Samantha can't come to the phone right now. May I take a message?

On May 8, 2018, a speaker walked on stage and demonstrated a piece of tech, and the whole world suddenly sat up and noticed this thing called AI.

The speaker was Sundar Pichai (CEO of Google), and the topic of conversation was a hairdresser appointment.

Remember it? I know it was a while ago now, and there was a pandemic in the middle, but in case you need a refresher, here’s what happened:

Last week, Tara Christianson gave me a heads-up on an AI tool that can do pretty much the same thing for us mere mortals today.

Meet Lucy by Curious Thing. They are an Aussie company that started in July 2018 with a mission to make AI curious.

I decided to give Lucy a test this afternoon, and I have to say it was pretty cool.

I could customise a voice greeting as well as an accent. Less than 10 minutes later I was getting a voicemail from my husband.

Things I liked a lot about Lucy:

1. She tells you it’s an AI and doesn’t try to pass herself off as a human - which I think is good from a trust point of view (unlike those dodgy AI wine sales bots who pretend otherwise…)

2. After getting my first message from Mark, I got a message from David from Curious Thing to ask me about how I found the experience. (I mean it’s early days for me with Lucy, but that is pretty good service!)

3. All voicemails are saved for easy access and come with transcriptions, allowing you to listen to them at any time.

Use Cases:

Haven’t had a whole lot of time to think about this one as I’ve only just downloaded it and started playing with it (you can call me if you like if you have my number!), but here are a few ideas:

• On the paid plan, you can direct calls like a virtual receptionist, so that might be one less subscription (for us anyway!)

• If you happen to be at an open home or with a client doing an appraisal and can’t come to the phone, having Lucy take the call might get better engagement than “leave me a voicemail…”

• There might be an opportunity to schedule appraisals and appointments automatically through their Calendly integration.

• Because you’re given the number and possibly an email from the caller, it might be a good way of growing your database. There might be other ways of pre-qualifying inbound enquiries as well—e.g., buying/selling, leasing enquiry vs. maintenance, etc. This would be great with a CRM integration of some kind… which I’m sure can be done.

In my chat with David, he mentioned some new features dropping tomorrow, including Lucy’s ability to answer specific questions on the paid plan: “What time is the open home?” “When is the auction?”—that you can customise to give clients the answers they want quicker.

As Lucy and these types of systems continue to advance, it’s highly likely they will become capable of so much more. But remember, they are not there to replace you; they are there to augment and empower you.

Happy Hunting 🚀