonous and everything.
00:30:35.224 --> 00:30:37.144
And 10% they get excited about.
00:30:37.404 --> 00:30:44.704
But that 10% is not enough for them to be excited when they get out of bed and
00:30:44.704 --> 00:30:47.364
they drive into work. Yeah. Right? Now imagine...
00:30:48.078 --> 00:30:55.618
You being able to have 30, 40, 50% of your job that you're excited about.
00:30:55.818 --> 00:30:57.058
That's what I'm talking about, right?
00:30:57.458 --> 00:31:00.158
Then it doesn't really become a job, right? Yeah. Yeah.
00:31:00.678 --> 00:31:03.758
Yeah, it's so hard to say where all of this is going to go.
00:31:03.998 --> 00:31:08.418
I think we like to think, oh, well, we have science fiction,
00:31:08.418 --> 00:31:09.698
so we know what's going to happen.
00:31:10.278 --> 00:31:14.518
Yeah, we don't know. Like history, I know history, and so things will kind of
00:31:14.518 --> 00:31:20.238
be similar. But I think it's really hard to realize that we're really on that
00:31:20.238 --> 00:31:24.058
we're in the future and we're on this crazy cutting edge.
00:31:24.398 --> 00:31:27.638
We're at the boundary of something and nobody knows what's going to happen.
00:31:27.898 --> 00:31:29.758
We have no idea what's going to happen.
00:31:30.038 --> 00:31:33.638
No idea, man. And if we knew what was going to happen based upon history,
00:31:33.998 --> 00:31:36.978
wouldn't all of us be very, very rich in the stock market?
00:31:36.978 --> 00:31:44.238
Wouldn't AI and just general math be able to know that to be able to recognize
00:31:44.238 --> 00:31:51.138
patterns and make predictions we are we're always in uncharted territory yes but where we're at today.
00:31:51.878 --> 00:31:56.518
Is like I remember like I was talking to my kids and everything and I talked
00:31:56.518 --> 00:32:00.938
to other adults about this who have kids my my age and I'm like I don't even
00:32:00.938 --> 00:32:04.258
know what to tell my kids of what careers they should go into.
00:32:04.538 --> 00:32:06.418
I don't know what careers are going
00:32:06.418 --> 00:32:11.418
to exist 10 years from now for my 12-year-olds. What's going to exist?
00:32:11.638 --> 00:32:15.758
I have an idea of some careers that are not going to exist that are going to go away.
00:32:15.878 --> 00:32:20.198
But as far as what jobs they'll be able to do, I don't know.
00:32:20.498 --> 00:32:24.898
So this one's interesting, and I'd like to get your take on it.
00:32:24.958 --> 00:32:28.058
Even as the guy that offers AI voice,
00:32:28.438 --> 00:32:33.318
let's say a contractor with a 10-person shop, very common size contractor,
00:32:33.538 --> 00:32:37.138
10 people all in, a few techs, a couple of people in the office,
00:32:37.458 --> 00:32:40.638
part of your business, would you automate first?
00:32:41.318 --> 00:32:44.898
Definitely inbound calls. Well, actually I'd take a step back.
00:32:45.138 --> 00:32:48.658
I'd say first, make sure you have a good CRM setup.
00:32:48.958 --> 00:32:52.098
Now you're really tracking your leads, tracking your booking and your scheduling.
00:32:52.318 --> 00:32:56.698
We work with some customers who, you know, they have kind of internal processes.
00:32:56.938 --> 00:33:01.518
Maybe they've been doing this since 1980 and they haven't quite modernized.
00:33:01.758 --> 00:33:07.358
Or I would say if you're on like a really old kind of fringe CRM and it's just,
00:33:07.518 --> 00:33:09.878
you know, you've stuck with them because you have a relationship,
00:33:09.878 --> 00:33:12.958
I might say, you know, maybe move to one of the big players.
00:33:12.998 --> 00:33:14.738
They're just so sophisticated now.
00:33:15.760 --> 00:33:19.040
Do you guys work with anybody besides Service Titan?
00:33:19.320 --> 00:33:24.980
So if I were at Housecall Pro or Service Mate, Jobber, do you guys work with those companies too?
00:33:25.180 --> 00:33:27.600
Yeah, we have a lot of different CRM integrations.
00:33:27.860 --> 00:33:34.060
So we have Service Titan, Housecall Pro, Field Pulse, and those three are kind of our flagship.
00:33:34.420 --> 00:33:38.440
We're formal partners with Service Titan and Field Pulse. Not yet Housecall
00:33:38.440 --> 00:33:45.800
Pro, maybe we could pull it off someday. Would you say that FieldPulse kind of fills that gap?
00:33:46.060 --> 00:33:50.480
Like if you're starting out today, one-man band and you couldn't afford Service
00:33:50.480 --> 00:33:53.440
Titan, because Service Titan doesn't, what I know a lot about it,
00:33:53.560 --> 00:33:56.400
they don't want the one-man band yet. That's just not for you.
00:33:56.500 --> 00:33:57.520
This is enterprise grade.
00:33:57.700 --> 00:34:02.340
Is it FieldPulse that you would start out with or would it be Housecall Pro,
00:34:02.540 --> 00:34:04.460
in your opinion, from working with them?
00:34:04.560 --> 00:34:08.140
It's hard for me to say without running my own trades business.
00:34:08.260 --> 00:34:11.240
Okay. Just because we work with customers that use each one,
00:34:11.440 --> 00:34:13.700
they all seem to like it somewhat.
00:34:13.900 --> 00:34:19.200
I will say FieldPulse is great, and they have a really good API that we've been
00:34:19.200 --> 00:34:21.200
able to use and work with.
00:34:21.580 --> 00:34:25.020
Yeah. It's like, I think- Better than Service Titans API? I mean,
00:34:25.200 --> 00:34:27.460
Service Titans is also pretty darn good.
00:34:28.100 --> 00:34:32.480
I feel like I've seen better, but it took me a while to understand it.
00:34:32.860 --> 00:34:36.020
It's not, it's the organization has room for improvement.
00:34:36.720 --> 00:34:40.380
I like that. But you're an official partner. The organization is,
00:34:40.520 --> 00:34:45.020
it looks like it was patched together as they were building the software, right?
00:34:45.500 --> 00:34:50.080
It didn't begin with the end in mind, but I've used other APIs that one call
00:34:50.080 --> 00:34:52.380
gets you so much information in Service Titan.
00:34:52.400 --> 00:34:56.600
It's like, I really got to do this just to get to the customer's phone number?
00:34:56.820 --> 00:34:58.440
Yeah. I will say it anyway.
00:34:58.740 --> 00:35:03.420
The Housecall Pro API is one of my favorites. It's just, there's like one query
00:35:03.420 --> 00:35:05.000
and you get a ton of stuff.
00:35:05.220 --> 00:35:07.760
Service Titan is also great. When you query capacity planning,
00:35:07.960 --> 00:35:09.640
you get a ton of information.
00:35:10.020 --> 00:35:13.700
That's good because you guys need to look at capacity planning to be able to
00:35:13.700 --> 00:35:15.020
offer appointments, right? Right.
00:35:15.300 --> 00:35:18.660
Yeah. And it has to be really fast. It needs to be very low latency because
00:35:18.660 --> 00:35:21.680
we typically pull all this information at the very start of the call.
00:35:22.000 --> 00:35:24.020
So that when the call starts, no matter what the caller says,
00:35:24.180 --> 00:35:26.580
bam, it's ready to go. Yeah. Sure. It's it.
00:35:26.920 --> 00:35:31.120
Yeah. Because it's not going to tolerate lag. Well, let me look up.
00:35:31.260 --> 00:35:34.900
Actually, you could fake it by saying, let me check something in your system.
00:35:34.900 --> 00:35:37.360
Because that's what a real CSR does today, right?
00:35:37.480 --> 00:35:40.220
Yeah, that's kind of the magic of the AI is it never does that.
00:35:40.380 --> 00:35:41.540
So it's just- Right, right.
00:35:41.760 --> 00:35:43.980
Yeah, it's like, I'd like to reschedule my appointment. Yes,
00:35:43.980 --> 00:35:44.840
sure, I see it's tomorrow.
00:35:45.378 --> 00:35:49.398
Yeah, that's awesome, man. Give me two minutes. I'll put you on hold.
00:35:49.778 --> 00:35:55.838
So you heard it from Ben. You want to start with a good CRM first because answering
00:35:55.838 --> 00:35:59.898
the phone and booking into something that isn't clean and doesn't have,
00:36:00.038 --> 00:36:02.238
isn't set up right, isn't going to help you as much.
00:36:02.338 --> 00:36:07.538
So you get the CRM first and then get this AI voice so that you can answer these
00:36:07.538 --> 00:36:10.078
calls correctly and book these appointments, right?
00:36:10.418 --> 00:36:14.178
And then after that, we got a lot of, there's a lot of other stuff to do after that.
00:36:14.298 --> 00:36:17.758
There's a lot. Yeah, I guess you can just keep automating until you need.
00:36:17.878 --> 00:36:24.218
I had 130 Zaps in my company that were working that automated thousands and thousands of tasks.
00:36:24.398 --> 00:36:28.418
But this was pre-AI. So you had to create a Zap and an automation for things
00:36:28.418 --> 00:36:32.898
that your AI can do, can cover 25 of those right now.
00:36:33.058 --> 00:36:36.418
Right. So it just started to consolidate all these things. Right.
00:36:36.678 --> 00:36:42.698
So, yeah. So we tried, we tried free to grow with the phone number.
00:36:42.698 --> 00:36:46.518
And I tried to break it. I didn't break it.
00:36:47.518 --> 00:36:51.398
I'd love to try again. So here's what I'd like the listeners to do.
00:36:51.578 --> 00:36:56.698
Nathan has created a phone number for Service Titan Hacks, specifically where
00:36:56.698 --> 00:37:00.358
they can call in and try it. And I think that that's the best step.
00:37:00.678 --> 00:37:07.578
The best first step is for somebody to go in, call this AI and see how it actually responds.
00:37:07.738 --> 00:37:11.598
That's your perfect demo to start. Would you agree? Yeah.
00:37:12.258 --> 00:37:18.638
Yeah, awesome. Yeah, we could talk about how it works and the 80% viable booking
00:37:18.638 --> 00:37:21.098
rate all day, but you just gotta talk to it.
00:37:21.318 --> 00:37:25.238
That's awesome. So I know you were talking about Outbound.
00:37:25.518 --> 00:37:30.018
Are there any other upcoming releases or features that you're really excited
00:37:30.018 --> 00:37:31.438
about? Anything else in the pipeline?
00:37:31.698 --> 00:37:34.878
Yeah, I don't know. We've got a couple of things, but I don't know if I want
00:37:34.878 --> 00:37:40.618
to say any right now just to get anybody's hopes up. one thing we've been working
00:37:40.618 --> 00:37:46.078
on a lot is just deepening our integrations, especially with CloudPro field polls.
00:37:46.298 --> 00:37:49.838
And we also have integrations with ServiceMinder, ServiceFusion.
00:37:50.378 --> 00:37:53.758
We have some jobber in beta. We have Salesforce.
00:37:54.238 --> 00:37:58.198
Yeah, we have a lot of them. But really those big three I mentioned,
00:37:58.558 --> 00:38:02.398
adding return customer functionality, doing some really smart stuff around the
00:38:02.398 --> 00:38:03.658
caller has a new location.
00:38:03.898 --> 00:38:07.138
It's an existing caller, but the location has changed. intelligent making
00:38:07.138 --> 00:38:10.138
that new location job types so yeah we're really focused
00:38:10.138 --> 00:38:15.098
on perfecting this inbound work workflow and just making this thing a booking
00:38:15.098 --> 00:38:20.098
machine you set it get it live and it's just printing jobs it's gonna go super
00:38:20.098 --> 00:38:24.438
deep before you go wide and try to be the next service titan a little bit of
00:38:24.438 --> 00:38:29.718
everything for everybody right so i like it yeah our competition some of the big names
00:38:30.129 --> 00:38:34.329
your listeners may have heard of. They're definitely trying to do 10 things.
00:38:34.549 --> 00:38:38.169
And we've actually taken a lot of their business on the inbound side.
00:38:38.369 --> 00:38:41.849
A lot of people go to us and say, this is just, it performs better.
00:38:41.989 --> 00:38:43.529
The onboarding experience was cleaner.
00:38:44.229 --> 00:38:49.669
You can always make onboarding better. You can always enhance the AI and the integrations.
00:38:49.769 --> 00:38:53.429
You can always get better at it because I'm sure that I agree that the integration
00:38:53.429 --> 00:38:57.389
is probably better with one CRM versus another. And yeah.
00:38:58.369 --> 00:39:02.729
Thanks for listening to the home service hacks podcast be sure to subscribe
00:39:02.729 --> 00:39:07.229
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service titan hacks or visit our website at,
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00:39:19.600 --> 00:39:34.629
Music.