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AI Agents Are Calling Your Front Desk · After the Demo

• 0:00
  Kate: Say your front desk picks up, and the caller says they're calling for a client. They'd like to book a cleaning on Tuesday.
• 0:06
  John Arndt: Who's the client?
• 0:07
  Kate: They don't say. And the caller's an AI assistant.
• 0:10
  John Arndt: Then your front desk might have a patient who already picked you.
• 0:13
  Kate: And if nobody picks up?
• 0:15
  John Arndt: Say that office runs Google's Local Services Ads. The call came in on the ad, during business hours.
• 0:21
  Kate: Okay.
• 0:22
  John Arndt: And the caller holds on past twenty seconds. Google can count that as a lead. And bill them for it.
• 0:27
  Kate: Wait. For the call nobody answered?
• 0:30
  John Arndt: Could be. That's the new rule for missed calls. Google just hasn't said how it treats a call from an assistant.
• 0:35
  Kate: So the robot waits longer than I do.
• 0:38
  John Arndt: Everybody waits longer than you do.
• 0:40
  Kate: Rude. Accurate, but rude.
• 0:55
  John Arndt: This is After the Demo. I'm John Arndt. I run about fifteen small software products out of Sacramento, most of them built and run with AI agents, plus an AI consulting practice.
• 1:06
  Kate: And I'm Kate.
• 1:07
  John Arndt: And today is about the front desk, because two things changed there at the same time. AI assistants started calling businesses on behalf of people. And for some businesses, a missed call started costing money.
• 1:19
  Kate: Which is a lot to dump on whoever answers the phone. If I owned the place, I'd want to know, is that caller a customer, or a robocall with better manners?
• 1:28
  John Arndt: Good place to start.
• 1:30
  Kate: I'm not done. Should I put a bot on my own phones? And what do I actually do about any of this before next week?
• 1:36
  John Arndt: That's the episode.
• 1:37
  Kate: And my job today is to make you prove that thing is a customer before my front desk is nice to it.
• 1:43
  John Arndt: Deal.
• 1:43
  Kate: Because right now my gut says hang up.
• 1:46
  John Arndt: Your gut's had a long career of being right about that sentence. So let's start with who's calling. Because somebody just gave them a billion
• 1:54
  Kate: A billion? Dollars? The robot?
• 1:57
  John Arndt: The company behind one of them. Yes.
• 2:02
  John Arndt: So. The company is called Instinct. It's a personal AI agent. It launched invite-only in August, and at the end of September it raised one billion dollars at a ten billion dollar valuation.
• 2:14
  Kate: Ten billion. For a thing that makes phone calls.
• 2:17
  John Arndt: It does a few things. But the part that matters for you is the phone. It has a concierge feature that makes calls for you. TechCrunch's example is booking an appointment somewhere that doesn't offer online booking.
• 2:29
  Kate: So, the places that make you call.
• 2:31
  John Arndt: Right. And it talks to its users by text message. There's no phone app yet.
• 2:35
  Kate: Ten billion dollars and no app. Just texts.
• 2:39
  John Arndt: Not yet. And about a month before that raise, it was valued at two and a half billion.
• 2:44
  Kate: Two and a half to ten, in a month. So how many people actually use it?
• 2:49
  John Arndt: They haven't said. Instinct hasn't shared its user numbers or any growth metrics.
• 2:53
  Kate: A billion dollars, and they won't say how many people use it?
• 2:57
  John Arndt: Not so far. Not a number.
• 2:59
  Kate: Noted. I'm holding that.
• 3:00
  John Arndt: Hang on to it. Because Apple's changing the phone call too. In mid-September Apple started rolling out Siri AI as a beta. One feature is called Call Context.
• 3:10
  Kate: Which does what?
• 3:11
  John Arndt: Apple's words. It "surfaces relevant information, like a confirmation code or reservation number, when calling a business."
• 3:18
  Kate: Surfaces it where? Does Siri read it to my front desk?
• 3:21
  John Arndt: No. It pulls it up for the person who's calling. So the person on the line can have the code in hand.
• 3:27
  Kate: So a startup's making the calls, and Apple's pulling up the code for whoever calls. Who's left?
• 3:32
  John Arndt: Your front desk, so far. And it's not only the tech companies. ServiceTitan, the contractor software, now pitches its consumer booking platform as a way for contractors to get booked by people's AI agents, not just by people.
• 3:45
  Kate: So the trade software's in on it. All right, walk me through one of these calls. Say I run a dental office.
• 3:52
  John Arndt: Phone rings, your front desk picks up, and the caller says it's calling on behalf of a client and wants to book a cleaning. Polite, clear, a little too calm.
• 4:00
  Kate: And she hangs up.
• 4:01
  John Arndt: Why does she hang up?
• 4:03
  Kate: Because that sentence is a robocall. Every front desk I can picture hangs up on "calling on behalf of." It's the extended warranty voice.
• 4:11
  John Arndt: And for years she was right. A robocall wants to sell you something.
• 4:15
  Kate: A warranty on a car you don't own.
• 4:17
  John Arndt: That one, yes. This one wants to buy. Somebody already looked around, picked you, and told their assistant, get me in.
• 4:25
  Kate: Or somebody told it to call every dentist in town.
• 4:28
  John Arndt: Could be. Even then, you're on the list it's calling. Hang up and you're off it.
• 4:33
  Kate: So I trained her to hang up on the one caller with a wallet.
• 4:36
  John Arndt: Pretty much.
• 4:37
  Kate: For the record, the robocalls trained her first.
• 4:40
  John Arndt: The robocalls started it. Agreed.
• 4:43
  Kate: Hm. That's annoying. Fine, she stays on.
• 4:46
  John Arndt: Good. And it wants Tuesday at ten.
• 4:49
  Kate: And when it books the wrong Tuesday, who do I yell at?
• 4:52
  John Arndt: Same person you'd yell at if a husband booked a cleaning for his wife and got the day wrong.
• 4:57
  Kate: The husband.
• 4:58
  John Arndt: Nobody, if you do it right. You get the actual patient's name, a number for them, and you confirm with them directly.
• 5:04
  Kate: I'd still yell at the husband a little.
• 5:06
  John Arndt: Within your rights. Quietly.
• 5:08
  Kate: So the rule is, book the human, not the caller.
• 5:12
  John Arndt: Yes. Who's the client? The human. Always book the human.
• 5:16
  Kate: I like that. That's a sticky note on the monitor.
• 5:19
  John Arndt: So? Say it.
• 5:20
  Kate: Fine. It's a patient.
• 5:23
  John Arndt: Thank you.
• 5:24
  Kate: But. I'm still holding my note.
• 5:26
  John Arndt: The user numbers.
• 5:27
  Kate: Those. Nobody knows how many of these calls there are. It could be ten people. I'm not rebuilding my front desk for a caller who rings twice a year.
• 5:36
  John Arndt: And you shouldn't. One sentence of training covers it. When someone says they're calling on behalf of a client, you don't hang up. You book the human.
• 5:44
  Kate: That's a very tidy sentence.
• 5:46
  John Arndt: I've been saving it.
• 5:47
  Kate: It shows. One sentence I can do, though.
• 5:50
  John Arndt: That's all it is. One sentence.
• 5:53
  Kate: And if she has to put it on hold? The robot just
• 5:56
  John Arndt: Sits there. Doesn't sigh, doesn't hang up.
• 5:58
  Kate: So it's more patient than me.
• 6:00
  John Arndt: I wasn't going to say it.
• 6:02
  Kate: You were thinking it.
• 6:03
  John Arndt: A little. Anyway, give it real times and spell the patient's name back, same as you would for anyone.
• 6:10
  Kate: So I don't hang up on it. And when it calls and nobody picks up?
• 6:13
  John Arndt: Since October first, for some of you, that silence has a price.
• 6:22
  Kate: Okay, missed calls. I'd have said a missed call is free. That's the one upside of not answering.
• 6:28
  John Arndt: For a lot of people it still is. But if you run Google's Local Services Ads, since October first, a missed call during business hours gets charged if the caller stays on the line for more than twenty seconds.
• 6:40
  Kate: Charged as what?
• 6:41
  John Arndt: Google's notice says those calls "will now be charged as valid leads if a user stays on the line for more than twenty seconds."
• 6:48
  Kate: A valid lead. Somebody I never talked to.
• 6:51
  John Arndt: Somebody who held on.
• 6:53
  Kate: Twenty seconds. That's one robot's patience.
• 6:56
  John Arndt: It's a lot of people's patience too, honestly.
• 6:59
  Kate: Great. So every robocall that sits on hold runs up my bill.
• 7:03
  John Arndt: Here the fine print actually helps a little. If you've got a phone menu, press one for this, press two for that, the twenty-second clock starts after they press a key. And you aren't charged for a call where nobody presses a key.
• 7:15
  Kate: So the menu's a filter.
• 7:17
  John Arndt: Kind of. Separate thing, while we're in the fine print. Google's Ads Liaison said that if you make follow-up calls to the same person within fifteen days of the first contact, you're charged once.
• 7:28
  Kate: Once for me calling them. Not them calling me.
• 7:31
  John Arndt: You calling them. Keep those two straight, because people won't.
• 7:35
  Kate: Hang on, the spam part. The robocall that sits there for twenty-five seconds.
• 7:39
  John Arndt: Google says it's introducing new safeguards to help limit robot calls and spam. It hasn't said how they work. And the notice doesn't say how voicemail is handled, or how you'd dispute a charge.
• 7:50
  Kate: So, wait and see.
• 7:52
  John Arndt: So far it's a promise without a how. Which means you look at your charged leads every week. It's your money, you read the bill.
• 7:59
  Kate: And those patient assistants? Does Google bill me for those?
• 8:03
  John Arndt: Nobody knows. Google hasn't said whether a call from a personal assistant counts as a lead or gets filtered as a robot call. I'm not going to guess.
• 8:11
  Kate: Noted. Holding that too.
• 8:13
  John Arndt: You're going to need a bigger hand. Can I ask you one now?
• 8:15
  Kate: Go.
• 8:16
  John Arndt: Say you're the owner. Do you think your phones get answered?
• 8:19
  Kate: Sure. Mostly. Why are you making that face?
• 8:22
  John Arndt: Because this is the one.
• 8:26
  Kate: Don't do that.
• 8:27
  John Arndt: A company called Invoca put out a benchmark in July, for home services. About half of inbound calls got a person. Fifty-two percent.
• 8:35
  Kate: Half of whose calls?
• 8:37
  John Arndt: Their own customers', averaged. Not every business out there.
• 8:40
  Kate: Still. Half.
• 8:42
  John Arndt: HVAC was about a third. Thirty-four percent. Plumbing did a lot better, about three in four.
• 8:48
  Kate: Their plumbers pick up. Good for them.
• 8:50
  John Arndt: And in their defense, if you filter out the misdials and the quick hang-ups, the share is higher. Sixty-five percent for calls longer than fifteen seconds.
• 8:59
  Kate: So in their numbers, about a third of the real calls still go unanswered.
• 9:04
  John Arndt: Yep.
• 9:05
  Kate: Let me just do the math on this. Say I get forty calls a month. Say I miss a third of them. Say each one's worth
• 9:12
  John Arndt: Stop. Don't.
• 9:13
  Kate: I was on a roll!
• 9:15
  John Arndt: I know you were. But every number you just said is made up, and the minute somebody puts a dollar sign on it, it ends up on a whiteboard as a forecast.
• 9:22
  Kate: I said "say." I said "say" three times.
• 9:26
  John Arndt: Three says is a forecast with a hat on.
• 9:29
  Kate: That's good. That's annoying, but it's good.
• 9:33
  John Arndt: Your real number is in your call log. Pull your business-hours calls and count the ones nobody answered. Anybody's example, including yours, is just an example.
• 9:42
  Kate: You're no fun.
• 9:43
  John Arndt: I'm a lot of fun. I'm just not forecasting your money with made-up numbers.
• 9:47
  Kate: Name one fun thing you did this week.
• 9:49
  John Arndt: I just stopped a forecast.
• 9:50
  Kate: That is not fun. Fine. No numbers. Just this. Before I spend a dollar on being found, somebody has to pick up.
• 9:59
  John Arndt: Write that down.
• 10:00
  Kate: You're going to steal it.
• 10:01
  John Arndt: Borrow.
• 10:02
  Kate: Uh huh.
• 10:03
  John Arndt: And you're not the only one who noticed. In early October, Invoca launched AI agents for home services. They respond around the clock and send the higher-value callers to a person.
• 10:13
  Kate: The big jobs go to a person. Noted.
• 10:15
  John Arndt: Same day, ServiceTitan opened its AI package, called Max, to every residential contractor on its platform. And a company called UpSmith raised ten million dollars for AI that chases missed revenue, missed calls included.
• 10:28
  Kate: So a lot of software companies are circling the same phone.
• 10:32
  John Arndt: And they'd all like to sell you an answer.
• 10:34
  Kate: So should a bot pick up?
• 10:35
  John Arndt: I think yes. And I think you're about to fight me on it.
• 10:38
  Kate: Oh, I am.
• 10:44
  Kate: Wait, this is new. You're usually the one telling everybody to slow down on automation. And today you're selling the robot?
• 10:52
  John Arndt: For five minutes. I'm going to make the best case I can, and you're going to take it apart.
• 10:57
  Kate: I accept those terms.
• 10:58
  John Arndt: Start with the trend. A sixteen Z, the venture firm, posted a chart in early October. Their chart says call-center jobs grew about four percent a year for fifteen years, and now they're shrinking about four percent a year.
• 11:11
  Kate: That's a chart about call centers. Say I'm a dental office. I have one person at the front desk.
• 11:17
  John Arndt: It's the direction things are moving. And an account called Leading Report posted that Elon Musk said call-center jobs will become obsolete because of AI.
• 11:25
  Kate: An account posted that he said.
• 11:27
  John Arndt: The post doesn't cite a source. So, grain of salt, and I'm moving on before you make me.
• 11:32
  Kate: Good instinct.
• 11:33
  John Arndt: But the direction's real.
• 11:34
  Kate: The direction can be real and still not answer my phone on a Tuesday.
• 11:38
  John Arndt: Then here's one aimed right at your front desk. A company called Vocca answers medical practices' phones with AI. It raised twenty million dollars in early October. And the company says its AI resolves seventy percent of conversations end to end, no human involved.
• 11:53
  Kate: Seventy percent of whose?
• 11:55
  John Arndt: Averaged across its customers, the company says. Handled start to finish.
• 11:59
  Kate: And who gets the other thirty percent?
• 12:01
  John Arndt: The company didn't break that down. I'd guess
• 12:04
  Kate: A person. Who you maybe didn't hire, because you bought the bot.
• 12:08
  John Arndt: That's not fair.
• 12:09
  Kate: It's a little fair.
• 12:11
  John Arndt: It's a little fair.
• 12:12
  Kate: And think about which thirty it is. If the bot took the easy calls, what's left over is the hard ones. The confused one, the upset one.
• 12:20
  John Arndt: Could be. Their number doesn't say which calls are left.
• 12:23
  Kate: And since you brought a chart, I brought a survey. End of September, from Alchemer, a survey software company. About two thousand US consumers. Forty-four percent say AI has made it harder to reach a person when they need one.
• 12:37
  John Arndt: Go on.
• 12:37
  Kate: And forty-three percent say they'd pay more for a product or service that guarantees access to human support.
• 12:43
  John Arndt: Say they would.
• 12:44
  Kate: I know. Saying, not paying. But that's a lot of people telling you what they want.
• 12:50
  John Arndt: Yeah. That one I can't argue with.
• 12:51
  Kate: And a bot on the main line is exactly what makes it harder.
• 12:55
  John Arndt: So what's your version?
• 12:56
  Kate: Same thing I said before you took my calculator away. Somebody has to pick up. During business hours, the first dollar goes to a person picking up. The bot catches overflow and after hours.
• 13:07
  John Arndt: Sure, but overflow is exactly where the money leaks. The rush, when the front desk is on the other line.
• 13:14
  Kate: Great. Put the bot there.
• 13:15
  John Arndt: Huh.
• 13:16
  Kate: You just argued for my plan.
• 13:18
  John Arndt: I did, didn't I.
• 13:20
  Kate: Keep going, you're doing great.
• 13:21
  John Arndt: All right, last try. The way the industry grades these bots, the word you hear is containment. How many calls the bot kept away from your staff.
• 13:30
  Kate: Containment. That's a word for a chemical spill.
• 13:33
  John Arndt: It's a real word they use.
• 13:35
  Kate: I believe you. You contain a leak. You don't contain a patient.
• 13:39
  John Arndt: Jeannie Walters would be on your side. She runs a customer-experience firm called Experience Investigators, and she told CX Dive that "a bot's scorecard often rewards keeping customers away from live agents."
• 13:51
  Kate: There it is. So here's my yardstick. Any bot on my phone gets graded on how fast a caller can reach a person, and whether they got helped. How many people it kept away doesn't count.
• 14:03
  John Arndt: She'd add a second number. Per CX Dive, she says track how much effort it takes the customer, and whether they have to ask again.
• 14:10
  Kate: Fine. Second number. And those Invoca agents I noted? They send the higher-value callers to a person. Even the people selling the bot send the big jobs to a person.
• 14:20
  John Arndt: You're piling on.
• 14:21
  Kate: I'm winning. It looks similar.
• 14:23
  John Arndt: Is there more?
• 14:24
  Kate: There's your patient. The one you made me admit was a patient. When it gets complicated, she wants a person.
• 14:30
  John Arndt: You win.
• 14:31
  Kate: Say it properly.
• 14:33
  John Arndt: You win. Person first during business hours, bot on overflow and after hours, and the bot gets graded on how fast you get a human.
• 14:41
  Kate: Say it again, slower.
• 14:43
  John Arndt: Person first. Bot on overflow, graded on how fast you get a human.
• 14:47
  Kate: Thank you. That was a good five minutes of selling the robot, by the way.
• 14:51
  John Arndt: It was four and a half, and I lost.
• 14:54
  Kate: Person or bot, whoever answers. How do I know it's actually answering?
• 14:58
  John Arndt: I have a story about that. I don't come off great in it.
• 15:06
  Kate: Good. I like these.
• 15:08
  John Arndt: Of course you do. So. My outbound email goes through an email provider. On August nineteenth, that provider paused sending.
• 15:16
  Kate: Paused why?
• 15:17
  John Arndt: Different story. What matters is what happened next, which was nothing. Nothing went out for a day before I caught it.
• 15:24
  Kate: A whole day? You run about fifteen products, mostly with AI agents, and nothing told you?
• 15:30
  John Arndt: Nothing told me. That was my miss. I didn't have anything watching for it going quiet.
• 15:35
  Kate: Huh. I'd have bet you had alarms for everything.
• 15:38
  John Arndt: I had a lot of confidence. That's different.
• 15:40
  Kate: Points for saying it out loud.
• 15:43
  John Arndt: And the part that stuck with me: a quiet day doesn't announce itself.
• 15:47
  Kate: Sure, but that's email. What's that got to do with my phones?
• 15:51
  John Arndt: Everything. Say your phone line goes down, or that overflow bot stops picking up. From where you're sitting, it sounds exactly like a slow Tuesday.
• 15:59
  Kate: Oh no. On a slow Tuesday I'd have taken a long lunch.
• 16:02
  John Arndt: Everybody would. That's how it hides.
• 16:05
  Kate: So how would I even notice? What's the tell?
• 16:08
  John Arndt: Often there isn't one, until somebody says, I tried to call you.
• 16:11
  Kate: From a customer.
• 16:13
  John Arndt: If you're lucky. Some people won't say anything. They'll just call somebody else.
• 16:16
  Kate: So my slow Tuesday might not be slow.
• 16:20
  John Arndt: Might not be. So the rule I wrote after: anything that sends for you needs a check that tells you when it goes quiet. Your phones answer for you, so same rule.
• 16:29
  Kate: Say I'm the owner. I don't have a dashboard. I have a front desk and a phone.
• 16:33
  John Arndt: Then you're the check.
• 16:35
  Kate: Great. More work.
• 16:36
  John Arndt: Small work. You call your own line.
• 16:38
  Kate: Wait. Isn't calling your own business a little paranoid?
• 16:42
  John Arndt: It's a little paranoid. Paranoid is cheaper than a quiet day.
• 16:45
  Kate: Put that on a mug.
• 16:47
  John Arndt: I'm not making mugs.
• 16:48
  Kate: Deal. But I'm building it, not you. You'll make it complicated.
• 16:52
  John Arndt: Go.
• 16:53
  Kate: Once a week, at lunch, I call my own line.
• 16:56
  John Arndt: Why lunch?
• 16:57
  Kate: Because lunch is probably when the desk is thinnest. If it's going to fail, I'd bet on lunch.
• 17:02
  John Arndt: Huh. Yeah.
• 17:03
  Kate: And I call twice. Once as a regular customer. And once as somebody's assistant. Say you're booking for your mom, and you say that's what you're doing.
• 17:12
  John Arndt: Calling on behalf of a client.
• 17:13
  Kate: The extended warranty sentence. If my front desk hangs up on that, I want to find out from me, before I find out from nobody.
• 17:21
  John Arndt: And time it.
• 17:22
  Kate: In twenty-second units.
• 17:23
  John Arndt: Sure. And write down the time, who or what answered, and whether you got booked.
• 17:28
  Kate: And what's a bad number? How long is too long?
• 17:31
  John Arndt: You'll know it when you're sitting there holding the phone. If you're annoyed as the owner, your customer got annoyed sooner.
• 17:37
  Kate: So my annoyance is the alarm.
• 17:39
  John Arndt: Your annoyance is a very reliable alarm.
• 17:42
  Kate: I'm going to take that as a compliment.
• 17:44
  John Arndt: You should.
• 17:44
  Kate: And if the person who answers is lovely, but it takes them four minutes to find the calendar?
• 17:49
  John Arndt: Write that down too. Slow counts. A caller on hold that long is already looking at the next name.
• 17:55
  Kate: Lovely and slow still loses the patient.
• 17:58
  John Arndt: Sometimes. And you'd never hear about it.
• 18:00
  Kate: Does a calendar reminder count as a health check?
• 18:02
  John Arndt: For a front desk, that is the health check.
• 18:05
  Kate: And the overflow bot. The one I won. It gets the same call.
• 18:09
  John Arndt: Same call, including after hours. If you're paying for it to answer at night, call it at night once. Does it take the message, and does the message reach a person in the morning?
• 18:18
  Kate: Because a message that goes nowhere is the same quiet.
• 18:21
  John Arndt: Same quiet in a nicer outfit.
• 18:23
  Kate: So this is my homework. I designed this.
• 18:26
  John Arndt: It's your homework. I'm just the cautionary tale.
• 18:28
  Kate: You're a great cautionary tale.
• 18:31
  John Arndt: Thank you, I worked hard on it.
• 18:32
  Kate: Wait, while I'm on my own phone. That Siri thing that pulls up a confirmation code for whoever's calling. Does that change anything at my desk?
• 18:40
  John Arndt: One thing. It can surface a confirmation code or reservation number when someone calls a business. And then somebody still reads it out loud. So look at the confirmation numbers you send people. Make them short and easy to say.
• 18:52
  Kate: Say mine are fourteen characters of letters and numbers.
• 18:55
  John Arndt: Then your patient reads fourteen characters to your front desk while line two is ringing.
• 19:00
  Kate: And somebody hears a B as a D.
• 19:02
  John Arndt: And now you're looking up the wrong appointment. Make it something you can say in one breath.
• 19:07
  Kate: One breath. That's two sticky notes now.
• 19:10
  John Arndt: The monitor's filling up.
• 19:12
  Kate: Okay, I'm calling myself at lunch. What's good enough? Is there a number?
• 19:16
  John Arndt: California just wrote one down.
• 19:22
  Kate: Rapid fire. Owner questions, short answers.
• 19:25
  John Arndt: Go.
• 19:26
  Kate: What did California actually pass?
• 19:28
  John Arndt: The Right to Human Customer Service Act, signed at the end of September. Large businesses have to make a good-faith effort to connect a customer to a person within fifteen minutes of asking, or offer an appointment with a person within one business day.
• 19:41
  Kate: That was not a short answer.
• 19:43
  John Arndt: That was the short version.
• 19:45
  Kate: And?
• 19:45
  John Arndt: And they have to say when the customer service rep is a chatbot and not a human.
• 19:50
  Kate: Good. I like that part a lot.
• 19:51
  John Arndt: Thought you might. Keep going.
• 19:53
  Kate: Does it apply to me?
• 19:54
  John Arndt: According to one legal write-up, it covers businesses with more than five hundred million dollars a year in revenue nationwide that serve California customers.
• 20:02
  Kate: Five hundred million. So probably not most of the people listening.
• 20:06
  John Arndt: Probably not. But talk to your lawyer about whether it touches you.
• 20:10
  Kate: Who enforces it?
• 20:11
  John Arndt: Public prosecutors, per the same write-up. Customers can't sue under it.
• 20:15
  Kate: And if a big company ignores it?
• 20:17
  John Arndt: Same write-up says penalties of up to five thousand dollars for a first violation, and ten thousand for each one after.
• 20:23
  Kate: So someone's going to notice.
• 20:25
  John Arndt: Someone's supposed to.
• 20:26
  Kate: Does the fifteen minutes cover voicemail?
• 20:28
  John Arndt: Per the write-up, no. Email, web forms and voicemail are outside the fifteen-minute rule.
• 20:34
  Kate: So should I care about mine anyway?
• 20:36
  John Arndt: For that law, it's outside. For your customer, a voicemail nobody listens to is the slow Tuesday again.
• 20:42
  Kate: Everything comes back to the slow Tuesday.
• 20:45
  John Arndt: It's a very unlucky day.
• 20:46
  Kate: Poor Tuesday.
• 20:47
  John Arndt: Tuesday didn't do anything.
• 20:49
  Kate: Then here's my idea, and it's mine. If I'm the owner, I don't care whether it covers me. I promise it anyway. A person within fifteen minutes, and I say so on my website.
• 20:59
  John Arndt: Voluntarily.
• 21:01
  Kate: Voluntarily. It's a promise people can read before they call. And that's a business idea, by the way. Your lawyer gets the law part.
• 21:08
  John Arndt: Your lawyer always gets the law part. Let me push. What about after hours? Nobody's picking up in fifteen minutes at nine at night.
• 21:16
  Kate: That's the overflow bot. After hours it says it's a bot, and it says when a person will call back.
• 21:21
  John Arndt: Steal that.
• 21:22
  Kate: It's mine. You can borrow it.
• 21:24
  John Arndt: Like the last one.
• 21:25
  Kate: You're running a tab.
• 21:26
  John Arndt: And then you measure the bot's contain
• 21:28
  Kate: Chemical spill.
• 21:29
  John Arndt: Measure how fast a person calls back.
• 21:31
  Kate: Better. Much better.
• 21:33
  John Arndt: I'm learning.
• 21:34
  Kate: Slowly. So, say my front desk tells me she's too busy for any of this.
• 21:39
  John Arndt: Then that's your answer to the bot question. That's overflow.
• 21:42
  Kate: Overflow. Put the bot there. Different question. Do people even want these agents?
• 21:48
  John Arndt: Someone posted a good line on that. Sandra, she's TakoTreba on X, she works at Lovable. She said there's a big gap between what tech is excited about and what everyone else experiences, and people outside tech don't necessarily want agents.
• 22:02
  Kate: Then what do they want?
• 22:04
  John Arndt: Her words. "They want their taxes done, their business running, their appointments booked."
• 22:09
  Kate: Appointments booked. That's my whole position.
• 22:12
  John Arndt: And it's why the caller with the cleaning is a patient. The agent is just how the appointment shows up.
• 22:17
  Kate: Book the human.
• 22:18
  John Arndt: Put that on a mug.
• 22:20
  Kate: You're not making mugs. And Siri. Is Siri going to start calling me?
• 22:24
  John Arndt: Not from anything Apple's described. Call Context pulls things up for the person calling. And Apple says these features have daily usage limits, with a fee for expanded access later.
• 22:34
  Kate: So the assistant has office hours.
• 22:37
  John Arndt: Some office hours, yeah.
• 22:39
  Kate: How would I even know whether one of these agents can reach me?
• 22:43
  John Arndt: One of my products, Mentioned On, has a free Agent Ready Checker. It reads your public pages to see whether assistants like Siri, Meta Muse or OpenAI Dots could call, email or book you.
• 22:53
  Kate: Does it call me?
• 22:55
  John Arndt: No. It reads your pages, it never calls, texts or emails your business. And a good result doesn't get you picked. It just means once someone's assistant picks you, it can reach you.
• 23:05
  Kate: So it checks whether the door opens. Not whether anybody walks in.
• 23:09
  John Arndt: Right. Walking in is a different episode.
• 23:11
  Kate: And you're telling me this because it's yours.
• 23:14
  John Arndt: I'm telling you because you asked. And I just told you it won't get you picked.
• 23:18
  Kate: Least salesy thing I've heard all week. Also, I'm out of sticky notes.
• 23:23
  John Arndt: Use the back.
• 23:25
  Kate: Last one. If I only do one thing?
• 23:27
  John Arndt: Not the checker. The test call.
• 23:29
  Kate: At lunch.
• 23:30
  John Arndt: At lunch. The checker can tell you the door opens. Only you calling tells you somebody's standing behind it.
• 23:36
  Kate: And if nobody's standing behind it?
• 23:38
  John Arndt: Then you've found your slow Tuesday early.
• 23:41
  John Arndt: So, this week. At lunch, call your own business twice. Once as a customer. Once as someone's assistant booking for somebody else. Time how long it takes until a person actually helps you, and write it down.
• 23:54
  Kate: And no rounding down.
• 23:55
  John Arndt: Honest numbers only. Better you find out on your own lunch call than from a slow Tuesday.
• 24:00
  Kate: And if you're putting a bot on your phones?
• 24:02
  John Arndt: Person first, bot on overflow and after hours, and grade it on how fast a caller reaches a human.
• 24:08
  Kate: That sounds familiar.
• 24:10
  John Arndt: I borrowed it. Somebody has to pick up.
• 24:12
  Kate: Somebody has to pick up.
• 24:13
  John Arndt: And send this to whoever answers your phones. They're the ones who'll hear "calling on behalf of a client" first.
• 24:19
  Kate: And now they know it's a patient.
• 24:20
  John Arndt: Links are in the show notes, everything we talked about.
• 24:23
  Kate: And the California write-up. For your lawyer.
• 24:25
  John Arndt: Always the lawyer. That's After the Demo. I'm John Arndt.
• 24:30
  Kate: I'm Kate. Somebody pick up.