Most PA’s are worth their weight in gold. Truly irreplaceable.
But the majority of us can’t afford a full-time PA, or a part-time one for that matter. Even if you calculate the savings from having someone there to take calls, check your diary and schedule meetings so that you didn’t have to, the numbers probably just don’t add up. Moreover, teaching and managing a PA would likely take just as many hours as any that would be saved.
Until now. Meet Amy.
Despite sounding freakishly human over email and even having a LinkedIn profile, Amy is actually not a personal assistant at all. She is artificial intelligence. The brainchild of a company called X.ai, Amy is a service that schedules meetings for you. Once you share your calendar with Amy, all you have to do is CC her on a meeting invite and she handles the rest.
Dennis Mortensen, the founder of X.ai, came up with the idea for Amy because of his own frustrations scheduling meetings. An entrepreneur who didn’t want to shell out the tens of thousands of dollars a year to hire a personal assistant, Mortensen said that before Amy he was spending his own time scheduling up to 1000 meetings a year. According to him the average meeting requires eight emails to find a time that works for both parties—taking up a ridiculous number of hours each week.
“We schedule meetings. That is the end of my pitch,” said Mortensen. “It is very easy for people to understand. I am serving the exact people I am pitching to in investor meetings... There is not a venture capitalist on the east coast that is not using Amy.”
Amy is said to be absurdly human in the way that she interacts via email. She can remember where you prefer to take lunch meetings as opposed to coffee meetings as well as how long you like phone meetings. Yet users of Amy say X.ai has some work to do on the backend before Amy becomes a serious threat to every personal assistant out there. Apparently she doesn’t understand certain social norms—i.e. sending emails on the weekend, or sending multiple follow ups to schedule a meeting when the person was out of office. Also, the waiting list for Amy is some 61 groups long, which would indicate that Amy has some infrastructure improvements to do before scaling globally.
With Amy and an advanced VoIP business phone system, virtually any business person can have streamlined, professional business image without spending a lot. Combining a service like Amy with a VoIP business phone service means that not only are meetings scheduled for you, but that calls are handled for you as well. With a top-notch hosted IP service, you enjoy benefits such as easily-recorded on-hold messages, one-button advanced call routing, mobile twinning (so your mobile rings when your office phone does), call groups, advanced call logs, 10-way conferencing straight from your handset, and on-network (i.e. in-office) calls to and from your mobile. Plus with voicemail to email and a voicemail recording service, you can have an Amy-like woman record your greeting!
It is often small innovations that make a big difference to our daily lives. Starbucks for example did coffee just that little bit better and made it a global phenomenon. Meeting scheduling software and an advanced VoIP phone system may not seem like a rocket-science leap for humanity, but the truth is X.ai’ Amy, and VTSL’s business phone system, make meeting-scheduling and phone management enough better to actually make a big difference to our daily lives.
So what are you waiting for?! Get on the Amy waiting list and give VTSL a call today on 020 7078 3200.