How AI-Powered Voice Assistants Revolutionise Small Businesses – Episode 6 with Alston D’Silva

Introduction to Go Beyond Busy

[00:00:00] Bernard: Welcome to Go Beyond Busy, the podcast for business owners who want to grow smarter, not just work harder.

In this episode, Christine Abela speaks with Alston D’Silva, founder of 42Voice in Auckland, New Zealand. If you’ve ever wished you could clone yourself to answer calls, make bookings, or follow up with clients while still doing your actual job, this one’s for you.

Alston shares how AI-powered voice assistants are changing the game for small businesses, from tradies and property managers to global companies. You’ll hear how 42Voice helps businesses stay available 24/7, improve customer service, and make outbound calls without the burnout.

Here’s your host, Christine Abela.

Meet Alston D’Silva and 42Voice

[00:00:45] Christine Abela: Hello, I’m Christine from Go Beyond Busy. I’m here with Alston D’Silva, a business owner in Auckland, New Zealand, who runs a company called 42Voice. How are you doing today, Alston?

[00:00:57] Alston D’Silva: I am doing absolutely fine today. Thank you.

The Journey of Building 42Voice

[00:01:00] Christine Abela: Great. And what would you like to tell people about what you have learned about running a business that you wish you’d known earlier?

[00:01:07] Alston D’Silva: In business, we always feel that you work for yourself and you can do things by yourself, but there is a lot of structure. You need a lot of help. So when I started my business, I was doing everything that I needed to, right from getting new customers, working them, going back to becoming an accountant, back to becoming you service tech.

However, what I found was that I was falling short on reaching new customers or reaching old customers. in a business you can either be a technician or an entrepreneur or you can be accountant or a manager in your business.

What I realized is that I was becoming more of a technician. But I wasn’t reaching out to new clients, and that got me thinking and I needed to be able to have somebody either work for me to make new calls, to handle a new calls. And also I hated getting rejections. Nobody likes it.

Nobody likes being told no. And then the next call is probably loaded with the previous call’s emotions. So I thought, why don’t I find a solution to that? And I started to build 42Voice.

What is 42Voice?

[00:02:19] Christine Abela: So tell me more about 42Voice. What is it? It’s an unusual name.

[00:02:24] Alston D’Silva: Oh yes. It’s actually a play on the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Now, in that movie, it states that the person wanted to know the meaning of life, so they traveled the entire universe and they came to this one AI planet.

They they asked this AI bot, what is the meaning of life? And the AI bot said 42. And if an IT perspective 42 is actually an ASCII code for asterisk, which means anything, whatever you want to make of life, make that. And so 42Voice means whatever you want to use the voice application and AI, we can do that for you.

So that’s what 42Voice means.

[00:03:03] Christine Abela: Very cool. So tell me more about what the company actually does. What can you provide for business owners?

AI-Powered Solutions for Businesses

[00:03:10] Alston D’Silva: We have different solutions for different business owners. We provide a booking calendar for a tradie, for example. A tradie, like a electrician or a plumber and HVAC person that is doing things. They get a lot of incoming calls, but when they’re busy on the tools, they find it very hard to pick up that call.

And so 42Voice will actually act as an assistant where it can pick up that call, talk to the client, make a booking by looking into the calendar of the, trades person and finding a free or a vacant space and booking the calendar right there. Now that allows your tradesperson to be available to your client 365 days of the year, 24 hours a day, and they can go to sleep in the night. But AI will keep working without taking a break, without having a holiday pay, without complaining, and she’s very obedient. Doesn’t get affected by rude questions or answers, and works efficiently and effectively.

[00:04:14] Christine Abela: You said “she”. Why “she”?

[00:04:17] Alston D’Silva: The reason I say “she”, because we’ve named our AI bot Aroha. And the reason I’ve named her Aroha is because it’s warm, friendly, New Zealand. That’s why Aroha. It does not mean that you cannot name the AI bot John or Robert. You could have a male voice, but normally when you have a business being answered by a beautiful female’s voice, it’s very calming, soothing. And different applications require different things. I’m not being sexist over here, but as a business, it depends on how you want your business to appear. And we can make the AI appear as a female voice. The clients that we have dealt with all have chosen female voices, and so naturally my progression went with saying she.

[00:05:05] Christine Abela: So does this female voice have a New Zealand accent or can we do a local accent for other countries?

Global Reach and Multilingual Capabilities

[00:05:13] Alston D’Silva: Yes, the female voice has a New Zealand accent. It can also have a accent for Australia, any country for that matter. And not only that, it can also speak in a different language. It can speak in Arabic, it can speak in Mandarin, it can speak in the local languages that AI has. And as AI is progressing, you could even have the option of when somebody calls into your business, and if they say “Nǐhǎo”, it will change and start speaking in Chinese.

You could say “Namaste”, and it will start speaking to you in Hindi. Or you could say, “Hola”, and will speak to you in Spanish, and this is how the AI will work. So therefore you don’t have to worry about translation, but the data that you get on the other end will be in English.

[00:06:00] Christine Abela: That’s very cool. You also talked about I don’t think you used this word, but I think you were talking about cold calling or telemarketing, so outreach. Can you explain me how that works, please.

[00:06:10] Alston D’Silva: Sure in my business, when I started off, you know, I wanted someone to do calls for me, and I hated the aspect of getting the nos and the frustrations of dialing a hundred numbers and probably getting a one Yeah. But with AI right now we have a 30% increase where AI will make those cold calls for you.

It will actually go through the IVR. The meaning of an IVR is when you make a call to a business, it says, welcome to XYZ. Press one for this, press two for this. So our system will press the one, press the two, speak to the reception, to the gatekeeper as we call it. Give a different script to the gatekeeper.

Ask for the decision maker. Use objections and handles objections very effectively and then go to the decision maker and then use the spiel with the decision maker. All this process is done effectively by AI because in AI today, all the training that you have online, AI has natural access to all of that, and it utilises information.

And I can give you examples that worked and what are some of the objection that has handled. So for example, when my AI had given a call to a person and they immediately said, oh, are you an AI calling me?” And the AI was very nice and said, yes, I am a digital assistant for the company, here to help this company work better.

However, can I continue to assist you on what we are talking about? Now that doesn’t make the AI feel afraid or tongue tied like we get tongue tied when I am making that call and I’m handling an objection that I find a little bit harder to explain, and this is where AI has really worked.

[00:07:55] Christine Abela: You were talking about doing other languages and accents and things. Does that mean you can work globally?

AI in Customer Support and Beyond

[00:08:00] Alston D’Silva: Absolutely. We were In fact talking to people in Dubai and they have an Airbnb. They wanted to have the AI actually ask Arabic and then also in English. 42Voice can absolutely do that. We can actually talk in Arabic, we can actually talk in English.

In fact, I had a case when I was going to Dubai and I had to have my booking with the hotel. It was stressful because everything was on emails and they had not confirmed my booking. So I called there, and this is my honest way it went. I won’t name the company, but this is how it went. It says, press one for this hotel, press two for that hotel, press three for that hotel. Then it said Arabic, then spoke in English. When I pressed and went to the hotel that I required, again, press one for this, press two for that, press three for that. In Arabic first, then in English, and I’m on an international call, so it cost me money. If they had 42Voice, basically it would’ve just answered straight away. Aroha would know exactly where to put the call through, look up the database, find where my booking was or make that booking, answer all my questions. Even when I called at two o’clock in the morning, they, would pick up the phone and, this is the power of 42Voice.

[00:09:11] Christine Abela: So you mentioned the database. So what if a business doesn’t really want to trust their data being accessible by Aroha on your server?

Data Security and Customisation

[00:09:19] Alston D’Silva: Absolutely. We built 42Voice differently. Because our program can actually sit within your domain in your business, and all the data is in your domain. Your data is in your domain and you are protecting it. You have got all your firewalls and everything protecting your entire organisation. So 42Voice can actually sit inside your domain and work effectively. And so the data can stay from a legal perspective in the country of your origin. And today people really do not understand they have got their data on the cloud and most of your data is actually sitting in the US. Now, if the US government decides that they want to investigate your data, they can, because they have the legal right. You may say, I’m a Kiwi, I don’t want you doing that, but I’m sorry that’s sitting in the US and they can access it.

So we can actually put our 42Voice in your domain, protect it, and that’s how we provide the service to businesses.

[00:10:15] Christine Abela: So we’ve got incoming calls being handled by AI and appointments being made. We’ve got outgoing or outreach calls being handled by AI. Are there any other cases for 42Voice?

Real-World Applications and Benefits

[00:10:29] Alston D’Silva: Oh yes. Imagine what you want 42Voice to do. For example, in an IT business, we have got AI acting as the first level customer support. Now here we have AI acting, as you know, speaking as as a male or as a female, and can definitely say, how can I help you? It will answer the basic questions and you can actually put guardrails around that.

And you tell AI to only answer certain amount of questions that you would like to answer. And what the assistant does is basically takes those calls, takes the information of the person calling, and then handle the basic first level customer support. If the client is happy with the first level customer support or if it’s too much, then the AI will say, I think I need to transfer your call to a level two support agent and then send the email or ticket straight to the level two customer support agent, and they will actually work with that.

So this helps that company basically triage customers, 24/7. People can even do after hours calls. So for example, can I give you another example with the medical sector? Imagine today you are with a child and your child is sick and you are looking after your child and it’s two o’clock in the morning.

Now what do you do? You panic. You say, I need to call the doctor. So you dial the doctor’s practice and all you get is the after service saying, “After hours. Can I help you?” And I’ll take your message and that’s it. But all you needed really was to book that appointment.

Now, you could do that by picking up your mobile phone, logging into the website, filling out your forms, and doing all that. But with a sick child, you do not want to do that. So now you’re stressed. Will I get an appointment at eight o’clock in the morning? The practice will open at 8:30. I’ve got to call them on time.

I’ve got to look after my child. You’ve not had sleep. Well, with 42Voice you can call. She would say to you, if it is an emergency, press 111. It would say, can I book the appointment for the patient straight away into the calendar.

Now this is all possible with 42Voice and how does that make you feel? That makes me feel that I am listened to by the practice, and this is how it helps businesses. It doesn’t take away jobs. It only enhances jobs.

[00:12:40] Christine Abela: I can think of a couple of other use cases for that. Like property managers would be another good one. When a tenant has got a problem with their house and they need the property manager.

[00:12:49] Alston D’Silva: I totally resonate with that. In fact I have looking for a property. I have rang so many property managers only to get voicemail. I’ve texted them and I do not get a response. However, if this would honestly be a very good solution for property managers. It would also be a great solution for rental companies, when you’ve got to drop your car back again.

And you’ve got to ask all these questions, where can I park? What do I need to do? And, you know, where AI can actually step in. And actually have a lovely conversation with the person. So it’s not only you want your business to come across as a friendly, professional company, you do not want your business to be only a robotic company.

And so Aroha actually sounds like a real human.

[00:13:34] Christine Abela: So you preload the AI, the assistant, with all the frequently asked questions. So like, where do I park my car? And what time are you open? And those kind of frequently asked questions. It’s not just an appointment booking thing.

[00:13:47] Alston D’Silva: That’s correct. You could actually call the company and say, Hey what are your timings? Can I have some rates? Any question that you would’ve ideally asked the business and the AI will actually answer. Now, guardrails is very important, and that is something our business really does because we put guardrails around what AI says and it does not hallucinate.

So we try to bring the hallucination really down, and it’s the prompts that you train your AI with. It’s the guardrails that you put around your bot. And this is where our expertise comes in. People say, oh, I could run on ChatGPT. But ChatGPT does not have the guardrails that you want for your business.

So how do you protect that? And that’s where we actually step in. We also have the facility for large businesses. We were talking to a large company where they call out for debts collections. They have around 10 people working there, but during the time when all the 10 people are there, they’re missing around 80% of the calls. And so you see why having AI actually handle a lot of the backend, you can then take the important things and transfer to your real sales rep to really do the main job and to get the job done. Why do we have washing machines? Why do we have a car? We could have walked to work, but having the car takes you faster. So this is just a tool. And with guardrails, it absolutely works fantastically.

Conclusion and Final Thoughts

[00:15:09] Christine Abela: Thank you very much. I really appreciate it. This is Christine from Go Beyond Busy with Alston D’Silva from 42Voice in Auckland, New Zealand, and I’ll see you on the next episode. Thank you Alston.

[00:15:20] Alston D’Silva: Thank you Christine. Thank you for having me.

[00:15:22] Bernard: Thanks for listening to this episode of Go Beyond Busy. If you found it helpful, make sure to follow or subscribe so you never miss an interview.

If you’re a business owner who’s ready to grow, streamline or scale up, head over to GoBeyondBusy.com.

You can book a free Business Strategy Session with Christine Abela, a seasoned business consultant and tech strategist who helps business owners build stronger, more sustainable businesses.