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BLUERIBBON AI INSIDER · ISSUE #3

Check Before You Repeat It

September 2026Correction · Getting Started · Tools · Trust

This issue opens by correcting our own work. In May we printed a statistic we could not later stand up, so we have pulled it and said so on that issue. That turned into the theme for this month: almost nothing in the AI conversation gets checked before it gets repeated. Everything below is something you can do this month without buying anything.

IN THIS ISSUE

Correction

We Got a Number Wrong. Here Is How to Spot the Next One.

The claim we printed traced back to a study from around 2007, co-authored by someone selling the software it recommended. While tracing it we found something stranger. A company called HiGrovi had to publish a public notice this August disowning a report attributed to them that never existed, analysing millions of calls they never analysed. Their notice includes a line addressed directly to AI assistants asking them to stop repeating it. That is the state of the field: tools confidently repeating figures nobody ever published.

💡 Your Takeaway: Before you put a number in your marketing, spend two minutes on it. Who published it, what year, and were they selling something? If the trail ends at a blog post citing another blog post, drop it. Your customers can check now, and a claim that falls apart costs you more than never making it.

Getting Started

Using AI and Having AI Are Different Things

Most owners who say they use AI mean they have a chatbot open in a browser tab. That is genuinely useful, and it is not a system. It only works while you are sitting there, which means it stops exactly when you get busy, which is when you needed it. The difference that matters is not which tool you picked. It is whether anything keeps running when you put the phone down. An enquiry that arrives at 8pm either gets answered or it does not, and no amount of clever prompting changes that if nobody is at the keyboard.

💡 Your Takeaway: Write down the three things that only happen when you personally do them. Answering the phone, sending the quote, chasing the follow-up. Those are your real automation candidates, in that order. Everything else is optimisation.

Tools & Automation

Ask an AI Assistant About Your Own Business

Customers are starting to ask an assistant instead of running a search. In July, Square began putting eligible sellers directly inside ChatGPT and Claude, so someone can ask where to order lunch and complete the order in the conversation. Eligible sellers were opted in automatically, with nothing to build. The specific product matters less than what it tells you: there is now an answer being given about your business, in a place you have never looked, and you had no part in writing it.

💡 Your Takeaway: Open ChatGPT, Gemini, or Claude and ask the question a customer would ask. Who does emergency plumbing in Loudoun County. Best bakery near Lovettsville. See whether you come up, and whether what it says about you is correct. Ten minutes, and almost no owner has done it once.

Trust & Disclosure

Tell People When They Are Talking to a Bot

Customers increasingly expect to be told, and most businesses are not telling them. The law is not where most articles claim either: California's SB 243, the one everyone cites, explicitly excludes customer-service bots, so for most small businesses disclosure is currently a trust decision rather than a legal one. Worth knowing the other side too. A survey by a company that sells human answering services found most consumers still prefer a person for local services, and a meaningful minority would hang up on an AI. They have an obvious interest in that result, and it is still worth taking seriously.

💡 Your Takeaway: Add one line wherever a bot speaks for you: 'You are chatting with our AI assistant. Type human any time and we will call you back.' It costs nothing, it takes ten minutes, and it makes you the honest operator in your market before anyone requires it.

WHAT'S NEXT

AI pricing is on promotional terms

Google's newest fast model launched in August at introductory rates that double on 1 January 2027. Most AI tools you use are built on models like it, so if a subscription feels cheap right now, that is partly why. Worth knowing before you build a process around a price.

Voice assistants are next

The same integrations now live in chat assistants are in development for voice. Being findable by something a customer speaks to, rather than types into, is the version of this that will matter for trades and local services.

The rules are moving, and being misreported

Colorado's AI Act was repealed and replaced in May, so any article citing the old version is out of date. Expect more of this. When you read that something is now required by law, check the date on the article before you act on it.

⚡ ACTION TIP

Write Your Top 20 Questions

One hour, no technology, and it is the highest-leverage thing an owner can do this month. List the twenty questions customers actually ask you. Pricing, service area, hours, emergency call-outs, warranty, what happens if it rains, how soon can you start. Write one honest paragraph answering each. That is the whole exercise. Do it and every AI tool, every new hire, and every answering service suddenly gives the same correct answer. Skip it and none of them can, no matter what you spend. The gap between businesses that get value out of AI and businesses that do not is usually this, not the software.

The thread this month is that the AI conversation has a sourcing problem and it is getting worse, because tools now repeat unchecked claims with total confidence. We added to that in May and we have corrected it here. The owners who come out of this era well will not be the ones with the most tools. They will be the ones who asked who says so before acting on it. If this was useful, forward it to one business owner who has been repeating a statistic they have never checked.

— The BlueRibbon Solutions Team

support@blueribbonaisolutions.com · blueribbonaisolutions.com

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