20: Using AI for Revolutionizing Business Communication with David Daneshgar

Hey, everybody, and welcome back to the podcast. Today, I'm thrilled to have David Dhaneshkar on the show. Like a lot of our guests, David's journey has been fascinating, from a top poker player to a successful entrepreneur. On this episode, we'll dive into how his company, Whippy, is revolutionizing business communication using cutting edge AI technology. So whether you're a small business or a large enterprise, you'll want to hear how Whitby's tools can 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 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. 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 with the audience a little bit about yourself.

Yeah, well, first off, thanks for having me excited. Yeah. My background, I live in Los Angeles recently because of Whippy, been traveling a lot. But my way of 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 used my math and probability analysis, quant, whatever you want to say it, to get in there. But I did quite well. I had won the World Series of Poker, one of the tournaments, and I was top five in the world. This is again in 2006-2008, so it's like a while back, excuse me. And from then went actually partly that to go into business school. And business school, I started a company called Bloom Nation, which is probably one of the fastest growing software, but specifically in the local florist market. We helped them come to like the digital revolution. We gave them websites, point of sales, marketing tools, Facebook integrations, delivery software. And I left that we'd scaled that I'd left, we're about at 100 people and we'd raise like 20 or 30 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 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 AI are going to come out in what are places that people do a lot of the minutia 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. 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 of at least the genesis of the direction we wanted to go. And then fast forward to a couple of years to today Whippy 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 a better texting or, 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, for these businesses and I'm excited to tell talk to you about it today.

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

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 actually a compound pharmacy show tomorrow in San Diego and they use our platform, so 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, automatically understand what it means in, 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 something 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 preference. Is 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. So that's, that's one example. Sure, that's in there.

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 element of wippy, how has that impacted their business? Obviously communication is cleaner with their clients, but are there any numbers that relate to that?

I don't have in front of me, but I think the one pharmacist I talked to said that like, you know, 25 to 30% 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, 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 sure.

That's a, that's, that's an impact for sure. With just that one application. All right, that's fantastic. Give me some more. I'm excited about this. 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 function 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. This is a beta for 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 quantity that they don't have enough time for the recruiters to get 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 voice. And I can see if I can bring this up here.

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

Exactly, Exactly. Exactly. In this. That's a great way to say that. And so for like, I'll give you another example for them. They're. 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 about it because they're paying a lot on Facebook. And imagine if in one second a software can call you and be like, hey, in this case 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 going to put this best I can on speaker.

Nice. So what we'll be listening to is AI Alex.

Hey, this is Alex from Express Employment in Indianapolis. I'm here to help you find a job quickly. Yeah, my name is Chris. My address is chrismail.com. Obviously that's something that we're running in beta. Sure. But you can ask it different questions. 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.

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 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?

No, I think it can be configured. I mean, I don't want to say infinite, but, 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. You know, our software is texting in some cases millions if not more people a day. And that's a great question, but 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 them and they're like, we get, you know, 10,000 inbound calls, I think 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. 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 customers. 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, those kind of questions through voice. We can also get them like, you know, to tell us where, where it could have been improved, give us a score, so on and so forth. We'll be back after a quick break.

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Who generated $1.3 million of revenue in his first seven months installing septic systems. If you are looking to build your own local service or trade business, come check out the Owner Ops podcast that's own ownerops.com o w n r o p s dot com. 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 artificial intelligence that's communicating with you voice to voice, understanding nuance, understanding intention, understanding sentiment, way beyond what a chat bot, a conversational chatbot could do.

Yeah, no, no, I'm trying to think. I mean, I'll see if I can take it again. Sorry. Because this, this is actually saying. 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? And what if I don't want to give you that information, match you with minimal job opportunities based on your location?

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.

It's not. Got it.

Yeah, but, but I think what's important 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 experience. Have you done, 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? What's the.

Well, I think you have to. 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 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 applied 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, they need to get a job. So if, if the AI is 90% of where that is, but it would, you know, bring down headcount considerably and actually maybe even do a better job of Quantifying that information. Will the applicant for the forklift job go through that? Probably that would be fine because they need something which is a job. 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, how would I call it? It's the biggest bang for your buck right now that I see with, with kind of, kind of this type of platform.

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

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? 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, so it, and it is doing that, it is doing that. Like the follow up question it generally asks is, you know, when, when, when were you working at McDonald's? It understands the object it's trying to achieve is this. Yeah, 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. Kind of having them all all together is very helpful as I, as I told you. But yeah, I mean when, when we, when we talk to businesses, which 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 am again, like if I'm, 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.

The human.

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, like, like more sales outreach. Sure, 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 work that, that a lot of businesses are doing will be automated to be able to be competitively.

Again.

It goes back to the world like, you know, 20 years ago, my dad, when people had like their patient management software and a computer versus files up there. You call, they put you on hold, they have to go climb the ladder, get the file, open it. Like there's a competitive advantage to pull that stuff in a couple seconds. People don't wait in the lobby, people, you know, et cetera, et cetera. And then the people like that, you then can all of a sudden access certain things in your, you know, your account, like payment on your phone. So like, I think that's the same thing that's happening 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 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.

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?

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, the staffing example I gave you for top of the funnel, which is leads like automating, because it's such high quantity, thousands of people are applying to forklift jobs. I wouldn't use this same workflow if I was recruiting like NASA engineers. Right. So it'd be different. But like, I think when it's high quantity or again, when it's, it's speed to lead like the personal injury stuff like that. I think that makes sense now again like I'm going to a pharmacy show, a compound pharmacy show. I mean I'm going to show them the voice AI because it's really cool. But I don't know even where that would sit in the hipaa, you know, world of compliance. But they use us because we're a HIPAA proof software for the SMS and the email and they use us for a lot of the two way communication. Like their softwares don't even have that because not all softwares are like Salesforce or HubSpot. Right. These industry vertical stuff we actually need to help them with the most basic part of their business 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 like how functional is it?

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 in bot wasn't an option and phone was. I would prefer to just, I'm okay with, you know, so it'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.

And let me take that one step further. I mean like you know, I'm the CEO 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 the thing is is like I mean let's just start with today. If you saw 50% of them which are the chat like you said the actual on website chat's gotten so much better. To understand stuff like the variations, it's generally quicker. Especially if a lot of times when I call for support, I'm sent offshore. Like I would 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 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 fruit. So in the example you said there's. 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.

Yeah. And I would imagine that the pricing for an environment that needed for customer service and customer service agents, the pricing for Whippy would not be $100,000 per year to use it, like.

No, no, no, no.

It would be a massive savings. Yeah, yeah.

No, no, I think that 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 5 to 10x that savings, like 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. Of that back, especially when you're trying to get market share, 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 going to. It doesn't really cost us anything because it's going to instantly save us, you know, the payroll of two people plus whatever that is. It's a very easy argument. And again, it doesn't have to be 100%. 20% in one processor 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 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. 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?

Yeah, so I'll even just use sms. So the first client in this, in this 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 get jobs. The second someone applies, even if it's midnight, this 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 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%. 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 and a half and they're like, oh, 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. 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 in 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? 2 and a half days. Yeah. And Apple.

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 going to say, oh, let me call.

Exactly. 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 them questions and you're like, hey, what time is good for you tomorrow? Yeah, perfect. We'll give a call then. To 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 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 from 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 small businesses start to really adopt.

You know, another stat that surprised me when I first saw it in my marketing career was the how. 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. A customer service situation, or let's say it's shopping cart abandoned. 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 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'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 very interested to hear the results. Are you hearing about your clients competition, jumping on board with AI and getting the benefits that your clients getting?

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 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 generally, is like, how do we do that ourselves? The only will, 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 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.

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. 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 vendors lack of initiative or, you know, 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. It's. 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 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. You mentioned customer service. Is that a place where Whippy has application?

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

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.

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. 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. These things, like, I don't know, 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 paydays Friday, how do I submit my W? 2, all these types of things. And there are 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 more powerful because those people aren't just sitting there waiting 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 so by being able to see all that and we don't send it, we drafted for them, but we see that save considerable amount of time on the support side as well.

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.

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 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, the grammatical sentences weren't perfect and he thought when they were texting people before it wasn't coming professional. Now they've absolved that issue. So it's like, you know, I think again, getting, getting a certain percentage of the way there. But in both cases, if we can take four down to two and then those two are more efficient, that's a really good recipe.

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 Whippy for particularly small businesses.

I think sales is. So we've talked about support. Yeah, we talk about support, marketing. I can talk just briefly about marketing, but marketing, you know, if some of our clients want to send out something like we said, and it's shopping. Yeah, exactly. 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 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.

So let me ask David, let me get some clarity on that. You're saying 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.

Yeah. That's all stored in our database. Right. Or in our customer's database. So to speak through, through us. Right. So it's very smart.

Yeah.

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 would see 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 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 moving to is like the sales automation side of stuff.

Okay.

I can just tell you in my world because you know, I do sales as well, like try to get ahold 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 don't respond, you'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. I just think a lot of that stuff, at least in the near term, 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 a lot of advancements, I would have to say, in E commerce because it's such a big, big 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 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 this is like one of the most serious things if, God forbid, colon cancer, something happens. And, like, there really is nothing that my. My dad is doing. He's 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 personal injury lawyer.

Yeah.

Or as a 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 fast.

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? And what would. What would that paradigm look like for sales?

Yeah, so, I mean, one of the things we're kind of beta testing. I'll stay with that same use case. Okay, let me make it easier. There are places where, 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 similar life cycles could some portion, if not a lot of it could be more automated. And so I think that that's like one example of a place where it's like cool, someone posted a job, all of a sudden software sees and that person's email is 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'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, 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 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, but like they never call me back. 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 a 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 saying that we tell people is, well, how are we going to remember all that? We're not a computer.

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 going to be where they become a customer of your business. It's going to be because they've read something, listen to your podcast, they saw your ad, they stopped by. It's, 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 dollars 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, they're, they're, they're not as great as you think they are. They could be. They could not follow up better than Whippy 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?

Yeah. So they can book a demo. Our domain is whippy whipy AI. So whippy AI. And yeah, you know, right now, I'm in 30 minutes.

Get your mind blown in 30 minutes.

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 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 the case. And I think the second thing I would say is like, again, you know, you know, 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 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.

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.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So like I'm actually going tomorrow, so it would be pretty cool. I was last week in a show in Las Vegas, so it was a. What was the industry staffing that. That was staffing. Next week I'm going to the compound pharmacy show where like their, their things actually their biggest problem, pain point right now, and this also made me reside 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 minders, stuff like that that their current systems don't support. 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 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 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, 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 here with what we're doing now.

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 applies to my this or that client. So getting that, that broader exposure to all these different domains has got to be fantastic. 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 and 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 going to 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, your widget might be a hundred thousand, yours might be a dollar pack of gum, industrial equipment. It doesn't matter. The process is the same. I market, I sell, I communicate with my clients and 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 Whitby does. This is fantastic stuff.

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. They're very meaningful. Thanks, Chris.

You're welcome. Everybody, reach out to David at Whippy 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 can apply this technology, this type of 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 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.chiefai officer.com. so thanks to our producer Evan Desolnier for making this episode possible. Follow us on Twitter at the handle using AIATWORK and visit www.usingaiatwork.com for free resources to help you harness AI in your role.