August 1, 2024 • 24 mins
Did you ever ask yourself what the high-end contact centers are doing differently? In this ACGpodcast, we dive deep into the cutting-edge technologies that set elite customer service operations apart from the rest.
This is how we are developing our strategic plan for Expivia.
From AI-powered chatbots to advanced analytics, we explore the tools and strategies that are revolutionizing the way top companies interact with their customers. Whether you're a business owner looking to upgrade your customer service or a tech enthusiast curious about the future of communication, this podcast offers invaluable insights into the world of high-tech contact centers.
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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 Leard.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
What's up everybody.
Welcome back to another episodeof Advice from a Call Center
Geek the call center contactcenter podcast.
We try to give you someactionable items.
Take back in your contactcenter, improve the overall
quality, improve the agentexperience.
Hopefully you can improve yourcustomer experience as well.
What's up everybody.
As you hopefully know by now, myname is Tom Laird.
I'm the CEO here at Xpevia,interaction, marketing and also
(00:53):
Auto QA.
It's good to be back and talkwith everybody.
We've been pretty busy withboth companies and want to talk
a little bit again and do thisin kind of an AMA format.
We're live on Twitter, onFacebook, on LinkedIn and here
on TikTok as well.
So again, if you guys have anyquestions as I'm kind of rolling
through this please do nothesitate to ask.
(01:16):
The things I want to talkthrough today are very relevant
in where we are as an industryand I think, as we've been
thinking through, we meaninghere at Xpevia, we are a contact
center outsourcer thinkingabout our strategic plan,
thinking about where things aremoving, how do we need to change
.
I want to present some of thoseto you today and talking to all
(01:37):
my friends in the industry andlooking at what AI tools people
are utilizing, kind of coming upwith 10 kind of core things
that I see as must-haves for aAI-powered contact center, for
you know, kind of the newdefinition of what a high-end
contact center is with all thetechnology that we have out
(01:57):
today.
You know, kind of just to startthis, it's funny we did a blog
post back in 2018, where wetalked about the 10 things that
a contact center outsourcer hasto have right, and at that time,
it was things speaking of likeomni-channel and looking at the
proper size and culture.
(02:17):
And again, I'm not saying thosethings are wrong and they're
totally outdated, but there's somany more things that I think
you need to look at from acontact center standpoint, if
you want to be known as kind ofthat AI powered or next
generation of contact center.
And again, I'm not sayinganybody should be having this
today, but I think this is theroadmap that you need to look at
(02:40):
and this is from our strategicplan.
These are the things that weare implementing.
Either now, either have thethings that we are implementing.
Either now either haveimplemented this year, are
implementing or plan onimplementing in the next 12 to
18 months to try to get to thatpoint in mid-2025.
These are all the things thatwe have, so let me start with
(03:02):
maybe some of the more of themore normal ones, right?
But again, we've been thinkingabout this strategic plan for a
really long time and this iswhat I believe.
In my opinion, that high-endcontext under the future meaning
2024 and beyond, for the nextcouple of years, is going to
need to look like and if youdon't, that's a good reason to
(03:23):
outsource.
I think our outsourcing in theBPO world has totally been
flipped on its head.
You've heard me talk about thisbefore, but we used to be just
a place where you could getagents, really highly skilled
agents.
It had a lot of technology onthe back end, but our core
purpose was to provide agentsand hold on.
(03:43):
I'm going to answer somequestions as they come in too.
I will stop everything here wehave.
There's a TikTok question whatdo I think about Amazon Connect?
I will tell you that I thinkAmazon has put its toe in the
CCaaS space.
I don't think they've gone allin.
If Amazon wants to take over,amazon's going to.
They are a stripped down toolthat really has a core kind of
(04:07):
ACD part, but you have to strapon everything from reporting to
any type of analytics, workforcemanagement, all the other
ancillary tools you need to slapon it.
I don't want to say it's aTwilio, because Twilio, that's
how Twilio was built.
My opinion on it is it's not asrobust as a nice CX1, as a 5.9,
(04:28):
as a Genesis, but there's stillamazing use cases for it,
especially if you have a teamthat can really integrate, a
team that can, you know, pull alot of different data sources
into it.
So again, it's not that it's abad platform, it's just what are
you looking for.
So, again, it's not that it's abad platform, it's just what
are you looking for.
And for everybody, I don'tthink that it's kind of there.
(04:51):
Yeah, some of those are nativeto AWS, but they are not
world-class.
Their reporting mechanism isnot good, their WFM, like any of
those type of tools, they'renot even close to world-class
anything that they have strappedon.
So what I've seen fromcustomers is you get the aws
kind of core.
You're very disappointed,you're frustrated because you
(05:11):
have to integrate with a lot ofthings that they say are native
and you're going out and you'regetting other tools from a
variant or from any of thoseother kind of third-party
providers.
So again, we can have thatconversation.
But, uh, again, again, keep thequestions coming.
We'll, we'll keep answering aswe're going.
But, as I was kind of saying,the BPO space has been flipped
(05:32):
on its head.
We used to be just providingagents, really skilled agents,
and had a nice technologybackground as well.
Well, now it's become we needto be the technology partner for
customers that also can providethe skilled agents.
But the technology pieces comefirst and I think you're
starting to see that even ininternal contact centers where
(05:53):
people are looking at what toolsshould we purchase first?
How do we get on this AIbandwagon?
And again, I've done a lot ofdifferent podcasts on that.
But today I want to kind ofpresent our strategic plan at
Expedia.
I want to kind of present ourstrategic plan at Expedia, what
we are working on now, what Ithink will be the definition of
kind of that AI powerworld-class contact center from
a technology standpoint, and andbe excited to kind of show,
(06:14):
share some of this with you.
So again, number one is, youknow, looking at advanced
technology and these digitalsolutions, right, looking at AI,
and again, this isn't rocketscience here right, developing
and thinking about what toolscan we develop in-house?
Right, we've developed an autoQA platform.
We can do auto summarizationright, develop these tools that
(06:34):
are much cheaper.
Right To develop in-house ifyou have the skill and the
technology for it to be able tointegrate with different sources
.
But then also thinking throughand having the expertise to say,
okay, what tools do we need togo out there with?
Right, how do we bring an agentassist to our contact center?
Right?
Does the agent assist platformnow is that the best?
Right?
And then you know, looking atthe self-service chatbots,
(07:00):
looking at you know LLMs andthinking, you know, do we need
to be internal with them?
Right, with our AI and our LLM?
Can we use external LLMs?
Right?
Those kind of things, I think,are what we are starting to
really discuss here.
What we have kind of come to therealization is we are trying to
build everything that wepossibly can.
So we have our auto QA platform, we've built that out.
(07:23):
We have auto summarization wehave built that out.
We have purchased and are usinga third party for agent assist.
We have multiple vendors rightnow for any type of AI
self-service, depending on whatthe need is, depending on how
complex it is.
So I think that's kind of wherewe see us is trying what can we
(07:44):
build out for ourself?
And then what level do we haveto go out and kind of purchase?
Number two is looking at dataanalytics and customer insights.
This comes with having us be anexpert and having your context
and being an expert inintegrations right, being able
to pull data not just from yourCCaaS but looking at your any
(08:05):
SQL database with maybe yoursales data, looking at your CRM,
being able to tie all of thistogether right.
And then being able to doreal-time, cutting-edge
analytics to predictcapabilities, to give insights.
You know us being an outsourcer, I don't want to just, you know
, say hey, here's the sentimentof calls and here's some
(08:26):
trending keywords.
We want to give actionableitems back to our customers from
a marketing standpoint, fromthe things that we are hearing
on calls right.
And I think you know thedevelopment of the contact
center beyond just a place thatanswers and solves problems for
customers but becomes thatanalytic tool.
We've been talking about thatfor a long time.
But some of these tools now,from an AI standpoint, are
(08:47):
actually doing what we've alwayswanted to.
Even our auto QA platform, Ithink, can do a lot with
answering questions, because allwe're doing, right, we're
asking questions of data and Ithink you have to have a data
analytics tool for customerinsights to really understand
and then, as things get better,it will be more predictive,
(09:08):
right.
And what we're doing when acustomer does call in, we're
pulling from lots of differentdata sources, doing analytics as
that call's coming in to givethem the best experience
possible.
So it's just, you know, kind oftaking what we've done with the
IVR and kind of putting it onsteroids and then really
understanding all the aspects ofkind of what's happening with
that call, with that customer.
(09:30):
Now number three, I think we'vedone a pretty good job with but
it is kind of the remote work,excellence, right.
Looking at more gamification,you know, developing our online
training we have to do a littlebit better with that right and
on how we educate our work fromhome agents.
How do we maintain that strongcompany culture, right, do we do
(09:52):
more baseball games or hockeygames or do we do those type of
things?
I think you know that's beenthe biggest thing I said today.
For the first time in mywhatever 20 or 30 years career,
I probably know less than halfof the agents here at Xpevia now
, because over the last threeyears we've all been work from
home.
I may go talk in their trainingclass, but we have failed, I
(10:15):
think, a little bit with thatfrom a cultural standpoint of
trying to keep people togetherand kind of keep what we used to
be able to do here right whenit was, you know, what we used
to be able to do here right whenit was so much fun when you'd
have 300 people in a contactcenter room and you could high
five, you could play games andyou're doing kind of some silly
things.
I think that stuff has goneaway and we need to get back to
that.
I think that's why it's on ourstrategic plan to do a much
(10:36):
better job with employeeengagement and kind of culture
building from that standpoint.
Number four is advancedcybersecurity.
I mean, everybody knows,everybody's heard by now the
whole CrowdStrike issue.
They're saying Delta's lost$500 million just from that
(10:59):
outage and us being not a largecontact center.
You know there's, there's a lotof of I don't know I.
It's almost like I, I in myhead I get, I get more scared or
more nervous because peoplethink like a smaller contact
center may be the low-hangingfruit.
So you know we have.
We've really gone overboard,like during the crowd strike
(11:19):
deal, we weren't down at all.
Right, our infosec team does areally good job making sure
again we are this close to SOC 2compliance.
But we're fully PCI, gettingpenetration testing, making sure
that everything you canpossibly do, even from an
insurance standpoint what areyour policies on all that?
We used to have a clean deskpolicy.
(11:40):
When you came into the officethere was no cell phones I know
people hated that but even nopens and paper.
Everything we did we had togive the agents things because
we work with a lot of financialservices customers, I think
really looking at morecompliance things, which are
super painful.
(12:01):
But now that we have auto qa,we're getting into the ai space.
You know what does that looklike?
What?
What are the certificationsthat ai is going to need?
I think those are some of thethings that we're kind of
talking through now and kind ofyou know, part of our strategic
roadmap to try to be a leader inthat um and and even have a
voice right into kind of howthat that works.
(12:21):
So I think that's important.
And again, number five kind ofgoes with number one.
But looking at integration ofAI integration of who do we
really want to use and who doyou want to use as the company
that is going to be your AIassistant company that is going
to help you with all of yourintegrations.
(12:44):
Like, I think this is the mainthing that people don't realize
and I've talked about it is, ifyou want to be AI-centric, right
, you need multiple things.
Number one you need massintegrations, right.
Integrations into multiplelevels of everything that you
have, whether that be your CCaaS, like we kind of talked about
your CRM, any other data source,right?
That's number one.
Number two is what no one hasis their KMS, right?
(13:05):
So you know, we want to be thatleader and I think all of you
who want to be an AI-poweredcustomer support center need to
start thinking about your KMS.
You need to make sure that notonly do you have one, which most
people don't right.
Number one, that you have one.
Number two, that it's up todate.
(13:26):
And number three, you have amechanism for keeping it up to
date, flushing out old data,because if you don't, you know
AI is kind of right now, for howwe have to have it set up is a
pipe dream.
You're just going to haveimproper information given to
customers.
Right, it goes way beyondhaving an FAQ section.
We could do FAQs for a reallylong time.
We're talking about a real AIbot that can give extreme
(13:48):
answers to questions, and onlythe top 1% of companies right
now are able to do that.
So, yeah, with right we want tobe the kind of the one-stop
shop that we can do all yourintegrations for you, start to
build your KMS out for you andthen be able to fully integrate
and to become an have yourprogram be an AI-powered program
(14:14):
, but in an AI-powered contactcenter.
If a BPO is telling you rightnow that they can integrate and
they can do AI on your stuff, ifa BPO is telling you right now
that they can integrate and theycan do AI on your stuff, ask
them those questions, becausethere's a lot of things that has
to happen before you can justturn on that AI chatbot and have
(14:36):
a takeover call.
That's why, when you hearthings from my AI chatbot is
greatai, right, all thosecompanies that are just popping
up, you know you got to askthose questions because all
they're doing is taking faqs,giving you something really
basic that you could have doneon your own, but make sure again
that that you're thinkingthrough how do we build this
integration, how do we buildthis, our kms, out, and then how
(14:57):
do we take that next step andwhat partner are we going to
utilize right to really do kindof ai with us?
You know, I think the othernumber, number six here is is
modern workforce management andyou know we're using kind of the
iex, we're using the cx1, butwe want to take that to the next
level even before that, withsmart routing, with workforce
intelligence and integratingthat stuff a little bit more.
(15:20):
I think that's really importantfor us.
There was a company that heardme speak at Interactions, asked
to have some time with me todayto talk about workforce
intelligence and that's what CX1calls it.
But everybody has it right AWS,genesis and Five9, they all
have some type of workforceintelligence where, as calls
(15:42):
come in, agents can be movedbased on business rules, whether
it be service level calls inqueue without a human being kind
of doing that, and then havingthat then tie into your
workforce management, which canbe done right, and having all
these business rules.
So you almost like get to apoint in the next.
For us, we want to get to thepoint in the next 12 to 18
months where we have basically avirtual mission control or
(16:03):
virtual supervisor, not from aQA standpoint but from a
operational standpoint ofkeeping service levels right.
So AI is coming to do that.
It's just now the integrationof these new technologies that
are kind of standalone right nowto put them together to come up
with some AI enhancing servicelevel, queue enhancing, routing
(16:27):
kind of technologies.
And I think you know with thatgoes.
You know, the customer journeyoptimization right, that's
something that we need to getmore into.
We've been doing it forcustomers for about the last
year, but really taking whatcustomers had and then kind of
showing them you know where.
Not only you know where someweak points are in their service
cycle, but also what could be.
(16:48):
You know, looking at what couldbe automated right, there's so
many things that you can do witha journey optimization looking
at feedback, continuous feedback, looking at you know where can
we optimize, how can we changerouting, where can we do
self-service.
There's so many things withthat and I think, again, your
(17:08):
BPO needs to be the leader inthat if you're using an
outsourcer, but even internally,these are things that you can
start to do on your own to startto optimize that don't cost a
ton of money.
There's some tools that are outthere that aren't crazy, but I
think it makes a huge difference, especially when you kind of
have it on as part of yourroadmap for what you want to do.
(17:29):
Number nine is for a BPO.
Being agile is huge.
We always say we have to be apart of the effort, which for us
is flexibility, and so we wantto do things, even one of the
main things that we've done, Ithink, from a that's kind of
knocked two birds off with onestone, from a flexibility
standpoint and also from asecurity standpoint.
(17:50):
And well, there's some otherease of use, I guess things too
is has we've been moving?
We moved from microsoft windowsto chrome os as our, as our
operating system and most of ourages now, and what we're buying
now are either those Google ohmy gosh, I'm going right into it
(18:10):
like the Google Books, or theboxes, and that's what we're
giving our agents.
Cool thing is, if you're usingWindows, if an agent goes to
another program, if they dosomething else, you have to
bring that computer in.
You have to wipe it clean, takeout all the data, put the
operating system back on andthen kind of do every single
(18:30):
time you're re-imaging thesecomputers, but with Chrome OS
you don't, it's crazy, right.
So they just keep it.
You can wipe it clean.
The other thing is you can eventell.
Sometimes we have agents thatwill say, hey, my internet's out
.
Well, with Chrome OS you canactually see what their internet
is, so they can't lie to you.
Any type of updates or any typeof things that you want to put
(18:54):
on their screen, you caninstantly do.
It's just been a really coolaspect of being able to be quick
, not having to have a lot of ITresources that are going to do
some of those things.
So again, I think that that'sanother thing that we want to
get really good at.
Right is to turn our wholeoperations kind of from that
(19:15):
Windows aspect to Chrome OS andthen look at how can we be
quicker with our training, howcan we be quicker with some of
the things that we need to do toget agents up to speed quicker?
How do we use agent assistbetter in our training?
How do we use some of theseauto QA tools?
Right, and kind of trying toput all these pieces together to
make us as quick and agile andstrong as we possibly can.
(19:36):
You know, number nine issomething that I wouldn't have
had on here ever but I've kindof got more and more around to.
It is just sustainability andkind of the social
responsibility you know.
Looking at, again, I think,looking at what we're purchasing
right, is there anything thatwe can do to help, you know,
with that?
Looking at our diversitypractices, with management
(19:57):
trying to get engaged more inthe community, I think those
things are things that when wehave, since we have a bigger
workforce, we've done a poor jobwith and we want to make sure
that we're doing a better job aswe kind of move forward.
I think that that's importantand I think it does make a
difference on the type of peopleand the culture that you have
in your organization.
So, again, that's something Ithink to look at and something
(20:19):
to kind of think through as well.
And again, we want to stayinnovative.
You know we want to be alwayslooking for what's new.
I want to be a voice for youguys to say you can listen to,
to hear what is happening nextpower things, what is real, what
is not real, how can weimplement some of these, these
tools, and I think that you knowthat helps us from a marketing
(20:41):
standpoint, to be honest, andhopefully it helps you guys, you
know, learn about what's goingon.
You have kind of that one stopshop.
I really appreciate so many ofyou guys that have reached out
and said, tom, we've learnedthis.
Or you know this has reallyhelped us.
Or you know I was a.
I get so many of the.
I was a call center agent whobecame a supervisor, who's now
(21:01):
running the call center and I'velistened to you the whole way
up and you've helped me.
Like that's awesome.
And again, I think that's thestuff that kind of keeps this,
keeps this, the podcast, andkeeps the energy here of over
almost 250 episodes now, youknow, really rolling.
So again, that's kind of youknow where we are at right.
You know, looking at advancedtechnologies, looking at these
(21:24):
digital solutions, trying tofigure out what we want to
implement and what we don't,really becoming a source of data
analytics and having a ton ofcustomer insights, really
looking at our remote workforcefrom a cultural standpoint,
improving that.
Trying to get again everybodyon Windows Chrome OS I think
that's been an easier to getagain everybody on Windows.
You know, chrome OS, I thinkthat's been an easier use.
But again, from a culturalstandpoint, how do we get better
(21:47):
with that?
Enhancing cybersecurity, whichyou could?
That'll never be done, right?
You can never say, hey, we'resecure, it is.
What is the next thing that wecan do to become more secure?
What is the next certification,right?
So, again, we want to have ourSOC 2 done by the end of this
year.
We want to have as many thingsin place as we're looking,
talking about the AI security.
You know what are the thingsthat are going to come out with
(22:09):
that.
Trying to be kind of a leader inthat Modern workforce
management that's confusing, butit's probably the easiest thing
to understand at the same time,right, but it's probably the
easiest thing to understand atthe same time, right?
So, taking all of thesedifferent things that we have,
from integrations to how weroute calls, to routing calls
off of data, to using workforceintelligence, to using
(22:31):
algorithms to see when calls aregetting out of queue, and then
having that kind of one sourceto kind of take all of that
information and then make smartdecisions, right?
We're trying to build some ofthat here on our own to take all
of these information and thenmake smart decisions, right.
We're trying to build some ofthat here on our own, to take
all of these different toolsthat we have and have that
balancing act.
So we have kind of that AImission control center.
I think that that's reallyimportant from where we are from
(22:54):
a construction standpoint.
You're looking at customerjourney optimization, trying to
be as agile and fast as we can,getting better with training of
agents.
Think that's the stuff that wewant to do in the next 12 to 18
months.
The sustainability and socialresponsibility, I think is
something again that we've notthought about in the past and
things that we need to start tolook at with how do we help the
(23:18):
community?
How do we have more diversitywithin our management team?
Is there any eco-friendlypractices we can do with with
how we just discard some of ourcomputers or how our equipment,
like I don't know, like even thelittle things I think can help
a lot.
And then again having that,that innovation of culture and
in a, in a native innovativeculture I can't speak today I
(23:44):
think it's's trying to again bethat voice for you guys and for
us about what's coming next, sothat we can kind of always stay
ahead of the curve.
So again, thank you guys forlistening.
If there's any other questions,you guys can DM me on kind of
any of the sources that you guysare listening on.
Also, if any of you guys arelooking to outsource, if there
is any rfps, we would love to bea part of that.
(24:04):
Um, you know, tiktok guys, Isee you guys have there's been
more questions here, so I'llstay on for a couple more
minutes with you guys.
But everybody else, Iappreciate it and I'll talk to
you right next week, all right?
So
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 Leard.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
What's up everybody.
Welcome back to another episodeof Advice from a Call Center
Geek the call center contactcenter podcast.
We try to give you someactionable items.
Take back in your contactcenter, improve the overall
quality, improve the agentexperience.
Hopefully you can improve yourcustomer experience as well.
What's up everybody.
As you hopefully know by now, myname is Tom Laird.
I'm the CEO here at Xpevia,interaction, marketing and also
(00:53):
Auto QA.
It's good to be back and talkwith everybody.
We've been pretty busy withboth companies and want to talk
a little bit again and do thisin kind of an AMA format.
We're live on Twitter, onFacebook, on LinkedIn and here
on TikTok as well.
So again, if you guys have anyquestions as I'm kind of rolling
through this please do nothesitate to ask.
(01:16):
The things I want to talkthrough today are very relevant
in where we are as an industryand I think, as we've been
thinking through, we meaninghere at Xpevia, we are a contact
center outsourcer thinkingabout our strategic plan,
thinking about where things aremoving, how do we need to change
.
I want to present some of thoseto you today and talking to all
(01:37):
my friends in the industry andlooking at what AI tools people
are utilizing, kind of coming upwith 10 kind of core things
that I see as must-haves for aAI-powered contact center, for
you know, kind of the newdefinition of what a high-end
contact center is with all thetechnology that we have out
(01:57):
today.
You know, kind of just to startthis, it's funny we did a blog
post back in 2018, where wetalked about the 10 things that
a contact center outsourcer hasto have right, and at that time,
it was things speaking of likeomni-channel and looking at the
proper size and culture.
(02:17):
And again, I'm not saying thosethings are wrong and they're
totally outdated, but there's somany more things that I think
you need to look at from acontact center standpoint, if
you want to be known as kind ofthat AI powered or next
generation of contact center.
And again, I'm not sayinganybody should be having this
today, but I think this is theroadmap that you need to look at
(02:40):
and this is from our strategicplan.
These are the things that weare implementing.
Either now, either have thethings that we are implementing.
Either now either haveimplemented this year, are
implementing or plan onimplementing in the next 12 to
18 months to try to get to thatpoint in mid-2025.
These are all the things thatwe have, so let me start with
(03:02):
maybe some of the more of themore normal ones, right?
But again, we've been thinkingabout this strategic plan for a
really long time and this iswhat I believe.
In my opinion, that high-endcontext under the future meaning
2024 and beyond, for the nextcouple of years, is going to
need to look like and if youdon't, that's a good reason to
(03:23):
outsource.
I think our outsourcing in theBPO world has totally been
flipped on its head.
You've heard me talk about thisbefore, but we used to be just
a place where you could getagents, really highly skilled
agents.
It had a lot of technology onthe back end, but our core
purpose was to provide agentsand hold on.
(03:43):
I'm going to answer somequestions as they come in too.
I will stop everything here wehave.
There's a TikTok question whatdo I think about Amazon Connect?
I will tell you that I thinkAmazon has put its toe in the
CCaaS space.
I don't think they've gone allin.
If Amazon wants to take over,amazon's going to.
They are a stripped down toolthat really has a core kind of
(04:07):
ACD part, but you have to strapon everything from reporting to
any type of analytics, workforcemanagement, all the other
ancillary tools you need to slapon it.
I don't want to say it's aTwilio, because Twilio, that's
how Twilio was built.
My opinion on it is it's not asrobust as a nice CX1, as a 5.9,
(04:28):
as a Genesis, but there's stillamazing use cases for it,
especially if you have a teamthat can really integrate, a
team that can, you know, pull alot of different data sources
into it.
So again, it's not that it's abad platform, it's just what are
you looking for.
So, again, it's not that it's abad platform, it's just what
are you looking for.
And for everybody, I don'tthink that it's kind of there.
(04:51):
Yeah, some of those are nativeto AWS, but they are not
world-class.
Their reporting mechanism isnot good, their WFM, like any of
those type of tools, they'renot even close to world-class
anything that they have strappedon.
So what I've seen fromcustomers is you get the aws
kind of core.
You're very disappointed,you're frustrated because you
(05:11):
have to integrate with a lot ofthings that they say are native
and you're going out and you'regetting other tools from a
variant or from any of thoseother kind of third-party
providers.
So again, we can have thatconversation.
But, uh, again, again, keep thequestions coming.
We'll, we'll keep answering aswe're going.
But, as I was kind of saying,the BPO space has been flipped
(05:32):
on its head.
We used to be just providingagents, really skilled agents,
and had a nice technologybackground as well.
Well, now it's become we needto be the technology partner for
customers that also can providethe skilled agents.
But the technology pieces comefirst and I think you're
starting to see that even ininternal contact centers where
(05:53):
people are looking at what toolsshould we purchase first?
How do we get on this AIbandwagon?
And again, I've done a lot ofdifferent podcasts on that.
But today I want to kind ofpresent our strategic plan at
Expedia.
I want to kind of present ourstrategic plan at Expedia, what
we are working on now, what Ithink will be the definition of
kind of that AI powerworld-class contact center from
a technology standpoint, and andbe excited to kind of show,
(06:14):
share some of this with you.
So again, number one is, youknow, looking at advanced
technology and these digitalsolutions, right, looking at AI,
and again, this isn't rocketscience here right, developing
and thinking about what toolscan we develop in-house?
Right, we've developed an autoQA platform.
We can do auto summarizationright, develop these tools that
(06:34):
are much cheaper.
Right To develop in-house ifyou have the skill and the
technology for it to be able tointegrate with different sources
.
But then also thinking throughand having the expertise to say,
okay, what tools do we need togo out there with?
Right, how do we bring an agentassist to our contact center?
Right?
Does the agent assist platformnow is that the best?
Right?
And then you know, looking atthe self-service chatbots,
(07:00):
looking at you know LLMs andthinking, you know, do we need
to be internal with them?
Right, with our AI and our LLM?
Can we use external LLMs?
Right?
Those kind of things, I think,are what we are starting to
really discuss here.
What we have kind of come to therealization is we are trying to
build everything that wepossibly can.
So we have our auto QA platform, we've built that out.
(07:23):
We have auto summarization wehave built that out.
We have purchased and are usinga third party for agent assist.
We have multiple vendors rightnow for any type of AI
self-service, depending on whatthe need is, depending on how
complex it is.
So I think that's kind of wherewe see us is trying what can we
(07:44):
build out for ourself?
And then what level do we haveto go out and kind of purchase?
Number two is looking at dataanalytics and customer insights.
This comes with having us be anexpert and having your context
and being an expert inintegrations right, being able
to pull data not just from yourCCaaS but looking at your any
(08:05):
SQL database with maybe yoursales data, looking at your CRM,
being able to tie all of thistogether right.
And then being able to doreal-time, cutting-edge
analytics to predictcapabilities, to give insights.
You know us being an outsourcer, I don't want to just, you know
, say hey, here's the sentimentof calls and here's some
(08:26):
trending keywords.
We want to give actionableitems back to our customers from
a marketing standpoint, fromthe things that we are hearing
on calls right.
And I think you know thedevelopment of the contact
center beyond just a place thatanswers and solves problems for
customers but becomes thatanalytic tool.
We've been talking about thatfor a long time.
But some of these tools now,from an AI standpoint, are
(08:47):
actually doing what we've alwayswanted to.
Even our auto QA platform, Ithink, can do a lot with
answering questions, because allwe're doing, right, we're
asking questions of data and Ithink you have to have a data
analytics tool for customerinsights to really understand
and then, as things get better,it will be more predictive,
(09:08):
right.
And what we're doing when acustomer does call in, we're
pulling from lots of differentdata sources, doing analytics as
that call's coming in to givethem the best experience
possible.
So it's just, you know, kind oftaking what we've done with the
IVR and kind of putting it onsteroids and then really
understanding all the aspects ofkind of what's happening with
that call, with that customer.
(09:30):
Now number three, I think we'vedone a pretty good job with but
it is kind of the remote work,excellence, right.
Looking at more gamification,you know, developing our online
training we have to do a littlebit better with that right and
on how we educate our work fromhome agents.
How do we maintain that strongcompany culture, right, do we do
(09:52):
more baseball games or hockeygames or do we do those type of
things?
I think you know that's beenthe biggest thing I said today.
For the first time in mywhatever 20 or 30 years career,
I probably know less than halfof the agents here at Xpevia now
, because over the last threeyears we've all been work from
home.
I may go talk in their trainingclass, but we have failed, I
(10:15):
think, a little bit with thatfrom a cultural standpoint of
trying to keep people togetherand kind of keep what we used to
be able to do here right whenit was, you know, what we used
to be able to do here right whenit was so much fun when you'd
have 300 people in a contactcenter room and you could high
five, you could play games andyou're doing kind of some silly
things.
I think that stuff has goneaway and we need to get back to
that.
I think that's why it's on ourstrategic plan to do a much
(10:36):
better job with employeeengagement and kind of culture
building from that standpoint.
Number four is advancedcybersecurity.
I mean, everybody knows,everybody's heard by now the
whole CrowdStrike issue.
They're saying Delta's lost$500 million just from that
(10:59):
outage and us being not a largecontact center.
You know there's, there's a lotof of I don't know I.
It's almost like I, I in myhead I get, I get more scared or
more nervous because peoplethink like a smaller contact
center may be the low-hangingfruit.
So you know we have.
We've really gone overboard,like during the crowd strike
(11:19):
deal, we weren't down at all.
Right, our infosec team does areally good job making sure
again we are this close to SOC 2compliance.
But we're fully PCI, gettingpenetration testing, making sure
that everything you canpossibly do, even from an
insurance standpoint what areyour policies on all that?
We used to have a clean deskpolicy.
(11:40):
When you came into the officethere was no cell phones I know
people hated that but even nopens and paper.
Everything we did we had togive the agents things because
we work with a lot of financialservices customers, I think
really looking at morecompliance things, which are
super painful.
(12:01):
But now that we have auto qa,we're getting into the ai space.
You know what does that looklike?
What?
What are the certificationsthat ai is going to need?
I think those are some of thethings that we're kind of
talking through now and kind ofyou know, part of our strategic
roadmap to try to be a leader inthat um and and even have a
voice right into kind of howthat that works.
(12:21):
So I think that's important.
And again, number five kind ofgoes with number one.
But looking at integration ofAI integration of who do we
really want to use and who doyou want to use as the company
that is going to be your AIassistant company that is going
to help you with all of yourintegrations.
(12:44):
Like, I think this is the mainthing that people don't realize
and I've talked about it is, ifyou want to be AI-centric, right
, you need multiple things.
Number one you need massintegrations, right.
Integrations into multiplelevels of everything that you
have, whether that be your CCaaS, like we kind of talked about
your CRM, any other data source,right?
That's number one.
Number two is what no one hasis their KMS, right?
(13:05):
So you know, we want to be thatleader and I think all of you
who want to be an AI-poweredcustomer support center need to
start thinking about your KMS.
You need to make sure that notonly do you have one, which most
people don't right.
Number one, that you have one.
Number two, that it's up todate.
(13:26):
And number three, you have amechanism for keeping it up to
date, flushing out old data,because if you don't, you know
AI is kind of right now, for howwe have to have it set up is a
pipe dream.
You're just going to haveimproper information given to
customers.
Right, it goes way beyondhaving an FAQ section.
We could do FAQs for a reallylong time.
We're talking about a real AIbot that can give extreme
(13:48):
answers to questions, and onlythe top 1% of companies right
now are able to do that.
So, yeah, with right we want tobe the kind of the one-stop
shop that we can do all yourintegrations for you, start to
build your KMS out for you andthen be able to fully integrate
and to become an have yourprogram be an AI-powered program
(14:14):
, but in an AI-powered contactcenter.
If a BPO is telling you rightnow that they can integrate and
they can do AI on your stuff, ifa BPO is telling you right now
that they can integrate and theycan do AI on your stuff, ask
them those questions, becausethere's a lot of things that has
to happen before you can justturn on that AI chatbot and have
(14:36):
a takeover call.
That's why, when you hearthings from my AI chatbot is
greatai, right, all thosecompanies that are just popping
up, you know you got to askthose questions because all
they're doing is taking faqs,giving you something really
basic that you could have doneon your own, but make sure again
that that you're thinkingthrough how do we build this
integration, how do we buildthis, our kms, out, and then how
(14:57):
do we take that next step andwhat partner are we going to
utilize right to really do kindof ai with us?
You know, I think the othernumber, number six here is is
modern workforce management andyou know we're using kind of the
iex, we're using the cx1, butwe want to take that to the next
level even before that, withsmart routing, with workforce
intelligence and integratingthat stuff a little bit more.
(15:20):
I think that's really importantfor us.
There was a company that heardme speak at Interactions, asked
to have some time with me todayto talk about workforce
intelligence and that's what CX1calls it.
But everybody has it right AWS,genesis and Five9, they all
have some type of workforceintelligence where, as calls
(15:42):
come in, agents can be movedbased on business rules, whether
it be service level calls inqueue without a human being kind
of doing that, and then havingthat then tie into your
workforce management, which canbe done right, and having all
these business rules.
So you almost like get to apoint in the next.
For us, we want to get to thepoint in the next 12 to 18
months where we have basically avirtual mission control or
(16:03):
virtual supervisor, not from aQA standpoint but from a
operational standpoint ofkeeping service levels right.
So AI is coming to do that.
It's just now the integrationof these new technologies that
are kind of standalone right nowto put them together to come up
with some AI enhancing servicelevel, queue enhancing, routing
(16:27):
kind of technologies.
And I think you know with thatgoes.
You know, the customer journeyoptimization right, that's
something that we need to getmore into.
We've been doing it forcustomers for about the last
year, but really taking whatcustomers had and then kind of
showing them you know where.
Not only you know where someweak points are in their service
cycle, but also what could be.
(16:48):
You know, looking at what couldbe automated right, there's so
many things that you can do witha journey optimization looking
at feedback, continuous feedback, looking at you know where can
we optimize, how can we changerouting, where can we do
self-service.
There's so many things withthat and I think, again, your
(17:08):
BPO needs to be the leader inthat if you're using an
outsourcer, but even internally,these are things that you can
start to do on your own to startto optimize that don't cost a
ton of money.
There's some tools that are outthere that aren't crazy, but I
think it makes a huge difference, especially when you kind of
have it on as part of yourroadmap for what you want to do.
(17:29):
Number nine is for a BPO.
Being agile is huge.
We always say we have to be apart of the effort, which for us
is flexibility, and so we wantto do things, even one of the
main things that we've done, Ithink, from a that's kind of
knocked two birds off with onestone, from a flexibility
standpoint and also from asecurity standpoint.
(17:50):
And well, there's some otherease of use, I guess things too
is has we've been moving?
We moved from microsoft windowsto chrome os as our, as our
operating system and most of ourages now, and what we're buying
now are either those Google ohmy gosh, I'm going right into it
(18:10):
like the Google Books, or theboxes, and that's what we're
giving our agents.
Cool thing is, if you're usingWindows, if an agent goes to
another program, if they dosomething else, you have to
bring that computer in.
You have to wipe it clean, takeout all the data, put the
operating system back on andthen kind of do every single
(18:30):
time you're re-imaging thesecomputers, but with Chrome OS
you don't, it's crazy, right.
So they just keep it.
You can wipe it clean.
The other thing is you can eventell.
Sometimes we have agents thatwill say, hey, my internet's out
.
Well, with Chrome OS you canactually see what their internet
is, so they can't lie to you.
Any type of updates or any typeof things that you want to put
(18:54):
on their screen, you caninstantly do.
It's just been a really coolaspect of being able to be quick
, not having to have a lot of ITresources that are going to do
some of those things.
So again, I think that that'sanother thing that we want to
get really good at.
Right is to turn our wholeoperations kind of from that
(19:15):
Windows aspect to Chrome OS andthen look at how can we be
quicker with our training, howcan we be quicker with some of
the things that we need to do toget agents up to speed quicker?
How do we use agent assistbetter in our training?
How do we use some of theseauto QA tools?
Right, and kind of trying toput all these pieces together to
make us as quick and agile andstrong as we possibly can.
(19:36):
You know, number nine issomething that I wouldn't have
had on here ever but I've kindof got more and more around to.
It is just sustainability andkind of the social
responsibility you know.
Looking at, again, I think,looking at what we're purchasing
right, is there anything thatwe can do to help, you know,
with that?
Looking at our diversitypractices, with management
(19:57):
trying to get engaged more inthe community, I think those
things are things that when wehave, since we have a bigger
workforce, we've done a poor jobwith and we want to make sure
that we're doing a better job aswe kind of move forward.
I think that that's importantand I think it does make a
difference on the type of peopleand the culture that you have
in your organization.
So, again, that's something Ithink to look at and something
(20:19):
to kind of think through as well.
And again, we want to stayinnovative.
You know we want to be alwayslooking for what's new.
I want to be a voice for youguys to say you can listen to,
to hear what is happening nextpower things, what is real, what
is not real, how can weimplement some of these, these
tools, and I think that you knowthat helps us from a marketing
(20:41):
standpoint, to be honest, andhopefully it helps you guys, you
know, learn about what's goingon.
You have kind of that one stopshop.
I really appreciate so many ofyou guys that have reached out
and said, tom, we've learnedthis.
Or you know this has reallyhelped us.
Or you know I was a.
I get so many of the.
I was a call center agent whobecame a supervisor, who's now
(21:01):
running the call center and I'velistened to you the whole way
up and you've helped me.
Like that's awesome.
And again, I think that's thestuff that kind of keeps this,
keeps this, the podcast, andkeeps the energy here of over
almost 250 episodes now, youknow, really rolling.
So again, that's kind of youknow where we are at right.
You know, looking at advancedtechnologies, looking at these
(21:24):
digital solutions, trying tofigure out what we want to
implement and what we don't,really becoming a source of data
analytics and having a ton ofcustomer insights, really
looking at our remote workforcefrom a cultural standpoint,
improving that.
Trying to get again everybodyon Windows Chrome OS I think
that's been an easier to getagain everybody on Windows.
You know, chrome OS, I thinkthat's been an easier use.
But again, from a culturalstandpoint, how do we get better
(21:47):
with that?
Enhancing cybersecurity, whichyou could?
That'll never be done, right?
You can never say, hey, we'resecure, it is.
What is the next thing that wecan do to become more secure?
What is the next certification,right?
So, again, we want to have ourSOC 2 done by the end of this
year.
We want to have as many thingsin place as we're looking,
talking about the AI security.
You know what are the thingsthat are going to come out with
(22:09):
that.
Trying to be kind of a leader inthat Modern workforce
management that's confusing, butit's probably the easiest thing
to understand at the same time,right, but it's probably the
easiest thing to understand atthe same time, right?
So, taking all of thesedifferent things that we have,
from integrations to how weroute calls, to routing calls
off of data, to using workforceintelligence, to using
(22:31):
algorithms to see when calls aregetting out of queue, and then
having that kind of one sourceto kind of take all of that
information and then make smartdecisions, right?
We're trying to build some ofthat here on our own to take all
of these information and thenmake smart decisions, right.
We're trying to build some ofthat here on our own, to take
all of these different toolsthat we have and have that
balancing act.
So we have kind of that AImission control center.
I think that that's reallyimportant from where we are from
(22:54):
a construction standpoint.
You're looking at customerjourney optimization, trying to
be as agile and fast as we can,getting better with training of
agents.
Think that's the stuff that wewant to do in the next 12 to 18
months.
The sustainability and socialresponsibility, I think is
something again that we've notthought about in the past and
things that we need to start tolook at with how do we help the
(23:18):
community?
How do we have more diversitywithin our management team?
Is there any eco-friendlypractices we can do with with
how we just discard some of ourcomputers or how our equipment,
like I don't know, like even thelittle things I think can help
a lot.
And then again having that,that innovation of culture and
in a, in a native innovativeculture I can't speak today I
(23:44):
think it's's trying to again bethat voice for you guys and for
us about what's coming next, sothat we can kind of always stay
ahead of the curve.
So again, thank you guys forlistening.
If there's any other questions,you guys can DM me on kind of
any of the sources that you guysare listening on.
Also, if any of you guys arelooking to outsource, if there
is any rfps, we would love to bea part of that.
(24:04):
Um, you know, tiktok guys, Isee you guys have there's been
more questions here, so I'llstay on for a couple more
minutes with you guys.
But everybody else, Iappreciate it and I'll talk to
you right next week, all right?
So
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