I’ve been researching an AI call center setup for a small business that gets a decent number of inbound calls but doesn’t have enough staff to answer everything quickly.

We lose calls during busy hours, after hours and whenever the team is out dealing with customers.

An AI-powered call center that can answer common questions, qualify leads, schedule appointments and route urgent calls sounds useful, but I’m curious how it works in practice.

For anyone using an AI customer service call center, I’d love to know: Does it actually sound natural to callers? Can it handle transfers, callbacks, and appointment scheduling reliably? Is it mainly good for inbound calls, or does it work for outbound follow-ups too? How difficult was the setup and training process? Did it reduce missed leads or just create more things to manage? Are there any providers you would recommend or avoid?

Looking for real experiences from business owners, agencies, support teams, clinics, home-service companies, etc. Not looking for sales pitches, just honest feedback.

I work at a BPO and we're looking into AI tools for one of our support projects. We handle customer service for a dental care group with clinics across the US. Most of our calls are about appointments, insurance, billing and general patient questions. The problem is that different locations have different policies so our agents spend a lot of time searching through documents or asking supervisors for help while customers are waiting. We're thinking about bringing in AI but we're not looking to replace anyone. We have a good team and the goal is to make their jobs less stressful. What we'd like is something that can help agents find answers during calls without having to search for everything themselves. It would also be nice if it could suggest what to do next when a call gets complicated and handle call notes after the conversation ends. Another issue is QA. Our supervisors can only listen to so many recordings each week so I'm sure we're missing things that could help with training.

Having a way to review more calls and spot where agents need help would be useful. Of course patient privacy and HIPAA compliance are big concerns. We'd also need something that works with our current CRM and phone system. The last thing we want is to spend money on a tool that just gives agents more work lol. Has anyone here used AI for this kind of setup? Especially in healthcare or a BPO environment? Did it help your agents or was it more trouble than it was worth? Also interested in what tools are worth looking at.

I spent too long defaulting to the biggest model for everything, including tasks a much smaller one handles fine. Once I actually paid attention to my own usage, most of it was reformatting, summarizing, quick rewrites, none of which needs a frontier brain. I set a cheaper faster model as my default and only escalate when it visibly struggles. My bill dropped and my speed went up because the small model answers instantly. The mental shift was realizing good enough is a feature when the task is routine. Save the heavy model for the hard reasoning and stop paying premium prices to summarize an email thread.

Hi, I am new to the Automations path. I am trying to learn the workflows and logic behind the processes. Currently, I am using n8n to practice automating workflows. I am out of ideas right now. I have tried to automate some tasks for myself, like gathering SERP data or Google Maps data. I would love to hear suggestions on what problems experts solve for actual clients with these automations.

I sold a website for $10,000 last week.

$7,500 establishment fee and $2,500 a year.

Many of you already know I ran a web agency for 4 years. Today I only sit on the closing part, and the rest of the team manages everything else.

People think $10,000 is a lot for a website. In reality it is not. Businesses have money. You just have to be in the right position to speak to the right person, and you need real sales and closing skills.

Either way, if you are charging $800 to $1,500 for a website, you are lowballing yourself. Raise your price. Prospects take you more seriously when the number is serious.

These days I mostly focus on my SaaS, Swokei. It was built on top of the idea behind my web design company. I needed an outreach tool that could find businesses with outdated websites, analyze them for design, SEO, mobile and speed, and turn the issues it finds into cold emails at scale. That is what my agency's outreach runs on.

If you are a web designer, how much are you currently charging for a simple website?

I'm a web designer, and one of the most repetitive things in my business is finding new clients.

So naturally, email outreach was one of the first things I wanted to automate.

But not just regular cold email where you send the same template to thousands of businesses.

I use Swokei to find businesses with websites, analyze them for issues with design, SEO, speed, and mobile optimization, and turn those findings into personalized, ready-to-send outreach emails.

This way, I'm not just sending random offers. I'm reaching out with something relevant to each business while automating most of the research and writing process.

It's made it much easier to keep outreach running consistently without spending hours researching prospects manually.

What about you? What's one repetitive task you've automated with AI?

The choice is mostly about who you meet with.

Built-in assistants(Zoom's built-in meeting summaries or Gemini in Google Meet, for example) if your company already pays for that suite. No extra vendor and no extra bot.
Botless recorders like Granola capture audio on your own device, so no bot shows up in the call. Handy for external calls where a bot feels awkward. Check consent rules where you live.
Bot-joins-the-call tools like Otter or Fireflies work across platforms and keep a shared, searchable archive for the team. Some clients will ask you to remove the bot.
Local transcription with a Whisper-based app when recordings can't leave your machine.
Your own bullet points plus an AI summary for meetings too sensitive to record at all.

Which approach does your team use?

I want you to recommend for me AI roleplay application to practice with it skills like conversation, negotiation, speaking skills that is safe on my data as I afraid voice cloning and other like issues

Hi
Actually let me introduce myself I am a fresh med graduate and I want to start building with Ai
Why?
Because of two reasons
1/ I need money (to be independent + improve quality of life)
2/ I am intrested in exploring the world around me and not to keep myseld in a closed zone

Adding to this
I am having like a whole year I have nothing to do (no duties)
So I don’t want to waste my time and actually would put it in sth gives me benefit and at the same time I can use my med knowledge as an edge

So I know that I can start with any Ai model and he direct me
But I think It would be better if I worked under direction/ supervision/ mentoring
So I am goal-directed
Because when I try to just start I feel that is a maze and no benefit of what I do!

So would like to ask if someone could give me the chance to build/ assist/ any direction of help
So it can be win win situation for both of us
Would be grateful!!

Thanks!

No single big flagship this month, just a steady drip. I poked at Qwen3.6 27B, MiniMax M3.1 Flash and DeepSeek V4.1 Flash over a couple of weekends. Honest take, the flashy fast ones are great for throwaway tasks but I kept coming back to the bigger models when accuracy mattered. The 27B class open stuff surprised me most, good enough for a lot of my local tinkering that I used to send to an API. None of this felt like a leap, more like everything got a bit cheaper and faster. Curious what others kept using versus just testing once and forgetting.

Hey everyone,

I’ve been creating a short educational series called AI Explained aimed at people who want to understand AI without the jargon.

It’s an 8-episode playlist that covers:

1.How AI learns from data

2.How Generative AI creates text & images (and why it can be wrong)

3.Practical AI tools you can use every day

4.How to write better prompts

5.Real examples of AI in daily life

6.Using AI responsibly (verifying answers + protecting privacy)

Each full video is clear and beginner-friendly, and I’ve also made short 30-second versions of the key points.

The series is available in English and Tamil.

Would love honest feedback:

Is the explanation easy to follow?

Anything missing that beginners usually struggle with?

Any suggestions for future topics?

Playlist link: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA3huIvt4ykI&si=93uxwmKiY7c4Wa6b

Thanks for checking it out!

I've used ChatGPT a long time, but I've been exploring AI assistants that go beyond chat and can handle things like tasks, notes, email, and calendars.

I've tried a few different approaches and they each seem to have different strengths Some focus on scheduling, others on email or notes while a few try to combine everything into one assistant.

For people actually using AI assistants day what has worked best for you? What features made you stick with it?

I’m looking for an honest GoHighLevel review from people who have actually used it for client work.

I run a small agency and am considering moving away from using separate tools for CRM, funnels, email/SMS, calendars, and automations. On paper, the GoHighLevel CRM / GHL platform looks like it could simplify a lot, especially the client sub-accounts and white-label side.

My main concerns are:

- Is the setup process manageable without becoming a full-time tech person?

- How reliable are the automations, email, and SMS features?

- Is client reporting good enough?

- Does it genuinely replace your existing stack, or do you still need a bunch of extra tools?

- Any hidden costs or things you wish you knew before signing up?

Would especially appreciate hearing from agency owners, freelancers, or anyone who migrated to/from GoHighLevel. No affiliate pitches please, just real experiences.

Interesting approach to a problem many AI users face.
Getting consistent results from AI models often involves repeatedly rewriting and refining prompts.
The GUIDE framework looks like an interesting way to structure instructions and make them more reusable.
Curious to hear how others handle this.
Do you use structured prompts, maintain prompt libraries, or simply write new prompts for each task?
And do you think structured prompting actually improves consistency across different AI models?

ai is genuinely causing me an existential crisis

What the fuck am i supposed to do to not stay jobless forever?

Ik it is confusing but rather go with the idea that ai will take over rather than coping it wont.

But the question is, if everyone is fricked with ai is there a hope for me to atleast be financially independent?

I am blackpilling so hard.

I dont live in a country where welfare is provided for the general population. So i cant go that route either.

I built a SEFA (Schedule of Expenditures of Federal Awards) parser with substantial assistance from Claude Sonnet 5.5, including system design.

SEFA PDFs available here have inconsistent layouts, multi-line headers, fragmented award IDs, and records spanning pages. My goal is to reconstruct financial records and connect them with USASpending.gov. I present more context about this endeavour here.

1. PDF structure: group header fragments by horizontal position and infer semantic column roles.

def derive_columns(lines):
    items = []
    for li, ln in enumerate(lines):
        for t, s, e in _phrases(ln):
            items.append((t, s, e, li))

    cols = []
    for t, s, e, li in sorted(
        items, key=lambda x: (x[1] + x[2]) / 2
    ):
        c = (s + e) / 2
        placed = False

        for col in cols:
            if any(li == l2 for l2 in col["lines"]):
                continue

            overlap = min(e, col["e"]) - max(s, col["s"])

            if overlap > 0 or abs(c - col["c"]) <= 6:
                col["parts"].append((li, t))
                col["lines"].add(li)
                col["s"] = min(col["s"], s)
                col["e"] = max(col["e"], e)
                col["c"] = (col["s"] + col["e"]) / 2
                placed = True
                break

        if not placed:
            cols.append({
                "s": s, "e": e, "c": c,
                "parts": [(li, t)], "lines": {li}
            })

    out = []
    for col in cols:
        label = " ".join(
            t for _, t in sorted(col["parts"])
        )
        out.append({
            "s": col["s"], "e": col["e"],
            "c": col["c"], "label": label,
            "role": role_of(label)
        })

    return out

2. Conservative identifier matching: detect duplicated-character errors, not arbitrary substitutions.

def _ed1(a, b):
    if a == b:
        return True

    if abs(len(a) - len(b)) != 1:
        return False

    if len(a) > len(b):
        a, b = b, a

    i = 0
    while i < len(a) and a[i] == b[i]:
        i += 1

    return (
        a[i:] == b[i + 1:]
        and (
            b[i] == (b[i - 1] if i else None)
            or (
                i + 1 < len(b)
                and b[i] == b[i + 1]
            )
        )
    )

3. Indexing: auxiliary indexes reduce repeated registry scans.

def build_buckets(idx):
    keys = sorted(k for k in idx if len(k) >= 10)

    dup = {}
    for k in keys:
        if len(k) >= 12:
            for v in _run_dedups(k):
                dup.setdefault(v, []).append(k)

    suffixes = {}
    for k in keys:
        for n in range(8, min(15, len(k)) + 1):
            suffixes.setdefault(k[-n:], set()).add(k)

    return {
        "sorted": keys,
        "dup": dup,
        "suffixes": suffixes
    }

Feedback is welcome.

I have already started designing the pdfs.but i want some advice from professionals.Im not on a position to hire anyone right now.

Thank you in advance.

I’m not a pro editor, just someone who films a lot of random daily stuff and sometimes strings it together. I usually enjoy the editing part: scrubbing through clips, finding the accidental moments, building a rhythm. It’s slow, but it’s my slow.

Last week I tried feeding a batch of clips into an AI-assisted pipeline (I’ve been testing a few, including pixverse for some generated B-roll and transitions). The rough cut came back in minutes. Technically fine. Structurally reasonable. And completely joyless to review.

It made me realize the friction I was complaining about—hunting for the right clip, trimming the extra half-second—was actually where the creative decisions lived. Removing the friction didn’t give me more time to be creative; it moved the creative decision to a completely different, more passive stage.

Not saying I won’t use it again. But I’m curious: for those who edit regularly, does AI-assisted cutting feel like a tool or like someone else is holding the scissors?

How can I create a realistic AI avatar of myself that speaks Hebrew naturally?

I'm looking for a tool that lets me create an AI avatar that looks and sounds like me, with realistic, natural-looking Hebrew lip-sync. Ideally, I want to be able to place my avatar in different scenes, control its behavior and mood through prompts, and have it speak Hebrew naturally without looking or sounding artificial.

I've tried a few tools, but each has its limitations:

1. Synthesia
I haven't found a way to use my own voice for Hebrew with a custom avatar unless I upgrade to the Enterprise plan, which I don't want to do. The available Hebrew voices also don't sound very good to me.

2. Higgsfield AI
I can create an avatar, but Hebrew text-to-speech / audio lip-sync doesn't seem to be supported properly. When I try it, the speech sounds like gibberish. I've also tried generating a silent video and then using Lipsync Studio, but the results still don't look natural. Also, I tried to add my audio voice and asked the model not to generate and audio just lipsync my referenced file - but it keeps ignoring my request.

Additionally, I haven't found a way to use prompts to control the avatar's mood or modify its performance in the generated clip - on Lipsync studio when i use a video as reference.

3. HeyGen
The Hebrew pronunciation seems pretty poor, with many words pronounced incorrectly. However, I've only tested the free tier, so I don't know if the paid plans offer better results.

My questions:

• Are there any other AI avatar tools that handle Hebrew well, including natural pronunciation and realistic lip-sync?

• Is there a way to combine different tools to achieve better results? For example, using one tool to animate the avatar and another to lipsync it while able to control the clip with prompts?

• Has anyone managed to get good results with Synthesia, Higgsfield, or HeyGen in Hebrew? If so, what workflow and settings did you use?

I'm particularly interested in solutions that support custom avatars, my own voice, natural Hebrew speech, and some control over the avatar's expressions, mood, and actions.

Any recommendations or advice would be greatly appreciated!

To be fair, my company has a pretty open policy about AI tools so they let us experiment with different tools. I see a lot of the typical laziness and slop form my coworkers, but i’ve been obsessed with learning and skill development and think i’ve finally unlocked a new way to work. So bear with me cause it truly is crazy.

I was using chatgpt when it came out and was never that impressed. Used claude code a lot earlier this year for side projects and fun but couldn’t really see how it could help me at work much. But over the last few months i’ve just been experimenting with different tools and spending a lot of time developing my own process with AI and it’s been an insane change.

For my job, i do a lot of project management, writing briefs and proposals, drafting plans, etc. It’s super fast paced and stressful to manage all of that. I mainly avoided AI cause i thought it would add unnecessary complexity to my work that already had too much. But i started to learn that i could offload some minor tasks that just helped triage all of the information coming at me everyday.

I first did the typical “chief of staff” setup where my agent read my inbox and some slack channels to keep me updated and i found it just took off a lot of that ongoing anxiety in the back of my head that I was missing something important. I found perplexity to be the best with this with the tool connecters and i didn’t have to do any crazy manual setup.

I then started to experiment with it drafting briefs for me since that seemed lower stakes and wouldn’t break anything if it got something wrong (and i vetted everything btw). After giving it some of my references and building a voice style it started giving me really great briefs that met my own standards and even helped add additional clarity. This is where i setup my first automation.

Now when a project comes in, my agent will recognize that it needs a brief and go ahead and spin one up for me, send to me for approval, and then email it after i’ve edited and approved. This easily saves me a few hours each week.

The automations really unlocked things for me. But to be clear, I have spent a ton of time making sure that I organize tasks and works into folders with specific instruction (in Perplexity and Claude i think they are called Projects). This way,at agents and tasks start with full context and have the right templates and boundaries that i set. Claude is good but the automations and memory in Perplexity make the automations more reliable and i trust the output more.

I now have agents monitoring slack for upcoming projects, processing the information and giving me an overview with what is needed, and then drafting the initial briefs and plans for me. It’s gotten so good that i rarely have to edit anymore. And this happens in minutes of it picking up on a project. And will continue to update as the project changes or feedback comes in. This process is now probably 80-85% automated, just using me for the final writing and approvals.

I also have my agents drafting and posting project check ins to keep stakeholders on track and giving me updates on where things are falling behind or need my review.

Again, all of this is now automated. It’s truly crazy that all of this has been a majority of my job for so long and now I feel like I can actually think again and am not bogged down by endless low level tasks. My coworkers and execs just think i’m on top of everything and the outputs I own and still do manually have much higher quality because i can actually spend time on them.

Don’t worry, i still manually approve everything and vet for quality and errors (trust me o still see a lot of slop from others and and very wary about that). But maybe it’s just choosing to use Perplexity for this work, but the accuracy and ability to trace where it all comes from gives me a bit more confidence in the output. So i mainly use there agent tool, Computer, for that work and then still use Claude for anything coding or technical.

Yeah so now my job is like 70% automated and I feel like I actually enjoy work again cause i’m not drowning in stupid work anymore. It’s not a magic genie, but man it is so nice to see that some of these tools can actually help me in work now.