Eight systems, and what we got wrong building each one.
No listicles, no predictions about the future of AI. Just long notes on the eight things we build, why they work when they work, and the bits we would not sell to a friend.
08 pieces
New pieces when there is something worth saying, not weekly.
- 01AI Receptionist
Nobody wants to talk to a robot. They want somebody to pick up.
We were embarrassed by AI phone answering for about two years before we were willing to put our name on one. Here is what changed, what a call actually sounds like now, and the moments where it still hands the phone straight back to you.
Read the piece7 min read
- 02Missed-Call Recovery
The text you send in ten seconds beats the callback you make at six
A missed call is not a message waiting for you. It is a countdown. This is what we learned about that countdown, what the first text should say, and why sending it fast matters more than sending it well.
Read the piece5 min read
- 03First Response
Your reply time is a promise, and you are making it by accident
Every business has a reply time. Almost nobody has chosen theirs. It is whatever falls out of who happened to be looking at which app, and it is usually the single cheapest thing to fix.
Read the piece5 min read
- 04Review Engine
Asking for a review is the most awkward thirty seconds of the job
Fourteen years of good work and eleven reviews. It is the most common shape we see, and it is almost never a quality problem. It is that asking out loud, in a driveway, with your hands full, feels like begging.
Read the piece6 min read
- 05AI Review Responder
A one star review is a conversation, and silence is your half of it
The reply is read more carefully than the complaint. It is also the one piece of writing about your business that a stranger knows for certain came from you, which is why we do not let a machine publish it unsupervised.
Read the piece6 min read
- 06Spreadsheet Retirement
In defence of the spreadsheet, and how to tell when it has quietly stopped working
I am not going to tell you the spreadsheet was a mistake. It was the right call, it got you here, and most of the software that wanted to replace it was worse. But there is a point where it stops being a tool and starts being a tax, and it is worth knowing what that looks like.
Read the piece6 min read
- 07Quote to Cash
Most estimates are not turned down. They are just sitting there.
Ask a builder his win rate and he will tell you four in ten. Ask what happened to the other six and it turns out one or two said no and the rest never said anything at all. That silence is the cheapest money in the business.
Read the piece6 min read
- 08Database Reactivation
Your best lead is somebody who already paid you once
A man asked us to build him an ad campaign. He also had fourteen hundred past customers he had not spoken to since the invoice cleared. We did the second thing first, and it cost him nothing but the writing.
Read the piece6 min read
If one of these describes your Tuesday a bit too closely, we will walk through it with you for fifteen minutes and tell you what we would remove first.