Vendasta’s AI workforce, consisting of several role-based agents, has been selected by Italian digital marketing powerhouse Italiaonline to power its 100,000+ SMB customers. The centerpiece of this integration is an AI agent known as MARiO, which fields inbound calls and turns them into new business.
Before going into MARiO and all its dynamics, what is Vendasta’s AI Workforce? As we’ve examined during its rollout over the past year, it offers AI agents to handle SMB functions ranging from receptionists to reputation management specialists. This is where agentic AI meets SMBs.
The idea is to help SMBs do more with less. They’re famously time-starved and tech-challenged. So rather than give them more software to deal with, the AI workforce works autonomously, in the spirit of agentic AI. And framing agents in traditional job roles makes their value proposition easy to swallow.
Vendasta’s first role-based agent in this suite was a receptionist that prevents the common SMB affliction of unanswered calls. It then launched a reputation management agent to manage SMB reviews. Then came a CRM agent that records and processes insights from customer and prospect interactions.
Getting Work Done
Back to MARiO, it starts where Vendasta’s agentic suite did: reception. It (or “he”) answers calls, captures leads, and books appointments. The use cases that Italionone emphasises are telling, such as home services pros that can deploy MARiO to field inbound leads while they’re busy getting work done.
As for MARiO’s capabilities, highlights include:
- 24/7 lead capture: Answers inbound calls and web inquiries instantly via phone, WhatsApp, and web chat, ensuring every prospect is engaged in real time, around the clock.
- Front office automation: Books tables and appointments, prequalifies leads, and organizes follow-up directly into the CRM, removing the administrative burden from the business owner entirely.
- Total data ownership: Every interaction is automatically logged into a searchable customer database the business owns permanently, ensuring continuity even as staff change and the business grows.
Meanwhile, MARiO has 25 businesses actively onboarded through pre-orders. More functionality will be rolled out in the coming months, says Vendasta. Additionally, this integration represents the first of many, as Italiaonline and Vendasta will build from there – possibly involving more agentic employees.
“The AI workforce isn’t a tool for enterprises anymore,” Vendasta cofounder & CEO Brendan King told Localogy Insider. “It’s infrastructure for the corner store. Italiaonline just proved that, for 100,000 businesses. That’s not a product launch. That’s a new standard.”
Trust in the Agent
Vendasta further empowers MARiO to do his thing by training him on other SMB first-party data. This includes everything from scheduling calendars to products/services to the ways that an SMB answers the phone. The idea is to mimic the voice of the business, which engenders SMB trust in the agent.
Vendasta is in a unique position to accomplish this model training because, in many cases, it runs an SMBs marketing functions such as its Conversations AI and CRM infrastructure,. As we discussed at L26, federated data to power AI propels the longstanding move towards all-in-one SMB platforms.
To underscore MARiO’s value – and that of its broader agentic play – Vendasta also says that 30 percent of SMB customers or prospects switch providers when they don’t receive an immediate response to their queries. So the window to make that first impression is fleeting – a dilemma for deskless SMBs.
Vendasta also reports that 74.5 percent of SMBs report that online reputation and customer responsiveness are critically important to their buasiness. But despite that, most SMBs struggle to manage customer engagement. AI employees like MARiO could be one answer to that problem.
“52% of large enterprises have adopted AI. 17.4% of small businesses have,” said King. “That gap isn’t a technology problem, it’s a distribution problem. Italiaonline solved the distribution. We built the technology. Together, we’re closing that gap for 100,000 businesses.”
