ISN Keeps Getting Better! Pt 2. featuring an AI Voice Assistant, improved scheduling, and more

0:07 All right, guys, back and better than ever right here from Inspection Fuel On. The ride along. That's right. And we're kind of continuing on talking with some of the vendors here. So we talked a little bit before about the ISN report writer, but we've got another ISN powerhouse over here, as it were. Lindsay, thank you for being on the show again. Miss Lindsay Grimm, everybody from ISN. not only have we had you on the show before, but we got to hang out in a very interesting context recently. Yes, tell me all about it. you want me to tell the story? All right. All right. So same we I wasn't there. It was two out of the three. Listen, I'm always honored when friends invite me to their homes.

0:50 That's not you got violent told that I was coming to your house Yeah, no, I got This basically what happened a little bit, but I didn't break anything. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, that was it no, so anyway, yeah, we we were putting together some demo reports for ISN and You know, I've made a test of the report writer a long time ago when it was in development but we were kind of coming out with some new templates, you were, some new sample reports that people can see. we used your absolutely stunning Seattle home. Yes, I don't know if we should say where she's from, but it was stunning. But anyway, if you don't mind, I could cut that out or I could leave it.

1:32 Okay, cool, yeah. She does not, she lives someplace, okay. But anyway, now what a beautiful home, seriously. mean, it's, I got to, I told everybody because there were so many different porch people. We kind of like used some existing homes for test dummies, if you will. And everybody was kind of in the background going, so who had the best house? Who had the nicest house? And I was like, Lindsay. And they're like, what? No. And I'm like, dude, show me somebody else who has a rooftop terrace overlooking Mount Baker, OK? Good lord. We bought the house in 2015 and it was when Seattle was really competitive now too, but it was just starting to sort of be impossible to buy a house in Seattle.

2:18 And so it was the most stressful summer, but we ended up in a really good place where we feel very lucky. Welcome back anytime. Well, thank you so much. Yeah. He doesn't get that very often. you're welcome. Wow. I definitely don't get that very often. Thank you. Yeah, I mean, do you want to fly from Houston all the way to Seattle? I flew from Florida. It was a hike. Definitely. now, so we're really here to not just talk about your house. That's not what we're here. But you have a very interesting role within the company, Verizon. So first of all, for the listeners, can you kind of recap what you do? Yes, so I am the product manager for ISN's core product, which um I tell people to think about that as when they're on their laptops and they're logged in to ISN, that's the experience that I and my engineering partners own.

3:08 So it's the web experience on ISN is the way we call it, the way we talk about it. Yeah. And I've been doing that for about, it'll be five years in December. No, it's awesome. So on the core side though, I mean, you guys have had some pretty interesting releases. We talked with Junafix about Report Writer releases and things like that. But on the core side, what are some cool things that have kind of come out over the course of 2025 here? Yeah, so we have, um we've been working on a lot of different stuff. I'd say the three things that I want to talk about today, and we can take these in whatever order you want to, are we made some updates to the way um we're offering Flex Fund now to our customers and their customers. So some exciting things there that just sort of make it um more visible in the client experience, and then um just sort of like a more intuitive experience, I would say.

3:57 And then um we have made some updates to our Zapier integration, which has allowed for companies to use ISN in much more customizable ways than they've been able to do in the past. And then the third thing that we want to talk about is our Digitalatics integration. And they are here at the conference this week. yeah, three exciting things that we've done so far. And then there's other things we're looking forward to down the road ahead. No, definitely. Let's dig in on the FlexFund Fee option there. Huge. We'll start with that. ah First of all, mean, obviously knowing the Guardian guys, Ben Tolman and all of them, wonderful people. They're here at the show as well. But let's talk about what you guys have done to kind of improve that feature.

4:41 Yeah, so the way that we rolled FlexFund out initially was, um for various reasons that I won't go into here, we couldn't expose the fee to end clients that they would have to pay for FlexFund. So we kind of rolled it into the standard inspection fee or whatever a uh customer calls their kind of home inspection fee. um And then they could charge clients and it would be enveloped in that fee. We have since sort of um extracted that fee out and exposed it more specifically and explicitly to clients in the various flows we have within ISN.

5:21 So like in our online scheduler, in the agreement signing flow, that kind of thing. it's just, um it kind of like, it's allowed us to sort of get rid of what seemed like a hidden fee and give clients more of a choice as to whether they were gonna opt into that. and we've seen really good adoption among our customers. So many more inspection companies have signed up for FlexFund as a result, which has been really cool. Yeah, and obviously there's so many benefits to using FlexFund as far as kind of an escalator for your services and things like that as well. And nothing's changed about the program itself. It's just this one small tweak to the way we're offering it to clients I think has made inspection companies say yeah that makes us seem more trustworthy and that kind of thing.

6:07 I mean we've all been in the place before where we've seen if you know we've been subjected to what feels like a hidden fee. Yeah, that irritates people when they think they're getting hidden fees. Yeah Yeah, that's huge and uh kind of certainly back to digital addicts to friend of the show. Yeah, we've we've had Karam Shazad on here before. One of my good buddies here in the industry, one of the first people that I met as I kind of got introduced to the wider world of home inspections and but such a cool dude. So what are some of the integrations that that they're kind of bringing in? Yeah, so what we've been working with them for the last few months and what our integration with them does is it syncs from ISN over to digital edX.

6:49 It doesn't go the other direction for many reasons, but mostly we didn't do it the other direction because we fear that there might be. duplicate orders getting created in ISN if we did it that way. So we made the kind of like co-decision to say it's only gonna sink in one direction. So when somebody creates an order, updates an order, cancels an order over an ISN, the status of that sinks over with Digital Addicts. And what the integration allows us to do is really like... em like streamline operations for companies. So instead of having to update things in two places, now all the information just talks to each other between the two systems. So you know, you can, it's speeding up sort of what we're calling time to insight.

7:34 So you can understand more about your marketing spend and ROI. And honestly, they're so huge for that. As far as kind of not just taking the data, but kind of giving you the best advice on what you should be doing with it, how you can kind of be looking to improve. They're so great. Definitely. And go back and watch the episode with Karam and Harmony Brown from last fall. Great episode. A lot of really cool insight on if you're to really beef up your marketing. That was a great one for sure. I didn't know if you wanted to say sorry. I had nothing. I'm just listening at this point, but I have the microphone now. And so now it's, you made it awkward. Or maybe I made it awkward.

8:16 Why do you keep talking about cutting things out? Like, I love this stuff. This is what we do. This is what I do. I make things awkward in a podcast and you polish it up. That's it, yeah. I'm the editor. Alright, so I'm doing my job. Or maybe you did by handing me the mic. Thank you. um You guys can't really cut things. You guys can't really. Your job is to observe, not cut. Yeah, yeah, there we go. I'm just gonna. Would you like to share that? Yeah, come on, come on buddy. Let's get chummy here. Alright, well, let's let's let's actually talk a little bit about what's coming down the pipeline too, because you guys are constantly working to kind of improve things and and you don't you don't just rest on your laurels over here.

8:59 No, we can't. mean, our customers don't. So why should we? We can't. We constantly have to be evolving and improving um with what we're offering to um our customers and hearing their feedback and incorporating their feedback and that kind of thing. So we keep hearing AI. I think we've talked about it in a previous episode. it's something we are focused on, but I would say not in a way that's disrupting our other work. What we're constantly trying to think about is how do we use AI, integrate AI in a way that helps customers, not that just does AI for its own sake. Nobody wants that.

9:41 I think we probably have all faced things where we've been offered the chance to use AI within one of our favorite products. it's like, well, it doesn't really make sense there. I'm going to do my usual thing because it doesn't really like. AI is not going to help me in this context. So that's what we're trying to avoid. We're trying to build stuff that's going to be helpful. So that's my like preface for saying one of the things we're working on right now is an AI voice assistant. which we have been running a contest on. If you guys have been following on Instagram, then you've probably been voting and helping us to name it. And we've come down to the finalists. That poll's kind of going on at the time of recording. uh that it's already like I mean the poll is still out there currently not when you're watching this but I mean I think there's a obvious leader right.

10:29 We're not going to announce it yet. This is news for you. Should we give her the top two? if you would like to. Okay, it's come down to Inspectly and InspectBot. InspectBot. it's not the one that we wanted. So, interestingly enough, um I have an inspector that is in training with me right now, and Gabriel, what's up man? He uh just chimed in one day and said, can it be Inspektron? And we were like, oh man, that is perfect. Yeah, like a British, like very robot, like C3PO type. Yeah. like Ron Swanson.

11:09 uh And Spectron's smells of rich mahogany and leather-bound books. He's kind of a big deal. Yeah, that's right. Lots of famous Rons. That's it. Rons. Yeah, That's funny because I heard Tron and you heard Ron. You expect Ron. That's great. like Rio, it's gonna make more human sort of, But Tron is also sort of anybody that, yeah, anybody that like is familiar with 80s movies. Right, exactly. Futuristic 80s movies. yeah, I think that's he was getting at, but I kind of like Ron now. Let's just cut out the inspect. Just Ron. Yeah, we're going to call him Ron. The winner's Ron. Get the whole pole and everything. We're not doing that anymore.

11:53 People are naming their dogs like human names a lot. Like their dogs are named Kevin and Steve. my favorite. all it or do you run I love it m the winner. hears it differently. Everybody hears it in spectrum. Gabriel's going to be so disappointed. I'm trying to run. I mean it's his doing actually. Anyway, so those are the top two names. We'll see which one the winner is, but I kind of wish it was Ron now. I mean, it's gotta be Ron. So many co-branding opportunities. Yeah, seriously. right. But okay, let's talk about what it does a little bit. We've teased that online, ah but let's hear it from the source itself. Yeah. The creator of Ron.

12:34 benefit of this is to say, we all can think of the scenario where a client calls in. So the calls, the number on your website and it's after hours or you're busy on another job and you miss the call. So this is an opportunity to say, how can we make the client feel like there is sort of a next step or there's sort of like a soft handoff to receive a call back later and just handle that call when it might otherwise go to voicemail. So it's not a lost call. Correct. We are actually able to communicate with them even if it's AI. They're able to communicate with them, maybe give them a price. Yeah. Maybe give them some availability. Exactly. And then so they at least have a couple of pieces and then we can take their information and get back with them later uh whenever we have time.

13:18 It's almost like you can rendezvous. my gosh. See. This is happening. This has to happen. Yes, yes, I love it the puns and dude celebrity celebrity I'm sorry. Please keep watching guys. Please. Ignore the dad joke. Puns are a sign of intelligence. That's it. I've heard that too, I cannot confirm it myself. Don't look to me as confirmation of that. ah But seriously, okay, so the voice assistant. But there's a couple other things as well. Yes. Remind me what we said. uh been instructed to talk about the order form overhaul and premium time slots.

14:02 oh something back in three, two. So the order form um was something that we had decided that for various reasons, there are sort of things happening on the backend of the order form and things happening with like what you see on the web with the order form that we said, let's bring this thing into the 21st century. um It's built on a sort of an old, instable platform. on the back end. And also, if you can think of ISN and think of those tabs at the top of the order form, that's a very sort of like 1990s implementation of sort of a flow. So what we did was we um had an effort to redesign it. And so the redesign has those tabs now in kind of a left navigation, which you can probably think of when you're browsing almost any website, just like the left.

14:50 persistent navigation and as you scroll down, you'll just see the sections change. So we built this new prototype, showed it to 30 customers in March, got some great feedback and we've been slowly building it ever since. So it's a huge project. Our engineers are super excited about it, which like when the engineers get excited about a project, I get excited about a project when they want it, when they're excited to work on something. So the whole point of it is like, like I said, bring it up to the 21st century and also in improving this critical part of our software, it's going to make everything else better and faster too. So it's been a long, it's been sort of a long haul to get this up and running, but it's um very exciting, very exciting.

15:37 Yeah, so premium time slots is I would file that under things we get asked for a lot and and also sort of like help inspectors earn more revenue so premium time slots will be a flexible way to say You know, I don't really work on Sundays So I'm gonna charge more if somebody wants to schedule an inspection on Sundays and and I want to charge this much more or you know, the the Monday noon slot is sort of like a highly contested slot. Everybody wants that slot as a result. I'm gonna I'm going to only allow for these inspection types or I'm going to charge, I'm going to have like this kind of upcharge. So it just, it just allows you to sort of take more control over your schedule.

16:18 And if there are times a day, times of week that are particularly competitive, you know, maybe it's a little bit of like surge, call it surge pricing, you know, not, like a surge pricing the way Uber is, but just, you know, it's sort of a static surge price. It's for those that just want to go like, look, I don't want to get out of bed on a Saturday for anything less than. Exactly. Some people might use it a ton, some people might not use it at all. um But it's been asked for enough that we're like, this is actually kind of cool. It would be, yeah, definitely. And yet, just kind of like another example of ways that you're listening to users and looking for ways that you can make this more suitable for them. And it's a constant balance with the web platform because we own all of what's happening on the back end.

17:04 We're constantly having to update our systems, what we call our software stack. There's constant updates. if we could, we would be doing features all day, every day. It's not a reality for what the engineering team owns to be able to do that. It's a percentage of our work. It's not the full amount of our And I definitely want to come back to something that you said, which I think is important. It's the way that you guys prioritize not just creating for the sake of creating or developing to develop. It's making things that are actually useful in response to needs. Yes, and I can kind of talk about that in reference to the Zapier work we've been doing this year. So Zapier is a third party automation tool. uh Zapier, like an example would be, say somebody updates an order in ISN, you can use Zapier to say, okay, that update just happened in ISN.

17:53 I want this spreadsheet to change in this way. So you can create those kinds of automations that are really specific to your business and em integrate different software platforms without like an official integration. And so what we learned was we were getting a lot of very specific requests about ISN, um but it wouldn't, they were requests that might help that business, but they might not help every business in the same way. So what we did was we said, what if we kind of double down on our Zapier integration so that our customers can do whatever they want. They can connect whatever tools they want um without having to sort of go through this long slog of an actual like tech integration.

18:35 So that's been really fun this year. We've done a lot with Zapier this year and we actually just talked to a customer last week who showed us some stuff they've been doing and it's incredible actually. Like they've realized a lot of operational efficiency as a result, which is super cool. It's cool to hear that you all are just constantly creating things that just make the users like me uh make it a lot easier. Developing things that are making things flow better. better. No, it is super cool. It's awesome. Honestly, all of these things get me excited to get back out on the field and get to play with some of these toys too. I mean, because for me, I'm a little bit of a nerd. I'm a Mac guy, which doesn't necessarily mean you're a nerd, but I do all things from audio video to creation.

19:21 so for me, somebody that uses software to run his day, when it comes to my job as a home inspector, I nerd out on that stuff equally as much as the software that I use for everything else. But it's sort of a spectrum, We even have people coming up to us at this conference saying, you I'm not a tech person. we have to think about that. We have to consider all the whole. You make it user-friendly. Exactly. Yeah. That's huge. Well, honestly, Lindsay, thank you so much. This has been super helpful, and it's always exciting to see everything that you guys are working on and the passion that you guys have for it. It's always fun to talk to you and kind of catch you up. What do we do it? Like once a quarter? Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's like sometimes a year.

20:04 Yeah. And also thank you for letting me inspect your house. There's that too. Yeah, that was always fun. And you get to come next time. Oh, I get an invitation? on the deck. Pending no rain. See, look, that is such a nice deck that you have to call it a terrace and then say it with a bit of French flets or the terrasse. The terrasse, yeah. with a Ron voice, that's it. Back to Ron. It always goes back to Ron. back to Rod. Dude, so yeah, so we got so much more coming from inspection fuel here in New Orleans. Keep watching, you know, and because one we're going to be announcing the name of the AI voice assistant.

20:45 did. It's a soft launch of Ron and but no, we're also we got the live the live recording that we got coming up to. podcast tomorrow. Well, won't be tomorrow for you that's watching this, but uh but we will be on stage doing a podcast in front of an audience. That's going to be really neat. And we will be live streaming it. So if you're watching this back later on ah after Fuel, be sure to go back and watch the Ride Along Inspection Fuel live podcast episode or listen to it wherever you listen to your podcast. But again, Lindsay, thank you so much for joining us. Seriously, it's been great. Thanks for having me. Yep. And thank you guys so much for watching. So much more to come from Inspection Fuel right here on The Ride Along. You got it.