Part 3 - Did I just get my first customer for my AI app!?
I spent the last two weekends build an AI power assistant to help medical spas with their client experience and customer service and... I might just have gotten my first customer!
Over the past two weekends and a few late evenings, I’ve been building an AI assistant called Laila. I’ve documented the process over the past two weeks. Here is part 1 and part 2.
It started as an experiment. Could I leverage the power of AI to help solve a pain point that I knew once of our clients in MiniCorp had. After building an initial product, I handed it over to Sisu a few days ago and asked them what they thought!
I want to really thank Pat Phelan too. He is always so open to new ideas and does everything he can to help those around him achieve great things for nothing in return. He’s one of the top people I’ve ever gotten to know. Thanks Pat.
The Product
Technically solving a challenge is one thing. Wrapping up the solution into a product is something much different. I’ve decided to call this product Laila. The north star and goal of Laila is to provide assistance to busy services based companies that are in regulated industries. Thing about medical, legal, finance or airlines for example.
For the moment, Laila will focus on the medical space and her core focus is to help companies through providing an exceptional front of house experience.
We need a customer
A plan… is worthless. A customer willing to pay, is everything.
On Friday, I wrote up on a whiteboard in our office the final pieces of functionality that I believed we needed before I could let the eyes of a potential customer take a peek.
A simple, quick and dirty list. I got my head down and made it happen.
This got me to a product that I felt I could hand over. Next, I recorded a video walkthrough showcasing the power of Laila. How you could;
Managing your clinics, services and people
Book an appointment
Cancel an appointment
Managing upcoming appointments
Ask for someone to contact you
It looked fantastic. I knew I had to rip the bandaid off and get it over to the team in Sisu and so…. I did.
I failed… like an idiot
I made two silly mistakes.
Mistake 1: You see, when Laila hits our API to find available clinics, she gets returned a list of IDs as strings. I, stupidly, had set this to “integer” within the OpenAI function which caused her to do some strange things. An easy problem to solve, but looks terrible to a prospective client.
Mistake 2: I used Twilio for the SMS validation. It’s fantastic but I forgot to make the account “production” ready. This meant that when they went to test, they couldn’t get a text message. Face. Palm.
Twilio::REST::RestError: [HTTP 400] 21608 : Unable to create record The number +35389XXXXXXX is unverified. Trial accounts cannot send messages to unverified numbers; verify +35389XXXXXXX at twilio.com/user/account/phone-numbers/verified, or purchase a Twilio number to send messages to unverified numbers https://www.twilio.com/docs/errors/21608
Communication is key
I fixed this issues, rapidly but more importantly, I communicated clearly and quickly to the potential customer about how I’ve solved them and what has occurred. I’ve witness far to many companies not offer transparency on their issues. My motto is to hold your hand up and tell the truth when you fail and it has served me well.
After some persistence, I got two major validation points.
A happy customer email: As a constantly refreshed to see how people were using Laila, I could see some good interactions coming through. Then I got an email with the words “Mind officially blown. Blown. You are really onto something here Brian , seriously”. Honestly, this meant the world to me.
Lots of interactions: I could see that internally Laila was being shared and that people were testing her capabilities. This was a major validation point too.
Testing → Production
Over the next week, my fingers and toes will be crossed to see if I can get Laila live and on Sisu’s core website. This will prove the biggest validation point and one that I know I can then push Laila further and into more customers hands.
I hope that this series of posts really inspires others to create. A good solution, hard work and great people can really create exceptional things.