How Waffle21 got a front desk that never closes

Max Jodie 0:00

Talk me through life before Jodie, I suppose. How did you handle calls and things like that?

Matt 0:07

Over the years we've become a smaller team. At one point I think we had five, six, even seven or eight employees here. Obviously COVID massively changed the way people worked and how training facilities were run. It changed a lot. So over the years we've made the team much smaller, where now, as a general rule, there's one person on at any one time. The issue is, if that person was dealing with whatever it was, you were missing phone calls.

Matt 0:35

So what we did is we got a messaging service, so calls would take seven rings and then go through to a message, which was great, although the messages didn't really do anything. It was, "Can I help you with X?" and, "No, I'll get someone to ring you back." And it was quite expensive for what you got.

Matt 0:58

So then, when I was looking around, I trialled another one and it just didn't sound correct. There weren't as many options on the back end of it. It was as if it was made for somebody that doesn't want to put anything into it. I guess that's great if you're not tech savvy in any way, shape or form, but personally I need to have full control of what it can and can't do.

Matt 1:40

Jodie can answer questions, as long as I spend the time putting the content into the back end of it, into its training part. I think when you're building the back end you've got to be very specific with Jodie, and AI in general, because if you're not very specific it will randomly give you answers that aren't correct. So whenever I'm training part of it, I always repeat: don't give information you don't know.

Max Jodie 2:13

Talk me through the Jodie set-up. Is she forwarded on from your landline or mobile? What's the telephony set-up?

Matt 2:22

At the minute I've set it up as it was when we had the messaging service, because ultimately there is always someone on hand, or I want there to be. I want Jodie to take the call when there's no one on hand, because that means I don't have to have someone sat at a desk waiting for the phone to ring. So if our phone isn't answered within five or six rings, it'll go over to Jodie.

Matt 2:45

I've put information in there, so if the information is there, they get what they need from it. For example, there was a meeting room booking and they wanted to change the timing of it. The person used Jodie as if it was a real person and they got what they needed. It emailed me or the reception team a message saying they wanted to change it from X to Y. The turnaround was 20 minutes: it had been replied to by email, the booking had been changed, and everything was done.

Max Jodie 3:26

Fantastic. So you're saying that Jodie actually works very well if you already have a team member on hand, because some people online think we're trying to replace people. And it's kind of like, no: either you can't afford somebody, or she works really well with existing people.

Matt 3:41

I mean, we all love to cut costs in business, but especially in our business, if we totally removed people, we wouldn't offer the same service. We wouldn't want that. They might as well go and get their own office where they have to run around after themselves. So I've had Jodie set up so that people can ring our office line 24/7. Not only does it take new calls, it also helps existing tenants.

Max Jodie 4:14

Yeah, it'd be interesting to know the kind of calls. Obviously you said existing and new customers.

Matt 4:19

For example, on a Sunday a few weeks ago, a tenant's key card wouldn't work to get into the building. I've put a full journey into Jodie of what happens if somebody rings because their key card doesn't work to get into the building. What I've had in the past is, out of hours, people ringing me asking if I can come in and let them in because they've left their key card at home, or their key card doesn't work for whatever reason.

Matt 4:47

So I've trained Jodie so that if someone's forgotten their key card, it tells them to go home and get it. If it's not working, I've trained Jodie to find out why it's not working and what happened, and then to ping me an email with the information. So about three or four weeks ago someone turned up and their key card didn't work. They rang the office number and got through to Jodie, even though it was a Sunday. Jodie asked them some questions, then said that as it's an emergency, Matt would be in touch with them very soon. All my emails come through to our phones anyway, so Scott was then able to deal with it. Within half an hour, that client got into his office.

Max Jodie 5:27

Amazing. And how did you configure that in Jodie? Was that in your training section?

Matt 5:32

It's in my training area, so I don't know if you can look in on that. You'll see, and don't get me wrong, Jodie is telling me my content is quite large, but if it works, it works. It doesn't bother me. I've tested it and it works. There's a part for existing physical office and coworking members, and it's basically a load of questions: if they ask this, handle it like this. Even to the point where if it's a cold caller, and I don't know if that's something you implemented or I implemented, if someone rings up trying to sell products, gas, telecoms, Jodie deals with it.

Max Jodie 6:25

Yeah, that's actually my favourite feature of Jodie, how she deals with those. That's really interesting. And I also think it's really interesting how much Jodie is ingrained into your business process. So just give a quick recap of how it was before, in one sentence, and then the process now with Jodie, if you don't mind.

Matt 6:50

I'm a lot more confident now that if we can't answer the call, the call's dealt with and we get the message straight away. I feel a lot more confident in the system than I did with the messaging service.

Max Jodie 7:02

Amazing. And with Jodie now set up in your business, if you had to quantify that in terms of impact on your business, it could be peace of mind, it could be saving time, it could be making you more money. What would you say, headline-wise, about how Jodie's affecting your business?

Matt 7:21

It's basically having an employee 24/7.

Max Jodie 7:26

Excellent. So it just means you don't miss anything and you can focus, because as you know, being a business owner, there's just a million things to do, right?

Matt 7:32

If the phone's ringing, I'm not too worried anymore, whereas before it went to the messaging service.

Max Jodie 7:41

You mentioned that story about the Sunday. How has it impacted the time when you're meant to be having time off, so evenings and weekends? Because some of our customers say they used to have issues where, when the phone rang, their missus or family members would give them grief at weekends and in the evenings, and that's kind of one of my favourites. We even had somebody say they used to get woken up by phone calls and now they can sleep.

Max Jodie 8:10

So I guess, to sum things up, if there was anybody who doubted Jodie, or if you had any doubts about Jodie before you joined, what would you say to people who have maybe seen Jodie but haven't signed up yet?

Matt 8:29

If I remember rightly, there's a 14-day free trial, so what have you got to lose?

Max Jodie 8:35

Seven-day, but yeah.

Matt 8:38

My honest opinion is you will get out of Jodie as much as you're willing to put into it. If you're not willing to spend the time to give Jodie the information she needs, then you're only going to get a little bit out of it. I spend quite a long time on all the information. If you're not willing to do it, you're not going to get everything out of it. It's amazing. You get out of it what you put in.