I Had a Tense Client Call Coming Up. AI Did the Prep I Wouldn't Have.
AI will help us do the things we already do. But it will also help us do all the things we wouldn't have done that can make all the difference.
Last week, I had a tense billing conversation coming up with a client. Instead of showing up defensive and half-informed, I showed up with a complete timeline of every payment, every invoice, every email exchange.
The whole thing took me minutes because I didn't have to cobble all of those things together manually.
A client had paid 2 of 3 invoices, but weirdly, the unpaid one was the second one I'd sent. When I asked about it, they said they'd paid the first two invoices and didn't even have the third on their radar. Which was further confusing because the second invoice they said they'd paid was for more than twice the amount of the third they had paid. Recipe for an awkward call.
I'd already set up Claude Code with tools to query my Stripe account and search my email. So I asked it to put together a timeline. It pulled invoice events, payment timestamps, email threads, everything.
On Jan 5, their AP team entered my invoice into Bill.com at 12:23. Six hours later, they paid a different invoice.
That specific detail changed the conversation from "where's my money" to "here's exactly what went wrong, let's fix it." Once we got on a call and checked my timeline with their records, we figured it out. Bill.com had dropped the invoice number on the payment, so Stripe attributed it to the wrong invoice. Mystery solved. Relationship intact.
Would I have done that research manually? Honestly, no. I'd have shown up grouchy and underprepared. This is the opportunity. Yeah, AI is going to help us do the things we already do. But it will also help us do all the things that we likely wouldn't have done that can make all the difference.
Give your agents tools. The magic happens when they're already there and you need them.