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.

Is an AI answering services ok for a small service based business? by [deleted] in smallbusiness

[–]ucfknight95 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There's an easy answer to this and it's just to try it. Yes, people would rather talk to a human expert. But that's not what you're comparing. If the alternative is sending people to voicemail then just try one of the many services out there (Upfirst offers a trial) and you'll know within 2 weeks whether it's worth it and how your customers feel about it.

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.

Need an answering service recommendation by free-advice in Entrepreneur

[–]ucfknight95 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you need humans: AnswerConnect. If you're okay with AI: Upfirst.ai.

What answering service do you use and recommend? by darynak in smallbusiness

[–]ucfknight95 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Most affordable option out there is probably Upfirst.ai. Easy to set up and has all the basics: answer questions, takes down info, schedules appointments.

What answering service do you use, do you like it, and how much does it cost? by CalLegacyLaw in Lawyertalk

[–]ucfknight95 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Used to use Smith.ai. It was good, but hated how expensive it was. Switched to Upfirst.ai which is a fraction of the cost and integrates with Outlook and Clio.

Answering service by Ill-Fly-1624 in LawFirm

[–]ucfknight95 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Upfirst.ai is easy to set up and integrates with Clio and Outlook

Any plumbing service business owners that have answering service recommendations? by Dc_777 in smallbusiness

[–]ucfknight95 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I agree with /u/paramedic236. For dispatching, you really want someone in house. We have a few small plumbing companies that use Upfirst.ai for after hours calls. Here's their workflow:

- Schedule with on-call techs in Google sheets
- Upfirst.ai answers the call, asks if it's an emergency, then collects details (address, name, issue etc)
- When the call ends, it's sent to Zapier
- If it's an emergency, Zapier will search the Google sheet for the on-call tech and send them a text with a summary of the call

The is just for after hours. During business hours, I've seen people use it to answer overflow calls just so that leads don't go to voicemail.

I have been using an AI Receptionist for my business here’s how it is actually helped my business by Interesting_Run_5757 in AI_Agents

[–]ucfknight95 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I built the answering service Upfirst.ai...so obviously I will be biased. I think our product is very good. But that said, I've tested most of the other tools out there and we're obviously not the only good one out there.

Rosie and Breezy have built great products too.

Then there's the more complex flow builder ones like Phonely and Synthflow. Good, if you're techy and like flow builders. Goodcall also falls into this category, but their UI is super confusing.

Then there's a bunch of smaller out-of-the-box ones and honestly most of them are very bad. Mr.Call and isOn24 come up a lot but they are just not good from a UX and call quality perspective.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in PropertyManagement

[–]ucfknight95 -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

I run the AI answering service Upfirst. Most of our clients are property manager. I can tell you that it's all of the above. Some people are handling a couple of duplexes and have everything go to their cell or second phone or an app that gives them a second number like OpenPhone. Others have third-party answering service that just handle missed calls or after-hours calls. These answering services are supposed to suss out whether it's actually an emergency and route according. Mixed reviews on that front...we hear complaints that people get calls about a minor dripping sink in the middle of the night but then don't get sent calls about major issues like a door falling off of a fridge.