00:00
Our guest today is Laurent Cohen. He is the founder and CTO of GetOblic, a company that develops voice-first AI for local businesses. Hi, Laurent. Welcome to the show.

00:16
Hello, David. Thank you for having me. Looking forward to discussing with you and Zina today and trying to let people know what AI can do for them.

00:26
Excellent.

00:28
Also joining us today is my co-host, Zena. Zena is an AI that's been trained on my work. If you want to further interact with Zena, you can chat with her at brainius.com slash Zena. Hi, Zena.

00:45
Welcome back to another episode of our podcast. Say hello to Laurent.

00:50
Laurent, it's a pleasure to have you with us. I'm excited to dive into your journey and the transformative role Voice First AI is playing for local businesses. Let's make this a rich and enlightening conversation.

01:02
Looking forward to that. Very good. So, Laurent, why don't we start by having you share a little bit about your background and what got you interested in AI?

01:16
I'm 54. I was born and raised in France.

01:20
I've been a geek for as long as I can remember.

01:24
So I'm very sensitive to anything technological. Let's put it this way. I cannot stand missing a train and staying at a station, David. So when AI... Well, conversational AI, since AI has been here for quite a long time, to be honest. But when conversational AI came... out of the wood and literally embraced every aspect of the workflow. I just dived into it like crazy. And I would say, David, to anyone listening now that is slightly afraid or really afraid of AI, I think the best way to understand what AI is, is through learning.

02:11
That's what I did.

02:13
Obviously, first, because I didn't know anything about AI. Every one of us was discovering what AI is. And I'm a learner, deep in the heart. I mean, I think that a day where I do not learn anything is a wasted day. And thank God, with AI now, I learn a lot every day.

02:35
Yeah, I agree with you. I think the best way to learn about AI is to jump right in and start playing with it, start learning as much as you can. And there are so many resources out there available for free that people can leverage to learn AI. So this is a really exciting time if people are interested in learning about AI and overcoming that fear that you talked about.

03:03
You know, David, not only is this learning about AI, but this is using AI to learn something, anything, tackle any subject, you know, just to get a sense not only of what you're going to learn, but really what you're going to learn is secondary to how AI is going to teach you what you want to learn. And that's because that's going to put your mindset in how AI functions, what are the limitations of AI, what you need to do to understand what AI is providing to you, it's serving you. And tackling it with a learning curve is the easiest way. You do not want to dive into AI within your workflow, your business, without knowing anything about how it works.

03:44
Yeah, that educational process is really fundamental before you jump into the deep end and start implementing AI. I agree with you. So, Laurent, in the last episode, I was interviewing an entrepreneur who was using AI avatars to increase website conversions.

04:04
I believe you're working on the process that comes before that when companies are trying to figure out how do they get found in directories and searches and so on. So tell us a little bit more about GetOblic and your business and what your solution does.

04:23
Deciding how we would tackle voice AI was literally a path that we've taken that took us where we didn't expect to be, literally. Because when you think about voice AI, you think about...

04:38
just communicating through the voice channel with an AI agent, right? So that's pretty straightforward. Anybody can pick up his phone today, open up GPT, Gemini, Grok, and start talking with the AI. So now people are starting to deploy agents, voice agents, and offering that solution to businesses, right? And the technology itself is very mature. So we thought, me and my partner initially, that we do not want to be the next SS solution that deliver both CI. That's just not enough. Because first of all, in itself, this is not really scalable. And secondly, you have, and that we understand very clearly early on, that as a new technology, and whenever a new technology comes in the market, the main barrier is the trust factor.

05:33
And in order to build trust, we've deep dive in understanding what our customers should be and would want. Because things didn't change with AI, David.

05:45
Customers are still front and center of any business. If anyone here is listening and think that creating an AI agent and that will run by itself and it would work with all their agents will make you a business, I do not think it's true. We're really not there yet.

06:01
We decided to do a voice agent because we love the technology, but again, it was not enough. So we said, okay, how can we deploy enough voice AI to make the company scalable? That's the first thing. And second,

06:15
How do we create the trust that is needed for businesses to adopt a product? So what we decided to do is literally create a directory, a business directory, which is pretty straightforward when you think about it. There have been directories for as long as the internet has existed. That was kind of the first format of the internet, if you remember that, in the 1990s.

06:37
So, okay, you come up with a directory. That's one thing. But what we wanted to do is go to the next step.

06:46
When you open a listing page, a business listing page on our directory, which is obviously free, and you put your information there, immediately a full working voice AI is deployed on the listing page and can interact with your customers. And you as a business owner can start interacting with it. So basically you get a sense of what voice AI is without even spending a dime. You have also customers that are coming to our directory through different channels, mostly our SEO building with Google, and they start interacting with the business listings. And what's crazy is that they interact with the business listing that potentially doesn't know that GetArbic exists at that time. So what we are really creating is a funnel of leads that come to our directory and that we are serving back to businesses for free.

07:42
So now we have a business owner, local business, small business, that wake up the morning and receives an email from a company he doesn't know saying, hey, we have customers for you. He's interested in your services and he's asking your prices. He wants to know if you're available next Tuesday at 4 p.m. Here's the information.

07:59
Now, we're bringing value to the businesses. So not only we're bringing value, but the businesses now can go and get up, like say, hey, there's something happening here. They're talking about me or whatever I think I have to see. They go there.

08:14
And they start interacting with voice AI. So they say, well, now it's cool. I'm interacting with voice AI that knows my business. And what I'm saying, voice know my business. This is not a demo, David. This is a really fully functioning AI that already knows the business, knows the vertical, and can start go pretty deep into the discussion with potential customers. So at this point, again, the business has not spent a dime. He will start by claiming his page, right, which is, again, free.

08:46
Once it's claimed, the business will start editing this information because initially we have two layers of information on GitHub. The first are little public information, you know, address, phone, email, you name it. But then what's very interesting is we've deployed 1.8 million businesses with as many customers voice AI agents, which means that we're creating an environment of use case every day, a real graph of information. So when you have businesses, let's say business A has an interaction with the customers, this interaction becomes a use case, which is served to train even more all the AI agents on the platform. So now you have the AI agent that is working because we have the public information, right? But we also have the overhaul voice agents that are literally dragging information.

09:42
And those use cases are used to train our businesses.

09:46
So now the business has claimed the page as its information. And while editing the information, you understand easily, David, that the AI gets smarter, even smarter, because now we get very into precision. What are exactly your services? What are your pricing? Do you have current discounts? You name it. Anything is potentially editable on the listing page.

10:09
Once the trust is built and the customer, the business, has a fully functioning AI, he can go beyond the directory by subscribing to our service. And then he will receive a virtual phone line, which will be linked to his agent.

10:26
where he can transfer his call. He will receive a connection to WhatsApp, which, by the way, is linked to that voice line, so it doesn't interrupt with his current WhatsApp. He will have a link to Google Calendar for his scheduling appointments and many more features that we're providing every day and creating. So this is very exciting because at this point, we've created the trust.

10:51
And now that the business is ready to work with us, now we start to educating on what you should do with voice AI. Because again, when you built a business with your heart, especially small businesses, you've created that business with your voice. And I'm not here literally talking about the speaking voice. I'm thinking the person you are, you know, the intention you've had, the connection you've made with your customers. And this is a...

11:16
binding that needs to be respected as a business so we tell our businesses you know what start slowly use voice ai on the weekends use voice ai after hours understand how it works understand the efficiency that it's already

11:34
giving you freedom of your time and when you're ready you start using it during the day while you're at work focusing on the customers and once the whole setup is made once trust has been built business understand that voice ai is a freedom tool they're moving from emergency mode Picking up the phone. What is it? Is it going to be a problem? Is it a spam call that can be filtered? Is it an emergency?

11:59
All those things can be treated. And now you move from emergency mode to growth mode because the phone by itself, which is, by the way, this crazy invention where they handle you 10 numbers and anybody can call you at any time just for an interruption.

12:17
Very few people in the world like the phone, to be honest. But we use it and this is the way it is.

12:23
So now you get that freedom of, OK, someone that is elegant, that is patient, that knows my business can answer for 24-7. And then the next step is also understanding that the voice AI will answer and provide information. But you have to set up guardrails. You have also to make sure that when there's an emergency, the voice AI can switch and transfer the call to the business owner. Because those are very important things, you know? And when you have all those things that are the same, now you have a solution in the business.

12:59
Yeah, this is really brilliant. I love the concept because you touched on so many fundamental ideas here. One is this idea of a self-learning process, right? Because you're categorizing all these different businesses and you may have... you know, a salon business, a financial services business, and different kinds of businesses. And the agents that are serving these businesses, they learn from each other, right? So they know what's important. They learn the terminology. They learn what questions to ask. So there's a layer of capability that's built into your process. And then on top of that, once the owner claims the page, then the owner can really personalize that agent to his specific business so that his voice is coming across. And then the AI becomes much more than just

13:52
a receptionist, right? This is an AI that can solve problems. This is an AI that can close deals. This is an AI that can deal with a number of different things without you having to worry about it. And then the point that you made that I think is absolutely fundamental, which is trust, right? Once that trust is built with the AI,

14:16
then it just changes the game completely. So I think this is a really cool model.

14:25
Thank you, David. Thank you. And there's two things I should add on top of what you just said, because this is exactly what we're doing here. We're building a voice layer infrastructure.

14:35
Google takes care of anything from the moment you open your laptop until the moment it hands on the phone number to any user. But once the phone number is handled, there's a whole layer of information there that needs to be learned, that needs to be harnessed. And that's what we're trying to do here. For instance, when we're working on those use cases, one that came up very early on was, can we not only offer a service to the users, but offer upsells, cross-sells, you know, things that a small business owner, when he answers the phone, doesn't necessarily think about. You know, you're busy, you are a pet groomer, you have a big dog in front of you, and you hang on the phone and someone is asking to schedule a pet grooming, right? But also, there's an opportunity here to do an upsell. Do you want to do a treatment for your dog? Should we do the nails? You know, all those things, as a human, you don't have that on your mind.

15:32
Maybe on Monday at 9 a.m., but certainly not on Friday at 6 p.m., you know? And AI can handle that, can harness that, and can be very efficient on that subject. So then, you know...

15:44
This is crazy because we all have phone lines, right? We all have voicemail, okay? And we accept that. We live with that perfectly because we're used to it. Now, five years from now, voicemail will disappear and they will all be replaced by AI. This is potentially a fact. Unless there's a atomic bomb falling on us, I'm pretty sure that's going to happen, right? So how do you come from today a technology that is already here? It's ready. It just needs to be...

16:14
plug and play to being adopted by everyone.

16:18
This is really something that is an obsession as a business owner. You say, I know I have the product. I mean, we all have the product. We know everybody's going to use it. Now, how can I convince everyone to use it early on?

16:30
Obviously, the first thing you say when you're a salesman, you say, listen, if you don't do it yourself, your competitor will, right? But literally, that's not enough.

16:38
This is a sales pitch. We didn't want to make a sales pitch because we want our company to last a bit longer than just a sales point. So again, it all comes down to trust.

16:49
Yeah, absolutely. So let me ask you a question. You have a great background in search engine optimization. We come from this world where Google dominates the space, and Google makes a lot of money selling ads. Now with AI, everything is changing, right? And there was a code red at Google. They realized that AI is going to change the search game. And now when you search on Google, Gemini provides a summary. How do you see that ecosystem changing and where does AI play a role in helping businesses be found on this digital ecosystem?

17:35
First of all, I've been doing SEO since 2002. And I thought I've seen it all. I had seen it all. I mean, the 2000s were magnificent. You know, it was the far west as far as I'm concerned. You know, you could be number one and went lost. That's a G word, you know. Yeah.

17:55
rent a car or whatever. But when you've worked long enough in SEO, you learn also to be very humble because there's a certain amount of methodology that you can acquire to do SEO. And a lot of the young kids out there that learn that think, okay, I've done my courses of three months for Google and I know everything about SEO. But again, when you've been here long enough, you know that's maybe 20% of what SEO is.

18:24
Because when you think about it, Google in itself is not just a company. It is the smartest brain in the world, the smartest amount of knowledge in the world. And if you know that, you have to respect that. And in order to respect that, you understand that it all comes down to semantics. It all comes down to...

18:42
what Google is going to want you to do in order to serve its users the best.

18:49
So now you put aside all technical aspects. We all can do meta description. We all can do schemas. We all can do backlinks. No, that's just time and elbows, you know, elbow work. But understanding the wording, the way you have to transmit the essence of the company is literally what makes a good SEO. Now, that's what I knew. But now I'm going to tell you what I learned.

19:18
And what I learned is that when we started the project, again, very humbly, I made the whole shebang, you know, the set up, the 20% I talked to you about. Then I started to work on what I think was our message. And you wait. Let's see what happens.

19:37
And what happened totally blew our mind.

19:40
First of all, we got indexed very quickly with very few backlinks. And we got indexed very high. So and I'm talking long tail pages for anyone that know the terms.

19:53
So each businesses, we had top three, top five indexed, which was tremendous within three months of existence.

20:00
So we started asking ourselves, why?

20:04
Why are we blessed to have Google liking what we do? I mean, our directory is great. I'm very proud of it. But it's still directory.

20:14
But now, digging in it, we start understanding that users were not only visiting the directory, but they were interacting with the widget you see here, which is a voice AI agent, right? So what happens there? When you have a user interacting with a voice agent, he spends time on the page. He asks questions.

20:38
So you move from a format of visiting a page would last usually 20 seconds max. You browse the information, boom, I'm out, to a moment where you start interacting. And if the AI is trained well enough, the interaction lasts longer. And if it's that longer, we enter the realm of retention.

20:58
That realm of retention is something that Google loves.

21:01
Because Google is at the same time very smart and at the same time very simple. That's my user, go to visit your site and stay there. Well, it stays. Okay, there has to be something interesting on that page. I'm going to try to push it a little bit more and see what happens there. So that's the first thing. Then the second thing, David, is that I'm exactly joining you on what you said earlier, what happened with AI. In itself,

21:29
Every website today, and I'm talking purely SEO here, that has some SAI tool, such as voice or video or generative, whatever, you name it, makes sense for Google to serve. This is the theme of the year. This is the theme of the decade. So you're serving AI. You're useful to customers. Of course, I'm going to push you more. So now we are an AI company, at least historically. because we're delivering agents, but we also have a layer of retention with the voice AI. Those two things themselves make Google being very interesting in what we do. And that's also kind of something we didn't expect initially, because we said, okay, we're going to build the directory, we're going to build trust, and we're going to serve customers with voice agents. But now we have customers that come and subscribe to our solution,

22:24
only to get that widget with the pre-trained agent inside because they put it on their website and get better indexing with Google. You see? So that's something we didn't expect. Now, to answer your question, where will it go?

22:41
I think that everybody's talking about GEO, SEO, what we are doing. And the only thing I know is that nobody knows. And if you meet someone that says, I know, he's a liar.

22:54
So at this point, anything related to GEO is basically SEO. Usually you try to format it in a FAQ format.

23:06
because it's easily readable for LLMs. But what I can tell you, David, is as today, Google as a provider of users through search engine is still very, very, very strong.

23:22
To be honest, I hardly use Google as a browser anymore.

23:26
But the company is so strong. It's everywhere. It knows everything.

23:30
It has this huge amount of users that it can still drag to you should they appreciate your product. Yeah.

23:39
Don't discard SEO. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, absolutely. But even going beyond SEO, I think you mentioned something that makes a lot of sense. So Google is very smart in knowing that in order for them to be on top of this game, they need to serve to searchers what they want. And so it's really figuring out that equation And I think it goes back to the idea that if you have relevant content, if you have engagement, if you have retention of a customer's attention, these are all signals that are important. And Google is going to capture that. And however they serve that to searchers is going to come across. So it's a win-win for customers, for businesses. for Google itself. So this is a really fantastic setup.

24:36
It is. And you saw also, David, we've been used for the past 30 plus years with the internet to interact with passive pages, right?

24:46
Those are passive. But now we have the availability with AI to make those pages two-dimension pages active with voice, with generated videos, and that changes the game.

25:01
You know, we decided early on to call ourselves a voice-first company because we put voice front and center of everything we do. But the more we're moving on, We're literally going to a voice-only interface. Now you can get obligated just calling a phone number, just calling our WhatsApp, interacting with the agents. You can call a phone number and ask, okay, found me a barbershop near me. And we will have to ask our own search engine providing information and transfer the call if needed. So now we use that internet layer because it's very useful for us, right? That's our funnel. That's how we interact with Google. But at the end of the day, we strongly believe that we need to focus on voice

25:45
Not because it's what we love, because five, ten years from now, voice will come back with a vengeance and will be the channel of interaction for everyone. I remember talking with you a few weeks ago, David, and we said that Elon is building millions of robots, and obviously we're going to interact with them, with our voices, you know? So we're not going to type on our keyboards just to interact with the robots. So it's already, I hear, you know, you...

26:13
jump into a car you know tesla you talk you know it's there yep yeah i mean the voice capability of ai has grown to such an extent that it blows me away just how good it is these days right i mean we have zina right here which is a perfect example and it's a good segue because i'd like for zina to ask you a question so let's uh bring zina back in And Zena, given Laurent's expertise in voice-first AI and what he is doing to make companies be able to be found on the internet through voice AI, what question do you have for him?

26:54
I'd ask him this. In a world where many local businesses are still catching up to digital best practices, how does he envision democratizing voice-first discoverability so it's not just the largest or most tech-savvy firms that benefit? As an AI, you should know that, Zina.

27:11
You offer a solution to level the game for every business.

27:17
Let me give you a fair example.

27:19
Three years ago, no small businesses could have even hope to offer multi-language services to anyone calling, right? I mean, can you afford a call center with eight different languages or 12 different languages? No, you cannot. When you're a small business, can you afford a receptionist working on Saturday night at 11 p.m.? Well, you can't.

27:43
As a receptionist,

27:45
or small business. Can you have someone that has the same emotion from Monday morning to Sunday night?

27:53
You certainly can't. We are human, David. We are, you know, a business owner. Again, I'm talking about local and small businesses. They live in the moment.

28:06
there's so many more factors that come into what happens with your customers. Are you upset? Did you have a good day? Did you fight with your wife yesterday? Are your kids safe? All those things. It doesn't matter for a 50,000 employee company.

28:23
No, it's not relevant. But for a small company, those little things change everything. So now, answering your questions, I'm going to make sure that business owners will understand that we're leveling the game for them and providing solutions that existed before, but only for medium and large-sized businesses.

28:43
Yeah. So this is just a great way to level the playing field, right? So now small businesses, and we've seen this coming with several capabilities over the last several years, technology in general, small businesses have access to technologies that at one point were only available to medium and large companies. And the same is happening with AI. But I'd like to get Zena to

29:09
jump in here and tell us a little bit more about her thoughts on this issue. So Zena, how do you see voice AI changing this entire digital landscape?

29:22
I see voice AI as a transformative force, shifting the digital landscape toward more natural and immediate interaction. Instead of users adapting to technology, the technology adapts to us, understanding context, intent, even tone. This means businesses and individuals must be more authentic and responsive because voice doesn't just transmit information, it builds relationships. In essence, we're heading toward a future where the digital world listens before it speaks.

29:51
Well said. Yeah, so the whole idea of building relationships, it's so much easier with voice, right? Because of the tone, of the intentionality, because of the way you interact with voice, it just helps you build that trust and develop those relationships, which is something that's much harder to do with a regular website. It just doesn't happen so easily.

30:14
Do you remember, David, 10 years ago on social media, you had all those little, you know, articles saying that, well, as a human species, 100 years from now, we will all have huge thumbs, you know, because we're spent typing.

30:29
Well, that's BS, right?

30:31
Now we know that. And in a more serious tone, Zina is totally right, because as now...

30:39
Voice AI is understanding emotion within its interaction, and it changes the game dramatically. And it's always come back to knowing your customers. David, you're a business owner. You are upset.

30:53
You pick up the phone. What is it? It just comes out of you. Well, that's not good, right?

30:59
Well, Zena doesn't do that. Zena knows that the person in front is upset or is panicked. So, well, you're panicked.

31:08
Okay, let's stay calm. Let me transfer you to the business owner. We'll find a solution. All those little things.

31:15
You have to trust AI. But in order to trust AI, you have to show what AI is. Remember what I say, learning?

31:22
We're very early on this crazy technology that is so mature. We need to be teaching people what it's doing. We're not just selling it.

31:31
Absolutely. So, Laurent, this has been a great conversation. Where can people find you? And what final message do you want to leave for our audience?

31:43
Thank you for having me, David.

31:45
Very good. Very great format. I really love it. And anybody can go on getoblick.com.

31:52
If you have a business, any business, you can just create a listing within two minutes. It's free. You will have your voice AI deployed. You can interact with it. You can use it. And just this is very exciting for us. And should you need our service, you can just subscribe to the monthly service. And if anyone wants to reach out to me, I'd be more than happy to answer questions or give a little my two cents on what's happening in the world today.

32:19
You can just go in the footer of the directory. We have tons of social media. Just send a message or an email or just call our concierge.

32:29
And one of our agents would be more than happy to forward the quote to myself. So you see, we are a voice-only company.

32:36
And as a last word, as a last word, if you do not use AI today, take an hour, take a week off, take a month off, you know, it would change you. I know, I'm talking for myself, it made me most certainly a better worker, a better professional. And in some aspects, it makes me a better human. What I like to say is AI is very similar to money, you know. Money is inert.

33:07
It is not bad or good in itself. It's just currency, right? But it has a tendency to exaggerate who you are. You're a bad person when you're cheap. If you get rich, you're even worse.

33:22
Well, AI is the same. You are who you are.

33:25
AI is not bad in itself. If you want good and you want to be a better person, AI will most certainly help you.

33:33
Yeah, absolutely. So thank you so much again, Lauren, for being a guest on the show today. And thank you, Zena, for being a great co-host on another episode of our podcast.

33:45
It's always a pleasure. Until next time, take care. All right. Thank you both.