Picture a homeowner in Walpole with a dead furnace. She doesn't search. She tells her AI assistant, "Find someone who can come Thursday and tell me roughly what it costs." The assistant visits a few websites, compares them and comes back with one name.
Was it yours?
That's not science fiction anymore. It's our lead today. After it: the first honest reviews of Businesses in ChatGPT, why AI budgets are moving to agents that work in the background, and new data on who's actually spending on AI. Each item links to the original post on X. Engagement numbers are as of the morning of November 12.
1. Your next customer might be an AI agent
@omooretweets, November 11. About 520 likes, 650 bookmarks and 165,000 views. Shared by @a16z (about 1,200 likes and 840 bookmarks).
Olivia and Justine Moore, partners at the venture firm a16z, published a piece called "Welcome to the B2A Economy." B2A means business to agent. Their argument: AI agents are becoming the main users of the internet, and soon they'll be choosing products, services and where to spend money for the people they work for.
They point to a few numbers. Shopify reported that AI-driven traffic to its stores grew eightfold year over year in the first quarter, and orders from AI-powered searches grew nearly thirteenfold. A follow-up post from @a16z added that HUMAN Security saw agent browser traffic grow 8x from August to October. Their line for businesses: for years companies built walls to keep bots out, and now they'll have to "fight for bots' business."
Our take: Most of this data is about online stores, not furnace repairs. But the direction is clear, and a service business is easy for an agent to skip. Agents read pages. They don't guess. Run this check on your own site today:
- Service area in plain words. "We serve Norwood, Walpole, Dedham and Westwood," not a map image.
- Hours on the page. Including whether you take emergency calls.
- What you do, one page each. Heat pump repair, boiler service, panel upgrades. Separate pages beat one long list.
- A rough price range where you can. "Most diagnostic visits start at..." gives an agent something to compare. If you don't price online, say how quotes work.
- One clear way to book. A phone number that gets answered or a short form. Agents and people both bail on dead ends.
Same rule as always. If a customer can't find it in ten seconds, an agent probably can't either.
2. Claimed your ChatGPT profile yet? The first reviews are in
@aleyda, November 11. About 65 likes and 3,900 views.
Last issue we walked through claiming your business in ChatGPT. Now people who did it are reporting back. Aleyda Solis, an SEO and AI search consultant, posted a video walkthrough. Her summary: "We expected a search console, we were given a basic 'Business Profile.'" It's a local profile mixed with a simple product feed and an agent builder, and her early verdict is that OpenAI gets more insight from businesses than businesses get back.
Morten A. Giraffe claimed his listing and called it a useful idea with rough execution. He listed repeated DNS, email and phone verification failures, unreliable photo uploads and limited editing, and he flagged the terms as unusually broad.
Our take: Still claim it. A basic profile with your correct hours beats no profile. Just go in with low expectations. Read the terms before you click agree. If verification fails, try a different method and come back in a few days. Write down what you entered so you can match it to your Google profile and your website.
3. The follow-up that runs on its own
@dylan522p, November 11. About 1,100 likes, 500 bookmarks and 143,000 views.
Dylan Patel, CEO of the research firm SemiAnalysis, said persistent agents are "the next unlock of AI usage." These are agents that keep working on multi-step jobs in the background instead of waiting for you to type a prompt. He said 45% of his firm's AI spend now goes to them. He also didn't hold back on which products he likes. He said his team mostly uses Perplexity Computer and gave Anthropic's and OpenAI's Slack agents poor reviews.
Our take: Forget the brand fight. The idea is what matters for a trade shop. A chatbot waits for you to ask. A background agent keeps going while you're on a roof. That's exactly where small shops lose money: the quote nobody followed up on, the missed call nobody returned until the next morning. Pick one follow-up that slips every week and make it run on its own. Keep a human OK on anything that sounds like a promise or a price.
4. Who's really using AI? Fewer businesses than you'd think
@arakharazian, November 11. About 360 likes and 117,000 views.
Ara Kharazian, lead economist at Ramp, shared the new Ramp AI Index, which is built from business spending data. In October, AI spend rose 2%, and growth for OpenAI and Anthropic fell to low single digits. Engineering teams drove 72% of spend, followed by customer service and leadership. In a clip shared by @rohanpaul_ai, he said 1% of businesses drive 80% of the revenue to OpenAI and Anthropic. Not everyone agreed on what the slower growth means. Some pointed out the index measures token spend, not subscriptions.
Our take: Read that 1% number again. Most businesses have barely started with AI. If you're a shop owner who feels behind, you're not. You're in the big middle. And look at the second place on the list: customer service. That's the right place for a trade business to start too. Answering calls, texting back missed leads and booking jobs. Not coding.
One more for the tech crowd
@unusual_whales (about 1,500 likes and 335,000 views) and @jukan05 shared a Korean Financial News report that Sam Altman told about 50 Samsung executives, in a closed-door session on October 31, that AI demand has been "double counted." According to the report, he said only OpenAI and Anthropic are driving major demand growth, warned of short-term turbulence and still expects big long-term growth. Worth keeping in mind the next time someone quotes a giant AI market number.
That's issue thirty
One thing to try today: open your website on your phone and pretend you're an assistant on a mission. Can you find your service area, your hours, what you charge or how quotes work, and how to book, all in under ten seconds? Fix whatever is missing. If calls and follow-ups are slipping while you're on a job, write to us at support@eighteye.ai. Eight Eye is the AI growth partner for small businesses. We answer your calls, text back missed leads, follow up until they book and help you get found online, while you keep the final say. See how it works, compare plans and pricing, or book a demo.
See you in the next issue.