A Little Voice Chatbot that Could · AI Automation Agency Hub

A Little Voice Chatbot that Could

My 11 year-old son's been selling Dr. Pepper and Sprite at his school for about a week now. He saw that his friends always craved for some soda that he decided to supply them. In past 5 days he sold 57 cans of soda at about $1.50 each.

I took this opportunity to teach him some business fundamentals and what AI can do for him. First it was about sales being the most important part of the business. Then the supply and demand. Then came the market development. Then the scarcity tactic. Now it's accounting.

He'd been piling up his dollar bills in his wallet. We talked about how many cans he sold and how much money he made each day. I advised on the importance of keeping a log, but he wouldn't even scribble these numbers on a sticky. He would say he's got this.

Over the weekend, I offered him an AI solution that could help him track his sales. He was interested in it until I dumped cold water on him by asking "how much are you going to pay me?" puhahaha 😁 Then yesterday, I thought, I'll just build it for him.

ORIGINAL DESIGN was simple:

Use Voiceflow for a chatbot that gathers daily sales numbers: date, quantity, and income.

Use Make.com to update a Google sheet that keeps track of daily sales.

-- VF and Make are two platforms I've spent most time in.

-- I knew it would be far easier to just have my son log it directly in a spreadsheet.

WHAT I MADE:

VF Chatbot, named Canning asks and gathers date, quantity, and income.

Then have my son confirm the numbers and either modify or log. If modify, it will have him pick which number to update, then update, reconfirm until my son tells it to log it.

Then Canning calls Make.com scenario on POST request with the sales figures.

Make.com scenario adds the numbers to the Google Sheet.

Google Sheet has extra columns that delivers running totals and running average.

Once Success response is received, Canning asks if my son would like the sales to date information. If no, then it ends the function, if yes, then Canning makes another API call to Make.com, this time a GET request.

Make.com searches for and retrieves the last running totals and average numbers from the Google Sheet and send them on the Response.

Canning updates my son with these numbers, compliments my son, and ends the workflow.

Canning is set up as a Voicebot instead of Chatbot for easier conversation on my son's mobile phone. (let me make it clear that it is a Chatbot that can have voice input and output without any phone numbers to call)

WHAT I LEARNED

While teaching my son about business, I was breaking the fundamentals of business: I built the solution without confirming client's (user's) pain points. 🙄

There needs clearer information on how to setup and handle API Responses in Make.com.

It's such a pain to debug for punctuation errors. 🤬

I am still developing things in deterministic style.

OPPORTUNITIES for improvements:

API Error handling: I can add SMS notification to immediately alert myself if API calls fail.

Data access: Replacing Google Sheets with simple database could be easier and less costly.

Data analyses: Instead of AI repeating the running totals that API node retrieved, AI should be able to provide these types of analytical data on its own with direct access to a data table.

Platform: I'm moving out of VF before they charge me for the second month in a week. Time to learn n8n!

Anyway, after demonstrating Canning to my son last night, he looked excited to use it. I overheard him telling his friend over the phone "my dad made me this thing with an AI that can keep track of my soda sales!" That made me happy. I'm excited to see how he likes using it. 😄

(Well, well, well... as he was heading out to school just now, my son told me "it doesn't work." I asked "what do you mean?" He said "when i clicked the link you sent, it says the it doesn't work on mobile."

And I've confirmed that currently VoiceFlow mobile support for prototype isn't available. Hmm... back to the development. 😉)

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A Little Voice Chatbot that Could