‘We Turned the Chatbot Off’: Anatomy of a Failed SMB AI Deployment
Every operator who’s been burned says it the same way. Not “the chatbot didn’t work out.” Not “we’re re-evaluating our AI strategy.” Just: “We turned the chatbot off.” Past tense, closed case, don’t bring it up again. What follows is a post-mortem of how a business gets to that sentence. The company below is a […]
Deploying a Dumb AI Agent Is Worse Than Doing Nothing
Somewhere in your peer group — the operators you trade notes with at association meetings — someone is about to sign for an AI agent this quarter because doing nothing feels like falling behind. We sell AI agents for a living, and we’re going to say the quiet part anyway: deploying a dumb AI agent […]
The 5% Rule: Most Customer Messages Never Needed a Human
Pull up yesterday’s messages. Not the dashboard — the actual thread list. Sales line, service line, the shared email inbox, the webchat widget if you have one. Read fifty of them and sort each one into two piles: Pile one: messages where the right response was a fact you already have. Store hours. Order status. […]