Posted by mooreds 10 hours ago
I appreciated your post and have some takeaways around text formatting for TTS in my own projects. Thanks!
Nothing pisses people off faster than calling up and getting put on the line with a robot. Like if we're thinking about this problem and how to solve it we can look at other examples like a website with a booking form,call the mechanics cell directly, hire a receptionist or worst case outsource the receptionist to a booking agency.
Asking a business to hire a receptionist is probably a bit unlikely for small businesses in today's environment.
"I'd like to schedule a smog check tomorrow or Wednesday?" rather than leaving a message and hoping for a callback that you don't miss either (and have go to voice mail).
Being able to have a voice appointment scheduling system (assuming that it isn't being jail broken https://www.youtube.com/shorts/GJVSDjRXVoo ) could be useful... though there are problems with giving it agency over decisions ( https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20240222-air-canada-chatb... ).
If they were to have an app on their website, I wouldn't know because I don't use the webpage for that purpose - I call them.
Now, they've all got receptionists there that work full time and handle the appointments and take that first tier of service. These are larger places that have two receptionists working the full day (handling walkins, calling confirmations, and the other administrative tasks)... I don't think that an LLM (even with access to appointments) would do a better job than what they do (and certainly wouldn't be able to do the "ok, I showed up, now what do I do?")
However, I could see this for a small mechanic shop. When I lived in California, I went to what is now Shoreline Auto Care on El Camino and Shoreline - a small two bay mechanic... and that's not the type of place that has the business that can afford a full time receptionist.
So the question for a place like that... "what do you get for the phone calls you miss?"
Running a small website with a calendar booking link just sounds much easier, cheaper, less error prone, and a better UX than running a voice LLM that is connected to a RAG and calendar. And I still don't think the technology around us has been built to support small websites or small businesses.
If the LLM augmented voicemail is not much more than the business voicemail service that such places have now, is it enough value add?
That also implies other things - such as the capability to integrate with the calendar and appointment system which I'm still in the very hesitant side, but it could be an interesting service add on if it was properly limited.
"Hmm, this user seems to really understand network topology, better get him over to engineering"
vs.
"Hmm, the user doesn't know the difference between their router and their modem, I should help them identify the router then walk them through a power cycle".
Why should people be impressed by this?
* i'd love to hear a sample/customer call. Even if it's just a test
* a blog without rss? How can i subscribe for part 2?
If I had to call four different places and spend five minutes on the phone with each shop, that'd eat up my entire lunch time.
I went through hell on a home remodel project 6 months ago around this stuff. I got a quote from a reputable plumber and went to schedule the rough-in session. An AI receptionist answered, got confused during the scheduling flow and could not understand my address, asking me to repeat it over and over. And it couldn't forward to me to human.
If I'm paying you tens of thousands of dollars for remodeling work, I damn well better be able to get in touch with you. I found a different contractor and never looked back.
This isn't to disparage the project - I think this sort of usage will become very common and a decent standard that produces good consumer surplus in terms of reduced costs etc. Especially impressive is that it's a DIY family-first implementation that seems to be working. It's great hacker work.
But be warned it will erode - in general - the luxury previously associated with your brand, and also turn some customers away entirely.
I assume the Op, being a programmer and not a car mechanic, just assumed they mean the same thing.
The entire discussion here about how AI undercuts luxury brands has absolutely nothing to do with the actual post.
It would be somewhat odd to specialize in both American and European luxury cars. It'd be significantly less odd to service a RR and a BMW 3er next to each other.
A BMW owner has fussier standards (on average) than a Toyota owner. The 'higher touch' a service you're trying to provide, the less welcome these interventions will be. If there's a distinction between a normal-car garage and a luxury-car garage, this probably comes down to some sort of licensing or certification from those luxury brands. Seems plausible to me that luxury brand X could stipulate things like availability of human contact points.
Re: not being a car mechanic, it's true, but I'll have you know that I replaced my own blower motor a few months ago :)
This garage is for those older cars and has no connection to the actual manufacturers, so there is no licensing required.
I agree with you on the dealership dynamics though.
Jaguar-of-Theseus
Bingo.
You can't get away with AI slop in a service oriented for wealthy customers.
The day my dealership starts answering me with AI they lose a customer 100%.
This solution screams "built by a tech bro with no idea about economics and marketing" which is the VC playbook into modernizing (and failing) businesses they don't understand.
OP's brother is by all accounts running a successful boutique workshop, but the various luxury annotations were completely unnecessary and just detract from the actual project. If they do want to lean into the luxury segment, being cheap with AI receptionists is not the way to go. They need to hire actual staff who has experience with HNW individuals.