What's the use case for AI receptionists and voice agents? Could it be customer support for dental clinics, med spas, hair salons, local shops, etc.?
Voice agents make the most sense in low-lifetime-value situations. For a private equity firm making $5-10M per deal, a voice agent would be pissing away that value to save ~$100/call — pointless. But in a business where a visit is worth $30 and someone visits about 5 times ($150 LTV), the low LTV means it's worth saving time on the call. Hair salons make sense; after-hours plumbers can make sense. I wouldn't automate dental clinics or med spas — a dental implant can be $5,000 done in an hour, extremely high LTV, and you shouldn't risk even a 2% lower close rate on intake calls to save time. Customer support can make sense for low-cost products since the customer's already paid — you're optimizing experience on a smaller slice of that LTV, not risking the sale itself. Local shops just depend on their specific LTV.
I don’t sell voice agents because the best‑paying industries are those with high‑lifetime‑value customers, and putting a high‑LTV client on an AI voice agent is risky. A voice agent can say the wrong thing, hallucinate, crash, or sound like a pack of barking dogs, which instantly erodes trust. Most people will be put off by that experience. Therefore I’d only sell voice agents to low‑LTV segments where individual customers don’t matter as much and the primary benefit is cost‑saving rather than revenue generation. If voice agents were the only product I had, I’d probably look for a job instead—just kidding—but the math simply doesn’t add up right now. That could change in a few years as the technology improves.
AI receptionists are often positioned as a timesaver, but their real value is in closing deals and driving appointments. If a human receptionist costs $3,000/month and generates about $10,000/month in appointment value (10 appointments at $1,000 each), replacing them with an AI receptionist saves $2,900 in direct costs but reduces appointment conversion from 10 to about 7 due to a ~30% gap, generating only $7,000/month. The net effect is a $100/month loss. So switching to AI receptionists saves money but loses revenue, and the revenue loss usually outweighs the savings. Be careful replacing front‑end functions like receptionists, because they’re closest to revenue; only do it if the math makes sense.
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If that's an option, I definitely wouldn't sell to an extraordinarily regulated industry, where they're exactly the kind of client who'd take legal action if something went wrong. Sell to less-regulated industries wherever possible, and look for situations where businesses take calls and speed-to-lead is critical to winning that call. Voice agents work so well in receptionist settings like hair salons and appointment-based businesses because of buyer behavior: someone wants a service today, searches 'salon near me,' calls the first listing, and if nobody picks up, hangs up and calls the next one, and the next, until someone answers. If that's the main bottleneck, a voice receptionist makes perfect sense, and you can scoop up market share just by being first to answer with 24/7 availability. But some businesses don't care about speed-to-lead at all — private equity inquiries, for instance, aren't going to hinge on getting an instant answer; they're sending outreach to 10-15 people anyway and expect a 48-72 hour response window. So focus on businesses where speed-to-lead really matters, and generally on lower average-order-value businesses, where the voice agent messing something up can't blow up a $100,000 deal.
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I was thinking local businesses, but in a previous video I said I would stay away from local businesses. There's nuance: I would definitely stay away from local businesses in general because they're less scalable and you don't get straightforward access to local leads, unlike fully digital leads. However, if you're selling voice agents, local businesses can be your best bet because they're high volume and have big consequences if they miss a call or inquiry, which creates strong search intent and need‑based demand. They also tend to have relatively low average order values, which matters because if a business you reach has a high average order value, the opportunity cost of losing even a small percentage of conversion rate by switching to an AI voice agent (instead of a human) can outweigh the savings. You might save $2,000 a month, but the opportunity cost could lose you $20,000 a month, which isn’t a trade I’d make.