SSA Fall 2026: 5 Questions to Ask Every AI Vendor on the Floor

The exhibit hall at the SSA Fall Conference opens Tuesday morning, and a good chunk of the booths in it will have AI on the banner.

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The hard part is the format. A trade show gives you a few minutes per booth, and a few minutes is not always enough time to evaluate software that will answer your phones for the next three years. Strong products and thin ones can both sound good in that window, because the window is short.

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1. What is the denominator on that number?

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Every vendor at this show will quote a performance figure. Almost none will define it unprompted.

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If a vendor says their AI resolves 80% of calls, the only thing that matters is 80% of what. All inbound calls, including wrong numbers and hangups? Only the calls that reached the AI? Only the calls it was configured to handle in the first place?

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Those are wildly different populations, and the same operation can produce a figure anywhere from 40% to 95% depending on which one gets used.

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Then ask the follow up that does the real work: what do you exclude, and why? Every honest containment figure has exclusions. Calls under a few seconds, internal test calls, conversations where the tenant asked for a person before the AI said anything. The exclusions are where the method lives. A vendor who can list theirs is measuring something.

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2. What does it write back into your FMS, and when?

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An AI that has a good conversation and leaves no record behind has moved the work rather than removed it. Somebody still has to open the FMS and key it in.

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Ask exactly what gets written, whether the lease is completed in the system of record, and what happens when a write fails. Then ask which FMS platforms that has run on in production, not which ones are on the roadmap. Those are different lists, and the second one is longer at every booth on that floor.

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3. What share of conversations reach a person, and how fast?

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The answer should not be zero. A vendor claiming their AI handles everything is either describing a very narrow deployment or is not counting carefully.

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What you want is a real number and a real path. How does a tenant get to a human, how long does that take, and does that person arrive with the conversation history attached or start cold. Ask what happens at 9pm on a Sunday, which is when it actually matters.

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4. What is the all in cost per location per month?

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Per location, per month, everything included. Then ask what is usage based and what happens when volume spikes in July.

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The pricing that looks cheapest on the floor often is not, because the comparison gets run on one line item instead of on the stack it replaces. Ask what it replaces. An answering service, a call center contract, overtime, a part time role that exists because the phones do not stop. Compare against that total, not against a per call rate.

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5. Ask to call it, right now, from your own phone

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This is the only test on the floor the vendor does not control, and it takes ninety seconds.
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Ask it something a tenant would actually ask. Whether the 10x10 climate controlled is still open. What the gate code is. Whether the rate is going up. Then ask a follow up. Interrupt it. Ask something slightly off topic and listen to how it recovers.
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That tells you more than any deck. If a vendor cannot put a live line in your hand at a trade show, it is worth noticing that they cannot.
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What to do with the answers
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Nobody will ace all five, and that is not the standard.
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What separates a vendor worth a second conversation is the shape of the answer. Specific beats confident. A vendor who says their containment definition excludes calls under eight seconds and explains why is more useful than one who says their AI resolves the vast majority of calls, even though the second one sounds better standing in an aisle.
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The pattern to watch for is a vendor who goes vague exactly where the detail matters. Precise on the claim, fuzzy on the method behind it. That gap is the whole thing.
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Write the answers down at the booth. By Friday you will not remember which vendor said what, and the ones who gave real answers deserve to be distinguishable from the ones who did not.
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Ask swivl at booth 1230
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Don't be afraid to ask us either. We'll have live phone lines at the booth and anyone is welcome to call one. Also, swivl CEO Mason Levy is on the AI panel Friday at 9am, on separating real opportunity from vendor hype.
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We're looking forward to seeing you there!

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