This episode is less theory and more "What you need to do!"
This audio recording is from the LinkedIn Audio Event we hosted on Friday, November 3, 2023. It's an in-depth discussion that covers all the preliminary steps you should consider before embarking on your journey into Artificial Intelligence.
We also explore the various tools that can significantly enhance your experience and effectiveness in the field. Additionally, the conversation includes insights into some of the most exciting and innovative tools that we anticipate will emerge in the AI landscape soon.
This episode is aimed at providing you with a comprehensive understanding of how to get started with AI and the technologies that could play a crucial role in shaping your experience.
If you are looking for USA outsourced customer service or sales support, we here at Expivia would really like to help you support your customers.
Please check us out at expiviausa.com, or email us at info@expivia.net!
Follow Tom: @tlaird_expivia
Join our Facebook Call Center Community: www.facebook.com/callcentergeek
Connect on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tlairdexpivia/
Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@callcenter_geek
Linkedin Group: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/9041993/
Watch us: Advice from a Call Center Geek Youtube Channel
This episode is less theory and more "What you need to do!"
This audio recording is from the LinkedIn Audio Event we hosted on Friday, November 3, 2023. It's an in-depth discussion that covers all the preliminary steps you should consider before embarking on your journey into Artificial Intelligence.
We also explore the various tools that can significantly enhance your experience and effectiveness in the field. Additionally, the conversation includes insights into some of the most exciting and innovative tools that we anticipate will emerge in the AI landscape soon.
This episode is aimed at providing you with a comprehensive understanding of how to get started with AI and the technologies that could play a crucial role in shaping your experience.
If you are looking for USA outsourced customer service or sales support, we here at Expivia would really like to help you support your customers.
Please check us out at expiviausa.com, or email us at info@expivia.net!
Follow Tom: @tlaird_expivia
Join our Facebook Call Center Community: www.facebook.com/callcentergeek
Connect on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tlairdexpivia/
Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@callcenter_geek
Linkedin Group: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/9041993/
Watch us: Advice from a Call Center Geek Youtube Channel
One of the things that I think has I've learned, you know, as we've kind of gone in to kind of kick this thing off of of what, what are some of the tools that you need. Like everybody thinks, you know, we can just turn kind of this AI button on, we can purchase this piece of software. When to do this thing right, you have to start to think about all the things that you need to do ahead of time to really have a, I think, a platform that is that is worthy of being called kind of AI. You know, one of the things that we have really struggled with with clients that you know, because every client that we have an exp, he is like, hey, we want to. You know, if you have any AI stuff, what is the roadmap for this? We'd like to try the generative AI from that first touch point. We want to try to get rid of some of our headcount and you know I will go to them and be like, okay, fine, you know, the first thing that you really, that I'm finding you really have to have is an absolutely, really good KMS system, right, so you know, everybody thinks KMS is kind of going away because of the AI where we're really, you know KMS is and having a knowledge management system that's going to tie into everything right, not just your top level kind of generative, having those chatbots in your natural language processing and your IVR or on your website, but also when you get into things like agent assist, when you get into things like you know, looking at analytics from a different perspective of being able to actually ask questions and get answers back. If you don't have a really good KMS and most companies do not, I think almost the more complex you are, probably the better your KMS is if you're doing service properly.
Speaker 1:But if you are a, you know, a smaller contact center that says, hey, we want to do this, you know that's something to really start to think about. So you know that's one of the even tools that we didn't even know we had to offer, but we're starting to offer customers now because nobody has it. They don't know where to go with it and they need it. So I think you know that's one big thing. The other thing is is as many integrations as you possibly can think through Right? So you know any kind of data you know. If you're a bank, you know to. Obviously you want to integrate with your customers. You know you can do that. You want to integrate with your clients. You want to integrate with your clients. You want to integrate with your clients. You want to get the integrations into your core. If you have a customer based CRM, you want integrations into that. That's a huge piece of this pie.
Speaker 1:And then I think the third piece that we don't think about, at least right now, is is how do you get your customer service data Right? And right now that's that's kind of transcripts. But it's crazy how important transcripts have become and also how difficult they are to get. In so many of these CCAS platforms we have found a way to use our analytics to be able to get transcripts for our clients. So, from building out a KMS to integrating into any possible data source that you possibly can, and then also to be looking at those types of transcripts to really load those into, to kind of and again I'm kind of using the kind of the nice I've seen so many demos on, kind of the nice and light and AI and kind of the tools that they use to be able to, you know, upload all of this information. That then will tie into all of the tools. But again, people thinking I can just snap my fingers and go full AI. I think that's that's a huge misconception that I'm seeing a lot of our clients do that we have to kind of be like whoa guys, let's make sure that we're thinking that through. So again, for even for your companies and for your contact centers. If you're talking to higher ups, I think you know that's a huge piece of the roadmap of making sure that you can get kind of those tools in process. You know I'm more excited about the tools for agents and the tools for data from an AI standpoint in the contact center than I actually am about, you know, the kind of this again, this first touch generative chatbot that is going to be supposedly taking ever all the contact center agents away.
Speaker 1:I think that's just for me. If you think of online banking right, it's kind of really good online banking, right, I can do, I can transfer my balance, I can make payments, I can do all of those types of things. But I could be, I could have done that the last 10 years. Now we're moving to different infrastructures, we're moving to different channels, we're moving to different business types that we're now being able to do that with. But I'm more excited about how agent assist can really have impacts on our customers and how we're dealing with our agents.
Speaker 1:I'm really excited about having real time analytics for our agent. I don't have these tools yet. I have agent assist but from a real time analytics right to be able to see in a supervisor hand of a visual representation of kind of calls going south to be able to then jump on those on those calls. I'm really excited about prompting analytics right to be able to not just look at the key where no one, nobody likes they look cool. But really from a from a usefulness standpoint, keywords and the bubbles right that we all have kind of come to know and love for when it comes to any type of analytic data can be pretty difficult to really discern actionable data from. You really have to dig into the data and you can do that, we do that and it's awesome. But we're getting now to a point where tools are out there where you can prompt right, you can say hey, what were the five most negative keywords that customer said about this product yesterday? And to be able to pull that information up what were some of the longest average handle time of some of my agents and who's been trending that way over the last three weeks. And then, you know, can we create a document for these guys based on where we think they could improve their handle time, create a training doc, right?
Speaker 1:Those kind of things are the stuff that I think really excites me and those are the tools that they're available now in a certain enterprise customer facet. I think they're coming for the little people like like me. You know, as as we kind of make this a little bit more democratized and there's a little bit more competition with with some of the really good providers that are out there. You know I'm excited about our small little, teeny, tiny, you know, auto QA, where we're using prompting and chat GPT to, you know, be able to fully automate QA scorecards that our customers have. We're doing it internally right now on a smaller scale, but to be able to scale that to kind of a SaaS product is something that's really exciting for me.
Speaker 1:So again, that's kind of my where, what I wanted to talk a little bit and get deeper into, as we kind of go on this day again for everybody that's joining, if you guys have any questions, please, please, please raise your hand. I don't want this to just be, you know, me talking to you guys. If you have anything that you want to add, please come up. I'll bring you up on stage, just kind of raise your hand and and you and I can have a quick, you know, even five minute conversation of a back and forth. I think that's where you know, I'd love to hear from you guys of how you're utilizing some of these, these, these technologies, or a lot of people are now just at least thinking about you know what, what are the real tools, that that we think can be implemented and those that are going to have an impact? You know, just to kind of continue on this, I really struggle and, if those of you have followed me, I did a couple videos on this this week.
Speaker 1:Technology is totally different and, again, this is in the BPO space, but I think that it doesn't matter. For a BPO contact center or if you were just a, you know, an internal contact center, we used to purchase technology that was siloed into and had to answer two questions. Number one does it create a value for our customer and is there ROI or is there enough revenue for us to justify it for Expedia, right? So we would look at analytics, we would look at an agent assist. We would look at any type of reporting software, any of those that gamification, right, we'd look at these and we'd have them siloed and they had to answer yes to both of those or we wouldn't purchase them, and I think that you can't do that anymore. And again, let's just look at the BPO and I know that I might be the, even the only BPO here, but just to start from a BPO standpoint, the last three or four RFPs guys that I have had has had agent assist as something that you must have on your platform to even be able to bid on that product. So agent assist is starting, what I see, to become as prevalent as somebody having chat, right, you know, that was the big thing. Everyone we went from voice and then everybody we saw had to have chat, and then we got into the social aspect, but now it's starting to be the AI tools.
Speaker 1:And again we struggled and did not purchase or have any type of agent assist for a while, because again I think there's some value for customers. But if I'm going to knock off 10 seconds of average handle time and I'm going to have to pay a ton of money, relatively speaking, to do that, it didn't make sense for us and I may have to raise my customer's price and all they're getting is 10 seconds of average handle time of efficiency. That maybe it knocks overall the scope at one FTE off, but it still didn't make sense financially. But now I don't. We can't look at it that way. Now we have to look at technology as a whole for all of our customers. Again, if I don't have agent assist, it might not have a huge ROI for me, but if I don't have agent assist and if now it's starting to be if your contact centers don't have agent assist, you're going to be falling behind. I'm not going to be able to get more business if I don't have these type of tools. So instead of just again siloing and saying everything, now we have to look at things and we almost have to have a. Have our technology be a almost a net zero right on the cost versus, you know, the gain of what we're having.
Speaker 1:And then I think that again, from a BPO standpoint, we have said we can't raise our per hour rates. It's very difficult to do that. So we're taking kind of the CCAS model and if there are cool tools we're kind of charging a monthly fee for them. If you want analytics, we're not going to add, you know, 50 cents or $1 an hour. You know we're going to, you know, charge you 1500 bucks a month for those kind of tools, and I think customers kind of understand that a little bit more.
Speaker 1:But again, getting to your contact centers, if you have an internal center, just understand. I think this is where I see so many RFPs and so many different clients. This is where the market is shifting and the technology is shifting. Right, you are starting to see your competitors. I guarantee you make investments into that, that top line generative chatbot kind of thing. They're probably going to fail a little bit. It's not going to be great.
Speaker 1:But I think the customers and your competitors that are doing agent assist, that are looking deeply into analytics, that are not just taking it from a keyword standpoint but having a huge investment into that, that are saying, hey, how can we make QA better with AI? You know, again, do we, do we use a chat GBT type model? Do we use, you know, a lot of C cast players are not at the point where they can take the time to use your actual form, which I find super annoying. Right, they want to use kind of a proprietary scoring system for these calls that they're utilizing, or do you want to again build something out from that standpoint? These are the things that you're that I'm seeing on RFPs, that major corporations and companies are starting to think about that they're making sure that they are part of the process and I think if you don't have some of these tools, I'm not saying you go out and you buy them tomorrow, but I think you start to think about that roadmap of how do we get our data in line with where it needs to be. How do we make sure we have really good, you know, customer data from a transcript standpoint? Are there any integrations we can do in this fourth quarter to, from a CTI perspective of putting our data, our telephony together and that kind of bottom line deal I think is the main thing to do here in fourth quarter and even getting into you know first and second quarter of next year and then really thinking through the what tools really add to our value to our customers.
Speaker 1:There's very little differentiation in the space right now. Everything is very vendor led and I think the more companies that start to build this data kind of sets out, they're the ones that are going to start to ask hey, we want this tool, we need this tool Because currently, right now, we're just being given tools by vendors and some of that stuff. I don't really want some of this stuff. I don't really see the you know, a huge amount of value in everybody's going low hanging fruit. Our chatbot is the best Right, that's what AI is for everybody. But I think when you peel the kind of peel, the layers off the onion and you get deeper into the agent experience and some of the amazing things that we haven't even thought about yet from a tool standpoint, you know that's the stuff, I think, that can really differentiate your company.
Speaker 1:So I just don't want to see people make mistakes of of, you know, going out thinking they can, you know, get rid of 20 to 30 to 40% of their headcount. You're making some huge mistakes on the early on, on this, on this deal, not really realizing that you might get the same amount of savings. Be for some of the internal things that you can do with your contact center and your agents to maybe lower your call work, have auto summaries to lower your after call work and when you do that and maybe you lose headcount that way, but you still have that personal experience. I don't think we talk about that stuff enough, right. Everything is, hey, get rid of the agents. But what if we find enough efficiencies that we that we quote, unquote lower our FTE but we're still keeping it from from that standpoint of having that personal touch? But you're not just having really cool experiences.
Speaker 1:That data is right at our agents fingertips. Supervisors know what calls to get on to. Analytics is telling us what type of what type of calls we can probably expect to come in workforce management and we even workforce management with AI has not been talked about enough the, the advances that I have seen in WFM and the tools of WFM. From a forecasting standpoint, it's almost the coolest thing that's happening. And again, and that no one is talking about, how you know we can now, you know, look at calls that are coming into the to our IVR and have you know a predicted cue so that agents are automatically moved within skills to protect service levels. You know workforce intelligence that everybody has. That's getting really, really good, like these tools that we don't think about that. I'm trying to say, okay, I have all these tools right now, like you know workforce intelligence and WFM and analytics. How do I just squeeze right the ever-loving heck out of all the value? How do I get creative with some of these tools that we have so that we can be really good at the things we have now and then understand a little bit better where the missgivings or where the holes are in our strategy? And those are the tools that I kind of want to go out and purchase and buy.
Speaker 1:I think again, I think it's really important to be in the cloud. I think it's really important to have a big brother behind you, right? So again, for us it's on the nice side. I know people have five, nine people of Genesis, but to have those big players and those main players, you know you never have to say no. Or if your C-level comes to you and says, hey, we want to implement this, you know, to be able to reach out and have that technology at your fingertips, not to have to go to many third parties to have things slapped onto your platform, I think is huge, as long as they can continue to innovate and, I think, keep talking to customers about the things that really need that. We need, not that, the things that you want to give us because they're easy for you to create. And again, that goes back to the whole. We're so vendor led in the C-Cas and in the CX AI space, that things that we're asking for. We're just being told to shut up and just use this chatbot, right, and I think that that's where we're going to see a big change as well. So again, guys, that was 20 minutes of me rambling about all the stuff that I'm really interested in, the stuff that I think about all the time. Hopefully that it gives you a little bit of a value there too.
Speaker 1:Does anybody have any questions? You guys have anything you want to add? I would love to talk to some of you. All you got to do is kind of just raise your hand. I'll bring you up on I guess it's like Twitter, like come up on stage, we can have a little bit of a conversation, or if you have any questions on anything that I have, you know, please, please, please. I really don't want to just talk to you guys. I mean, I'm more than happy to do that, as most of you will know, but would love to have some of you guys involved with this as well. All right, let's. Again, I want to move to. You know talking about.
Speaker 1:You know some specific tools, some things that we have found to be really cool. You know, I think analytics for us, you know it's the number one driver of new business for us. So we have really tried to do everything we possibly could to make it as cool and as value add as possible. You know, we used to be able to just show really cool bubbles and clients would say, well, that's really cool, I like it, and it would almost sell itself. But now it's gotten so good it's beyond sentiment, it's beyond trending keywords, it's beyond, you know the phrases that customer says the marketing data now that you can glean to change your overall business from this kind of AI infused analytics is insane. Right To be able to, you know, tell we have a toy company that's one of our clients and they will. If they have a new toy that they really want to test and they want to get feedback on, they'll send a 1-800 number in the packaging which then correlates to a skill back here at Expedia so that we can do kind of specific analytics just on that skill. So we can say things like you know, 35% of the customers that called in use the phrase too expensive, or they like the color red more than the color yellow.
Speaker 1:Those kind of marketing changes is something that a lot of, I think, organizations they don't realize, right, because what are we told? We're told by the CCAS guys and we're told by analytics companies. This is the dashboard we're going to give you and what does that give you? It gives you sentiment analysis on your customers, sentiment analysis on your agent. It gives you frustration levels. It gives you trending keywords. It gives you phrases right, and that's cool and that's great.
Speaker 1:We have this dashboard, but analytics is one of the tools that we have been able to kind of silo into different products because we can do so many different things with it and I think for your organizations, it's the biggest buy-in from a C level, just because every department can glean insights if you're doing it right. It's not a any analytics platform is not just a set up and let it go right. It is a ton of work. It is a ton of work on the front end to set up categories, to make sure that everything you have and the information that you want you can get easily. But there's also ways that you can glean information on things that you don't know about that are coming in and when you can kind of figure that out. And now, with the advances that are coming with AI, of the actual just prompting of things, it's a tool that I think is almost it is so necessary for any type of organization that I think is there's probably a little bit of a size that needs to happen with that but to really glean a lot of different insights. But if you have a ton of different products, like if you're a retailer, it's an absolute no-brainer and I don't even care about the call center stuff with that, I care all about the marketing data with that and what we can give clients and customers. And again, like I keep saying, the prompting aspect it almost turns into how right when you're just talking and you're typing and you're getting information that is having huge impacts on the marketing, on sales, on your C level. And those are the things that can differentiate us as a BPO with some of the things that they can't do internally.
Speaker 1:Agent Assist let's talk about that. I have struggled with Agent Assist, as a lot of you know that have followed me. I don't see for a BPO it is a very difficult sell. Now again, we've already talked about this and we do have Agent Assist because I have to have it to get new business, but from an actual ROI standpoint it's not really there for me. Now, if you're an internal contact center and this is a volume play right it's if you could knock off and again, you guys are all contact center professionals. I'm not telling you anything you don't already know here, but if you can knock 20, 30 seconds off because of how quickly we have access to data and you have 1,000 seats, that's a massive savings and it could be the number one tool that you would want in your organization. If you have 10 seats, it might not be Unless. What you're focused on is a really good customer experience, right? So there's so many different ways that we can kind of sell or that you wanna purchase that, but I love it as a user of technology, as an owner of a business. It's kind of a loss leader for me.
Speaker 1:And again, we're not a huge BPO. I don't have 400, 500 seat clients. Most of our clients are in that 30, 40, 50 seat range, so it is a little bit more difficult. But again, we're selling. We initially sold agent assist kind of on a per hour deal and now it's more like keeping our hourly rate as low as we can and then, if you want it kind of like a C-Cast, a monthly fee for those kind of things. But the bigger you are, the more important efficiency type tools are right. Looking at things like auto summary, right, I mean, that's a huge kind of it's one of the low hanging fruits of a chat GPT type model. But again, volume play you have 500 seats, you have 10,000 seats, you have 1,000 seats and you are now taking your 48 seconds of after call work or wrap time and you're getting rid of that and maybe you just give your agents 25 seconds to catch their breath. You just saved whatever 30 seconds. 20 seconds on every single call makes total sense.
Speaker 1:Again, I think maybe I'm a little bit more jaded because I'm not as big. So there's certain tools again that I think the enterprise guys make because they're gonna make the most money on them. But I try to think of what can happen or what could really help. That that 500 seat center, that 600 seat center, that 30 seat center, what are some of those kind of tools that I think can really have an impact? And again, I think, when you talk about that, all of this stuff can have an impact. But AI is such a for me it's such a scale model where the bigger you are, the more impact this thing's gonna have, when the smaller you are, the less, and it's harder to kind of function that way, and I think that's kind of where we've seen it again, not to kind of go off the path here, but that's been the changing of the kind of the path in the woods. Everything right now is being built for the enterprise guy and it makes sense because I think it has the most.
Speaker 1:When you talk to an O-Milia, an A-Milia, a Poly AI, any of those kind of partners, the monthly minimums are pretty large. Right, you need to have the volumes to do that. I think, just crying again about this the little guys that 20 seat center that is a credit union in North Carolina is kind of getting left out of this. They can get a really cool online banking tool, but what are some of those things that are cost effective for these guys? And I think that will be a shift that we'll see. I think it's a huge business opportunity and, again, that's kind of one of the things that we're playing with with our Auto QA is to help those little 20, 30 seaters that are kind of being left out of this, what I see as being left out of this space as well.
Speaker 1:We talked a little bit about workforce management. We talked a little bit about analytics kind of getting into that. Ask model Workforce management, it just. Again, it's been a really exciting tool and again, no matter, I was always of the kind of that's a bigger guide tool. You need to be 100 seats or more, and I think that that's not true anymore. We can. There's a lot of value add for that 20, 30 seater. The cost is not that expensive. The value that you get from being able to really forecast your things down to a 15 or 10 minute interval is massively important.
Speaker 1:The just the forecasting tool in general. So many smaller contact centers are using some type of just Erlang C calculator and Excel. And again for probably, if you have any kind of platform for literally I don't know 10, 15 bucks a month per agent to be able to get some of that technology into your deal is really important. I'm gonna say it one more time as well whether you're a Genesis, nice, five, nine, ujet, whoever you are, as long as you kind of have a cloud platform. It used to be the old and I loved it when I used to be in a Viya person back in the early 2000s and 1990s and they had it was called the business advocate, and business advocate basically just moved agents in and out of skills based on predicted wait times in the IVR Like it was unbelievable technology even in like 2002. But now with AI getting involved with some of those decision-making processes, that's a huge tool that is not that expensive for the smaller contact center as well.
Speaker 1:I speak at Interactions, which is the nice user conference, and every single time I kind of give a when I give my talk on kind of 10 ways to kind of disrupt your contact center. It's always the tool that everybody has and it's really 95% of all nice customers. And again, that's not talking about nice. Everybody has, because I've demoed every single platform. They all have some kind of tool that is a workforce intelligence tool, but no one knows either how to use it. It's not publicized very well by the CCAST provider because I think they probably don't make that much money off of it, to be honest, right, because it's already part of the platform, so it's not an add-on, so they're not really selling it where I think there's a ton of value. So again, guys, make sure you check that out, no matter what platform you have, it is something that has been able. We kind of sell it now as an AI tool, because that's what it is, so we can guarantee service levels with it. So, if you have three skills that come in with us you have a sales, you have a customer support and, let's say, you have a logistics questions or shipping questions, obviously every customer wants their sales queue to be at that, whatever 90, 10. And so we can almost guarantee that by having workforce intelligence moved up so it can move our agents in and out based on queues that are happening and based on predicted queues as well as things get even better down this AI front. So those are some of the, I think, smaller contact center things Super excited about, and I'll talk about auto QA just here for a second. We are very close to having an alpha and beta testing with customers. I know I've been saying that for a while, but from the demo that I took with the IT guys yesterday, we're weeks away and I think this month we'll be able to really show all of the smaller contact centers.
Speaker 1:Do not have transcripts, right. Transcripts is like I don't know. It's such a wanted thing and it can be such a difficult headache thing for so many different contact centers to be able to utilize some of this AI technology. So, from be able to, for us to be able to say, hey, go onto our platform, click the analyze button, pick your recording that you wanna do to have it instantly. Go get a transcript, bring it back to the prompt that we have set up with you. That absolutely mirrors the QA scorecard that you've been using for the last 20 years.
Speaker 1:Gets sent out to chat GPT. We are struggling to get a chat GPT enterprise account. If anybody knows a better way, we're using the chat GPT for just the APIs right now and have it back, come back in and score that score. Those calls talk about give outputs like what are the four ways that this agent could improve? What is the overall sentiment of the customer and the agent? What is the confidence score that you have on this? Because sometimes the transcripts aren't great. So chat GPT will say, hey, that's only a two for me, two out of 10, I'm not really confident in scoring this. So I think you know those are some of the things that excite me.
Speaker 1:Again, for the smaller contact center and, guys, I'm an open book with that I have. If you check my content out, I have all the prompting that we're using. Like you could literally do this, forget even the APIs. If you don't have connectivity with it, you can just use the prompts that we have found out through all the R&D that we have. Use the desktop version. Just you gotta have a transcript. Use that transcript and you could be scoring in, qa'ing and scoring calls in your contact center, like literally 15 minutes after you saw the first prompt. So again, that stuff is very democratized. It's out there. It's just being used for enterprise type customers. So that's something I'm pretty fired up about as well. So, anything questions, guys, anything you got. That's really what I plan to kind of talk through again.
Speaker 1:I know that's kind of a rambling talk, but it's kind of everything and like one giant I don't wanna say brain vomit, but all the stuff that I've been thinking about. When it comes to how do we roadmap our clients here at Expedia to get on this AI train, because if I don't do it, somebody else is gonna do it, and I think how do we do that appropriately? How do we actually raise customer experience. How do we not just buy the shiny tool? How do we think this thing out properly and think through what tools do we want now and what tools do we hold off on because we think that they're gonna be something better out there later? And those are the decisions that I think everybody's confused with.
Speaker 1:I was lucky enough to go this is about two and a half three weeks now I got to speak at the Google offices in Boulder through Ed, with a nice Google Chrome OS and outsourced consultants kind of little, I guess, seminar, right. So they had about 35 BPO's that were there and luckily I got to speak almost last, which was pretty cool and just kind of talk about how we're doing this, how we've gone from the model of just it's $32 a seat, kind of all in, to being able to understand hey, you have a hundred call center seats that you wanna outsource, not to be afraid to be like, hey, we're gonna use AI, we're gonna use other tools to get that down to 62 seats within the next 18 months, right, how do you change that thought process? How do you change the? This is how we've been doing things for 20 years and I'll tell you what the BPO's are confused, like they don't know. They don't understand how to change their model. They're scared to death that they'll change their model. They're gonna lose 30% of their revenue and they will if they continue on the path that they have been doing.
Speaker 1:But I think that there's a technology hunger out there. There's so many customers that have no idea what the heck they're doing at all, and I'm sure a lot of you guys I mean, I'm not saying I'm an expert in this, I'm learning just as much as you guys are but there's so many customers, so many contact centers, that have no idea how to get on this train. They're gonna need help. And again, I think our model has changed from a just being a contact center outsourcer to a CX technology partner that does outsourcing, and that's a huge shift for us. But to get into professional services now, to be able to do more types of integrations, to be a onboarding partner for CCAST partners, to look at those kind of tools in the contact center space, but then become really become experts in some of the tools that are out there, to be able to say, hey, no, you don't need that. Or hey, yes, you do need that.
Speaker 1:I think that there's a need for that out there, because nobody knows what the hell they're doing. They've just been told that from C level people. Hey, we wanna get on this AI train, figure it out. I hear that all the time, and so, again, I think that that's the new space for the BPO, for the contact center outsourcer, is to try to help these organizations if they're strong enough to change their model, and I think a lot of you guys on the internal side need to think that through as well.
Speaker 1:Right, how do we know our customers and our space are moving to different models? How do you not just jump at that shiny thing, but think it through again? How do we build out our baseline data sets? How do we make our KMS awesome? How do we integrate all of our stuff? How do we get transcripts? Or how do we be able to feed all of our customer data to this model that we wanna use? And then, what tools do we wanna use with it? And kind of take that slow.
Speaker 1:I think the companies that are going really fast head on to this are gonna slam into a wall. There's gonna be mistakes. You can't tell me. I'm telling you right now, and I think all of you know I go get it onto an quote unquote AI chatbot, which I really can't tell the difference between the other chatbots that were there. I can tell right away that's not a human and maybe that's okay. But maybe I'm getting a little older so I care more about that. Maybe if you're younger you don't. But the voice thing I hear great demos, right, and then I go to actually like hey, can I get three licenses to try in my contact center and I will try it out and it is nothing like the demo, right, which I think is a huge kind of deal that we've been seeing. Right, is the demos always great, but the actual product is not, and I think a lot of people are getting fooled with that and spending a lot of money on making mistakes that they don't have to make if they just kind of play things out a little bit slower.
Speaker 1:But again, this is like everything is happening so fast. I know it keeps saying go slower, but everything is happening so fast. It's almost like it's important to be a little bit slower Because the tools just like anything, just like the internet, right, the tools that are here now, or your iPhone it's almost, I think iPhone's probably even better, the iPhone that you have now right. Hold on to, because that next one's coming out really fast and it's gonna be totally different. So the tools that we're about to see in the next year or so are gonna be crazy, and I think it will shift from being more vendor led to being more customer led, as more people start to be onboarded into this, asking for different types of tools, asking for different types of things. But again, start to prepare your data sets, start to prepare your KMS, start to prepare and get all your integrations in order. I think that's the number one tool or the number one thing, so you'll be ready to go when you wanna push that button instead of being held back by a lot of those things.
Speaker 1:That's what I got, guys. I hope that's a little bit helpful. I'm here if you have any questions. If there's anything you want to add, I'm here as well, but if there's nothing, that's my 40 minute talk on AI. Oh yeah, all right. Good, we got a question or a comment. Let me bring it up here. What's?
Speaker 2:up. Hey, what's up, tom, can you?
Speaker 1:hear me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, man, all good. Yeah, thank you so much for this session Great information and thank you for sharing your knowledge and your experience with us. This is very helpful. I had a little comment and a question for you.
Speaker 2:So there's all these solution providers that are approaching most of us with these solutions and all of them are saying, yeah, it's AI powered and you can do this and you can do that, and AI usually is within its own solution, so it only does what that solution does. So if it's telephony, it's for the calls in that telephony. If it's for quality, it's for the calls recorded in that solution. If it's workforce, it's for that workforce solution. I wanted to get your input on the open AI API solution that they've been selling to a bunch of enterprise buyers. Do you think that's a good route to go for those companies that do currently have a technology stack of multiple solutions, like a Genesis for telephony and a software workforce and something else for quality? Do you think the best route for those contact centers is just make sure they have access to the database, to the raw data of all those solutions, and then leverage the open AI API to gain those AI features on that data?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I have a lot to talk on that. So one of the things and again, I see Annette is here and she's one of my best buddies from NICE One of the things that, again, that NICE is developing and again, I'm not here to sell NICE stuff, but some of the other ones, and I know this doesn't answer your question, but I'll get to that is they're starting to see that as well, whether that is, let's just say, you're on a one specific platform, but you want to tie everything together into kind of this one AI model. Again, that's why I really like I personally like NICE, because, with their enlightened AI, it is basically taking all of your data sets and then being able to utilize it through your IVR, to be able to utilize it with your chat, to be able to utilize it with your voice, with your self-service, with your analytics. It's like this one kind of chat GPT almost for customers in their internal data sets, now answering. So that's where I think it's really cool, right, if you choose the right partner. I will say, though, you're right.
Speaker 1:So many different contact centers have a lot of different types of tools that are kind of integrated into their platform. What I am starting to see and again even talking to the people at some of these C-Cast players with the larger huge enterprise customers like, say, a Walmart. Walmart is going to be doing just that. They're basically going to be purchasing their own private instance of a chat GPT right, utilizing all of their data sets, and they're doing that not just because, to your point, you can then take all of these different tools and utilize it under one kind of umbrella. But the other big thing is nobody's really been able on the chat GPT side to be answered. Now they think they have the security aspect right. So the security aspect with a lot of these large language models and those types of things, it's not there, it's not secure. And now are they learning off of your data and those kind of things like the Walmart and these giant contact centers and businesses they don't really want to deal with.
Speaker 1:So that's been a move and a shift that I'm definitely starting to see is they're kind of utilizing their own AI or their own instance of an LLM or their own instance of, like, a chat GPT. So I don't know the cost effectiveness of it right for a specific size. I mean, I haven't done that much research into it, I know like. Just for our own little business of auto using the API, connectivity into it has been very, very, very cheap. Even when we get looking at the cost of the enterprise API usage, it's less than pennies right for every single interaction with that, based on the amount of tokens that you have and the amount of words that you have.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, no, I think that that is a route to go and I think you're going to see more and more companies that are especially the larger enterprise companies move to that type of model where they have their own private instance of a chat GPT, utilizing all the different data sets and data sources that they have to create, you know, their own kind of personal AI.
Speaker 1:But then again, you know they have I don't know even like a Walmart how many programmers are those guys have. Right, like they have the IT resources to, I think, build something out really cool. If we're talking something smaller like I could never do that. You know that's where I think there's more, a more dependence on really good partners in the space that that are building out tools to be able to utilize. But yeah, I don't know if that totally answers your question, but I think that's kind of where I see things you know. There's kind of two splits in the road with that as well from a utilizing kind of third party kind of AI models and then utilizing your own instance based on all of your data sets and then keeping it kind of enclosed privately to to your own set.
Speaker 2:It does. Thanks a lot. That's great information, Sure sure.
Speaker 1:Anything else, guys, any other questions, comments, concerns Well, if not, guys, thank you so much for joining. This is awesome. Like I said, I didn't know how many people were going to come to have. You know, 10, 11, 12 in here during a during a time. Was was pretty cool. I'm going to try to do this like once a week. I'll try to get word out.
Speaker 1:Maybe the you know more than 10 hours before I, before I go live. But again, hopefully this added some value to you. Hit me up if you, if you have any questions. You know that you don't maybe you don't want to talk about here. You know, bob, here is our dare. Got a couple in males already on some questions. Oh, ablai, you want to come on up? Okay, guys, thank you so much Again. Hopefully see you guys next week. We can kind of continue, pick some new topics out as well. I appreciate all you guys joining. Thank you, what's it all about? Hi Hi, hi, hi, hi.