We gave an AI a phone and asked 1000 SF businesses a question

We ran an experiment for SF Tech Week trying to understand how SF businesses are ready for AI. Very soon, every personal assistant like Muse, Instinct, Dots is going to call local places for us, so we wanted to understand what happens.

Our AI called the businesses across different categories - vets, bars, cafes, dentists, hair salons etc. It was introducing itself as AI on every call and then asked a question which fits the business like “Are you taking new patients” for dental places. We called only during business hours.

What we found: - Only 1 out of 3 businesses kept talking after picking the phone - Vets were 79%, dentists 61%, bars and dry cleaners - around 20% - Most people did not argue, but silently hung up after listening to the intro - 1 out 25 businesses already had AI reception answering the phone

Caveats - it is just one city and one week, so small differences between neighbourhoods could be a noise.

We would really love to hear how you are handling this if you are building AI voice agents calling places for people