"Don't let the AI ​​answer the phone!"

In this issue, cocon founder Markus Mazur writes about the question of where artificial intelligence can relieve the burden on craftsmen and craftswomen.

This article is part of the special column: "Workbench + Change"

"Why don't you let the AI ​​do it?!"

Have you heard this question before? There's always a subtle "Are you stupid?" in there, isn't there?

But how exactly does AI install the radiator on the wall? The drainpipe doesn't suddenly clear itself just because someone used ChatGPT on it. And it will still be some time before a robot carries the glass door up to the sixth floor and installs it properly. It's understandable, then, that small and medium-sized businesses are asking themselves: What exactly is all this AI hype supposed to do for me?

When a company lacks the resources to handle phone calls, the solution seems obvious: We'll use AI! But honestly, I've experienced this myself. A system tries to imitate a human as convincingly as possible. It doesn't really get you anywhere. What remains, however, is primarily customer frustration!

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The problem isn't AI, but how we use it. Instead of asking where we lack human talent and how we can replace it with AI, we should rather look at what our highly qualified employees are doing all day.

Or to put it more directly: What tasks – ideally repetitive ones – are actually preventing our people from doing what we really need them to do? In many trades businesses, people sit and transcribe handwritten timesheets. They try to track how many hours a technician spent on site and what materials they used. This results in an invoice that goes to the customer. The customer checks it and discovers that materials are listed that weren't even used. So the invoice goes back. It's checked, corrected, and sent again. Do you see the problem?

Suddenly, highly trained people are spending a significant portion of their time searching for and correcting avoidable errors. This is where digitalization and AI should come into play. If the technician digitally records their hours and materials used directly on-site, and the customer immediately approves the information, the entire process becomes simpler. The invoice can be generated based on reliable data, and time is freed up in accounting.

Time for individual customer consultations. Time for callbacks. Even time to spontaneously answer the phone.

We need to stop throwing AI at everything. We need to figure out which tasks AI and digital systems can take over in the background, so that people can do what they do best: be human, build relationships, and foster trust. But what if no one's available to answer the phone? Then it's the damn answering machine, with the voice of Claudia, whom I know, and who gets back to me promptly.

Don't let AI answer the phone! Let it ensure that humans have time to answer it again.

A bi-weekly column by Daniel-John Riedl and Markus Mazur
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