Making $$$ with Voice AI agents and SaaS (my little secret)

Category: Business Ideas

Tags: AIAutomationStartupsTechnologyVoice

Entities: AppFolioBrexDentrixOpen DentalRetailStartup EmpireSynthflowTwilioVappy

Transcript

00:00

Today we're going to talk about how to make money with voice AI agents. Now, I think a lot of people when they hear voice AI agents, they just think of these like robot callers that actually are horrible experiences.

Now, I think that there are tons of those poorly set

00:17

up voice AI agents, but at the same time, we're getting to a point where some of these voice agents actually sound like human beings. And I think there's a bunch of businesses that you can create using voice AI agents that could generate a lot of money.

So today,

00:34

we're going to give you a a primer on how to master voice AI agents, and I'm going to give away a bunch of startup ideas, the exact workflows on how to actually create these startup ideas and frameworks. And let's just start with one just to get just to get you excited.

00:51

You know, I want I want you to feel excited. And I know that when you go through this startup idea, you're going to be like, "Wow, I could sit through this entire episode to learn exactly how to build these voice AI agents." So,

01:07

[Music] >> this is startup idea number one. It's an AI property manager voice line.

How does it work? We've all been there.

We're renting an apartment, your toilet

01:24

breaks. So, you end up call you call this line 1 800 tenant whatever and it transcribes in real time uh what what you're saying.

So, it said it knows that you said toilet broken and then it classifies the

01:41

issue as urgent versus non-urgent. Based on that, it'll either create a high priority ticket using an API and then it'll dispatch a request with notes and photos and then you actually get a text with uh your the ETA and a ticket link.

01:58

But if it's not urgent, um you know, it'll just log the ticket with normal priority and then it'll text troubleshooting steps and tickets and then you get a push call summary and a sentiment. So this whole process you can use uh you know vapy and 11 labs you can

02:16

use deep gram and whisper you can use a property management tool like app folio or buildium and just uh uh connect with those those softwares and that's by the way one of the things I love about voice AI agents is you can use it and connect it to outside software

02:33

repair vendor and then you can use something like Twilio for SMS if you didn't really understand that uh you this framework. I also like thinking about it from a flow perspective.

So, uh the inbound ten tenant calls you issue

02:49

the category is it urgent then you create the ticket. If it's not urgent creates the ticket and self-help SMS and then you sync the summary to the dashboard.

This is a business that someone could create and charge $500 a

03:05

month, $1,000 a month, $1,500 a month. And you know, you don't need that many customers to, you know, have a million-doll business here.

So, I think it's totally possible. Um, and I know that there's people listening to this that are going to say, "Well, this

03:21

already exists." Or, you know, the other the old school property managers are going to get into this. Well, okay.

If that's the case, just go nicher. create an AI property management voice line for Quebec or Canada or, you know, with a

03:39

specific type of brand. Um, so I think it's it's totally doable.

Now, I'm going by the end of at the end of the episode, I'm going to go through four more ideas like this and I'm just going to give it away. People charge for this stuff.

I'm just giving it away. I want you to have

03:54

the sauce. I want you to build something.

My goal is to get you bu to build something. But I need to start by just explaining lay of the land the foundations a primer about what you know what what what is a voice AI agent why why you should care and what are the

04:10

different types of voice AI agents. So a voice AI agent is basically a software system that can have natural phone conversations with human beings that understand what people want and that take actions to help them.

Think of them

04:25

as digital employees with three superpowers. Listen and understand.

Listen and understand human speech in real time. Think and reason about what you're asking for and speak and act to solve your problems.

Now, there's four main

04:40

types of voice AI agents. Number one, you have customer service agents handling complaints, returns, order status.

Number two, you have sales and leads qualifications. That's qualifying prospects, gathering requirements.

Number three, you have appointment

04:57

scheduling. You can book meetings, manage calendars, and lastly, you have information and support, answering questions, providing business info.

You know, that's what the four main types are. Now, if we just zoom in here, this is the way to think about it.

Uh, how

05:13

does this work? How do these voice agents work?

Well, basically, step one is they listen to your voice. I need to book an an an appointment.

Step two is, and this is the key point, and this is why it it's finally starting to get voice AI agents are starting to get

05:28

good, is because the models are getting better. So, there's an AI brain that understands the intent.

So, basically, when you're when you're on the phone with uh with one of these bots, you're on the phone with, you know, an LLM, a Gemini, a chat GBT. Um, so it

05:45

understands what's happening. And then there's text to speech.

Step three, text to speech. That converts the response to voice.

I'd be happy with that. And step four, there's some action.

So, it takes an action in a business system. It books the appointment.

It updates a CRM in

06:00

Salesforce. It sends a confirmation.

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06:32

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06:49

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07:06

better, too, and you can't be mad at that. Now, what are the key technology components and what tools do we need to care about?

And by the way, at the end of the very end of this episode, I will go through which tools uh you know, the

07:21

pros and cons of some of these tools and how and if you're technical, which tools you should use and if you're non-technical, which tools you should use. That'll be at the end of the episode.

Now, um there's a few components to voice AI agents. You have the speech to text.

So, that's going to,

07:36

you know, you're going to need that to convert the voice to text. So you can use something like deep gram whisper assembly AI.

Uh an AI brain you can use something like C GPT uh GP5 I guess code and Gemini uh text to speech you can use

07:52

11 labs uh which I've talked about a lot on on the pod cartigia opents and then there's these platforms that basically handle everything for you. I've had Lindy AI on on on the on the uh on the podcast before.

they do a lot of

08:09

voice AI, but Vappy and Synflow and Retail um are also uh the big ones. So th those are that's kind of the from a tech perspective like what you need.

And a lot of people think that uh voice AI

08:26

agents are just really just focused on like it's it's a limited use case and it's just not true. Like you can apply voice AI agents to healthcare, you know, appointment booking, insurance verification, home services, emergency calls, service scheduling, legal, client

08:41

intake, case screening, restaurants, reservations, menu questions, real estate, lead qualification, showing schedules, e-commerce, order status, and returns and exchange. So, this is, you know, it it we we haven't even scratched the surface on on what to do with voice

08:57

AI agents. I want to just make one important point here.

A lot of the time actually human beings are better than the voice AI agents. The only thing is human beings don't work 24/7 and voice AI agents can and also

09:15

uh some people don't have the budget to hire 10 sales reps or 10 uh book you know assistants and stuff like that. So they it's just cheaper to to do this, right?

If you're trying to save money, it's it's a good way to do it. I will

09:31

say though, if it's a complex request, what I like to do here is, you know, I I'll I'll start a voice AI agent, but if it's complicated and I and the LM could see it's complicated, you can have it transfer to a human. So you can say, let

09:47

me connect you with someone who can help. the other the and what some people do here is if it's salesreated, if it's if it's close to making a sale, just transfer it to a human being.

So, that's just something to think about uh is like kind of like a hybrid appro approach.

10:03

You don't need to go full-on 100% voice AI agent. You can have some voice AI agents help you and that'll get your cost down, help you scale.

And then when you actually want to do the sale or you want more of a white glove experience, that's when you do transfer to human. Uh

10:18

we have a paid membership for entrepreneurs called Startup Empire. There's about 600 people in it and it just helps people who are idea people, help them build their businesses faster.

We thought it would be fun to build a Vappy um AI agent that gets feedback

10:34

from our customers because we always want to make it better and better. Um and we used a flow like this and it's it's working pretty well.

And I'm going to actually call Anna, that's her name, Anna the uh Anna Eisenberg AI.

10:50

Um call her and uh see what uh see what she has to say for us. And and and this is this is how good voice AI agents are.

Don't take my word for it. Take Anna's.

>> Hello, this is Anna. I'm Startup Empire's AI assistant.

I'll be in charge

11:07

of collecting any feedback you have about your experience in Startup Empire. All of your feedback will be completely anonymous unless you decide otherwise.

Let's get started. Would you mind telling us your name?

If not, just say no thank you. >> My name is Greg.

11:24

>> How has being part of Startup Empire helped you or your business? >> It's been pretty good.

I've only been a member for 30 days and I noticed that there's some amazing people in the community, but I want to spend more time with them. I just don't know how.

11:39

>> Could you please provide more details? >> Yeah, absolutely.

I noticed that there was someone named Jordan in the community and I I I want to hop on a Zoom with him or just get to know him better because I just think he's super

11:54

smart. What did you think was the most useful or impactful part of your experience?

>> I would say every few weeks the Tony does a an AI chat where he just shows the latest stuff and and what what

12:10

what's working for him. That has been the most interesting thing for me.

>> If you could change one thing about our community or product, what would it be and why? >> I think that there's so many smart people in the community.

It's just about how do I spend more time with them?

12:26

>> Is there anything else you'd like to add? >> No.

>> Thanks for taking the time to give us feedback. We appreciate you.

Bye >> bye. So the cool thing about it is now uh what we do is we actually take that feedback, we send it to an LLM.

It

12:42

summarizes it. It shares it on our Slack.

And I can actually show you that. See Empire notifications.

You can see Greg. So, Greg, a 30-day startup empire member, shared valuable feedback, highlighting the community's smart people in Tony's impactful AI sessions.

12:59

His main suggestion is to create more opportunities for members to connect deeper and specifically mentioning want to interact with more community members like Jordan. How cool is that?

How cool is that? And now our community manager can go in and

13:14

be like, "Okay, there's this person named Greg. Let's go connect him with Jordan.

Let's do more events." um and everyone on our team could see. So, this is a bit of the primer on what voice AI agents are.

And I want to get to the fun stuff. I want to get to the ideas.

I

13:30

want to give that these ideas and I hope you uh you end up building it. The second idea is an AI patient intake assistant for dentists.

So, uh you know, you call up this number. I'd like to book a cleaning.

It

13:46

transcribes um an entity extract. So your name, your date of birth, your insurer, and then it checks the patient record.

Are you an existing or new patient? If you're a new patient, it needs your insurance provider and member ID.

So then it goes

14:03

and creates that um and then it'll create that in a in a software. The popular ones in the dental world are Dentrix and Open Dental.

It queries uh the appointment slots. It'll see if there's available times.

It offers the top three times for you. You select the

14:20

slot, the book, it books the slot, but plus a little buffer. It adds appointments and the notes and then it sends the confirmation and forms link.

So the text stack needed for something like this is uh you're going to use something like a Vappy, a deepgram,

14:36

whatever system that the dentist is using. Uh calendar, you can use, you know, Google calendar or Calendarly.

Um, and then Twilio. Um, so super simple idea, something that you could sell to, you know, dental companies all day long.

14:53

Um, it's a it's a it's a huge value ad for people to be able to call at any hour of the day to do this. And then dental offices are are good customers.

Like they they make a lot of money. There's a lot of revenue there.

I could see you end up potentially selling this

15:09

to one of the practice systems. It's like not crazy that you scale this to12 $2 million in revenue and they're like, "Yeah, we'll pay you four to 6x revenue." Um, and you know, life-changing uh result.

So, I

15:25

love this idea. I think it's interesting.

Someone please build it. And then from a flow perspective, this is what it looks like.

The call starts um and matches by the name and date of birth. um the yes no and you get your SMS confirmation.

15:42

That's idea number two. Idea number three, and I I I must say I stole this idea from ideabrowser.com where if you haven't been already, go there to grab all your startup ideas.

Um so what is the a what is it? It what is number

15:58

three? AI HOA hotline.

So um HOAs are huge especially in the United States. There's I think must be millions of people living in HOAs.

So let's say you you call this hotline. It says when is the trash pickup?

It looks through

16:14

semantic search in the FAQ um or database knowledge database. It finds the answer.

Gives you the answer snippet. It provides the time and rules.

It log the calls and resolution and um

16:29

it collects the details, address and evidence. It stores the structured result or sorry it stores the structured record and it creates the ticket and notifies the HOA manager.

So this is a very simple very very simple flow. Um

16:47

and I wanted to put this here because it's also you know it's just not that complicated and it's about having the information in a database like you can store it in an air table. like this is a simple simple uh voice AI agent business that you can create use retail or Vappy

17:05

um you'll have to obviously have the knowledge database you have to create that content but you probably already have it anyways um and then yeah you just literally use an air table. So super super simple um HOAs have a lot of money um it's a good customer to sell

17:22

into. uh it can scale a lot um and uh makes the lives of people better.

So um that's that's idea number three for you. This one this is a this is a funny one.

So um

17:41

I don't know about you but uh I kind of remember this being a problem in elementary school. So it's called the AI school absence line.

So Johnny, you know, you call this number and you say Johnny Smith, grade four is sick today. It transcribes and extracts those

17:58

entities. So it's like, okay, Johnny Smith, name grade four.

Got it. Name, grade, date, reason.

It validates that Johnny Smith is in fact a student uh in you know uh Miami public in Miami

18:14

grade school. And if it's valid, it append it appends the absence row.

It compiles and sends an 8 am daily report um to P school which is uh software uh for um K through 12 uh it's a it's like

18:33

a vertical software for K through 12 um for schools. It confirms it and uh yeah you you can have it as to repeat and clarify and it flags the exception for the office.

So, you know, could be cool,

18:48

right? could be cool.

Just like a very more a very uh clean way of dealing with people are sick, kids get sick and they get sick all the time. And wouldn't it be great if it just automatically updated the

19:04

database into a Google sheet, there's a daily email report. This is valuable.

Now, it is harder to sell to schools. It is harder to sell to schools.

So, I think that if I were going to do something like this, it might be one of those things where you kind of give it away. You give it away and you get them

19:22

on the on the product and then over time once you've earned their trust, then you upsell them. So, that that's what I would do here.

I would literally give this away. Um, and uh and then start there's, you know, once once you're in their system and you're integrated, then you can think about, you know, what are

19:38

other things that you can go ahead and sell to them. So, um, it might look like a funny, simple idea, um, that can't go anywhere, but I actually think it's like a sneaky, really good idea that's a huge wedge into something that can be a lot bigger.

19:54

And here's the flow for for folks that want to screenshot that. Uh, another idea, and we have I think we have one more idea, and then we're going to get to um the different tools and and and and the pros and cons, uh, if you're technical or non-technical.

So, this one

20:10

is the AI trade contracting uh contractor answering service. So, basically an answering service if you're a plumber, HVAC, electrician had to do a boring business idea in here.

So, okay, let's break it down. How does this work?

So, the customer calls in and says, "The

20:28

water heater is leaking." You do an urgency check plus address plus photos via an SMS link. And then it queries the next slot by zone and tech.

You get the slot options um via Google

20:44

calendar. Um and then you offer the earliest window.

So you know I should have said the voice agent is something like a Vappy and 11 Labs. You're checking the calendar.

You're offering the earliest uh window and if they accept then you can actually take the deposit using Stripe or whatever payment

21:01

processing you use. Um, and then if it's successful, um, that's awesome.

You can create a job ticket and attach photos. Um, and then you can do an SMS confirmation and prep instruction.

So, what I love about these voice AI agents

21:18

and and it's built into all these different softwares is it it makes it a lot easier for the businesses, right? So, if it makes it a lot easier for the businesses, there is value that you're creating for them.

And if there is value that you're creating for them, you can charge them money for it. Now, how much

21:36

could you charge? I don't know, a few hundred a month, maybe.

Um, $800, $500. Um, tough to say exactly, but I do think that they'd be willing to pay for it and on a monthly basis.

So, um, I like this idea. I also think that it's interesting

21:52

that, you know, obviously that you can connect payments, right? like people that's the that's the cool thing about um Voice AI agents and the integrations to these platforms is you can literally collect payments 24/7.

It's kind of like

22:08

the internet, right? Like it blew people's minds that you, you know, when the internet came out that you can go on the internet and people can put in their credit card and they can buy a digital product or physical product and you can wake up every single morning and you're getting paid.

Now, the same idea could

22:25

be applied to all these voice AI agents. You could literally just wake up and just if you're own, you know, you own an HVAC company or you're a plumber, oh my god, I have these four or five new customers that came in.

Um, which is super super awesome.

22:43

And here's what the flow looks like over here. Um, again, I think it's really interesting that you can upsell people using these voice AI agents, offer an annual maintenance plan, um, and then tag them in the CRM.

22:58

Now, the last idea is a bit grim. Um, but you know, it's basically this idea that, um, you know, an AI funeral home intake line um, that's compassionate and compliant, of course.

So, a family

23:15

caller uh calls the line uh reports the passing of a loved one um and requests assistance. Um I I just put this in because I think it's important to note that uh you know, you'd want to have the the Vappy or whatever voice AI agent you

23:31

use that's super soft tone. Um low pace, empathetic prompts, you know, no rush, I'm here to help.

Things like that, putting it in there. Um and of course um if people do want to speak to a human being you should have that option for people um especially during that time.

23:49

Um so it transcribes the entity and intent extract. So you know the name the time location maybe you know the religion any preferences they might have.

It creates a pre preliminary case file. They gather key details pickup location contact preferences um and

24:05

notifies the on call director with a summary. uh confirms call back window.

It provides an ETA and what to expect, document, checklist, PDFs, anything like that. Um and then sends any compassionate resources, confirmation, and maybe um uh a phone number of or

24:22

many phone numbers of the of people they can speak to if they need any support, if they want to talk about anything. Um you know, I have here on call director human.

It's important to have that human in the loop. So this is like a hybrid idea um that just is an intake form um

24:38

for you know a space that you know a lot of people aren't create you know creating uh software for for in the funeral home industry but you know if you can make the lives easier for for that business and and for the people running it um so that they can focus on their job and and and and stuff like

24:55

that I think uh that could be great. So, you know, that's that's that's the last idea um that I want to give.

Um and I think a lot of people hopefully a lot of people

25:10

went through some of these ideas and are like, "Wow, this is I could do something like this. I could see myself building a voice AI AI business uh either hybrid or fully voice AI." Um and I just but I just don't know like which voice AI AI

25:27

platform to start. So, you know, it I can't answer that for everyone.

But what I will say is um you know, do you code or not? Well, if you don't code, then and your your your priority is speed and quality, then I would say, you

25:44

know, something like Synthflow, which is about a 30 minute setup. Um it's a visual builder.

It's about $29 to $450 a month. Perfect for an MVP.

If you want quality, something like uh retail. um retail AI.

So, it's natural

26:00

conversations, handles interruptions, it's usage based, it's a bit of more of a premium experience. Now, if you're a bit more technical, and you don't have to be super technical, but a bit more technical, I would say using something like uh Vappy, I've used Vappy for a few

26:17

a few uh a few use cases and it's been really great. Open AAI, TTS, Whisper, uh GPT, U Mini.

Um but you know that's in the less to 50% uh 50 cents uh per call I believe. So um it does add up right.

26:34

Um more than 50% there are there are some um you know more expensive tools that you could be using but yeah I think uh for the most part you know using something like Vappy or Synthflow or Retail is kind of where you want to start. Vappy is a little more uh

26:52

technical, but if you can figure it out, I highly recommend Vappy. I'm not I don't work with them.

Um and I'm not sponsored by any of these tools, but um I do think that having you know, I don't know. I find that if you

27:08

can learn how to use it, um it's it's worth it. And it's just you have to be a little bit technical.

Uh you have to be a little bit technical. So, I should also mention that I'll include in the in the show notes a pl uh how to actually get access to this Excal.

I know that's

27:26

big question that people have. They they see they see me do these these and they're like, "Hey, I need this.

I need this. I don't want to just screenshot it." So, please like and comment before you grab it.

Just do a quick like and comment and then grab the uh link from the show notes and I can't wait to see

27:42

what you build. Um there you have it.

This is uh how to master voice AI agents with some startup ideas in there. Hopefully now you have like a good foundation of what is happening in the world of voice AI agents and how you

27:59

could how you can partake in it. Uh that's the magic of voice AI and I know it's not perfect but voice AI and connecting it with software and the automations that you can do.

It's really really something special. if you can see past, you know, some of it is janky, of

28:15

course. Uh it's only going to get better.

Um and uh if you're here, you're early. So, this is just scratching the surface, of course.

Um this is the tip of the iceberg. If people want me to go deeper into any of these topics, maybe doing a tutorial on something like Bappy

28:32

or one of these platforms, just let me know. I read every single YouTube comment.

Um I see every tweet that is tweeted at me. Um, I love when people like the video.

It gives me a sense to know if I should create more stuff like this. So, please, please let me know.

28:50

Um, I live to serve and and I want to see you build something big and great. Um, so thank you.

Um, I'll see you in the comment section and uh, have a creative day, friends.