We Are Selling with Lee Woodward
We Are Selling is a weekly podcast about real estate, business and tackling life's challenges. Hosted by renowned real estate industry coach, Lee Woodward, learn from experts in their field and maximise your life.
We Are Selling with Lee Woodward
Are You Missing Calls That Could Be Listings
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We test-drive a 24/7 AI receptionist that answers calls, handles common questions, and sends us a recording and transcript so we can call back with context. John Walker explains how he built “Emma”, where AI answering works brilliantly for Australian small businesses, and where the limits still matter.
• Why we started using an AI answering service instead of voicemail
• how onboarding works and what information Emma needs
• hearing a live call demo covering pricing and course dates
• why it’s better to disclose that the assistant is AI
• what Emma cannot do yet and why honest limits matter
• filtering spam and prioritising the calls worth returning
• property management and real estate use cases after hours
• add-ons including smart call transfer and SMS links
• pricing, free trial details, and what’s coming next for voice AI
If anyone wants to have a conversation with Emma, the number is 02 9000 1625. https://aiansweringservice.io/
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Welcome And Sponsor Message
SPEAKER_02Hello and welcome back to the podcast We Are Selling. My name is Lee Woodward, your coach and host, and the author of the Complete Sales Person Course. Today's programme is brought to you by the Agency Portal, Australia's first listed to settled execution platform. This incredible digital platform allows us to use Agency Sign, Agency AML, the Sale Funding Process, Commission Funder, Agency Supplier Pay, and Agency Settlements. Agency Settlements is the Pixar partner that allows the real estate digital transaction to exist. Let's get started with today's podcast. Over the last six months, many of you have been ringing the Lee Woodward training line and speaking to Emma. And Emma is our new AI assistant who is our receptionist. And she announces, and we'll call her in a moment, hi, I'm Lee Woodwards, AI assistant. How can I help you? And she's been answering all your questions about courses, pricing for Zoom sessions, whatever it is you've needed to know. And then instantaneously, I get the transcription, the recording, and I can hit the phone number and call you back. And when I was first trialing this, I thought, yeah, this is not for us. You know, we're a human company that do wonderful things with words. But like everything in my world, I've got to trial it, I've got to test it, I've got to learn about it. And I gotta tell you, I'm absolutely in love with Emma. Emma has been the best receptionist I've ever had, and I don't want to offend anyone who's worked for me in reception before, but that recording part of it has been amazing. Many of you have asked me, Lee, who are you using? We tried something else, it didn't work. And I'm using the AI answering service, your 24-7 AI receptionist from Sydney. That's for all Aussie small businesses. I just happened to run across it on a search that I was doing. But it's been so successful, and many agents are now asking me, can I do it? Can I forward my mobile to it? I'm sick of getting all these voicemails. Yes, you can, but I thought I'd make it a topic today because lots of people are raving over AI, but does it actually get the effectiveness? Not all AI is the same. And joining me is the creator of Emma, Mr. John Walker. He joins us on our program today. John, welcome to the program.
SPEAKER_04Thank you very much, Lee. It's a pleasure to be here and talk to your audience about this exciting technology.
SPEAKER_02It is exciting technology. And to give us some context, what was your background to build this?
SPEAKER_04Well, I've been in IT since I was a little kid, and and I just love technology. And to be honest, I was a bit bored in my IT job around the year 2010 onwards. COVID happened, and then around the same time we had G craxing and ChatGPT, and then I got very, very excited about my industry again and started building this AI receptionist.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely amazing. I'm one of your happiest customers because it's been a game changer for us because we're on stage all day. We're on different countries and different locations, and to have safe hands 24-7 answer phone calls is amazing. Take us through the development of Emma. Our listeners are gonna hear from her in a moment. But what did you do to build it and what's been the success?
Who It Fits And Who It Does Not
SPEAKER_04As we all know, the AI technology had a huge big balloon in 2010 when they realized that AI could have relatively realistic conversations. And I thought, well, if you can have a conversation by text, the voice synthesis and the voice recognition is getting so good. I've been using Siri, you know, to dictate all my emails for so long now. I thought, why can't she have a conversation on the phone? And I started looking into it and I thought this is really possible. And so I started building the stuff, her very first versions in 2021 uh of this service and playing around with it. And two and a half years ago, I had my first customer, which was a big success, which really pushed things forward, and then it just grew from there.
SPEAKER_02What type of businesses are using the service?
SPEAKER_04For our service, we're finding any small business that gets a lot of phone calls, either they can't answer them because it's after hours, or they get a high load of calls sometimes, or they have stuff being away sometimes, or they get common questions over and over again on the phone. There are a few businesses with the where they're just getting hammered with the phone question. So all of those use cases fit really well, but there are some businesses we don't suit as well.
SPEAKER_02So when I was doing my research, I noticed just cuts use it, Microsoft, training companies. Uh you've even got government bodies that are again getting those repetitive questions. I think I listened to a demo of a tow truck driver, and he was so excited with 24-7 coverage of what's going on. Who doesn't it suit?
SPEAKER_04Look, that's a good question. And I like to be upfront and honest on the website and with my customers, because the industry's full of empty promises and people being unrealistic and then unfortunately callers thinking this is going to replace humans. It doesn't do that yet, and it may not ever. It doesn't suit Health and Beauty where they need the AI to book into appointments. It doesn't suit callers with strong access. It doesn't suit bigger businesses where they have complex workflows and and they need to integrate into their existing stock systems or booking systems or anything like that.
SPEAKER_02Thank you for sharing that because people go nuts with this stuff going, oh, we'll get it to do this, and go, well, you didn't find out if it does that. Whereas in my case, John, you and I spoke. You set it up for me, I didn't set it up. I had to email you some stuff, and actually just take our listeners through that, because that's been the biggest question I've had. I've had so many people ring Emma and then ring me, saying, Where did you get that from? And how did you set it up? What is the setup process?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, look, we're a little bit different because most of the ones in the world give you a control panel and say, there you go, you're on your own. Or if you want to engage our support team, you know, it's$800. And there's some of them that that will say we do a setup for you for$1,000 or$500 or whatever it is. And sometimes they'll they'll say they'll waive it. But we take a different approach. We do the setup for the customers because we believe that's actually quite difficult. They can waste weeks and weeks or even months of time working it all out themselves. And our target business is small business through a time poor, and we just don't think they have the resources or the time to do a lift. So we set it up for them. It's really quite straightforward. We give them some standard questions on the email, but we offer a phone call as well. We just confirm that the greasing that what Emma says when she answers the call is is right. And then we just ask them what's some common questions they might get. Is there any special question they need to ask the caller that finds their name and is this number that they're calling from the best callback number? Some industries have some special questions. Um, but most of them uh it's pretty straightforward. We keep things simple and it works very well.
SPEAKER_02Well, let's call Lee Woodward Training and speak to Emma, and I'll chat with her, and our listener can actually hear live what that sounds like.
SPEAKER_00Welcome to Lee Woodward Training. This is Emma, Lee's AI assistant. How can we help you?
SPEAKER_02Hi, Emma. My name's Peter. I'd like to book a one-on-one with Lee Woodward. What do they cost?
SPEAKER_00Hi, Peter. The one-on-one personal Zoom coaching with Lee costs$800 plus GST. Would you like me to note anything down or help you with booking?
SPEAKER_01Uh, that's okay. Now I know that. When's the next complete salesperson course on?
SPEAKER_00The next complete salesperson course after Sydney is in Hunter Valley on the 19th and 20th of August. Running from 8 30, 45 a.m. to 5 p.m. Let me know if you need anything else.
SPEAKER_02What about Perth?
SPEAKER_00The next complete salesperson course in Perth is on the 5th and 6th of November. From 8 30, 45 a.m. to 5 p.m. Anything else you'd like to know?
SPEAKER_02I'd like to book into Perth actually, so what do I need to do?
SPEAKER_00I can't make bookings over the phone, but I can pass your interest on to Lee's team so they can get back to you with the next step. Can I take your details for them?
SPEAKER_02Yes, certainly. My name's Peter Smith.
SPEAKER_00Thanks, Peter. Anything else you'd like to add for Lee's team about your booking?
SPEAKER_02Uh do you have my phone number?
SPEAKER_00Yes, I have the number you're calling from. I'll make sure they get that.
SPEAKER_02Thank you, Emma.
SPEAKER_00No worries, Peter. Thanks for calling Lee Woodward Training. Take care.
SPEAKER_02So, John, there we go. She just answered my calls, told us the next day to the complete salesperson course. How how does she know that?
SPEAKER_04Okay, so when we do the onboarding, the free onboarding, we uh collect that information from you via email, or even we can go to your website and collect that information for the setup process. We tell people that it's only the common questions they get on the phone that they need to tell us about. The the frequently asked questions on people's websites are not usually the same as the one, the frequently asked questions they get on the phone. So we keep things simple, but if there are common questions uh that they get all the time, we include those, and then she has that knowledge. So when she answers the call, she has all that information ready to answer the questions.
SPEAKER_02Now she sounds very natural, very Australian, so that part of it puts people at ease. And in my situation, it's different for everyone, but I wanted her to announce she is an AI receptionist or an AI assistant to Lee Woodward. What do most people do then?
SPEAKER_04That's right. Most businesses we announce I'm Emma, a virtual assistant. We can change her name, we can even provide a male voice. We've worked out, uh, especially in the last year, that it's usually better to announce that she's an AI because some people feel a bit silly if they realise halfway through that she's an AI or they get a bit stage fright. So and if I am I guess that's uh a better a better thing to do to be uh upfront announce she's an AI. That works better.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, we've got a brilliant example today of a telemarketer ringing Emma. Let's cross to that because that's hysterical.
SPEAKER_03Hi, it's Jack. How are you today?
SPEAKER_00G'day, Jack. I'm doing well. Thanks for asking. How about yourself?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, great. Thanks. Uh I just got back from lunch myself, so you know, can't really complain, I suppose. Joe, I'm actually just reaching out from uh we're a boutique marketing agency and a Google partner based in Brisbane. I was just gonna chat with whoever takes care of the Google Ads. Would that be you?
SPEAKER_00I'm not the one who handles Google ads directly, but I can definitely pass your details along to the right person. Could you let me know a bit more about what you offer and I'll make sure the team receives your message?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so it's a little bit hard to get in back in contact with me. Just because I'm calling on an outbound line and I'm on the phone quite frequently. Is there a better time I can call back and just get in contact with the right person?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, that one that one was quite funny when that came through. And it shows one of the benefits of filtering all the spam calls and and that sort of thing.
SPEAKER_02So, John, what can't Emma do? You mentioned she can't book an appointment into your calendar, whereas what she does for me is, yep, I'll take that booking for you, what's your name, your details, and it comes through to us for us to reach out and confirm the booking. But the fact we've got all the details, who they are, which course they want to go to is just gold.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, look, businesses being able to prioritize the calls, work out which ones are the important ones that are business to call back. That's one of the biggest use cases for it. But as I said, she can't deal with strong accents. She will take booking requests, and someone you might say, well, what day suits you is that a morning or afternoon is better. Okay, staff are going to get back to you and and uh can and confirm with you. So uh just wait for that message, that sort of thing. That works well. Yeah, she's not there to replace humans, she's not there to have the whole conversation and close sales. She's there to just take messages, to answer common questions, to get the right information so the business can decide which calls are the most important ones to call back and that sort of thing.
Property Management Use Cases
SPEAKER_02And we look at that. Most people ring a business to find out their opening hours or trading hours, or when something's on, all that can be done. Let's go to the real estate world. I've had a lot of the property management principals reach out to say, Lee, how could I best use this? How would it work in property management? What could she do and what would be her limitations? For example, plumbers details, emergencies, what could she do?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, so there's gonna be uh obviously property management type polls, there's gonna be property open inquiries, there's gonna be a few different types, and there's gonna be busy partners, principals who uh might want to forward their mobile calls and have her filter them and deal with them a bit more efficiently. So in the case of property management, if uh they get an after-hours call and their their hot water's leaking or not working, then she can give some standard information about climbers, electricians, whatever those handyman details are. If it's uh inquiry about the rental or open inspection, she's gonna grab the property address, but it the business is a step ahead when they call back. That's one of the great advantages that the staff are a step ahead when they call back and they don't have to go and ring up, ask all the information, have the person on hold trying to look it all up.
SPEAKER_02Now, John, in addition to answering the phone calls, you've got some other add-on services. And actually, while you're online today, I want to add one on for myself. When anyone rings Libel to training now and that inquiry's taken, I would love to forward out a text message with a link to my next events, which is just a page on my website, which is always the same link. It never changes. We keep updating the website. Is that possible?
SPEAKER_04Yes, sure. That's uh one of our add-ons. We have a few add-ons that some businesses take up. One is transferring calls to one nominated number. So if someone says, Look, I want to speak to a human, uh, or they say um it's an emergency or it's urgent, then she will say, Would you like me to transfer you to a human? And she can do that. The other one is the SMS to the caller during the call. And that's right, if someone has a booking link or a quote form or some sort of form on their website, or even just a website, just a home page or an email address, she can check that information to the caller during the call, and that one's been quite popular. We also have the SMS to a bismuth uh owner after every after every call. Some mechanics and tradies and things take that up because they've got their hands full and they're not always at the front desk checking their emails. That that one's not as popular as the SMS to the call or during the call or the transfer function.
SPEAKER_02So, John, in observing all these Australian small businesses, um, mine being one of them, what's been some of your observations of the of the breakthroughs of the service?
SPEAKER_04In terms of the industries or in terms of expectations, or what uh which one should you have in mind? Yeah, like what businesses have really taken well to it? We're finding that that there are a huge range of small businesses. We've got driving stools, we've got strata managers, we've got training companies, we've got a few restaurants, we've got cardiologists, although the medical ones are not as common. We don't really push that because this is a little bit more sensitive, some of those conversations. Um we've got some dentists who I don't want amateur booking appointments because customers don't usually know the length of the appointment. There's a huge range of businesses. We have some some customers really think that they're going to defy their receptionists and use ammo, but we're very careful to say that the technology is not there yet to replace humans and the humans are still needed to call back and have a good conversation. But it takes the load off, it answers some of these common questions, it makes them more efficient. So that's sort of what we've noticed over the last two years.
SPEAKER_02And John, I love that about you. I I went with this service because you tell me what it couldn't do. Whereas everybody else has said, Oh, I can do anything in the world, just the way AI goes. And unfortunately, I've been let down badly with those promises that weren't there. Whereas Emma has lived up to everything you said she would do. I do want to add on the text message out because I think that's good. And I I am going to add on the smart call transfer. I didn't know you could do that because I didn't ask the question. And smart call transfer, that's when I'd get them to transfer to Robin, our events manager, and also my wife, because our main web page was going direct to Rob. But Rob could be doing anything at any moment, and it was like, I need a better solution. But a smart transfer, people would accept that, okay, they're transferring me, but she wasn't available. But we've still got all the details. Is that the best way to use that?
Pricing And The Future Of Voice AI
SPEAKER_04Yeah, sorry. But transfers, there's still going to be an email that comes through, and all the emails have the summary and a full transcript and a recording, and often businesses find it's enough to read the summary. So you're still going to get an email, even if it goes to your mobile and it goes to voicemail and you didn't answer, you've still got a record of that call, or at least there's the number they call from. And if if we're embasked to collect their name every time before she transfers, then you'll have the name as well. But on that topic of limitations, yeah, I really think it's important at the moment to be honest about the limitations because there's so many companies out there that are just called a hype and promising the world with AI, and it's very hard for people to understand it when there's all that misinformation out there.
SPEAKER_02And John, final questions for you, and your link is going to be in our show notes. Uh, everyone asks me that. How much is it? It's$48 a month. You get a 14-day free trial. Uh, you can listen to the demos, you guys will do the onboarding and explain how it all works. Dedicated Sydney number, which I think is really important. You get to decide on your own greeting message. And knowing your business hours, address, products, and frequently asked questions is the idea of it. But keep it like simple's difficult. Don't overload it, is what I've learnt. And it's working perfectly. Yet if I try to get too fancy with it, I think I could go wrong. My question to you is where does it go to from here? What are you passionate about where Emma's going to be, what she's going to be doing in the future?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, no, just quickly on that note, keeping it simple is definitely the way to go. We've had customers if they, if she, if the caller says this go to step seven, if they say this go to step nine, that's too complex. So, yeah, I think it's an exciting future. It's evolving all the time. I think her intelligence and her ability uh to be more natural, the way that when people stick over each other, that's gonna improve. But at the moment, it can be a little bit awkward sometimes if occasionally we get the two talking over each other, but it's not not very common anymore. That's already been fixed a lot in the last year. It's hard to know exactly where it's all going, but I think she'll become more intelligent. We're gonna still focus on always focus on floor and business. We're gonna keep things simple and we're gonna introduce new technology carefully so that it's easy and uh reliable for people.
SPEAKER_02John, as our AI expert, meaning you do this every single day, I was in a conference yesterday and I had a lot of mature agents ask me questions about, you know, all this technology, it's you know, gonna be beyond me one day. Will I keep my job? And I said to them, Do you know what? You guys are back in with a new lifeline that instead of being stuck in front of your screen all day trying to work out software, you'll say, Hey software, could you get all my established clients from DY that bought 10 years ago, that I send a Christmas card and put them into a little list for me and send a text message saying, We've got a property just near you, we'd love to see you check it out. Uh, give me a call if you need any help. Is that possible?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, look, the technology is improving all the time. And I believe that this void interface where people can just talk to AI is is the future. People don't have as much time as they did on screens, everything needs their time on the screen. And if you can just talk to technologies like ChatGPT or Perplexity and say, look, get into my email and find some of the emails from this person. What are they saying? I I used it the other day and I said, look at the last 10 requires to this person. Can you draft an appropriate reply? And it was pretty amazing. So I think this way you can talk to your computer, you can ask it to do things, that's just gonna get better and better.
Why Recordings Change Callbacks
SPEAKER_02Well, John from AI Answering Services, thank you so much for coming on board. This is not a paid sponsorship, it's just a happy customer. And I I want to see everyone in the real estate industry get some time back and efficiency and clear capture light that it is a game changer. It takes so much pressure off you. And John, just some feedback for yourself. One feature that's been amazing for me that I never had with normal reception is well, firstly, the amount of calls coming to us is reduced in life anyway, compared to what it used to be when I had 22 staff and the phone would be ringing off the hook because we had a support service. So today, if someone's ringing us, it is real. It is not uh just a general inquiry, it's quite serious. But the part and the feedback I'd like to give you is I love that I can listen to the call and the number's straight there in the email that comes to me, and I just bang ring it because I've listened to the call and I can help straight away. But what I'm getting is everyone going, Oh my god, I didn't think it'd be you calling me. And uh, it gives me an opportunity to say, Look, I love speaking to people, and if there ever comes a day I Don't have time to speak to my customers, I'll give it up. Thanks for reaching out. And it's been such a natural conversion to help people because we've got all that intelligence and information. There's no point me having three other people ring back that will have to escalate to me anyway. It's quicker. And I can do five, six calls in the back of a cab and Uber. It's become so time effective only because I've got the information. And it's also that I'm listening to the tonality of the call, how friendly or maybe urgent they are, that you can help so much. And that's where I think it's been a game changer.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, the recording's really useful for that. Yeah, I think it gives real estate agents a little bit of an edge where they appear to be a bit more modern than maybe some of their competitors, and that's going to be an advantage for sure to get that listing.
SPEAKER_02And John Walker, AI Entering Services, thank you for joining us. Thanks, Julie.
Closing And Try Emma Yourself
SPEAKER_04It's been a pleasure explaining this furthest to your listeners. I would like to say that it's very easy to call Emma. If anyone wants to have a conversation with Emma, it's 029000 1625. And uh you'll be able to that experience uh first hand.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely amazing. John, we look forward to the future.
SPEAKER_04Thank you very much, Lee. Hi for