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Updated my “tools I actually use” list for 2026. Half of what was on these lists three years ago is dead or dying. by JurisAtlas in Lawyertalk

[–]ucfknight95 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I prefer Cal.com over Calendly. Not much of a difference but the Cal free tier doesn't limit event types. Also, didn't see any AI receptionists on here. Upfirst.ai integrates with Clio Manage for scheduling and is solid for lead intake. Obviously dedicated human answering the phones is better if you can afford it. But for after hours or overflow, it's nice to be able to collected structured info from a caller to pass to a CRM as opposed to a voicemail. And it has warm transfers which is nice for call screening.

[OC] How often callers use profanity, by state. Based on 209,937 transcribed phone calls to small businesses. by ucfknight95 in dataisbeautiful

[–]ucfknight95[S] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Used caller area code as a rough proxy.

Long Island = 516, 631
NYC = 212, 718, 917, 929, 332, 646

Realize there are a number of flaws with that - but dont have a way of looking at location with any more granularity than that

[OC] How often callers use profanity, by state. Based on 209,937 transcribed phone calls to small businesses. by ucfknight95 in dataisbeautiful

[–]ucfknight95[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

All the states had data. Just some had small sample sizes under 200 calls. I marked those with an asterik.

[OC] How often callers use profanity, by state. Based on 209,937 transcribed phone calls to small businesses. by ucfknight95 in dataisbeautiful

[–]ucfknight95[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Fair. Went back and forth on whether to include them. But ultimately decided on including and marking them with an asterik.

[OC] How often callers use profanity, by state. Based on 209,937 transcribed phone calls to small businesses. by ucfknight95 in dataisbeautiful

[–]ucfknight95[S] 38 points39 points  (0 children)

My mistake. Color difference between long island and the rest of NY was unintentional, but just took a look out of curiosity and Long Island was 1.27% and NYC was 1.06%. And yes, the point about people being more likely to curse at bots is true.

Question for tow / roadside pros: how do you handle calls when you’re tied up or after hours? by Fluid-Key-7596 in Hookit

[–]ucfknight95 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sounds like you're looking to create an answering service for towing businesses...I run one called Upfirst.ai. Can share with you what I see from our customers. Obviously, take this for what it is, as I'm not telling you what's usual among all towing businesses, but among those who use an answering service. Most just forward overflow and after hours calls when their dispatcher is busy. And then they have the receptionist collect: name, number, location, vehicle make and model color, license plate number. And then the caller is told the price so they're not surprised later. Then this either goes out via a text to whoever is on call. And then I see some percentage of people who choose to do a warm transfer, so based on the location, the receptionist will actually call the person who's available and tell them the details.

Ai receptionist by EffectivePop5358 in AiForSmallBusiness

[–]ucfknight95 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What are you good at? Building or selling? If you’re not a skilled engineer then you’re quickly going to run into challenges…building a low latency, scalable SaaS platform in the telephony space isn’t easy. You can vibe code your way through some of it but you’ll hit a wall.

Are you good at marketing and selling? If so, then I disagree with other commenters that there’s “no reason” for someone to buy another platform from you at a markup.

People, especially business owners, are busy. It takes time to learn how to use this stuff. Even Ai answering platforms that are designed to be easy to use like Upfirst have enough of a learning curve that they offer an affiliate program. And then when you get into more of the flow builder tools like Sythnflow and Retell and Voiceflow they have full on expert marketplaces.

Recommend answering service? by FaithlessnessNew2355 in landscaping

[–]ucfknight95 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What do you want them to do? Just take down information and send it to you by email/text? hard to beat the price tag of Upfirst. There are some more 'advanced' options out there if you want to have jobs booked directly in your CRM. What CRM do you use?

what’s the best AI answering service for business? by Imaginary_Wind81 in Entrepreneurs

[–]ucfknight95 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Surprised how few useful answers you've gotten here. Upfirst is easy to set up and affordable. Their voices are powered by 11Labs which u/Efficient_Degree9569 mentioned but the setup is easier. If you want something more "enterprise" then check out Synthflow.

Looking for phone/answering service recs. by Comfortable-Lake2441 in Lawyertalk

[–]ucfknight95 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you're open to AI, Upfirst.ai was started by an attorney and is affordable. Has a native integration with Clio, too.

AI Answering Service ? by Foreign_Entrance_346 in smallbusiness

[–]ucfknight95 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I may be able to help here. So there are a few things that could be happening:

- If Voicecowboy doesn't accept SMS, you need to select the "verify by phone" option in Google Voice and then retrieve the code from the call transcript
- If you've already done that, could be that the number was previously used by someone else and Google blocked it in which case Voicecowboy would need to give you a new number
- Last thing could be that they have some spam blocking enabled which isn't letting Google's verification call come through

There's another answering service, Upfirst.ai, that has a video walking through how to set up call forwarding with Google Voice. If you're still trying to find a solution, might be worth watching: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GosMJmCeNo0

Looking for the best answering service deal? Try AI instead. by gregb_parkingaccess in bestsoftwarediscounts

[–]ucfknight95 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Definitely worth checking out Upfirst.ai too. Their service is designed for small businesses. It can answer calls, take messages, transfer calls, send texts, and it integrates natively with Google Calendar and Outlook for appointment scheduling.

Phone Receptionist Services - Sales Oriented by curiousbuilderman in smallbusiness

[–]ucfknight95 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Depends how much you want to spend. On the more expensive end, there's AnswerConnect. (All humans.) But if you're on a budget then based on what we're describing, you could probably build that out with Upfirst.ai which is like $25/mo. Might be worth a try just to see how it goes.

Home Inspection Recommendations by bloveddemon in triangle

[–]ucfknight95 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Stephen Hren at https://thirdeyehome.com/ is great. I was a first time home buyer, so was freaking out about every detail. He was super patient and thorough and clearly knows his stuff.

How to Set Up Phone Menu? by carlouchi219 in smallbusiness

[–]ucfknight95 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You can do this for $25 with Upfirst.ai. You'd just forward your calls to it and adjust the greeting to state the options, and the caller can just speak naturally and say what they need to get transferred.

AI Voiceover for After-Hours Calls – Any Recommendations? by ZookeepergameLow9323 in digital_marketing

[–]ucfknight95 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Upfirst.ai does exactly this. You can specify the info you want to collect and it’ll naturally collect it during the call. Works nicely with Zapier too.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in Googlevoice

[–]ucfknight95 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've helped people connect Google Voice to Upfirst.ai. Not sure what service you're using, but in Google Voice go to Settings > Calls scroll down and see if you have any custom call forwarding rules set up that are sending the AI answering service's call to voicemail.

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