Leveraging AI for Personalized Customer Experiences, with George Swetlitz
Host
Bob Azman is the Founder and CXO of Innovative CX Solutions (InnovativeCX), a customer experience consulting firm focused on helping organizations design and execute better customer and service experiences. A Certified Customer Experience Professional (CCXP) and past Chairman of the Board of the Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA), Azman brings decades of practitioner experience spanning customer experience, contact center leadership, and global operations management. His background includes executive leadership roles at organizations such as Thomson Reuters, Ceridian, and Deluxe Corporation, and he also serves as an adjunct professor (including at the University of Minnesota Carlson School of Management and Rutgers programs). He also hosts the All Things Considered CX podcast, where he explores “the trends, tools, and tactics” shaping how businesses connect with customers—bringing an operator’s lens to what actually changes customer behavior and business outcomes.
Summary
In this episode of the All Things Considered CX podcast (Unhinged), host Bob Azman speaks with George Swetlitz, co‑founder and CEO of RightResponse AI, about a practical use of AI inside customer experience—specifically, how AI can help businesses engage customers more personally through reviews (both generating them and responding to them). Azman frames the conversation as something many CX leaders are searching for: “a true utilization of AI to personalize the experience for customers.”
Swetlitz explains that his perspective comes from operating at scale, not just theorizing about CX. As CEO of a private‑equity‑backed audiology consolidation (with “about 220 locations across the country”), he observed a consistent pattern: the best performing locations didn’t just run better ads or have a different funnel—rather, they had a stronger “final gate” in the customer decision journey: reviews. Even with the same advertising and operating approach, some locations converted better because prospective customers eventually check reviews before choosing where to go. That operational reality—how reviews influence real customer behavior—became a core motivation for building RightResponse AI after the business was sold and Swetlitz started thinking about what newly launched generative AI could do in this space.
A major theme in the discussion is the current tension around AI: on the one hand, AI is powerful; on the other hand, people are increasingly skeptical because AI can feel “fake” and inauthentic. Swetlitz describes the broader environment: it’s “hard to tell what’s true,” and that skepticism “impacts us on an inward way” when businesses try to use AI at work. He also notes that many people only use tools like ChatGPT lightly, and even simple outcomes—like generating one genuinely good paragraph—can be surprisingly hard.
Azman adds a CX industry critique that becomes a useful contrast to RightResponse’s positioning: in customer service, new technology is often used first to reduce cost, not to improve experience or drive growth. He says, “the first thing that we do in customer service…with new technology, is…‘how do we cut costs?’” and connects that mindset to how many leaders talk about AI in terms of job reduction. Swetlitz agrees that AI can be used in different ways depending on leadership priorities—but emphasizes that RightResponse is oriented toward revenue outcomes rather than just efficiency. He describes the company’s lens as “organic growth”: improving day‑to‑day customer conversion and revenue without relying on acquisition strategies. In Swetlitz’s framing, AI can deliver the same type of answer cheaper, or it can deliver a better answer that supports growth.
When Azman asks about applicability for small businesses, Swetlitz challenges the idea that company size is the defining factor. Instead of labeling an “ideal customer” as SMB vs enterprise, he says RightResponse serves “people who are interested in quality.” He explains that small businesses often have a different constraint than budget: time. A small business owner may not want to learn a complex system at the end of a long workday. To address that, Swetlitz describes a done‑for‑you approach designed to reduce the operational burden, while larger organizations typically have internal teams to run programs themselves.
The most detailed portion of the conversation is RightResponse’s approach to reviews. Swetlitz separates review strategy into two distinct goals:
- Getting more reviews supports visibility and ranking because reviews act as a proxy for popularity. He notes that volume and consistency help search platforms understand that a business is actively serving customers.
- Responding to reviews serves a different purpose: it influences the next customer who is reading reviews to decide where to go. Swetlitz summarizes this distinction in a line that anchors the episode’s logic: “you get reviews for your ranking. You don’t respond to reviews for your ranking.”
Both speakers highlight that many businesses either ignore reviews or respond in ways that are unhelpful. Swetlitz describes how early reputation tools relied on templated responses, and how that created a mismatch between what the reviewer said and what the business replied (“two ships passing in the night,” as Azman puts it). He argues that “generic AI” can be similarly hollow: it may technically reference the review, but it doesn’t add anything meaningful. In Swetlitz’s view, this can be actively harmful—especially for negative reviews—because it signals the business isn’t truly engaged.
RightResponse’s aim, as described in the episode, is to use AI to make responses feel more human rather than less. Swetlitz explains the system is built to incorporate business‑specific truths—what the owner would actually say—so responses contribute to the conversation and differentiate the brand. He describes this as the central paradox the company is trying to solve: in an era where AI can create inauthentic content, “what we’re trying to do is make things super real…Through AI.” He adds that the goal is “super authentic” output—responses that aren’t inventing a personality, but instead reflect validated facts and messages from the business.
Azman repeatedly underscores that this approach feels meaningfully different from typical automation. When Swetlitz describes turning review responses into an “engaging conversation” that can teach the reader something new about the business, Azman reflects that it “takes it to a whole new level.” Later, after hearing how the product handles personalization and analysis of customer feedback, Azman calls it “probably one of the most effective applications of AI I’ve heard to date.”
Finally, the discussion expands into “voice of the customer” value. Swetlitz explains that, alongside generating responses, RightResponse can analyze review content for sentiment across business‑specific topics (different for a restaurant than for a roofer) and track a metric he calls “percent positive.” Because this topic‑level metric moves in step with overall ratings, it can help leaders identify what’s driving rating declines (e.g., cleanliness, service, temperature control) and assign targeted operational fixes. Azman praises this diagnostic angle as a practical advantage for multi‑location operators: “You’re not painting everybody with the same brush,” because each location can focus on the specific issues pulling its experience down.
Q&A
1) Should I respond to every review?
Swetlitz frames responding as choosing whether to participate in a public conversation about your business: “are you going to engage in that conversation or not?” Azman reinforces the practical reality that many companies ignore this channel even though it’s visible to everyone evaluating you. The episode’s core idea is that replies aren’t just courtesy—they can shape what the next customer believes about your attention and care.
2) Will responding to reviews help me rank higher on Google?
Swetlitz draws a sharp distinction: “you get reviews for your ranking. You don’t respond to reviews for your ranking.” In his framing, the volume and consistency of reviews contribute to visibility signals, while responses are primarily for the person reading the reviews deciding where to go next.
3) Why do I need a steady stream of reviews instead of doing one big “review push”?
Swetlitz argues that consistency matters because platforms interpret it as an ongoing popularity signal, not a one-time spike. He describes reviews as “a proxy for popularity,” and warns that a burst followed by nothing can look like a “blip” rather than sustained demand.
4) What’s the downside of not responding to reviews at all?
Swetlitz describes non-response as opting out of the conversation: customers are talking to each other, but “the owner of the business” is absent. He frames this as a missed opportunity at the decision moment, because people often read reviews right before choosing. Azman’s comments align with that: he calls reviews a “wealth of customer data” that many businesses effectively leave unused.
5) Should I respond to 5-star reviews too, or only negative ones?
Swetlitz doesn’t give a strict rule like “only respond to negatives,” but he frames responding broadly as engagement that influences readers comparing options. Azman’s reaction suggests even positive review responses can matter when they elevate trust and signal genuine care—especially if they feel specific rather than boilerplate.
6) How do I avoid AI replies that sound like a bot?
Azman directly calls out the risk: when the reply is generic, “it almost is detrimental,” because it signals “they don’t really care.” Swetlitz’s solution concept is to use AI to sound more real, not less—by grounding replies in what the owner would actually say. He describes the aim as making it “super authentic,” not generic.
7) Are templated responses worse than no response?
Azman’s critique of templated replies is blunt: “two ships passing in the night.” Swetlitz explains why templates lose: they don’t compete with a real human response, and they don’t add anything meaningful to the conversation. The episode doesn’t explicitly claim “templates are always worse than silence,” but both speakers treat templated/generic replies as a credibility risk—especially when customers can tell the reply wasn’t written for them.
8) What should a “good” review response add beyond just saying thanks?
Swetlitz argues the response should add something the reader didn’t already know—like business-specific context that a real owner would share in person. His example is responding to a compliment about the food by adding a real detail about sourcing or standards. Azman agrees this changes the feel of the interaction, calling it “an engaging conversation” that takes it to “a totally different level.”
9) How should I respond to negative reviews without sounding defensive or generic?
Azman highlights the failure mode: a negative review plus a generic apology (“we’re sorry…”) reads like a template and can reinforce the customer’s suspicion. Swetlitz agrees generic AI can be harmful here, because it doesn’t meaningfully engage. The transcript doesn’t provide a step-by-step negative-review playbook (tone, escalation, compensation, etc.), but it does push a principle: make the response relevant, specific, and grounded in real business context—so it sounds like a human who’s actually listening.
10) Can AI-written replies hurt my reputation?
Swetlitz acknowledges the broader skepticism environment: AI makes it “hard to tell what’s true,” and that skepticism follows people into how they interpret business communications. Azman goes further on impact: generic AI replies can be perceived negatively and “detrimental.” The transcript’s implied guardrail is that AI must not produce vague, canned responses; it should reflect real, validated business messages.
11) How can RightResponse AI help me avoid generic AI “slop” in review responses?
Swetlitz describes RightResponse AI as built specifically to avoid generic replies by grounding responses in business-specific content the owner validates. He says the goal is to make it “super authentic” and “super real…Through AI,” because it “is not saying anything that the owner wouldn’t say anyway.” Azman validates the differentiation by emphasizing how much it changes the customer’s reading experience—calling it “one of the most effective applications of AI I’ve heard to date.”
12) What information do I need to provide so AI can reply in my voice and with real details?
Swetlitz describes using existing business content as the base: prior reviews (what customers talk about), prior owner/brand responses, and the business website. From that, the system builds draft “messages” (he also calls them “facts” or “snippets”). The owner then reviews them to ensure they’re still true—because, as Swetlitz notes, something said “three years ago” might not be true anymore.
13) Do I have to approve every AI-generated reply, or can it run automatically?
Swetlitz says different customers want different workflows. Some want to “just…click a button and have it run,” while others want to “put eyes on everything,” using AI to help them do a better job without losing control. The transcript doesn’t prescribe one best practice for everyone; it frames it as a choice based on the organization’s quality expectations and risk tolerance.
14) I’m worried AI will say something inaccurate. How do I prevent that?
Swetlitz points to validation as the key control: the system generates draft messages, but the owner must confirm they’re true—because AI can’t know what changed in the business. He explicitly frames the owner’s role as validating reality, not learning a complicated system: review the drafted messages and confirm accuracy so the AI isn’t improvising.
15) I’m a small business owner and I’m exhausted—what’s a realistic way to handle reviews consistently?
Swetlitz argues the biggest constraint for many small businesses isn’t just money; it’s time. He uses an example like a roofer who wants to do roofing, not learn software at the end of the day. He describes a “done for you” approach where the heavy lifting is handled so the owner isn’t required to manage every operational detail of reputation management.
16) I run many locations—how do I figure out which specific operational issues are hurting my ratings?
Swetlitz describes using reviews as Voice of the Customer input, analyzing sentiment by topic so leaders can see what’s dragging a location down rather than just telling managers to “get your rating up.” Azman highlights the operational value of that specificity: “you’re not painting everybody with the same brush,” because one location might need cleanliness focus while another needs a different fix.
17) What should I track besides the star rating if I want to improve operations?
Swetlitz proposes tracking topic-level sentiment rather than only the overall rating. He describes a metric he calls “percent positive” tied to specific topics relevant to that business type (restaurants vs roofers have different topics). His point is that overall ratings tell you that something is wrong; topic sentiment helps you identify what is wrong.
18) How does “percent positive” relate to star rating?
Swetlitz says that when you chart “percent positive” over time and chart average rating over time, “they follow each other.” In his framing, that correlation matters because percent positive is calculated differently and can be broken down by topic, helping explain why the overall rating is rising or falling.
19) Can reviews be used as a real Voice of the Customer program, not just marketing?
Azman explicitly calls reviews “this wealth of customer data,” and Swetlitz describes using that data to diagnose operational performance at scale. The episode positions review analysis as both a marketing lever (visibility + conversion) and an operational lever (identifying issues like cleanliness, service elements, or other location-specific problems).
20) Is AI mainly about cutting costs, or can it help me grow revenue?
Azman criticizes the default posture in customer service: “the first thing that we do…with new technology, is…‘how do we cut costs?’” Swetlitz agrees cost reduction is common, but argues leaders often miss the growth lens—using AI to produce better engagement that supports “organic growth,” meaning revenue improvement through daily customer experience and conversion, not just cheaper operations.
21) What kinds of businesses is this approach aimed at?
Swetlitz states RightResponse AI focuses on location-based businesses rather than e-commerce product review environments. He emphasizes the local decision journey where people search, compare, and then read reviews before choosing where to go—making both review volume and response quality central to visibility and conversion.
Transcript
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[00:00:00] Bob Azman: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the All Things Considered CX podcast, unhinged. As always, I'm Bob Osmond, your host, and today we are talking about ai. We have had some fantastic conversations about ai. In the past podcast releases. But what's interesting and intriguing, I think you'll find about today's discussion is what I would say a true utilization of AI to personalize the experience for customers.
[00:00:31] Bob Azman: And that's something I think we're all struggling with as CX professionals. So. Um, I'm really pleased to have, uh, uh, George Switz with me, who is the co-founder and CEO of rate response ai. George, welcome to the podcast and if you would take a couple of minutes to introduce yourself and your background to our listeners.
[00:00:54] George Swetlitz: Sure, Bob. It's great to be here and, uh, have this conversation with you today. My background is quite varied, so I've, I've been a consultant for about half my career and an operator for half my career. And within operations I've worked with large organizations and most recently with a private equity backed consolidation in audiology and.
[00:01:20] George Swetlitz: Across all of those years, I've really been focused on the engagement with customers. And how do you grow your business organically through great engagement and, and and what happened? When, when I was the CEO of this, uh, audiology consolidation called alpaca, we had about 220 locations across the country.
[00:01:49] Bob Azman: Hmm.
[00:01:49] George Swetlitz: And you know, we, we observed that our best performing locations, um, had better uptake of our ads. So when we would run, you know, when we would do ads, people would come and, and get into that funnel. We would have more of that from our high performing locations than our low performing locations. And so the question is why, you know, what is it?
[00:02:20] George Swetlitz: Same funnel, same ad, you know, same way of operating, but some locations just outperform in the funnel. And what we came to realize was there's this final kind of gate, which is reviews, right? You know, you, you, you spend all your time bringing people. To that, you know, to your site. You know, you do SEO, you have a website, you run ads, but at the end of the day, you know, people read reviews and so that was something as a CEO that we struggled with.
[00:03:04] George Swetlitz: We were dealing with it at scale, 220 locations. Yeah. How do you respond? How do you get, you know, all those things. But the principle is the same, and we'll talk about it more during, but, but this was kind of a very recent experience I had was just a few years ago. We ended up selling the business. It was private equity backed, so eventually you sell, we sold the business.
[00:03:24] George Swetlitz: Right. And, um, I find, found myself with some free time. And then, uh, uh, chat, GPT got launched and I started thinking. When we, you know, right when it was launched and the promise of AI and how it would change the world. And I started thinking, you know, maybe AI could have helped us with this challenge.
[00:03:47] Bob Azman: Mm-hmm.
[00:03:48] George Swetlitz: So a, a group of us created right response to, to, to, to try to, to get into the middle of that space. And solve that problem most, I'm sure. We'll, you know, we will unpeel that, you know, onion throughout the episode, but that was
[00:04:05] Bob Azman: right.
[00:04:05] George Swetlitz: That was kind of my background and how I got to where I am today.
[00:04:09] Bob Azman: Mm-hmm. Very, very interesting background and I, and I like asking our guests that because. There's always variation there. There's never a, you know, one path that gets people into any particular field of expertise that they're in. And so, George, let's take it high level and, and my lord, the noise around AI is, is overwhelming.
[00:04:31] Bob Azman: So with your background, tell me about what you're seeing, hearing, thinking about broadly speaking, AI and what we're, and how we're using AI within experience management.
[00:04:44] George Swetlitz: So it's really kind of, it's really an interesting place that we're in right now when you look outside. So social media and the ways that AI is being used, it, it's hard to tell what's true.
[00:05:03] George Swetlitz: You, you look at things and you don't know whether they're real or fake, and a lot of that is. You know, the, the impact of AI on the way that we perceive things and, and so that skepticism about AI kind of in an outward way impact us on an inward way. When we try to use AI at work, we're, you know, we're engaging in that in the same place where we say it's fake.
[00:05:33] George Swetlitz: I don't, I can't tell real from fake. It's not authentic. It's inauthentic.
[00:05:37] Bob Azman: Mm.
[00:05:38] George Swetlitz: And so that's, I, I feel like that's the framework that we're in. So that's one element of the framework. Another element of the framework is a lot of people don't really use AI that much. They use it a little bit. They use Chatsy pt or Claude or Gemini, but they don't really know how to use it.
[00:06:02] George Swetlitz: I mean, using, you know, I've just, I. I would be in that situation if I wasn't running this business. But you know, we're in it every day and we learn, you know, we try things. I mean, at the end of the day, we're trying to develop one paragraph. That's all we're trying to do is write a paragraph. And it's so hard.
[00:06:21] George Swetlitz: It's so hard to write one really good paragraph F. And people see that all the time when they write long documents. You know, the beginning of it's good, the end's bad, you know, there's all these things that are happening, right. So there's a question of like, of how do you use ai? How do you actually make it work for your business needs?
[00:06:45] George Swetlitz: So there's, there's that element too. And so we're existing in, within all of that. And then we have people telling us that it's gonna eliminate all of our jobs when we have a hard time writing a paragraph. And so it's like, there's, there's dissonance, right? Like, am I missing something? Is somebody else.
[00:07:00] George Swetlitz: Really good at it and I'm bad at it. Right? So there's all of these elements and there's privacy and all these things that are happening in our lives that we're trying to, to deal with. And it's interesting from, you know, sitting in my shoes now, not as a CEO, but as someone running an AI business
[00:07:22] Bob Azman: mm-hmm.
[00:07:23] George Swetlitz: How do you make sense of all of that? How do you talk to customers? About that when they're skeptical about using AI because they feel like it might be fake, does it detract as opposed to add?
[00:07:39] Bob Azman: Mm-hmm.
[00:07:40] George Swetlitz: Those are things that we think about all the time.
[00:07:44] Bob Azman: Right. I, you know, I might add too, uh, George, I think those are really important points.
[00:07:50] Bob Azman: Uh, having been in the. Customer service, business and contact center business for most of my career, and listeners get tired of me saying this, but the first thing that we do in customer service is. Uh, with new technology, as we say, how do we cut costs? How do we use the technology to cut costs? So, uh, go way back, you know, when chat was first introduced, we didn't look at chat as a profit generating way to interact with our customers.
[00:08:17] Bob Azman: We said, how many chats can an agent handle at the same time so that we can, um, take less phone calls and have less expense and, and. It feels a little bit like we're doing that same thing with ai. When you mentioned the job reduction, it's like, how do we, how do we use AI to eliminate jobs or how do we use AI to cut costs?
[00:08:37] Bob Azman: And, and I, and I think about this, this, you know, you can say what you want about ai, but this wealth of knowledge that's going to, uh, present itself to us and our responses, again, customer service is how do we cut costs? As a, as a, as a professional and experience management, it, it frustrates me with that.
[00:09:03] George Swetlitz: Yeah. Well, I mean, the, the reality is there are different ways to use ai and it all depends on the leadership team and what their objectives are. And I think you're right. I mean, the first thing that people think about is how can I reduce costs? How can I do what I'm doing now, but cheaper? They don't necessarily think about how can I do it better?
[00:09:28] George Swetlitz: Because if I'm gonna do it better, am I gonna get paid to do it better? Right. You know, there's always this question people are buying from me now, like, why should I do something better? Am I getting paid more? You, those kinds of things is a normal thing for a management team to ask.
[00:09:43] Bob Azman: Mm-hmm.
[00:09:45] George Swetlitz: But I think what they miss often, especially around ai, is.
[00:09:51] George Swetlitz: The ability, you know, to, to look at it from a lens of how do I grow revenue, how do I build organic growth? Right? That's how we look at it. We look at orga, we, we call it organic growth. So it's how do I, not through acquisition, but how do I just, in my daily business, increase the revenue of a location organically?
[00:10:17] Bob Azman: Mm-hmm.
[00:10:18] George Swetlitz: Right? And. I think we've demonstrated that you can do that using ai. So as opposed to cutting costs, you, I mean, AI can give you the same answer cheaper, or it can give you a better answer, which helps you increase revenue mm-hmm. At the same price. Mm-hmm. So it, it's, it's whatever you want and we have
[00:10:44] Bob Azman: mm-hmm.
[00:10:45] George Swetlitz: Frankly, we have customers that want both. I mean, I mean one, one or the other.
[00:10:50] Bob Azman: Mm-hmm.
[00:10:51] George Swetlitz: But we have people that just say, Hey, I just, I don't care. I just want answers. I just want cheaper.
[00:10:57] Bob Azman: Right.
[00:10:57] George Swetlitz: I don't, I just, I just want to click a button and have it run. And we have others that say we want to put eyes on everything, but we want AI to help us do a better job.
[00:11:11] George Swetlitz: Mm-hmm. So we have both sides. And one will drive revenue, the second one will drive revenue, and the first one won't. It'll just reduce costs.
[00:11:20] Bob Azman: Right. So George, when I was doing some background research on the company and prepping for this discussion, one of the things that kind of stood out to me in the, in your approach to the market was small business and the ability to have small businesses do this.
[00:11:39] Bob Azman: And the reason it stuck out to me is because. Uh, a few years ago we would have the, the big CRM people on these podcasts, and they talked about all these wonderful things that the CRM is gonna do, and small business would say, yeah, I don't have a million dollars to spend on a CRM system to track my customers.
[00:11:58] Bob Azman: And, and yet you seem to call that out. I guess a couple of questions is one, did I read that correctly? Is it, is it small business applicable and and are, are you seeing that, are you seeing small businesses kind of grab that and say, Hey, this, this is, this is a game changer for me as a small business to manage my customers better?
[00:12:19] George Swetlitz: Yeah, it's, it's a great question. So. I'm often asked, what's your ICP? What's your ideal customer profile? And they, what they wanna hear is small business SMB enterprise, you know, they wanna hear that.
[00:12:30] Bob Azman: Right.
[00:12:30] George Swetlitz: And I respond with people who are interested in quality and they're, oh, that's a bad answer. You know, it's not, you know, it's not small business, you know, SMB enterprise.
[00:12:41] George Swetlitz: I'm like, yeah, but I have all three. I mean, I have all three customers. Why would I wanna say that? One of them is my ICP when I have all three. Mm-hmm. So what separates us is not, are we designed for small business or enterprise, it's we provide a very high quality product. So therefore, if you're interested in quality, you come to us.
[00:13:04] George Swetlitz: If you're not, then you know you can probably find something cheaper. Not that we're cheap, I mean, not that we're expensive. We're actually not expensive, but at the very low end, there are people who do you know very cheap stuff. So for example, on our website, we have a free responder. And we use like, you know, chat GPT-3 0.5.
[00:13:28] George Swetlitz: It's like the cheapest version, you know, it costs nothing. It's free and it, but the response is, it, it's, you know what people call AI sl, right? It's just, it's just a response. There's no, not nothing to it.
[00:13:44] Bob Azman: Mm-hmm.
[00:13:45] George Swetlitz: We generate thousands. Of responses on that every day.
[00:13:49] Bob Azman: Interesting.
[00:13:49] George Swetlitz: We even pop up something that says, Hey, you've been here like 55 times, you know, for $15 a month, you could be getting like much better responses and, and they click out and just keep on going.
[00:14:03] George Swetlitz: Right. Because they don't because they don't care.
[00:14:06] Bob Azman: Mm-hmm.
[00:14:06] George Swetlitz: And that's fine, you know, it's fine if people don't care. There's a lot of different people in the world and. That's a perfectly valid way to think about it. Mm-hmm. If it works for their business, but that's not our paying customer. So I would say that the, the issue that the small business has is not only price, but it's time.
[00:14:31] Bob Azman: Mm-hmm. You
[00:14:32] George Swetlitz: know, they, if you're a roofer, you want a roof. Right. You don't wanna learn how to use some system.
[00:14:41] Bob Azman: Hmm.
[00:14:42] George Swetlitz: Do all this stuff. You're tired at the end of the day and you don't want to do it. So we developed a done for you program that where we do everything. So it's very personalized. It's not, it's actually not that expensive.
[00:14:56] George Swetlitz: It's, you know, 75 to a hundred dollars a month. It's that 50 50 to a hundred dollars a month realistically if you have multiple locations. Mm-hmm.
[00:15:06] Bob Azman: Um,
[00:15:07] George Swetlitz: and, and we just. We help them develop a strategy. You know, we do a lot of work upfront and then it kind of runs after that, but
[00:15:14] Bob Azman: Right.
[00:15:15] George Swetlitz: We, we do it all. And that is great for small, you know, for single location businesses, one to three location businesses where the owner just, you know, they, they're intrigued by it, but they don't want to do it.
[00:15:33] Bob Azman: Right.
[00:15:34] George Swetlitz: Um, a large company would never do that, you know, because they got lots of people and you know, they have people that can do that stuff. So we don't sell done for you to big clients, but we do sell a lot of it to small businesses.
[00:15:48] Bob Azman: Mm-hmm.
[00:15:49] George Swetlitz: Um, and, and so that's another, you know, differentiation for us because most reputation management platforms don't do it for you.
[00:15:58] George Swetlitz: You know, you have to kind of do it yourself.
[00:16:00] Bob Azman: Right. So that's a perfect segue, uh, George into let's get into the details about the company and what you do and, and, and provide our listeners some perspective on, um, how you're applying AI in this, uh, in this unique and what I think is a really unique approach to reputation management.
[00:16:21] George Swetlitz: So, so great. So there are really, so I'll, I'll just focus on two elements of reputation management. One is I need to get more reviews, and two is I need to respond to those reviews. And you do these things for different reasons and I'll bring all this back eventually to organic revenue growth. 'cause each one plays a part in that.
[00:16:49] George Swetlitz: So everyone knows. They get review, everybody gets reviews. I mean, there's, we did, we did some research and like the number of reviews just keeps on going up. Just every year it's more and more.
[00:17:02] Bob Azman: Hmm.
[00:17:03] George Swetlitz: And, and so it's an increasingly important part of a, of business for any location based business. It's also important for product based businesses, but we don't really work with product based businesses.
[00:17:19] George Swetlitz: Like we don't. Do reviews on pro, like on e-commerce sites. We're really focused on location based business.
[00:17:27] Bob Azman: Mm-hmm. Okay.
[00:17:30] George Swetlitz: So let's talk about review response. Well, let's talk about, actually, let's talk about each element and what it does. So getting more reviews is important because reviews are a proxy for popularity.
[00:17:45] Bob Azman: Hmm.
[00:17:46] George Swetlitz: If nobody's leaving reviews, how does Google know that you're popular? You could have a thousand people walking into your restaurant, but if you don't get any reviews, it could be one person Google doesn't know,
[00:17:58] Bob Azman: right?
[00:17:59] George Swetlitz: The, the review, the number of reviews, the consistency, people don't think about that either.
[00:18:06] George Swetlitz: They're like, go get a hundred reviews and then nothing. And Google says, oh, that's a blip. You know, they did something. It, I can't trust that you have to have consistent reviews. So getting reviews. Is important. It is a signal for popularity and it helps you climb the rankings. So when somebody Googles best Italian restaurant, lot of things matter.
[00:18:34] George Swetlitz: But something that's really important is having more reviews than your competitors, having better rating than your competitors. That's important.
[00:18:45] Bob Azman: Mm-hmm.
[00:18:45] George Swetlitz: That's one piece. So, uh, what I always say is you, you get reviews for your ranking. You don't respond to reviews for your ranking, right? Interesting. You respond to reviews for the person reading the review that's trying to decide where to go next.
[00:19:13] George Swetlitz: So you generate a lot of reviews. That gets you higher on the ranking. Someone then says, best Italian restaurant, you show up. What's the first thing they do? They go to your reviews.
[00:19:26] Bob Azman: Right?
[00:19:27] George Swetlitz: Right. And they start reading reviews. And so you have an option there. You can say nothing, right? You don't have to respond to reviews.
[00:19:37] George Swetlitz: Some people don't because they're like, well, the review's, the review. Nobody cares about what I have to say.
[00:19:41] Bob Azman: Hmm.
[00:19:45] George Swetlitz: Then you're not participating in the conversation. You have all these people talking to each other except the owner of the business. You different. It's like absent. Right?
[00:19:51] Bob Azman: Right. You're not
[00:19:52] George Swetlitz: there.
[00:19:52] George Swetlitz: It's like the craziest thing. And so, so you have all this, you have this conversation taking place out in the world about your business, and the question is, are you going to engage in that conversation or not?
[00:20:04] Bob Azman: Mm-hmm.
[00:20:05] George Swetlitz: Okay. So back way back when, when everything started, people had to write answers, right?
[00:20:10] George Swetlitz: They had to write. Well, that takes a lot of time.
[00:20:13] Bob Azman: Right.
[00:20:14] George Swetlitz: So then the reputation management platforms came out and the first thing they started doing was templates.
[00:20:21] Bob Azman: Mm.
[00:20:22] George Swetlitz: Remember that? You know?
[00:20:23] Bob Azman: Oh yes.
[00:20:24] George Swetlitz: It'd be a templated response. And so every third one would look, regardless of what
[00:20:28] Bob Azman: the review was, it would be a template.
[00:20:30] Bob Azman: It was just totally, there were two ships passing in the night.
[00:20:33] George Swetlitz: Right. And that's, that's what we were doing. It was just templated reviews back at Alpaca. We were just, do we template it because that's what was available. Nothing else was available, and so we were competing against people. So a lot of our competitors were audiologists who had single location businesses, who would write answers, who would respond, how do you compete like human being typing great responses versus a template.
[00:21:04] George Swetlitz: Who's gonna win that game?
[00:21:05] Bob Azman: Exactly.
[00:21:06] George Swetlitz: The human right. So then taxi PT came out and all of a sudden you were getting like what I call generic AI answers. So the response, you know, the review would be, oh, you know, I love the, I'd love the veal, and the wine was great. And the answer even today is, oh, we're glad to hear you love the, you know, you.
[00:21:30] George Swetlitz: Love the steak, and the wine was great because it doesn't know anything, so,
[00:21:36] Bob Azman: right.
[00:21:37] George Swetlitz: You're not contributing to the con. Even with generic ai, you're an, you know, you're, you're responding to the review, but you're not participating in the conversation.
[00:21:48] Bob Azman: It's almost, it almost is detrimental. The response almost becomes a negative because it's unrelated to the review and it's templated and it, it, you know, it makes the reviewer probably think.
[00:22:00] Bob Azman: They don't really care. Yeah. They responded, but they don't really care,
[00:22:04] George Swetlitz: especially if it's a negative review. Yeah.
[00:22:06] Bob Azman: I
[00:22:06] George Swetlitz: love that. 'cause if it's a negative review, they're, they're looking for you to say something. And if you just have this generic, you know, I was really upset with, you know, with the pool at the hotel.
[00:22:15] George Swetlitz: I'm, we're sorry you were upset with the pool at the hotel. Right, right,
[00:22:18] Bob Azman: right.
[00:22:19] George Swetlitz: I, I, you know, okay, fill
[00:22:20] Bob Azman: in the blank, we're sorry. And then fill in the blank.
[00:22:23] George Swetlitz: Right. And so it does, it, it becomes so we, so. I thought it's detrimental. Just like you said, it's detrimental because you're just wasting space. But of course I'm in the business so I'm like, I'll I, you know, am I biased?
[00:22:43] George Swetlitz: So we did some research. We did some research and we asked people, and they did say that they viewed it negatively, generic. There's like this increasing. And sometimes I see it, look, and I'll look through reviews. I'll see sometime, you know, I'll see it when I look back at the customer's historical reviews.
[00:23:01] George Swetlitz: Sometimes we'll see things like, nobody's reading these anyway, because it's just a generic AI response. So they, they'll make a comment, they'll update their review with nobody reading this, nobody responding, whatever.
[00:23:16] Bob Azman: Right. Don't tell anybody I said this, but in, in the surveying days, I used to put in, you know, so not a review, not a public review, but a survey that came back to me.
[00:23:27] Bob Azman: I put in a negative comment and see how long it would take for a company to respond to me. And out of a thousand companies, maybe two would respond, oh, you had a negative survey result. So it's crazy. But go ahead.
[00:23:40] George Swetlitz: Right. So what we do, what, so our, our objective. Again, our objective is organic growth, right?
[00:23:51] George Swetlitz: So one element is getting more reviews, higher in the rankings, more people organic growth. The other is people are now, so you're in the ranking with somebody who's either above you or below you, and their reviews are being checked out too, right? So. Their review is this, what about the steak? And it's a silly, you know, generic AI response and yours is, oh, we're really glad you enjoyed your experience.
[00:24:22] George Swetlitz: We only use prime beef and we buy it from a producer in Colorado. We're glad you enjoyed it. Completely different feeling to that response because you've added something. That wasn't in the review. You're telling them something about your business. Right? You're telling them what you would tell them if they were in front of you.
[00:24:48] George Swetlitz: Sure. If they came up to you and said, I love the beef. You're like, you know what, you know we only get prime beef. We get it from Colorado. This, this place we have a relationship with. That's what you would say to them. So our, our goal.
[00:25:03] Bob Azman: That's an engaging conversation then rather than that, all of a sudden we're taking it to a totally different level now.
[00:25:10] George Swetlitz: That's right. So if you're reading those two, you're trying to decide, am I gonna go to steakhouse A or steakhouse B?
[00:25:16] Bob Azman: Right.
[00:25:16] George Swetlitz: And one's like, Hey, thanks for your five star review. And the other is what I just said. You're probably gonna gravitate to the one that Eng engage where the owner. The company engaged you told you something new,
[00:25:35] Bob Azman: right?
[00:25:36] George Swetlitz: Because you say they care. They care. They're telling me something. I didn't know they got it from a farm. I like that. I like that We're supporting, you know, these people that are trying to raise good beef, I'm gonna go there and have that beef because, right. I don't know what's going on in this other joint.
[00:25:52] George Swetlitz: I'm not gonna take the time to go to their website and do my own research. I'm gonna make a reservation here.
[00:25:59] Bob Azman: Yeah.
[00:25:59] George Swetlitz: So
[00:25:59] Bob Azman: makes, yeah.
[00:26:00] George Swetlitz: So now you're converting that incremental customer organic growth.
[00:26:05] Bob Azman: Mm-hmm.
[00:26:05] George Swetlitz: Right. So both of those can lead to organic growth for very different reasons.
[00:26:10] Bob Azman: And, and all the people that are reading the reviews that are trying to decide to go to that restaurant now have just read that response to the review and saying, wow, that's, you know, that's an engaging.
[00:26:22] Bob Azman: Of that business that they wanna learn more. So it, it's a, it, it's gotta have a domino effect on the, the reviews of people now looking for the first time to say, do I want to go to this restaurant or not?
[00:26:33] George Swetlitz: That's right, a hundred percent. And so let's loop that back around to ai. Okay. So in this world in which we exist today, where nothing's real because of ai, what we're trying to do is make things super real.
[00:26:51] George Swetlitz: Through ai. So what we're trying to do is take what the owner would say, put that in writing, put that into our system, and then when the review comes in, we find what's relevant to that review and we incorporate that back into the response. So how do we do that?
[00:27:16] Bob Azman: Hmm.
[00:27:17] George Swetlitz: So when and when a company onboards with us.
[00:27:21] George Swetlitz: We read all their prior reviews, all their prior responses and their website. We read all of them. The reviews tell us what people talk about. They talk about the stake. They talk about how friendly people are. They talk about the bartender, like these are the things that they talk about. So we create these kind of.
[00:27:50] George Swetlitz: Messages, messages, facts, snippets, whatever you want to call it. Mm-hmm. Messages is the word that I'm kind of leaning towards now. So we identify the, the things that people talk about, and then we look at prior responses and the website to identify what can we say from a marketing perspective that's relevant to that topic.
[00:28:17] Bob Azman: Okay,
[00:28:18] George Swetlitz: so we create a set of these draft messages. The owner just has to go in and make sure, just read them and make sure they're true. Mm-hmm. Because, you know, somebody might have said something in a response three years ago that not true anymore.
[00:28:33] Bob Azman: I see.
[00:28:34] George Swetlitz: Right. AI doesn't know that. So all the customer has to do is validate that these messages are in fact, correct.
[00:28:44] George Swetlitz: And then it just runs. You know, every time a review comes in, it evaluates, it identifies the relevant themes and the, the messages that make sense. It pulls all that together and writes a response, and that's. That's kind of how it works. Mm-hmm. And so in an age where AI is, can be very inauthentic, what we're trying to do is make it super authentic because it's not saying anything that the owner wouldn't say anyway.
[00:29:16] Bob Azman: Right.
[00:29:17] George Swetlitz: Right.
[00:29:19] Bob Azman: Fascinating that, that, I mean, like I said a moment ago, it is taking this to a whole different level because you're right, and, and I wanna tag on something you said earlier about the reviews. You know, you need the reviews to get, you know. Google to show you're a popular place. You know, the more reviews, I guess I always knew that, but the way you articulated it was just, of course it is.
[00:29:40] Bob Azman: You know, that's what you want. And, and then it comes to mind is how many companies are ignoring their reviews or not responding or using can responsive, and here's this wealth of customer data. You know, meanwhile, we're out doing surveys, but here's this wealth of customer data that's right in front of us that says.
[00:29:56] Bob Azman: We're doing really good or we're doing really bad or something in between. And how do we take advantage of that? And, and that's what I found, you know, throughout my career and experience management has been, is in, in some of the most basic places or where we find out the customer's view of our business.
[00:30:13] Bob Azman: And you know, it's talking to a customer service agent and saying, Hey, what's happening today? What are our customers saying? And you, there's just all that wealth of information. And now what you're doing from the review standpoint is just that saying. We gotta review. Let's not ignore it, let's take advantage of it.
[00:30:29] Bob Azman: And I, I just think it's, it just takes it, I keep saying it, but it takes it to a whole new level.
[00:30:35] George Swetlitz: Yeah, yeah. No, we, we actually have another module, kind of a voice of the customer module where at the same time that we're analyzing that review for the content and relevant messages and things like that.
[00:30:46] Bob Azman: Mm-hmm.
[00:30:47] George Swetlitz: We're also analyzing it for sentiment. Against a set of things that are relevant to that business. So we, we generate a set of topics for every business that are unique to that business, um, that are relevant. So, you know, the topics for a restaurant are gonna be different than the, the topics for a roofer,
[00:31:08] Bob Azman: right?
[00:31:09] George Swetlitz: Right. Because different business. And then what we do is we, we create a metric that's called percent positive. So we look at every mention. Within each topic, and we look at the percentage of the phrases that were positive to the percent positive in that topic. What's interesting about that is if you, if you chart the percent positive over time and you chart the rating, average rating over time
[00:31:42] Bob Azman: mm-hmm.
[00:31:42] George Swetlitz: They, they, they follow each other. So when the rate average rating goes up, the percent positive goes up. When the average rating goes down, the percent positive goes down.
[00:31:51] Bob Azman: Right.
[00:31:53] George Swetlitz: Which is great because it means, it, it's a proxy. It's a very close, it's calculated completely differently, but it's a, it's a good proxy.
[00:32:01] George Swetlitz: Mm-hmm. What that means is because the rating is only for the whole business and the percent positiv is for these individual topics, you can actually see what it is that's bringing your rating down. You might have one restaurant where freshness is really low, and that's what's dragging your rating down so you know what you have to fix.
[00:32:23] George Swetlitz: Another one, freshness might be high. Food quality might be high, but service is low or some element of service, right? That's what's dragging you down. So the problem. And we used to have this all the time when I was kind of CEO, you'd have a, you'd have, we'd have a location and they'd have a 3.5 rating and you'd just yell at them, get your rating up.
[00:32:43] George Swetlitz: You know, right? Like what you know, what else do you know? You don't know anything else. Uh, someone's gonna go read all, like read the reviews and figure it out. Now we can act. Now, an owner of a multiple location business can say, manager one, look, you really need to focus. On the, you know, on where the customer, the dining area.
[00:33:05] George Swetlitz: Right,
[00:33:05] Bob Azman: right.
[00:33:06] George Swetlitz: You know, cleanliness, that's what you need to do. If you do that mm-hmm. Your rating will go up and manager number five, you know, you, you got a problem with temperature control. You know, you really have to focus on that. That's what's driving your rating. Right. And so what, what, what we find is that the larger SMBs, um, medium in particular, medium sized businesses, enterprise customers.
[00:33:31] George Swetlitz: They'll use our voice of customer. The small ones don't because they're like, I'm there every day. I know what
[00:33:39] Bob Azman: Right.
[00:33:40] George Swetlitz: Makes sense. Oh yeah. Like I know,
[00:33:42] Bob Azman: right? Oh, that's,
[00:33:43] George Swetlitz: so, it's, yeah.
[00:33:44] Bob Azman: It, it's, it's, um. It's fascinating. It really is. And I mean, I to that last comment you made about you're not painting everybody with the same brush, right?
[00:33:53] Bob Azman: You're saying this location needs to work on this and that location needs to work on that. George, this has been a great conversation about ai, um, uh, and the application of ai, probably one of the most effective applications of AI I've heard to date. So congrats on that. Um, listeners are intrigued. How do they get, uh, you mentioned some things on your website, but how's the best way to connect with, uh, your company and, um, engage with what your services are?
[00:34:22] George Swetlitz: Yeah, so it's Right response ai.com, right? Response ai.com. That's the easiest way on that site. It's easy to set up a call. You click a button, book a call. Usually it's me. If I'm available, I'm the one that's all I do is I talk to people. I love it.
[00:34:38] Bob Azman: All
[00:34:38] right,
[00:34:38] George Swetlitz: so anyone who wants to. Learn more about what we do or strategize about how they can grow their revenue.
[00:34:46] George Swetlitz: Location-based businesses in particular. Happy to talk to people. They can come there. We also have some, uh, we do special nice things for our, you know, podcast hosts. So if your listeners go to Right response AI slash cx u. CXU. Um, that's a special place for your listeners where we have, uh, some specials, uh
[00:35:15] Bob Azman: oh, great.
[00:35:15] George Swetlitz: Pretrial discounts, things like that. Mm-hmm. And the ability, again, there to book a call with us and we know exactly where they're coming from. So, um, that's nice as well.
[00:35:25] Bob Azman: I love it. I, we appreciate that. As to our listeners, so. Uh, George, thank you for your time today and we really appreciate your perspective and we look forward to hearing more about Right Response AI and what the future holds.
[00:35:37] Bob Azman: So, um, it's been a great conversation. Thank you.
[00:35:41] George Swetlitz: Thank you for having me.
[00:35:43] Bob Azman: And listeners, this has been another episode of the All Things Considered CX Unhinged podcast. As always, if you've enjoyed this episode, please share it with your network networks and stay tuned for another episode coming soon.