April 29, 2024 • 22 mins
Are you overwhelmed by the relentless push to overhaul your contact center with AI? Let's clear the air about the real impact of AI in this industry.
My recent talks reveal a surprising fact: many companies are not rushing into AI as believed. In reality, few have a detailed plan or have started implementation.
Join me in a practical journey as we create a roadmap for incorporating technology thoughtfully in your contact center.
Drawing from my latest engagements in Philadelphia and Miami, we'll focus on using what you already have efficiently and investing wisely, not hastily.
We advocate a thoughtful approach to innovation, ensuring you adopt AI at a manageable pace, suited to your business needs. This discussion is about building a strong foundation for growth, stepping into AI with confidence and a well-defined strategy for success.
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.
Follow Tom: @tlaird_expivia
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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 (00:32):
Welcome back everybody to another episode of
advice from a call center geekthe call center and 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.
I'm the CEO of Xpeve,interaction Marketing and of
Auto QA.
It's good to be back.
We're starting to get back intoour routine of once a week
(00:54):
podcast, so thank you again forjoining.
I apologize for being late.
It's Monday and it seems likeevery type of technical issue
with my microphone or camera hasto happen today, but I got to
figure it out.
So I apologize for those of youwho are waiting live and
patiently here on LinkedIn, aswe are live on LinkedIn.
Again, if you have anyquestions, if you disagree with
me on this I think this is alittle bit of a controversial
(01:17):
topic, but I want to try to spitthe truth of what I am seeing
out there in the actualmarketplace.
That is totally different thanwhat you see on LinkedIn or what
you see on TikTok or Reels orany of these social spaces.
If you go to the contact centerexpos and CCWs and everything
seems, everybody seems like, youknow, we're all way down this
(01:38):
path to AI when nothing could befurther from the truth.
And, to be honest, it's just.
There's a ton of lies andmistruths out there from a lot
of AI companies.
Right, trying to push productsand they're freaking people out,
right they're.
They're, they're scaring a lotof individual companies to think
that they're falling behind.
(01:58):
They're getting CEOs to putpressure on on managers and it
professionals to do something.
Nobody knows what that is.
They don't know what that is.
Get a chat bot up because we'refalling behind the competition.
I'm telling you right now thatis not true.
So let's start at the verybeginning here.
I've had the privilege ofspeaking about five or six times
(02:23):
so far.
This year is in the know in thefirst, you know, four or five
months.
Here's as we go down to gettinginto may, probably spoken in
front of about 1200 to 1500contact center professionals Now
, not sales dudes, these areactual contact center managers,
frontline supervisors.
(02:44):
You know all of those, thosepeople that are actually on the
front lines making things go.
I've asked the same question tostart all of my talks this year
and it is you know how many ofyou feel comfortable about where
you are from an AI standpoint,have started to implement AI in
your contact center, at leasthave a roadmap.
I'm not lying when I say threepeople out of 1500 have raised
(03:05):
their hands.
So the honesty is also there,because nobody knows what's
going on.
Nobody's talking about thebridge to get there.
Right, if you talk to an AIsales, tech sales guy, it just
implement our strategy and boomyou're full, fully AI, whatever
(03:26):
strategy, and boom you're fullfully AI, whatever.
And that's not what we need.
You know, today, in 2024, weneed to start talking about the
process of getting to AI.
We need to start talking aboutthe actual tools that can be
utilized, that are mature, andmost of this stuff is not the
(03:49):
other thing that we keepforgetting as an industry as a
whole.
And again, I get that you don'thave to be in the cloud to
start to implement some of theseAI tools, but it really helps.
It's way quicker and mosteverything is going to have to
be implemented and integratedand it's way easier to do in the
cloud.
And the vast majority of contactcenters the vast majority of
contact centers are still noteven in the cloud.
I mean, think about that for asecond.
(04:10):
We're talking to everybodyabout AI and moving to this
AI-centric model, and I don'teven care if it's other tools
like.
It could be agent assist, itcould be all of these other
tools, let alone the firsttouchpoint AI chatbot that
everybody thinks is justunbelievably great.
It's not there yet.
There's steps that have to betaken and I think there's a lot
(04:34):
of opportunity even for othercompanies to come into the space
to help this happen, and we'retrying to do that with AutoQA as
a step.
Do I think that the AutoQAplatform that we're using now is
going to be even in existencein its same form in five years?
Heck, no, it might be threeyears, it might be 18 months,
but we're going to keep evolvingthat.
But it's a bridge.
(04:56):
There's a paradox that'shappening out here in the
marketplace and it's aperception.
If you're utilizing AI in yourcontact center, then you think
everybody else is too, so youwant to talk about it all the
time, when people can't eventalk your lingo.
The other kind of flip side ofthe coin is you're not using AI
(05:17):
and you think that you'refalling way behind, and that's
not true either.
Both of those things are nottrue.
The truth definitely issomewhere in the middle, but the
perception and the FOMO that ishappening and is being pushed
by AI technology companies, bythe mychatbotcom AI is great
(05:39):
companies.
We're not there and you're notfalling behind.
Now do you have to startworking to get to this process?
A hundred percent, right, butdon't let anybody's demo, don't
let anybody's sales presentation, don't let all the stuff that
you see on LinkedIn freak youout and think that you need to
move into something that you'renot comfortable with, that
you're not there yet, thatyou're not with there yet.
(06:02):
Some of the things that I havediscussed in the past.
But again, let's just bringthese to the front of the table.
Most companies are not in thecloud number one.
Number two most don't have theintegrations that they need.
The lack of integrations in theFranken stacks that you see
from a CX standpoint for mostcompanies, right.
(06:22):
It does not allow for easyintegrations and to get to the
data that you're going to needto use data in your AI from your
personal stack of information.
That's number one.
Number two nobody, nobody hasbeen talking about KMSs and
knowledge management systems.
Nobody has them and if they do,they're either out of date or
(06:44):
they have no process to keepthem up to date to give these
unbelievably great AI chatbotsthe knowledge that they have.
If you have dirty data, you'regoing to get crap coming out of
it.
So we have to make sure that weunderstand those concepts.
And I guess the third or thefourth is I think people are
getting ripped off.
I think they're getting rippedoff by the cost of this thing,
(07:05):
by the ROI of this thing.
You know there's so much pricegouging that is happening, you
know, with some of theseenterprise-type contact center
providers, these third-partyguys that are trying to slap
onto CCAS.
Or you know, it's amazing to methat we're still using a per
seat license, right, we're notat a usage model when almost all
(07:28):
customers would prefer that,right, they would prefer it.
But you know what?
The the those guys right thatare providing the technology.
It's not conducive to them.
That makes no sense to meeither, and there's going to be
some real differentiators thatare coming into the space again.
I'm just a little peon a verysmall deal with auto qa.
(07:49):
That is actually growing fasterthan I thought, but we're doing
everything the opposite waythat everybody else is doing it.
Total per seat model.
You want to do 500, you want todo 300 calls.
You want to do 10,000 calls, Idon't care, right, and I think
that there's a huge issue withthat If I would tell you that it
(08:09):
literally costs pennies, likecents, like under 10 cents,
under 5 cents to do a lot of thesame auto QA and transcriptions
, and you know now you can buildthat depending on calls and
it's all a little bit different,but it does not equal, even
with a hefty profit margin, whata lot of these guys are
charging on a per seat model forsome of these AI tools, right,
(08:33):
and nobody's going to like thisvideo and nobody's going to like
this podcast, because 90% ofeverybody who follows me is a CX
technology person, right, soall of these things kind of get
squashed and get quiet, butthat's the honest truth of where
we are today.
So what do we need?
We don't need another chatbotcompany.
We need companies to come intothe space and help to start to
(08:58):
bridge people.
If I had to start I said thisin my talk and I was in Philly
last week If I had to start acompany right now from scratch
and I might even do it we wouldstart a consulting company with
technology to help build a KMSfor companies, to help build out
their knowledge base.
Right, that is such a lackingtool that nobody talks about and
(09:22):
if you go talk to thetechnology guys, they don't even
tell you you need it.
You do If you want to haveanything that's that's worth its
salt.
You do?
You know, having integrations,having integrations not just
into your CRM but any other datasources, like all that stuff
helps.
And it's cool Like you can dojust even stuff in your regular
contact center stuff If you haveintegrations into it.
(09:44):
Not just screen pops, but youcan route really cool.
You can.
You can do amazing things evenwith some of the stuff, as as
you're bridging.
So that was the talk that I gavelast week too, and I think that
there's some things too, whenyou, when you hear your, your
CEO or you hear a C-level personcoming to you and was like hey,
listen, we need to do AI,whatever that means, we need to
do AI I hear that all the timeSay, okay, let's breathe.
(10:06):
Right, come up in 2024 with thethings you need to do to do AI.
Right, let's talk about what weneed to integrate.
Let's talk about building outour KMS.
Let's talk about those kinds oftools.
Let's talk about the policiesand procedures.
What's secure?
How comfortable are we from asecurity aspect to use large
language models?
Are we at all?
Is there an appetite for it?
(10:27):
I think that stuff's reallyimportant to do in 2024.
You want to get into the LLMs?
Let me, from a chatbotstandpoint, how are you going to
QA your AI, right?
If you think that you can justlet it run and I've seen
companies now they're not doingthe hybrid thing, right.
So if a customer gets tickedoff, it lets the AI handle it
(10:47):
the whole way through.
It's a disaster, right.
Nobody wants to talk about that, right?
Because you're not sellingproduct.
It's a disaster, right.
I still think you can do the AIthing from a self-service
standpoint.
If you have a hybrid model, ifyou have some rails on the cart,
you're going to agents, right,but you're still utilizing
agents.
You're not going this full.
You know we're going AI andthat's the other thing, right?
(11:08):
Companies think in 2024 thateverybody wants to go full AI.
I think most companies don't.
They want to start to utilizetools.
The technology and the thingsthat people are creating are
moving faster than customers caneven buy them and can even
think about them.
So I'm not saying you slow down.
But I'm saying understand yourideal customer profile, because
(11:31):
so many of these guys are movingso far ahead with stuff.
That's okay, it's not great,but I think that if companies
that are selling these productswould take the time and start to
set their customers up forsuccess instead of just selling
them a product, we're going tobe in a much better place.
(11:54):
There's going to be a bubblehere, right, because too many
companies are going too fast onthis stuff and it is it's not
fully mature, especially whenyou talk about an LLM chatbot.
It's not no matter what anybodywants to say.
So there's a lot to think aboutand digest there, but it just
(12:14):
it's kind of frustrating for meto see you know the the speed of
of the technology, because it'seasy to use.
It's awesome technology.
It's going to be in in certainplaces, it's it's going to push
people forward, but it's movingtoo fast and the quality isn't
as good and nobody can keep upwith it, right.
(12:37):
So what are we doing?
So, again, there is a there's ahuge spot in the market for
companies that want to.
Again, I mean to just be, I meanfrank here.
I think, like auto qa, right,we are utilizing AI and being
able to have a company that hasno technology whatsoever.
(12:59):
It doesn't matter.
All you need is a callrecording right, a call
transcript, a help desk ticket,an email, a chat transcript
right, and we can fully AI right, your quality assurance, those
kinds of tools, autosummarization.
You don't really need a ton oftechnology, maybe a little
integration that you can utilizenow you can start down this
(13:20):
path.
But when I hear people go on toLinkedIn or I see a survey that
says you know, if you are nothere, you are falling behind in
this AI realm, I think that'sgarbage and I don't think it's
true at all and it's nothingthat I've seen in the market and
(13:41):
I've talked to a ton of peopleon this stuff a ton of BPOs who
are ahead of the curve right,because we have to be ahead of
the curve and, again, as a kindof a cheap plug for the BPOs,
not just for Expedia, but if youwant to move to AI fast, you
should outsource to a BPO thathas all this stuff right, like
not just me but many of myfriends in the industry.
We have it all right, fromagent assist to auto
summarization, to auto QA right.
(14:03):
Looking at getting into, how doyou build out a chatbot?
The right way from an AIstandpoint looking at.
How do you integrate yourcontact center?
How do we use analyticsdifferently?
Right, all of this stuff.
We have expertise, we know howto do it.
It's not just Expedia, it's aton of BPOs that are out there
Onshore, nearshore, offshore,don't care, if you get the right
one, you don't have to pay the50, 60, 70, 80 grand to
(14:25):
implement some type of AI.
Not see the ROI for 17 years,and too many people are falling
for that.
Um, and too many people arefalling, falling for that.
It is crazy expensive, theminimums that a lot of these ai
companies from a self-servicestandpoint are collecting that
(14:45):
they want.
So there's not even there's ahuge setup fee 50, 100, 200
grand.
There is a a sign up fee foreach of your customers, not a
lot.
Still stupid, though.
It's just an add on thatthey're just kind of taking from
people.
So every time that somebodygets signed on maybe for a voice
, biometric, those kinds ofthings within the IVR from a
(15:06):
security standpoint, right,they're adding that on.
There's a per minute charge andit's normally like the minimum
of like 45 seconds.
So if you have a 10 secondself-service call, you're paying
for 45 seconds and again, again, while you can build this stuff
on your own, it is, it'sextremely frustrating.
(15:27):
You have to have the expertiseto really be able to do that, or
you're going out to these guys.
If you have the edict to do AIand and and really struggling,
and then, I think, with theresults that you're finding, dig
deep into demos.
I will tell you that, right,dig deep, Don't, don't, don't
take a demo at face value.
Be like hey, I want to try thatout and if you're not
(15:48):
comfortable with that, call me,I'll do it for you.
Right, I'll do it for free.
Right, and if and if there's noagent that it's going, I'm
going to trick it 100 times.
I've done it.
I'm going to be that level 10irritated customer.
Let's see how it handles that,because it's not going to be
good.
And and if you're utilizing theagent, then again, I still
(16:09):
don't see the full value if youhave a really good self-service
model already.
Right, the banks when you call abank, you want financial things
, you want your balance, youwant to pay off a loan, pay a
credit card, you want to dothose types of things.
Right, we have that technologyright Now?
Again, is there use cases forsome of this stuff?
I think the bigger you have aton of SKUs, you have, you know,
(16:31):
a ton of different, maybe morecomplex things that you think
you can add into there and ifyou have the right knowledge
base, you're seeing theenterprise guys do that.
The enterprise guys can do thatbecause they have the budget
for it.
They can take 20 people and say, go build out my KMS in the
next three weeks and they canafford all that.
And I think that there is aquicker ROI when you have a
(16:53):
higher amount of volume.
But if you're 500 seats, 400seats, 200 seats, the 20 seater,
the 15 seater, right, you'repriced out of the market right
now, for the most part pricedout of the market.
So doing things right and doingthem quickly a lot of times
don't align perfectly, but youknow it.
(17:14):
Just all the talks that I havegiven and hearing people that
have either spoken before me orafter me and they always talk
about the why you need AI.
I don't think anybody needs tohear the why We've got to start
to talk about the how, how do wedo it and how do we do it right
?
How do we build integrationsout?
(17:35):
Do I do that ourselves?
How do we build our KMS?
How do we do these things thateverybody kind of takes for
granted that they think thateverybody already has but really
, really no one has them, ormost of the companies don't.
Again, another plug.
That's why bpo can really helpyou.
Right, we have all that stuff,know how to do it, can build out
(17:56):
your kms, can do integrations.
But if that's something thatyou want to do on your own, then
just make sure that you'reyou're set up for success.
Um, for ai, all right, that's 17minutes of me being on a
soapbox.
It just it bothers me to hearand I hear people.
They're stressed out about it.
They talk to me and they'relike we're so far behind, we
(18:18):
don't.
I'm like, guys, 2024, juststart to build that road.
And you can't just stand onyour hand or sit on your hands.
Stand on your hands, that'd behard.
Sit on your hands, but you gotto start moving or you got to
outsource.
But if you're doing this stuffon your own, then don't fall for
a lot of these things that arethat are not mature yet.
Right, if you're ready for AI,I would still say easy on the
(18:42):
chat bot auto QA, autosummarization.
The chat bot auto QA, autosummarization agent assist those
type of tools starting to useanalytics in different ways.
The last talk I gave, we talkedabout how we can reduce
headcount, how we can do all thethings with AI.
If you're not ready for AIusing the legacy tools that we
have today, thinking outside thebox on that stuff, the last
(19:06):
thing I want to say with this isI think that there's a huge
mistake as well on companies'roadmaps on not understanding
the outcome that they want.
So, meaning, what's the endresult that you want?
Do you want to lower yourheadcount?
There's tools for that.
We can do that.
Do you want to raise your NPSand CSAT?
(19:28):
There's AI tools for that.
Do you want to lower yourhandle time?
We've got tools for that.
Do you want to get rid of yourafter call work?
We've got tools for that.
Do you want to improve theagent experience?
There's tools for that.
So, understanding what theoutcomes that you want predict,
or start to talk to you aboutthe AI tools that you should
have and then what you need todo to kind of set that stuff up.
(19:49):
But don't freak out.
Start to work down that path.
Start to get your contactcenter integrated.
Start to think about how do webuild out a KMS right?
There's a lot of tools onlinethat you can do that.
Don't panic.
Don't fall for the FOMO of thisthing.
There's a lot of companiesmaking a lot of mistakes right
now at a crazy high level.
If you're not an enterprise guy, you have time.
(20:12):
You have time and you have morethan you think.
So don't let anybody kind ofrush you, push you into things
that you're not comfortable with, that your company is not ready
to go for.
If you need somebody to talk to,I'm here.
I can kind of help you out andkind of guide you through some
of that stuff too.
But all right, guys, that's,that's what I have today.
(20:32):
I just did a again.
I've been thinking about thatall weekend.
I have a couple of links on onLinkedIn that I or posts on
LinkedIn I did today.
And also, if you look throughsome of my stuff from the week
before, listen to my Philly thecouple videos from the
(20:53):
Philadelphia talk that I gave.
Also one in Miami that I hadposted online.
That just talks about how doyou roadmap this thing and what
are the actual steps and toolsthat you need to do that don't
cost a ton of money.
They're going to cost somethingfrom a manpower standpoint.
And then, if you're ready to go, what are the first tools to
start to look at?
But I think that this is a toeput in the water and then slide
(21:15):
in instead of a dive or jumpfrom the diving board, and I
think that the slower you movewith this and slow is probably
not the right word, but the moremethodical and thoughtful that
you move with this, the betterthat you're going to be in the
long run.
So thank you guys for hearingme.
I hope that again, that thiscalms some people down.
(21:36):
You're not that far behind.
Things are going to be okay.
Start working towards thatprocess.
If you want to know some thingsagain, check out some of my
videos on some things.
If you're getting pressure tolower headcount, if you're
getting pressure to lower handletime that you can utilize right
without paying a ton of moneyfor AI, that you can maybe hold
the wolves back for a little bit, as you're kind of building
(21:57):
things out and trying to be thevoice of reason.
I think in this world thatwe're trying to just sprint
before most companies aren'teven walking.
Thanks guys.
I'll talk to everybody nextweek.
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 (00:32):
Welcome back everybody to another episode of
advice from a call center geekthe call center and 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.
I'm the CEO of Xpeve,interaction Marketing and of
Auto QA.
It's good to be back.
We're starting to get back intoour routine of once a week
(00:54):
podcast, so thank you again forjoining.
I apologize for being late.
It's Monday and it seems likeevery type of technical issue
with my microphone or camera hasto happen today, but I got to
figure it out.
So I apologize for those of youwho are waiting live and
patiently here on LinkedIn, aswe are live on LinkedIn.
Again, if you have anyquestions, if you disagree with
me on this I think this is alittle bit of a controversial
(01:17):
topic, but I want to try to spitthe truth of what I am seeing
out there in the actualmarketplace.
That is totally different thanwhat you see on LinkedIn or what
you see on TikTok or Reels orany of these social spaces.
If you go to the contact centerexpos and CCWs and everything
seems, everybody seems like, youknow, we're all way down this
(01:38):
path to AI when nothing could befurther from the truth.
And, to be honest, it's just.
There's a ton of lies andmistruths out there from a lot
of AI companies.
Right, trying to push productsand they're freaking people out,
right they're.
They're, they're scaring a lotof individual companies to think
that they're falling behind.
(01:58):
They're getting CEOs to putpressure on on managers and it
professionals to do something.
Nobody knows what that is.
They don't know what that is.
Get a chat bot up because we'refalling behind the competition.
I'm telling you right now thatis not true.
So let's start at the verybeginning here.
I've had the privilege ofspeaking about five or six times
(02:23):
so far.
This year is in the know in thefirst, you know, four or five
months.
Here's as we go down to gettinginto may, probably spoken in
front of about 1200 to 1500contact center professionals Now
, not sales dudes, these areactual contact center managers,
frontline supervisors.
(02:44):
You know all of those, thosepeople that are actually on the
front lines making things go.
I've asked the same question tostart all of my talks this year
and it is you know how many ofyou feel comfortable about where
you are from an AI standpoint,have started to implement AI in
your contact center, at leasthave a roadmap.
I'm not lying when I say threepeople out of 1500 have raised
(03:05):
their hands.
So the honesty is also there,because nobody knows what's
going on.
Nobody's talking about thebridge to get there.
Right, if you talk to an AIsales, tech sales guy, it just
implement our strategy and boomyou're full, fully AI, whatever
(03:26):
strategy, and boom you're fullfully AI, whatever.
And that's not what we need.
You know, today, in 2024, weneed to start talking about the
process of getting to AI.
We need to start talking aboutthe actual tools that can be
utilized, that are mature, andmost of this stuff is not the
(03:49):
other thing that we keepforgetting as an industry as a
whole.
And again, I get that you don'thave to be in the cloud to
start to implement some of theseAI tools, but it really helps.
It's way quicker and mosteverything is going to have to
be implemented and integratedand it's way easier to do in the
cloud.
And the vast majority of contactcenters the vast majority of
contact centers are still noteven in the cloud.
I mean, think about that for asecond.
(04:10):
We're talking to everybodyabout AI and moving to this
AI-centric model, and I don'teven care if it's other tools
like.
It could be agent assist, itcould be all of these other
tools, let alone the firsttouchpoint AI chatbot that
everybody thinks is justunbelievably great.
It's not there yet.
There's steps that have to betaken and I think there's a lot
(04:34):
of opportunity even for othercompanies to come into the space
to help this happen, and we'retrying to do that with AutoQA as
a step.
Do I think that the AutoQAplatform that we're using now is
going to be even in existencein its same form in five years?
Heck, no, it might be threeyears, it might be 18 months,
but we're going to keep evolvingthat.
But it's a bridge.
(04:56):
There's a paradox that'shappening out here in the
marketplace and it's aperception.
If you're utilizing AI in yourcontact center, then you think
everybody else is too, so youwant to talk about it all the
time, when people can't eventalk your lingo.
The other kind of flip side ofthe coin is you're not using AI
(05:17):
and you think that you'refalling way behind, and that's
not true either.
Both of those things are nottrue.
The truth definitely issomewhere in the middle, but the
perception and the FOMO that ishappening and is being pushed
by AI technology companies, bythe mychatbotcom AI is great
(05:39):
companies.
We're not there and you're notfalling behind.
Now do you have to startworking to get to this process?
A hundred percent, right, butdon't let anybody's demo, don't
let anybody's sales presentation, don't let all the stuff that
you see on LinkedIn freak youout and think that you need to
move into something that you'renot comfortable with, that
you're not there yet, thatyou're not with there yet.
(06:02):
Some of the things that I havediscussed in the past.
But again, let's just bringthese to the front of the table.
Most companies are not in thecloud number one.
Number two most don't have theintegrations that they need.
The lack of integrations in theFranken stacks that you see
from a CX standpoint for mostcompanies, right.
(06:22):
It does not allow for easyintegrations and to get to the
data that you're going to needto use data in your AI from your
personal stack of information.
That's number one.
Number two nobody, nobody hasbeen talking about KMSs and
knowledge management systems.
Nobody has them and if they do,they're either out of date or
(06:44):
they have no process to keepthem up to date to give these
unbelievably great AI chatbotsthe knowledge that they have.
If you have dirty data, you'regoing to get crap coming out of
it.
So we have to make sure that weunderstand those concepts.
And I guess the third or thefourth is I think people are
getting ripped off.
I think they're getting rippedoff by the cost of this thing,
(07:05):
by the ROI of this thing.
You know there's so much pricegouging that is happening, you
know, with some of theseenterprise-type contact center
providers, these third-partyguys that are trying to slap
onto CCAS.
Or you know, it's amazing to methat we're still using a per
seat license, right, we're notat a usage model when almost all
(07:28):
customers would prefer that,right, they would prefer it.
But you know what?
The the those guys right thatare providing the technology.
It's not conducive to them.
That makes no sense to meeither, and there's going to be
some real differentiators thatare coming into the space again.
I'm just a little peon a verysmall deal with auto qa.
(07:49):
That is actually growing fasterthan I thought, but we're doing
everything the opposite waythat everybody else is doing it.
Total per seat model.
You want to do 500, you want todo 300 calls.
You want to do 10,000 calls, Idon't care, right, and I think
that there's a huge issue withthat If I would tell you that it
(08:09):
literally costs pennies, likecents, like under 10 cents,
under 5 cents to do a lot of thesame auto QA and transcriptions
, and you know now you can buildthat depending on calls and
it's all a little bit different,but it does not equal, even
with a hefty profit margin, whata lot of these guys are
charging on a per seat model forsome of these AI tools, right,
(08:33):
and nobody's going to like thisvideo and nobody's going to like
this podcast, because 90% ofeverybody who follows me is a CX
technology person, right, soall of these things kind of get
squashed and get quiet, butthat's the honest truth of where
we are today.
So what do we need?
We don't need another chatbotcompany.
We need companies to come intothe space and help to start to
(08:58):
bridge people.
If I had to start I said thisin my talk and I was in Philly
last week If I had to start acompany right now from scratch
and I might even do it we wouldstart a consulting company with
technology to help build a KMSfor companies, to help build out
their knowledge base.
Right, that is such a lackingtool that nobody talks about and
(09:22):
if you go talk to thetechnology guys, they don't even
tell you you need it.
You do If you want to haveanything that's that's worth its
salt.
You do?
You know, having integrations,having integrations not just
into your CRM but any other datasources, like all that stuff
helps.
And it's cool Like you can dojust even stuff in your regular
contact center stuff If you haveintegrations into it.
(09:44):
Not just screen pops, but youcan route really cool.
You can.
You can do amazing things evenwith some of the stuff, as as
you're bridging.
So that was the talk that I gavelast week too, and I think that
there's some things too, whenyou, when you hear your, your
CEO or you hear a C-level personcoming to you and was like hey,
listen, we need to do AI,whatever that means, we need to
do AI I hear that all the timeSay, okay, let's breathe.
(10:06):
Right, come up in 2024 with thethings you need to do to do AI.
Right, let's talk about what weneed to integrate.
Let's talk about building outour KMS.
Let's talk about those kinds oftools.
Let's talk about the policiesand procedures.
What's secure?
How comfortable are we from asecurity aspect to use large
language models?
Are we at all?
Is there an appetite for it?
(10:27):
I think that stuff's reallyimportant to do in 2024.
You want to get into the LLMs?
Let me, from a chatbotstandpoint, how are you going to
QA your AI, right?
If you think that you can justlet it run and I've seen
companies now they're not doingthe hybrid thing, right.
So if a customer gets tickedoff, it lets the AI handle it
(10:47):
the whole way through.
It's a disaster, right.
Nobody wants to talk about that, right?
Because you're not sellingproduct.
It's a disaster, right.
I still think you can do the AIthing from a self-service
standpoint.
If you have a hybrid model, ifyou have some rails on the cart,
you're going to agents, right,but you're still utilizing
agents.
You're not going this full.
You know we're going AI andthat's the other thing, right?
(11:08):
Companies think in 2024 thateverybody wants to go full AI.
I think most companies don't.
They want to start to utilizetools.
The technology and the thingsthat people are creating are
moving faster than customers caneven buy them and can even
think about them.
So I'm not saying you slow down.
But I'm saying understand yourideal customer profile, because
(11:31):
so many of these guys are movingso far ahead with stuff.
That's okay, it's not great,but I think that if companies
that are selling these productswould take the time and start to
set their customers up forsuccess instead of just selling
them a product, we're going tobe in a much better place.
(11:54):
There's going to be a bubblehere, right, because too many
companies are going too fast onthis stuff and it is it's not
fully mature, especially whenyou talk about an LLM chatbot.
It's not no matter what anybodywants to say.
So there's a lot to think aboutand digest there, but it just
(12:14):
it's kind of frustrating for meto see you know the the speed of
of the technology, because it'seasy to use.
It's awesome technology.
It's going to be in in certainplaces, it's it's going to push
people forward, but it's movingtoo fast and the quality isn't
as good and nobody can keep upwith it, right.
(12:37):
So what are we doing?
So, again, there is a there's ahuge spot in the market for
companies that want to.
Again, I mean to just be, I meanfrank here.
I think, like auto qa, right,we are utilizing AI and being
able to have a company that hasno technology whatsoever.
(12:59):
It doesn't matter.
All you need is a callrecording right, a call
transcript, a help desk ticket,an email, a chat transcript
right, and we can fully AI right, your quality assurance, those
kinds of tools, autosummarization.
You don't really need a ton oftechnology, maybe a little
integration that you can utilizenow you can start down this
(13:20):
path.
But when I hear people go on toLinkedIn or I see a survey that
says you know, if you are nothere, you are falling behind in
this AI realm, I think that'sgarbage and I don't think it's
true at all and it's nothingthat I've seen in the market and
(13:41):
I've talked to a ton of peopleon this stuff a ton of BPOs who
are ahead of the curve right,because we have to be ahead of
the curve and, again, as a kindof a cheap plug for the BPOs,
not just for Expedia, but if youwant to move to AI fast, you
should outsource to a BPO thathas all this stuff right, like
not just me but many of myfriends in the industry.
We have it all right, fromagent assist to auto
summarization, to auto QA right.
(14:03):
Looking at getting into, how doyou build out a chatbot?
The right way from an AIstandpoint looking at.
How do you integrate yourcontact center?
How do we use analyticsdifferently?
Right, all of this stuff.
We have expertise, we know howto do it.
It's not just Expedia, it's aton of BPOs that are out there
Onshore, nearshore, offshore,don't care, if you get the right
one, you don't have to pay the50, 60, 70, 80 grand to
(14:25):
implement some type of AI.
Not see the ROI for 17 years,and too many people are falling
for that.
Um, and too many people arefalling, falling for that.
It is crazy expensive, theminimums that a lot of these ai
companies from a self-servicestandpoint are collecting that
(14:45):
they want.
So there's not even there's ahuge setup fee 50, 100, 200
grand.
There is a a sign up fee foreach of your customers, not a
lot.
Still stupid, though.
It's just an add on thatthey're just kind of taking from
people.
So every time that somebodygets signed on maybe for a voice
, biometric, those kinds ofthings within the IVR from a
(15:06):
security standpoint, right,they're adding that on.
There's a per minute charge andit's normally like the minimum
of like 45 seconds.
So if you have a 10 secondself-service call, you're paying
for 45 seconds and again, again, while you can build this stuff
on your own, it is, it'sextremely frustrating.
(15:27):
You have to have the expertiseto really be able to do that, or
you're going out to these guys.
If you have the edict to do AIand and and really struggling,
and then, I think, with theresults that you're finding, dig
deep into demos.
I will tell you that, right,dig deep, Don't, don't, don't
take a demo at face value.
Be like hey, I want to try thatout and if you're not
(15:48):
comfortable with that, call me,I'll do it for you.
Right, I'll do it for free.
Right, and if and if there's noagent that it's going, I'm
going to trick it 100 times.
I've done it.
I'm going to be that level 10irritated customer.
Let's see how it handles that,because it's not going to be
good.
And and if you're utilizing theagent, then again, I still
(16:09):
don't see the full value if youhave a really good self-service
model already.
Right, the banks when you call abank, you want financial things
, you want your balance, youwant to pay off a loan, pay a
credit card, you want to dothose types of things.
Right, we have that technologyright Now?
Again, is there use cases forsome of this stuff?
I think the bigger you have aton of SKUs, you have, you know,
(16:31):
a ton of different, maybe morecomplex things that you think
you can add into there and ifyou have the right knowledge
base, you're seeing theenterprise guys do that.
The enterprise guys can do thatbecause they have the budget
for it.
They can take 20 people and say, go build out my KMS in the
next three weeks and they canafford all that.
And I think that there is aquicker ROI when you have a
(16:53):
higher amount of volume.
But if you're 500 seats, 400seats, 200 seats, the 20 seater,
the 15 seater, right, you'repriced out of the market right
now, for the most part pricedout of the market.
So doing things right and doingthem quickly a lot of times
don't align perfectly, but youknow it.
(17:14):
Just all the talks that I havegiven and hearing people that
have either spoken before me orafter me and they always talk
about the why you need AI.
I don't think anybody needs tohear the why We've got to start
to talk about the how, how do wedo it and how do we do it right
?
How do we build integrationsout?
(17:35):
Do I do that ourselves?
How do we build our KMS?
How do we do these things thateverybody kind of takes for
granted that they think thateverybody already has but really
, really no one has them, ormost of the companies don't.
Again, another plug.
That's why bpo can really helpyou.
Right, we have all that stuff,know how to do it, can build out
(17:56):
your kms, can do integrations.
But if that's something thatyou want to do on your own, then
just make sure that you'reyou're set up for success.
Um, for ai, all right, that's 17minutes of me being on a
soapbox.
It just it bothers me to hearand I hear people.
They're stressed out about it.
They talk to me and they'relike we're so far behind, we
(18:18):
don't.
I'm like, guys, 2024, juststart to build that road.
And you can't just stand onyour hand or sit on your hands.
Stand on your hands, that'd behard.
Sit on your hands, but you gotto start moving or you got to
outsource.
But if you're doing this stuffon your own, then don't fall for
a lot of these things that arethat are not mature yet.
Right, if you're ready for AI,I would still say easy on the
(18:42):
chat bot auto QA, autosummarization.
The chat bot auto QA, autosummarization agent assist those
type of tools starting to useanalytics in different ways.
The last talk I gave, we talkedabout how we can reduce
headcount, how we can do all thethings with AI.
If you're not ready for AIusing the legacy tools that we
have today, thinking outside thebox on that stuff, the last
(19:06):
thing I want to say with this isI think that there's a huge
mistake as well on companies'roadmaps on not understanding
the outcome that they want.
So, meaning, what's the endresult that you want?
Do you want to lower yourheadcount?
There's tools for that.
We can do that.
Do you want to raise your NPSand CSAT?
(19:28):
There's AI tools for that.
Do you want to lower yourhandle time?
We've got tools for that.
Do you want to get rid of yourafter call work?
We've got tools for that.
Do you want to improve theagent experience?
There's tools for that.
So, understanding what theoutcomes that you want predict,
or start to talk to you aboutthe AI tools that you should
have and then what you need todo to kind of set that stuff up.
(19:49):
But don't freak out.
Start to work down that path.
Start to get your contactcenter integrated.
Start to think about how do webuild out a KMS right?
There's a lot of tools onlinethat you can do that.
Don't panic.
Don't fall for the FOMO of thisthing.
There's a lot of companiesmaking a lot of mistakes right
now at a crazy high level.
If you're not an enterprise guy, you have time.
(20:12):
You have time and you have morethan you think.
So don't let anybody kind ofrush you, push you into things
that you're not comfortable with, that your company is not ready
to go for.
If you need somebody to talk to,I'm here.
I can kind of help you out andkind of guide you through some
of that stuff too.
But all right, guys, that's,that's what I have today.
(20:32):
I just did a again.
I've been thinking about thatall weekend.
I have a couple of links on onLinkedIn that I or posts on
LinkedIn I did today.
And also, if you look throughsome of my stuff from the week
before, listen to my Philly thecouple videos from the
(20:53):
Philadelphia talk that I gave.
Also one in Miami that I hadposted online.
That just talks about how doyou roadmap this thing and what
are the actual steps and toolsthat you need to do that don't
cost a ton of money.
They're going to cost somethingfrom a manpower standpoint.
And then, if you're ready to go, what are the first tools to
start to look at?
But I think that this is a toeput in the water and then slide
(21:15):
in instead of a dive or jumpfrom the diving board, and I
think that the slower you movewith this and slow is probably
not the right word, but the moremethodical and thoughtful that
you move with this, the betterthat you're going to be in the
long run.
So thank you guys for hearingme.
I hope that again, that thiscalms some people down.
(21:36):
You're not that far behind.
Things are going to be okay.
Start working towards thatprocess.
If you want to know some thingsagain, check out some of my
videos on some things.
If you're getting pressure tolower headcount, if you're
getting pressure to lower handletime that you can utilize right
without paying a ton of moneyfor AI, that you can maybe hold
the wolves back for a little bit, as you're kind of building
(21:57):
things out and trying to be thevoice of reason.
I think in this world thatwe're trying to just sprint
before most companies aren'teven walking.
Thanks guys.
I'll talk to everybody nextweek.
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