Episode 11: Never Miss a Customer Call: How Voice AI Is Changing Small Business

Voice AI is quickly changing the way small businesses communicate with customers, answer questions, capture missed opportunities, and build stronger relationships. 

In this episode, Sandy Kibling sits down with Laurent Cohen, CTO of Get Oblique, to explore how Voice AI is helping small businesses improve customer service, respond faster, and create more consistent customer experiences.

Laurent shares his perspective on why AI is not about replacing human judgment, but strengthening it. From answering calls to supporting customer interactions, Voice AI can help businesses stay responsive while still requiring leaders to apply transparency, ethics, and thoughtful decision-making.

The conversation also explores one of the most important parts of AI adoption: trust. Laurent explains why disclosing AI use matters, how emotional understanding plays a role in customer service, and why small businesses need to think carefully about how AI represents their brand. As Laurent notes, “AI is like a currency, it emphasizes who you are.”

Listeners will walk away with practical insights on how small businesses can begin using Voice AI, where it can create real value, and why the best AI strategies combine technology, transparency, and human judgment.

Sound Bites

• "Working with an AI is applying human judgment"
• "Not disclosing AI in calls breaks trust"
• "AI is like a currency, it emphasizes who you are"

Chapters

02:48
Laurent's Journey and Insights on AI

06:02
Building a Profitable Business with AI

08:55
Understanding Voice AI and Customer Interaction

12:11
The Importance of Trust in AI

15:11
Case Studies and Real-World Applications

17:58
The Future of Voice AI and Business

20:56
Final Thoughts on AI as a Currency

Resources:

Get OBLIC.com

#Podmatch

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Start talking with the AI, deep dive into the subject, ask questions, you will get answers. Not those all those answers are going to be accurate. Now you're going to learn that AI is not always accurate. Now you're going to learn that you can negotiate with AI how to work and how to apply good judgment. Because Sandy, at the end of the day, working with an AI is applying human judgment. AI by itself is neutral. It may sound like it's pleasing you, it's telling you a bet, but it's really at the end of the day neutral. So you need to learn how to tame it. And in order to tame it, you need to apply human judgment.

SPEAKER_00 0:46

Welcome to Playbook AI Partners Podcast.

SPEAKER_02 0:53

Your host, Debbie Kibbling, is the chief playmaker, helping business owners and teams stop testing 20 tools and start using AI in a way that actually moves the numbers.

SPEAKER_00 1:16

You can use AI safely to be with confidence and get results. Let's run the play.

SPEAKER_01 1:36

Implementing AI in your business sounds exciting, especially if you don't want to miss a customer call. But how do you do this effectively and not lose that customer trust you've built over the years, especially because you're implementing AI and you're still a little bit overwhelmed by that? Well, to help us get into this topic today, I have Lauren Cohen on the show. He is the founder and CTO of GetOblick, a voice first AI platform helping businesses never miss a customer call. With over 20 years of entrepreneurial and technical leadership across Europe and the US, he now builds AI tools that handle real phone conversations, book appointments, and capture leads automatically. Laurent helps business owners understand how to use practical AI to save time, recover missed revenue, and simplify daily operations. Welcome to the show, Laurent.

SPEAKER_03 2:28

Thank you for having me, Sandy. It's a real pleasure having a discussion with you. And I hope that by the end of the show, a lot of people listening will be feeling a lot more comfortable with AI.

SPEAKER_01 2:39

Yeah, I hope so as well, because there is so much overwhelm out there for sure. But let's get into it. Why don't you start by telling us more about yourself and how it has led you on the journey you are on today with AI?

SPEAKER_03 2:52

I guess it comes from uh long time ago in a land very far away when I had my first computer. And uh I, you know, I I believe for the past uh 45 years, I've seen it all as far as uh digital and uh internet and social media and AI goes. Um it all comes down uh about how fearful you are or fearless you are when uh in front of uh new technology. Um it's not about skills. Uh it has never been about skills. Skills can be learned. It's about how comfortable you are handling a computer, handling a keyboard, and knowing that Ctrl Z will always get you back on your feet. So it's the same with AI and we get into it's as far as my story, of course. Just to answer your question, I I I I moved to America from France, where I was born, uh, in 2002, and I started a digital company in the e-commerce uh field, which got successful pretty fast. Then uh I used all the tools, SEO, SEM, social media, uh influence, uh advertising. And when as soon as uh LLNs and conversational AI came uh the field for everyone, it just amazed me and probably confused me a little bit. Because uh it appeared that once I received a phone call and uh it took me around five minutes and six questions to understand that I was talking with an AI. So it makes you wonder, you know. And as soon as you start to wonder and you're an entrepreneur, you start creating. That's what I did.

SPEAKER_01 4:42

Now that's really interesting. I love what you said about the skills. I think anybody can learn anything. I think it's just getting over that intimidation factor and that fear, especially with AI as fast as things are moving. And I would also say, hearing you talk about, you know, uh the c addressing a customer call and using AI for that, you know, I think it gets people can get fearful of that as well. But we'll dive into that in a minute, but because I want to dig into a little bit more about um your journey, but but but also helping listeners who may be thinking, boy, I'm starting from ground to zero. I hear you and what you're saying's great. You've you've made a success with GitOblick. What would you tell someone who's wanting to build a profitable business today using AI as a foundation? What tips would you give them?

SPEAKER_03 5:32

A few things to really keep in mind. First of all, uh when I started working in the digital realm back in 2002, uh I got a sense of um there were cycles, no? And I figured out very early on that those cycles were approximately seven years. You know, 1993, first real connection to the internet, 2000 is the crisis, 2007 we have social media, 2014 we got real streaming on phone and on computer. Uh 2021, we had COVID and the explosion of social media in totally different approach, and now we got AI. The main difference, and I used to tell everyone that was feeling, you know, a bit distressed about the fact that they missed the train, right? Well, we are all at some point sitting at a train station. We always miss something. You know what? There's always another train coming. Uh it was social media, it was video, it's it's you call it now it's AI. The only difference is now we don't have those seven-year cycles. We don't have any cycle. Things that are happening have happened yesterday, not even tomorrow. So the first thing I would tell anyone listening is uh do not get overwhelmed with the amount of information you hear and read and see about AI. Nobody in the world follows what's happening. So you open X, you open Instagram, you open any social media, you will see millions of videos saying, I created the latest agent in 24 hours, I have 200,000 followers and I make 10 million dollars, right? Perfect, good for you. And you know why? They're trying to sell you something, and that thing they're trying to sell you is probably something that's gonna be useless for you. Let me tell you why. We arrive at a technological threshold where even the technology that is six months old is way more is way enough for anything you need to do. Okay, and even the person that is working the hardest, deepest into the AI environment still doesn't need the latest shiny tool. So that's something that I would tell anyone. Don't get overwhelmed with all those information. Choose your technology, start learning, and that's the second point. You do not learn AI. There's no AI school, nobody has gone to AI uh high. You just dip into your LLM and you start learning yourself. What I'm trying to say is the best way to understand how AI works is to have a conversation with the AI about any other subject that AI. Because you you pick up a subject that you like, you know, uh you like astronomy, you like cooking, you like you name it, you know. Just start talking with the AI, deep dive into the subject, ask questions, you will get answers. Not those all those answers are gonna be accurate. Now you're gonna learn that AI is not always accurate. Now you're gonna learn that you can negotiate with AI how to work and how to apply good judgment. Because Sandy, at the end of the day, working with an AI is applying human judgment. AI by itself is neutral. It's it may sound like it's pleasing you, it's telling you the best, but it's really at the end of the day neutral. So you lean you need to learn how to tame it, and in order to tame it, you need to apply human judgment. And in that way, I think we're still pretty safe as a species against uh the machines. So learn with AI, apply judgment, and uh last thing that I think is probably the most important thing, again, remember what we said earlier that it's not about the skills anymore. In the AI era, it's literally not about the skills, it's about problem solving. As long as you can solve a problem that's in front of you, you will be successful with AI. And it's it appears in some way that problem solving is a quality that comes with experience, and experience comes with old age, right? So it's an opportunity for people that are not of the younger, young gun generation to come back in the work field and try to do something. Because us, I include myself, I'm 54. Uh, we have uh a lot of potential in terms of uh problem solving, and uh that's probably the number one asset you can have when using AI.

SPEAKER_01 10:23

That's great advice. I always tell everyone just start, say, hey, I'm gonna take 30 minutes, I'm gonna learn a new tool today. I'm gonna open up Claude, I'm gonna open up Gemini, I'm gonna open up Notebook LM, and just try something. Um, and just and you'll you'll learn as you go because it really, and I do courses and and community, but I would argue that community tends to be probably more important because you're getting that play-by-play in a community. I do two live sessions a month, and so it you're getting the latest and greatest information. And not to say that courses aren't bad because I do think they create a foundation, but I agree with what you're saying. Just, you know, get out there, start, do something. I always say this that that things happen not overnight, but taking small steps consistently over time. So I do appreciate that. And um, the last thing I'll say, and I kind of laugh about this too. And AI is so much fun and so easy. I had on my, I think it was episode three, I believe, Lynn Frieston, who's 75 years old, you know, used to work at John Deere at the Court in the C suite, and said, you know what? I'm gonna, I'm gonna dive into this and help people my age not feel like they're bored at an assisted living or whatever, but they can start their next career. And he built an app for that. I mean, it's so amazing what people can do. So dive in. But with that being said, let's talk more about the great things that you're doing. And I want to start off maybe with uh understanding voice. We talked about chatbots or getting different, uh getting an automated voice to answer a customer call. How has that changed with AI today?

SPEAKER_03 12:01

Let me tell you one thing that's very interesting. And that we discovered very early on when we started a project. There are so much small and local businesses in America and actually worldwide that are totally disconnected from the digital world, believe it or not. They some of them have a website they've created in 2012 and they lost credentials. They don't even keep it up to date. Some others have a Facebook or an Instagram page that hasn't been updated since COVID, you know. And you count them on, it's the same thing. But at the end of the day, those are still up and running companies. Their business owner is hustling every day, wakes up in the morning, you know, attend his customers, but not only has lost all his credentials and doesn't have time to deal with it, but again, with the AI era and the overwhelming amount of information and things to do, you know, on a daily basis, just say, you know what, I'm not gonna do it anymore. I can't just stand it. I will have probably a WhatsApp group where we send a message to my customers, but that's the end of it. So when you know that, you understand that there's a real digital gap that we didn't really apprehend it. And now you have the opportunity with Voice AI to just go over that gap from the time back in the days when you open your first Facebook account to literally go to the voice channel that is a way to interact with your customer base in a more natural manner, which is, by the way, the way they interact in a daily basis as business owners. You know, when you create a business, when you're bootstrapping a business, you open the door, you take a lease, you know, you put merchandise on the shelves, and then the third thing you do is start using your voice. And I'm when I'm saying I'm using your voice, it's not only the voice that comes from your mouth, it's your voice, who you are, how you express yourself. This is the foundation of any company. And this foundation should really be safe. And this is why there's a real, no, it's it's the technology of Voice AI is very mature. You know, it feels the emotion of the person it's talking to. It works 24-7. It can talk in tens of languages, which is the equivalent of have having at your footstep a whole call center from South America. You know, this is amazing for a few dollars a day. Nevertheless, when you start handling to a company that does voice AI, this voice that you've created to a business is not about technology, it's about trust. You are asking an AI to make sure that the trust they've been building for the past 20 years will be safe in their hands. So this is why as a company we work on the technology, obviously. We ensure that our product is uh perfect, but we want to keep the solution safe. And keeping it safe means having guardrails. You know, if someone calls as an emergency, can we have fallback to the business owner? You know, all those kind of things. We like to say here at GetOblick that uh it's like someone that's uh airplane pilot, you know. You have the passengers that look at the stars and the airplane pilot look at the instrument. You know, we're not trying to show the shiniest voice. We have it. We're trying to make sure the airplane lands safely.

SPEAKER_01 15:37

Oh no, that's so awesome. So make it make it simple for me and my listeners, if you don't mind. Can you perhaps provide a case study of a business where you help them never miss a customer call using voice? Maybe just help kind of walk somebody through that with something they can uh apply.

SPEAKER_03 15:55

Exactly. Um what we did first, and that's what differentiated our company from other competitors, is we've created uh a directory, business directory. Right now we have 1.8 million pages, business pages in our directory, which means that with each of those uh pages, we have one voice AI, which is included for free. So now understand that we've deployed 1.8 million voice AI at this moment and when we started, businesses didn't know we even existed. This directory was based on public information. So when we started to be indexed on Google, we started to have users interacting with our page. Because again, Sandy, remember when I said they don't businesses don't even reply to their website or Facebook or Instagram. So now they go to Get Oblik. And what happens is we do multiple things here, right? We do filtering, you know, spam call, people trying to sell you something. You know, we gather those information and we send it to the business. Then we provide leads. Someone contacts the business on our page, asks for an appointment, we take the information and send it to the business. Now remember what I said, the business doesn't know we exist. So we provide free leads. Then the business starts to say, okay, something is happening with GetOblick. I'm gonna go and look at it. And they can claim their page for free. Now, when they claim their page, they can edit their information on their listing, which in turn turns the AI even smarter. And once we have built trust, because we have provided free lead, we have proven that the AI is working because the business owner can test it online, live and fully working. The business owner can subscribe to our monthly service where he receives a virtual phone line, a widget it can put on its website if it needs, and a connection to its WhatsApp account. And at any moment in time, over the weekend, after hours during the day when it's busy, he can transfer the call to his own voice AI that would handle every request in a timely manner, in an elegant manner, and uh never tired.

SPEAKER_01 18:13

That's awesome because there are a couple things. One I think of sometimes you mention busy days and weekends. And I I love that AI can just say, hey, I can enjoy my weekend and my time with my family and not miss a customer call or at least have someone address an inquiry before they go to the competitor. So I would argue, too, you're keeping them in line or or in tune to that business that they first called on. You mentioned trust. I think that's so important because I think I mentioned in the very beginning, I think people fear if I bring on this AI voice that I'm gonna lose trust with my customers. They're not gonna get the message that is key to my business, that is is is cut key to my mission and my brand. So, how do you ensure with GetOblick that the brand and the voice of the customer still exist with AI handling the call?

SPEAKER_03 19:07

Beyond applying all the guardrails and protection and fallbacks that we do as a technological company, uh I'm a strong personal believer, and my partners are saying that AI should be disclosed. And let me explain you why. As now, for instance, we have the technology to clone anyone's voice. So we could argue that we could offer that service to any business owner, right? It may sound great that the AI answering the call is the business owner voice. Well, in fact, we need to think it yet. Let me tell you why. Let's say you have a customer that has been coming to your hair salon or as a chiropractor to practice for 20 years. You know, he's a bit older, you know, he doesn't know AI much. So he starts calling, and this AI voice starts answering with the exact voice as the assistant that is working in a practice. So now you have communication that happens. But then maybe on the first call or second call, something breaks. It sounds off, you know. And what happened? You're breaking trust. You're not disclosing the AI, and not only you're not disclosing it, but you're trying to hide it by the fact that you're cloning your voice. See, those those little tricky things here, we think that's what makes the difference. On top, obviously, of all the safeguard technological things that we need and have to do in creating the AI. So in more general way, you know, uh, people that are very afraid and uh worried about AI. I think that as a species, humans, as people, we're gonna have a reaction to this perfection that we keep seeing on the image generation, the video generation. You know, it's too crispy, too clean. You know, we are we are gonna be looking in the next few years for the flaws. We're gonna come back to see what's human, and this is what's gonna protect us. So you have to have a perfect service, but you also have to have this kind of little thing that makes it relevant and protective.

SPEAKER_01 21:10

Yeah, no, that's a great point. You know, you mentioned hair salon. I had re I want to say about a month ago, I had to reschedule an appointment and I went in and had the most pleasant assistant, and turns out she was AI. I even asked her, but she didn't respond. I asked her if she was AI because I was curious what she would say. But only AI people, I think, would really do something like that. But I I thought I'd ask. But it was really a good process for me. It was a good customer experience. I I was um, I kind of went different paths because I was trying to reschedule and it was really very effective. So um I think things have improved maybe since people have tried. But with that said, help me and listeners understand you know, what is the difference, right, between the voice and uh a voice answering or addressing a call on the weekend, business hours. How is that different from changing? chatbots or any other traditional automation tools.

SPEAKER_03 22:04

Chatbots may answer to you using AI. May answer to you immediately but they will not understand your emotions. And that layoff of emotion is not just a bonus. This is essential to create the perfect alignment between what the user wants and what the business can provide. Let's say you know and to be fair as humans we don't even manage that well those emotions. As a business owner when you wake up on Monday morning and go fresh from the weekend you're not the same person that you are on Friday at 7 p.m before going back home for the weekend, you know you're tired, you're exhausted and you know AI doesn't have that problem. AI works diligently 247, seven days a week. So when you have an AI that understands that the customer is upset and apply a certain way of reacting to it and a certain uh adjustments on what it says it changes the game completely. Because remember that when you don't answer another business will you said it earlier you know small businesses live in the moment they don't have quarters they don't have boards they don't have annuals you know what happens today is what's important for them. They might know what's gonna happen next month but probably not what's going to happen six months from now. So you have to be reactive and if you're not your competitor will so if you have a solution that is strong, that's solid and that works over time at a price that you know is leveling the game too because no small business can afford what larger business can, which means having people talking multiple languages working 247 you know being uh on top of everything all the time. So this is an asset that's not only will be on every single plan in the next 10 years but people need to know and do their math that as today it's still there. It's very cheap and it does the work perfectly you know when when you have a company you're talking about hair salon you know let's say it costs $100 per hairdo you know and uh you got four calls that are grabbed by the AI during after hours or weekend you're already looking at $400 that we would have missed. That's huge. And that's only four calls here. You know and when you know what costs voice AI today no it's like really a no-brainer. So the only limitation is not the price of the technology is the trust barrier. And that's right we that's what we're trying to break hair out of it all.

SPEAKER_01 24:47

No I appreciate that. Well hair is more like 200 plus these days. So I double that price. But you're so right because people want um people do want what they want and if they're calling and not getting a solution and that's just the nature of the business we're off to the next person that's going to answer the call or provide us a solution. So I love what you said about that. That's so true. Now as we we get close get to a close we've talked about get oblig a little bit but tell us more about maybe uh business is served size of business industry and maybe your mission on that help us understand more about GetOblick well uh it's all about scalability right that's the really the uh the thing that we decided from the first day it needs to be scalable so right now we have one point n million business listed we have uh 500 thousand pages that have been claimed by their business which is huge seconds we get three hundred three hundred uh six hundred thousand sorry uh page ranked on Google so this is what we do so now what we're trying to do the next step for getOblick is obviously provide always better service but the great things that happened is that very early on we understood that not only we were offering a voice AI service but all the interaction that are happening on a daily basis with our voice AI becomes use cases.

SPEAKER_03 26:15

So let's say business A has a use case as a hair salon that we've treated with one interaction. We use that in a graph that is distributed over all of our voice AI which make all of the voice AI even smarter. So now we're building something that goes beyond the voice AI distribution.

SPEAKER_01 26:35

Really something that goes within search within understanding how voice AI is trained and that's very exciting and that's really what we deep dive into well we will make sure and link to that in the uh notes so uh the website so people can gather more information and reach out. But uh what would you say Lauren? I really appreciate your insight today. It's really been amazing so so many thought provoking nuggets of information really things to think about. But what are your final tips or closing thoughts to uh listeners today whether that's about AI or getOblick or that you would just leave listeners with I see AI as a currency uh it's something that I really like people to understand because once they understand that they understand AI and they're probably less afraid.

SPEAKER_03 27:28

Uh what else is a currency? Money and both money and AI don't have bad or good value in themselves. You know it's only the people that are using it that transform it into something that is good or that is bad. Okay? You know the thing with money you know when you don't have money and you're a good person you're still a good person. And if you're a bad person you're a bad person right well if you get more money you just emphasize who you are you're still a good person and probably a better person. Well it's the same with AI you know AI doesn't make you what you are not it just emphasizes what you are so if you decide that you're a learner you're gonna learn more. If you're a worker you're gonna definitely work more you know and be a bet become a better worker. Obviously in certain instances if you have some things in your mind that are not really uh working well it might hurt. But at the end of the day this is not AI creating the problems this is who you are as a person. So I believe that you should not be afraid of AI because AI would only make you better at what you're good at. So you love something open your LLM start talking with your agent and become a better person oh absolutely I appreciate that and you just echo the the thoughts and the message I try to deliver every day.

SPEAKER_01 28:53

So thank you for that. Thank you for all you're doing at GitOblick and all the great things and helping businesses never miss that customer call and um the information you provided today Laurent I appreciate your time and your expertise so thank you for being on the show.

SPEAKER_03 29:09

Thank you Cindy it was a great discussion I really enjoyed it.

SPEAKER_01 29:13

I enjoyed having Laurent on the show I appreciated his thoughts on AI and all the great services getOblick offers business owners make sure and check out the link in the show notes to learn more about service offerings and the awesome testimonials. In our next episode it's going to be me and the mic. I'm spotlighting two powerful resources from Playbook AI Partners the AI Mini Solution Locker and the Huddle. AI is moving too fast for outdated courses, random webinars or scattered videos that leave you wondering now what? You do not need more noise. You need practical solutions that help you solve real business problems, save time, make smarter decisions, and use AI with confidence. So let's talk about it. Let's talk about those problems. Let's talk about real AI solutions and practical plays to help you move faster, reclaim your time and get better results in your business. Until next time, take action, execute and let's run the players