Outbound Contact Center

E10: AI and personalization in contact centers with James Hummer of Ethos

• Courtland Nicholas • Season 1 • Episode 10

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In this episode, Alex Levin interviews James Hummer, VP of Sales at Ethos, discussing the evolution of contact centers and the integration of AI. They explore the balance between digital convenience and personalized customer interactions in the life insurance industry, highlighting the role of AI in enhancing customer experience while maintaining human touchpoints.

To learn more about everything Outbound Contact Center, read more posts at regal.io/blog or email us at hello@regal.io.

Alex Levin:

Hi, this is Alex Levin and I'm here with James Hummer, the VP of sales from Ethos. Thanks for joining me,

James Hummer:

Hey, thanks, Alex. Thanks for having me.

Alex Levin:

So maybe to start, you know let's talk a little bit about your background and how you got to where you are now. You know, you've had a, a wide ranging, like, you know, you were an engineer, you had your own startup for a while, and now you're like working at a high, you know, high flying startup. So tell us a bit about like how you got to where you

James Hummer:

Yeah, absolutely. So I guess I've always been a builder, right? Young age, always like taking things apart, always liked, you know, building new things. And I was also, you know, that kid that, you know, had the lemonade stand, got jobs in the summer. It was just always working.

Alex Levin:

My kids are thinking about doing it now. And I'm just like, that's, you know, it's hard work guys. You got to stand there all day and like, make sure you're there. Like, did you have a successful lemonade

James Hummer:

it's a, you know, it's an infinite money glitch because your, your parents buy all the produce and all the sugar and you just sell it and then you just get money. But when you start, you know, doing that every weekend and every day and they start spending way more money and not seeing any return, they start charging you. And so it's really good for a bit until they catch on to the game and then you, you know, your, your profits start to suffer because you actually have to go into the real world and have cogs and whatnot. But yeah. You know, these days, you know, I don't know if I would do lemonade stands, but, you know, always, always looking to do something right. To your point, because I liked building, I went into engineering. I was good at math, went into engineering, got a mechanical engineering degree. That taught me kind of how to think like in systems. It's like when I approach problems, it's all about systems. What I didn't realize, you know, going into college, getting a degree in mechanical engineering is that most jobs, when you have that degree is you're just basically locked to a computer 24 seven. Like it's just in the office and being a young 20 year old, I wanted to be out. I couldn't stand sitting in the office for eight, nine hours a day in front of a computer. And so I transitioned into sales. And so from there, it was just like, you know, fell in love with the whole aspect of like the revenue engine, right? How do you make money? Like, how does a business make money? How do you set up systems so you can generate as much revenue as possible? That aspect just became like, you know, Just part of me. I just really, really enjoyed it. From, you know, started selling, you know, large mechanical HVAC systems in New York City, ultimately joined a health care startup doing telemedicine back in 2008. You know, we were way too early for telemedicine back then. From there, you know, started a company in pet health. Launched that with the third largest pet store chain in the United States, ultimately sold it and then got back into the startup game, like, you know, consulting and working with a number of like high growth technology companies, primarily in insurance health insurance, and now ultimately in life insurance. And so, you know, It's been a, it's been a long, you know, winding career, but it's been pretty fulfilling and, you know, ultimately it's kind of like all the same thing. It's building, it's building systems and it's, you know, it's being close to the money, being close to the revenue. It's, it's pretty exciting place to be.

Alex Levin:

yeah, ethos is a very exciting place to be these days. So maybe, you know, tell us like what, what is ethos is a founding story and like, what is ethos trying to do for customers? Yeah.

James Hummer:

So at Ethos, we, we sell life insurance directly to customers, right? So we're DTC life insurance company, and we specialize in what's called instant issue life insurance. So you can come to our website. Fill out an application 10, 15 minutes later, you can be fully approved and purchase that policy and be totally covered, you know, compared to, you know, the legacy life insurers, that process can take anywhere from six to eight weeks. So if you can think about it, like we make this incredibly convenient. Right. And so now we've been around for roughly five years or so, I think we launched somewhere in the, in 2018, you know, we do, we cover thousands of families a month now we, we do billions of dollars of premium. And so what we've done is we've really made this relatively arduous, but very valuable product for customers. Just attainable, like easily attainable through, you know, the website, their phone and whatnot. And so, yeah, we're basically just trying to make life insurance something that's really important for families. Very accessible to everybody and anyone.

Alex Levin:

We've talked about this before, you know, everyone who shops online now expects the rest of their life online. I think you sort of, you guys had a similar realization that, that we had when we were in the home services business at Angie's list, where, you know, I thought the business at Angie's list would be fully digital. There'd be no human connection whatsoever. And like, that was the dream. And then we found out actually it was good to talk to customers and customers liked it. We drove more revenue. And ultimately, you know, it was a better fit. And I think you guys, if I remember, went through a similar process where you actually found that having a fully digital experience wasn't as good as having this moment where for, for customers that were eligible, you actually went and talk with them.

James Hummer:

Yeah, so, you know, a large, even the majority of our customers still purchase other life insurance policy without ever speaking with an agent. And that's one of our, you know, highlights is that you can come and do this and be done and never have to do it if you know exactly what you want. You can come and get it, but there are some customers that, you know, want to speak to somebody, you know, the, the analogy I use for like life insurance is it's not an inexpensive product. You know, oftentimes it's, you know, a thousand,$2,000 a year that someone is spending on this product and life insurance, like unlike other things, you hope not to use it. Right. Like if you use your life insurance policy, it means that you've died and you know, ultimately you don't see any benefit of it. Your family sees the benefit of it. And so because of this, it's a, it's a very emotional and kind of like considered purchase. Like you don't get an iPhone, right? When you, when you spend$2,000 a year with life insurance, you just get what we call peace of mind. And so. For a lot of folks that look at this, like, you know, do I want to spend$200 today to protect my family? Yeah, most people say yes, but like when you actually think about clicking that button, is this the right decision? They really want to know, am I choosing the right product? Am I getting the right amount of coverage? Is this something I should do now, or should I wait? And really when you speak to somebody, you know, our licensed experts, you know, most of them have like, you know, 10, 15, 20 years of experience in the business. They can really help guide them and make the educated choice, which we have found has been really beneficial to our customers in helping them, you know, find the right product for them.

Alex Levin:

So yeah, you guys are in that interesting hybrid model where you have the digital experience. You have the human touch. You hire very knowledgeable people. We're certified in specific states. That are engaging with customers. And it's, you know, it's not like you're trying to get rid of that human touch. Like, sure, to your point, if somebody wants to self serve it's there, but you know, it's, it's a very new way of doing business online. That's a very different playbook than, than retail. So, you know, as you think about. You know, the, the team you've built, you know, and are continuing to build, like what are, what's top of mind for you? Like, what are you thinking most about over the next year as you're planning out?

James Hummer:

And when you're thinking about my, the team, like our, our sales organization, like what, what specifically do you, are you thinking about?

Alex Levin:

Yeah. You know, if you're thinking about, you know, your sales org, like what metrics are you watching most? Like, what do you think you and other people in this sort of space need to focus on.

James Hummer:

there's a couple different things. Like what we're focusing right now is how do we make sure that every customer that's coming into ethos is getting to the right place? Right. Be it self serve, be it speaking to an agent picking the right coverage. And so it's all about trying to optimize and kind of figure out where exactly we should be doing different touch points and what is going to kind of build that intent to that customer through that customer journey. And so that's the big thing that we're focused on. You know, when you get down to like the very specifics of like our sales organization, it's a lot about like our connect rates. What, who are we calling? When are we calling them? How long are our conversations? Are we hitting our touch points, et cetera, et cetera. But that's, you know, a pretty like a small piece of like everything that we're trying to do. Ultimately, it's, it's really kind of like building that funnel. And make sure that we're nurturing that funnel and trying to figure out new and better ways to get people to move through that funnel more efficiently at scale, right? Because we're, we are, we're getting to the point where we are larger than, you know, a handful of the larger legacy life insurers at this point. Like, I think I have some notes here, like according to like one of our recent LIMRA surveys, like, We're issuing more policies than folks like New York Life, Prudential, John Hancock. Like we're, we are sizable, right? And so now it's really how do we make that funnel even more efficient through both our product on website product experience, but also how do we engage those people through our agents while they're in that experience? Post the experience and you know, continuing onwards,

Alex Levin:

Yeah, for sure. And you know, part of what we've talked about a lot also is, You know, obviously you guys use regal as you have gone through this, like what's maybe something that surprised you that you've learned as you like tested and tried different scripts and tried different, you know, channels and ways like what's been surprising to you.

James Hummer:

you know, you tend to relearn the same lessons over and over again, sometimes, and, you know, sometimes you'll be surprised by like how just a simple change in like copy in your SMS will have a dramatic improvement or decrease in performance small tweaks. Make really big changes over time. And so, some of the surprising things that we have found is, you know our copy of our SMSs have really improved since we've been able to test with right? And those have driven,

Alex Levin:

And you know, you guys are using SMS. First of all, a lot of customers still are, you know, SMS is thing. The contact center, the sales team doesn't have it. So like just that you guys as a contact center, as a sales team are using it as big and then AB testing, you're on like, you know, you're on a different track for sure.

James Hummer:

it's the beautiful, you know, it's the beautiful thing of Regal. Right? Is that you can set up this system and then you can pit it against each other the best, most optimized way to engage your customers. Because it sends out a bunch, you know, what Regal does is it allows you to make it incredibly easy to blast people with phone calls and SMSs. And sometimes that works, but ultimately what we found is as you get better at it, you can send the right messages at the right time and get more outcome

Alex Levin:

Oh, for sure. And now you know, and now we're talking about AI like you've always been, I'd say earlier than most of our customers on trying AI agents and without naming names like there were some out there that were basically scams and like not really doing much. But I think the tech is getting to a point where it's like it's almost there. Like how have you been thinking about like starting to bring AI into this to, you know, make that experience for customers? Great do things that you couldn't have done before.

James Hummer:

Yeah, I mean, like the pessimistic side Is like, yeah, it's going to replace us all at some point.

Alex Levin:

Is that really pessimistic? like I'm excited if AI does the things that I don't want to do and I can go do fun things instead, you know, and it's a deflationary force and whatever. I'm not, I don't know if that's pessimistic.

James Hummer:

I don't know, I love working. So if I get put on a job, I don't know what I'm going to do. But what I don't know is if it's years or two decades, but it's going to happen like the tools, the AI tools are becoming so powerful so quickly that you'd be negligent not to have some part of your testing regimen be focused on AI. Right? We've tested a lot of different things. We've tested AI agents through text message. We've tested AI agents phone I think there's a lot of different ways how this is going to play out in terms of our business and just call it the business of contact centers with AI. I think there's some really great paths. I think there's also some negative paths that this could take where, makes it harder for companies like us to get in touch with our customers in a, in a, in a real way. Valuable way. But ultimately I think it's just going to change the, uh, the landscape. And I think that landscape is going to change. Once it changes, it's going to be rapid. And so unless you, if you're not testing it in trying to figure out how that's going to impact your business, then someone's going to catch up and beat you immediately. Because this, the, the tech is coming. And so you got to be prepared.

Alex Levin:

Yeah, agreed for sure. I mean, it's, you know, Sam Altman, the CEO of open AI, like saying, Hey, you know, soon there'll be a company that's a billion dollar revenue company with one employee. Like, you know, you know, to your point, I don't know if it's going to be in two years or 20 years, but there'll be a one person contact center that's handling what a thousand agents used to be able to do. The question is just when, so like, it's definitely exciting. I tend to think, you know, it's getting better really fast. And so it'd be pretty quick, but I think it's more like two years than 20 years, but you know, it is exciting to your point. You know, it's hard to know how customers will interpret it. And like, you know, it's hard to make sure that the experience with the customers are good. Like one thing I think a lot of contact centers are not thinking about is they're going and trying to build their own AI agent, put it out there. But they forget that that's the easy part. The hard part is what is the Q.A.? What is the system they are using? Because building an AI agent is not like building a bot. It's not like engineering. In engineering, you write code once you test it to make sure it works and you put it out there and it just does the same thing again and again. An AI agent is actually much more like running a contact center. There's A new one that comes in, you train it over some period. You see how it does with customers. You do some nesting, right? You do QA, you do coaching, and it's this constant, you know, level, you know, improvement that you're trying to put together because it's not static. It's not code. It is a stochastic model. That's going to give many different answers depending on, you know, what's going on. So. I think actually contact centers or people who run contact centers are going to be uniquely well suited to managing AI agents because it's so much like a contact center and not like running code.

James Hummer:

I think I would agree with that. I think there's the. More existential question of, and I'll relate it to like email marketing, right? Rewind 10 years email marketing was the way you got in touch with customers. And if you fast forward to today, I'm sure you and most people have like two email addresses. You have your personal email address and you have your spam email, right? Because email marketing has become so pervasive. In many different ways that you basically just shove it all into one place, right? And so the reason why that kind of came to be is because there's no, call it incremental cost of sending another email, right? Historically, there's been an incremental cost to making a phone call. And it's not the actual phone call that costs money. It's the staffing, the human being behind the phone call that creates that incremental cost. Now you remove AI agent in some capacity. And what you can imagine is a world where you can call for pretty much any reason for any size basket and phone number is now going to become as accessible as your email. And you see that SMS marketing and things of that nature, I'm sure you get a bunch of spam. And so now the question is, how is this going to be valuable to the customer, right? And how do you actually meet the customer to where they want to opt into that experience? Right. And so the big kind of, I think, sea change that is probably going to happen in call it the next, you know, one to two, three years, I'm not quite sure the timeline here is that there's going to be a different space in a different way that you engage with your phone and specifically a voice phone, right? And the people, the companies and the folks that figure that out and figure out how to engage customers in a positive way, they're going to win.

Alex Levin:

yeah, I mean, you know, our opinion, right? Our opinion is, you know, it's about, you know, doing things with those AI agents that humans couldn't do. So, you know, if on one end, you have a mother with three kids and she owns a home and, you know, she lives in New York, you know, they should be treated one way. You know, and then you have somebody else. Let's say they're right out of college and they're renting and they're thinking about, like, maybe starting to date. I don't know what they're on the opposite end of the spectrum. They should be treated another. Not that like not in a biased way. I mean, you should use the information you know about them to give them an experience that's tailored to them. And actually, human agents yes, As much as like, you know, they want to do this or it's really hard because when you have that much volume, you can't do it. AI agents are uniquely good at that. So like, I'm excited about the 24 seven availability of somebody who knows everything about me and is going to help be tailored to me. I think that is going to really unlock quite a lot. Now, the, the desire that I have, and I think most people have is for brands to sort of interact with me the way I want them to interact with me. And like, that's going to be, to your point, really tough for brands to handle. It's not just like, Oh, I'm going to call you every day, all the time. It's how do I figure out. What are the right signals the customer is giving me that says that I need help and that I'm proactively then engaging the customer, whether it's on text, email, phone, depending on the severity of the thing to help them. And it may even be options that you select as a, you know, as a person, like for my bank, you know, if my credit card fails, like, I want them like on the phone with me immediately telling me what's going on so I can go fix it. Is it fraud? Is it just something I did? Is it a mistake? You know, versus if it's like, I don't know, you have this much money left in your account, you need to put more money in the bank. Like, I don't know, I don't need them to call me for that. That's like not a very helpful moment. So yeah, I think, You know, and for everybody may be different. I think there's going to be a lot of personalization available. Finally.

James Hummer:

Yeah. It's going to be an opt in world versus an opt out world in some ways. And to your point, you we're going to have to figure out how to best engage those customers, how they want to be engaged.

Alex Levin:

Yeah.

James Hummer:

Ultimately, like, you know, every customer is going to have a channel through which they want to purchase. Right, and it's kind of generally tends to be the channel that they start with and kind of moving them to a different channel requires some finesse, right? It's not just as simple as they start on the website, move them to SMS. get them to kind of like make that progression from one call it sales channel or sales method to a second sales method? And what is the urgency or intent of that customer to make that transition with you? Both for their benefit and also the businesses, right?

Alex Levin:

So we're running sort of out of time here. So, you know if if you're sort of giving advice to, you know, contact centers that are starting to grow, starting to scale other than saying, of course, by Regal, like, you know, we know that, but like, you know, what advice would you have for people as they're thinking about building out, you know, more revenue generating teams more outbound context center teams?

James Hummer:

So I'd say you have to have two approaches that are constantly running at the same time. One is your, call it just your incremental, kind of like, get better every day mentality, right? How do you get, you know, one, five, ten percent better every day, every week, every month? Just incrementally take from what you've learned, and how do you apply those learnings to your next step? So you just continuously get better. The polar opposite of that is you have to swing from the fences. You constantly have to basically reinvent yourself and reinvent your team. If you're not doing that second piece, it doesn't matter how good you are incrementally learning. You're not going to make step changes and ultimately in startups, it's about finding and unlocking step changes. It's not about incrementally improving your business. Week over week, day after day, month after month. It just doesn't work that way. You have to continuously improve, but if you're not unlocking your 10, 20, 30, 40, 50%, Improvements and you're not doing that on a monthly or quarterly basis, then you're going to get smoked. And so you have to have that mentality, call it dual mentality, where you have to kind of mind your business and improve your business. But you also have to be like consciously trying. Some ways to find that next unlock in those bets, you should expect them not to work, right? You have a hypothesis of why they should work, but if they don't work, you shouldn't be discouraged, but you should consistently be going after it, right? And so if that's like the one thing, like another context or another revenue group should be thinking about is like, get better every day, but also try to like, Swing for the fences and don't let complacency of just kind of getting better, get in the way of progress because you're not going to succeed by just being good at your job. You've got to reinvent the job and you have to do that consistently.

Alex Levin:

Yeah, I love it. Thank you. I mean, in the end of the day, I think, like, the, the thing, you know, you're saying that really resonates with me is The job of a contact center, is not to treat everybody the same and not to just do things that drive to efficiency, right? The job is to, to your point, test and learn. And start using, you know, the data you have about customers to treat everybody differently, treat millions of customers like, you know, one in a million, that would be amazing. And, you know, that's the, the challenge I think in front of us as people in this industry. But James, thank you so much for joining me today. I appreciate you being here.

James Hummer:

100%. Alex, appreciate it.