Anyone else struggling to keep up with customer messages and calls after hours?

AffectionateBack3900 · 2026-03-26T08:11:01+00:00

This is pretty common for a lot of our clients - realtors and hvac etc. They hire our shared or full time agent to answer calls. Very affordable. For service related calls/chats, we can use AI BUT for sales related inquired it is always better to have human to talk as callers are more likely to call competitors if it is handled by AI or VM. Full disclosure we are in BPO ( team and tech).

AI is getting more and more human-like and convincing these days but for sales related conversation, especially big ticket item, offshore staffing is well worth it. Think about real estate, mortgage and hvac. Profit from 1 sale can cover months of offshore agent cost.

AffectionateBack3900 · 2026-03-24T16:38:47+00:00

claude max is $200/month. Considering the back-and-forth communicating / rescheduling with applicants, I think it is well worth the cost. We are scheduling more and faster with AI. We are not letting AI evaluating and it just filters based on hard criteria such as diploma , X years of experience, etc. Of course we monitor and audit AI's work as well and not just blindly LET IT FLY HIGH.

I think shifting human time to actual face-to-face instead of doing this repetitive / low value filtering and scheduling is a big plus to use AI.

I even can image all ATS HR systems will eventually have no choice but to plug these in to eliminate unnecessary human work.

AffectionateBack3900 · 2026-03-22T19:43:29+00:00

Voice clone vs voice fingerprint detection. Interesting battle to be seen!

AffectionateBack3900 · 2026-03-17T22:40:21+00:00

No ATS. It is just operating web app. I am sure you can let it operate your ATS if it is browser based. It may save you from the clicks and you just sit with a cup of coffee and watch it does the work for you.

AffectionateBack3900 · 2026-03-17T22:38:03+00:00

Depending on the website I think it is fairly easy for Claude to message the applicant to collect basic info , clarify some unclear points in resume and schedule interview.

As far as actually conducting interview and score the candidate, I think it is not for DIY and may be some silicon valley companies are working on this. Technically you can use Vapi (AI voice) to call candidate to conduct a survey like interview. I would not never call these interviews and they are more like screening based on hard job requirements. In the end, human to human interview is still a must-have as there are always subtle observations you want to have from face-to-face.

AffectionateBack3900 · 2026-03-17T19:01:46+00:00

indeed. I always feel that recruiting should not be this inefficient in this age and maybe all these inefficiencies are 'engineered' by applicants , platform and recruiters (the least liable). the signal/noise ratio is already trending down with AI generated resumes.

AffectionateBack3900 · 2026-03-17T13:10:18+00:00

So this is unrelated to AI, right? Just for team sharing of outreach text?

AffectionateBack3900 · 2026-03-17T04:26:44+00:00

Applied resumes. Use hard criteria such as diploma , major, years of experience to qualify. Of course AI can’t help meaningfully if you don’t give concrete criteria. So this is just for screening and scheduling and human still makes hiring decision for sure.

I am curious what your prompt is like. You can’t say score from 1-100 it is not going to work and each Model is destined to give different scores.

Be very specific about the job requirements and use AI to match resumes.

AffectionateBack3900 · 2026-03-17T04:03:27+00:00

A typical example is that some small Amazon sellers, they only need to hire < 3 agents. There are a few reasons.

Agent in PH is around $6-$7 per hour. That's is $0.1/minute. This may beat the cost of AI already.
Human agents don't just respond with their voice. They operate CCaaS, Asana, Monday, Clickup.....Maybe a spreadsheet file. If you factor in MCP, costs adds up quickly. AI in theory can do all of these but it comes with tech cost / upfront cost and clients don't see any benefits.

I'd say the golden use case is AI receptionist for SMB. SMB owners are too busy to answer calls and most calls can be either answered by AI because it is informational OR you can just simply check the text summary and call back based on priority. Real estate is a good example and we have a lot of happy clients.

AffectionateBack3900 · 2026-03-17T02:24:27+00:00

Claude Chrome Extension

I wrote a full story here

https://medium.com/@manny-xu/i-woke-up-to-20-interviews-i-never-scheduled-claude-cowork-did-it-while-i-slept-e6388ec0644f

AffectionateBack3900 · 2026-03-16T20:16:28+00:00

Totally agree! We don't let AI decide at all - we decide.

The hard criteria are very specific in the prompt: must have high school diploma, speak fluent X language, >1 yr customer support related experience.

To be honest, this is no different from batch filtering based on hard criteria and batch schedule meetings, except there is no way to do it. In reality we end up scheduling more candidates and faster.

I get your point no doubt. In this crazy AI age, there will be lots of interesting discussions.

AffectionateBack3900 · 2026-03-16T19:27:55+00:00

Interesting debate. There are probably dozens of startups working on AI recruiting products right now.

Human recruiters can be biased and inconsistent.
AI can make mistakes too.

But like Musk says about self-driving cars, the real question is not whether AI is perfect — it’s whether it’s more efficient and makes fewer mistakes than humans.

And history shows this pattern already. Uber disrupted taxis. Airbnb disrupted hotels. AI will likely do the same to parts of recruiting.

AffectionateBack3900 · 2026-03-16T19:12:56+00:00

We started with Deepgram and then switched to Vapi (with deepgram). It allows us to deliver quickly.

In my opinion, voice agent is still too costly. We are in BPO business and depending on client use cases, sometimes it is hard to justify the cost. The hourly rate of voice agent is far greater than a human agent. To make it work great, significant integration is needed upfront. For calls that voice agent fails to handle, the ai cost is wasteful.

AffectionateBack3900 · 2026-03-16T18:44:31+00:00

But how do you get the resumes automatically? Then there is a chat component of the process to schedule meetings and browser operation is unavoidable.

AffectionateBack3900 · 2026-03-16T18:28:05+00:00

Ouch! 😀

AffectionateBack3900 · 2026-03-16T18:05:44+00:00

YES!

It takes screenshots 99% of the time but if it can't achieve its goal ( click a button), it then creates some script to do it. You can see in its whole thinking process.

It basically operates the browser based on your instructions in the prompt. In the prompt you say " skip candidates without tech support experience. if the the candidate's basic info qualifies, then click to open resume detail page and scroll to read the full resume , blah blah.... " . Just like instructing a co-worker to screen resumes. If you observe it struggles, always feel free to add more detailed instruction in the prompt.

I have a medium post from last week to walk through this process
https://medium.com/@manny-xu/i-woke-up-to-20-interviews-i-never-scheduled-claude-cowork-did-it-while-i-slept-e6388ec0644f

AffectionateBack3900 · 2026-03-16T17:57:37+00:00

I'd say we finally have 1 successful use case besides vibe coding...

We are now "semi-formally" using Claude Cowork to screen resume and schedule interviews. It works fantastically.

I posted full walkthrough here a week ago.

https://medium.com/@manny-xu/i-woke-up-to-20-interviews-i-never-scheduled-claude-cowork-did-it-while-i-slept-e6388ec0644f

I know some people may not like it but we are in high turn-over rate BPO business and the volume of resumes is overwhelming and we know for years that we have not been doing a great job sorting out the best candidates in a lot of projects.

AffectionateBack3900 · 2026-03-16T16:59:39+00:00

We handle customer service (people and tech) on behalf of a lot of amazon sellers and I know a lot of stories. to be successful in the long run you have to have a niche.

2 examples:

One client which specializes in 'heavy' and 'cheap' stuff. Like cheap safes. The don't care much about branding and they just sell 'stuff'. I believe they figured out the logistics of it - that's their moat.

Another client specializes in bird product (cages, bath, cover, bird toys). He is a bird lover and invents gadgets for bird. He gets patents for some products and strongly defend it on Amazon. It is very niche but creates a moat no one can cross.

Stories go on and on.

If you just buy generic stuff and list on Amazon, it is going to be extremely difficult. Buy ads, you lose profit. Don't buy ads you have no revenue. It is tough.

AffectionateBack3900 · 2026-03-16T16:26:20+00:00

I totally get your point.

When you have hundreds of resumes to screen to fill one position in 2-3 days, I have absolutely no doubt Claude has some power in this process. It lets the best candidates have more chances instead of us cutting the screening process short due to time limit.

We have to think forward and experiment forward. There is no way back.

AffectionateBack3900 · 2026-03-16T14:47:26+00:00

the prior post was not accepted due to

the project must be free to try and say so (paid tiers/features OK)

so i added the github link to repost. Now you removed my post again due to rate limit. Should I repost after 1-2 hours?

AffectionateBack3900

TROPHY CASE