The calls that didn't ring out

Arboristbutiken sells climbing and cutting gear to arborists. Petzl, Teufelberger, DMM, Arbortec. A physical shop on Kemistvägen outside Stockholm, and a web shop that ships across the Nordics.

Worth saying up front: the shop is owned by VOCA's founder.

One thing to be clear about before the numbers: the 61 calls below are not the shop's call volume. Kim only gets the calls that have rung four times without anyone answering, plus the ones that arrive when the shop is closed. Everything staff catch never appears in this log at all. What is counted here is the overflow, the calls that would otherwise have rung out.

How it is wired

The phone rings four times. If nobody picks up, the call moves to Kim, an AI colleague who introduces herself as exactly that:

Hi, this is Kim, Arboristbutiken's AI colleague. I can help with most things about stock levels, products, or anything else.

The same thing happens when the shop is closed. No keypad menu, no voicemail, no queue.

Kim is wired to the shop's Shopify catalogue, so stock and prices are the real ones. Prices are read out as words rather than digits, because "four hundred and fifty-five kronor" survives a phone line and "455" often does not.

What actually happened

The numbers below come from the production log, so 62 days. Setup day's three calls are excluded, two of them were our own test calls. Nothing here is estimated.

Seventeen of the 61 came in when the shop was closed, one of them on a Sunday at quarter past six in the evening. The other 44 arrived mid-workday, when the phone rang four times and nobody could pick it up.

The distribution is the interesting part. Close to a third of the calls fell outside office hours, and they were not low-value. The Sunday calls were about the same things as the Thursday calls: an order gone wrong, a rope that was sold out, trousers in the wrong size.

Four calls

The transcripts below are real, pulled from the log, shortened and translated from Swedish. Names and any detail that identifies a specific customer have been swapped out.

Advice that ended in a chosen product.

Customer: What size RH Pusher should I get?

Kim: Let me check what we have on the RH Pusher. It comes in six models, Pusher I through VI. The size depends on what trees you fell and how much force you need. The Pusher I lifts fifteen hundred kilos. What kind of trees do you usually fell, smaller or larger?

Customer: Larger trees.

Kim: For larger trees I'd recommend the Pusher IV or above. The Pusher IV lifts two thousand five hundred and fifty kilos and weighs twenty kilos, while the V and VI are more powerful but also heavier. Which of those suits your work best?

Customer: Can you use a Pusher V on small trees?

Kim: Yes, it's just more powerful and heavier than you need. If you work with both small and large trees the Pusher IV is often the better choice, since it's easier to handle on smaller trees but copes well with the big ones.

Customer: I want that one. Pusher IV. Thanks.

Kim: Good choice. The Pusher IV is built for larger trees and weighs twenty kilos. Would you like to place the order now, or do you need anything else first?

That order went through. The Pusher IV was packed and shipped, 6,295 SEK excluding VAT. The call came in on a Tuesday afternoon, after four unanswered rings, and took under three minutes to go from "what size should I get" to a decided purchase.

Look at what actually happened there. The customer did not know which of six variants he needed, and that is exactly the question that makes someone hang up and call the next dealer instead of ordering. Nobody buys a felling jack at that price without talking to someone first. The lifting figure Kim quoted, two thousand five hundred and fifty kilos, is in the product data for that specific variant, so the advice came out of the shop's own catalogue rather than a guess.

A rope that was sold out, and a customer who wanted to come in that day.

Customer: I'm wondering about a climbing rope, Courant Kalimba.

Kim: Let me check if we have a rope by that name. We do have the Courant Kalimba, but it's sold out at the moment. Staff can call you when it's back in stock, or I can suggest an alternative that's in stock?

Customer: Ask them to call me as soon as possible, I want to come in today.

Kim: Understood. What's your name?

Customer: [name]

Kim: Thank you. Staff will call you as soon as they can about the rope and about coming in today.

That call came in on a Tuesday morning. Without Kim it would have been four rings and a customer trying the next shop.

A problem that needed a human, and got one.

Customer: I put the wrong phone number on my order, DHL can't reach me.

Kim: I understand. This is something staff need to fix directly. I can note that you'd like a call back so they can correct your number and make sure the parcel gets through. What's your name?

Customer: [name]

Kim: Can staff reach you on the number you're calling from now, or do they need a different one?

Customer: This number is fine.

Kim never tried to solve it. Changing a phone number on a dispatched order is not a job for an agent, and it did not take it. It did the thing that was worth something: wrote down who, what and which number, and passed it on.

A question where Kim advised all the way to the right model.

Customer: The difference between the secateurs. Chikamasa seven and eight.

Kim: We have two Chikamasa models and one battery-powered Felco. What branch size are you working with?

Customer: 5 to 20 millimetres.

Kim: Then the Chikamasa PS-8 Plus fits, it's built for exactly that range and costs four hundred and fifty-five kronor. Carbon steel blade for clean cuts and an ergonomic grip.

Customer: Is the blade replaceable?

Kim: It doesn't say the blade is replaceable on this model. For more on spare parts I can note that you'd like a call back.

It handled the product advice on its own, down to the right model for the right branch diameter. Then the source material ran out. Spare parts and wear parts are not in the product data, so it had nothing to answer with, and it did not invent anything.

That is worth pausing on, because the limit was what the shop had fed it, not what the agent can do. With the spare-parts information in place, the same call ends like this instead. This passage is constructed, not taken from the log:

Customer: Is the blade replaceable?

Kim: Not on this one. The blade is fixed to the body, so it's sharpening rather than swapping when it gets dull. The carbon steel takes a good edge, and most people get many seasons out of a PS-8.

Customer: And if I want a replaceable blade?

Kim: Then you'd move to Felco, but that's a different price bracket. For 5 to 20 millimetres the PS-8 is honestly the one I'd pick anyway.

Customer: Do you have a sharpener that fits?

Kim: Yes, we have a diamond file for it. Both are in stock, so if you order before twelve it ships today.

Customer: I'll take both.

Kim: Good. Put them in the basket at arboristbutiken.se and you're set, and get in touch if you need anything else.

The difference between the two versions is one row of product data. That is the kind of top-up that makes an agent which already works get noticeably better week by week.

The point is not the deflection

It is easy to read 61 as a deflection figure, as though staff were spared 61 calls. That is not how it works. They took their calls as usual. The 61 came on top, when nobody could answer.

Which is the whole point. None of them got a ring tone that simply stopped.

An unanswered call costs more than it looks like it does. The customer does not know whether you are closed, busy, or whether the number is wrong. They only know nobody answered. The next step is rarely to call again. It is to keep searching, and that cost never appears in a report, because the customer never arrived.

Even when Kim does not solve the errand itself, it says: we heard you, we wrote down what you need, someone will call. That goes further than you would think. Sixteen people left a name, a number and an errand over these two months. They landed in a list somebody can work through, rather than in a call register nobody opens.

What the owner says

What I wasn't ready for was how often my hands were full when it rang. You assume you always answer. The log said otherwise.

The best feature is the dullest one. A name, a number and one sentence about what it was about. That's the whole thing. I call back already knowing what the call is about.

I'd have said no to a bot pretending to be a person. Kim says she's an AI in the first sentence, and customers keep talking anyway.

What it took to get started

One afternoon. Opening hours, address, shipping and returns, plus the link to the Shopify catalogue so stock and prices come out right. No new hardware, no switchboard migration, no new system for staff to learn. The phone number is the same as before. Only the fifth ring does something different now.

Then it runs. It gets better as the shop tops up what was missing, exactly as in the secateurs example above, and that work is half an hour a week rather than a project.

In short

Two months, 61 calls nobody in the shop could take, every one of them answered. Sixteen left a name, a number and an errand in a list somebody can phone through. Seventeen arrived when the shop was closed, and not one of them met a voicemail. One call ended with a 6,295 SEK felling jack going out the door.

One call paid for the subscription well into next year on its own. But that comparison is not what makes the difference over time. What makes the difference is that customers who used to hang up and call someone else now get an answer, and the shop knows who they are.