Writing
Field notes from real AI deployments.
Honest writing on what we've shipped, what's worked, what hasn't, and what mid-market companies should expect when they move past ChatGPT into integrated AI systems.
Smith.ai vs. a Teams-Native AI Receptionist: An Honest Look
Smith.ai is a human-first answering service that forwards your calls out. A Teams-native AI lives inside your phone system. What each model is actually good at — and the profile where you should buy theirs instead of ours.
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Does Your Chatbot Legally Have to Say It’s a Bot? A 2026 Reality Check
A run of states now regulate AI chatbots and the headlines make it sound like yours is covered. Read the actual statutes and almost none of them reach a business service bot — but one quietly does, and it asks for exactly one sentence.
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RingCentral’s $49 AI Receptionist vs. Webex’s $100: What the Meter Actually Buys
RingCentral bundles 100 minutes for $49. Webex bundles 250 for $100. The honest comparison, with everyone’s published numbers — including exactly when you should buy theirs instead.
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GPT-5.6 vs. Claude: Stop Asking Which AI Model Is Best
OpenAI’s newest flagship ships at the old price, lands a point off Claude, and isn’t even OpenAI’s own default. The frontier has converged — which means the model was never the hard part. The deployment is.
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1 in 3 Companies That Fired for AI Are Hiring Those Jobs Back
The layoffs didn't pay off. The data on why AI-driven cuts keep boomeranging — and the play a mid-market operator should run instead: more output on the team you already have.
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Is It Legal to Use an AI Receptionist? What US Small Businesses Need to Know
Short answer: yes. The robocall rules everyone worries about govern outbound AI calls — not an AI answering the calls your customers place to you. The real, much shorter list of what actually applies.
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We Answer Our Own Phone With Aria — and Here's What We've Learned
Our business line is answered by Aria, the same AI voice agent we sell. After months in production, here's what's working, what isn't, and what to expect from a deployment on your own line.
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From ChatGPT Chaos to Integrated AI Systems
ChatGPT is a useful tool. It's not a working system. Here's the difference between a chat tab and an integrated AI deployment — and why mid-market companies keep getting stuck at the threshold.
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AI Email Triage: How We Got 8 to 10 Hours Per Week Back
One of the systems we run internally is an AI email triage layer. Here's what it actually does, what it cost to build, what the limits are, and what a deployment on your inbox would take.
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