Nashville's AskOtto Uses AI To Save Customers From On Hold Music and Phone Tag

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Tennessee entrepreneur Eric Brown wants to ensure you never have to hear on hold music ever again.

Or that you never waste precious time tracking down a phone number for a business. Or end up playing phone tag with that business when you have a question.

His startup inSearchX, and its AskOtto.ai platform, makes it so that you can have AI do all the waiting for you.

Brown said the AskOtto platform acts “like an admin [to get] both people on the phone.” Users tell AskOtto what company they can to get ahold of and what questions they are looking to get answered. The platform then tracks down the phone number and waits for a live person to answer the phone. Once they do, AskOtto connects the business and the user for the conversation.

Customer Service Gets An AI Upgrade

AskOtto has been making phone calls for the last year. Brown said throughout that time, he found a strong use case in working directly with brands and publishers who are looking for ways to streamline how they connect with customers and ultimately close more deals.

That includes the recent launch of a campaign, "Which Mercedes Benz is Right for You?” in USA Today. Such campaigns help eliminate the “friction” associated with reading an article, clicking on an ad, filling out information on a landing page, and trying to figure out how to best connect with a business selling a specific car.

AskOtto might help consumers who are shopping online for big-ticket items like cars, or those who are looking to contact businesses like internet providers, insurance, or travel companies.

“A lot of friction that consumers experience isn't necessary,” Brown told Hypepotamus. “They're bouncing all over the internet identifying whatever information they want. They are filling out forms and waiting for people to follow up.”

It was a pain point that Brown had experienced while working in the automotive industry. Brown was previously the President of LotLinx, an AI-driven  automotive company that worked directly with car dealers, and was the CEO and co-founder Dataium, an auto shopper intent scoring model. During that time, he realized that customers were missing out on vehicles that would be a perfect fit simply because they were being forced to navigate a maze of websites, tools, and forms that did not get them directly in contact with a sales team.

Building In The AI Age

While he is running an AI company and has built the startup’s large language model, Brown takes a problem-first approach to technology.

“We didn't create a business for the sake of AI. We created business for the sake of our customers and solving a problem.  AI is the tool that we have found to be most effective at achieving that mission,” Brown added. “You should identify a problem and then ask the question: will AI make it  better? Can I solve this problem faster and better with AI? If yes, use AI. If not, don't use AI.”

For Brown, it is also about giving people back their precious time.

“I have one guiding principle and I have an acronym for it. I call it WHY? What is happiness to you?” he told Hypepotamus. “Happiness, generally, is found between people. Not between people and our software.”

Brown is the only full-time staff member, and he oversees a team of contractors. The company took out outside capital early on, the startup is largely bootstrapped to date.

While large brands and enterprise businesses are natural users of AskOtto’s platform, Brown said that he enjoys working with startups. Such companies are, he said, “the ones that seem to have the fertile, no boundaries mindset that brings us new use cases.”