Accelerated HVAC Success Podcast
00:08:25 · Ben Middleton
[00:08:25] S1: So I know that there's probably a group of contractors out there right now that are listening to this that are familiar with ChatGPT. They've logged in. They played a little bit. Maybe they're helping... It's helping them to clean up emails, clean up their grammar. Like you said, even, you know, your mother is using it to to make sure that she communicates her ideas clearly and concisely to the people that she's communicating with, which makes all of the sense in the world. Maybe some people are getting a little bit more advanced or using AI to organize their schedule, to collect their thoughts. I, you know, I use it all the time now. You know, I have an idea pop into my head. You can just real quickly put it into the... Into chat. And then at the end of the day, you can say, summarize all my thoughts that I had today, and you have that nice list of of information there. You can use it to analyze data. So you can upload spreadsheets and say, hey, what can you tell me about this this set of data that I'm putting in here? And it can give you really good information. Daikin today is using AI, and we're about to release an assistant. So you can just scan a model number, and it will bring up all of manuals, and it'll tell you which pages you need to look at in that service manual to be able to accomplish whatever task you're using for. So there's all these great use cases that you can utilize AI for. I do wanna know what is the the the story behind the name Broccoli?
00:09:47 · AJ Jain, Ben Middleton
[00:09:47] S2: I don't think we have enough time for this, but our short answer is very, like simple to the point. Broccoli is good for you. It's healthy. And Broccoli AI is good for your business. That's it. Like, and same way as Broccoli, a lot of people don't like it, but it's good for you. AI, same. It's scary. What about the human connection? I've built this business based on relationships. We're not taking away anything. It's just helping you fix some things that were broken where a customer was on hold for nine minutes. Was being answered by an answering service that had no idea about your business. So Broccoli is a much better alternative than the previous solution. So that's it. It's just good for you. [00:10:29] S1: Okay. Yeah. Well, tell me a little bit. [00:10:31] S2: What does Broccoli do? Yeah. So Broccoli is democratizing access to great customer service. Just like, I'm just building upon what we just discussed. Right now, as a contractor, you need to invest so much in into your call center to make sure your CSRs are trained, they have knowledge about your services, your brand. You need to coach them on empathy as well. So it's hard. You need time, resources and money to do that. Broccoli's goal is to democratize that and offer the best customer service out of the box through AI. So this was a very philosophical answer, but the simple answer is we build AI voice agents for HVAC plumbing and electrical contractors.
00:10:31 · AJ Jain, Ben Middleton
[00:10:31] S2: What does Broccoli do? Yeah. So Broccoli is democratizing access to great customer service. Just like, I'm just building upon what we just discussed. Right now, as a contractor, you need to invest so much in into your call center to make sure your CSRs are trained, they have knowledge about your services, your brand. You need to coach them on empathy as well. So it's hard. You need time, resources and money to do that. Broccoli's goal is to democratize that and offer the best customer service out of the box through AI. So this was a very philosophical answer, but the simple answer is we build AI voice agents for HVAC plumbing and electrical contractors. [00:11:20] S1: It's interesting you talk about that. The other day, I was calling a hotel because I needed to change a reservation for some travel I was doing for work. And I think it took a good three minutes before I figured out I was actually talking to an AI voice agent. It was that good that I had no idea that I was not talking to a human being until I finally stumped it on a question that I had. But that voice... AI voice agents have come a long ways in just a year.
00:11:20 · Ben Middleton, AJ Jain
[00:11:20] S1: It's interesting you talk about that. The other day, I was calling a hotel because I needed to change a reservation for some travel I was doing for work. And I think it took a good three minutes before I figured out I was actually talking to an AI voice agent. It was that good that I had no idea that I was not talking to a human being until I finally stumped it on a question that I had. But that voice... AI voice agents have come a long ways in just a year. [00:11:48] S2: Yeah. Yeah. Honestly, even I'm shocked at the way voice as a technology has evolved. It has kind of crossed the uncanny valley. Mhmm. Where it's a much more human like experience. The AI also has empathy. And honestly, it's it's it feels magical where you can offer the best customer service even if somebody calls you on a Sunday evening at 9PM. You you don't, like humans have emotions and even I, like my mood changes throughout the day, but see AI won't won't throw tantrums and would just be smiling and offering, trying to help a customer. So from a customer point of view, I think that's gonna be a much better experience for sure. Yeah. So what [00:12:38] S1: objections do you hear from contractors or hesitations do you hear from contractors of saying, yeah, I wanna use this technology or I think maybe it's a good idea, but I'm not ready for it. Where where do you get the pushback on it?
00:12:38 · Ben Middleton, AJ Jain
[00:12:38] S1: objections do you hear from contractors or hesitations do you hear from contractors of saying, yeah, I wanna use this technology or I think maybe it's a good idea, but I'm not ready for it. Where where do you get the pushback on it? [00:12:50] S2: Yeah. And to answer this question, I don't think AI is for everyone today. Mhmm. It again depends on what systems you have in place. If you have an amazing call center that you're really happy with, you should use them. You should hire more folks if you can. But the bigger problem is people are not able to hire great CSRs. Even if you have a CSR, once they go back home, you rely on an answering service. Mhmm. Everybody loves their answering service. So we're trying to solve those problems. We don't go in and say that fire your call center. That's not our pitch. Our pitch is that today's AI is 10 x better than an outsourced answering service and a great backup to your team. So if you don't want any customer to wait on hold as your CSRs are on the phone helping other customers, use AI. It's a great backup. And if you feel the AI is doing a good enough job, you'll you'll allow the AI to answer more calls. But as of today, we just treat the AI as a backup to your existing, an augmentation to your existing call center. So... [00:13:57] S1: Yeah. So does AI tie into your dispatch tools, into your scheduling tools? Where do you have integrations today?
00:13:57 · Ben Middleton, AJ Jain
[00:13:57] S1: Yeah. So does AI tie into your dispatch tools, into your scheduling tools? Where do you have integrations today? [00:14:05] S2: Yeah. Broccoli is a very focused company. We are purpose built for contractors. So we don't do this for healthcare companies or insurance. So we understand their systems. We integrate with their CRMs like ServiceTitan. We know what is on their dispatch board, the AI can prioritize job. So if somebody says my AC is not working, the AI is smart enough to ask them, what's the issue? How old is the how old is the equipment? If it's greater than ten years old, most likely it's a replacement. So it's a higher priority job. Then we'll book the job on the dispatch board in their CRM and Broccoli can also double down as a dispatcher where we'll also, if it's an emergency, Broccoli can call the on call technician and say that, hi Jonathan, a new emergency service was just booked. So we close the loop and it's more like a lead management platform. Broccoli can do outbounding as well to schedule reoccurring services for members. We do SMS. So every channel you get a lead from Google, LSA, Yelp, Broccoli can make an outbound phone call within seconds. So we we help them not miss on a single lead across every every channel. [00:15:18] S1: Can AI do any prioritizing by by looking at the quality of the lead and saying, okay. This lead is gonna be a a much more high quality vetted lead, if you will, versus this lead over here and help... Does it do... Go that far in the dispatching?