The CX Files #32 - Laura Dolan

Learn in this episode:
- Why AI is often a "hindrance" rather than a "help" in customer workflows.
- How to build and train internal AI agents (like Software’s Coralline) on brand voice.
- The specific tasks AI is great at (summarization) vs. what it fails at (empathy and nuance).
- Why "prompt engineering" is a mandatory skill for 2026 leaders.
- Strategies for maintaining quality control in an automated world.

About Laura Dolan: Laura is the former Director of Digital Marketing at Loftware, with a rich background at Optimizely, Autura, and Keap (formerly Infusionsoft). With two decades of experience spanning print journalism to digital UX, she brings a unique, editorial-first perspective to the world of B2B marketing and customer experience.

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Transcript

The CX Files #32 - Laura Dolan

Laura Dolan: [00:00:00] Someone on LinkedIn was talking about wanting to schedule a haircut for their kid, and they call the salon and they said, oh, you have to do it through the app. Like you, you make the appointment, you pay for it, blah, blah, blah. And this lady's like, I just wanna make a simple appointment for my kid and be done with it. I don't wanna have to go through, know, sign up for the app, create a password, and then put my info in there. You know, it's like. A lot of these convenient tools, yes, they're convenient after a while, but when you have to get 'em set up, and a lot of people don't wanna take those steps.

Laura Dolan: They just wanna get whatever the task or whatever the product they need, like one and done, you know? Or if somebody goes to a router store to get a new router and they say, oh, you have to get it online. They're like, but you, you right there. Like, can you just hand me one? But like, no, you have to go through the.

Laura Dolan: The website because we need your info and we need the tracking, whatever, whatever the excuse is. And I just feel like we just need to be careful about overcomplicating things. Be, you know, trying to, trying to simplify at the same time. Like there's [00:01:00] that counterintuitive, You know, almost backlash of making things worse or making things more complicated.

Laura Dolan: So to answer your question is, I, don't know what that looks like. If we figure it out and we could figure out how to streamline AI and how to actually make it so that we can rely on it and we, you know, just. Use it in a way that actually helps, rather than hinders then Yeah. That that's the hope that everybody should have.

Ben Foden: Hello and welcome to the CX Files podcast. Today's guest is Laura Dolan. She's the director of digital marketing at Software, and she has past experiences at Optimizely and keep previously in Infusionsoft, as well as early career experiences in content and writing. She currently oversees SEO optimization and ux.

Ben Foden: To boost [00:02:00] traffic and conversion, as well as managing organic social media and other media channels. She's built social for the ground from the ground up for multiple businesses. Laura, thanks for joining us.

Laura Dolan: Thank you so much for having me, Ben. I'm excited to be here.

Ben Foden: I always like to hear about. Early stories that shaped people's careers. Um, and I know you had some experiences with writing. Can you tell us a little bit about an early story and maybe how that, how that's affected the work that you do today?

Laura Dolan: A hundred percent. So next month will be 20 years since I started my career. I started out as, thank you. I started out as an intern for a magazine at San Diego called San Diego Metropolitan Magazine and North Park News. They had the same editorial staff and I started out as a staff writer. I went in three days a week.

Laura Dolan: I got to. downtown and go in this big high rise and work with the staff there. And do you know, at first it was just, you know, I'm, I'm call, I'm going [00:03:00] down a list and calling people, verifying their business addresses and things of that nature for some of our ads. But then I got to get into the weeds and go interview local businesses and like restaurants and salons and things like that.

Laura Dolan: So that was when my career took off. I was able to have my own bylines. As a 22-year-old senior in college and in the, a huge, well, I don't wanna say huge, but you know, it was an important local magazine for me that was a big deal. I was all about the bylines and the mastheads back then, especially in print.

Laura Dolan: You know, obviously 20 years ago print was a little bit, I'm sorry, I hope you're gonna edit this. 'cause sometimes I keep, sometimes I lose my train of thought.

Ben Foden: It's fine. It's fine. We're all humans.

Laura Dolan: yeah, at the time print seemed a little bit more important than digital. I've seen a huge, transition over the digital in my 20

Ben Foden: Mm-hmm.

Laura Dolan: it's just been cool to see to go from being so excited about something that's in print to something that's [00:04:00] online and that's perpetually. Researchable and people can always find your work and, you know, just things you're proud of are, are out there and they can show up in searches and things like that. So the evolution of going from print to to digital in my career, you know, from writing and editing and then just stumbling into the marketing. Stage of my career has been an amazing journey and I just can't believe, like I've, I've been doing this for so long and it's been very rewarding. I've just met the best people along the way. I've gotten to meet, I've gotten to work at amazing places and talk to amazing businesses and vendors and partners.

Laura Dolan: So it's just definitely been a very well-rounded experience and looking forward to the next 20, believe it or not.

Ben Foden: Well, I, I absolutely believe it. And I, and I see the evolution there and I see that there's, there's some consistent threads, even if they're, even if the job titles are very different, even if the, the media format is very different, right? There's clearly [00:05:00] this thread of thinking about people, right? You're going out and interviewing them and there's clearly this thread of communication as well, right?

Ben Foden: And how do you express. Those ideas so that they connect with people right. In whatever the format is. You know, this podcast typically focuses on support, the support part of customer experience. But as we know, customer experience is this overall thing that the human being at the human being experiences, it's not these individual departments.

Ben Foden: How do you, how do you think about this idea of like. In, in the customer's mind. There is no division of departments. There's just one thing, and how, how can teams kind of, you know, think about, you know, where, where to blow the lines, where to where to get cross-functional.

Laura Dolan: This is something I was literally thinking about yesterday, and for me, no matter what department you're in, whether it's engineering, marketing, development, product, the [00:06:00] customer should be number one. They should be the most important entity we're thinking about. obviously there's things that. Take priority.

Laura Dolan: Like we, we wanna make sure we're getting people into the funnel and we're seeing conversions, and we're seeing people move through the funnel and become qualified leads and sales leads. But at the end of the day, these are people looking for a solution. And our job, especially as marketers. Is to provide that thought leadership and provide that pain point solution, meet them halfway. And for me that it's always been about that creating value when they come to your website, making sure that what they're looking for is there and at any stage of their journey, whether it's, you know, they're a small business or they're an enterprise, making sure that. What the solution is, is something that they can benefit from, and. Take them from A to B, [00:07:00] take them from before and after, take them from you know, from hell to heaven, however you say it. You know, it's just take them to a place that's better than where they started. That to me is the end goal, and that should be reflected. Again, just in, in anything we're doing, whether it's producing a video, an ebook, an infographic, obviously I'm, I'm coming from a content perspective, but me it's all the same goal.

Laura Dolan: Everybody should be aligned with the customer comes first. The customer is the most important person in the room, and that's what would break down the silos if everybody can get aligned just on that thought process and just really making sure that. At the end of the day, we want our customers to be happy.

Laura Dolan: We want them to come back and do case studies for us, give us referrals join a loyalty program, anything that makes the company look better and give credibility. Because at the end of the day, your reputation to be, you know, completely solid. And the way we do that is putting the [00:08:00] customer first and making sure that we take care of them as much as we can. Mm-hmm. Yes. Yes. Mm-hmm.

Ben Foden: speaking, like what are some things that you do or what are some things you recommend to, you know, get the customer in the room, even if they're not, you know, physically present.

Laura Dolan: Yeah, that's a great question. And I think it comes down to not just. we're selling them, what we're offering them, but how are we nurturing them? So once they buy the product, once they sign up for a service, do we have a customer portal for them? Do we have a team of customer success representatives that they can come to and trust?

Laura Dolan: Someone they can keep coming back to or are we providing any kind of reference tools? So for example, I work with a tool called Story Lane and it provides [00:09:00] step-by-step demos that our customers can download and they could keep them as reference and they don't have to keep, you know, calling the company or. Asking questions, you know, the, the answer's right there. And it, it's a matter of like how detailed we wanna be you know, how much work we're putting into it to really help them along. You know, it has, if we're gonna give them a tool where they have to be independent, we have to make sure that. skip any steps, that it's got every single detail that they would need. And that's something I think about as well. You know, when I'm creating content and thought leadership, you know, what, what is the thing they're looking for? What is the thing that's gonna make them click or keep scrolling or watch a video?

Laura Dolan: It, it dovetails into that. That you have those goals as a marketer, but then at the same time, it's, yes, those goals are there, but it's serving a purpose and making sure, like, you know, that back link is in the right place at the right time. That video is what they're looking for at the right [00:10:00] time. And just putting yourselves in their shoes.

Laura Dolan: I always do that. I'm a consumer. You're a consumer, you know, we, we wanna be treated a certain way and. It's all about empathy. You just have to put yourself in the customer's shoes and say, okay, well if I were doing this, what would I wanna see? What would I wanna know? So for me, you know, the customer's in the room, if you put your mindset, if you just go there with your mindset and you know, just, again, it's all about empathy.

Ben Foden: Absolutely. Yeah. I mean this, this idea of having empathy for the customer, um. As you said, putting yourself in their shoes. You know, people do customer journey mapping. People do, um, you know, what is it like the, uh, almost like the secret shopper kind of thing, right? Where you kind of become a user of your product and you, and you kind of go through it and see, you know, what stands out to you.

Ben Foden: Um, there's like various mm-hmm.

Laura Dolan: you know, go going through ICPs, things like that.

Ben Foden: There's various things people can try and, and that [00:11:00] are very helpful in this regard. One of the, one of the pieces again here that I'd love to get your thoughts on is like when you, when you have your marketing brain turned on and you're in the marketing point of view, and you're thinking about the support department, or you're, you've talked to the support department in the past, are there any stories of like a great interaction there where you learned something that you would, you might not have gotten on your own or.

Ben Foden: If not, is there, is there like, is there like an ideal shopping list you have for like what you want to get from the support department?

Laura Dolan: Yeah, that's a great question. And I mean, I'll just say in my personal experience, I, no matter where I work, I always have a really good relationship with the customer success teams or the customer success reps and telling them like, anytime you hear something positive, anytime you get some kind of stat or some kind of great feedback, ask the customer, can we please? Repurpose that, or would you be willing to come on and do a case [00:12:00] study or some kind of customer interview? And more often than not, they would say yes. And I think that's where the, the two worlds converge, where you know, the customer success team is setting our, obviously our customers up for success, whether it's through a portal, whether it's through some kind of, you know, ongoing communication on onboarding with the tool, what have you.

Laura Dolan: And then just breaking down those silos and having them. Be in constant communication with your marketing team and say, you know, this customer's very satisfied and they'd be willing to come on and do an interview or a blog or something. And I think that's where the, the two roads converge, where if you're paying attention and you're in constant communication with different departments, you will get those, that kind of feedback and those kinds of ideas for, you know, just. Better assets that will serve your prospects or potential customers, because you always want that social proof. And for me that that's invaluable.

Ben Foden: Yeah, I, I think you know [00:13:00] the, the support conversation as. Ideal source material for social proof is a hugely underappreciated opportunity that like people out there, like if you're in marketing, go and talk to your support team or your success team and ask them for this. And if you're in support or success, maybe take a step and be like, Hey, marketing, I've got, I've got the treasure here.

Ben Foden: Like, do you want some of this?

Laura Dolan: Right. Exactly. Yeah. And, and that it's such, it's exactly what it is. It's a treasure trove. And if, if that's not untapped, then you have to like, you have to pivot your thinking because if you are not in touch with your customer success team or your sales team, and you're getting this amazing feedback, know, that's just like wasted. It's, it's wasted gold. Honestly. It's just like, you know this unless, sorry, I try to pause because I know how easy that is to edit.

Ben Foden: Hey. You know, but this is, this is a natural [00:14:00] thing and, and I, you know, I, I respect your, um, you, you being careful about it, but I, I, I think that honestly, in this day and age, whether, whether you're writing a support response or you're writing a marketing campaign, or you're having a podcast conversation.

Ben Foden: Like the human element, which includes the ums and the ahs and the pauses and the, the dog getting up in the background. Literally.

Laura Dolan: you knows.

Ben Foden: Yeah. But, but like a li

Laura Dolan: over.

Ben Foden: but a, a little bit of roughness is a good thing is my point, because it like, if, if you polish off all those edges, like you kind of, you, you can't do that without losing some of the humanity too.

Laura Dolan: Yeah, no, the OCD in me tries to fight that, so I appreciate that.

Ben Foden: yeah. Well, I, I like to say that we're all human, you know, like we, nobody is perfect out here. One of the things that you touched on, speaking of which is this idea of empathy and I think there's a lot of directions that you can take that as a team or as an [00:15:00] initiative. Is there some examples that you could give us or some stories of like.

Ben Foden: Something around this idea of improving empathy for customers.

Laura Dolan: It is a great question. Just like in general, like what companies can do or what

Ben Foden: Any, any personal experiences that you've, you've had around this? I.

Laura Dolan: So I will say overall every time I've interviewed a customer or interacted with a customer as a marketer and they know what my role is and you know what I'm doing with them, at that point, it's so rewarding because they're so appreciative whether I am promoting their business or letting them. Basically empowering them to have a voice and talk about their experience and how it could help others. for me it's. It's giving 'em that outlet that they probably would otherwise not have other than maybe leaving [00:16:00] a, a Google Review or a Yelp review, which are also great, but to have the actual interaction with the company, somebody on the other side that they can express that appreciation to. I loved doing that at the beginning of my career up until the last company I worked for, I actually would just go on site to some local businesses here in Columbus that were customers of my company and just get to visit them for the day. And they take you on a tour and they show you around.

Laura Dolan: You get, take pictures and then just sit down for an interview. And it's, it's an experience for both me and them and. Seeing like a happy customer and knowing, you know, it's my company that's doing that. Like also me feel like I'm, I'm a part of the journey. I'm a part of this whole mission that we are striving for together and making the customer happy and, you know, creating. A quality solution or a quality product that they can go out and like shout to the [00:17:00] world, like, listen, like this thing worked for me, it got me from point A to point B. It could do the same for you. So just getting that message out there with their help, because it's like, it comes from the source, you know?

Laura Dolan: It's not secondhand information where you're just, you know, writing a thought leadership blog. This is like in the weeds almost. Like if you wanna get gritty, just. Get down and dirty, like with the customer and say, okay, like, what was it like before? What's it like now? And how can it get better? Things can always get better, things can always improve.

Laura Dolan: And then again, just tapping from the source and asking them like, you know, what, what can we do to make this better? You know, where else would you go for that information, you know?

Ben Foden: Absolutely. Absolutely. And I, I, I think it's easy to get away from, from the source material, so to speak. You know, we all have our own you know, projects and milestones and there's, there's all these different things, pushing and pulling in all these different directions. And, and people talk a lot about being customer centric, being [00:18:00] customer first.

Ben Foden: Like, practically speaking, it's hard to keep the customer's voice preserved

Laura Dolan: Mm-hmm.

Ben Foden: the source and then, and then amplify that, right? Without it getting, you know, kind of interpreted and changed and, you know, sort of watered down if you will through all the, the layers. But, um.

Laura Dolan: Mm-hmm. Yep.

Ben Foden: Yeah. I, I, I think getting to the source is, is just really essential for marketing.

Ben Foden: But of course you know, customer experience overall revolves around this. I wanted to get your, your, your opinion and, and your, your experience with, you know, as a marketing person. There's, it's this funnel, right? So you have to. Attract attention. You have to build awareness. Then you have to get them interested and they have to get into the funnel.

Ben Foden: They visit the website, they go through all the stages, and, and eventually there's a purchase somewhere and and then it's retention, and then you get into the customer success and support and all that stuff, right?

Laura Dolan: Right.

Ben Foden: [00:19:00] but when you look at this whole funnel, right, there's, there's various times when customers look for information.

Laura Dolan: Mm-hmm.

Ben Foden: so one of them would be, you know, before the purchase, like they're just trying to research what are the companies out there that sell this thing? Who are the providers that are available, how do they compare? And so on. And you have these kind of like pre-purchase questions that that customers have.

Ben Foden: And then there's, there's the real kind of evaluation phase. It's like, all right, well I've got these three items in my shopping cart, so to speak.

Laura Dolan: Mm-hmm.

Ben Foden: 1:00 AM I actually gonna pull the trigger on? You get really specific about the compare and contrast. That's another kind of category of questions.

Ben Foden: And then you have the kind of like the really specific purchase questions. Like, is my credit card supported? You know you know, is the kind of payment system that I wanna use. Is it annual, monthly, whatever.

Laura Dolan: Right?

Ben Foden: then you have post-purchase of course, which is where we lead into support and success typically.

Ben Foden: When you think about that, like. [00:20:00] Those are all different systems. Each of these stages of the funnel, these are different tools, these are different departments. Like where do you see that going? Do you think it's gonna remain this kind of like jumping from this stone to this stone, to this stone as you go across the river?

Ben Foden: Or is it, is it gonna become more like a bridge that's just, you know, just a smooth walk? I.

Laura Dolan: Yeah, I don't know. And especially if you want to, know, mention the thing that, that, that's so taboo right now and that's ai.

Ben Foden: Hmm,

Laura Dolan: how much

Ben Foden: We have to talk about it.

Laura Dolan: We have to, I, you know, it's just, it's, it's not going away. It's here. It's not the future, it's here. And what, from an auto, from an, sorry. Wow. My mind just went blank. From an automation standpoint and using ai, I feel like something like that will be employed in, in the near future. That's not to say it's going to take people's jobs away or replace [00:21:00] them. I feel like having that human interaction behind AI is, is still something that people clamor for,

Ben Foden: Yes.

Laura Dolan: for me. Personally, you know, if I call a company, I want to talk to a human. I don't wanna talk to this automated system, which, you know, that was a thing before ai. You know, every time I called in my prescription from the pharmacy, I never talked to a human. It was just all automated. I feel like that is where we're headed, just in a different context, but I'm hoping. Just the world in general and businesses in general have the foresight to realize the human interaction, the, the empathy behind it all is still plays a role. what was the question again? I'm so sorry.

Ben Foden: Well, it's, it's this,

Laura Dolan: question.

Ben Foden: it's this. The overall question is this idea that. There are, there are different stages [00:22:00] in the customer journey where customers look for different kinds of information and historically those have been different tools and systems and departments. And, and where do you see that going?

Ben Foden: Do you see it merging? And, and, and if so, you know how.

Laura Dolan: Yeah, I do see it merging and the. The way it's gonna merge, I think is the tricky part. If you wanna have everything all in one place. 'cause what a lot of companies are doing now, including mine, is consolidating, they're consolidating tools, they're consolidating solutions. So what is the end all, be all?

Laura Dolan: What does that tool look like? Where, you know, is it, is it on the website? Is it an app, is it a portal? Whatever the answer is. I think we just as a society need to be careful with tool we put out there because I just know, like I'll say a quick example. Someone on LinkedIn was talking about wanting to schedule a haircut for their kid, and they call the salon and they said, oh, you have to do it through the app. [00:23:00] Like you, you make the appointment, you pay for it, blah, blah, blah. And this lady's like, I just wanna make a simple appointment for my kid and be done with it. I don't wanna have to go through, know, sign up for the app, create a password, and then put my info in there. You know, it's like. A lot of these convenient tools, yes, they're convenient after a while, but when you have to get 'em set up, and a lot of people don't wanna take those steps.

Laura Dolan: They just wanna get whatever the task or whatever the product they need, like one and done, you know? Or if somebody goes to a router store to get a new router and they say, oh, you have to get it online. They're like, but you, you right there. Like, can you just hand me one? But like, no, you have to go through the.

Laura Dolan: The website because we need your info and we need the tracking, whatever, whatever the excuse is. And I just feel like we just need to be careful about overcomplicating things. Be, you know, trying to, trying to simplify at the same time. Like there's that counterintuitive, You know, almost backlash of making things worse or making things more [00:24:00] complicated.

Laura Dolan: So to answer your question is, I, don't know what that looks like. If we figure it out and we could figure out how to streamline AI and how to actually make it so that we can rely on it and we, you know, just. Use it in a way that actually helps, rather than hinders then Yeah. That that's the hope that everybody should have. ​

Ben Foden: Absolutely. Yeah. I mean. Helping rather than hindering is, is sort of the table stakes, right? That's the starting line that everybody should, should begin from. And unfortunately, you know, it's, uh, we have an AI initiative and we're, we're AI forward and we're AI ready and all this. And it's a lot of talk without a lot of substance I find.

Ben Foden: You know, and

Laura Dolan: Yes. Yeah.

Ben Foden: it, it is just you know, as a vendor, like I have to be careful about this. Because every incentive is to overhype it. Every incentive is to say, we promise you the world and it's gonna solve [00:25:00] all your problems and it's gonna integrate all your systems and everything's gonna be great. And the reality is that it's not like that, of course.

Ben Foden: And you know, the reality is that customer experience is, is almost at an all time low. From, from the eyes of the customer, from the eyes of the humans that are actually interacting on the, on the end of these things. And, and it's a lot of frustrating experiences. Like this story you told, you know, I just wanna book an appointment.

Ben Foden: I'm already on the phone. Why are you forcing me into another channel? Right?

Laura Dolan: and it's gonna take me more time. And you know, I'm just, I'm talking to you, can you just put it in your computer right now?

Ben Foden: Yeah, yeah,

Laura Dolan: the point of even having somebody answering the phone? So,

Ben Foden: yeah. Yeah.

Laura Dolan: again, I just, I don't want us to get to a point where everything we're doing is counterintuitive and we're just making things more difficult.

Laura Dolan: So,

Ben Foden: Absolutely.

Laura Dolan: to see how it evolves.

Ben Foden: Yeah. I mean the, the tools and the processes need to adapt to the human, not the other way around.

Laura Dolan: A hundred percent.

Ben Foden: and I feel very strongly [00:26:00] about that.

Laura Dolan: Yeah, that's the key. And I, I am hoping that that's how everybody else is thinking, but I have a bad feeling that it's not, it's not the way it's gonna

Ben Foden: Well, we're, we're still early doors, right? We're still, it's still early in this whole AI thing. You know, AI as a discipline has been around for decades, but as like a practical part of our lives. It's been here for only a few years.

Laura Dolan: Right.

Ben Foden: even that, you know, depending on industry and depending on your personal experience, like you may be further or ahead or behind on that adoption curve.

Ben Foden: But I think, I think it's just so, it's all too common that it's frustrating and it's just not reliable. And I appreciate, of course, the companies out there that wanna move forward and try new things, but,

Laura Dolan: Right.

Ben Foden: there's a whole new skill set that's involved. 

Laura Dolan: Yep.

Ben Foden: and those, those new skills is kind of the next thing I wanted to ask you about is like, what, where are you learning?

Ben Foden: What, what kind of directions are you excited to get more into as we head into [00:27:00] 2026?

Laura Dolan: Yeah. This is a very timely question. So my company, we use copilot and, and what we're getting in the habit of doing is. Creating agents within the tool. So for those who aren't familiar with how that works you go into copilot and instead of prompting instead of putting a prompt in the chat like you normally do, you go into an, you create an agent, you train it you can call it whatever you like.

Laura Dolan: Ours, it's an acronym and the acronym spells out coralline. So I'll just say, so Coralline is an agent that helps us with a, a lot of our marketing needs. So we'll prompt it to give us maybe some social copy or split this ebook into four blogs, you know, what, what have you. And then you're teaching it your. The voice of the company the tone branding just, you know, the, the, do you use sentence case? Do you use title, case, you know, just little nuances and details like that. And you train this agent and a while the train, the agent [00:28:00] becomes. An expert on what you're working on within your brand or within your business, and that's something that's also been a little interesting to, to see roll out and and evolve. For me personally, I. You know, it's a whole new skill set to become a, a prompt engineer, as they say when it comes to ai. And just knowing exactly how to word it how much detail to put in there so you get the best results. people just have to be careful. 'cause ai, it's getting things from the internet and the internet isn't always accurate.

Laura Dolan: There's a lot of. Crap out there. You know, I, it's just for, for lack of a better

Ben Foden: It's true.

Laura Dolan: you have to, again, you still need that human intervention where you go through and you fact check it and you make sure that it's not making mistakes or it's not wording something incorrectly. You know, it is just. For me, it's not a time saver like people think it is. And you know, [00:29:00] I, I said I started my career as a writer, but I am first and foremost an editor. I've been editing, I edited papers in high school and got paid for it from people in college. I mean, like, that's like the type of. Person I am is like, I am a perfectionist and I will nitpick, pick something, rip something apart, I will read and make sure that it's up to standards and that it actually makes sense. AI doesn't always make sense and that's the drawback. I think it's still needs to be perfected, We have embraced it to the point where I think we're skipping a step where, okay, we're just taking it face value that whatever I get back from Chachi BT or Copilot or whatever other tool is correct, and I'm just gonna put it out there for the world to see and.

Ben Foden: Laura, I think you muted your microphone there somehow. [00:30:00] In the, in the app. It has a, it has a mute icon.

Ben Foden: I cannot hear you. I don't know if there's, if your microphone got unplugged or if something happened with your microphone, maybe. Oh, there it is. I can hear you again.

Laura Dolan: That's so weird. I didn't even touch anything

Ben Foden: I have no idea. Maybe like a loose, a loose wire or something.

Laura Dolan: I don't know, maybe I accidentally hit my mute button. I don't know. Anyway, sorry.

Ben Foden: Sorry. So just, yeah, just continue your thought and I'll, I'll stitch it together.

Laura Dolan: I can't remember where I left off. 

Ben Foden: You know, sort of thoughtful use of AI versus just, you know, giving it free reign basically, I.

Laura Dolan: Yeah. So I think at the end of the day, we just need to put the effort in to make sure what we're prompting it and what we're getting back. Is it aligned with what we're putting out there, that it's credible, that we fact check it, that we read through it. You know, don't be afraid to proofread. Don't be afraid to go in and, and rewrite.

Laura Dolan: I, I'm constantly re [00:31:00] rewriting what AI spits out. I feel like. At the end of the day, I could have just written it myself. And it would be the same amount of time. So it, it'll be just interesting to see how it evolves and how accurate the tool is and how we could almost fact check the tool itself. You know, how do we hold AI accountable, I guess.

Ben Foden: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, absolutely. I, I think there's a lot of people that can relate to what you're talking about right now, and we've all seen the AI slop content. It's, it's terrible. We all hate it. But we also,

Laura Dolan: Also.

Ben Foden: a lot of us, maybe everybody these days wants to get the efficiency as well. So there's kind of two sides to that coin.

Ben Foden: And I, I, I think there's, there's this idea that I, I, I came across actually a, a family friend. It was like a really savvy executive, and he, he had this, this idea that you should not hire somebody to do something that you are good [00:32:00] at

Laura Dolan: at

Ben Foden: So if you have the skill so that, let's extend this to ai, right?

Ben Foden: If there's, if you're good at writing, don't ask AI to do it for you.

Laura Dolan: exactly.

Ben Foden: Right. But if there's something you're really bad at and AI is really good at, then of course use it for that. Right? So like, for example, just for people out there, like if you're gonna go, if you wanna, like you have a goal of writing a blog post or writing a knowledge base article or something and you're gonna get your source material ready and you wanna have your references and, and you want to get, you know, you wanna summarize a lot of data.

Laura Dolan: you,

Ben Foden: can throw in pages and pages and, you know, thousands and thousands of words into AI and say, Hey, summarize this

Laura Dolan: Mm-hmm.

Ben Foden: and it's gonna do a great job.

Laura Dolan: job.

Ben Foden: Right. That's not your article though. That's just the, the, the notes, the preparation, and now you go and write, you know, with all this stuff nicely summarized and sort of cited and ready for you.

Ben Foden: So I, I think those are the sorts of things that, you know.

Laura Dolan: you know,

Ben Foden: Hopefully people can think [00:33:00] about a little bit more of like, what am I good at and what am I not good at? And like, don't outsource the good part, right?

Laura Dolan: It's the same concept as hiring people smarter than you,

Ben Foden: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Laura Dolan: hiring the people who know how to do something that you don't, and they're the ones that who make you look good. And I feel like, yeah, we could definitely leverage AI in that way if we, again, know how to use it. They're, I've seen so many training videos out there on how to be. successful prompt engineer and you know, it is, it's a skill set. You can add your resume. I've done it because I've been working with AI now since almost three years. Beginning of 2023 is when I started using chat GBT

Ben Foden: Mm-hmm.

Laura Dolan: and you know, it, it started out. know, just very, I honestly didn't know where to, where to begin.

Ben Foden: Mm-hmm.

Laura Dolan: like, the possibilities are endless. Where do I even start? And so I'm like, Hey, could, you know, write this LinkedIn post for me and, and you know, here's my company, here's my branding, whatever. And it just kind of took off from there. [00:34:00] And yeah, from an efficiency standpoint, it's fantastic.

Laura Dolan: Especially if you needed to create, like, notes for a podcast or some kind of outline for a video or script or some kind of suggestion. You know, a way to figure out how to communicate. Details for an infographic that you're giving to a design team. You know, just things like that I feel are, are invaluable.

Laura Dolan: But again, possibilities are endless and it just depends on people's industries and, and what they're doing with it. And, you know, at the end of the day, it is a helpful tool. I don't mean to bash it, but I'm just trying to be cautious. I'm just overly cautious with things. So that's just me.

Ben Foden: Well, we have to be critical about these things, I think, and you can't accept it at face value. You know I wanted, so there's, there's this theme throughout this episode. This, there's, there's a few themes I wanna pull together here and get your thought on, on where this is all going. So you, you've got, you've got this theme of, of the, kind of the blurring of the lines internally in order to, to have a comprehensive.

Ben Foden: Single [00:35:00] customer experience externally. There's that, and then there's also this evolving. So I mean, that suggests like sort of a cross-functional role or sort of a, a change in the traditional role job roles. But there's also this, um, this, this trend of ai.

Laura Dolan: ai.

Ben Foden: Skills being more and more relevant to every function.

Ben Foden: Right? So, you know, you're not just writing, you're writing with ai, you're not just answering support tickets, you're, you're solving problems with AI as well. On the marketing side, there's this sort of, all this analytics and other stuff going on. Like, but the, the skillset is very different of like

Laura Dolan: like

Ben Foden: managing the AI instead of managing it direct, managing the problem directly yourself.

Laura Dolan: Mm-hmm.

Ben Foden: some cases, what do you think about this? Like this evolving landscape? You know, like from a career and sort of, and sort of job point of view?

Laura Dolan: I think it definitely adds another layer to whatever you're doing, because again, if you're relying on a tool

Ben Foden: I.

Laura Dolan: for efficiency, [00:36:00] yes, it. Delivers something that you need at that time, but still need as, as the person responsible, as the human side of it. Again, qc it know, just don't take it at face value.

Laura Dolan: Don't just copy and paste something and then send it off. If you're trying to draft an email, make sure that. You know, it's addressing the right person, or you're not just sending an email that says hi name. You know, it's just these little minute details

Ben Foden: Hi. Insert name here.

Laura Dolan: exactly.

Ben Foden: Yeah.

Laura Dolan: you know, those are steps I think some people forget when they're, you know, in, in a hasty wow. In a hasty rush,

Ben Foden: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Laura Dolan: And they're not taking the time to, you know, they think that, wow, here's this great tool and it's making me more efficient. And, but at the end of the day, yes, there's efficiency, but there's also accuracy. And, you know, you, you need to embrace both and make sure that you are, you know, that you're embracing both.

Laura Dolan: Yeah.

Ben Foden: Yeah, I mean, that's the holy grail, right? Efficient and [00:37:00] accurate. If you have inaccuracy, that's inefficient. 

Laura Dolan: Exactly

Ben Foden: uh.

Laura Dolan: just defeats the whole purpose of everything.

Ben Foden: Right, right. Yeah. Well Laura, it's been great to talk to you. Uh, it's, it's Laura Dolan on LinkedIn. Everybody, if you wanna connect with Laura, um, she does great work and, and feel free to reach out to her.

Ben Foden: And, and that's been it for the CX Files Podcast. We'll see you next time.

Laura Dolan: Thank you so much Ben, and thank you all for listening. This has been a lot of fun, so I really appreciate you bringing me on.

Ben Foden: Thank you. Bye.

Laura Dolan: Bye.