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Comment by avgDev | Hacker News Reader

I'm looking for a contractor to do my concrete. 2 companies had AI agents. Instant no thank you, I'm just going to go with a guy that still answers his phone.

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I try to warn my small business clients who ask for this.

You know those annoying AI bots the big companies use?

Well yours will be worse because you don't have their budget and it will drive what few customers who stumble upon your site away instantly.

Your own authentic voice answering a customer query directly is one of the few advantages a small business has over the big guys.

Not to mention liability if the agent says something misleading. You won't be able to afford the lawyers the big guys can to get yourself off the hook.

Most of those contractors have so much work that scaring away customers is a feature.

Then they can simply not pick up the phone.

This is something I've thought about as people complain about things like restaurant photos being AI and such. You know what kind of customer this pushes away? The kind that complain about minor details that don't really matter. Might be a net good for many businesses.

If you can't be bothered to get the minor details right, how can I be confident that you'll get the major ones right?

Alternatively: if you're wasting a bunch of your time on the minor details how do you have enough time for the major ones? I'd much rather my restaurant owner worry about sourcing ingredients, keeping the kitchen clean, improving the taste of the food than anything else.

If you don't have the time or money to have actual menu photos taken, what are the odds you have the time and money to source high quality ingredients, keep the kitchen clean, or improve the taste of the food?

The minor details are precisely the ones that require the least time and money to handle, so if those are being skimped on, it's likely that the major details are too, in my experience.

It depends, probably. If we are talking about high end, off the beaten path places, marketing is important. For the $1.50 slice pizza at the hole in the wall in Times Square? I doubt those places are cleaned and no one is checking the reviews, people just line up because others are, and because the smell and taste is right.

...so lack of attention to detail as evidence of a focus on meaningful quality?

Hell yeah I will ship you a box of ‘food’ for two hundred dollars. You know it’s going to be great because I don’t spend my time on stuff like describing or photographing it

Yeah! Restaurants, famously businesses who can lose customers with no downside and don't operate with a high chance of failure.

this is an idiotic take

My bet: it's less than a 2% loss in customers that are just very loud on the internet.

Given restaurant margins are in the single digit percentage points, even a 2% loss of customers could be a big deal.

To the people who are saying these little details aren't an indicator of what matters:

As a chef of close to a decade I will tell you right now:

If people in the restaurant aren't getting small details right...

They DEFINITELY aren't getting the rest right either

Someone who isn't paying attention to the food they're serving and the conditions they're serving it in just doesn't care and isn't paying attention to how they wash their hands or that piece of meat they dropped behind the fridge a few days ago that's bringing in roaches and rodents or the sour smell coming from the bag they just opened or the open wound that just dripped blood into your sauce

Most likely, they probably don't even know what allergens are present in their menu, posing a genuine risk to people

I promise you

Who are you people sticking up for?

I don't understand the "I mean they clearly didn't put any effort in here, but I believe 100% that they're doing their absolute best everywhere else!" sentiment

It's great to be optimistic about life and people in general but that's entirely unreasonable and you're only gonna be let down (or in the case of a restaurant probably get sick)

Would you trust a pilot that advertises his services with some half assed ai generated ad with spelling mistakes?

I know I wouldn't

There's a great episode from the Search Engine podcast about this. The gist is that it takes a lot of concerted effort to make something great, otherwise it will probably suck. The host got interested in a restaurant that seemed obsessive about doing things well and talked to the owner about it. The episode title is "How to pursue excellence ... in noodles".

>> You know what kind of customer this pushes away? The kind that

They are saying their belief about how other people act. I'm guessing they themselves do care.

People typically underestimate others. All too often bosses do. It's like the common belief that only other people respond to advertising: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-person_effect

A prevalent problem everywhere: most dangerous in politics where we tend to call it hipocrisy.

Do they really? Are there any numbers available to support this? Sample size of one, but my brother is in that field, and it's been their and their subcontractors' slowest year in a long while.

I recently went contractor hunting and everyone was too busy and ignoring me. I did find one eventually but it took 5 days of calling 5-10 shops a day. How is your brother not also swamped with work?

Maybe tell him to get a sticker for the back of his truck and make sure he has a Google map listing with 2 photos of his work and a very basic website?

You're being extremely dismissive and you're denying somebody else's reality.

Demand varies a lot by location, type of contracting, price, etc.

Both you and I are, like I said, a sample size of one. You're drawing conclusions generalizing your 5 day experience looking for one type of work to an entire industry. He may not be in the same field you were looking for, or a different geographic reality. I also didn't say they weren't swamped with work, their schedule is full regardless, but that it's the lowest demand they've seen in a while.

Are you a contractor? In the current economy, it’s very hard to imagine this being true.

Where are you located? In the Northeast US, we're finding getting a contractor who is both good and has availability is quite an ordeal, involving significant delays.

The advise to do things that don't scale is more pertinent than ever.

No kidding. If they won’t pick up the phone to take my business, imagine when I’m calling after they already have my money.

Yep. I had a recurring contract with a local service company that got bought out by a larger one. Old company had an email that I could message and immediately get a useful reply back from a human. New ownership got rid of that, and their website messaging didn't work. The only way to contact them was to call on the phone.

Who is the phone answered by? A crappy AI voice bot. Getting past that wasted a bunch of my time, followed by talking to person who was useless. Then I finally got through to someone who could actually do something for me. At that point the only help I wanted was to immediately close my account and never do business with them again.

Cue both of them sending you a weekly newsletter from now on, from which you can't unsubscribe from, for the next 30 years.

I've posted several reviews recently on Google, rating the company 1 star and warning that they're customer support is using AI agents that are unhelpful and try to waste your time. The other crazy thing is restaurants who use AI generated pictures in their marketing. Instant yuck.

On the other hand, I am also looking for a contractor to do my concrete. I hate the whole process, I hate calling people only to spend 5 minutes trying to explain what I want and then they don’t provide that service or try to convince me to do something else, and then seeing bids and not really understanding what things are important and if I am getting a good price.

I would love for an agent to just be able to handle all this for me. Find me a good, fair price from a reliable contractor who understands what I want. I don’t want to have to call a bunch of people, just do it for me.

I tried seeing if an agent could help me with this, but it isn’t quite there yet. It did a good job helping me figure out what I really wanted, but not the rest of it.

I got quotes first which was the wrong approach. I ended up taking photos and detailing what I want on plat of survey. I also consulted a structural engineer(for garage cracks) and researched using rebar, fiber mesh, and metal mesh.

So, basically I know what I want and it is easier to get quotes this way. I just send the docs and dimensions.

> I also consulted a structural engineer

Well, now I have the same problem I had before, how do I find a good structural engineer, and what is a fair price to pay them? Do I have to call a bunch and do the same thing I hated doing for the contractors?

Fair point!

I would call 4 local structural engineers to you. Ask about price. Inspection and report is about $700-$2000. You just go with someone who feels right for you. Still cheaper than $40k concrete job, so not as much of a deal.

There are some businesses I don't want to contact anyone.

when finding an emergency plumber or a tow truck, it seems all the companies you can contact are just scummy intermediaries that call a normal business and take a cut.

I added emergency road service to my car insurance just so I wouldn't have to search for a tow company myself.

Its annoying because thats what people want from small business but as a contractor you're usually working so you have to do your trade and be available to take calls like a receptionist. Better if they'd just send an email or use the online booking form.

I'm open to leaving voicemails. If I hear "hello, this is Bob from Bob's Concrete, I'm on a job leave a detailed message and I will get back to you", that guy is likely to get my job, even if he is a bit more.

Thats fair.

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