July 8, 2024 • 28 mins
The contact center industry is evolving, and with that evolution, contact centers of all types are starting to learn valuable lessons.
In this episode, we'll dive into how the BPO landscape is changing, what these changes mean for customers, and the latest AI tools you should be asking for in your outsourcing RFPs.
Don’t let the title fool you, this episode is essential for anyone running a contact center.
Tom Laird’s 100% USA-based, AI-powered contact center. As the only outsourcing partner on the NICE CXone Customer Executive Council, Expivia is redefining what it means to be a CX tech partner. Learn more at expiviausa.com.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is advice from a call center geek a weekly
podcast with a focus on allthings call center.
We'll cover it all, from callcenter operations, hiring,
culture, technology andeducation.
We're here to give youactionable items to improve the
quality of yours and yourcustomer's experience.
This is an evolving industrywith creative minds and
ambitious people like this guy.
(00:21):
Not only is his passion callcenter operations, but he's our
host.
He's the CEO of XpeviaInteraction Marketing Group and
the call center geek himself,tom Laird.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Welcome back everybody to another episode of
Advice from a Call Center Geekthe call center, contact center
podcast.
We try to give you someactionable items.
Take back in your contactcenter, improve the overall
quality, improve the agentexperience, hopefully improve
your customer experience as well.
My name is Tom Laird.
(00:52):
I'm the CEO of XpeveInteraction Marketing, also of
Auto QA.
I hope everybody's having agood summer.
I just kind of took my firstfamily vacation, which is pretty
bad since my daughter's 11 andmy son's 9.
Went to the Keys for a littlebit to see my sister.
They have a little house there,which is awesome, but I did a
lot of thinking when I was there.
When you're just kind of layingaround, I think that this is
(01:13):
something we have to start toget across as an industry,
meaning as a BPO, as anoutsourcer.
We need to start talkingthrough some of the changes that
are evolving and some of thethings that I think you need to
start looking for in a contactcenter outsourcer of today
compared to even what you woulddo a year or two or three or
(01:34):
four years ago.
Things have really evolved.
Things have really changed.
A lot of organizations from thecontact center side are
struggling to keep up with that,struggling to figure out what
they need to provide tocustomers.
I think customers are confusedon what they should be asking
now too, right?
So, you know, wanted to take acouple minutes and again we're
(01:58):
here.
I'm live on Facebook, live onLinkedIn, live on Twitter.
If you have any questions, youknow, please, please, let me
know.
We can kind of get a discussiongoing as well.
But I wanted to kind of talkthrough some of these things
that maybe a lot of theoutsourcers are not talking
about, because there's a littlebit of preparation into kind of
(02:21):
what the next steps are in thiskind of new world of AI and what
we should be kind of lookingfor.
So I wanted to kind of give acase study, I guess, of Xpevia,
of our contact center and howwe're looking to evolve certain
aspects of what we offercustomers.
What we see is some of theneeds of customers that they're
not sure about how to take thenext steps.
(02:42):
So we want to kind of be thatgroup or one of the
organizations that can helporganizations or different
companies that are looking tooutsource take that next step
down a technology path, down anAI path where maybe they don't
have the resources or not reallysure what to do next.
There's a lot of really cooloutsourcers out there right now
(03:05):
that are really embracing thistechnology and, you know, I
don't think we talk about itenough, and I think the smaller
contact centers like my contactcenter right, we are the ones
that are that can move reallyquickly on this stuff.
So, you know, I think that'sprobably why you don't hear as
much from the big guys, right,because's a huge kind of pool
(03:28):
and kind of ebb and flow thatthey need to do to move the
Titanic, so to speak, right Acouple inches where I think some
of these smaller quote unquote,under 1,000, under 2,000 seat
BPOs we can sprint and kind ofget things going really quickly.
But I think I want to startthere.
(03:49):
That's the biggest thing is.
Number one is we are planningin the next three years for
about a 20 to 30% reduction inoverall outsourcing and contact
center headcount, not just dueto kind of that first touch
chatbot that's going to handleeverything.
I think that there's a piece ofthat touch chat bot that's
going to, you know, handleeverything.
I think that there's a piece ofthat.
But I think there are addedefficiencies that we're starting
(04:10):
to see within AI tools that youknow they're talked about, but
now we're actually starting tosee them realized and we're
starting to even be able to kindof create some of the tools you
know internally at a smallerdollar amount that I think we
(04:32):
can really kind of make as ahuge benefit to customers.
So you know, it's one thingwhen you hear a sales guy, a
technology sales guy say, hey,your NPS is going to go up 20%
and your average handle time isgoing to be dropped by 33%, like
all that stuff at the beginningwas all BS.
But now we're starting toreally see, as we dig into tools
(04:53):
, start to utilize them indifferent ways, that there are
some real kind of cost savingsthat we can find for customers,
and I think even a lot of thingsare going to change.
So the number one thing that Ithink that we have seen is you
know, we are no longer callourselves really an outsourcer
(05:14):
or BPO, right, we are.
We're a technology company,right, a CX technology partner
that specializes in outsourcing,or before it was, you know,
we're a contact centeroutsourcer that was really good
at technology, right.
So we've totally flipped kindof that whole thing on its head
and and just talk about nowbeing about that ai or cx
(05:35):
technology part.
And again, guys, remember, thisstuff is a year old at max,
right.
So when you hear everybody talkabout ai powered, this and
we're fully AI and I'm notsaying that that's total BS, but
remember we're all kind ofworking through this and I think
(05:55):
some of us are just a littlebit of ahead of the game but
when you hear about fully AIpowered or just AI, just be
careful with that.
I think we do say AI powered.
I think I use that AI powerbecause there's a lot of tools
now that we didn't have beforethat we're now utilizing because
of AI.
And those are the things that Iwant to kind of talk about here
(06:18):
today too, of how they canbenefit you.
And then, when you're doing anRFP for an outsourcer, what are
some of the things that youshould be asking for now that I
think can benefit you?
And then, when you're doing anRFP for an outsourcer, what are
some of the things that youshould be asking for now that I
think can give you good, greatcost savings and also raise your
NPS or CSAT or whatever thosemetrics are and we'll talk about
that here in a second as well.
Actually, let's start there.
(06:41):
One of the main things that Ihave found with AI is that you
can't just kind of throw itagainst the wall and hope.
You have to use itstrategically to answer specific
questions or to solve specificproblems that you have.
Now, I'm not saying it can't doall of these, but if you really
pinpoint and say, hey, you know, we want to raise our customer
(07:03):
experience right, our CSAT, ourNPS, we want to raise those
scores right, then there's toolsfor that.
Hey, we need to lower ourhandle time right, there's tools
for that.
Hey, we want to make the actualagent experience better.
It's so confusing now, how dowe utilize AI to make that agent
experience better, which thenwe believe, will translate to
(07:24):
both of those things right,higher CSAT, higher NPS, and
also looking at a kind of alower handling time or lower
amount of time that a customerhas to be on the call.
We'd like to lower costs, we'dlike to shift away from the
contact center into more of atechnology model right, and
again, there's times and placesfor that, and I think that all
(07:47):
that stuff is good.
But that's how we need to start.
The process is what problems dowe want to solve, and maybe
it's all of them right.
Maybe we want lower costs andwe want higher CSAT scores and
we want the agents that do takecalls to have the best
experience ever, which isamazing.
But don't think that one toolis going to do that, because
(08:09):
number one it's not, and we needto be roadmapping this out to a
specific kind of endpoint thatyou have and then move on to
something else and then kind ofcreate this kind of AI-powered
customer experience.
The other thing that I'm seeingis a lot of the CCaaS guys are
(08:31):
coming out with tools stillpretty expensive.
I think that we're starting tolook at building right and I
think you're starting to seethat even in the smaller BPOs
looking to build out specifictools right at a lower cost
point, using LLMs or usingwhatever internal AI maybe that
(08:55):
we can kind of get our hands onor start to play around with,
but for the most part, utilizingthe LLMs and those large
language models from whether itbe ChatGPT, whether it be Sonnet
, whether it be Lama, any ofthose and trying to again solve
problems with that.
And I think, again, that'swhere the whole becoming a
(09:16):
technology partner first thatspecializes in outsourcing
really, really makes adifference.
You know, I think you guys knowI mean, if anybody's been
following me at all you guysknow how we've fully developed,
you know, auto QA, right.
So we are fully automating allscoring of quality forms for our
customers internally.
(09:38):
So for most of our customers,again, we're not a huge BPO,
right?
So our average customer isprobably 20 to 30 to 40 seats,
right.
We have some that are five to10 seats, some that are in that
80 to 100, right, but those arefew and far between.
Most of them are in that kindof mid area and because of that,
the amount of volume that we'retaking, we can score 100% of
(10:01):
our calls for our customers.
So you know, that's a hugechange and a huge shift to not
have to charge, have a hugevalue add, actually save us
money, right, but provide abigger value for customers than
if we were.
You know, using a QMA platformfrom a CCaaS provider, that
we're doing.
You know, three calls per agentper week per our SOW, right.
(10:25):
So again, that's anunbelievable use case that we're
starting to build out and thenstarting to build things on top
of that, right, so you get afull coaching model, right, to
have agents be able to redocalls that maybe they made
mistakes on, they made an errorwith.
Calls that maybe they mademistakes on, they made an error
(10:45):
with, but literally calling thesame customer that they just
talked to, but us sending outthat transcript to AI using an
AI voice and having basically anAI avatar of the customer be
able to react to a differentoutcome that the agent is now
going to give them after we'vekind of coached.
I think that those are some ofthe really cool experiences that
(11:06):
you can build out on your own,or that an outsourcer is
building out on our own toprovide value to customers and
either keep the same cost lowercost but add a higher level of
value.
Those are the tools that Ithink are winning today.
Right, you know it's still.
(11:27):
If you go out on your own andyou have, you know whether it's
CX1, 5.9, genesis, any of theyou know main players if you go
out to an Omelia, an Amelia, anyof those AI, poly, ai providers
, it's crazy expensive.
Still, right, your ROI won't bethere for a while and I think a
(11:51):
lot of that is set up in thesetup.
Set up in the setup.
Right, the setups are so crazyexpensive.
The usage model is there, whichis cool, right, but it is still
really expensive and high.
You know they're rounding upthe crazy numbers.
So I think that's where anoutsourcer can kind of come into
(12:11):
play, right, to say, hey,listen, we already have this
stuff built out.
We have to do a small build outfor you, right?
So instead of maybe paying 50grand, it's going to be five
grand, right, because we kind ofhave everything done.
We kind of understand theprocess, building out your model
from a self-service standpointthat can bring you ROI much
(12:32):
quicker.
Because, especially if we'restarting to build things on our
own but still maybe utilizingsome of those tools in
conjunction with each other,it's still going to be less than
I believe what you would startto pay if you had to start from
scratch and go out on your own.
And if there's a BPO that'scharging you crazy, crazy setup
fees, I think that you need torun away from that.
I was never a believer in setupfees.
(12:55):
I know a lot of BPOs do that tocover their training costs,
right, and cover that upfrontcost that they have, but they're
still billing for training.
So again, for me it was let'scharge at cost for setup, maybe
a 10% overage.
But let's get this thing up asquickly as we can and let's
(13:16):
start adding value withcustomers and with the
technology.
So let's talk about what youshould be asking then from an
RFP standpoint, right.
So, if you're building out anRFP, and what should BPOs, what
should contact centers havetoday?
Right, that should be almostlike skills-based routing was
(13:40):
right.
Or omni-channel right.
There's still contact centersthat are selling omni-channel,
like, if you don't haveomni-channel now, like, what are
you doing?
Right?
So I think that the core and Ialways like to start from the
agent experience out, and Ithink, again, that's where a lot
of mistakes get made we startat the customer level and then
work our way in right.
(14:01):
I would start with looking atthings like the customer or your
BPO should have agent assist,especially if you have a complex
type of program.
Maybe you're a retailer with aton of different SKUs right.
You have so many differentproducts that an agent it's just
really hard for them andnormally they'd have to look up
things up in a KMS or, you know,go to a SharePoint, right?
(14:25):
If that's your core businessand you have a very complex set
of things that agents have tolearn, then agent assist is like
a godsend, right, and that'ssomething that you should be
looking for in your RFPs or havea kind of a mandatory section,
right.
I think agent assist is turningthat way where it's no longer
(14:47):
like the cool thing to have butit's turning into something for
a lot of different customers ofthe must-have.
I think that you know that'ssomething that has been again.
I hate the phrase low-hangingfruit I use it so much, I need
another phrase for that butwe've seen agent assist do a lot
right.
So I think that's one of thethings that you should think
(15:09):
about.
If you have an RFP, if you'relooking for an outsourcer, do
they have this technology?
How do they apply it for theuse cases that we would have,
you know?
The second really easy thing isauto summarization, right, which
you know being able to take thecall, summarize it in a way
that makes sense for you, youknow, put those notes in there
(15:31):
into the auto summarizationright To kind of tell it what
you want of how the outcome ofcalls happen.
Then be able to put that intoyour CRM Again.
What is the use case for thatright?
That use case could be foranything, right.
Number one if you have issueswith quality of memoing and
notes in your CRM from youragents.
This is a good you know tool tohave if that's really important
(15:53):
to you guys.
But I think more importantly,if you have long after call
works right.
If you have long wrap times, ifthe agent has to do two to
three to four minutes of workwhen that call is over,
obviously we could do some RPAif there's a lot of things they
need to do.
But if they're just memoing,making sure that the account is
(16:16):
documented properly, then autosummarization is the no brainer
of no brainers.
Documented properly, then autosummarization is the no brainer
of no brainers.
I think a lot of the CCAS guys.
I mean they're charging likeseven, eight, nine cents per
interaction, which I think isreally high for that, just for
the amount of tokens that you'reusing with the LLMs it should
be cheaper.
I also think that if you don'tknow what tool, if you have the
(16:40):
technology in your contactcenter to build something out,
auto summarization is crazy easyto do.
I mean you can kind of almostfigure out the prompt right away
for it, depending on what youwant right, and to be able to
put it to a quick integrationinto your CRM is a pretty light
lift.
So you know, that's somethingthat, again, for us, like we
don't even really charge forthat because it's really such a
(17:04):
small offering and small costfor us that you know we are
charging literally a penny of apenny of a penny of a penny of a
penny for that, where some ofthese guys are really gouging
that price because they thinkit's such cool technology and
it's really probably the mostbasic AI technology that there
(17:25):
is for the contact center.
So I would ask and make surethat you're getting a good price
on that.
I think you know, looking atsome of the advanced routing,
right, looking at you know CX1,you guys know I'm a CX1 guy they
have a tool that has beenreally really now powered now by
(17:47):
AI, which is WFI, which isworkforce intelligence.
If you're using Five Knot,genesis, dialpad, all these
companies have a tool like thiswhere basically you're looking
and has the ability to, insteadof a human being, moving people
in and out of skills, but havingnow AI powered, kind of a brain
(18:08):
, move agents in and out ofskills based on business rules
of handle time or service level.
That's a really cool use casethat you can utilize.
Now, again, I tell every time Igo to talk at an interaction
which is a CX1 event, I say,guys, make sure that you're
utilizing this.
It doesn't cost anything andit's an AI powered tool.
That I think is really cool.
(18:31):
The other thing that I thinkpeople don't talk about are
these legacy tools right?
Ask about the BPO's workforcemanagement.
Is there WFM?
How good is their reportingaspect?
How good is their reportingaspect?
How good is their forecasting?
What type of AI technologiesdoes that have embedded in it?
That's one of the huge thingsthat nobody talks about that
(18:51):
I've seen.
One of the biggest changes withis WFM and how smart that that
tool is now getting from aforecasting standpoint, from an
intraday forecast, and beingable to make really these split
decisions that can then tie intoWFI or to move agents in and
out.
So you're almost having like arobot-controlled contact center
(19:16):
and that's kind of what we'vegotten to right that kind of our
WFI almost talking to ourworkforce management and being
able to move agents kind of inand out of skills fluently.
You know, based on the forecastthat's coming, based on what's
happening in the IVR, if we'regetting a little bit of a rush
or we're getting crushed duringa certain time of day that we
(19:37):
didn't expect.
Right, to make those splitsecond decisions.
That, again, I think, would beharder for you if you don't know
what you're doing on a realcore CCaaS platform.
And again, another kind ofvalue add of an outsourcer and
something to look at when you'redoing your RFP we can then talk
about.
(19:57):
You know those, the chatbots?
Because I think that talk aboutyou know those, the chatbots,
because I think that you know Iwould be remiss to not talk
about them, right, they're,they're an important aspect of
what is coming.
It depends on how deep you wantto go down the rabbit hole with
that.
You know the number one thingthat I would say if you, if
you're doing an RFP for acontact center outsourcer, I
(20:21):
would not say, hey, do you haveself-service AI, chatbots,
virtual assistants, whatever youwant to call them?
Do you have that?
Because that's what I hear.
Do you guys have thattechnology?
Well, yeah, everybody kind ofhas the technology, but are you
ready to utilize it to itsfullest extent?
But are you ready to utilize itto its fullest extent?
(20:43):
Right, meaning right?
What integrations?
Do you understand that you'regoing to have to have as many
things integrated as possible tomake it work, whether that be
your CMS, whether that be yourKMS, whether that be any type of
data sets that you have.
You know you're obviously yourCCaaS platform.
Having all of these things kindof tied together is the number
one aspect.
The number two thing is how isyour KMS?
I would ask in the RFP can youhelp me build out the KMS?
(21:11):
What resources do you haveavailable to help organizations
that don't have a KMS, or maybehave one that's old, that has
bad data?
Or how do you keep your KMS?
How will you help us keep ourKMS up to date and how will you
integrate it into our IVAs orinto our chatbots?
Those are the things that people, again, we're not understanding
.
We're not being an outsourcer,being a CCaaS provider.
(21:33):
We're not talking about thoseenough of the kind of the steps
and again, guys, I've donemultiple podcasts on that Go
check it out on what you need todo to really become fully AI
powered what are the steps thatyou need to do, maybe this year,
to kind of get to that level sothat next year you can start to
buy technology?
I think that that's somethingthat's pretty important and
(21:58):
something that I think you needto kind of really start to think
through before you just have anoutsourcer say, hey, we want
you to do full self-service, wewant you to do all this stuff,
and the outsourcer says, okay,that's fine, and then they don't
really realize it eitherbecause they're just saying yes
to everything.
You have to be really carefulwith who you're talking to, what
(22:23):
questions they're going to askyou, making sure that you
understand everything, that youneed to kind of meet that
standard that they can give you.
I can give you that, but weneed to work through and talk
through what you need to do toget to that spot.
I think that's the importantthing.
The other thing that I like toask and I would ask in an RFP is
what other tools have youlooked?
Rfp is is have you kind of whatother tools have you?
Have you looked at your thelegacy tools and have you kind
(22:46):
of advanced them?
Like, do you have advancedanalytics that have some type of
AI power in them, meaning notjust looking at trending
keywords and that, but?
But they're integrated intoyour supervisor, right?
So it can tell.
Talk through real-timesentiment, right?
So if sentiment starts to godown on an agent boom,
supervisor gets notifiedSupervisor can get on that line,
(23:09):
like those are some of thethings that every BPO should
start to be having now.
Right, those aren't like thecool check this out.
No, they're kind of the 20242024 must haves in the contact
center and I think you knowthat's.
That's really important.
The other thing I would start totalk to in my, my RFP is is how
(23:33):
good are they with integrations?
Again, we talked about the KMS,but the integration piece, I
think goes beyond just the AI.
Right, obviously you need itfor AI, but can you do it for
cool, just regular things?
I still think one of thecoolest things we do has nothing
to do with AI.
But when you can route off ofdata, like I don't know why, for
(23:55):
me that's always just so cool,right?
So when a call comes in to golook at different fields in
Salesforce and, depending onwhat that field says, send it to
maybe a self-service, send itto a specific agent, send it to
a group of agents, to have thiskind of really cool routing
aspect when you're integratingdata sources with telephony, I
(24:19):
still think is crazy, crazy cool.
Sources with telephony, I stillthink is crazy, crazy cool.
And because we always were goodat that and we always probably
because I liked it and I wouldalways recommend it.
You know, we always got to havea little bit of a step up, of
getting customers to be able tokind of move down that AI road,
because integrations are kind ofsecondary to us.
(24:39):
I know a lot of BPOs as well,but they're just so easy to do
and again, once you get thatdone, there's so much stuff that
you can do as well.
Let's see, just trying to thinkif I missed anything here,
checking out some I think that'sthe other thing is this is this
(25:03):
is good.
I'm glad I went through mynotes here.
I think every single outsourcershould have quarterly
technology reviews.
So that's kind of what we donow.
Granted, we're talking weekly,but to really have a have an
hour, have an hour and a halflong meeting where we kind of
develop their AI roadmap.
You know we can demo any kindof technology that's maybe we're
(25:24):
utilizing for other customersthat's just coming out, show new
use cases.
Technology is moving so quicklythat you can't wait really year
to year to do this and it needsto be a quarterly at least.
Hey, this stuff's coming out.
Hey, check this out.
I think that this would be agood use case for you.
So make sure in your RFP thatyou're talking through that.
(25:45):
How often are they going tohelp you kind of roadmap and get
to where you need to be from atechnology standpoint so that,
depending on what you want to do, you can always kind of stay
ahead of the game.
I think that's really importantas well.
I think as well, guys, if you'renot using you know, even the
(26:11):
desktop version within yourorganization, you know, even if
it's one-off stuff like start toutilize, that there's so much
that you can do internally thatyou don't even need an
outsourcer for anymore.
You know, to be perfectlyhonest, with some of the
technology and some of theinformation, right, your KMS,
you know, using a personal GPT.
(26:32):
That could be something reallycool, especially for smaller
contact centers, that you can do.
You know.
I still think that our auto QAplatform is just it's so crazy
inexpensive that, no matter whatsize you are from a five-seater
if you're a five-seat, ten-seatcontact center you can pay $700
to us and have 500 QA formsscored a month, which is
(26:55):
probably almost could be closeto 100% of all your probably not
100%, but it's a hugepercentage of calls that you're
getting for much less cost thanit would take one person to
score.
So again, we've seen those hugesavings in there.
I know transcripts the cost ofthat is just plummeting right
(27:18):
now.
I'm excited for ChatGPT 5.
I think that we'll start to seesome real audio.
You know I get a lot ofquestions on sentiment and we're
still utilizing prompting andtranscripts for sentiment just
like kind of analytics.
But until we get real audiowhere we can start to talk about
sarcasm, we can start to reallynotice changes and raises and
(27:40):
lowering voices.
I think that's the big nextstep.
So yeah, guys, that's kind ofwhat I wanted to kind of talk
through today.
If there's any questions oranything, please DM me.
I would love to talk with you.
If anybody's looking tooutsource, even if you want to
go nearshore offshore, xpebe isfully onshore.
(28:01):
We don't have an offshorepresence but I have a lot of
connections, you know, nearshore, offshore, if that's where
you want to go.
If you just want to kind oftalk about your AI plan, I'd
love to kind of talk thatthrough.
If you're looking to outsourceanything from your contact
center here in the States, youknow you'd be pretty surprised
(28:22):
and happy with a lot of theanswers that you got, so
appreciate it and I will talk toeverybody next week.
This is advice from a call center geek a weekly
podcast with a focus on allthings call center.
We'll cover it all, from callcenter operations, hiring,
culture, technology andeducation.
We're here to give youactionable items to improve the
quality of yours and yourcustomer's experience.
This is an evolving industrywith creative minds and
ambitious people like this guy.
(00:21):
Not only is his passion callcenter operations, but he's our
host.
He's the CEO of XpeviaInteraction Marketing Group and
the call center geek himself,tom Laird.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Welcome back everybody to another episode of
Advice from a Call Center Geekthe call center, contact center
podcast.
We try to give you someactionable items.
Take back in your contactcenter, improve the overall
quality, improve the agentexperience, hopefully improve
your customer experience as well.
My name is Tom Laird.
(00:52):
I'm the CEO of XpeveInteraction Marketing, also of
Auto QA.
I hope everybody's having agood summer.
I just kind of took my firstfamily vacation, which is pretty
bad since my daughter's 11 andmy son's 9.
Went to the Keys for a littlebit to see my sister.
They have a little house there,which is awesome, but I did a
lot of thinking when I was there.
When you're just kind of layingaround, I think that this is
(01:13):
something we have to start toget across as an industry,
meaning as a BPO, as anoutsourcer.
We need to start talkingthrough some of the changes that
are evolving and some of thethings that I think you need to
start looking for in a contactcenter outsourcer of today
compared to even what you woulddo a year or two or three or
(01:34):
four years ago.
Things have really evolved.
Things have really changed.
A lot of organizations from thecontact center side are
struggling to keep up with that,struggling to figure out what
they need to provide tocustomers.
I think customers are confusedon what they should be asking
now too, right?
So, you know, wanted to take acouple minutes and again we're
(01:58):
here.
I'm live on Facebook, live onLinkedIn, live on Twitter.
If you have any questions, youknow, please, please, let me
know.
We can kind of get a discussiongoing as well.
But I wanted to kind of talkthrough some of these things
that maybe a lot of theoutsourcers are not talking
about, because there's a littlebit of preparation into kind of
(02:21):
what the next steps are in thiskind of new world of AI and what
we should be kind of lookingfor.
So I wanted to kind of give acase study, I guess, of Xpevia,
of our contact center and howwe're looking to evolve certain
aspects of what we offercustomers.
What we see is some of theneeds of customers that they're
not sure about how to take thenext steps.
(02:42):
So we want to kind of be thatgroup or one of the
organizations that can helporganizations or different
companies that are looking tooutsource take that next step
down a technology path, down anAI path where maybe they don't
have the resources or not reallysure what to do next.
There's a lot of really cooloutsourcers out there right now
(03:05):
that are really embracing thistechnology and, you know, I
don't think we talk about itenough, and I think the smaller
contact centers like my contactcenter right, we are the ones
that are that can move reallyquickly on this stuff.
So, you know, I think that'sprobably why you don't hear as
much from the big guys, right,because's a huge kind of pool
(03:28):
and kind of ebb and flow thatthey need to do to move the
Titanic, so to speak, right Acouple inches where I think some
of these smaller quote unquote,under 1,000, under 2,000 seat
BPOs we can sprint and kind ofget things going really quickly.
But I think I want to startthere.
(03:49):
That's the biggest thing is.
Number one is we are planningin the next three years for
about a 20 to 30% reduction inoverall outsourcing and contact
center headcount, not just dueto kind of that first touch
chatbot that's going to handleeverything.
I think that there's a piece ofthat touch chat bot that's
going to, you know, handleeverything.
I think that there's a piece ofthat.
But I think there are addedefficiencies that we're starting
(04:10):
to see within AI tools that youknow they're talked about, but
now we're actually starting tosee them realized and we're
starting to even be able to kindof create some of the tools you
know internally at a smallerdollar amount that I think we
(04:32):
can really kind of make as ahuge benefit to customers.
So you know, it's one thingwhen you hear a sales guy, a
technology sales guy say, hey,your NPS is going to go up 20%
and your average handle time isgoing to be dropped by 33%, like
all that stuff at the beginningwas all BS.
But now we're starting toreally see, as we dig into tools
(04:53):
, start to utilize them indifferent ways, that there are
some real kind of cost savingsthat we can find for customers,
and I think even a lot of thingsare going to change.
So the number one thing that Ithink that we have seen is you
know, we are no longer callourselves really an outsourcer
(05:14):
or BPO, right, we are.
We're a technology company,right, a CX technology partner
that specializes in outsourcing,or before it was, you know,
we're a contact centeroutsourcer that was really good
at technology, right.
So we've totally flipped kindof that whole thing on its head
and and just talk about nowbeing about that ai or cx
(05:35):
technology part.
And again, guys, remember, thisstuff is a year old at max,
right.
So when you hear everybody talkabout ai powered, this and
we're fully AI and I'm notsaying that that's total BS, but
remember we're all kind ofworking through this and I think
(05:55):
some of us are just a littlebit of ahead of the game but
when you hear about fully AIpowered or just AI, just be
careful with that.
I think we do say AI powered.
I think I use that AI powerbecause there's a lot of tools
now that we didn't have beforethat we're now utilizing because
of AI.
And those are the things that Iwant to kind of talk about here
(06:18):
today too, of how they canbenefit you.
And then, when you're doing anRFP for an outsourcer, what are
some of the things that youshould be asking for now that I
think can benefit you?
And then, when you're doing anRFP for an outsourcer, what are
some of the things that youshould be asking for now that I
think can give you good, greatcost savings and also raise your
NPS or CSAT or whatever thosemetrics are and we'll talk about
that here in a second as well.
Actually, let's start there.
(06:41):
One of the main things that Ihave found with AI is that you
can't just kind of throw itagainst the wall and hope.
You have to use itstrategically to answer specific
questions or to solve specificproblems that you have.
Now, I'm not saying it can't doall of these, but if you really
pinpoint and say, hey, you know, we want to raise our customer
(07:03):
experience right, our CSAT, ourNPS, we want to raise those
scores right, then there's toolsfor that.
Hey, we need to lower ourhandle time right, there's tools
for that.
Hey, we want to make the actualagent experience better.
It's so confusing now, how dowe utilize AI to make that agent
experience better, which thenwe believe, will translate to
(07:24):
both of those things right,higher CSAT, higher NPS, and
also looking at a kind of alower handling time or lower
amount of time that a customerhas to be on the call.
We'd like to lower costs, we'dlike to shift away from the
contact center into more of atechnology model right, and
again, there's times and placesfor that, and I think that all
(07:47):
that stuff is good.
But that's how we need to start.
The process is what problems dowe want to solve, and maybe
it's all of them right.
Maybe we want lower costs andwe want higher CSAT scores and
we want the agents that do takecalls to have the best
experience ever, which isamazing.
But don't think that one toolis going to do that, because
(08:09):
number one it's not, and we needto be roadmapping this out to a
specific kind of endpoint thatyou have and then move on to
something else and then kind ofcreate this kind of AI-powered
customer experience.
The other thing that I'm seeingis a lot of the CCaaS guys are
(08:31):
coming out with tools stillpretty expensive.
I think that we're starting tolook at building right and I
think you're starting to seethat even in the smaller BPOs
looking to build out specifictools right at a lower cost
point, using LLMs or usingwhatever internal AI maybe that
(08:55):
we can kind of get our hands onor start to play around with,
but for the most part, utilizingthe LLMs and those large
language models from whether itbe ChatGPT, whether it be Sonnet
, whether it be Lama, any ofthose and trying to again solve
problems with that.
And I think, again, that'swhere the whole becoming a
(09:16):
technology partner first thatspecializes in outsourcing
really, really makes adifference.
You know, I think you guys knowI mean, if anybody's been
following me at all you guysknow how we've fully developed,
you know, auto QA, right.
So we are fully automating allscoring of quality forms for our
customers internally.
(09:38):
So for most of our customers,again, we're not a huge BPO,
right?
So our average customer isprobably 20 to 30 to 40 seats,
right.
We have some that are five to10 seats, some that are in that
80 to 100, right, but those arefew and far between.
Most of them are in that kindof mid area and because of that,
the amount of volume that we'retaking, we can score 100% of
(10:01):
our calls for our customers.
So you know, that's a hugechange and a huge shift to not
have to charge, have a hugevalue add, actually save us
money, right, but provide abigger value for customers than
if we were.
You know, using a QMA platformfrom a CCaaS provider, that
we're doing.
You know, three calls per agentper week per our SOW, right.
(10:25):
So again, that's anunbelievable use case that we're
starting to build out and thenstarting to build things on top
of that, right, so you get afull coaching model, right, to
have agents be able to redocalls that maybe they made
mistakes on, they made an errorwith.
Calls that maybe they mademistakes on, they made an error
(10:45):
with, but literally calling thesame customer that they just
talked to, but us sending outthat transcript to AI using an
AI voice and having basically anAI avatar of the customer be
able to react to a differentoutcome that the agent is now
going to give them after we'vekind of coached.
I think that those are some ofthe really cool experiences that
(11:06):
you can build out on your own,or that an outsourcer is
building out on our own toprovide value to customers and
either keep the same cost lowercost but add a higher level of
value.
Those are the tools that Ithink are winning today.
Right, you know it's still.
(11:27):
If you go out on your own andyou have, you know whether it's
CX1, 5.9, genesis, any of theyou know main players if you go
out to an Omelia, an Amelia, anyof those AI, poly, ai providers
, it's crazy expensive.
Still, right, your ROI won't bethere for a while and I think a
(11:51):
lot of that is set up in thesetup.
Set up in the setup.
Right, the setups are so crazyexpensive.
The usage model is there, whichis cool, right, but it is still
really expensive and high.
You know they're rounding upthe crazy numbers.
So I think that's where anoutsourcer can kind of come into
(12:11):
play, right, to say, hey,listen, we already have this
stuff built out.
We have to do a small build outfor you, right?
So instead of maybe paying 50grand, it's going to be five
grand, right, because we kind ofhave everything done.
We kind of understand theprocess, building out your model
from a self-service standpointthat can bring you ROI much
(12:32):
quicker.
Because, especially if we'restarting to build things on our
own but still maybe utilizingsome of those tools in
conjunction with each other,it's still going to be less than
I believe what you would startto pay if you had to start from
scratch and go out on your own.
And if there's a BPO that'scharging you crazy, crazy setup
fees, I think that you need torun away from that.
I was never a believer in setupfees.
(12:55):
I know a lot of BPOs do that tocover their training costs,
right, and cover that upfrontcost that they have, but they're
still billing for training.
So again, for me it was let'scharge at cost for setup, maybe
a 10% overage.
But let's get this thing up asquickly as we can and let's
(13:16):
start adding value withcustomers and with the
technology.
So let's talk about what youshould be asking then from an
RFP standpoint, right.
So, if you're building out anRFP, and what should BPOs, what
should contact centers havetoday?
Right, that should be almostlike skills-based routing was
(13:40):
right.
Or omni-channel right.
There's still contact centersthat are selling omni-channel,
like, if you don't haveomni-channel now, like, what are
you doing?
Right?
So I think that the core and Ialways like to start from the
agent experience out, and Ithink, again, that's where a lot
of mistakes get made we startat the customer level and then
work our way in right.
(14:01):
I would start with looking atthings like the customer or your
BPO should have agent assist,especially if you have a complex
type of program.
Maybe you're a retailer with aton of different SKUs right.
You have so many differentproducts that an agent it's just
really hard for them andnormally they'd have to look up
things up in a KMS or, you know,go to a SharePoint, right?
(14:25):
If that's your core businessand you have a very complex set
of things that agents have tolearn, then agent assist is like
a godsend, right, and that'ssomething that you should be
looking for in your RFPs or havea kind of a mandatory section,
right.
I think agent assist is turningthat way where it's no longer
(14:47):
like the cool thing to have butit's turning into something for
a lot of different customers ofthe must-have.
I think that you know that'ssomething that has been again.
I hate the phrase low-hangingfruit I use it so much, I need
another phrase for that butwe've seen agent assist do a lot
right.
So I think that's one of thethings that you should think
(15:09):
about.
If you have an RFP, if you'relooking for an outsourcer, do
they have this technology?
How do they apply it for theuse cases that we would have,
you know?
The second really easy thing isauto summarization, right, which
you know being able to take thecall, summarize it in a way
that makes sense for you, youknow, put those notes in there
(15:31):
into the auto summarizationright To kind of tell it what
you want of how the outcome ofcalls happen.
Then be able to put that intoyour CRM Again.
What is the use case for thatright?
That use case could be foranything, right.
Number one if you have issueswith quality of memoing and
notes in your CRM from youragents.
This is a good you know tool tohave if that's really important
(15:53):
to you guys.
But I think more importantly,if you have long after call
works right.
If you have long wrap times, ifthe agent has to do two to
three to four minutes of workwhen that call is over,
obviously we could do some RPAif there's a lot of things they
need to do.
But if they're just memoing,making sure that the account is
(16:16):
documented properly, then autosummarization is the no brainer
of no brainers.
Documented properly, then autosummarization is the no brainer
of no brainers.
I think a lot of the CCAS guys.
I mean they're charging likeseven, eight, nine cents per
interaction, which I think isreally high for that, just for
the amount of tokens that you'reusing with the LLMs it should
be cheaper.
I also think that if you don'tknow what tool, if you have the
(16:40):
technology in your contactcenter to build something out,
auto summarization is crazy easyto do.
I mean you can kind of almostfigure out the prompt right away
for it, depending on what youwant right, and to be able to
put it to a quick integrationinto your CRM is a pretty light
lift.
So you know, that's somethingthat, again, for us, like we
don't even really charge forthat because it's really such a
(17:04):
small offering and small costfor us that you know we are
charging literally a penny of apenny of a penny of a penny of a
penny for that, where some ofthese guys are really gouging
that price because they thinkit's such cool technology and
it's really probably the mostbasic AI technology that there
(17:25):
is for the contact center.
So I would ask and make surethat you're getting a good price
on that.
I think you know, looking atsome of the advanced routing,
right, looking at you know CX1,you guys know I'm a CX1 guy they
have a tool that has beenreally really now powered now by
(17:47):
AI, which is WFI, which isworkforce intelligence.
If you're using Five Knot,genesis, dialpad, all these
companies have a tool like thiswhere basically you're looking
and has the ability to, insteadof a human being, moving people
in and out of skills, but havingnow AI powered, kind of a brain
(18:08):
, move agents in and out ofskills based on business rules
of handle time or service level.
That's a really cool use casethat you can utilize.
Now, again, I tell every time Igo to talk at an interaction
which is a CX1 event, I say,guys, make sure that you're
utilizing this.
It doesn't cost anything andit's an AI powered tool.
That I think is really cool.
(18:31):
The other thing that I thinkpeople don't talk about are
these legacy tools right?
Ask about the BPO's workforcemanagement.
Is there WFM?
How good is their reportingaspect?
How good is their reportingaspect?
How good is their forecasting?
What type of AI technologiesdoes that have embedded in it?
That's one of the huge thingsthat nobody talks about that
(18:51):
I've seen.
One of the biggest changes withis WFM and how smart that that
tool is now getting from aforecasting standpoint, from an
intraday forecast, and beingable to make really these split
decisions that can then tie intoWFI or to move agents in and
out.
So you're almost having like arobot-controlled contact center
(19:16):
and that's kind of what we'vegotten to right that kind of our
WFI almost talking to ourworkforce management and being
able to move agents kind of inand out of skills fluently.
You know, based on the forecastthat's coming, based on what's
happening in the IVR, if we'regetting a little bit of a rush
or we're getting crushed duringa certain time of day that we
(19:37):
didn't expect.
Right, to make those splitsecond decisions.
That, again, I think, would beharder for you if you don't know
what you're doing on a realcore CCaaS platform.
And again, another kind ofvalue add of an outsourcer and
something to look at when you'redoing your RFP we can then talk
about.
(19:57):
You know those, the chatbots?
Because I think that talk aboutyou know those, the chatbots,
because I think that you know Iwould be remiss to not talk
about them, right, they're,they're an important aspect of
what is coming.
It depends on how deep you wantto go down the rabbit hole with
that.
You know the number one thingthat I would say if you, if
you're doing an RFP for acontact center outsourcer, I
(20:21):
would not say, hey, do you haveself-service AI, chatbots,
virtual assistants, whatever youwant to call them?
Do you have that?
Because that's what I hear.
Do you guys have thattechnology?
Well, yeah, everybody kind ofhas the technology, but are you
ready to utilize it to itsfullest extent?
But are you ready to utilize itto its fullest extent?
(20:43):
Right, meaning right?
What integrations?
Do you understand that you'regoing to have to have as many
things integrated as possible tomake it work, whether that be
your CMS, whether that be yourKMS, whether that be any type of
data sets that you have.
You know you're obviously yourCCaaS platform.
Having all of these things kindof tied together is the number
one aspect.
The number two thing is how isyour KMS?
I would ask in the RFP can youhelp me build out the KMS?
(21:11):
What resources do you haveavailable to help organizations
that don't have a KMS, or maybehave one that's old, that has
bad data?
Or how do you keep your KMS?
How will you help us keep ourKMS up to date and how will you
integrate it into our IVAs orinto our chatbots?
Those are the things that people, again, we're not understanding
.
We're not being an outsourcer,being a CCaaS provider.
(21:33):
We're not talking about thoseenough of the kind of the steps
and again, guys, I've donemultiple podcasts on that Go
check it out on what you need todo to really become fully AI
powered what are the steps thatyou need to do, maybe this year,
to kind of get to that level sothat next year you can start to
buy technology?
I think that that's somethingthat's pretty important and
(21:58):
something that I think you needto kind of really start to think
through before you just have anoutsourcer say, hey, we want
you to do full self-service, wewant you to do all this stuff,
and the outsourcer says, okay,that's fine, and then they don't
really realize it eitherbecause they're just saying yes
to everything.
You have to be really carefulwith who you're talking to, what
(22:23):
questions they're going to askyou, making sure that you
understand everything, that youneed to kind of meet that
standard that they can give you.
I can give you that, but weneed to work through and talk
through what you need to do toget to that spot.
I think that's the importantthing.
The other thing that I like toask and I would ask in an RFP is
what other tools have youlooked?
Rfp is is have you kind of whatother tools have you?
Have you looked at your thelegacy tools and have you kind
(22:46):
of advanced them?
Like, do you have advancedanalytics that have some type of
AI power in them, meaning notjust looking at trending
keywords and that, but?
But they're integrated intoyour supervisor, right?
So it can tell.
Talk through real-timesentiment, right?
So if sentiment starts to godown on an agent boom,
supervisor gets notifiedSupervisor can get on that line,
(23:09):
like those are some of thethings that every BPO should
start to be having now.
Right, those aren't like thecool check this out.
No, they're kind of the 20242024 must haves in the contact
center and I think you knowthat's.
That's really important.
The other thing I would start totalk to in my, my RFP is is how
(23:33):
good are they with integrations?
Again, we talked about the KMS,but the integration piece, I
think goes beyond just the AI.
Right, obviously you need itfor AI, but can you do it for
cool, just regular things?
I still think one of thecoolest things we do has nothing
to do with AI.
But when you can route off ofdata, like I don't know why, for
(23:55):
me that's always just so cool,right?
So when a call comes in to golook at different fields in
Salesforce and, depending onwhat that field says, send it to
maybe a self-service, send itto a specific agent, send it to
a group of agents, to have thiskind of really cool routing
aspect when you're integratingdata sources with telephony, I
(24:19):
still think is crazy, crazy cool.
Sources with telephony, I stillthink is crazy, crazy cool.
And because we always were goodat that and we always probably
because I liked it and I wouldalways recommend it.
You know, we always got to havea little bit of a step up, of
getting customers to be able tokind of move down that AI road,
because integrations are kind ofsecondary to us.
(24:39):
I know a lot of BPOs as well,but they're just so easy to do
and again, once you get thatdone, there's so much stuff that
you can do as well.
Let's see, just trying to thinkif I missed anything here,
checking out some I think that'sthe other thing is this is this
(25:03):
is good.
I'm glad I went through mynotes here.
I think every single outsourcershould have quarterly
technology reviews.
So that's kind of what we donow.
Granted, we're talking weekly,but to really have a have an
hour, have an hour and a halflong meeting where we kind of
develop their AI roadmap.
You know we can demo any kindof technology that's maybe we're
(25:24):
utilizing for other customersthat's just coming out, show new
use cases.
Technology is moving so quicklythat you can't wait really year
to year to do this and it needsto be a quarterly at least.
Hey, this stuff's coming out.
Hey, check this out.
I think that this would be agood use case for you.
So make sure in your RFP thatyou're talking through that.
(25:45):
How often are they going tohelp you kind of roadmap and get
to where you need to be from atechnology standpoint so that,
depending on what you want to do, you can always kind of stay
ahead of the game.
I think that's really importantas well.
I think as well, guys, if you'renot using you know, even the
(26:11):
desktop version within yourorganization, you know, even if
it's one-off stuff like start toutilize, that there's so much
that you can do internally thatyou don't even need an
outsourcer for anymore.
You know, to be perfectlyhonest, with some of the
technology and some of theinformation, right, your KMS,
you know, using a personal GPT.
(26:32):
That could be something reallycool, especially for smaller
contact centers, that you can do.
You know.
I still think that our auto QAplatform is just it's so crazy
inexpensive that, no matter whatsize you are from a five-seater
if you're a five-seat, ten-seatcontact center you can pay $700
to us and have 500 QA formsscored a month, which is
(26:55):
probably almost could be closeto 100% of all your probably not
100%, but it's a hugepercentage of calls that you're
getting for much less cost thanit would take one person to
score.
So again, we've seen those hugesavings in there.
I know transcripts the cost ofthat is just plummeting right
(27:18):
now.
I'm excited for ChatGPT 5.
I think that we'll start to seesome real audio.
You know I get a lot ofquestions on sentiment and we're
still utilizing prompting andtranscripts for sentiment just
like kind of analytics.
But until we get real audiowhere we can start to talk about
sarcasm, we can start to reallynotice changes and raises and
(27:40):
lowering voices.
I think that's the big nextstep.
So yeah, guys, that's kind ofwhat I wanted to kind of talk
through today.
If there's any questions oranything, please DM me.
I would love to talk with you.
If anybody's looking tooutsource, even if you want to
go nearshore offshore, xpebe isfully onshore.
(28:01):
We don't have an offshorepresence but I have a lot of
connections, you know, nearshore, offshore, if that's where
you want to go.
If you just want to kind oftalk about your AI plan, I'd
love to kind of talk thatthrough.
If you're looking to outsourceanything from your contact
center here in the States, youknow you'd be pretty surprised
(28:22):
and happy with a lot of theanswers that you got, so
appreciate it and I will talk toeverybody next week.
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Intentionally Disturbing
Join me on this podcast as I navigate the murky waters of human behavior, current events, and personal anecdotes through in-depth interviews with incredible people—all served with a generous helping of sarcasm and satire. After years as a forensic and clinical psychologist, I offer a unique interview style and a low tolerance for bullshit, quickly steering conversations toward depth and darkness. I honor the seriousness while also appreciating wit. I’m your guide through the twisted labyrinth of the human psyche, armed with dark humor and biting wit.