Evaluating AI
What to actually ask before you put AI on your phone number.
Not a scoreboard with us at the top. The questions that separate a demo from a system you can live with.
Every vendor in this category demos well, because a scripted conversation is the easiest thing in the world to make look good. These are the questions that get past that.
The problem
The questions that reveal the difference.
Ask these of anyone you are evaluating, including us.
Can it send without my permission?
If the answer is that it starts sending as soon as it is connected, you have taken on the risk of every message it decides to write.
What stops it saying the wrong thing?
If the answer is 'we tell it not to in the prompt', that is a suggestion. Ask what happens structurally when the model is wrong.
Does it know where the deal is?
A system that only sees the last message cannot know that the customer already applied, already visited, or is waiting on a lender.
How Mako handles it
How Mako answers its own questions.
Stated plainly so you can hold us to them.
It cannot send until you allow it
Every account starts in draft mode. Delivery is a separate, deliberate permission you turn on and can turn off.
Safety is not a prompt instruction
Compliance screening runs before anything is returned, and it fails closed — if the check cannot run, the message does not go.
It runs a deal state machine
Stages have requirements. A conversation cannot talk its way into a step that has not actually happened.
It does not replace your CRM
Your system stays the record. There is no migration, and disconnecting is removing a call rather than unpicking a platform.
One engine
This is a use case, not a separate product.
Everything on this page is the same Mako Engine, pointed at this job. That matters, because it means the thing answering here knows the state of the deal rather than running a script for one narrow task.
Being straight with you
Compare us properly.
Tell us what you actually need handled and we will tell you honestly whether this fits.