What our assistant heard: October

Redtie’s own phone number is on this website, and the AI assistant answers it. That means it gets called by people who aren’t customers. Some are curious, some are testing it, and a few are just bored.

So, starting this month, we’re sharing what the assistant heard on our line. We don’t name anyone, we don’t share numbers or recordings, and we don’t quote transcripts. Everything below is a paraphrase. Only calls to our own number are included, never a customer’s.

The numbers

From October 20 to November 4, the assistant answered 13 calls on our line:

• 1 came from a real prospect.
• 8 were curious, testing it, or asking for something Redtie doesn’t do.
• 3 said little or nothing it could understand.
• 1 was an angry caller.

The highlights

“ChatGPT gave me this number.” Our favourite call. A prospect said ChatGPT had suggested Redtie. The assistant walked them through live captions, call screening, recordings and pricing. Then the caller asked for the phone numbers of other AI companies, and some trivia about the news, so we’ll call it a partial win.

The logo critic. One caller rang only to tell us our logo looks like a bow tie. Fair. The assistant explained the name and asked if there was anything else it could help with.

“Red tie, or red teeth?” Another caller wanted to know which one. It’s Redtie, one word. The assistant spelled it out.

The storyteller. One caller asked the assistant to help write a story. It politely said that isn’t what it does and offered to help with their phone line instead.

What’s in the news? One caller mostly wanted to know what was going on in the world. The assistant isn’t a news service. It explained what Redtie is, and the call drifted off.

The personal questions. A caller wanted to know whether the assistant was a person, then asked it a question we won’t print. It stayed polite and steered back to whether they needed help with a phone line.

Pictures by text? A caller wanted an AI that sends pictures by text message. Redtie is about calls, so the assistant said so.

A language it doesn’t speak. One caller asked several times for the assistant to switch to their language. It couldn’t, and the caller was understandably frustrated. That one isn’t funny, and we’ve noted it.

The unhappy caller. One caller was angry from the first word, told the assistant to be quiet, and wanted a person. The assistant stayed calm, explained it was outside business hours, and offered to take a message. The caller didn’t leave one.

What we take from it

• Politeness holds up. Testing, off-topic or rude, every caller got a calm answer and a way back to something useful.
• People find us through AI chatbots. At least one caller came from ChatGPT. That’s new, and we’re glad.
• Language matters. Callers who don’t speak English need a better answer than “sorry”.

If you’d like the same assistant on your own number, it answers when you can’t, or only for callers who aren’t in your contacts (here’s how that works). Every call it answers shows up in your Activity with a summary.

We’ll do this again next month.