As negative double-digit temperatures and a foot of snow slammed Rochester, NY, Nicole Little arrived at Northwinds Services Group’s call center with an odd feeling.
Calm.
Normally, extreme-weather weeks elicit a sense of dread — of thousands of customers calling across their 20 brands with urgent “no heat” calls, resulting in long wait times, high abandonment rates, unhappy customers and 25 burnt-out CSRs.
Little didn’t fear any of that.
“I was excited,” Northwinds’ Director of Residential Service said. “Because I know Lucy can handle it.”
Lucy is the name they chose for the newest addition to their team — ServiceTitan’s AI Voice Agent, available to all ServiceTitan customers regardless of their telephone system. She can handle an unlimited amount of calls, simultaneously. She can book and reschedule appointments across Northwinds’ brands. She can escalate to a team member, if necessary.
In her first six weeks…
Lucy’s booking rate is 80-85% — higher than most of their CSRs.
Her average talk time is around four minutes and 30 seconds vs. human call times of 8 to 10 minutes.
Her handle time is zero, which means Lucy effortlessly cruises from call to call in emergency moments, eliminating wait times, taking the burden off CSRs and making what should’ve been a dreadful week…oddly not that hectic.
“Two floor managers came to me and said, ‘You know what, we had a really good week this week,’” Little recalled. “And I replied, ‘Great! Do you want to see how many calls came in the call center?’”
The managers were stunned: roughly 7,000 calls that week.
“Statistically-wise, KPI-wise, (Lucy) is our very best CSR we could ever wish for,” Little said.
But just a few months ago, Little was Lucy’s biggest skeptic. Here’s what changed.
‘Try to break her’
Little knew AI voice agents were the future and that she had to embrace them. She just didn’t think they’d work.
Northwinds, a ServiceTitan customer for two years, looked into many different voice agent solutions. They chose ServiceTitan for a few reasons:
Touchless and Accurate Bookings: ServiceTitan’s AI Voice Agent books to your live capacity for accurate job bookings. No overbooking or underbooking — just right and perfectly optimized. “Other companies…will show you have 15 slots available, but in reality, there could be 40 AI bookings that we don’t even know about,” Little explained.
Integrated End-to-End Intelligence: ServiceTitan’s AI Voice Agent works seamlessly with the workflows already in place at Northwinds. For example, “You can see it’s the AI Agent booking, so we get the notification. Outside companies can’t do that.”
One company: It was important for Little that their AI Voice Agent was under the ServiceTitan umbrella — which simplifies partnership and taking ownership. “If we went outside of ServiceTitan and something went wrong, it becomes, ‘Is it this company's issue, or is it that company's issue?’”
Little chose the name Lucy for her AI Voice Agent because she wanted an uncommon name.
“But the second reason, if I'm being 100% honest, is I love Lucille Ball,” she said.
As for her skepticism? When Northwinds initially tested Lucy during onboarding, they were told, “Try to break her.”
“I remember we booked a Tuesday appointment for a ‘no-heat,’ and then we're like, ‘No sorry, I forgot, let's do a Wednesday. Oh no, sorry, I forgot, let's do a Thursday. Oh, nope, can we have it on Saturday?’” Little said.
“(Lucy) never got annoyed, she never missed a beat. She was like, ‘Yeah, no problem, does this work for you?’ And her work types were right. I was just like, ‘Wow.’ That's when I knew this product was ready.”
‘Laughter in the (call center)’
Four months ago, Little noticed that there was low morale in the call center. It was too quiet. The CSRs felt attached to their desks. There was burnout and no work-life balance.
Even so, there was hesitation when everyone first learned about Lucy.
“I (emphasized) in our rollout that Lucy was not here to replace you. Lucy is here to assist you,” Little said.
But that point wasn’t fully felt until…
Sick? Go home: Recently, the flu hit Northwinds’ call center — primarily because CSRs continued coming to work sick. “Now we’re saying, ‘Please go home. It’s no problem. We have Lucy.’”
Emergency weather: There’s no more dread among CSRs when crazy weather weeks happen. “When they know it's going to be freezing, they're like, ‘No worries, Lucy's got us.’”
Holidays off: CSRs at Northwinds no longer have to work on Christmas. “That's priceless stuff.”
Little explained that Lucy has allowed the CSRs to really take care of the customers who “need that extra love” and “human touch.”
“She didn't take away jobs — she actually enhanced the experience for our clients and enhanced our call center. Because they're no longer drowning, they're able to give that customer service that's really needed.”
The result?
“Now you can hear laughter (in the call center),” Little said.
The #1 newsletter for the trades.
‘Employee of the Month’
Little said that the advanced AI she thought was far into the future is actually here — right now. Lucy’s latest mind-blowing example? Empathy.
“We had a customer call in and say, ‘My wife passed away,’ and Lucy actually said, ‘I am so sorry for your loss.’ And we were like, ‘What?’ That was incredible to us. The fact that Lucy knew enough to say that was amazing.”
Lucy has made “zero errors and is foolproof” according to Little. Recently, a customer told Lucy that his driveway was icy.
“And then when we went to the job summary, it had all the details of the job, and then right at the end, it said, ‘Please beware the driveway is slippery,’” Little said.
At first, Northwinds used Lucy for emergency calls only. Now, they’re deploying Lucy for after hours and weekends — saving money from live answering services.
“We're going to turn Lucy on full-blown. I wouldn't even be shocked if (she one day takes) 50% of the calls.”
Little jokes that Lucy is her favorite CSR and that, based on how much people talk about her, “you’d think that Lucy is Employee of the Month.”
The name she chose for their voice agent — and Lucille Ball’s inspiration behind it — has proven to be prophetic.
“We love Lucy,” Little said.
