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You Paid for the Lead. Then You Sent It to Voicemail
The Digital Slice Podcast is brought to you by The Friedman Group, LLC
Hate talking to bots? Today’s AI receptionists might change your mind.
Your marketing gets the phone ringing. What happens when no one answers? A missed call can become a missed customer, and voicemail rarely makes a great first impression.
Join Brad Friedman and Gene Sigalov as they discuss AI-powered virtual receptionists, customer expectations, and the trade-offs between automation and human service so you can make a more informed decision about answering calls and serving your customers.
Gene Sigalov is a serial entrepreneur, licensed attorney, and Co-founder and CEO of Upfirst, an AI-powered virtual receptionist for small businesses.
Having used virtual receptionist services for his law practice and a previous business, Gene brings firsthand experience with the costs and challenges of outsourced call handling. With Upfirst, he focuses on helping solopreneurs and small to midsize businesses answer calls, collect information, and manage appointments.
In this Episode:
- Gene contrasts modern conversational AI with older phone trees that leave callers frustrated and asking for an operator.
- Gene describes how AI receptionists can collect caller details, identify urgent needs, and help owners prioritize callbacks.
- Gene discusses appointment scheduling and transfers to a specific person when a business configures human handoffs.
- Gene outlines the progress in voice quality, emotional expression, and conversational timing, along with remaining latency challenges.
- Gene shares how businesses can customize receptionist voices, accents, and speaking speed.
- Gene identifies new-business conversion and existing-client satisfaction as two areas to watch when evaluating call handling.
Quotes from this Episode:
- [00:01:05] "If You're selling a, you know, Bugatti Veyron, You'll probably still want that human touch if You're selling like a three-million-dollar car." – Gene Sigalov
- [00:03:35] "You know, the argument that I would make is that some intelligent system is always better than getting voicemail and having to call back, right?" – Gene Sigalov
- [00:11:45] "Failure to reach a business is a very common complaint, and it'll push down your NPS score; it'll push down your review ratings." – Gene Sigalov
- [00:11:40] "Can you pull your conversion rate up on, uh, new business? And can you improve the satisfaction for existing clients?" – Gene Sigalov
- [00:13:13] "You can analyze everything down to the very minute detail of how conversation quality's going." – Gene Sigalov
Today’s Guest:
Gene Sigalov:
- Company – Upfirst: http://upfirst.ai/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sigalov/
- X (Twitter): https://x.com/genesigalov
Connect with Brad
Brad Friedman
- X Brad: https://x.com/BradFriedman
- X The Friedman Group: https://x.com/FriedmanGrp
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thefriedmangroup
- LinkedIn Brad: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bfriedman/
- LinkedIn The Friedman Group, LLC: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-friedman-group-llc
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/friedmansocialmedia
- Website: https://friedmansocialmedia.com
You can also call the office at 720.248.8185 or email brad@friedmansocialmedia.com.
Books
- “Brad Friedman on Digital Marketing,” by Brad Friedman
- “The Small Business Owner’s Guide To Inbound Marketing,” by Brad Friedman
- “100 Livestreaming & Digital Media Predictions,” by Ross Brand with a chapter by Brad Friedman
Sponsors and Tools
This podcast is brought to you by Magai. The tool we use for our AI needs. Magai is over 30 AI apps in one. There’s just one subscription to access all the best AI models. Get Magai right here, https://friedmansocialmedia.com/magai. And, if it’s your first time purchasing, use BRAD30 at checkout to get 30% off your first 3 months.
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Affiliate Links & Transparency
Thank you for trusting me with my honest opinion on future purchases you may make after listening to this podcast. I am always completely transparent with you. As a friend of The Friedman Group, LLC you allow me to be able to use affiliate/referral links when suggesting items for purchase. Please know I am a customer myself or have done sufficient research to feel comfortable sharing these links with you. When you click on a link and purchase the item I may receive a small “commission.” This allows me to continue to provide you with quality content and doesn’t affect you in any way at checkout.
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