Casting agency created 1,246 appointments in July with a voice assistant

Starting point

A casting agency was handling commercial applications with a team of six. After every application, the same three steps were repeated: call the candidate, invite them to the office and arrange a day for a test shoot. That meant as many calls, invitations and appointments as there were applications, and the six-person team handled all of them.

When these calls slipped, candidates were lost and the test-shoot calendar stayed empty. Two things had to be solved: not losing the candidate, and not leaving the calendar empty.

What the assistant does

AvaritCall's voice assistant now does this work. The three steps the team used to carry out by hand on the phone are handled by the assistant itself:

• Call: It phones every candidate who has applied for a commercial; the call is made by the assistant, not by a team member.
• Invite: It invites the candidate it has reached to the agency's office.
• Test shoot: It agrees a day and time for the test shoot with the candidate and creates the appointment.

Call transcripts are logged in the panel and can be followed via push notifications in the iOS app; calendar and CRM integrations are connected per setup. The time the team spent on the phone thus passes to the assistant; the calling, inviting and scheduling work six people used to do is now the assistant's job.

Outcome

In July, the assistant created 1,246 appointments. The calling, inviting and scheduling work previously done by six people now runs at the cost of a single employee.

• 1,246 appointments in July
• The work of six people, at the cost of one employee
• Candidates are not lost, the calendar does not stay empty

The outcome fits in two sentences: candidates are not lost, the calendar does not stay empty. The candidate who is called gets invited to the office and the test shoot goes into the calendar; what changed for the agency is that the work of a six-person team now runs at the cost of a single employee.

What people still do

The assistant takes over the call, the invitation and the appointment; decisions about candidates and commercial negotiations remain with the team. In a casting agency, this work is done not over the phone but face to face and by team decision.

• Evaluating the candidate face to face at the test shoot
• Making the casting and selection decision for the commercial

In this case, the assistant's job is to get the candidate to the office at the right time; who makes the cast is still decided by the team. As in every case, pricing negotiations and complaint handling stay with the team.