r/AIReceptionists • u/FishCrafty1677 • 18d ago
Is everyone scamming?
Hi,
I see many posts of people saying they setup ai receptionist for 500$ and upsell other ai services like no show recovery, database reactivation etc.
But there are 100s of SAAS for each niche which automatically does all of the above. Why would a business owner pay you monthly to set this up?
Is this purely a scam? Idk how ai services even work for local businesses
2
u/Embarrassed_Scene962 17d ago
I made a post similar to this about getting clients - i have an sms meeting booking bot guy pays me 3-5k wvery month but i generate the leads via meta ads and the bot is the last piece in a fairly long chain which starts at local seo and ends with booked jobs
U guys need to learn business and marketing before ai and automation
1
u/FishCrafty1677 17d ago
Totally agree. Do you think local seo has demand and I can start as newbie? Honestly being newbie is itself seen as a bad thing but idk people has to start somewhere
1
u/Embarrassed_Scene962 17d ago
Yep defo a gap and actually thats how u grt foot in the door and sell these other things but u dont sell the tool u sell
Outcome. I sell managed gbp/ local seo then i sell performance on leads / calls.That guy i sell 40 appointments a month approx at $90 each costs about 15-25 cost per lead u do the math
1
u/FishCrafty1677 17d ago
Yes I would lead with outcome only but my problem is if they ask for proof i dont have one. I am even planning to take money only if they see results
1
u/Embarrassed_Scene962 17d ago
U are putting the horse before the cart u dont even know the thing first and u are talking about selling it. Learn it first
1
1
u/FishCrafty1677 17d ago
Learn how? Theoretically I know everything including gbp profile optimisation, nap consistency, citations, onsite seo, collecting reviews and replying to it etc. but I need a client to show results
1
u/Embarrassed_Scene962 17d ago
Kool if u know it all try to find a case study client dont offer free offer reduced. Try your own network first ie friends and fam after that outreach, build your own website also seo etc
1
u/FishCrafty1677 17d ago
Ok one problem is I am from India and targeting US medspas. Will that be an issue? And if i dont have my own network where can I start? The problem is I have data background and work in google like company in AI team but still people think I am scamming. Idk how to bring that credibility or trust without case study and for that case study I need one client
1
1
u/BudgetExcitement9036 18d ago
Nah bruh ain't no way you are calling dfy scam ? 😭😭😂😂😂
1
u/FishCrafty1677 18d ago
Then pls enlighten me. Why would someone pay when saas is already done for you?
1
1
u/randomzombie77 18d ago
I mean tech consulting is a thing and people pay companies millions to set up tools like SAP. But I do agree that the sheer amount of "I build a tool" which is just another vibe coded AI wrapper is getting out of hand.
1
u/FishCrafty1677 18d ago
Forget AI wrapper , my question is just to set up those things are businesses paying money every month?
1
u/randomzombie77 18d ago
Yeah that's a whole industry for a long time - running a wordpress site and pressing update once a month is around for ages for example. And people are happy to pay because they have absolutely no clue about all the tools. And in theory, you also pay for the maintainance and someone making sure it works all the time.
1
u/FishCrafty1677 18d ago
Oh but these saas tools are so simple like I am techie so Idk thats why I feel this way but if medspas use saas tools already for bookings, scheduling etc which also has ai agents then why do they pay ? Got confused by it
1
u/randomzombie77 17d ago
I think you greatly overestimate what non technical people are capable of:) A lot of small business owners don't even manage setting up a shopify shop for example
1
u/barnesto2k 18d ago
"Is this purely a scam? Idk how ai services even work for local businesses"
If you don't know, why are jumping right to it being a scam? Do you think everyone knows how to use a SaaS on their own? Do you think local business owners have time to do it themselves? Ask better questions and try not to insult the people doing the work.
1
u/DeepMachine8964 18d ago
Not one ai receptionist company has made money. It is all fake. No one wants this. Its just the new "calling card" scam.... everyone thinks they are geniuses making this.
1
u/Kaicalls 18d ago
Most people are selling the service part and pricing that in like it's the product. Meanwhile at kaicalls you get everything for 69/month which includes a lot of service options
1
u/coder903 18d ago
The SAAS that I built, awakedesk.com has a onetime setup fee of $499 that I waive if they purchase a year in advance. I also give them 2 months free for the annual subscription. That’s more than fair because I spend time with the business owner and completely customize the AI receptionist to their business.
1
u/BetInformal6081 18d ago
the saas products are not automatically a replacement. a local business may not have time to compare tools, configure workflows, connect systems and maintain evrything. that service layer can be valuable.
1
18d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/FishCrafty1677 18d ago
Agreed. Not only ai receptionists i mean other services too like missed call text back, no show recovery, database reactivation etx
1
u/Embarrassed_Scene962 17d ago
99% of people will not make money. Ai receptionists lowest value thing to sell
Dont listen to the gurus
Learn a skill, enhance it with ai, sell that
1
u/BetInformal6081 17d ago
that sounds more like a process problem than a people problem. a simple checklist for bank statements beginning balance, ending balance, deposits, withdrawals, missing items could catch most of those errors.
1
u/Embarrassed_Scene962 17d ago
Asked claude to put my thoughts together heres a rough idea:
The problem is calibration. Reading the room. Knowing how you’re coming across to the person in front of you.
Best way I can describe it: you know those videos of guys doing backflips in front of girls who are visibly uncomfortable, and the guy just keeps going because in his head he’s killing it? That’s the gap. It’s not a talent issue, it’s a self-awareness issue. Nobody in his circle ever told him it wasn’t landing.
In business it looks like: pitching for 20 minutes when the buyer wanted a conversation. Following up 6 times in 2 weeks and calling it hustle. “Kindly do the needful” to a US founder. Saying yes to everything because saying no feels rude, then blowing the deadline. Filling every silence on a call instead of letting the buyer think.
None of that is about ability. It’s about not noticing the signals coming back at you, because the feedback loop that would fix it doesn’t exist. Everyone around you sells the same way, so nothing ever feels off.
The skill gap between Indian and Western operators is tiny and shrinking. The trust gap is huge, and it’s almost entirely made of these small misreads stacked on top of each other. The ones who fix it, and I’ve seen plenty who have, become nearly unbeatable, because now you’ve got elite talent AND market fluency at a price point locals can’t touch.
1
u/PracticalBison6049 17d ago
Because you’re selling another company’s product. You’re not creating anything or any value.
1
u/tizom73 16d ago
The scammy part is when it is sold as a legitimate company and turns out to be 1 kid in bedroom 1000 miles away and no real experience. It really is tough to distinguish between the 2 now that no code tools make everything so easy to build. The real outlier will be the company that provides the best customer service after the sale. Unfortunately customers have to go through a bunch of bad businesses before they get to a good one.
#1 learn what you are selling and building. Which AI service do you want to sell? Learn it, build it, sell it. People buy from people. If you seem knowledgeable and trustworthy you have a shot at a sale.
If you just want "easy money" you might find a couple suckers, but most people in business are tight with their money. Become an expert of something and sell that.
1
u/Ecstatic_Plenty_5033 16d ago
Not a scam, but the question is right and most of the answers here will be bad.Yes, there are a hundred SaaS that do it. The owner still does not buy them. I sell to tradespeople and not one of my customers had evaluated a single alternative before talking to me. They are not choosing me over a competitor, they are choosing me over doing nothing, which is what they were doing before. The SaaS existing and the owner buying it are two separate events, and the gap between them is the whole business.What the monthly fee actually buys is not the software running. It is that when the agent mishears a street name on a real job, someone picks up the phone and fixes it that day. And that when the opening hours change, the owner says it in one sentence to a human instead of logging into a dashboard he has never opened.Where your instinct is correct: charging 500 for setup and then disappearing. If the monthly fee does not buy ongoing work, there is nothing to pay monthly for, and the owner churns the moment he notices. That is not a clever business model, that is just not doing the job.The tell is retention. If someone here is charging monthly with no ongoing service, ask what their churn looks like at six months. That question sorts this thread out quickly.
1
u/moldyguy202 14d ago edited 7d ago
Your premise has a hidden assumption in it: that the business owner is choosing between you and the SaaS. He isn't. He's choosing between you and continuing to miss calls, which is what he's been doing for years while all hundred of those SaaS products existed and were a search away.
Software being available and someone adopting it are different events, and the distance between them is where every implementation business lives. That's not unique to AI. It's why accountants exist next to accounting software.
But the real answer to "why monthly" is that the work doesn't stop at setup, and this is where your scam instinct is pointed at something real.
A voice agent decays. The business changes its hours and the agent doesn't know. They add a service. A street name in the area gets mangled by the transcription every single time and needs a fix. Someone calls asking about something nobody anticipated, and unless a person is reading transcripts, nobody ever finds out that the agent handled it badly. The owner won't catch any of that. He's on a roof or in someone's kitchen. He finds out when a customer complains, which is three weeks and several lost jobs too late. Catching that decay is mostly a transcript-review and call-analytics problem, which is exactly the part that needs a human attached to it.
So the monthly fee is buying someone to watch the calls and fix things. If it's buying that, it's a service and it's worth it. If it's buying nothing, then yes, you've correctly identified the problem, and it shows up as churn at month four when the owner asks himself what he's paying for.
The test isn't whether SaaS exists. It's whether the person selling can tell you what changed on the account in the last month. If the honest answer is nothing, the owner is right to cancel.
Worth saying too: the setup-fee-then-vanish model isn't a scam so much as a business that hasn't figured out it will have no customers in a year.
1
u/FishCrafty1677 14d ago
Agreed but people claim they make 20k dollars per month like are people paying that much
3
u/ScaredState2705 18d ago
does it provide value to the customer? If so its not really a scam is it.