The interview — AlphaMakers

Before the call

You choose the time. The booking link in your invitation shows open slots — including early mornings, evenings and weekends — because an AI interviewer is not working around a person's calendar. You give a phone number, and we call you on it at the slot you picked. There is nothing to install, no video, no link to click at the time; it is an ordinary phone call.

Nothing to prepare. No documents, no figures, no thinking in advance. Preparing would actually make the research worse — we are trying to hear how the work really goes, not a tidied-up version of it.

The first thirty seconds

The interviewer opens by identifying itself and asking permission to record, before it asks you anything of substance. Close to word for word, this is what you will hear:

“Hi — is this [your name]?”

“Hi [your name], this is an AI assistant with the AlphaMakers team — [the person who wrote to you] invited you. Thanks for making the time. We’re looking at building something that could make running a [your trade] easier, and before building anything, we want to understand what would genuinely help people who do this work. This is a research conversation, not a sales call. It’s recorded so we can listen properly afterwards — is that okay with you?”

If you say no to recording, it does not record, and it ends the call there rather than carrying on without your agreement. If you say yes, the first real question is simply what a normal day looks like.

It will not pretend to be a person

The interviewer is instructed never to present itself as human. Ask it what it is and it will tell you it is an AI assistant on the AlphaMakers team. Ask it something it has not been told, and it will say it does not know rather than invent an answer.

What you will be asked

Open questions about your working week, in your own words:

What a normal day looks like, start to finish.
Which parts take longer than they should, and what you do about it.
How work comes in, gets scheduled, gets done and gets paid for.
What you have tried, what you gave up on, and what you still do by hand.
What you would change if it were up to you.

There are no right answers and no quality bar. "That has never really been a problem for me" is a genuinely useful finding, and it is paid exactly the same as a long list of complaints.

What you will not be asked

Nothing is sold to you, on the call or afterwards.
No payment details, bank details or card numbers — ever, for any reason. If anyone ever asks you for these in our name, it is not us.
No passwords, and no access to any system you use.
No customer names or customer records.

Stopping

You can end the interview at any moment, without giving a reason — say you want to stop and it stops. You can decline any individual question and move on. You can ask for the recording to be deleted afterwards and we will delete it; the privacy notice explains how.

Afterwards

A completed interview is thanked with an Amazon gift card, sent by email to the address we wrote to, within two business days. The amount is stated in your invitation.

The recording and transcript go to the company that commissioned the study, along with our analysis of what was said across all the interviews in it. That is the whole purpose of the call. It is not published, not sold, and not passed to anyone trying to sell you something — the privacy notice sets out exactly who receives what and for how long it is kept.

If you missed the call

The interviewer tries a few times at your booked slot and then gives up. You will get a single email with a link to choose a new time if you would still like to talk, and nothing after that.

If you would rather not do this at all

That is a completely fine answer and no explanation is needed. Use the unsubscribe link at the bottom of any email we sent you, or write to us, and we will stop contacting you.

Exactly what happens on the call.