What's Up with Tech?

From IVR To Orchestration: Building AI-First Customer Journeys

• Evan Kirstel

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If you could see customer issues before they happen, would you still measure success by hold time? We dive into how CX is transforming from a reactive cost center to a proactive, revenue-positive engine—and why the shift depends on a new orchestration layer that acts as the brain across every channel. With Alorica’s co-CEOs, Max and Mike, we unpack the practical architecture of AI-first customer journeys, the role of empathy in automation, and the real-world metrics that prove impact, from fewer complaints to higher NPS.

We break down what “participation over problem solving” looks like when AI learns a customer’s preferences and adapts each step—more relevant touches, fewer dead ends, and seamless handoffs between bots, systems, and people. You’ll hear how an airline used real-time detection to proactively rebook travelers, cutting complaints by over a third and lifting satisfaction. Beyond the headlines, we talk through the nuts and bolts: why data freshness matters more than perfect data, how to avoid 75 conflicting policy answers, and where to start when AI evolves weekly and the vendor map is overwhelming.

Forget seat-based contracts and vanity metrics. We explore outcome-based partnerships, resolution time by type, model effectiveness, and customer satisfaction as the north star. We also share a simple playbook to get moving now: launch a narrow bot with current policies, pilot orchestration on one high-friction journey, use a lab to capture edge cases, and deploy AI-embedded tools across sales and legal to bank quick wins. Finally, Max and Mike offer a candid look at Alorica’s 2026 roadmap—greater tech adoption, deeper investment in people, and a firm bet on blending AI with empathy to raise the bar for loyalty and lifetime value.

Join us, then tell us: what’s the first journey you’ll orchestrate? If this episode sparks ideas, follow the show, share it with a colleague, and leave a quick review so more builders can find it.

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SPEAKER_00:

Hey everybody, really fascinated for this chat today as we dive into how we're unpacking CX, which is going to look very different in 2026 and beyond, with a true innovator and uh player of the field at Alurica. Max and Mike, how are you?

SPEAKER_01:

Hey, Evan, nice to talk to you today. Doing well, Evan. Doing really well.

SPEAKER_00:

Good to see you both co-CEOs. So that's quite a kind of dueling piano setup we have here today. So we'll try to keep it uh entertaining. Uh before that, how would you introduce Max Alorica these days for folks who aren't familiar?

SPEAKER_01:

Sure. Uh well is one of the largest players in the CX space. Um, we are one of the largest private companies in the space and one of the only minority-owned businesses uh in the space. Um, we've had a long track record of transformation and being on the like cutting edge of technology, both through implementation of technology as well as investment in technology throughout our history. Um I'd say we're at a very interesting pivot point that Mike and I have stepped into the role here as co-CEOs. And we found interesting ways to accelerate that change, both in terms of what our clients experience, uh our our representatives experience, as well as what our company overall is delivering to market. And so shameless plug. If you want to learn more about Alorca, you should listen to our podcast as well as this one right after. You can go right there where we talk about a lot of these things. But I'm I'm sure Mike has another way to add to that.

SPEAKER_02:

No, I I I you know, Dooling, you mentioned pianos, so I try not to out out thing Max and his best repertoire for sure. Um thanks for having us. Uh yeah, Max hit it well. It's a great time to be uh co-CEOs of a CX company because of uh what we consider to be the transformation the industry is about to go through and is going through. So we're excited to talk about it.

SPEAKER_00:

Fantastic. I remember working with Alorica on the vendor side. This is 20 years ago. Well, media gateways. So what a long 20 years it has been. Um what's changing, uh, Max, if if you look at customer behavior expectations leading into 2026, we've got AI embedded in daily interactions. But what's fundamentally changed over those you know couple of years, if not two decades?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, listen, I think a lot has changed and it continues to change. Um, you know, it's something that Mike and I spent a lot of time thinking and talking about. Um, I think one of the things that um we think is the most seismic change, I think, is that the idea of a proactive instead of a reactive service is really becoming our baseline, right? You know, the uh AI enablement of customer experience um is really increasing expectations of both people's customers as well as brands in the market. And sometimes moving faster than brands can adapt, right? And so I think in 26, you know, customers will continue to expect, you know, uh companies to not only anticipate problems, um, but really be proactive in terms of what they offer with them. And so if I think about what that concept is today, it's very different than maybe what it was even two, three, four, five, or even more so 20 years ago, which was you know, would wait on hold for endless amounts of time, you know, which is something that everyone's had that experience with. I'm not gonna say that doesn't happen. But where I think it's increasingly moving to is, you know, predictive um examples, right? So we have a recent example of one of our major airlines that we service, where we, you know, our AI system was able to detect flight disruptions in real time and reached out to customers um with rebooking options before they even realized there was an issue, right? So it delivered reduction by a 35 plus percent reduction in complaint volumes, a 12-point increase in NPS, which as you know, maybe from the you know, 20 years ago, we're a very different business. But NPS is one of those things that we look at very, very closely. Um, and so it's it's continuing to kind of change the narrative about what CX is and how important it is for customers uh and companies to be in sync.

SPEAKER_00:

Fantastic. And Mike, what's changed in your uh mind, your perspective? And also what are you excited about most as we head into 2026 in a month?

SPEAKER_02:

In a month, yeah, less than a month. Um so I I'll just add to Max's comments a little bit. I think we're we're really excited that CX has become a focus for AI, partly because it's a performance and metrics driven. So it's easy to monetize the economics of how you shave time off an AHT or a handling time or uh you know a total call volume time. So easy pickings for where AI would go. But I actually Max and I have this thesis that the the reality of what will happen is there'll be a layer of a platform, call it an orchestration layer, that will become the next generation of of your comp your customer experience. Now, the reason for this sort of layering effect is that you are talking in terms of voice calls or chats today, or an omni channel. If you if you were you were 20 years with us in the industry, omni channel was hit. But the the reality of many of those things is it isn't uh a layer that you have to go buy an agentic engine to put onto it. So you're bolting on these sort of technical layers and depths that are so consistency labeled as more breadth of functionality. But I think what really happens is there's this layer of AI now that becomes an orchestration engine that interacts with the experience that's being presented to it, whether that's an agentic bot talking to it via Siri, what you ask it for, or whether it's a human talking via a phone, or whether it's uh another system to system from a B2B transaction for bookings. The reality is that orchestration becomes your brain, your language models, your LLMs, SLMs, whatever you choose to have, become your domain IP. So what we're seeing more of is clients start talking about journeys and more of how the sort of this ubiquitous layer can handle journeys independent of the transaction type, right? Call it interactive experience. But the interaction is what matters. Is it a person interaction, a bot transaction, is it a system transaction? But orchestration and that layer and that brain power connected to the IP of the client, a customer, uh, in terms of how they want to expose it via large language models or other. Um that becomes the key to what we think the future will be. And I I think the piece that's now getting layered into AI that that will be the most important part of it is this sort of human and emotion uh element of it that's been missing for a while, where the the interaction models can actually take the tone and voice and understand the empathy in the the real uh curse or cause of a call. So to me, that becomes a little bit more of what's missing from the elements to make this layer really uh the brain trust of the future. I we're excited about that.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, very exciting. And what do you say that CX is moving from simple problem solving to actual participation? Does anyone want to take credit for that quote? What does it mean in practical terms?

SPEAKER_01:

I we don't we don't we don't take credit for either quote. Mike and I have two bodies in one box, yeah, neither one of us. Um you know, I I think what's what's interesting is that you know, if you think about that that sentence, or whoever which one of us said it, because we talked so much, I think we're starting to talk alike, which is a bit scary. Um you know, um I I think it is something that if you think about that idea, it is shifting that CX is something that companies do to customers versus something that they actively participate in, right? Um and to Mike's point about orchestration layers and integration of technology, um, I think what AI, one of the things I'm I think we're both most excited about, and Aloric is as a company, is the idea of mass personalization and customization that AI is going to enable companies for a reasonable cost to personalize journeys um like you know, kind of a custom route GPS. Like, you know, if you look on Google Maps or back in the day, you remember MapQuest, you could pick routes that avoid, you know, tolls or bridges or highways or whatever you don't want to avoid. And so let's say you're a customer that likes to be talked to um by you know by phone. Companies will know that and they'll be able to interact with you in a different way. Um and the system will learn your kind of preferred pathway forward. So, like for example, if I know that Mike really likes a sports team I dislike, I'll make sure that I always mention that to him whenever they lose. Just like that, AI will look and say, okay, Max likes to have his questions answered or follow-ups by text after having a phone call. So it'll kind of participate with the consumer. I think the other interesting thing about this thing and the thesis that Mike and I share, is that it's actually going to increase the number of interactions um over time, uh, not decrease. And so I think the more customers can and will interact with their um brands or partners or however they think about how they interact with services and products, it's actually going to increase the amount of interactions in a global basis. What those look like and how those are delivered will continue to change. But that's I think what you know, Mike and I think about when we think about participation versus just simple resolution, which was did you know, did I check, did I meet your obligation, yes or no?

SPEAKER_00:

Amazing. When I when I started in the industry 35 years ago at Dialogic, you know, it was basically you know, press one for this, press two for that. We sort of didn't invent, but we certainly uh enabled the modern IVR, and it's just amazing how little that has changed over you know three plus decades. Uh why is that, uh, Mike? I mean, why why can't brands expect more from their CX partners than you know traditional IVRs that we still have to uh trawl through today?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, it's a it's a great analogy. It's um I you know I think the IVR had its day in which uh everybody would love to get rid of that tech debt if they could. Um they just got to figure a way to service the clients and put them in the correct queues for the right servicing. And queuing in IVRs was was and is still a method, but which a lot of people use. But I think AI kind of changes that for us, which is part of the excitement of this, which is um you have to think of the client. If if this is the time where CX becomes the most sexiest thing in the company, which has never actually been a statement that anybody would have made prior, right? It's sort of it's the thing you had to do to support the clients for the product because the product was the most important. But client protection, retention, upscaling and upselling are the new norms. There isn't an expectation that a client is just a static engine, it's a it's a an area in which more services and more products can be enabled. But how do we reach them? It isn't the traditional product development tool a positioning. Now it's about how do I take my CX stack and enable that to be an offensive weapon creating revenue for me. That typically never really was a discussion that was had, right? It was always, well, we could have them cross-reference or upsell. But what you have now is you have human capital trained on your products at very mature rates to your point, 20 years in the industry. We've got how do you then turn that engine of AI into a sales engine, which you could represent to a client that a product is in multiple colors, you could actually give them a clearly a bot that does most of that for you in any way possible. But what you have is a human in our side saying, well, in addition to this product, we have X. So for us, I think it becomes less about the IVR and the click, and more that the CX partners need a seat at the table and become your integration layers to how those journeys should be orchestrated. I'm going back to orchestration again. That that piece is the key. That sort of unlocks this power that probably exists everywhere. It's just untapped at the moment.

SPEAKER_01:

I think if I could add one thing, Evan, but to Mike's point, I think one of the really important things that Mike mentioned is the idea of turning, and I think this is part and parcel with what you're saying about the why do ABR, IVRs still exist, right? Um, is turning it in from a need to do or a cost center or into a uh, you know, let's call it a revenue generation engine or a you know, call it customer loyalty driver, right? So I think IVRs are still in place, if we say it this way, because they're inexpensive and the logic is written. Um, and it's something that you know can continue to handle a variety of calls. Although I know I don't know a single person that doesn't come up to me now that you know that Mike and I are running Alorica um and say, you know, I was on hold for such and such a time, but even if I was talking, but imagine if that experience wasn't like, hey, Max, I see you've called in once before about you know your iPhone not syncing to your computer or something like that. Let me get you someone who can address that problem, like, yeah, this continues not to work. Great. Let's send you out a new phone. And by the way, have you thought about protection on your phone in case you drop it or something like that? Right. And so it turns not only into a you know, press one for a new phone style, uh, press two for you know tech support. It it enables that to become interactions become the important driver of not only um customer SAT, but also revenue gen, right? So that's I think really key point. Mike and I are seeing that across verticals, across companies of different sizes, of how this once let's call it um much begrudged part of a company's must-do is becoming a really kind of more central focus. Fantastic.

SPEAKER_00:

Um, this space has many, many uh dozens of vendors. Many have been around for you know decades, and there are market maps of who they are, they're new entrants to this space. But are the traditional vendor models working? Are are they enough for CX uh and where it's headed? And why are there 3,000 bot companies now uh when there used to be you know a dozen? Uh just be curious about your perspective on the landscape. Mike or Max?

SPEAKER_02:

Uh I'll I'll start quickly and let Max, but we we've we spent a lot of time on this. Uh as you know, we talked to analysts quite a bit and a lot of customer uh C-level board meetings where they're asking us the same question. I I I do think the evolution of the model is sort of bringing the old to new again, which is outcome-based. If if the hypothesis or thesis we have is this orchestration's there and interactions become important, then you're going to pay by interaction. Whether it's a bot, a human, a system, it really uh agentic or a transactions are transactions. So I think outcomes become uh the most important measure of uh a cost factor or revenue cycle for us. But the the second part of that evolution, uh, I believe is lifting and shifting that experience. I think there are those clients that we work with that are fantastic at the customer experience. It's woven into their uh merits, it's woven into their um programs for their clients for longevity. It's it's really important to them. There are other clients who, in their journey, have got so many products coming to market that they really need a partner to own their CX journey while they're bringing the most expensive thing to market, which is the product they sell. So we've seen a lot of people looking for us to help orchestrate that journey from that end start to end. And that that is outcome, but it's also platforms, right? So I think the event solution is there will be an outcome transaction where this model will start to earn. You mentioned bots, bots will be part of that outcome, but also the platform by which this journey gets orchestrated will we'll foreshadow that that will be the key to making CX of the future, the companies of the future exist. And I think owning that platform and building it, and it's a layer on top of many things that exist today, whether it's models or other things, uh agentic tools. I think that's where uh this industry will go.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I think I I think the only thing, and Mike, like I said, we we try to play dueling pianos, not dueling, but you know, kind of in harmony and rhythm, depending on what section we each play. The thing I would say that I think is true today is that a lot of the technology of the future are just getting founded and built and started today. So you see thousands of bot companies, thousands of different things. But when you peel back a layer, and Mike and I look at lots of different companies to do, we do a lot of venture investing in the space. Um, some have a lot of really solid use cases, and some we've invested in are bringing to market, and others don't, right? And so I think one of the things that I think the industry is long overdue for is a true partnership model. Right to Mike's point on outcome-based results, um, having a CX partner versus a transaction handler, let's call it that for lack of a better term, I think is the really important part. Because if you think about a transaction handler, economic incentives are kind of skewed, right? Like it's in their interest to pay us, you know, in some cases, l as little as they want. And it's in our interest to try to charge them as much as we want versus getting the best outcome for both of us, which is having a good partnership with built around the best outcomes possible for their clients, not around um the you know, call it how many IVRs, bots, people, whatever the case may be. Right. The answer is your do your customers love you guys, or is it something that you want to do as an also you know, kind of brand part of your business? And I think increasingly most of our clients are moving more towards having um us to Mike's point as a seat at the table. Um, and those clients that we have that are some of our largest and longest standing partnerships, as well as some of our newest, are really really increasingly migrating to that partnership model, right? Where the loss of a customer, in many cases for customers for our clients, is much more expensive and impactful than anything else in their value chain, right? That doesn't matter how good you know, procurement engines are, IT technology interventions are. If you lose, let's say Mike, the customer comes in and says, I've had a horrible experience, I'm going across the street to Evans business. It's gonna be really hard to get in Mike back. So the cost of acquiring a customer, your CAC, is increasingly being looked at as a as an element of your CX spend. Um, and so I think that's increasingly where things are moving to, rather than static KPIs that don't really tell the whole story, right? AHT is one measurement of how satisfied someone is. I know many people that have 20-minute conversations with some of our associates that say these are great. I know people that say, I've had a two-minute chat and this is terrible. So it doesn't really always correlate to the best outcome. And so I think you know, and I think it's long overdue for true partnership mentality. Um, and and companies selfishly like Alorica, I think that are very focused on bringing the right technology to bear and human element where it makes the most sense in an integrated fashion.

SPEAKER_00:

Fantastic. So the move to loyalty, the move to long term value, I get, but what what KPIs need to change in order to kind of match this evolution? That's that's a great, that's a great question.

SPEAKER_01:

Um I I like to think generalities are never true. So it's it's hard to say what KPI would work for everything, but I think customer satisfaction and that will vary how you define it by sector, by company, uh and what matters to each company, right? Um, I think will ultimately win the day. Um, and the experience or how likely they are to be a promoter of your brand, I think will increasingly become a very valuable KPI. Um, you know, I think if you think about certain KPIs that I think will really um become, I wouldn't say less relevant, but like an interesting statistic will be the length of a call um or the length of an interaction. It's an interesting anecdote, but it is the primary driver of whether it was a good or bad interaction. Um, I think that's you know kind of how I would think about it. I think yeah, sorry, Mike.

SPEAKER_02:

No, I think there's uh just to add to that, I think there's a probably a couple of new metrics that that have to get defined pretty quickly. I think the idea of a transaction means time, and that means IT, speed, efficiency, and query. So AHT from a handling time becomes uh, I'll call it a transaction time, which is how fast was the resolution provided. Resolution by type. So if you think about a Gentec coming in as a bot, then the bot talks to what? Well, I need I could see in the orchestration layer what that bot is talking to, and I can see that that resolution was 100%. So you're gonna see resolution by type, and then you're gonna see model effectiveness, which also today would be extensive testing and all the hallucinations. But the reality of the model effectiveness is the domain by which the knowledge ingestion happened by which this resolution was able to occur. So you're gonna see a bit of knowledge become another measurable effect of to what extent do we need to really start equipping the questions that can't be asked that become the exception? So I think there's new metrics that have to get orchestrated into the layers, and they become equally as important to, and Max was spot on. The end of the day, it's CSAT. Was it was the was whatever that transaction handled by whatever method, was it accomplished in the amount of time and fast uh because speed is of the essence? It was the client happy, and I think those will just start to mature as we think about these new models.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Fantastic. Um, what's the biggest ship brands need to get ready for now for 2026? Are the things they could be doing to prepare and lay the groundwork for all of this change ahead? Any uh advice, words of wisdom?

SPEAKER_02:

Oh man. Data, data, data, data. So Max and I get this question with in every meeting we've gone to, uh, when someone says we want to get ready for tomorrow, what do we do first? Uh it isn't that it has to be all organized and perfect, it just has to be the most up-to-date. And what we mean by that is AI is great at policy ingestion and methods and documentation. It will learn whatever you feed it in that way, but it has to be the latest versions of those things because if you start to probe a corporate infrastructure looking for yesterday's travel policy, you'll find 75 copies. Well, it'll give you 75 answers if you want to ingest all 75 copies. So you really need to make sure your data is at least up to date and organized in a way that you can ingest it so that you're not creating yourself a problem with a model. That would be my first.

SPEAKER_01:

That's a that's a big one. That's a big first one. Data, data cleanliness and organization is really important. I think for many large companies, even mid or small companies, that's really challenging. Um, I would also say having a clear set of priorities in terms of what is the mission of your company, right? Like is the mission of your company to really focus on improving customer satisfaction and improving outcomes. And to Mike's point about resolution rates by channel, improving resolutions, um, is it to drive revenue, right? You know, is it to reduce costs? Is it yes, all of those things? Um, but prioritizing those things and thinking about how your and selfishly your CX partners or your partners across your enterprise can help you achieve your objectives in 2026. I think regardless of your view on the economic climate in the US or Europe or Asia, I think you know, cut companies by and large are looking for ways of maintaining the revenue growth they've experienced here last several years and finding ways to reduce costs in creative ways that don't detract from the their overall value to market. Um, and so I think really trying to spend time to find out what your goals are and maybe even by segment of your customer base becomes really increasingly important, I think, in the future. And I think, like to what we think we've talked about in this conversation, finding new ways of injecting turning something from a cost basis to a revenue basis is a really neat way of solving both of those problems.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, fantastic advice. What one I'd add is uh everybody asks us this question, and Evan, you you might get this as well. How do how do we get started? Um, so when people say, Well, I look at 26, man, there's so much noise, there's so many new things, the evolution of AI changes weekly. I I don't even know where to get started. And my my my Max and I have the same response to most of them. Uh, it's not the how, it's just get started. Like there's so many small things you could do. Um, yes, data is important, but you know, building a bot and getting yourself a chat bot on your website from uh just a what's my company about is a very easy way to start the journey of the knowledge that you need to build for future, right? So we always encourage people that try a lot of things. We have a lab environment where we bring a lot of clients into our lab and we become the experiment engine. And the reason you do that is because you're teaching everybody at the same time as you're learning about what could be the art of the possible, right? So to me, I think there's to 26, there's so much that could be done. Um, but every CFO, Max and I get this comment, every CFO has asked for 10% savings because they're spending so much on AI. The answer is you we should do something. Like let's just get started, like get started on something small and start to build the momentum. Because once it starts, uh you can start to see the art of the possible. And and I think then it's uh it's a tsunami that will continue to come.

SPEAKER_00:

That'd be nice. The flip side of that is uh uh I was at Gartner Expo a few weeks ago. There was an insurance company there on stage describing 87 AI projects they had underway in different parts of the organization. So uh do you think next year might be when we see AI begin to really deploy at scale beyond the the trial science projects and evaluations?

SPEAKER_01:

I I would say that I think AI is being applied in a large basis kind of across the industry. Um and I think what it's being used for is continuing to evolve and shift and change. I think um, you know, to your point about the 87 things that an insurance company is doing, they're gonna find that some of them really work well, and those are gonna double down on those ones that work really well. Um, you know, just aside from our business, what we do for our clients, you know, Lorca as a corporation, right, has over 100,000 people around the world, sites in you know, 50 plus countries, you know. Um, so it's we we ourselves are running a global enterprise as well and deploying AI. And I would say we're we've deployed AI to do a lot of things already, automated hundreds of thousands of transactions that our employees need every single day. So I think you know it's it's a bit like that sentence that tomorrow never comes. I think tomorrow is here as it relates to AI. And I think the the challenge from here is finding the best use cases that allow you to actually accelerate your goals versus those that are the simplest execution, in Mike's point. It's very easy to have a bot listen and learn to a um a policy or procedure. Is my flight in policy for my corporation? Yes, no. Yes or no, it is. You've already seen websites that do that today, right? That's really basic kind of utilization of policy management.

SPEAKER_02:

I would only Max's point is is spot on. People think AI is something I have to go build to get the value out of it. And I think we missed the fact that there are so many tools that you could adopt today that have an AI base in them today that give you a potential benefit immediately. So, in the case of legal in our contracts world, it's just an easy adoption of a platform with AI embedded that gives us so much more capabilities than we had yesterday. Sales, proposal development, uh client-pitch materials, outbound sales, sales lead development, all AI enabled today. So it didn't take us much to do it. So there's a bit of the platforms you can go source to build the core, and then there's this thing that you could build to monetize AI for yourself and CX as a layer on top. Those might be very different, but you can get value out of AI immediately.

SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely. So, final question any peek into the future at Alorica initiatives, uh roadmap plans that you could share, or do we have to wait till uh uh next year to see those that news and announcements?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, that's a good that's a good question. We get that question more than we'd like to uh answer it, I'll tell you that much. Um, I think one of the best things about being a private company is we get to do lots of interesting things and in different forms and fashions um that we've seen, you know, many of our public peers be like, hey, are you guys really doing all the things you're doing? Like, yeah, well, those are we only talk about 20% of the things that we're actually doing. So it's been a very um fun experience maintaining our status as a private company in this kind of very, you know, change-rich, evolution-rich uh environment. I would say, uh, you know, I know Mike has lots of uh, you know, kind of we share our thoughts around this, but I think the number one thing that you'll see increasingly from Alorca in 2026 is an increasing adoption of technology across every aspect of our business. You know, I think you know, AI adoption, utilization, and integration is key for the future of our business uh and our clients' businesses. And I think you'll see continued uh adoption of that as well as investment in our people, right? Like we are found, we're solidly in the cam. We believe the future of CX and what our company is going to be about is a blending of technology and people and empathy, um, and making sure that we bring that unique partnership mindset to our customers. So you'll see more investments in in venture companies, you'll see more uh investments internally in terms of AI development and utilization. Um, and you'll see, I think, increasingly less focus to your point before, about static, you know, kind of metricies and trying to elevate the conversation to the next level of how we judge our efficacy. You know, one of the things Mike and I are very proud of is the fact that we have more top quartile, number one and number two rankings by our clients than any of our peers. Um, and our clients uh tell us this as well. It's one of our key focus in taking over as co-CEOs is doing the small stuff incredibly well, in some cases the big stuff incredibly well. So now that we've checked that box, it's how do we take it to the next level in terms of integration of technology? So it's not as if I we could sit here to say we strive to be the number one provider for you in your future. No, we're already there, we're trying to move the goalposts in terms of integration of tech. That's what I would say.

SPEAKER_02:

Uh I would uh he says it so well that it leaves me wordless for anything. Um but it's not true. The I would just uh if I was a predictive engine, I would say that in 2026 Alorica is positioned to do something fairly big. Whether that's an advanced technology, whether that's uh Alorika becoming something more, uh, I think is still to be determined. But we have done all the right things as a company to put ourselves in a position with our clients to be top of the stack ranking. We've given our talent pool everything it needs to be AI enabled, and we've given ourselves a tech-enabled platform. I think we're in the driver's seat more so than we ever have been in the previous 20 years, and I think that's kind of where we're gonna go in 26.

SPEAKER_00:

Wow. Well, that was a mic drop moment, pun intended. Um thanks so much uh for joining. I shouldn't have waited 20 years to reach out again for an update. So I'd love to keep in touch. Thanks for sharing the mission and the vision.

SPEAKER_02:

You're welcome. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00:

Thanks everyone for listening and watching, sharing the episode, and of course, checking out the TV show, techimpact.tv on Bloomberg TV and Fox Business. Thanks, Max. Thanks, Mike. Take care. Take care.