20: Using AI for Revolutionizing Business Communication with David Daneshgar

In this insightful episode, Chris Daigle interviews David Daneshgar, the CEO of Whippy AI, a company revolutionizing business communication with cutting-edge AI technology. David shares how Whippy's tools can automate and enhance email, SMS, and voice interactions, including handling multi-language communication. He provides real-world examples of how businesses across various industries, from staffing to healthcare, are leveraging Whippy's AI solutions to streamline processes, improve customer experience, and drive operational efficiency.

Learn more about Whippy AI by visiting:
https://www.whippy.ai/

🔗 Book a demo: https://www.whippy.ai/demo
🔗 Download the whitepaper mentioned in the episode: ‘8 New Ways that Whippy uses AI’: https://www.whippy.ai/resources/guides/8-new-ways-that-whippy-uses-ai

Chapters:

00:00  Introduction and David's Background
04:25  The Genesis of Whippy
08:04  Multilingual Communication for Businesses
12:11  AI for Lead Qualification and Intake
16:30  Addressing Listener Concerns About AI
20:44  Applications Across Industries
28:19  Augmenting Human Employees with AI
32:11  Marketing and Sales Automation
38:09  The Benefits of Follow-ups and Consistent Communication
42:07  Getting Started with Whippy
46:43  Closing Thoughts


Be sure to download this week's Smartcut/s:
🔸 Professional Logo Design Made Easy with AI — https://smartcuts.io/20
🔸 Craft Masterful Blog Articles with AI — https://smartcuts.io/canva-magic-blogs
🔸 AI-Generated Youtube Thumbnails with Canva — https://smartcuts.io/canva-magic-thumbnails
🔸 Effortlessly Create Stunning Images with AI — https://smartcuts.io/ideogram-images
🔸 Automated Content Creation with AI — https://smartcuts.io/canva-magic-posts

And check out the related prompts at: https://PromptVault.studio

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

Introduction and David's Background

SPEAKER_00 0:36

Hey everybody, welcome back to the podcast. Today we're on the show. Revolutionizing business communication using company AI technology. So whether you're a small business or a large enterprise, you want to hear how we do automate and enhance your email, SMS, and voice interactions, and even handle multi-language communication. So stick around. This is an episode packed with insights you don't want to miss. Welcome to Using AI at work. I'm your host, Chris Daigle. Each week we'll be learning how today's business owners, entrepreneurs, and ambitious professionals are getting more done with smart use of tomorrow's tech. Let's get started. All right, David, I'm excited to have you on this um episode today because the technology that you guys are using, I think has massive application for the audience of this podcast as well as any small business or large business. Um, but it's not one that's that's been saturated in the market yet, which is pretty cool. So I'm excited to talk to you about that. So, David, before we get started, if you don't mind, just share um with the audience a little bit about yourself.

SPEAKER_01 1:58

Yeah, yeah. Well, first off, thanks for having me excited. Um, yeah, my background, I live in Los Angeles recently because of Whippy, been traveling a lot. But my way background is pretty interesting. I went to school at Berkeley, I got really interested in statistics and probability, and ended up like most UC Berkeley grads, going into professional poker. So I'd gone and and used my math and uh probability analysis quant, whatever you want to say it, to get in there. But I did quite well. I'd won the World Series of Poker, one of the tournaments, and I was top five in the world. This is again in 2006 to 2008, so it's like a while back. Excuse me. And um from then went actually partly that to go into business school and business well, I started a company called Bloom Nation, um, which is probably one of the fastest growing software, but specifically in the local florist market. We helped them come to like the d digital revolution. We gave them websites, point of sales, marketing tools, Facebook integrations, delivery software. Um, and I left that we'd scaled that I'd left, we're about at a hundred people, and we'd raised like twenty or thirty million dollars. And most recently, one of the engineers there and I were just picking each other's brain after I did a little sabbatical, and we said, Hey, let's just get into because with Bloom Nation, the one thing and it's now called the promenade group, but for a for a tech person, like sometimes the addressable market was small. It was like florists, and when you conquer that word, you go. So when we were brainstorming Whippy, we were thinking, like, what are the biggest things that we could do? And then how do we, as we'll talk about today, how do we make that more specific for different verticals? And so we just thought about communication. I mean, we we generally talk a lot as people, we message people, we text people, we DM people, all that stuff. And we just thought, you know, if automation and AI are going to come out in, what are places that people do a lot of the minutiae or like work that can start to be automated? And there were just different things we're looking at. Like we're looking at intake for lawyers, outreach for sales reps, stuff like that. I I and just like that that low-hanging fruit where automation may actually be better at it, and then tee it up for someone else. And so that was kind of the idea uh of or at least the genesis of the direction we wanted to go. And then uh fast forward to a couple years to today, um, Whippy, um, and I can kind of paint this picture for you. But you know, when we started, we were just starting in texting, and it was just manual texting, like mass messaging. Now we're an email and voice, and it's not just about you know having uh a better texting or email or voice platform. It's also there's automation and there's full AI. So you can just see, depend on the use case, there's a lot of a lot the platform can do for these businesses, and I'm excited to talk to you about it today.

The Genesis of Whippy

SPEAKER_00 5:00

Nice. So, uh, as we've talked about um on this call and others, you understand who our audience is. Um, they're uh curious about AI, but this particular application, the combination of what you guys are doing with SMS, email, and voice is um universal, right? Doesn't matter what your business is, you're gonna be communicating internally with clients, whatever, or prospects. And um I know I know that you've got uh we're gonna be giving away uh a white paper from WIPI in the show notes about eight use cases for this type of technology in any business, but maybe um pick a few of those that you think might be most applicable and that we can cover in an hour.

SPEAKER_01 5:41

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I'll even just give you an example, which is pretty simple. So if you look at the paper, like one of the use cases, I'm going to a actually a compound pharmacy show tomorrow in San Diego. And they use our platform. So they're they're a pharmacy. And the thing that was most meaningful to them is like the ability to do as simple as is, like language translations within the software. So if I send you a text and you talk to me in Mandarin, I want to click a button and automatically understand what it means in English. And then when I send you a message, I want to be able to do that. But also, if I were to send you like a mass message or a refill automation or some like, hey, we're not all of our patients, we're not in today. I want yours to be in Mandarin and his to be in Spanish and his to be in English so that my patients understand that. So that's one example. Yeah, yeah. I think where it gets where it gets very interesting is like with when you mix that with email or voice, let's say someone comes in again, thinking a little futuristically, but I'm already seeing those steps now. Someone calls in to get a better understanding on a delivery, and you have marked their language preferences. That how awesome if the voice AI could then default to that language. So when you bring multiple channels in and multiple products, I think it can be very compelling. Um, so that's that's one example that's in there.

SPEAKER_00 7:00

Um David, I don't know if you have data on this, but I'm curious for your clients who have been able to leverage that particular uh element of Whippy, how has that impacted their business? Obviously, communication is cleaner with their clients, but are there any numbers that relate to that?

SPEAKER_01 7:14

I don't have them in front of me, but I think the one pharmacist I talked to said that, like, you know, 25 to 30 percent a new subset of patients. And I'll just tell you why. My parents, my grandparents are Persian, Iranian, they speak Farsi. If you don't speak that language, guess what they do? That my for their medication, they go to the Farsi speaking pharmacist. So all of a sudden, by them speaking these different languages, especially that this one person's probably added more than 30% because they're in New York, which is so diverse. Wow. They they've allowed a new subset. And then obviously, if you speak those languages, the referrals come in. So I think they've seen like 30% subset of clients that they weren't able to get prior.

SPEAKER_00 7:54

Sure. That's a that's uh that that's an impact for sure, with just that one application. All right, that's fantastic. Uh give me some more. I'm excited about this.

SPEAKER_01 8:03

Yeah, I'll go to the whole other side of the spectrum, which is something we're currently beta testing, which would be like voice. And rather than that be like a functionality that a pharmacist would use, this is a really cool functionality that I've showed, like, for example, people, different doctors. And I think it's better for intake. So, in this example, I'll try to put right now for you. It would be an example of this. Is a this is a beta for uh um an industrial staffing company where they're getting lots of people that are applying on Indeed or different job boards or their website or Facebook jobs, and it's just such high um quantity

Multilingual Communication for Businesses

SPEAKER_01 8:39

that they don't have enough time for the recruiters to get to all of them and to be able to screen them. And then what ends up happening is they go to the competitors, I think is a general sense. And this will hit with a lot of the people that listen. And this is more um voice, and I can see if I can bring this up here.

SPEAKER_00 8:56

So essentially that these companies, that company was paying for leads that it wasn't able to service.

SPEAKER_01 9:01

Exactly, exactly, exactly. In this case, that's a great way to say that. And so, for like, I'll give you another example. For them, they're paying that's exactly it. They're not utilizing their marketing spend. So they're paying on indeed for applicants, which are leads. Yes. Personal injury lawyers are starting to talk to us in beta because they're paying a lot on Facebook. And imagine if in one second a software can call you and be like, hey, in in this case, it it just says I'm an automated recruiter, I just want to make sure. But in the personal injury, it could be someone that says, Hey, I want to make sure I get you to the right lawyer, and that person was in an accident. And if you get to them in three seconds and you collect that information, not only that could be like a million dollar Uber case. So let me see if I can show you this. I'm gonna put this best I can on speaker. Nice.

SPEAKER_00 9:42

So let me so I can so what we'll be listening to is AI. Like, hey, this is Alex Comics Unemployment in Indianapolis.

unknown 9:49

I'm here to help you put it up quickly.

SPEAKER_01 9:53

Yeah, my name is Chris. Um my uh address is Chris at gmail.com. So so the so the I mean that I I I'm obviously that that's something that we're running in beta. Sure. Um but you can ask it different questions. Um and and if you were to stretch it or take it off, it's trained to come back and be able to answer a lot of like the direction that some someone would go.

SPEAKER_00 10:22

You know, it's interesting that you bring up the staffing, one of our students from the chief AI officer course, that's their trade. They're part of um uh a large multinational that does a lot of recruiting, right? So if they were to run these ads, these huge campaigns to bring in these leads, how many inbounds can this technology handle simultaneously?

SPEAKER_01 10:43

No, I I think it can be configured. I mean, I don't want to say infinite, but you know we wouldn't be able to max it out easily. No, I think it's it's just creating on our end, creating that that bandwidth. And again, if you were to take that same world to the texting, which is also really hard, yeah um you know, our software is texting in some cases millions, if not more, people a day. Um that's a great question. But I I my advice to those people is always walk before we run. So when a client comes in and let's say, let's say that's what they want to do, and I get a demo of them and then we get you know 10,000 inbound calls. I think uh not to push out our own company, but I would say, okay, cool, take a subset of 500 of those and let's route this to this and let's see what the data shows us. Um cool, and then let's let's like you know land and expand, so to speak. But I think that would be a better mentality, and it's also more comfortable for the customer. It's hard to just go from one extreme to the other, and there are things that we may have to flush out that running those kind of questions through voice, we can also get them to like you know to tell us where where it could have been improved, give us a score, so on and so forth.

SPEAKER_00 12:47

So we've all heard of conversational bots, and we've probably all experienced those conversational bots. This is the next level of that. This is a uh artificial intelligence that's communicating with you, voice to voice, understanding nuance, understanding intention, understanding sentiment, way beyond what a chat bot, a conversational chat bot could do.

SPEAKER_01 13:06

Yeah, no, no, I'm trying to think. I mean, I'll see if I can take it again. Sorry, because this is actually something that's like the example I have is just like a demo example. But I'm trying to see if we actually if we push it, let me just see. Sorry, if I can get this. Hi, this is Alex. How are you? Uh and what if I don't want to give you that information?

SPEAKER_00 13:36

It's kind of hard to hear, but I can I can get the sentiment of it. It's not it's not coming through on the speaker very well.

SPEAKER_01 13:42

Oh, it's it's it's not. I got it, I got it.

SPEAKER_00 13:44

Yeah, but but I think what's important

AI for Lead Qualification and Intake

SPEAKER_00 13:46

here is that the parts that I could catch, it handled that like a professional rep would handle that. There was no pause, there was no excuse me, I'm a robot confusion. It was very natural uh experience. Have you done uh, I don't know, user interviews to kind of find out what people's sentiment is once they realize they're talking to an AI? And is it positive, negative?

SPEAKER_01 14:07

What's the well I I think you have to tell so the one you all the use cases that we have that people are currently using, it's not that the person doesn't know they're talking to AI. So I think the better way to say that is when do people use this when the caller needs something? So like I I don't think it's I mean, this is a very early version, and we're in a very early universe universe with this this type of stuff, but I would say, you know, I'm trying to think like like even right now, forget even like this this type of you know, next level AI. People even deal with bots when they call the bank because like they need something. So they know that there's a little more leeway. So here, if someone apply it on Indeed, the example of the staffing, they I mean I hate to say this, but they're they're trying to make money. They they need to get a job. So if if the AI is 90% of where that is, but it would you know bring down a headcount considerably and actually maybe even do a better job of quantifying that that information, will the the applicant for the forklift job go through that? Probably that would be fine because they need something, which is a job. Um so I definitely think the early use cases are not meant to replace people. They're meant to do data collection, either input or output, like disseminating information or capturing information, speaking to the system of record to fill those things in. And I think that's the the how would I call it's the biggest bang for your buck right now that I see with with kind of this type of platform.

SPEAKER_00 15:41

So uh if I was a business owner and said, hey, that sounds pretty cool, I'd like to try it, but how accurate is it? Is it going to because obviously if I need email addresses or phone numbers, um, the tolerance for an accuracy is zero. So is AI able to pick up on all everybody's different voices and input that accurately?

SPEAKER_01 16:00

Yeah, I mean, again, in the example that we have now, I think the biggest thing you're saying is like, hey, can can it parse out the right information? So if in the example that I said there, if if someone, if it asks, like in that in that demo example, it asks, you know, where did I used to work? Uh where was my last job? If I was to answer, I used to work at McDonald's and you actually sound pretty cool, it has to parse out McDonald's and put it in the right thing. So so it so it it and it is doing that. It is doing that. Like the follow-up question it generally asks is um, you know, when when what when were you working at McDonald's? It understands the object it's trying to achieve is this. Yeah. Um but I would also then double down on the fact that it's you know not just voice. So like with Whippy SMS is really helpful. Yeah. Um kind of having them all all together is very helpful as I talk as I told you. Um yeah, I mean when when we when we talk to businesses, which I I think is kind of your listener group, I I generally think that like where is the places that AI can help? I think it has to be, I call it myself just internally, my own made-up world, functional AI. We see all these things that are really sexy and really crazy. But I think if I'm again, like if I'm uh I'm a staffing company and I'm paying people and they're asking the same 20 questions over and over again, and then they have to put it into a computer, they have to format it, add it to the CRM. If they're missing something, go back and get it. That would be like a really good way to reallocate their time to do something maybe more meaningful.

SPEAKER_00 17:36

The human.

SPEAKER_01 17:37

Yes, exactly. So, like like the classic case that we see in staffing companies is in some cases, they're like saving that that that headcount and putting that back into their you know, their balance sheet, or they're reallocating that resource to do something like more sales outreach, sure, uh stuff like that. But but I do think that and I think this is probably pretty obvious or will be obvious, like in a couple years, like this manual

Addressing Listener Concerns About AI

SPEAKER_01 18:05

work that that a lot of businesses are doing will be automated to be able to be competitively um to be it again. It goes back to the world like you know, 20 years ago. My dad, when people had like their patient management software on a computer versus files up there, you called, they put you on hold, they have to go climb the ladder, get the file, open it. Like there's a competitive advantage to be able to pull that stuff in a couple of seconds. People don't wait in the lobby, people, you know, et cetera, et cetera. And then like people like that, you then can all of a sudden access certain things in your um, you know, your account, like payment on your phone. So I think it's the same thing that's happening in in this place. And I think it will be the standard in in in in a couple years, and just like all the things that I see from from a very low level. I mean, I I wouldn't say I'm I'm at the highest level, is that like the evolution, the the kind of productivity curve that we're seeing in this world is pretty exponential.

SPEAKER_00 18:58

Yeah, no doubt. So you're doing conferences. You said since you've been in four cities since the last time we talked, and even two weeks ago. So you're you're out there communicating with with businesses and trades and industries about this stuff. What is the reception that you're getting? Is there concern? Is there enthusiasm? What does it look like?

SPEAKER_01 19:18

Well, I think it goes the most important thing to say is it goes back to our actual product. So because again, we have these products and these ways of engaging, it seems to fit different use cases differently. So, like, for example, in the um the staffing example I gave you for top of the funnel, which is leads, like automating a lot, because it's such high quantity, thousands of people are applying to forklift jobs. I wouldn't use this same workflow if I was um recruiting like NASA engineers, right? So it'd be different. But like I think when it's high quantity, um, or again, when it's it's speed to lead, like the personal injury stuff like that. I think that that that that makes sense. Now, again, like I'm going to a pharmacy show, a compound pharmacy show. I mean, I'm gonna show them the voice AI because it's really cool, but I I don't know even where that would sit in the HIPAA um um uh you know world of of compliance, but they use us because we're a HIPAA-proof software for for the SMS and the email, and they use us for a lot of um um the the two-way communication. Like their old their softwares don't even have that. Um because not all softwares are like Salesforce or HubSpot, right? These individuals, these industry vertical stuff. We actually need to help them with with with the most basic part of their business and then and then work our way up. So I think the adoption to your point is different based on where these industries are, both from like an information perspective or regulatory perspective, and also from like where their system of record uh like how how functional is it?

SPEAKER_00 20:58

You know, it's interesting you brought this up that in a couple of years you think that this will be a pretty standard. Now, most of us, if we go to a website and we use chat, my preference actually, and not because I'm immersed in AI, but my preference is the bot because the bot is instant, the bot is ready to go. And if I could do the same thing, if I had to change a ticket or whatever the thing was, if I could and bot wasn't an option and phone was, I would prefer to just I'm okay with AI, you know? So that's interesting to see. So anybody that's got any objections or some concerns about well, I don't want to talk, you're already talking to bots, it's just a different channel. You're typing, not not listening.

SPEAKER_01 21:38

And let me take that one step further. I mean, like, you know, I'm the C of this company and still sometimes I'm hesitant for to talk to automation. So I think the biggest thing is not to say that you'll solve 100% of the cases. I think that's naive. Good point. But I think what what what the thing is, is like, I mean, let's just start with today. If you solve 50% of them, which the chat, like you said, uh the actual on website chat's gotten so much better to understand stuff, like the variations. It's it's it's generally quicker, especially if a lot of times when I call for support, I'm sent offshore. Like, I'd prefer that that better. Yeah. But it's not, I don't think I don't think we should think like, hey, we don't need those people. A lot of actual AI that I've seen people do is is on the

Applications Across Industries

SPEAKER_01 22:19

back end. Like there's a lot of AI on customer support, on like what's the right answer to say, so that those people speed up so that their time to onboarding and training is faster internally for customer service. So there's a lot, but yeah, I think it is just looking for the lowest hanging food. So in the example you said there, I think if we strive to cut down half of that, yeah, and they have four people taking those tickets, if that's two and they're here, that you know, with with benefits and stuff, that's like 100K. And that's some of the stuff we're seeing in these older industries.

SPEAKER_00 22:48

Yep. And I I would imagine that the pricing for an environment that needed four customer service and customer service agents, the pricing for Whippy would not be $100,000 per year to use it. Like it would be a massive savings.

SPEAKER_01 23:02

Yeah, yeah. No, no. I think that I I've studied that's very interesting. Like I've tried to study pricing. Yeah. I mean, there's not a lot of stuff on pricing, but I think a lot of the stuff I read is you have to give people back five to 10x, that's savings. Like to for that to be so like if someone's saving 100k and our software is charging them, for example, 10 or 15k, like that's a win win. But I think you do have to give them. A multiple number of uh of that back. Um uh especially when you're trying to get market share.

SPEAKER_00 23:34

You know, and and that's interesting for those of you listening. So this is an opportunity. David could easily go in there and say, you know, position his pitch as you're paying me from the money you're saving. You're not actually paying me. You're you're getting free money. It's almost like free money. So I mean, if you can get this pitch down, folks, and you can go into the boss or you can go into your executive team and say, you know, this is what it's gonna, it doesn't really cost us anything because it's gonna instantly save us, you know, the payroll of two people plus benefit, whatever that is, it's a very easy argument. And again, it doesn't have to be 100%. 20% in one process or workflow is huge. 20% across 15 different workflows is transformative, right? And that's what we're talking about here. Not like push a button and the business has changed, it's push a button and this process is now better. We've got Mandarin and Farsi speaking clients who are now comfortable doing business with us because we're we've got this inexpensive and simple to install uh technology. The data on I'm very interested in this. I'm a data-driven marketer myself, but I'm not texting as many people as your platform is. I'm not emailing as many people as your platform is. What are the for people out there so that they can kind of understand, they can start running the mental math, what is the response rate on those channels, or what are some of the interesting metrics or KPIs that we should look at for SMS and email?

SPEAKER_01 24:56

Yeah, so I'll even just use SMS. So the first client in this, in this uh one company we work with that used basic, and I think it's it's basically we built an integration to the advertising platforms, like the ones they they're spending money to get jobs. The second someone applies, even if it's midnight, the text comes in and the chatbot comes in and collects all that information, that person is more likely to move forward, right? There's a whole bunch of economic studies that say the more you invest in something, the more likely. They saw like pretty instantly, like 56% more people move to Yeah. So and it's not I I I say that and you're like, yeah, if you're getting 100, you're getting 156, which actually means you could probably cut your ad spend down by like 60%, 50%, and you're getting the same results. That's actually how sometimes you know, you're talking about pricing. Some people need to know they can get twice as many people, but some owners don't care about that, so you have to switch it and be like, okay, well, then you can just cut your spend down in a half. And they're like, oh, so so it depends. But it's not rocket science. It's like we're just looking at the fact that, like, by the way, that same company that when the applicant applies or the Facebook lead comes in and you get to them, and then you get that information and you put that in a formattable way. Um, like we're getting them in a second, right? So your ad spend is going to be more utilized. Where we're now currently testing that industry. So here's a good data point for you. We're testing hundreds of people and staffing on Indeed, and we're having a fake perfect candidate apply to all of them. And you know what the average response time is? What do you think the average response time is? Like when do we hear back from the company? Two and a half days.

SPEAKER_00 26:38

Yeah. Two and a half. I was gonna say, what I understand is that if I'm looking for the solution, you said like this works for people who are looking for an answer. I want a job, I want a whatever that is. If somebody says immediately reaches out and says, hey, we're out of the office, but I'll tell you what, I've got your information, we'll call you back first thing in the morning. As far as I'm concerned, my problem is solved. Even though they haven't actually solved it, I've communicated, there's an engagement, and I understand that you know, I don't expect them to call me at midnight necessarily. And even just that part alone now locks that lead in. They're not gonna say, oh, let me call five. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 27:13

They don't apply to anyone else. That's the key right there. So what happens is you get to them right away. No one is getting back to them in I mean, just imagine any company in hours. And you get back to them right away, you can ask some questions and you're like, hey, what time is good for you tomorrow? Yeah. Perfect. We'll give a call to them. They create a task for someone to do that. They're gonna wait. They're gonna get on their date because they don't want to be applying, they don't want to be looking for lawyers, roofers, whatever. They just want to get on with their date. Like they want to get back to watching Netflix, they want to get back to with their family having dinner. So once you they have that assurance, it's like awesome. So I think that is something where conversational AI will help a lot, whether it's through email, whether it's through text, whether it's for voice, whether it's through WhatsApp, whether it's through, you know, all these different channels. And I think that is a place where you'll see uh small businesses start to really adopt.

SPEAKER_00 28:06

You know, another stat that surprised me when I first saw it in my marketing career was the how quickly people cool down. If they take an action, go to your website, and there's no and they have to wait. Let's say it's a um a customer service situation, or let's say it's shopping cart abandon. Somebody comes to your website, they like the product, they get all the way to the order form, but they don't complete, the like the likelihood of them being able to convert from that abandon drops significantly very quickly, like within 30 seconds. If you haven't gotten back to them, it drops in half. If you haven't gotten back to them in three minutes, it's like dropped by 90%. So something like this, if if you've got an e if you're a listener and you've got an e-commerce situation or you're selling a lot of products online, having something like this that would initiate that text, hey, saw you were having trouble with the cart or whatever. If you get them instantly, it's that same kind of thing. And obviously, shopping cart abandoned, they've jumped through a lot of hoops to get to your shopping cart and to lose them at that stage by not implementing a very simple technology that just, hey, we see you. Can we help you? Right. Yeah. And usually you'll find it, it's simple questions, but your competition is not doing this. And let me ask you, David, in the in the staffing and the recruiting world, I know you've got this test going on, which I'm I'm very interested to hear the results. Are you hearing about your client's competition jumping on board with AI and getting the benefits that your client's getting?

SPEAKER_01 29:33

Yeah, I mean, I think it helps, right, to speak their language. So if I was, I think, I think the one thing again is the word functional. If I went to someone in Industry X, I don't know, like, and we're trying to learn these use cases, waste disposal. I don't know. If I can't speak their language and talk their tongue, it's pretty useless. But if I can say, hey, this person is using, and here's how they're using it, it generally is like

Augmenting Human Employees with AI

SPEAKER_01 29:54

how do we do that ourselves? The only real, I would say sometimes the only thing that stops that sometimes is if they're like really deep into a CRM or a software, and like we have to build an integration. But I think one of the things that my my partner Jack did really well is he built a fully robust API. So you could be another software company that like offers, I don't know, let's say your clients are a doctor and there's a patient management software and it's like never move with the times of AI. It's like stuck in the rut and it's losing out to some really new player that's bringing all this, they could actually use our API to offer that to their customers pretty quickly. But I think that is also something, yeah, yeah, allowing the connectivity of what we're doing to be used by other software platforms.

SPEAKER_00 30:37

And for listeners, if you guys, if your company is deep into a software that is exactly what David described, they're not quite on the AI train yet, reach out to that vendor and let them know that this exists, that there are API connections with tools like Whippy that have the functionality so that your vendor, I mean, you want this stuff, folks. What don't let your vendor's lack of initiative or you know uh excitement about this opportunity be your downfall. If your vendor's not doing that, tell them, hey, you need to integrate with this or show me how to, because this stuff is transformative. What David's talking about here is I mean, like you've now got a staff that's working 24 hours a day that understands your business enough to be able to engage with prospects in their language globally, 24 hours a day, and like bring them into your funnel, bring them into your network, bring them into whatever your sales process is. This is something you do this now, you have an advantage that you're in your competition, they're still trying to figure out, they're scratching their head going, where do we start? Right? You do this, you gobble up market share. You you become uh an you get an unfair advantage for sure. All right, David, let's talk about maybe one more scenario that would be a pretty common um you mentioned customer service. Is that a place where Whippy has application?

SPEAKER_01 32:04

Yeah, yeah, so for sure. So I think we talked about, I mean, in a way, lead qualification. We use the voice for I'm bummed that you can't hear it. You really couldn't hear it, huh?

SPEAKER_00 32:12

Now, but when you and I did the demo, I heard it and it was fantastic. And listen, I've listened to, I've done demos with a lot of them. Yours was as good, if not better, than everything that I've heard.

SPEAKER_01 32:21

Yeah, I mean, I'm looking, so we went over lead qualification. We talked about different languages. I think on the customer support, there's two things that I've seen. So I mean, the most frequent one is just uploading your FAQs and letting the AI answer them. So for example, you know, someone has all these uh things like, I don't know, uh, where are you located? When are you open to the classic ones? But like, yeah, again, using the staffing one, they ask like, when do I get paid? And payday is Friday, how do I submit my W2? All these types of things, and they're different variations. And like someone may ask, you know, when do I get paid? They may ask, where's my money? You know, and it may be, you know, you know, even where be my cash, I don't know, right? And the software needs to understand that. And so I think to a certain degree, it's kind of like what you said when you go on-site chat, but we think in a lot of these use cases, SMS is more powerful because those people aren't just sitting there waiting on on site and they're not going to engage. But SMS is where you hit them wherever. So that could also be an example of customer support. That's one example. And then another example we're seeing is just our software being able to look at their SMS, whatever connected platforms they have, and being able to predict what the next message should be. So, in a lot of cases, you know, still someone has to go there and they're like, oh, the person's like, when do, you know, what's the update? And then they have to go look an email to see what they sent them and et cetera, et cetera. And

Marketing and Sales Automation

SPEAKER_01 33:46

so by being able to see all that, and we don't send it, be drafted for them, but we see that save considerable amount of time on the support side as well.

SPEAKER_00 33:55

So that would be augmentation. You'd be augmenting a human who was still doing the the human chat, but they were getting their responses queued up for them so that it was still, even though human was in the loop, it was coming out faster than it would be anyway. So there's still savings.

SPEAKER_01 34:11

Yeah, I think that's a good way to say it. Like AI with a human touch or human in the loop. So we it's almost like they have to, and a lot of these get very complicated. So again, going back to your whole thing, I don't think we want to be able to answer everyone, but if we can get them 80% of the way there, and uh again, another thing, actually, that's I was talking to a dentist who's using this, and he was just saying it's great because even though they have to edit a little stuff, like their spelling or their grammatical, you know, their grammatical sentences weren't perfect. And he thought when they were texting people before it wasn't coming professional, now they've absolved of that issue. So it's like, you know, I think again, getting getting a certain percentage of the way there. So in both cases, if we can take four down to two, and then those two are more efficient, that's a really good recipe.

SPEAKER_00 34:55

Yep. What are some other areas where of the business that is applicable across business, whether that's sales, marketing, customer service, finance, that you're seeing application of Whipy for uh particularly small businesses?

SPEAKER_01 35:08

I think sales is so we've talked about support. Yeah, we talked about support. Marketing, I can talk just briefly about marketing, but marketing, you know, if some of our clients want to send out uh something like we said, and it's shopping hard in a minute. Yeah, exactly. I I think not only having SMS email voice, but also being able to optimize based on what that person's been more likely to engage with. So I think like for me, and that's that's the way where we're going, it's like if you want to give this person this notice, but these 30 people are more likely to talk to channel one than two than three, you want to optimize based on that as well. So I think that type of stuff where you're multi-channel and like you're you're you're helping people cue things up more intelligently would be really helpful. So that's on the marketing side.

SPEAKER_00 35:56

So let me ask, David, let me get some clarity on that. You're saying that that your tech can take a look at what my behavior has been in the past and say, well, he's never responded to a text, but he opens 30% of the emails. Let's don't send him a text, let's send him an email instead.

SPEAKER_01 36:11

Yeah, that's all stored in our database, right? Or in our customers' database, so to speak, through through us, right? So it's why would we and I guess the the main way, and again, this is for the listeners too, both for the businesses and the people trying to start a company. We don't profess to know any of these industries. So I think if you're naive, that helps. Because then what happens is people come to you and say, hey, this would be helpful. So one of the things we'd be seeing in certain industries is like, hey, we text them, but then when we don't get a response, we have to figure out who that was and then go into our email software and then, you know, bulk, bulk, upload all those contacts. Yeah, and it was just like, who's how how is this how is this even sustainable? So I think those types of workflows would be helpful. And then yeah, I think the next thing we're we're moving to is like the sales automation side of stuff. Um I can just tell you in my world, because you know, I I do sales as as well, like try to get a hold of people to get the software. And I think there's a lot of stuff we see, like there's sales automation softwares where they'll email you, and if they you know don't respond, they'll email you, or they'll go to text or LinkedIn and tell you, hey, I sent you an email, it could be in your spam, like those types of stuff that we see that are workflows. Yes. I just think a lot of that stuff, at least in the near term, uh, is gonna be much more efficient. And so again, I don't think e-commerce has been so much where our time has been spent. We like to say our customers are in the real world. So there are there are a lot of advancements I would have to say in e-commerce because it's such a big, big um uh kind of world. But for us, like there are just so many examples. Like, even my dad is a gastroenterologist, and you know, I had my first colonoscopy when I was younger because we thought, you know, one time he thought he saw pulp and I'd go back there, and then my dad would remind me, David, you need to come back. But I was like, do you do anything for your patients to let them know that every couple years they should? And and this is like one of the most serious things if God forbid colon cancer or something happens. And like there really is nothing that my my dad is doing. He's just kind of hoping that they'll come in and call in. So when I would see these things, I'd just be like, wow, these are places where, like in the real world, as a gastroenterologist or as a person injury lawyer, yeah, or as an industrial staffing company, or certain places where I think those things in the real world, they've been laggards, and I think Whippy's position to help them move faster.

SPEAKER_00 38:30

I love that. Yeah, I love that. Because we've got, you know, all categories of business that pay attention to this, and all categories of business can benefit from AI automation and augmentation. So I'd like to know a little bit more about the sales side of things. How would how would the average small business leverage Whippy in a what would what would that paradigm look like for sales?

SPEAKER_01 38:52

Yeah, so I mean, one of the things we're kind of beta testing, I'll stay with that same use case. Okay. Oh, I'm gonna make it easier. There are places where um you know, like a staffing company would see regular companies post jobs, and they want those jobs, they want to fill those jobs. Yeah. So what does a human do? A human goes and monitors those websites, figures out that person's email, you know. I mean, this really doesn't happen. Like they don't do this, but then should like reach out to them and then should follow up right diligently. I think there's all those parts of that kind of life cycle or other similar life cycles could some portion, if not a lot of it, could be more automated. Um and so I think that that's like one example of of a place where it's like, cool, someone posted

The Benefits of Follow-ups and Consistent Communication

SPEAKER_01 39:44

uh a job, all of a sudden software sees, and that person's emails this and they work at this company and they reach out to them and they reach out to them again, and they queue that up for someone to to get into a deeper, deeper conversation. But right now they have people doing it, and I and I've noticed the one thing again about these these businesses versus like software companies where people are like real sales trained through and through is they forget to follow up. Like, I don't know if anyone's listening to this here, but it's like this must dawn on them really well. Like 90%, like when I when we started this and I was calling dentists, yeah, I was testing them and I'd call them and I'd say, Hey, I want an appointment, and she'd say, sure. And then I'd be like, Cool, you know, actually, actually, I gotta pick up my son from work now. Here's my phone number. And um, I I better watch out if I say that I don't have a son, so my mom would get excited if she heard that. But but um, but like they never call me back. It's it's just so often. I told you, we're testing companies, so I just think that there are places in that like that's a great example, like to be able to like press a button and be able to like follow up on that lead and stuff like that. And so I think there are a lot of places where we just see, and I'm telling you, if it's a business owner listening to this, that's this is the part where they like really connect when I'm talking to them. Because we all know there are places where it's just like easy wins and people just like let it slip. And I think that makes sense because it's like the the saying that we tell people is, well, how are we gonna remember all that? We're not a computer.

SPEAKER_00 41:12

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Now, this is interesting because as a marketer, one of the corny maxims you hear is fortune in the follow-up, right? That as a salesperson, the first interaction is usually not gonna be where they become a customer of your business. It's gonna be because they've read something, listened to your podcast, they saw your ad, they stopped by. It's multiple touches that result in that person going from interested to becoming a customer or a very serious prospect. And humans will drop the ball. We will forget, we will, it's Friday afternoon, I'm kind of wanting to get out of here early, whatever it is, and that results in you as a business owner or you as a salesperson or a performer missing out on an opportunity for a follow-up when you can use a tool like this and never have to worry about missing that again. That is, it's not just, it's not just the efficiency that gets introduced into the sales process. It's not just the, wow, all of a sudden we're getting more interest from prospects. It's the the mental capacity that is no longer tied up with worry about, oh, I wonder if they got back to them. I wonder if I wonder as a business owner, I'm spending X doll per lead. I wonder if we're really following up with them the way that they should. And the answer is if you're not doing this stuff, the answer is no. Well, I've got a great sales team, Chris. No, they're not doing there, they're they're not as great as you think they are. They could be, they could not follow up better than Whipy or you know, an SMS or email automation or whatever could do. So keep that in mind. So, David, if people want to find out, how do they plug in with Whippy?

SPEAKER_01 42:49

Yeah, yeah. So uh they can book a demo. Um our domain is Whippy W H I P P Y dot AI. So w hippy dot AI. Um and yeah, you know, right now I'm in. 30 minutes.

SPEAKER_00 43:08

Um get your mind blown in 30 minutes.

SPEAKER_01 43:12

Yeah, yeah. So we'll get them into a demo. And again, a big part of this is, you know, like I said before, what we're really interested in is two fronts. One, the new industries, because we want to keep growing. So a lot of those, they may not even be demos. They may actually, and you know the world of sales, they may become more into discovery calls and like understanding what the problem is and actually saying, like, are we the best solution for you or not? I realized very early on, I was just trying to make us the best solution for everyone. And sometimes, you know, yeah, that's not always always the case. And I think the second thing

Getting Started with Whippy

SPEAKER_01 43:42

I would say is like, again, you know, you know how you told people never let things slip. One of the best ways to do that would be through the integration. Because if we can see all the data on the other side, yeah, that just makes this this so much powerful. So I really do think like the more systems we can integrate with, especially those that they're the system of record and we're the communication platform, that partnership. And we're having a couple of those happen right now in different industries, and they're proving to be very fruitful.

SPEAKER_00 44:09

Yeah, those would be nice clients. Awesome. So, where are you off to next? You're off to a compounding conference to talk to pharmacists about AI and automation?

SPEAKER_01 44:19

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So, like uh, I'm actually going tomorrow. So it would be pretty cool. I was last week in a show in Las Vegas. So it was uh uh staffing.

SPEAKER_00 44:30

Staffing?

SPEAKER_01 44:30

That that was staffing. Next week I'm going to um the compound pharmacy and show where like their their things actually, their biggest problem pain point right now, and this also made me tired of people, is there's just too much wasted time on the phone. They don't have that many pharmacists, they're getting really slaughtered on the phone. And so they want to move a lot, a lot of that. Even even if they just simply just move that to text communication, sure. They're getting right to the point. It's asynchronous. Um and there's a lot of automations they're building workflows around like refill, refill miners, stuff like that that their current systems don't support. Um and then after that, the week after I'm going to meet some people in in the real estate world who are starting to use our software and trying to see how to uh expand that as well. So that's that's one thing I really love, actually. I was thinking about this at Vegas because in my last company, I would go to the trade shows and it was the same exact trade show every year. It was it was really cool. It was it was like the local flower shops, but After like five, six years, I know I could see myself, my my my wheels spinning on looking for something else. Here, the cool thing about Whippy, which I really like, is like um, you know, plugging this into other industries, you get to meet people from different walks of life, you get to go to different shows, you get to learn things yourself that you wouldn't really understand. And I think that's been something that's been really awesome uh here uh with what we're doing now.

SPEAKER_00 45:48

And you're also picking up stuff, something that might work in real estate. Well, that it's interesting how they do that over there. You know what? Guess what? It applies to my staffing clients, it applies to my this or that client. So getting that broader exposure to all these different domains has got to be fantastic. Um so for those of you listening, you say, Well, I don't have a staffing company, or I'm not an it's not about the specific industry, it's about the application and how you get good at using AI at work is you start to do what I call think and AI. You start to you start to be able to understand how automation, human in the loop, augmentation, right, and AI fit together. And every time you encounter here's where I'd start, the things you don't like doing in your business. Start looking and say, huh, could could that solution that he talked about that they were using in the pharmacy industry, could I apply any of that to this part of my process? It's kind of similar. That's what you need to be doing as you listen to these podcasts. It's not about, well, I'm not in that industry, so I'm not gonna pay attention. That's not what this is about. These things apply. The operation of a business is universal. Well, no, you don't understand, Chris. My widget is different. No, it's not. Your widget might be 100,000, yours might be a dollar, a pack of gum, uh, industrial equipment. It doesn't matter. The process is the same. I market, I sell, I communicate with my clients, somebody services those clients. We fulfill, we've got human resources, we pay bills, we have staff. All of those things are universal. So as you're hearing these examples from experts like David on this podcast, don't shut it out if it's not your industry. Think, how is this? How does this universal concept apply to what we're doing in the paper industry, the you know, auto parts, whatever it may be? So that's my two cents. David, thank you so much. I want you to have safe travels, man. I'm excited to see what Whipy does. This is fantastic stuff.

SPEAKER_01 47:41

No, yeah, no. Thank you. Thank you for bringing me on and excited to see where this goes and to continue to listen into to your viewership and hear these conversations.

SPEAKER_00 47:50

They're very meaningful. Thanks, Chris. You're welcome. Everybody, reach out to to David at Whipy. The show it'll in the show notes will be the link. I want to get a demo from you so that they can listen to that, go, holy smokes, this is incredible. And also, there'll be the white paper about eight areas where you could apply this technology, this type of uh process automation into your business. Thanks, everybody. See you on the next episode. Thanks for tuning in to using AI at work. Don't forget to subscribe

Closing Thoughts

SPEAKER_00 48:18

for more conversations about how to use AI at work. And a special thank you to our sponsor, Chief AI Officer, for empowering businesses with AI education and training. Visit their website for a free AI readiness assessment and AI strategy guide to help you get started using AI at work. That's www.chiefaiofficer.com. Thanks to our producer, Evan Desalnier, for making this episode possible. Follow us on Twitter at the handle usingAI at work and visit www.usingai at work.com for free resources to help you harness AI in your role.