Ran an AI voice agent for my pest control business calls for a month - here's what happened

I set up a simple AI voice system to handle after hours calls for my pest control company in Cleveland. I was expecting it to just take messages, but it actually booked three real appointments in the first week without me doing anything. The system asked callers about the type of pest, location, and even gave them a price estimate before scheduling. I kept it running for a full month and it handled around 60 calls, only needing me to step in on 5 of them where people were confused. The main thing I learned is that the technology works better than I thought, but it still can't handle angry customers or folks who talk really fast. Has anyone else tried using one of these for a small business, and did you run into problems with people hanging up?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_jason16d ago

That part about it booking actual appointments without you lifting a finger really hit home for me. I did the same thing with my lawn care side business last summer, and the first time the AI scheduled a full consultation I nearly didn't believe it. I ran into the same problem with fast talkers too, people who rattle off their address and phone number in five seconds flat. The hang up rate was maybe one out of every ten calls, which I figured was better than letting voicemail eat them. I ended up keeping mine on for the whole season and it paid for itself in about two months.

xena37316d ago

I tweaked mine to repeat back addresses slowly and that cut the hang ups way down.

hart.mark15d ago

Honestly, I had the exact same problem with fast talkers. It got to the point where I just programmed mine to pause for a full second after it heard a string of numbers, and then repeat each digit back one at a time. Tbh it made the calls sound a little robotic, but the hang up rate dropped to almost nothing. Ngl I think people just feel more comfortable when they know the system actually caught every detail. I'd rather have a slow robot than a missed appointment any day.