The phone is where AI shows up first
How many calls did your business miss last week while everyone was busy with a customer?
Around Charleston, that is the first problem people are handing to AI. Here are three who did it.
Katsubō Chicken & Ramen, Park Circle
Their AI attendant, Kat, answers questions about takeout, reservations, hours and jobs. Staff stay with the guests in the room. The owners liked it enough to start selling it to other restaurants as Noodl.
Source: Post and Courier. Directory entry.
MUSC Health
An AI agent named Emily handles appointments, billing questions and pharmacy refills by voice and chat. SoundHound, the company behind it, reports 2.2 million patient interactions a year at a 4.3/5 NPS. Those figures are SoundHound’s.
Source: SoundHound. Directory entry.
Town of Mount Pleasant
Sawyer was developed in partnership with Citibot, a Charleston company. It takes pothole reports and trash questions around the clock. The town says it answers in more than 70 languages on the website and by text. By phone it understands English and Spanish.
Source: WCBD via Yahoo. Directory entry.
Try this today
Paste this into ChatGPT or Claude:
List the 20 most common questions our phone gets and write short, accurate answers. Then list which calls should always go to a person: [paste your notes]
It is free, and it is the script any AI phone tool will need anyway.
On the calendar
- Nov 5–6: AI Era 2.0 for law firms, Daniel Island
- Nov 6: AI CAN Do It. SHOULD It?, Moncks Corner (free)
- Nov 10: AI Advantage, Charleston AI lab ($75)
- Nov 12: AI in building, HBA of the Lowcountry, Daniel Island
- Nov 19: Building AI Agents for Entrepreneurs, Harbor Entrepreneur Center, Mount Pleasant
Links for all of them are on the events page.
If you are using AI in your business, send it through the submit page and say what is working. I would like to feature you.
Collin
Published by Charleston AI Playbook. Published October 16, 2026.
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