No shortage of hot topics in AI! Listen today as I chat with Sam Nelson, VP of CX at Telarus. Today's session is titled - AI Agents: What's new and interesting in AI and what does it mean for you? Today, we dive into what's changed in AI Products since Sam and I last spoke. We also talk about Anthropic's latest release of their product titled "Computer Use" and how powerful that is. In addition, we talk about how Salesforce is planting a flag with its Agentforce offering. And, of course, Sam drops some great tips on how to leverage this knowledge to your competitive advantage and be a thought leader with your customers and prospects. Welcome to the next gold rush!
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Episode Transcript
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(00:01):
Welcome to the podcast that's designed to fuel your success in
selling technology solutions. I'm your host, Josh Lopresto,
SVP of Sales Engineering at Telaris, and this is Next Level
Biz Tech. Hey everybody, welcome back.
Today we are talking about some exciting stuff.
(00:21):
We're talking about AI agents, what's new, what's interesting
in AI and what does that mean for you?
And we have on with us the amazing Sam Nelson, VP of CX at
Teleris. Sam, welcome back.
Thanks for having me Josh. Always excited to be on the
podcast. Sam, we got man, I, I feel like
not a minute goes by where we'renot sharing, you know, some new
(00:42):
latest, greatest thing and trying to decide what this is.
And I figured, you know, we're, we're talking about some of
those, the partners need to hearabout it.
So, so let's, let's jump in. Before we do, I want to remind
everybody that Sam was on episode one O 8 the beginning of
the year. We were kind of just jumping
into some of the AI trends that you shared, you know, things
(01:05):
that that you know, was really kind of starting to elevate the
CX experience already. So if anybody hasn't seen that,
go back and listen to episode one O 8.
And then also you've got a greatproduction out there every week
that comes out the minute snippets.
I think it's crazy the amount ofthings that you're able to pack
into that. So if anybody has missed that,
go check those and and keep watching those every week.
(01:25):
I think you put some great stuffout there for our advisors.
Thanks. I can't believe it's already
been so long since we last spoke.
It's crazy. I know, I know and and there's
still so much to talk about. So much has happened.
We're gonna jam as much of it inas we possibly can.
So we talked about a little about your back story.
(01:45):
So we won't go into that. We're gonna make everybody go
back and listen to episode one O8 or one of the others that were
on there. But just give us a start.
Us off with hard lesson learned,mentor, mistake, old boss,
anything entertaining. Just start us off somewhere.
Anything entertaining, I love it.
You know what's funny is I am super late.
I was super late to the Ted Lasso bandwagon.
(02:06):
And so I recently watched that and the one quote that stood out
to me 'cause there's so many outthere.
Great series. If you haven't watched it, 10
out of 10 recommend. But the one quote I took away
from that was don't fight Back, Fight forward.
And that's one of my favorites when I think about it, you know,
every all these distractions andeverything going on and we tend
(02:27):
to react and, you know, ways that don't progress us forward
sometimes just naturally as humans, right?
But if we focus on eye on the prize and we move it forward, we
can get a lot farther with a lotless stress.
So definitely something I'm taking into the new year.
I love that 'cause I suppose if you don't look back, you don't
have to look and see what everybody else is doing.
It doesn't matter. Just focus on you and focus on
(02:48):
the forward. I love.
That exactly. All right, well, let's let's
dive in. We got a lot of we got a lot of
topic here. So we're talking hot trends AI,
which is we got all kinds of stuff.
We got AI agents. We got this anthropic computer
use thing that's floating around.
Let's let's level set here. And first of all, you know, we
(03:08):
know the word agents from traditional contact center side
of things, right? We know what an agent is.
But first of all, just to find for us though, what is an AI
agent? Yeah, for sure.
That's a great, great point you make there, Josh.
I think a lot of folks, just to level set with everybody,
whether you're selling CX or not, is a lot of people consider
(03:29):
an agent to actually be a human sitting in a cubicle answering
phones, right, answering calls now answering emails and chats
and things of that nature. But in the context of artificial
intelligence, an actual AI agents is some kind of either
system or a program that's actually designed to
(03:52):
autonomously perform tasks on behalf of a user or doesn't even
have to be a user. It could be a completely
different system, right? And so essentially, it's this
mechanism that can make decisions, it can plan, it can
interact with different environments in order to achieve
a particular goal that you give it.
(04:14):
So just know that it's not, you know, necessarily human.
It's again it's a system or a program designed to do things.
Awesome. Well, so, so we'll get into
Anthropic. Some topics for today.
We're going to talk about what Anthropic is doing.
We're going to talk about what Salesforce is doing.
But maybe you know, just since now from the last time that we
chatted, we've got this evolvinglandscape just moving so quick.
(04:37):
What are some of the most significant changes that you've
seen in the market with some of these introductions of the AI
products in the last nine months?
There are so many, it's, it's too wild.
It's like, where do I even start?
Since episode 1 away at Josh, There are so many different use
cases. And what's interesting now is we
are starting to see more AI use cases specific to industry or
(04:59):
vertical. And these all these new
companies coming out with, you know, different features
leveraging different kinds of LLMS or large language models.
We're starting to see more of that come up past the basic,
hey, analyze this, this message,right?
We kind of started with analysisand insights into data, but now
(05:24):
it's how do we act upon that data?
And the AI is actually helping us do that in this next step of
AI evolution. So let's let's Fast forward then
Anthropic, right? You know, when we talk about the
big LLMS that are out there, we've got ChatGPT, we've got
Microsoft Copilot, we got Anthropic.
And so there's a, there's a feature that's come out, right?
(05:46):
If we understand, I can chat with all of those LLMS.
I can ask him for advice. I can, you know it and it will
generatively reply and give me suggestions to anything from
what do I do here to help me build a strategy with this to,
you know, help me do anything that I want, write code, you,
you name it, everything in between.
But now Anthropic has come out with this thing called, which I,
I would have loved a better nameon this, but it is what it is.
(06:09):
It's called computer use. So it says, OK, I, you, you can
do an API into a virtual instance.
It sounds really confusing. So I went and played with this
and I think, Oh my gosh, this isgoing to take forever.
I'm, you know, I'm not a JavaScript guy.
I may be a nerd, but I don't, I'm not, you know, that deep in
writing code. And it was really simple.
(06:31):
I take an API key that Anthropicgives me.
I plug it in over here into a virtual machine and poof, I have
a little chat window that now I'm not just chatting with the
text base, I'm chatting and I'm watching this thing.
Hey, go book me a flight from Salt Lake to LA on Tuesday and
I'm watching it open up Firefox.I'm watching it pull up times.
(06:53):
I'm watching it look at schedules.
So we're moving towards this idea of full blown autonomous,
right? So that's to me, this is a not
highly touted but monumental leap from an AI interaction
perspective. So as that's moving along, what
does this mean? How does this play?
How do you want advisors to think about this?
(07:13):
Yes, there are a lot of crazy cool things coming out with a in
the realm of AI, especially withcomputer use.
I've seen it, I've tried it. It's really, really interesting.
I think it has a long way to go in the in the context of what
you mentioned, look up flights for me, right?
It can look up flights for you, but it won't take it a step
(07:34):
further and actually book thingsbased on your preferences.
You still have to provide some kind of decision making there,
right? And I think that eventually
we'll get there, but it needs tostill have that human element of
knowing what it is that you wantto do, right?
And so I think that when we we look at practical use of it
right now, it's mainly around the research, right?
(07:55):
And cutting down the time and increasing overall productivity
and how AI is helping us do research.
But this poses an interesting sort of conundrum with our
technology advisors, right? As how do you have the
conversation around these thingsthat are new really to
everybody, right? It's even new to us.
Josh, you and I were just talking about this on the other
(08:17):
day. Check this out.
It's brand new. Let's look at it and the reality
is clients, businesses out thereare going through the same exact
thing. And so as easy as it may seem,
right, plugging in API keys and things and such, I'm not
technical either, but there is absolutely a technical component
(08:37):
and other components you have toconsider to complete the tech
stack. And for tech advisors, it's, you
know, providing that word of caution to business users of,
hey, that's really cool. But you know, we talked about
data security and data cleanliness and things of that
nature, right? If you are leveraging AI, it's
(08:58):
only as good as the data that you provided with and that it's
being provided and the sources it's being provided.
I think the, I think the value just thinking of this too, is
that if you know, our partners are going to get into these
conversations and they're going to dive deep and they're going
to uncover, right. And we'll talk about some of the
things that you've done at, at some of the latest AI summits
and, and examples. But I again, I don't, I don't
(09:21):
want to miss out on the underscoring of, OK, we explore
this stuff because we're passionate about it and we love
technology. But what you'd also what, what
you should also understand is that we can come in and help
you. We're we're, we're, we're so far
in front of some of the real commercialized productization
that we're here to help you divein from a technical perspective,
engineers, architects, advanced solutions, whoever you need to
(09:44):
bring into that call, whatever that layer of the discussion is,
don't forget that, yes, we're passionate about this, but
we're, there's a purpose at the end, right?
We're here so that we're ready for whatever it is you all need
to pull us into. Yeah, absolutely.
Don't go in alone because I guarantee that that small AI
comment or conversation you haveis going to turn into something
(10:05):
much bigger. Yeah, Yeah, it it seems like
this is one of the greatest opportunities for technology
sprawl and runaway IT. Just like, you know, we thought
cloud was this scary runaway IT thing.
And now, you know, look at how we've been able to kind of
monetize it, partners have been able to capture that.
(10:26):
I think this is that next thing where hey, this is, this could
be great if you do it right. And to do it right, you know,
let us help you with that. Right, right.
Yep, All right. Salesforce, you know, we've,
we've sat adjacent, we've integrated A zillion CX
environments into that. We've, we've maybe consulted of
(10:46):
how to build, what to build, things like that.
But Salesforce has put their foot down in the CX landscape
with this little thing called Agentforce.
Talk to us about what that is, what's its role in CX, and
what's your thoughts. Yes, it is a big move for
Salesforce. And as we all know, they're a
behemoth when it comes to CRM. And so this is really important
(11:09):
for technology advisors to understand is a lot of the CRM
players, not just Salesforce, but even Microsoft in the world
of Dynamics and some of those other larger players out there
are actually looking to enhance the agent desktop.
And so essentially what that means is they are now giving
consumers, yes, everyday consumers the ability to create
(11:33):
these AI agents within their solutions, within their CRMS.
And so, you know, having that capability sit in the CRM is
extremely powerful because if you've ever used one, and we do
everyday, you are living and breathing inside that thing all
day long, right? And so the capability is there,
(11:53):
it's there, but it's the fact that it is now available to
consumers. It's actually been there for a
really long time, if you think about it, right?
Automations, you clicking a button and it does something
right. But now you have control as a
consumer to define exactly what happens by just providing it a
bunch of data, giving it some parameters and off you go,
(12:16):
right? But again, what's really
important to understand is it does still require a lot of
technical work. I mean, Josh, you and I have
tried this. Yeah, we've actually tried this
in Salesforce just in a random environment and it's not easy,
not, not yet, right. And you have to consider these
(12:37):
out-of-the-box solutions that wehave in the portfolio today at
Telaris make all that stuff really easy.
And so we're at this kind of pivotal moment of, you know,
we've got these big behemoths coming in saying they want to
take over Agent Desktop, but at the same time, we have to help
them understand that that's not always the easiest route unless
(12:57):
they have resources. And we need to be a part of that
resource conversation. In fact, technology advisors
need to position themselves as resources for these new features
and these new AI agent capabilities coming out from
these behemoths. Yeah.
You know, it's a it, it was a fun, interesting exercise to go
(13:17):
through. And I, I think we, we bring it
up so that our advisors obviously know what's out there,
what their customers, what theirprospects are looking at.
But the, the reality is, if you are the CIO, if you're the CEO,
do you right now want one personthat may be the expert building
(13:38):
that and being dependent on yourentire infrastructure being
built on that? Or would you rather have a
full-fledged mature platform that is ready with a huge
wrapper of team around it? I think those are the things,
you know, we'll continue to pay attention to this as this
evolves, but it's, it's, it's compelling.
They're, they're making an effort and they're going to be
(14:00):
in these conversations. And I want our advisors to be
prepared that they're going to be in these conversations.
Right. And on the bright side,
honestly, Josh, it's good to bring this stuff to the
forefront, right? Because it actually puts CX at
the top of everyone's mind. And so if anything, now is the
perfect time to start talking tobusinesses about what exactly
(14:21):
happens on the agent desktop andwhen, because you can help them
go down that path and help them define what that experience
looks like without them just kind of experience experimenting
with something on their own. All right, So Thanksgiving is
over. We've all had our Turkey.
We're, we're, we're looking forward now to 2025, we're
(14:41):
thinking about AI CX2025 S your role as the VP of CX.
What's your read on how these businesses are going to approach
that in 25? And then what, what kind of
trends do you see being implemented or any examples
around that? The crystal ball who our
favorite? That's my favorite question.
Yes. Well, first AI agents is going
(15:04):
to be a huge theme really I see just a couple things going into
the new year, right? Because we are again, like I
said at this pivotal point of where we as well as customers
are still trying to understand the capabilities of AI and it's
actually moving a lot faster than we thought and that we can
understand. And so going into the new new
year, AI agents in the context again of artificial intelligence
(15:27):
being a program or you know, a software or what have you.
That's going to be a big theme going to the new year is people
are going to wonder how to best either create or use AI agents
to optimize business processes, things of that nature.
The second trend that I'm predicting here is around
(15:48):
industry or sector specific innovation like cool, sounds
great. What does that mean?
It really means that we're goingto start seeing more and more
capabilities emerge based on industry specific use cases.
So think of it as you know, say in healthcare patient
(16:13):
experience, booking appointments, what specific
solutions can you, you know, leverage to book appointments
versus a hey, a solution boilingthe ocean saying let's book
appointments for everybody. It's going to just get really
industry specific and continue to grow in that fashion as we go
into 2025 because every single industries these cases are just
(16:35):
being hyper focused on right now.
Lovett is that is there anythingadditional there that you think
you know is is personal personalization, is that same as
vertical specific? Any any differences in that or
are those one of the same? Yeah, that's a great question.
I think it is a little bit of both.
(16:56):
It's one and the same and different because I definitely
think that when you look at patient experience versus a
retail experience, right, they're going to look
dramatically different. However, hyper personalization
leveraging artificial intelligence is not going to
slow down. So I would say that's almost a
sub trend that we're going to see sprinkled into everything.
(17:17):
People are not just going to look at, hey, how do you book
appointments with a primary carephysician?
But they're going to look at, OK, you know, based on a
condition or your time preference or date preference or
location preference. How do they further tailor
booking appointments to be a better experience for you as a
patient? So it's definitely sprinkled in.
(17:39):
It's not slowing down. And it's going to be interesting
to see what more we can personalize out there with AI,
The fact that we can even just generate videos without even,
you know, engaging other humans,It's it's pretty wild.
I've seen too many cat videos. Yeah, I.
I know, we, I know we say this alot right now, but there is no
fun or time to be. It's Jim Gaffigan reference, if
(18:02):
anybody can remember what that'sfrom.
But there is, it's just this is so exciting to see and just
think about how can we apply this?
How can we use this? How can we help our advisors?
There's just there's no shortageof lack of innovation and then
figuring out a use case to applyit.
And I what we have to caution, Ithink to put a bow on some of
(18:22):
that, what we have to caution the the advisors on is that the
customers are the, you know, the, the, the IT people at these
orgs are equally as excited, right?
And so as we look at some of these, are we looking at and you
know, let's say the customer brings up, hey, do you have
these 95 things? I'm, I'm looking at?
Are we a problem looking for a solution or are we a solution
(18:47):
looking for a problem? Cause the 1st is a lot easier
and RO is out a lot more solid. And those are interesting
conversations to, you know, callsomebody's baby ugly.
But I think we have to frame it up and and try to decide which
product fits where. Yep, absolutely you have to.
OK, so this is all rosy and exciting, but I think we make it
(19:10):
sound really easy sometimes. But now we're introducing
really, really powerful technology that I think it's
there's APIs, there's integrations, there's data
cleanliness. I mean, talk to us about, well,
it's got all this promise. What are some of these
difficulties that you're seeing the companies struggle with in
(19:31):
trying to do some of this on their own?
We touched on it a little bit earlier.
Yeah. I think the number one thing is,
like you mentioned earlier, theysee something shiny and new and
they think, OK, what can we do as a business to accommodate for
something like that? When in reality, it should be
the way around. And I think we don't consider as
well as customers don't considerthe security concerns around
(19:55):
using things like ChatGPT like Claude, right?
We don't consider the information that we put in
there. We think, oh, this is so easy.
Let's just pop in everything andnext thing you know, you're
leaking a bunch of proprietary data into the ether, right?
And if it's not blocked off. That's a huge problem.
And so I think that first and foremost there is a security
(20:18):
concern around implementation and actually using large
language models out there. Everyone wants to use the most
powerful, but it does come with security risks if you don't
handle that appropriately. And on top of that around
implementation, you hit the nailon the head with customers can
(20:39):
only leverage artificial intelligence as as long as the
data is good. And so that becomes a cloud
conversation, data integrity. That's I would say challenge
number 2 is making sure that data is clean because if it's
not, you're going to you're going to suffer when it and when
it comes to AI and its outputs. So, so if I'm a partner, if I'm
(21:00):
an advisor and I know that my customers, this is the, this is
the questions section. I love questions.
So if I'm an advisor, I've listened to what you just said.
I know some companies are going to be struggling with that and I
think maybe my customer might begoing through that, but I'm not
quite sure what to ask them. What's your, what's the one
(21:21):
question that eases them into asking would elude out then a,
oh, I hadn't thought about that or oh, you know, security.
Wait, what? What's your what's a good
question to ask there to uncover?
Are they going down that road orhave they thought about this?
My favorite question, and I willtotally steal this from our
(21:43):
amazing Jason Lowe CX Solution Architect.
It truly is what is your AI roadmap going into 2025?
If you ask that question, it will expose quite a bit.
They will either say, and most likely they won't, but they will
either say, here it is, which isvery rare, or the latter, which
(22:06):
is what do you mean an AI road map?
And that is the perfect place tostart.
So again, just to reiterate, what does your AI road map look
like for 2025? And that will set off so many
light bulbs. I mean, just think about getting
in your car and all the emergency lights are on, right?
It's going to inspire that feeling for an end customer to
(22:28):
consider because I guarantee that they've touched artificial
intelligence in some way, shape or form, right?
We can, can, we can for sure saythat.
But now, now you want to unpack exactly how much and what
they've considered around how touse AI in the business.
So that's the number one question.
And usually after that it's OK. Well, what do I, what do I do
now, Sam? I've asked them, right, talk
(22:50):
about AI readiness and that's where you have the conversation
around the data. And we actually have an AI
readiness document out there. So yeah, we're going to actually
continue to build more resourcesaround that because what I, I
should have added this to my third prediction, but it's this
born in AI, quote UN quote, bornin AI consulting that has now
(23:12):
emerged. Because if you start with AI and
you start with a conversation ofhow do you want to leverage it?
Let's look at your use cases. That leads to all of the
different technology swim lanes,not just CX, but cybersecurity,
cloud, advanced networking, mobility, IoT, right?
And so it's a new different way of actually selling, but it
(23:34):
crosses over all of the different swim lanes.
So very powerful. I love it.
You know, you mentioned cars carmechanic back in the day.
My this, there's the total parallel here.
People would come in for like, Ineed my oil change.
And you know, obviously our goalwas to what else can we find
that we can help them with besides this one thing?
We'll do this one thing, but we'll say, did you know that all
(23:57):
these other things are going on on your car?
And my favorite, favorite, I sawthis more than once, more than
twice, probably more than three or four times.
You mentioned all the lights on on the dash.
You know that if you take a little piece of black electrical
tape and if you're at the driver's seat and you put that
tape right over the check enginelight, you don't have to see it,
but it doesn't mean that it's not still on.
(24:18):
And so don't let your customer be the, the tape over the check
engine light person. And I, I love your idea to how
we can help get in front of it. Love that question.
Awesome. OK, final couple thoughts here.
So I want to move into a little bit of practical advice and then
we'll get into kind of some somewrap up and takeaways here.
So final thought on practical advice.
(24:40):
So, so if partners, OK, we're we're getting them warmed up to
the idea of this AI and CX tech sale.
What's the practical advice? You, you've done some great
stuff at some recent events, butwhat would you help them to
suggest to initiate some of those meaning conversation,
meaningful conversations that kind of capitalize?
Yeah, When it comes to customer conversations, I say, you know,
(25:01):
start with the general questions, don't get too
specific, and really try to understand a use case.
When I have a client who comes to me and says I want to use AI,
my next question is, well, how do you envision AI helping you
in the business? And there's all kinds of
different things that I get. And you could tell that they're
just going in all these different directions, help guide
(25:23):
the conversation, but more importantly, bring a resource.
I mean, that's why we have 3 dedicated CX solution architects
and a huge, huge field solution engineering team, right?
Don't go in alone. Bring us along for the ride
there. But Josh, I actually want to
talk sort of more practical use,right?
Because I think a lot of people are thinking, well, how do I use
(25:44):
this in the business? And you talked about AI, our AI
summits that we had pretty recently.
We had three of them this year. And I actually went on stage and
I demoed a couple things. I demoed GPT, ChatGPT
specifically, and I gave it someprompts.
And you have to understand that prompting is not just, you know,
hey, tell me about this. It's a lot more complex than
(26:07):
that. You have to give it a lot of
parameters. And so we covered that.
But what's even cooler is, I think advanced voice mode.
If you haven't tried it yet, tryit.
Advanced voice mode with ChatGPT.
One of the practical use cases is if you're one of those who's
who's a talker versus a typer, this is going to help you
significantly. You could be driving in the car
and having a full mind mapping or brainstorming session with
(26:31):
advanced voice mode and it will generate a dock for you
afterwards of a summary, right? People are doing things like
writing manuals on the go. I, I tried this the other day.
I walked my dogs and I had a full conversation with advanced
voice mode around some ideas going into next year and it was
brainstorming with me. And when I got back home after a
(26:51):
1520 minute walk, it had a document ready for me
summarizing everything we talkedabout and some action items that
I should take from that. So definitely, you know,
leverage these tools yourselves because the more experience that
you have with them, the better that you can speak to them in
front of your clients. And honestly, even if you can't
monetize something like that today, the fact that you just
(27:12):
bring general knowledge around Productivity Tools that speaks,
speaks volumes. Yeah, awesome thought
leadership. I love it.
I it's great, great advice. OK, All right, so let's say key
takeaways here before we wrap this up.
What do you want? We we talked about a lot of good
stuff today, but what do you want the audience to remember
(27:35):
from today about AI agents and how to roll that into the, you
know, the next 9 to 12 months? Yep, I'd say number one thing
when you ask the question again,reiterating the question, if
you're tuning in towards the endof this podcast, it's what does
your AI road map look like for 2025?
That is the number one to open the can of worms and then two,
(27:57):
just keep in mind the trends AI agents plus industry specific.
So when you look at your client base or you're prospecting into,
you know, new client accounts, consider the different use cases
before you go in so that you're fully equipped to have the
conversations to take them to the next step.
Love. It all right, final thoughts
(28:17):
here. Take this anywhere you want,
anything you're excited about yourself over the next 12
months. Are you going to buy a robot?
Anything else you want our our advisors to pay attention to?
Off topic, on topic, take us home.
Look, man, I have a Roomba and I've had a Roomba for some time
and that thing is just has changed my life.
But it's already been around forsome time if you think about it
right now. Am I going to go buy an
(28:38):
Optimist? I'm not sure.
I'm a little worried about kind of the iRobot situation, but
assuming we have the parameters in place, I mean hey, you never
know, we've already got self driving cars so go figure it's
the next step and we just got tokeep up.
Love it, love it. So much stuff to pay attention
to. Great stuff.
(28:58):
Appreciate you coming on as always, Sam.
Thanks for thanks for dropping all the knowledge and and doing
all the things that you do. Thank you.
Appreciate it. All right, everybody, that wraps
us up for today. I'm your host, Josh La Presto,
SVP of Sales Engineering at Telaris.
This has been AI agents. What's new, what's interesting
in AI and what that means for you, Sam Nelson, VP of CX at
Telaris. Until next time.
(29:23):
Next Level Biztech has been a production of Telaris Studio 19.
Please visit telaris.com For more information.
Welcome to the podcast that's designed to fuel your success in
selling technology solutions. I'm your host, Josh Lopresto,
SVP of Sales Engineering at Telaris, and this is Next Level
Biz Tech. Hey everybody, welcome back.
Today we are talking about some exciting stuff.
(00:21):
We're talking about AI agents, what's new, what's interesting
in AI and what does that mean for you?
And we have on with us the amazing Sam Nelson, VP of CX at
Teleris. Sam, welcome back.
Thanks for having me Josh. Always excited to be on the
podcast. Sam, we got man, I, I feel like
not a minute goes by where we'renot sharing, you know, some new
(00:42):
latest, greatest thing and trying to decide what this is.
And I figured, you know, we're, we're talking about some of
those, the partners need to hearabout it.
So, so let's, let's jump in. Before we do, I want to remind
everybody that Sam was on episode one O 8 the beginning of
the year. We were kind of just jumping
into some of the AI trends that you shared, you know, things
(01:05):
that that you know, was really kind of starting to elevate the
CX experience already. So if anybody hasn't seen that,
go back and listen to episode one O 8.
And then also you've got a greatproduction out there every week
that comes out the minute snippets.
I think it's crazy the amount ofthings that you're able to pack
into that. So if anybody has missed that,
go check those and and keep watching those every week.
(01:25):
I think you put some great stuffout there for our advisors.
Thanks. I can't believe it's already
been so long since we last spoke.
It's crazy. I know, I know and and there's
still so much to talk about. So much has happened.
We're gonna jam as much of it inas we possibly can.
So we talked about a little about your back story.
(01:45):
So we won't go into that. We're gonna make everybody go
back and listen to episode one O8 or one of the others that were
on there. But just give us a start.
Us off with hard lesson learned,mentor, mistake, old boss,
anything entertaining. Just start us off somewhere.
Anything entertaining, I love it.
You know what's funny is I am super late.
I was super late to the Ted Lasso bandwagon.
(02:06):
And so I recently watched that and the one quote that stood out
to me 'cause there's so many outthere.
Great series. If you haven't watched it, 10
out of 10 recommend. But the one quote I took away
from that was don't fight Back, Fight forward.
And that's one of my favorites when I think about it, you know,
every all these distractions andeverything going on and we tend
(02:27):
to react and, you know, ways that don't progress us forward
sometimes just naturally as humans, right?
But if we focus on eye on the prize and we move it forward, we
can get a lot farther with a lotless stress.
So definitely something I'm taking into the new year.
I love that 'cause I suppose if you don't look back, you don't
have to look and see what everybody else is doing.
It doesn't matter. Just focus on you and focus on
(02:48):
the forward. I love.
That exactly. All right, well, let's let's
dive in. We got a lot of we got a lot of
topic here. So we're talking hot trends AI,
which is we got all kinds of stuff.
We got AI agents. We got this anthropic computer
use thing that's floating around.
Let's let's level set here. And first of all, you know, we
(03:08):
know the word agents from traditional contact center side
of things, right? We know what an agent is.
But first of all, just to find for us though, what is an AI
agent? Yeah, for sure.
That's a great, great point you make there, Josh.
I think a lot of folks, just to level set with everybody,
whether you're selling CX or not, is a lot of people consider
(03:29):
an agent to actually be a human sitting in a cubicle answering
phones, right, answering calls now answering emails and chats
and things of that nature. But in the context of artificial
intelligence, an actual AI agents is some kind of either
system or a program that's actually designed to
(03:52):
autonomously perform tasks on behalf of a user or doesn't even
have to be a user. It could be a completely
different system, right? And so essentially, it's this
mechanism that can make decisions, it can plan, it can
interact with different environments in order to achieve
a particular goal that you give it.
(04:14):
So just know that it's not, you know, necessarily human.
It's again it's a system or a program designed to do things.
Awesome. Well, so, so we'll get into
Anthropic. Some topics for today.
We're going to talk about what Anthropic is doing.
We're going to talk about what Salesforce is doing.
But maybe you know, just since now from the last time that we
chatted, we've got this evolvinglandscape just moving so quick.
(04:37):
What are some of the most significant changes that you've
seen in the market with some of these introductions of the AI
products in the last nine months?
There are so many, it's, it's too wild.
It's like, where do I even start?
Since episode 1 away at Josh, There are so many different use
cases. And what's interesting now is we
are starting to see more AI use cases specific to industry or
(04:59):
vertical. And these all these new
companies coming out with, you know, different features
leveraging different kinds of LLMS or large language models.
We're starting to see more of that come up past the basic,
hey, analyze this, this message,right?
We kind of started with analysisand insights into data, but now
(05:24):
it's how do we act upon that data?
And the AI is actually helping us do that in this next step of
AI evolution. So let's let's Fast forward then
Anthropic, right? You know, when we talk about the
big LLMS that are out there, we've got ChatGPT, we've got
Microsoft Copilot, we got Anthropic.
And so there's a, there's a feature that's come out, right?
(05:46):
If we understand, I can chat with all of those LLMS.
I can ask him for advice. I can, you know it and it will
generatively reply and give me suggestions to anything from
what do I do here to help me build a strategy with this to,
you know, help me do anything that I want, write code, you,
you name it, everything in between.
But now Anthropic has come out with this thing called, which I,
I would have loved a better nameon this, but it is what it is.
(06:09):
It's called computer use. So it says, OK, I, you, you can
do an API into a virtual instance.
It sounds really confusing. So I went and played with this
and I think, Oh my gosh, this isgoing to take forever.
I'm, you know, I'm not a JavaScript guy.
I may be a nerd, but I don't, I'm not, you know, that deep in
writing code. And it was really simple.
(06:31):
I take an API key that Anthropicgives me.
I plug it in over here into a virtual machine and poof, I have
a little chat window that now I'm not just chatting with the
text base, I'm chatting and I'm watching this thing.
Hey, go book me a flight from Salt Lake to LA on Tuesday and
I'm watching it open up Firefox.I'm watching it pull up times.
(06:53):
I'm watching it look at schedules.
So we're moving towards this idea of full blown autonomous,
right? So that's to me, this is a not
highly touted but monumental leap from an AI interaction
perspective. So as that's moving along, what
does this mean? How does this play?
How do you want advisors to think about this?
(07:13):
Yes, there are a lot of crazy cool things coming out with a in
the realm of AI, especially withcomputer use.
I've seen it, I've tried it. It's really, really interesting.
I think it has a long way to go in the in the context of what
you mentioned, look up flights for me, right?
It can look up flights for you, but it won't take it a step
(07:34):
further and actually book thingsbased on your preferences.
You still have to provide some kind of decision making there,
right? And I think that eventually
we'll get there, but it needs tostill have that human element of
knowing what it is that you wantto do, right?
And so I think that when we we look at practical use of it
right now, it's mainly around the research, right?
(07:55):
And cutting down the time and increasing overall productivity
and how AI is helping us do research.
But this poses an interesting sort of conundrum with our
technology advisors, right? As how do you have the
conversation around these thingsthat are new really to
everybody, right? It's even new to us.
Josh, you and I were just talking about this on the other
(08:17):
day. Check this out.
It's brand new. Let's look at it and the reality
is clients, businesses out thereare going through the same exact
thing. And so as easy as it may seem,
right, plugging in API keys and things and such, I'm not
technical either, but there is absolutely a technical component
(08:37):
and other components you have toconsider to complete the tech
stack. And for tech advisors, it's, you
know, providing that word of caution to business users of,
hey, that's really cool. But you know, we talked about
data security and data cleanliness and things of that
nature, right? If you are leveraging AI, it's
(08:58):
only as good as the data that you provided with and that it's
being provided and the sources it's being provided.
I think the, I think the value just thinking of this too, is
that if you know, our partners are going to get into these
conversations and they're going to dive deep and they're going
to uncover, right. And we'll talk about some of the
things that you've done at, at some of the latest AI summits
and, and examples. But I again, I don't, I don't
(09:21):
want to miss out on the underscoring of, OK, we explore
this stuff because we're passionate about it and we love
technology. But what you'd also what, what
you should also understand is that we can come in and help
you. We're we're, we're, we're so far
in front of some of the real commercialized productization
that we're here to help you divein from a technical perspective,
engineers, architects, advanced solutions, whoever you need to
(09:44):
bring into that call, whatever that layer of the discussion is,
don't forget that, yes, we're passionate about this, but
we're, there's a purpose at the end, right?
We're here so that we're ready for whatever it is you all need
to pull us into. Yeah, absolutely.
Don't go in alone because I guarantee that that small AI
comment or conversation you haveis going to turn into something
(10:05):
much bigger. Yeah, Yeah, it it seems like
this is one of the greatest opportunities for technology
sprawl and runaway IT. Just like, you know, we thought
cloud was this scary runaway IT thing.
And now, you know, look at how we've been able to kind of
monetize it, partners have been able to capture that.
(10:26):
I think this is that next thing where hey, this is, this could
be great if you do it right. And to do it right, you know,
let us help you with that. Right, right.
Yep, All right. Salesforce, you know, we've,
we've sat adjacent, we've integrated A zillion CX
environments into that. We've, we've maybe consulted of
(10:46):
how to build, what to build, things like that.
But Salesforce has put their foot down in the CX landscape
with this little thing called Agentforce.
Talk to us about what that is, what's its role in CX, and
what's your thoughts. Yes, it is a big move for
Salesforce. And as we all know, they're a
behemoth when it comes to CRM. And so this is really important
(11:09):
for technology advisors to understand is a lot of the CRM
players, not just Salesforce, but even Microsoft in the world
of Dynamics and some of those other larger players out there
are actually looking to enhance the agent desktop.
And so essentially what that means is they are now giving
consumers, yes, everyday consumers the ability to create
(11:33):
these AI agents within their solutions, within their CRMS.
And so, you know, having that capability sit in the CRM is
extremely powerful because if you've ever used one, and we do
everyday, you are living and breathing inside that thing all
day long, right? And so the capability is there,
(11:53):
it's there, but it's the fact that it is now available to
consumers. It's actually been there for a
really long time, if you think about it, right?
Automations, you clicking a button and it does something
right. But now you have control as a
consumer to define exactly what happens by just providing it a
bunch of data, giving it some parameters and off you go,
(12:16):
right? But again, what's really
important to understand is it does still require a lot of
technical work. I mean, Josh, you and I have
tried this. Yeah, we've actually tried this
in Salesforce just in a random environment and it's not easy,
not, not yet, right. And you have to consider these
(12:37):
out-of-the-box solutions that wehave in the portfolio today at
Telaris make all that stuff really easy.
And so we're at this kind of pivotal moment of, you know,
we've got these big behemoths coming in saying they want to
take over Agent Desktop, but at the same time, we have to help
them understand that that's not always the easiest route unless
(12:57):
they have resources. And we need to be a part of that
resource conversation. In fact, technology advisors
need to position themselves as resources for these new features
and these new AI agent capabilities coming out from
these behemoths. Yeah.
You know, it's a it, it was a fun, interesting exercise to go
(13:17):
through. And I, I think we, we bring it
up so that our advisors obviously know what's out there,
what their customers, what theirprospects are looking at.
But the, the reality is, if you are the CIO, if you're the CEO,
do you right now want one personthat may be the expert building
(13:38):
that and being dependent on yourentire infrastructure being
built on that? Or would you rather have a
full-fledged mature platform that is ready with a huge
wrapper of team around it? I think those are the things,
you know, we'll continue to pay attention to this as this
evolves, but it's, it's, it's compelling.
They're, they're making an effort and they're going to be
(14:00):
in these conversations. And I want our advisors to be
prepared that they're going to be in these conversations.
Right. And on the bright side,
honestly, Josh, it's good to bring this stuff to the
forefront, right? Because it actually puts CX at
the top of everyone's mind. And so if anything, now is the
perfect time to start talking tobusinesses about what exactly
(14:21):
happens on the agent desktop andwhen, because you can help them
go down that path and help them define what that experience
looks like without them just kind of experience experimenting
with something on their own. All right, So Thanksgiving is
over. We've all had our Turkey.
We're, we're, we're looking forward now to 2025, we're
(14:41):
thinking about AI CX2025 S your role as the VP of CX.
What's your read on how these businesses are going to approach
that in 25? And then what, what kind of
trends do you see being implemented or any examples
around that? The crystal ball who our
favorite? That's my favorite question.
Yes. Well, first AI agents is going
(15:04):
to be a huge theme really I see just a couple things going into
the new year, right? Because we are again, like I
said at this pivotal point of where we as well as customers
are still trying to understand the capabilities of AI and it's
actually moving a lot faster than we thought and that we can
understand. And so going into the new new
year, AI agents in the context again of artificial intelligence
(15:27):
being a program or you know, a software or what have you.
That's going to be a big theme going to the new year is people
are going to wonder how to best either create or use AI agents
to optimize business processes, things of that nature.
The second trend that I'm predicting here is around
(15:48):
industry or sector specific innovation like cool, sounds
great. What does that mean?
It really means that we're goingto start seeing more and more
capabilities emerge based on industry specific use cases.
So think of it as you know, say in healthcare patient
(16:13):
experience, booking appointments, what specific
solutions can you, you know, leverage to book appointments
versus a hey, a solution boilingthe ocean saying let's book
appointments for everybody. It's going to just get really
industry specific and continue to grow in that fashion as we go
into 2025 because every single industries these cases are just
(16:35):
being hyper focused on right now.
Lovett is that is there anythingadditional there that you think
you know is is personal personalization, is that same as
vertical specific? Any any differences in that or
are those one of the same? Yeah, that's a great question.
I think it is a little bit of both.
(16:56):
It's one and the same and different because I definitely
think that when you look at patient experience versus a
retail experience, right, they're going to look
dramatically different. However, hyper personalization
leveraging artificial intelligence is not going to
slow down. So I would say that's almost a
sub trend that we're going to see sprinkled into everything.
(17:17):
People are not just going to look at, hey, how do you book
appointments with a primary carephysician?
But they're going to look at, OK, you know, based on a
condition or your time preference or date preference or
location preference. How do they further tailor
booking appointments to be a better experience for you as a
patient? So it's definitely sprinkled in.
(17:39):
It's not slowing down. And it's going to be interesting
to see what more we can personalize out there with AI,
The fact that we can even just generate videos without even,
you know, engaging other humans,It's it's pretty wild.
I've seen too many cat videos. Yeah, I.
I know, we, I know we say this alot right now, but there is no
fun or time to be. It's Jim Gaffigan reference, if
(18:02):
anybody can remember what that'sfrom.
But there is, it's just this is so exciting to see and just
think about how can we apply this?
How can we use this? How can we help our advisors?
There's just there's no shortageof lack of innovation and then
figuring out a use case to applyit.
And I what we have to caution, Ithink to put a bow on some of
(18:22):
that, what we have to caution the the advisors on is that the
customers are the, you know, the, the, the IT people at these
orgs are equally as excited, right?
And so as we look at some of these, are we looking at and you
know, let's say the customer brings up, hey, do you have
these 95 things? I'm, I'm looking at?
Are we a problem looking for a solution or are we a solution
(18:47):
looking for a problem? Cause the 1st is a lot easier
and RO is out a lot more solid. And those are interesting
conversations to, you know, callsomebody's baby ugly.
But I think we have to frame it up and and try to decide which
product fits where. Yep, absolutely you have to.
OK, so this is all rosy and exciting, but I think we make it
(19:10):
sound really easy sometimes. But now we're introducing
really, really powerful technology that I think it's
there's APIs, there's integrations, there's data
cleanliness. I mean, talk to us about, well,
it's got all this promise. What are some of these
difficulties that you're seeing the companies struggle with in
(19:31):
trying to do some of this on their own?
We touched on it a little bit earlier.
Yeah. I think the number one thing is,
like you mentioned earlier, theysee something shiny and new and
they think, OK, what can we do as a business to accommodate for
something like that? When in reality, it should be
the way around. And I think we don't consider as
well as customers don't considerthe security concerns around
(19:55):
using things like ChatGPT like Claude, right?
We don't consider the information that we put in
there. We think, oh, this is so easy.
Let's just pop in everything andnext thing you know, you're
leaking a bunch of proprietary data into the ether, right?
And if it's not blocked off. That's a huge problem.
And so I think that first and foremost there is a security
(20:18):
concern around implementation and actually using large
language models out there. Everyone wants to use the most
powerful, but it does come with security risks if you don't
handle that appropriately. And on top of that around
implementation, you hit the nailon the head with customers can
(20:39):
only leverage artificial intelligence as as long as the
data is good. And so that becomes a cloud
conversation, data integrity. That's I would say challenge
number 2 is making sure that data is clean because if it's
not, you're going to you're going to suffer when it and when
it comes to AI and its outputs. So, so if I'm a partner, if I'm
(21:00):
an advisor and I know that my customers, this is the, this is
the questions section. I love questions.
So if I'm an advisor, I've listened to what you just said.
I know some companies are going to be struggling with that and I
think maybe my customer might begoing through that, but I'm not
quite sure what to ask them. What's your, what's the one
(21:21):
question that eases them into asking would elude out then a,
oh, I hadn't thought about that or oh, you know, security.
Wait, what? What's your what's a good
question to ask there to uncover?
Are they going down that road orhave they thought about this?
My favorite question, and I willtotally steal this from our
(21:43):
amazing Jason Lowe CX Solution Architect.
It truly is what is your AI roadmap going into 2025?
If you ask that question, it will expose quite a bit.
They will either say, and most likely they won't, but they will
either say, here it is, which isvery rare, or the latter, which
(22:06):
is what do you mean an AI road map?
And that is the perfect place tostart.
So again, just to reiterate, what does your AI road map look
like for 2025? And that will set off so many
light bulbs. I mean, just think about getting
in your car and all the emergency lights are on, right?
It's going to inspire that feeling for an end customer to
(22:28):
consider because I guarantee that they've touched artificial
intelligence in some way, shape or form, right?
We can, can, we can for sure saythat.
But now, now you want to unpack exactly how much and what
they've considered around how touse AI in the business.
So that's the number one question.
And usually after that it's OK. Well, what do I, what do I do
now, Sam? I've asked them, right, talk
(22:50):
about AI readiness and that's where you have the conversation
around the data. And we actually have an AI
readiness document out there. So yeah, we're going to actually
continue to build more resourcesaround that because what I, I
should have added this to my third prediction, but it's this
born in AI, quote UN quote, bornin AI consulting that has now
(23:12):
emerged. Because if you start with AI and
you start with a conversation ofhow do you want to leverage it?
Let's look at your use cases. That leads to all of the
different technology swim lanes,not just CX, but cybersecurity,
cloud, advanced networking, mobility, IoT, right?
And so it's a new different way of actually selling, but it
(23:34):
crosses over all of the different swim lanes.
So very powerful. I love it.
You know, you mentioned cars carmechanic back in the day.
My this, there's the total parallel here.
People would come in for like, Ineed my oil change.
And you know, obviously our goalwas to what else can we find
that we can help them with besides this one thing?
We'll do this one thing, but we'll say, did you know that all
(23:57):
these other things are going on on your car?
And my favorite, favorite, I sawthis more than once, more than
twice, probably more than three or four times.
You mentioned all the lights on on the dash.
You know that if you take a little piece of black electrical
tape and if you're at the driver's seat and you put that
tape right over the check enginelight, you don't have to see it,
but it doesn't mean that it's not still on.
(24:18):
And so don't let your customer be the, the tape over the check
engine light person. And I, I love your idea to how
we can help get in front of it. Love that question.
Awesome. OK, final couple thoughts here.
So I want to move into a little bit of practical advice and then
we'll get into kind of some somewrap up and takeaways here.
So final thought on practical advice.
(24:40):
So, so if partners, OK, we're we're getting them warmed up to
the idea of this AI and CX tech sale.
What's the practical advice? You, you've done some great
stuff at some recent events, butwhat would you help them to
suggest to initiate some of those meaning conversation,
meaningful conversations that kind of capitalize?
Yeah, When it comes to customer conversations, I say, you know,
(25:01):
start with the general questions, don't get too
specific, and really try to understand a use case.
When I have a client who comes to me and says I want to use AI,
my next question is, well, how do you envision AI helping you
in the business? And there's all kinds of
different things that I get. And you could tell that they're
just going in all these different directions, help guide
(25:23):
the conversation, but more importantly, bring a resource.
I mean, that's why we have 3 dedicated CX solution architects
and a huge, huge field solution engineering team, right?
Don't go in alone. Bring us along for the ride
there. But Josh, I actually want to
talk sort of more practical use,right?
Because I think a lot of people are thinking, well, how do I use
(25:44):
this in the business? And you talked about AI, our AI
summits that we had pretty recently.
We had three of them this year. And I actually went on stage and
I demoed a couple things. I demoed GPT, ChatGPT
specifically, and I gave it someprompts.
And you have to understand that prompting is not just, you know,
hey, tell me about this. It's a lot more complex than
(26:07):
that. You have to give it a lot of
parameters. And so we covered that.
But what's even cooler is, I think advanced voice mode.
If you haven't tried it yet, tryit.
Advanced voice mode with ChatGPT.
One of the practical use cases is if you're one of those who's
who's a talker versus a typer, this is going to help you
significantly. You could be driving in the car
and having a full mind mapping or brainstorming session with
(26:31):
advanced voice mode and it will generate a dock for you
afterwards of a summary, right? People are doing things like
writing manuals on the go. I, I tried this the other day.
I walked my dogs and I had a full conversation with advanced
voice mode around some ideas going into next year and it was
brainstorming with me. And when I got back home after a
(26:51):
1520 minute walk, it had a document ready for me
summarizing everything we talkedabout and some action items that
I should take from that. So definitely, you know,
leverage these tools yourselves because the more experience that
you have with them, the better that you can speak to them in
front of your clients. And honestly, even if you can't
monetize something like that today, the fact that you just
(27:12):
bring general knowledge around Productivity Tools that speaks,
speaks volumes. Yeah, awesome thought
leadership. I love it.
I it's great, great advice. OK, All right, so let's say key
takeaways here before we wrap this up.
What do you want? We we talked about a lot of good
stuff today, but what do you want the audience to remember
(27:35):
from today about AI agents and how to roll that into the, you
know, the next 9 to 12 months? Yep, I'd say number one thing
when you ask the question again,reiterating the question, if
you're tuning in towards the endof this podcast, it's what does
your AI road map look like for 2025?
That is the number one to open the can of worms and then two,
(27:57):
just keep in mind the trends AI agents plus industry specific.
So when you look at your client base or you're prospecting into,
you know, new client accounts, consider the different use cases
before you go in so that you're fully equipped to have the
conversations to take them to the next step.
Love. It all right, final thoughts
(28:17):
here. Take this anywhere you want,
anything you're excited about yourself over the next 12
months. Are you going to buy a robot?
Anything else you want our our advisors to pay attention to?
Off topic, on topic, take us home.
Look, man, I have a Roomba and I've had a Roomba for some time
and that thing is just has changed my life.
But it's already been around forsome time if you think about it
right now. Am I going to go buy an
(28:38):
Optimist? I'm not sure.
I'm a little worried about kind of the iRobot situation, but
assuming we have the parameters in place, I mean hey, you never
know, we've already got self driving cars so go figure it's
the next step and we just got tokeep up.
Love it, love it. So much stuff to pay attention
to. Great stuff.
(28:58):
Appreciate you coming on as always, Sam.
Thanks for thanks for dropping all the knowledge and and doing
all the things that you do. Thank you.
Appreciate it. All right, everybody, that wraps
us up for today. I'm your host, Josh La Presto,
SVP of Sales Engineering at Telaris.
This has been AI agents. What's new, what's interesting
in AI and what that means for you, Sam Nelson, VP of CX at
Telaris. Until next time.
(29:23):
Next Level Biztech has been a production of Telaris Studio 19.
Please visit telaris.com For more information.
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