Mike Minutes Mastermind 02/28/2024

All right.

We are alive.

There you go.

Okay.

I'm not going to send out the text message to everyone today because there's only a couple questions it looks like.

And I know that takes a few minutes to get some people.

All right, let's see here.

Got two questions.

Present.

All right, first question comes from Joel. I think the long term goal for Max is to take over most if.

Not all answering and handling calls from.

CC reps so CC can focus on other tasks.

It's going to take a long time. You're probably looking at 10 to 10 to 15 years by the time that's actually true in terms of like handling a lot of the things because you'd have to be able to integrate with scheduling a lot. Number one, if this is correct, I'm.

Curious why they choose a school. It seems like large companies have moved to making calls, calling almost impossible and indirect. Instead redirect customers to web based or SMS based chats or email. This is also how Copilot seems to handle customer service. I'm not suggesting text chat is the best way to go, but curious why you went in different direction with Max. Not suggesting text chat is the best way to go, but curious why you went in a different direction with Max.

Mostly because it because of the sales side. Because with sales the you're trying to get the person to stop contacting other people. The problem with text I find is if I have like for example, if I, if I'm trying to get support for my iPhone.

I'm going to Apple. There's no other option, there's no other alternative. But if there was five other companies I could potentially go to and get support from, I would probably respond, go to the person whoever responded to me the fastest. And so from a sales perspective the speed is so important. Like even the other day I was trying to get a refund for a, a flight and.

I had to wait like three minutes to be able to just put my, just be able to type my message. Then it was like saying it was going to be assigned to someone and I just waited for like 20 minutes and then by the time they got in there I was like onto something else and they just, I just got an email like my text transcript. So that's why I still think that like for at least several years they'll still be a need to be able to do phone calls.

And if you look at most customer facing brands like not product customer service. Customer service has been this way for a long time. Right. In terms of text chat and that sort of situation, but in terms of actually talking to a person, sales driven organizations that are.

Business to consumer B2C, they typically still have phones. And I think it'll just be, it'll be a matter of time and it will move that direction. I agree with that. But it'll take a very, very long time.

So.

And because our target audience is an older demographic, like 20 years older than say the average copilot user, for example. So like on copilot you can message them through Facebook, you can message them through WhatsApp, you can message them through tech, through the chat, etc. You can set up Zoom calls, etc. But we don't have a live phone number that you can call because you're not going to make a split, you're not going to be making a split decision today on choosing your software. Whereas someone needs to get their lawn care just like they want that problem solved today. And they're just going to call whoever picks up their phone first. They're the ones that will typically get the bid. So.

Two, you seem to have a lot of conviction that in three to five years most smaller service companies will try to use a call answering a service system like Max. What do you see that makes you believe that is the direction the industry and consumer behavior is headed? Instead of better AI power, web based, SMS based chats or some other method of communication, it's our target demographic. Our target demographic is literally 20 to 30 years behind in terms of age, the.

The curve. And so typically I see a 5 to 1 ratio of like years of age and technology adoption. So for example, if someone is 20 years older than me, they will probably adopt the technology I'm adopting today in four years. That's typically what I've seen. So for example, if Facebook comes along and it's for like teenagers and now, you know, fast forward five, six years later, their grandmas and grandparents are getting on there. And so let's say there's 50 years difference, that's 10 years it takes from, for Facebook basically to mature their audience from a teenager to their grandparent. And so I see like what's coming out right now, like the text, it's become much more popular, etc. For our demographic. When I say our demographic, I mean like 20, 30, 40 year olds. But the vast majority of our customers are 60s, 70s, 80s. They're going to take several more years, they're not going to take 20 years, they're going to take several more years to actually adopt that technology. Right. So like Covid really accelerated even People like with like delivering of groceries to their door, people getting on Amazon, people using social media. It accelerated that really quickly. But I still see on average like 5 to 6 is like the ratio of like how many years it takes to adopt new technology. Just my observation. So I do believe it's going this way and that's like better AI powered, web based, SMS based chat, etc.

Especially when you start thinking about like.

Augmented reality, things like the.

Apple Vision Pro, stuff like that.

A lot of that sort of thing. I, I do see it going that way, but our, our demographic will be several years behind the curve. And that's why if you look at companies that serve millennials, they're usually on the quote unquote cutting edge of it because the millennials are willing to receive communication that way. Whereas like if we said hey, we're only taking text based service only, we lose out on a lot of people that I just want to solve this farm right now. I'm going to call all these people until I get my estimate and get it solved.

So.

But it will go that way. You're right. In the long term.

But what you're saying is like why do I think it's going to be my answering service? Because I just don't think the phone is going to die. I think we're just going to modify how we, how we change using the phone. I think the phone will become more a service of like.

You call and leave a voice message for someone else's AI assistant. And so the same way that you would have, you know, Max for say Augusta. I think in 10 years each of us will have a customizable version of ourselves that answer the phone, send messages, etc and the same way you would SMS someone, you would send them a, a voice message through a phone number and then they would get a voice message in their voicemail, just like you would get SMS message in your texting inbox. Like I, I don't know about like again, it all comes down to age. Like I never answer this phone. It doesn't even ring. You cannot call this and get a phone this to ring. I've disabled it and I never call out on it unless I am looking for service. And so that's where I still think it'll be a long time using the. That's where the phone will be useful. Still number three, do you have data.

You can share on the average percentage.

Of incoming calls that are for estimates versus scheduling versus billing versus complaints versus spam versus whatever other general categories might be?

Yeah, they had to break down this, I'll try to get the one. Every Friday I have a call with the team. I'll try to get the most recent one.

I recently listened to a few talks from Rory Sutherland about psychology and perception in relation to products, services and marketing. These talks got me thinking about how you get leads in different ways to change or improve customer perception of signing up for service or getting help. Yes, like I think your general basic. Basic is like where's SMS kind of going to fit in all this. I think that is the longer term game. But we got to meet the customer where they want to be served. And right now the vast majority of leads will still come in through two platforms. One SM request form, two phone calls. Like you take those two things out and you say hey, we're just going to do everything through the chat bot, you'd probably lose out. Right now I'd say an 80% of leads. By adding that level of friction.

I just still genuinely believe that most people like for me, I would go do an estimate request form and if I can buy it on the site, I'm thrilled out of my mind, like awesome. The vast majority of older people, they're going to go on a call and if I can get their phone message and get them locked in, there's no reason that they keep calling five other providers because like I just challenge everyone. Like go call five of your competition, just see how many people pick up their phone, see how many have a full voicemail. I venture to believe that only one or two out of five will even answer the call.

And so I just believe that having just answering the phone, you're going to lock in significant numbers of more leads. And now with max answering it 24 7, we're going to capture a whole bunch of leads that are happening during the evenings, weekends, et cetera, nights that we weren't getting before. So Tara Boone's Creek, Tennessee we have a bunch of clients that we serviced all their yards last season, last year and towards the end of the year they call in to cancel their services. I'm not sure if they meant to cancel their services completely or meant to just pause mowing services for the winter. These clients do not have a card on file in Copilot yet. So we've been thinking about just sending a new mowing quote on each of them this spring a few days before we start mowing to see if they'll accept. Do you think is a good idea when they paused at the end of last year. This is why it's so important to make notes in their. Their profile. So, like, if command center took a call and they wanted to cancel, it'll. You'll see it in their customer notes inside service autopilot. So if you say, have 20 or 30 of these people, I just go through them one by one and be like, okay, they paused a month early. Were they pausing because they thought the season was over and they finished prematurely, or is this someone that actually canceled and moved? There should be that in the office notes. And this is why it'll be nice inside of copilot with having the off season. Because if someone says, oh, I just want to be done for the season, like, we'll address this as we get to the end of the summer. But what we will be eventually training command center on is we're not going to pause that service. We're going to move the off season for that customer up. Like, we're going to, like, pause just the part until the off season so that next spring, they'll still. Their service will still start. So it just be pausing the last two or three visits of the mowing portion of the year, so that way you don't have to. You know, this is the annoying part about pausing service. Like, well, are they pausing because of the end of the season or they pausing because they actually canceled? So, but if It's. If it's 20 or 30, Turrell, I would just go through manually right now, look at the customer notes on the profile and just make sure.

And just see exactly what the reason for them canceling was or if it was like they moved. If they're just pausing services, that's the kind of confusing part. So. All right.

Any other questions?

No. All right, you'll have a fantastic Wednesday. Things are kicking off here.

Tomorrow's March 1st. Is it tomorrow?

Yeah, I think it's tomorrow.

Tomorrow's March 1st.

You know, I got second myself. No, Friday is March 1st. So I know a lot of people are starting to get ramped up for mowing season and sending out their.

Email letting everyone know that you're starting. So very exciting times and looking forward to an awesome spring rush ahead. All right, guys, take care.