Walmart AI Boosts Orders 35 Percent - What Your Business Can Learn

Walmart just rolled out an AI assistant called Sparky that boosted online orders by thirty five percent. But here is the thing. The same technology that powers Sparky is available to small businesses right now. In this episode I break down what agentic commerce actually means, why it matters for service businesses, and three steps you can take this week to put AI to work in your business. Read the full breakdown at hRead the full breakdown at https://go.speedmobi.com/walmart-sparky-ai-pod

Transcript

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Hey, it's Keith Carpenter. Welcome back to the Mean Business Podcast by Speed Moby. I want to get right into it today. We're talking about how Walmart has an AI assistant and it just boosted their orders by 35%. Okay. And I want to talk about what that actually means for your business. Now, let's stop and think about this. 35%. That's how many more orders Walmart customers place when they use an AI assistant and they call their AI assistant Sparky. Okay. 35% more, not five, not 10, 35. Okay. I'm not telling you this because I think that you should go work at Walmart, right? I'm telling you because the same exact idea that they're employing here can work for your plumbing company or your dental practice or your HVAC business, really any service business that relies on phone calls and appointments. Hey, it's Keith Carpenter, the founder of Speed Moby. And today we need to talk about something called agentic commerce. Okay. Now, before you tune out, because I know it sounds like a fancy tech word, stay with me here. I'm going to break it down so it makes sense for you. Okay. Because this could change how you run your business. Now, why should you care about what Walmart is doing? Okay. Here's why. Walmart just put out their latest numbers. Their ad business grew 37%. Okay. Their marketplace is booming right now, but the number that jumped off the page to me was Sparky, their AI shopping assistant. Customers who use Sparky place 35% more orders than customers who do not use it. Think about that, right? Think about that for a second. Same store, same products, same prices. The only difference is that one group has an AI helping them and one doesn't. So here's how it works: a customer opens up the Walmart app, says something like, I need to plan a birthday party for a six-year-old. Okay. Here's how the old way worked. They search for cake, then they search for plates, then candles, then decorations, then party favors. They have it all figured out, right? They're going to go and figure it all out themselves. Well, the new way is where Sparky hears a birthday party for a six-year-old and builds the whole list out, right? Cake mix, plates, candles, decorations, party favors, everything in one click. That's insane to think about. The customer just says yes, and it's done. You see the difference there? The old way, the customer has to do all this work, right? The new way, the AI does the work for the customer. That's what this whole agenc e-commerce means. Now, the AI does not just answer questions, it takes action. That's the big deal here. Here's what I think most people are going to miss about this. This is not just for like big companies. I've been doing this for over a decade. I've worked with over 5,000 businesses in the US and up in Canada. And I can tell you that the number one reason that these local businesses lose customers is not bad marketing. Okay. It's not bad ads. It's not any of that. It's that nobody picked up the phone. Think about your business right now for a second, right? A customer calls at seven in the morning. Your office doesn't open till eight, right? That customer needs a plumber right now. So what do they do? They call the next company on the list. They're gone. You never even knew that they called. Or a lead comes in from your website at nine at night, right? Nobody follows up until the next morning, but by then they've already talked to two other companies, probably. But you're playing catch up in that case, right? And this is where the AI agents come in. And I do not mean some basic chatbot that says, please leave a message. I'm talking about like a real AI agent that can answer questions about your services, that can check your schedule, that can book appointments on your calendar right there on the call.

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Let me give you an example. One of the businesses we work with is an HVAC company. They set up an AI phone agent about three months ago. And before that, they were missing about 37% of their calls. 37%. Okay. That's a lot of money walking out the door. Now, their AI agent now picks up every single call, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It answers basic questions, right? It checks the schedule, it books appointments. And when it gets a question it can't answer, it takes the customer's info and it routes it to the right person on the team. So their missed call rate went from 37% to basically zero. And their booked appointments went up by about 25% because the AI is not just answering, right? It's booking. It's booking appointments. Amazing, right? So what should you do about this? Here, here's the three things you can start this week. Number one, set up an AI phone agent. This is the fastest win for any service business out there. It catches every call you miss, early morning, late night, weekends, lunch hour, when your team's out on jobs. The AI is going to pick up and answer the questions. It's going to book the appointments. Most businesses see a difference in the first week. Now, number two, put an AI chat assistant on your website. When someone visits, they come to your site, it's 10 o'clock at night, they got questions. The AI chat agent widget on the website, it's going to answer those questions instantly. Tell them exactly what's up. It captures their contact info. And it's going to send that lead straight into your CRM so your team can follow up first thing in the morning and get on it. Number three, I want you to automate your follow-ups. Okay, this is where the real magic happens. The fortune's in the follow-up. Set up automatic text and email follow-ups for every new lead. Okay, the data shows that if you respond to a lead within five minutes, you probably heard this, you're 10 times more likely to close them than if you wait an hour. Okay. Ten times. And AI can do that follow-up for you in seconds. Now, here's the bigger picture. We're at the beginning of a huge shift in how small businesses operate. Okay. The companies that adopt AI assistance right now are going to pull way ahead. Not because the AI replaces their team, not at all, but because it fills the gaps, right? No more missed calls, no leads slipping through the cracks anymore, right? No customers waiting hours for a response. The AI is going to handle all that stuff that falls through when your team is busy doing the real work they do every day. Now, Walmart figured this out. Their AI assistant boosts orders by 35%. They're a $100 billion company, guys, with the best engineers in the world. But the same basic idea, it works for a five-person plumbing company. Answer every call, respond to every lead instantly, follow up automagally, right? That's what AI agents do. And the businesses that start now are going to look back in a year and wonder why they did not do it sooner. Okay. This has been going on for a couple of years now. But that's it for today. If you got something out of this, go ahead and share it with another business owner who needs to hear the message. And if you want help setting up an AI phone agent or a chat assistant or automated follow ups for your business, come see us at speedmoby.com. We help service businesses like yours get more calls. We help you book more jobs, and we help you grow without adding a ton more staff. I'm Keith Carpenter, and I'll talk to you on Monday.