111 Curiously Quick...My Worker Bee's Thoughts on AI in the Contact Center

Hello, My Curious Colleagues...! In this week’s “Curiously Quick” episode (#111) on the @My Curious Colleague podcast, I share my thoughts on AI in consumer relations and the contact center. My thoughts, albeit brief, are covered in three key areas. Listen to today’s episode for more details and in these past episodes noted here:

1. Helping the Agent—exploring Voice AI, Agent Assist, and Reason Codes (Ep. #82, Speech Analytics with CalZilla).
2. Helping the Consumer—from chatbots to virtual assistants (Ep. #95 with Joe Mazer, Michelin Tires).
3. Brand & Quality Insights—insights via sentiment analysis and trend identification (Ep. @91 with Gotham at Yogi).

Listen in to get a worker bee’s perspective on AI’s potential for smaller teams and more. 🎧 

#NewPodcastEpisode #AI #ContactCenter #ConsumerRelations 

Episode Transcript

Denise Venneri (00:30):
Hello, my curious colleagues. This episode
I have what I'm calling acuriously quick episode. It's a
worker bee's thoughts on AI inconsumer relations and the
contact center. And, yes, asmost of you know, I've largely
been a worker bee in consumerrelation teams, leading a team

(00:52):
of analysts in the reportingroles and also in my role as a
brand specialist. But in thepast year or so, I've kept my
ears and eyes open to what is AIin the contact center.
Now you know I don't have abudget for this stuff, but I'm
beginning to pick up anunderstanding. Some of my

(01:13):
thoughts have been shaped byguests or my podcast. Thank you
for that, guests. Skimmingarticles on LinkedIn, I've saved
more than I've probably read.Attending industry webinars and
conferences, and lastly,actually using chat GPT to play
around with writing show notessummaries for this podcast.

(01:37):
Here's the point. In in myhumble opinion, it's still
fairly early to adopt andimplement AI, so you have not
missed the boat. And I'm noteven confident there's a clear
one winner of this AI AI AIcontest yet. So, again, you have
not missed the boat. However,even if you're a small contact

(02:01):
center, you should still bereally learning and
understanding and getting yourhead around potential use cases
and the pain points AI couldpotentially solve and also map
out a multiyear AI road map orweaving some of these AI AI I
can't say AI.

(02:22):
Weaving AI tools into yourtechnology road or, your tech
stack. Attend a quick webinareven if it's over lunch from a
from a, vendor, and then maybelater arrange for a free demo.
Perhaps even that vendor wouldbe willing to work with you on a
pilot of a small sample size tohelp you and your leadership see

(02:46):
the outcome. And, of course,begin to understand the range of
costs because like anything elsethat's cool, like a cool gadget,
I believe the market will adjustas adopting and modifications
and efficiencies are made inthis technology. So here's the
use cases I've seen kind ofbandied about, and I'll bucket

(03:10):
them into 3 groups.
Please note, I'm not sponsoredby any of these companies nor am
I recommending their usage. I'mjust sharing along some of the
folks that maybe you wanna justsneak around and lurk their
website and start to talk topeople specifically about some

(03:30):
of the software. So let's gowith that first category. I'm
gonna call this helping theagent. So there's voice AI right
up front of a telephone call.
Do check out company calledPolyAI. There's agent assist AI.
This provides the agent with thenext best suggested response.

(03:52):
Check out Zendesk models forsomething like this or even in
your Salesforce. There may bemodels available to you in
there.
Then there's AI to suggest theappropriate assignment of reason
codes, which is a very difficulttask, I think, for agents. Check
out episode 82, speech analyticswith Kowzilla for more details

(04:18):
here. Now the second category,so far, that's a little brief,
but it's helping the consumer.Although I can make a really
good case that all a AI willeventually help the consumer
with the with the bestexperience possible. But under
this category, helping theconsumer, there's chatbots and

(04:41):
virtual assistance, and you cancheck out episode 95 with Joe
Mazur of Michelin Tires for thatone.
And then the 3rd category, it'sa little wordy, helping to glean
insights for the brand and thequality teams. Right? So AI
applied to provide insights foryou and sentiment analysis,

(05:05):
check out operationalintelligence as a starting
point. And then there's AIapplied to specifically the
ratings and review channel,looking for insights for you and
your competitors, which I thinkis interesting. Check out
episode 91 with founder Gautamat EOG.
And lastly, check out any textanalytics to identify trends in

(05:30):
unstructured data. I'm not surethis is considered pure AI, but
there is an opportunity here.Thanks again for your time
during this curiously quickepisode. You have been listening
to the My Curious Colleaguepodcast with Denise Vineri.
Thank you for your time.