Advice from a Call Center Geek!
Advice from a Call Center Geek is a weekly podcast with a focus on all things call center and contact center. Tom Laird, CEO of 600+ seat award-winning BPO, Expivia Interaction Marketing and Ai auto QA startup OttoQa, ICMI Top 25 Contact Center thought leader discusses topics such as call center operations, hiring, culture, technology, and training while having fun doing it!
Advice from a Call Center Geek!
Exposed: The Unvarnished Truth About AI Deployment in Contact Centers
Are you overwhelmed by the relentless push to overhaul your contact center with AI? Let's clear the air about the real impact of AI in this industry.
My recent talks reveal a surprising fact: many companies are not rushing into AI as believed. In reality, few have a detailed plan or have started implementation.
Join me in a practical journey as we create a roadmap for incorporating technology thoughtfully in your contact center.
Drawing from my latest engagements in Philadelphia and Miami, we'll focus on using what you already have efficiently and investing wisely, not hastily.
We advocate a thoughtful approach to innovation, ensuring you adopt AI at a manageable pace, suited to your business needs. This discussion is about building a strong foundation for growth, stepping into AI with confidence and a well-defined strategy for success.
Tom Laird’s 100% USA-based, AI-powered contact center. As the only outsourcing partner on the NICE CXone Customer Executive Council, Expivia is redefining what it means to be a CX tech partner. Learn more at expiviausa.com.
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This is advice from a call center geek a weekly podcast with a focus on all things call center. We'll cover it all, from call center operations, hiring, culture, technology and education. We're here to give you actionable items to improve the quality of yours and your customer's experience. This is an evolving industry with creative minds and ambitious people like this guy. Not only is his passion call center operations, but he's our host. He's the CEO of Xpevia Interaction Marketing Group and the call center geek himself, tom Laird.
Speaker 2:Welcome back everybody to another episode of advice from a call center geek the call center and contact center podcast. We try to give you some actionable items. Take back in your contact center, improve the overall quality, improve the agent experience, hopefully improve your customer experience as well. My name is Tom Laird. I'm the CEO of Xpeve, interaction Marketing and of Auto QA. It's good to be back. We're starting to get back into our routine of once a week podcast, so thank you again for joining.
Speaker 2:I apologize for being late. It's Monday and it seems like every type of technical issue with my microphone or camera has to happen today, but I got to figure it out. So I apologize for those of you who are waiting live and patiently here on LinkedIn, as we are live on LinkedIn. Again, if you have any questions, if you disagree with me on this I think this is a little bit of a controversial topic, but I want to try to spit the truth of what I am seeing out there in the actual marketplace. That is totally different than what you see on LinkedIn or what you see on TikTok or Reels or any of these social spaces. If you go to the contact center expos and CCWs and everything seems, everybody seems like, you know, we're all way down this path to AI when nothing could be further from the truth. And, to be honest, it's just. There's a ton of lies and mistruths out there from a lot of AI companies. Right, trying to push products and they're freaking people out, right they're. They're, they're scaring a lot of individual companies to think that they're falling behind. They're getting CEOs to put pressure on on managers and it professionals to do something. Nobody knows what that is. They don't know what that is. Get a chat bot up because we're falling behind the competition. I'm telling you right now that is not true. So let's start at the very beginning here.
Speaker 2:I've had the privilege of speaking about five or six times so far. This year is in the know in the first, you know, four or five months. Here's as we go down to getting into may, probably spoken in front of about 1200 to 1500 contact center professionals Now, not sales dudes, these are actual contact center managers, frontline supervisors. You know all of those, those people that are actually on the front lines making things go. I've asked the same question to start all of my talks this year and it is you know how many of you feel comfortable about where you are from an AI standpoint, have started to implement AI in your contact center, at least have a roadmap. I'm not lying when I say three people out of 1500 have raised their hands.
Speaker 2:So the honesty is also there, because nobody knows what's going on. Nobody's talking about the bridge to get there. Right, if you talk to an AI sales, tech sales guy, it just implement our strategy and boom you're full, fully AI, whatever strategy, and boom you're full fully AI, whatever. And that's not what we need. You know, today, in 2024, we need to start talking about the process of getting to AI. We need to start talking about the actual tools that can be utilized, that are mature, and most of this stuff is not the other thing that we keep forgetting as an industry as a whole. And again, I get that you don't have to be in the cloud to start to implement some of these AI tools, but it really helps. It's way quicker and most everything is going to have to be implemented and integrated and it's way easier to do in the cloud.
Speaker 2:And the vast majority of contact centers the vast majority of contact centers are still not even in the cloud. I mean, think about that for a second. We're talking to everybody about AI and moving to this AI-centric model, and I don't even care if it's other tools like. It could be agent assist, it could be all of these other tools, let alone the first touchpoint AI chatbot that everybody thinks is just unbelievably great. It's not there yet. There's steps that have to be taken and I think there's a lot of opportunity even for other companies to come into the space to help this happen, and we're trying to do that with AutoQA as a step. Do I think that the AutoQA platform that we're using now is going to be even in existence in its same form in five years? Heck, no, it might be three years, it might be 18 months, but we're going to keep evolving that. But it's a bridge.
Speaker 2:There's a paradox that's happening out here in the marketplace and it's a perception. If you're utilizing AI in your contact center, then you think everybody else is too, so you want to talk about it all the time, when people can't even talk your lingo. The other kind of flip side of the coin is you're not using AI and you think that you're falling way behind, and that's not true either. Both of those things are not true. The truth definitely is somewhere in the middle, but the perception and the FOMO that is happening and is being pushed by AI technology companies, by the mychatbotcom AI is great companies. We're not there and you're not falling behind. Now do you have to start working to get to this process? A hundred percent, right, but don't let anybody's demo, don't let anybody's sales presentation, don't let all the stuff that you see on LinkedIn freak you out and think that you need to move into something that you're not comfortable with, that you're not there yet, that you're not with there yet.
Speaker 2:Some of the things that I have discussed in the past. But again, let's just bring these to the front of the table. Most companies are not in the cloud number one. Number two most don't have the integrations that they need. The lack of integrations in the Franken stacks that you see from a CX standpoint for most companies, right. It does not allow for easy integrations and to get to the data that you're going to need to use data in your AI from your personal stack of information. That's number one. Number two nobody, nobody has been talking about KMSs and knowledge management systems. Nobody has them and if they do, they're either out of date or they have no process to keep them up to date to give these unbelievably great AI chatbots the knowledge that they have. If you have dirty data, you're going to get crap coming out of it. So we have to make sure that we understand those concepts.
Speaker 2:And I guess the third or the fourth is I think people are getting ripped off. I think they're getting ripped off by the cost of this thing, by the ROI of this thing. You know there's so much price gouging that is happening, you know, with some of these enterprise-type contact center providers, these third-party guys that are trying to slap onto CCAS. Or you know, it's amazing to me that we're still using a per seat license, right, we're not at a usage model when almost all customers would prefer that, right, they would prefer it. But you know what? The the those guys right that are providing the technology. It's not conducive to them. That makes no sense to me either, and there's going to be some real differentiators that are coming into the space again.
Speaker 2:I'm just a little peon a very small deal with auto qa. That is actually growing faster than I thought, but we're doing everything the opposite way that everybody else is doing it. Total per seat model. You want to do 500, you want to do 300 calls. You want to do 10,000 calls, I don't care, right, and I think that there's a huge issue with that If I would tell you that it literally costs pennies, like cents, like under 10 cents, under 5 cents to do a lot of the same auto QA and transcriptions, and you know now you can build that depending on calls and it's all a little bit different, but it does not equal, even with a hefty profit margin, what a lot of these guys are charging on a per seat model for some of these AI tools, right, and nobody's going to like this video and nobody's going to like this podcast, because 90% of everybody who follows me is a CX technology person, right, so all of these things kind of get squashed and get quiet, but that's the honest truth of where we are today.
Speaker 2:So what do we need? We don't need another chatbot company. We need companies to come into the space and help to start to bridge people. If I had to start I said this in my talk and I was in Philly last week If I had to start a company right now from scratch and I might even do it we would start a consulting company with technology to help build a KMS for companies, to help build out their knowledge base. Right, that is such a lacking tool that nobody talks about and if you go talk to the technology guys, they don't even tell you you need it.
Speaker 2:You do If you want to have anything that's that's worth its salt. You do? You know, having integrations, having integrations not just into your CRM but any other data sources, like all that stuff helps. And it's cool Like you can do just even stuff in your regular contact center stuff If you have integrations into it. Not just screen pops, but you can route really cool. You can. You can do amazing things even with some of the stuff, as as you're bridging.
Speaker 2:So that was the talk that I gave last week too, and I think that there's some things too, when you, when you hear your, your CEO or you hear a C-level person coming to you and was like hey, listen, we need to do AI, whatever that means, we need to do AI I hear that all the time Say, okay, let's breathe. Right, come up in 2024 with the things you need to do to do AI. Right, let's talk about what we need to integrate. Let's talk about building out our KMS. Let's talk about those kinds of tools. Let's talk about the policies and procedures. What's secure? How comfortable are we from a security aspect to use large language models? Are we at all? Is there an appetite for it? I think that stuff's really important to do in 2024.
Speaker 2:You want to get into the LLMs? Let me, from a chatbot standpoint, how are you going to QA your AI, right? If you think that you can just let it run and I've seen companies now they're not doing the hybrid thing, right. So if a customer gets ticked off, it lets the AI handle it the whole way through. It's a disaster, right. Nobody wants to talk about that, right? Because you're not selling product. It's a disaster, right. I still think you can do the AI thing from a self-service standpoint. If you have a hybrid model, if you have some rails on the cart, you're going to agents, right, but you're still utilizing agents. You're not going this full. You know we're going AI and that's the other thing, right?
Speaker 2:Companies think in 2024 that everybody wants to go full AI. I think most companies don't. They want to start to utilize tools. The technology and the things that people are creating are moving faster than customers can even buy them and can even think about them. So I'm not saying you slow down. But I'm saying understand your ideal customer profile, because so many of these guys are moving so far ahead with stuff. That's okay, it's not great, but I think that if companies that are selling these products would take the time and start to set their customers up for success instead of just selling them a product, we're going to be in a much better place.
Speaker 2:There's going to be a bubble here, right, because too many companies are going too fast on this stuff and it is it's not fully mature, especially when you talk about an LLM chatbot. It's not no matter what anybody wants to say. So there's a lot to think about and digest there, but it just it's kind of frustrating for me to see you know the the speed of of the technology, because it's easy to use. It's awesome technology. It's going to be in in certain places, it's it's going to push people forward, but it's moving too fast and the quality isn't as good and nobody can keep up with it, right. So what are we doing? So, again, there is a there's a huge spot in the market for companies that want to.
Speaker 2:Again, I mean to just be, I mean frank here. I think, like auto qa, right, we are utilizing AI and being able to have a company that has no technology whatsoever. It doesn't matter. All you need is a call recording right, a call transcript, a help desk ticket, an email, a chat transcript right, and we can fully AI right, your quality assurance, those kinds of tools, auto summarization. You don't really need a ton of technology, maybe a little integration that you can utilize now you can start down this path.
Speaker 2:But when I hear people go on to LinkedIn or I see a survey that says you know, if you are not here, you are falling behind in this AI realm, I think that's garbage and I don't think it's true at all and it's nothing that I've seen in the market and I've talked to a ton of people on this stuff a ton of BPOs who are ahead of the curve right, because we have to be ahead of the curve and, again, as a kind of a cheap plug for the BPOs, not just for Expedia, but if you want to move to AI fast, you should outsource to a BPO that has all this stuff right, like not just me but many of my friends in the industry. We have it all right, from agent assist to auto summarization, to auto QA right. Looking at getting into, how do you build out a chatbot? The right way from an AI standpoint looking at. How do you integrate your contact center? How do we use analytics differently? Right, all of this stuff. We have expertise, we know how to do it. It's not just Expedia, it's a ton of BPOs that are out there Onshore, nearshore, offshore, don't care, if you get the right one, you don't have to pay the 50, 60, 70, 80 grand to implement some type of AI.
Speaker 2:Not see the ROI for 17 years, and too many people are falling for that. Um, and too many people are falling, falling for that. It is crazy expensive, the minimums that a lot of these ai companies from a self-service standpoint are collecting that they want. So there's not even there's a huge setup fee 50, 100, 200 grand. There is a a sign up fee for each of your customers, not a lot. Still stupid, though. It's just an add on that they're just kind of taking from people. So every time that somebody gets signed on maybe for a voice, biometric, those kinds of things within the IVR from a security standpoint, right, they're adding that on. There's a per minute charge and it's normally like the minimum of like 45 seconds. So if you have a 10 second self-service call, you're paying for 45 seconds and again, again, while you can build this stuff on your own, it is, it's extremely frustrating.
Speaker 2:You have to have the expertise to really be able to do that, or you're going out to these guys. If you have the edict to do AI and and and really struggling, and then, I think, with the results that you're finding, dig deep into demos. I will tell you that, right, dig deep, Don't, don't, don't take a demo at face value. Be like hey, I want to try that out and if you're not comfortable with that, call me, I'll do it for you. Right, I'll do it for free. Right, and if and if there's no agent that it's going, I'm going to trick it 100 times. I've done it. I'm going to be that level 10 irritated customer. Let's see how it handles that, because it's not going to be good. And and if you're utilizing the agent, then again, I still don't see the full value if you have a really good self-service model already.
Speaker 2:Right, the banks when you call a bank, you want financial things, you want your balance, you want to pay off a loan, pay a credit card, you want to do those types of things. Right, we have that technology right Now? Again, is there use cases for some of this stuff? I think the bigger you have a ton of SKUs, you have, you know, a ton of different, maybe more complex things that you think you can add into there and if you have the right knowledge base, you're seeing the enterprise guys do that. The enterprise guys can do that because they have the budget for it. They can take 20 people and say, go build out my KMS in the next three weeks and they can afford all that. And I think that there is a quicker ROI when you have a higher amount of volume. But if you're 500 seats, 400 seats, 200 seats, the 20 seater, the 15 seater, right, you're priced out of the market right now, for the most part priced out of the market. So doing things right and doing them quickly a lot of times don't align perfectly, but you know it.
Speaker 2:Just all the talks that I have given and hearing people that have either spoken before me or after me and they always talk about the why you need AI. I don't think anybody needs to hear the why We've got to start to talk about the how, how do we do it and how do we do it right? How do we build integrations out? Do I do that ourselves? How do we build our KMS? How do we do these things that everybody kind of takes for granted that they think that everybody already has but really, really no one has them, or most of the companies don't. Again, another plug. That's why bpo can really help you. Right, we have all that stuff, know how to do it, can build out your kms, can do integrations. But if that's something that you want to do on your own, then just make sure that you're you're set up for success.
Speaker 2:Um, for ai, all right, that's 17 minutes of me being on a soapbox. It just it bothers me to hear and I hear people. They're stressed out about it. They talk to me and they're like we're so far behind, we don't. I'm like, guys, 2024, just start to build that road. And you can't just stand on your hand or sit on your hands. Stand on your hands, that'd be hard. Sit on your hands, but you got to start moving or you got to outsource. But if you're doing this stuff on your own, then don't fall for a lot of these things that are that are not mature yet. Right, if you're ready for AI, I would still say easy on the chat bot auto QA, auto summarization. The chat bot auto QA, auto summarization agent assist those type of tools starting to use analytics in different ways.
Speaker 2:The last talk I gave, we talked about how we can reduce headcount, how we can do all the things with AI. If you're not ready for AI using the legacy tools that we have today, thinking outside the box on that stuff, the last thing I want to say with this is I think that there's a huge mistake as well on companies' roadmaps on not understanding the outcome that they want. So, meaning, what's the end result that you want? Do you want to lower your headcount? There's tools for that. We can do that. Do you want to raise your NPS and CSAT? There's AI tools for that. Do you want to lower your handle time? We've got tools for that. Do you want to get rid of your after call work? We've got tools for that. Do you want to improve the agent experience? There's tools for that.
Speaker 2:So, understanding what the outcomes that you want predict, or start to talk to you about the AI tools that you should have and then what you need to do to kind of set that stuff up. But don't freak out. Start to work down that path. Start to get your contact center integrated. Start to think about how do we build out a KMS right? There's a lot of tools online that you can do that.
Speaker 2:Don't panic. Don't fall for the FOMO of this thing. There's a lot of companies making a lot of mistakes right now at a crazy high level. If you're not an enterprise guy, you have time. You have time and you have more than you think. So don't let anybody kind of rush you, push you into things that you're not comfortable with, that your company is not ready to go for.
Speaker 2:If you need somebody to talk to, I'm here. I can kind of help you out and kind of guide you through some of that stuff too. But all right, guys, that's, that's what I have today. I just did a again. I've been thinking about that all weekend. I have a couple of links on on LinkedIn that I or posts on LinkedIn I did today.
Speaker 2:And also, if you look through some of my stuff from the week before, listen to my Philly the couple videos from the Philadelphia talk that I gave. Also one in Miami that I had posted online. That just talks about how do you roadmap this thing and what are the actual steps and tools that you need to do that don't cost a ton of money. They're going to cost something from a manpower standpoint. And then, if you're ready to go, what are the first tools to start to look at?
Speaker 2:But I think that this is a toe put in the water and then slide in instead of a dive or jump from the diving board, and I think that the slower you move with this and slow is probably not the right word, but the more methodical and thoughtful that you move with this, the better that you're going to be in the long run. So thank you guys for hearing me. I hope that again, that this calms some people down. You're not that far behind. Things are going to be okay. Start working towards that process. If you want to know some things again, check out some of my videos on some things. If you're getting pressure to lower headcount, if you're getting pressure to lower handle time that you can utilize right without paying a ton of money for AI, that you can maybe hold the wolves back for a little bit, as you're kind of building things out and trying to be the voice of reason. I think in this world that we're trying to just sprint before most companies aren't even walking. Thanks guys. I'll talk to everybody next week.
