Meet JingJing: Transforming Service-Based Industries with Superbench's AI Innovations
Meet JingJing, the visionary founder behind Superbench, a trailblazing platform revolutionizing service-based industries with cutting-edge AI technology. Drawing from her extensive background in facility management and commercial cleaning, JingJing identified industry challenges and saw the potential of generative AI to transform service operations. In this interview, we explore her journey, insights, and the innovative solutions Superbench offers to streamline sales, optimize scheduling, and enhance customer experiences across diverse communication channels.
What inspired you to create Superbench and how did you get started?
After leaving Helpling, I maintained relationships with the facility management and commercial cleaning companies I previously worked with. Many of them approached me with job offers for management positions, which led me to discuss their common challenges. Recognizing these issues, along with the rise of generative AI in early 2023 with the release of ChatGPT, I saw an opportunity.
Superbench offers key features beneficial to service-based businesses:
- Sales Suite: Enables 24/7 inbound sales, managing customer inquiries on service scope, pricing, and scheduling.
- Scheduling Optimization: Integrates with company calendars to instantly find the best workers for jobs and optimal time slots.
- Knowledge Management System: Utilizes self-learning AI to stay updated with daily operations, promotions, and new services. This system helps train new workers quickly, keeps knowledge current, and eliminates the need for written SOPs.
How does Superbench’s AI-powered scheduling and CRM tools improve operational efficiency for your clients?
We base everything on conversations, inspired by generative AI, to determine the most helpful use cases for conversational interactions. Unlike booking a taxi via an app like Uber or Grab, which is highly efficient, booking services involves a more complicated quoting and scheduling process where traditional chatbots or app-based systems often fall short. However, conversational-based booking excels in this area, and that's where we come in.
Through conversations, we can track the conversion funnel, and we also auto-populate these conversations into a customer database for the company. This approach allows us to seamlessly integrate an operating system for service companies into their existing conversational workflows. Instead of navigating through pages and clicking buttons, users can simply interact with an internal coordinator or operations manager.
What distinguishes Superbench from other AI solutions in the market?
We are focusing deeply on the home services sector because operating a company in this space relies heavily on basic conversational communications. This strong use case allows us to leverage conversation-based operations effectively. By specializing in this area, we can accomplish much more than a general AI chatbot.
For instance, we can handle transactions and resolutions at a deeper level, provide quotes with images using our proprietary data, and manage entire interactions from inquiry to payment. Unlike general chatbots that typically manage only brief exchanges, we offer comprehensive support, making our solution uniquely capable in ways that many other companies cannot match.
Can you share a success story or case study that highlights the impact of Superbench on a client’s business?
Most of our clients quickly notice significant benefits when they start using our service. One of the main advantages is that they no longer need to constantly check their phones, as our AI handles initial customer interactions. For example, one client shared a success story where he woke up on a Sunday morning to find five converted leads instead of 50 unanswered messages.
This difference is crucial because, in the service industry, speed is everything. However, speed alone isn't enough; providing the right information quickly is essential for closing sales. Additionally, sales are incomplete without proper scheduling. Our system captures all these elements, allowing us to swiftly convert cold leads into sales.
How do the self-learning SOP and FAQ functionalities work, and what advantages do they offer to users?
Our self-learning FAQ system integrates into our clients' communication channels, such as emails and messengers, allowing them to handle their customers as usual. Depending on the volume of interactions, our system can learn how to manage customer inquiries within a day to two weeks. It then generates a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) and FAQ based on these interactions.
The SOP outlines conversation flows, while the FAQ addresses common questions and responses. This system is advantageous for companies without existing FAQs or SOPs, facilitating seamless onboarding. Even if clients decide not to continue using our service, they leave with a fully developed SOP and FAQ, which many small companies, like cleaning or plumbing businesses, typically lack.
Moreover, the system ensures that these documents are always up-to-date, unlike many larger companies where FAQs and SOPs often become outdated. This feature also helps companies onboard new employees efficiently with the most current knowledge base.
What trends do you see shaping the future of service scheduling and business intelligence?
In my podcast, I often discuss industry trends, and one key insight is that speed has become the new luxury. Both I and many other service company owners recognize that speed equates to premium service. Even if you offer high-quality home services, a slow response time undermines the perception of luxury. Conversely, if you can respond to customer inquiries instantly and courteously, as AI can, it positions you to charge a premium in the future.
Speed is crucial not only for customer satisfaction but also for efficient scheduling. Service companies often have fixed labor costs, whether their workers have jobs to do or not. For example, if a worker costs $100 a day, that expense is incurred regardless of their workload. Therefore, maximizing the number of jobs per worker increases profitability. However, if workers spend too much time traveling between jobs, their utilization rate drops, cutting into margins.
As labor costs rise, efficient scheduling becomes even more critical. Without the ability to quickly take on new customers and optimize scheduling, maintaining a high-margin business becomes challenging. These trends underscore the importance of both rapid response and effective scheduling in the service industry.
What new features or improvements are you planning to introduce to Superbench in the near future?
We realized that establishing a robust knowledge management system for companies is essential before introducing AI-powered technologies. We're currently focusing on new features and improvements. Firstly, we aim to enhance our AI capabilities. While our AI doesn't hallucinate much, there's always room for improvement.
Secondly, we plan to leverage our proprietary data, including conversations and images, to develop more effective proprietary conversation models that better support our clients' interactions.
Additionally, we want to help our clients track their business metrics more effectively. For example, we aim to trace the origin of inbound messages, enabling marketing attribution analysis. By identifying that five out of ten customers came from Google and two from Facebook, companies can gain valuable marketing insights.
Ultimately, we intend to track everything from the channels customers use to their retention and overall lifecycle with the company. This comprehensive tracking will provide companies with a clearer understanding of their marketing effectiveness and customer journey.
What advice would you give to other entrepreneurs looking to launch a startup in the AI and SaaS space?
When launching an AI venture, it's crucial to deeply understand the problem you're addressing. Simply building a general-purpose chatbot won't suffice for long-term success. I firmly believe in focusing on verticals. General-purpose chatbots can often hallucinate unless the interactions are very basic and superficial, which adds little value to a business.
To be successful, prioritize solving specific problems and recognize that generative AI may not be the best solution for every use case. For example, in our case, using generative AI for quoting isn't ideal because AI is notoriously poor at math, leading to numerous issues. Understanding where to apply and where not to apply the technology is critical.
Additionally, having a CTO with industry experience is invaluable. It's all about aligning technology with business use cases and adapting it effectively. Ultimately, everything boils down to solving a real problem with the right technological approach.
How can businesses get started with Superbench, and what should they expect during the initial setup?
Just visit our landing page at superbench.ai and start a chat with us. I'll be personally available to guide you based on whether you already have existing SOPs and FAQs or not. Currently, we're developing an onboarding flow that can onboard all our clients within an hour.
Here's how it works: First, we'll integrate you into our Omni-channel system, which aggregates all conversation channels such as WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, Messenger, Telegram, SMS, and emails into one platform. Second, we'll deploy our AI to start learning from your existing conversations or new ones you'll handle in the coming week.
Once our AI has learned enough, usually within a day or two, we'll roll out the system and monitor its performance. For most companies, this setup is sufficient as our self-learning AI continues to improve autonomously. However, for some, additional customization may be needed, in which case we'll adjust and continue training the AI until it meets your specific needs. That's essentially how we streamline and enhance communication processes for our clients.