EASTHAMPTON — On a recent weekday morning, Sean Hogan had a phone conversation with an AI agent, a development sweeping across the world that mimics the voice of a customer service worker.
In this scenario, Hogan, who runs an IT business, plays the role of a customer whose computer isn’t working. When Alex, the agent, answers the phone, Hogan says, “My computer is not working.”
Alex responds saying, “Oh no, that’s frustrating. I’m going to help you get this sorted out,” then asks for contact information, what the problem is, how Hogan tried to fix it and clarifies when it started. At the end, Alex submits a support ticket that a member of Hogan’s technical team will review and use to follow-up shortly.
Rather than speaking to a human, Hogan is conversing with a computer that sounds human. While this new wave of AI innovation is being adopted by national companies, two Easthampton-based businesses are also getting in on the action.
Hogan is the president of Hogan Technology, which provides IT services to companies across New England, including mainly medical and automotive companies. He has partnered with Sentillian, a company competing with top AI-development firms across the world, developing AI agents, or technology that answers and handles customer service calls with human-like voices, just like Alex.
Together, the companies will deliver these agents that can handle the basic tasks of a receptionist to Hogan Technology and its clients. The theory is, this will streamline the customer service process of call centers, making it easier for companies across industries to deal with high-call volumes and serve customers.
For Hogan, the move to this technology is a no-brainer, helping him save time and money, and focus on getting work done. “It’s enhancing some of our folks so they can work in different departments,” he said. “You’re still going to get a live person at some point.”
If the call with Alex were real, all of the information would be summarized and kept as part of an audit ledger, including call-back information, the tone of the caller and a quality report of the conversation. Hogan employees would then review the audit and reach back out to the callers.
Hogan said the technology is just about ready to be launched for his company, expecting to go live within the coming weeks.
“That call opens a ticket automatically. As you can tell, he’s (Alex) is trying to fix it (the problem), because it’s artificial intelligence. They’re learning,” Hogan said. “They’re going to try to walk you through the process of actually fixing it, and it’ll create a ticket automatically with our ticketing system at Hogan.”
Sentillian CEO Jacob Del Hagen, a former Easthampton High School student, said his company is competing with AI-companies in San Francisco. Del Hagen is the CEO of digital marketing agency, Big Voodoo Interactive, the umbrella company of Sentillian and several others.
Hogan and Del Hagen met in the late 1990s, when Del Hagen started his first company. He was one of the first incubator companies to move into Armory Square in Springfield, overlapping with Hogan who was doing work for a client there. They have been friends since.
Del Hagen has piloted AI-agents with nearly 100 law firms, launching the technology about 18 months ago. He says the partnership with Hogan is exciting and special because it allows them to expand AI-agents beyond legal services into automotive, health care and other industries that rely heavily on help desks and call centers.
Del Hagen said to imagine a law firm client with 20 lawyers. Each of those lawyers may get dozens of calls a day and the time it takes to answer adds-up. AI agents can help the lawyer know how to respond by summarizing the accident, injuries and tone of the customer.
For pharmaceutical companies, Hogan said this technology could be used to set up appointments or build a prescription refill system. He is and will continue to collaborate with his clients in various industries learning how AI-agents could best suit them.
“There’s lots of mind share that goes on but we’re definitely, with Jake’s (Del Hagen) help, we’re ahead of the curve right now with this product and a lot of my partners out there want to see it,” Hogan said.
Del Hagen said he has worked with IBM to progress this technology and there are years of work put into AI agents.
“I’m going back 10 years … AI has been around a long time it’s just becoming popular now,” Del Hagen said. “The reason we started to work with IBM, and them with us, is because we were in law so we built very specialized models.”
Del Hagen said there is no simple way to explain how the technology works, but a key word to understand is neuro-symbolic AI. Of the many subfields of AI, neuro-symbolic AI specifically has “capabilities of human-like symbolic knowledge,” according to IBM.
The agents can currently represent about 112 different voices. If a client begins speaking in a different language, Del Hagen said agents can switch between select languages like English, Spanish or French. The technology also has the ability to assist clients 24/7, answering calls after-hours or on holidays, a crucial factor for Hogan to never miss a call.
Part of the inspiration for developing this technology is to be more inclusive to non-English speakers and accommodate all accents. Accents can range from different regions of the South like in South Carolina, to different countries around the world. Del Hagen said many times, call centers in the U.S. do not have the capabilities to assist a wide array of non-English speakers.
Del Hagen showed data from a sample law firm that uses agents. In one month, the firm’s agents responded to 1,686 calls. According to that data, only about 386 of those calls were legitimate as actual customers, which he said is mainly due to scams and telemarketers.
Del Hagen said the data shows the agents outperform humans 23% of the time, meaning they transfer a customer to the correct department faster, don’t put the customer on hold and does not swear at the customer.
The two said since the COVID-19 pandemic, just about every business has seen an increase in traffic through their call centers, due to less in-person contact and spam calls. The spike in these agents has gone up drastically since, in an attempt to help deal with the increased traffic.
AI fear
The two business owners don’t feel the agents are replacing jobs. Rather it is enhancing employees and saving them time to do more urgent work.
“The question isn’t, are these agents replacing these jobs to answer phones? The question is, what should we as people be doing?” Del Hagen said.
“We’re in IT, so you have to embrace AI,” said Hogan. “It’s already a tool that we’re using everyday and it’s embedded in a lot of our tools. You have to learn how to best use it, you have to learn how to govern your AI usage, but you also have to make sure that you’re working with safe AI.”
Del Hagen said he understands there is a general fear surrounding AI growth. But he firmly believes that this technology is transformative and safe when used correctly.
The Pew Research Center surveyed 5,023 adults in the United States from June 9 to 15 earlier this year, evaluating attitudes toward AI. The survey found that 50% of participants say they’re more concerned than excited about the increased use of AI in daily life — up from 37% in 2021 — 10% are more excited than concerned and 38% say they’re equally excited and concerned.
Del Hagen said there is going to be a spike of laws implemented across the country, aiming to create boundaries for AI use.
On Sept. 29, 2025, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the Transparency in Frontier Artificial Intelligence Act (TFAIA), setting different regulations and guidelines for AI companies in the state.
Del Hagen doesn’t feel the government has to have deep AI regulation because — at least for his company — it is already being regulated by his team more efficiently than the government could. “Our Code of Ethics is that we’re going to be as transparent and compliant as humanly possible to protect the person’s data as much as possible,” he said.
In the case of AI agents, Del Hagen said there will be regulations that make the agent reveal it is AI to the caller, which he feels is appropriate and he said there to be some level of oversight from the government. Additionally, some law firms are implementing a tool that allows a caller, when talking to an agent and wanting to speak to a human, to switch over.
Del Hagen also feels there is a generational gap, with older adults being less receptive to the use of AI. He hopes to see more education helping people understand how this technology is being used. “The fact is there’s a generational gap and the generational gap is basically — Gen X, 45-ish and down — is super receptive to them, to agents because they’re used to working with them.”
Del Hagen said there was a recent issue with the agents. After an update, many AI agents started saying they were human.
“It was pretty serious where the AI started saying it was a person, across all of our accounts. So the AI, because it’s pretty advanced … we had an update and all of a sudden it broke its own rules and started to say it’s a person,” he said.
Although, Del Hagen said it was fixed with additional programming by implementing “guardrails.”
He said while there is a lot to explore with AI technology, the main takeaway is it will help many people across the world. And having this happen right in western Massachusetts is special.
“Two local companies have partnered together to have a larger footprint and it’s kind of a testament to the area that these two companies are rolling out together,” said Hogan. “Jake (Del Hagen) developed it, I’m helping go to market. I’m helping spread the word about the product and the services and it’s exciting … I’ve been doing this for a long time and this is probably the most exciting thing we’ve seen (in a long time).”
