The Executive Sessions: Francisco Lopes, CEO Of Sonant AI

Welcome to the executive sessions. The point of the executive sessions is to humanize the C-suite executives I think we've lost our mind as citizens out there and realizing that they're humans too So I thought I'm gonna fly around America and I'm gonna interview these people face to face no zoom no teams Face to face for you now. Here's the deal the bad side is is sometimes the quality is not the greatest because this was my first time And a lot of times I was doing it myself setting up the recording information But I still think I'm delivering my goal to you in humanizing them enjoy. Hey, I podcast Hello loyal listeners welcome to another episode of agency intelligence podcasts where I give you that real agency Intelligence and not the artificial that they try to make you believe out there. I'm your host Jason Cass Oh Right, all right, all right you loyal listeners. Welcome to another episode of agency intelligence podcast where I give you that real agency Intelligence and not the artificial that they try to make you believe out there. Hey, I'm here today with my friend Francisco, well, I'm not gonna say we're best friends. Okay, but what I'm gonna say is is he's a little bit more than the acquaintance I love friend Cisco. You're gonna find out that he has a Hard of gold right now. We are here at applied conference. It's October 7th and they have given us the luxury of having this Wonderful room to record in we've been doing a lot of executive sessions I hope you've been listening to those where I've been going around and humanizing executives But in the meantime, I had a little bit of left-time leftover and I hollered at my boyfriend Cisco not saying Francisco just Francisco and I said to him Hey, bro. I said let's come in here He said 230 and here we are. You're gonna find out a lot about his Francisco We're gonna talk about AI. We're gonna talk about because that's what he does and you guys know that I'm a geek about it So I think it's gonna get pretty cool and pretty radical before we do start though I want you to mind you to go to a-i-inditek.com a-i-inditek.com Keep in mind January 27th and 29th. We will be at In Fort Lauderdale at the Margarita Resort and Spa, so I want to make sure that everybody knows about that Okay, let's get on with the man the one the only because I really don't know anybody else right me personally That has the name Francisco friends Cisco. How are you doing brother? Dude cast thank you so much for having me and if you don't know anyone with the name Francisco You're gonna come to Portugal or Brazil live in America somewhere because that's one of the most common names out there Is it? Yeah, I don't know anybody else. Dave pretzels go, you know, I mean, I don't and so is that what you are as Portuguese? Yeah, oh shit. I didn't know that yeah, you don't you don't know that's not that that's not A nationality you meet every day. You know what I mean? Yeah, you meet a lot of different Europeans or Asians, but you don't see here somebody say I'm from Portugal That's that's really cool. We're like 10 11 million people in the world and not that many in the US Hence the reason that's why okay, that makes sense that makes sense and it's so unique how how most people would even don't know and but I do From the fact that I own business in Latin America that Brazil to be in Brazilian doesn't mean that you know That's their official language is actually Portuguese and not Spanish, which is cool. Yeah, right? And then is there any other countries as gay Guyana is that Portuguese, do you know? Guinea. There's a couple of countries in Africa. There's a country in near Indonesia called Timur. Okay. Yeah, so we're all okay Okay, you guys were colonized and just like everybody else was back in the day, you know, yeah, all right Francisco the one and only to me Dude, give us the 30 second. Don't bore us with all your boring-ass business shit Give us the 30 seconds of what you do and why you have a passion for what you do for us agents. Yeah, so look at Sonnance in a very simple terms. I know you like that we help agencies pick up the phone and we do that with AI agents Okay, so that sound like a human and where this comes Andy is that for many loyal listeners listening Agencies agency owners agency staff. You probably know how are these to pick up the phone and to answer, you know, those routine phone calls those clients that maybe you know are taking time away from from your staff or mute to be spending time like building the Relationships That's what we come in. That's where we help and we do that while plugging into the workflows the platforms the agents Maiden she sees the RMS of free shares and we really only work with the share of the agencies and shares brokers Okay, loyal listeners tell me was that more than 30 seconds someone tell me that now I'm just joking all right, so Francisco I Love what you do You have competitors in the market and I think you've separated yourselves with I think The best way I could say is a lot of other people give you the product and say here it is You kind of give it the person the product and say hey, we have flows We have workflows that already help you so you don't have to reinvent this stuff Wouldn't you say that that's the biggest separator with you? That's one of the biggest separators for sure is that because we are so focused in this industry we know Already have the workflows out of the box so you know ramp up is much faster not only that, but the integrations And the workflows around the calls and that's where we're becoming you know better and better and invest in more so Making sure that's the experience because they experience with voice on the phone like a voice robot can Do so much when it becomes really valuable when you can give them the context of what are the posts? For example, you're looking at Someone calls in and you can see their name on the agency management system you can see who they are And maybe you can route and encourage an activity to the right department the right CSR 20 low stasks, right? So that's where we really focus on and because that's our only client Our only Focus in picking up the phone. We can really nail in being the best at it Hmm Francisco I want to talk to you about the fact did you feel people are adopting in in and Do you think people are adopting your type of technology not your product? I'm talking about the technology as a whole And do you think they're adopting it quick enough? Does that make sense when I'm asking there? Yeah, I think it's a great question I this technology is not for everyone today, so a lot of people are not adopting it. Mm-hmm, but There we do see a lot of adoption at the same time. I mean, there's a lot of agents. What do you think is making one over the other? You think I think in the end of the day comes down to First like I'll strong of the problem you have right now and how much do you want to go? Do something that is different because there's a fundamental tension here insurance agencies Exist because they are local they have a relationship with the customer And now we're talking about putting a ion the funds and we're like what what tail is going on here like this is crazy, right right? There is not where we're supposed to be so that's that tension What about the personal touch and what we see we've been seeing is that the agencies that Deep their toes into this realize that there's opportunity or that they can differentiate versus their competitors. They can Be more agile be better at serving their their clients ultimately are the ones that Embrace the transformation adopted see the benefits start getting deeper on the workflows and we see that this year like it's you know We haven't been doing this for very long because it's all new technology. Mm-hmm. Last year applied net was our first industry conference when we met. Yeah, and We were there to boots you came you came over to the booth with meach but there was not many people there right now We have aligned people trying to talk to us and and Obviously, there's there there are more people like there are people that come to us or I've heard about soonans I've heard about what you guys are doing This agency that I know is using it. So we see like there's more willingness to talk about but still like you go around Then you ask people ethics conference. I will like do you want to have AI picking up the phone? How do you feel about that? Probably they're still not ready yet. Mm-hmm. There's like this tension So let's talk about I wanted to ask you some questions here And I'm really curious about one because I do not know but the The problem we had was the latency is that that latency when I use the right word different Cisco meaning whenever I ask a question How fast the person replies is that latency? Yeah, that's the latest is lag also used for and and that's really in the industry as a whole gotten way better I mean very little latency. I think that's something you pride yourself on last year. So you probably do I Want to talk about something else. I want to talk about the other side and in Francisco This is a problem we encountered and for all loyal listeners. I do not have his product So don't think that this is his product. I'm telling him what it was Um, and for the record. Yes. I'm seriously considering switching to his product now We had a carrier that got cyber attacked and we were down for two two months Here we go. Yeah, yes. Okay, Erie. We'll say Erie And when they were down they would make these regular updates Erie did a fantastic job of keeping us informed and they did such a great job of saying hey You're the agent keep your people informed and we thought to ourselves. Okay, this is a great time for us to use AI right we can make those outbound calls that say hey, this is the things we just want to let you know It was an Ethan disaster. It was a disaster We had customers calling us being like hey, and here's what we found out We found out that when somebody calls into our office They usually have a quiet room The AI works perfectly But when I'm calling them and they're at the baseball game or they've got the kids in the car or they're cooking and the kids are running around Hey, this is Yes, this is so Hey, yeah, it would get it could barely get through because the sound was kicking in and there's all these agents who are like Oh, we're making outbound calls and stuff. I'm sorry We tried it over and over again, and it didn't work well. How do we fix that with this product? How do we fix that? Not your product, but how do we fix that so that that doesn't happen? That's that doesn't make it real Well, what are you describing is one of the reasons why we focus so much over last year? In nailing down the in-mount calls first because people are calling in there's more people are the ones in the customers one that is initiating the call right so that's right When I'm outbound you're kind of invading that's right someone else right so You're right you have all those issues to deal with from a technology extent points You know, it's now there's going to be maybe better models better handling of interruptions There are optimizations that that you can do, but I think there's also something important to consider here is that The world is going to be getting used to speak with AI. Yes, and as that happens is people realize that You know those type of Communications can actually help and be valuable like hey Your insurance carrier got a cyber attack like here's what you what you can do to protect yourself right that's the legitimate Information that you want to communicate right so I think it's also like it's going to be a combination of you know Uh, we we are Working we have outbound calls right like optimizing more the system for that Having good architectures technological things in place better models coming in from the big labs the open a eyes of the world And people getting more used to it. I think the combination of these two will get us there We've got to train these things though on real-life conversations of cutting people off My customer can't find out about eerie's thing because every time their kid cross says something It cuts off and it because it thinks that we're talking back to it, right? That's in my opinion where the training needs to come in because we just do that normally I'll be on the phone with you and when I have a thought I'll kind of cut you off and sometimes you may finish what you're saying and I'll say oh, sorry Or sometimes you'll be like oh, let me see what Jason says and then you allow me to talk right yeah If it's AI and they know it's AI I just rather it just keep fricking talking Right rather than cutting out now maybe like the person keeps talking for like three four seconds That's when it cuts out But I think this is a major issue and then the reason why I don't think it's an issue. I think today It's just a problem, but once you solve that problem I think you've got a huge advantage over your competition because you could say hey inbound calls are great And we're perfecting that but the real power is is you're going to reach out to them because there is some kind of difference And I think that we want to reach out to our customers a lot more But we don't because the manual labor of it and so that was one of the things that I'm going to be honest with you I hurt my feelings and what I mean by that is is I was so excited to use this product to be like okay This is where we can use AI to reach out to our customers our customers We're just calling in going man. Hey, I can't understand what the machine saying it keeps cutting out You know, and then I thought to myself I went to my team and I said wait a minute We use it for inbound calls are we having that problem? No, and when we would go listen to the calls we would find out that they're usually what do you do when you get it Where you're going to make a call? Hey everybody be quiet or you'll walk out of the room, right? So you set the AI up at AI up perfectly for that but not on the reverse So I think that that's what needs to be changed. I really do. Yeah, and for you to like the way this technology this calls our run today Mostly is by transcribing the voice to take so it's really not to glue that distinguish what voice is yours and what voice is You're keep talking the background. Mm-hmm, right? So that's when Where the challenge relates. Yeah, it does. That is a challenge there I think though if you're training on enough conversations and let it hear people over interrupting each other They should know whenever Someone's interrupting like if you and I are talking. I'm like wait a minute San Francisco. Well, okay, stop, right? But if I just start talking over you I think the AI should still be talking because it's rude to talk over to somebody You know what I mean? So just something to think about I I wanted to be better on that way So any genius ways that you really I mean you have customers that this is their first line of defense keep in mind A lot of people on here haven't used it. Let's educate them Are they the first line of defense? Are they using it just for the weekends? Or lunchtime? How are your users? Yeah, so The first the first way people start using it is where you're saying like After you know during lunch hours during the weekend That's how people start getting used to it A year ago that's how most people would use it like I almost like a glorified voicemail now that is getting connectivity with the AMS Mm-hmm We're seeing agencies using it as first line of defense and it'll start maybe with a fraction of the calls But then you'll start increasing the volume that it goes as they get more comfortable And it starts doing things that even a person cannot do like when you call And if you have a Person picking up the phone they cannot recognize the phone number immediately on the AMS and see what the name of the person greeting them by the name You know potentially seeing their policies putting that information all clean after the call because then there's an auto call coming on, right? So you we start seeing As we got deeper on the workflow The utility increasing for for the agency to I like that I like that a lot Where are we going with all this Francisco? You're in AI 24 at seven. Where are we going with this man? I think I think we're going not to to doom scenario anytime soon. I don't believe that either I think we're going into an area of abundance where we are going into you know for these industry particularly agencies are going to be able to have more time for their stuff You know, it's hard to find a quality people you know license or even non-license right like you you have a business around that because of that reason like Get good quality people to the To the agencies and AI is just a way that Our product in general the technology like it's going to help agencies Get that capacity back to their staff make sure that their stuff is not burned out That's is enjoying more their work And it's really being able to spend their time more time with clients advising them eventually selling more policies producing and That's that's where we believe this is all going to go So I was earlier today with one of our clients here and they were saying and you're going to like this because you have the app report metrics Before sonnet they were doing 70 tasks a day on average per staff now they're doing their stuff is doing 100 tasks a day on average Wait, they were doing 70 tasks a day now they're doing a hundred tasks per day Yeah, because sonnet is able to help them collect information and get them much more time so they can be more productive so They they're able to do more with the same time they're able to to to to to have You know be more be more if I see what you're saying. I see what you're saying time only allowed them to do 70 Now that sonnet's helping them they're actually able to do more. Yes, right being more productive, right Um A loyal listeners remember I always say in and to you, Francisco. I say that Productivity is doing more with the same And efficiency is doing the same with less Just think of that and that's what you're talking about you're talking about the fact that they're doing more What the same amount of people that they had using AI right um and then the efficiencies is can be well I'm going to do the same But with less right and that's that's the key and I believe the future which through the manual and everything that I wrote is is We have to collapse the efficiency before we improve the productivity a lot of agencies owners Are very productive, but they can't get any more productive They can't get past what their normal benchmark is because they have to collapse the efficiencies And so I think that that is the part of AI that you need to make sure with your business So you're saying hey, we're already helping agencies do more with the same because of our thing But how can we help them do the same with less is the key and that's what people don't want to talk about right now Because it's like well that means I have less people well It could be but it also could be doing less of tasks that you shouldn't be doing right so there's a lot of differences out there um So you say that there's not a doomsday scenario Okay, and I want you to know I don't believe in this BS either But what do you what do you see what's your doomsday? What's the changes you see that are going to affect business and how we are going to work in terms of in terms of using AI sorry like with AI How is it how do you see it changing the not just insurance, but like the whole world I mean do you see in 10 years where we're all sitting around singing kumbai yaw collecting government money because no one has a job Um, and if you do see that how far out do you think that is? I don't think I don't think that's coming in 10 years Uh, or maybe at least in 5 10 is already predict but um based on how things are going Uh, the model quality has been stagnating a little bit and maybe let's see like in this fall what's gonna happen But What we were where I do believe is that and this is you ask 30 seconds at the beginning For the story why we're passionate about this reason we're passionate about building this because we ate repetitive task and AI is just Paradise to automate repetitive tasks to make you know work more fun to make it more more more fulfilling so you can spend more time with people So I think that's what's going to happen is that people are going to spend more time with people and with AI agents AI agents are going to be part of that. That's right, but that's that's gonna help make the work more less repetitive and the less repetitive tasks And this is all like something you see on transformations in in like in every tech transformation when things change Right now it's very weird for us to think about an insurance that you know like how you will need to You know go and analyze paperwork Versus going on the you know on a carrier port for example. Yeah, or you know Endling an AMS on the cloud versus I don't know some agents still have but like desktop right? So that also that today all sounds very weird and some behaviors that today are seem surprising to think about like in 10 years They're gonna sound Very weird one of someone on my team was saying that maybe in 10 years every agency is gonna pick up the phone We take with AI and and handle more interactions with AI And I think that's that's the that's the the future where we're always it's gonna change is gonna be people spending more time with people And we take iagents and less on the repetitive tasks like in front of their computer trying to click around and In the interact today with software. I believe also the power of your product is is routing and my manual I write routing structure scale and I believe that we have to change this my bet my buddy Michael cruise is real big into this and it has to do with the fact that when something is coming in it could be by voice It could be by or by call it could be by email it could be by inbound form whatever it could be that needs to be routed Correctly and I call it the logic routing engine and the reason I do that is because I've been preaching to insurance agents for the last Damn freaking years that they need to be able to Not have licensed people doing unlicensed task and they can't figure it out So I thought okay if we create a routing engine that routes it and then we overlay it with bots And then we overlay it with agentic eventually when that comes we'll be able to do that And I believe your product is essential to that and I believe that when it comes in not through email not through form It comes in through your the call It's important that when that person says I have a billing issue that that Doesn't go to the licensed person. That's where it needs to be able to route accordingly and we can do that We can go in there right now and say this is the person who's this and that and I want agents to know that now To for your product is that 100% possible if it comes in and I say hey, it's a billing issue and that and let's say Lisa is the only one that does billing will your machine know that and automatically route it to her Or can we tell it that yeah exactly can tell you that and then the cool thing about routing as well Is that when you integrate with the management system you can do routing based on the management system properties So you could see maybe assign the count manager or assign CSR so you can take routing to the next level Yes, okay, and that's when it gets really cool and then also routing the post call activity So who is this task going? There's a task. Who is this task going to be assigned to? Okay, there's a non-licensed task this goes to this department department, right? Yeah, or this is a licensed task goes to this department So under percent like routing is is a is a is a is a big use case and One of the the things that we do on the phones. Yeah, I don't think that agents understand how important this is and You're not going to economically be able to have a human router Which a lot of people do and then like some people are like will I have a phone tree that's kind of like an old-fashioned routing thing but like We've done the studies we used to use the phone tree our calls dramatically went down And and what it was is that and that was not necessarily a good thing Because why they were going down is because they were frustrated that they couldn't get through the damn tree So Travis on my business partner was like that's it no more tree Well, because we track so many stuff even including our phone calls we started noticing that we started getting more phone calls now Some of them say well, that's not any good I still disagree that phone calls are good. It's communication And it's how they communicate and we're probably going to be using it for a really really long time You know, so I don't want us to down that I also know and a lot of you a lot of the agents know this too We hate getting a lot of phone calls, but we also know that if you look at your productivity Let's say let's say I grow by 15% just have a huge year. Okay. Let's say I grow by 25% now a huge year I guarantee you that year I had more phone calls than I did when I wasn't growing right? So is that one of those things people can't sit there and say oh well, I want to get red phone calls No, it's kind of tied to sales in a way Yeah, that's why like if you are in steady state if you are in retention mode You probably don't have you know need to worry about that Because everything has been the same But if you're growing your business is changing every three months every six months. That's right. Whatever. It's right Um, so hey, um, Francisco. We got to wrap it up. That way quick any last minute thing you want to say Thank you so much for for having me Jason. This is a you know very good conversation as always You know appreciate appreciate the good good insights the good chat And yeah, we're super excited to to keep building for for for the for the industry, you know Our direction is clear and we just want to keep helping helping the the industry helping agencies being more efficient and getting ready for that That's a joy. Yes, that's right. Francisco. I greatly appreciate your time. Hey everybody loyal listeners out there Be sure to check out Francisco. He he's his team is great. You can tell how nice he is He's he doesn't probably get mad at all unless I was talking to his wife or something She'd probably tell me something different But the thing is is that he's a really good guy. He's got a really good team. It's got a good product And I'm telling you I had the others out there because I use them there This is a little bit different and it's coming from a better angle I also just think that the company has a lot it seems like you may be Snewer than some of the others, but I see your leadership in the way you do things as the future, okay? So thank you once again loyal listeners You know what I do because I do it for you tell me your thoughts and tell me your ideas And I'm going to tell the world what you have to say. This has been Jason Cass with agency intelligence podcast and that's Francisco We're out. Thank you You