How eCopier Solutions uses AI to spot lease traps
David Salamon is President of eCopier Solutions, which provides managed print, IT and document management services to businesses nationwide. Salamon discusses using AI to flag lease clauses, keeping client-facing writing human, and why process fixes should come before new tools.
AI is useful for initial contract reviews, where it can flag escalation clauses and renewal traps in minutes, but client-facing writing stays human. Salamon’s broader advice is to clean up the offer and process before investing in AI or marketing.
What’s the quick origin story of your business, and what makes what you do genuinely different from the other options your customers are looking at?
Back in 2011 I was watching clients get beaten up by leases they didn’t understand. Things like hidden fees and service charges buried on page four. The first thing every client complained about was the contract. So I built the opposite, providing our customers with a flat rate and unlimited toner included, no surprises.
Where does most of your new business come from today, and where do you wish it came from?
Referrals, hands down. Business owners telling other business owners we’re the ones who don’t play games. I wish more of it came from inbound, honestly. We’ve never been great at getting found online. Most people hear about us from someone they trust, which is a good problem to have.
What’s one thing you’ve actually handed over to AI in the last year, and one thing you tried it on and went back to doing the human way?
The initial contract review. AI scans a lease in minutes and flags every escalation clause and renewal trap. What I tried and dropped was client-facing writing. Client stuff gets a human hand on it, no exceptions.
Have you noticed a change in how customers find you or what they already know before they reach out? Is anyone arriving through AI assistants like ChatGPT yet?
They know more before they call in these days They’ve already compared leases and read reviews. I haven’t seen anyone say they found us through ChatGPT yet. But I’d bet it’s coming!
If you were advising someone in your industry on all of this for the next 12 months, what would you tell them to actually do, and what would you tell them to ignore?
Fix your offer before you spend a dime on marketing. If your product needs spin to sell, the product is the problem. Ignore the "AI hype" and the expensive tools until your process is clean. AI makes a broken process faster, that’s not winning in my book.
Thank you to David Salamon and the team at eCopier Solutions for sharing what actually worked with Leaders Perception readers.
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