Adapting to the Future of Contact Center Outsourcing- Lessons Learned for All

00:00Hi guys, Tom Laird here. You've heard me break down contact center technology on the podcast time and time again. Now, it's time for me to help you with your challenges. As your contact center technology advisor through our new company Expivia Digital, I can help you with things like CCaaS selection, any type of AI implementation, and studio and integration services. It's the same honest advice you hear on the geek applied specifically to your operation. Visit ExpiviaDigital.com to get started. That's ExpiviaDigital.com. 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 call Welcome back, everybody to another episode of advice from a call center geek, the call center, contact center podcast, we try to give you some action 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 Expivia Interaction Marketing, also of OttoQA. I hope everybody's having a good summer. I just kind of took my first family vacation, which is pretty bad since my daughter's 11 and my son's nine. I went to the Keys for a little bit to see my sister. They have a little house there, which is awesome. But I did a lot of thinking when I was there when you're you're just kind of laying around, I think that this is, you know, something I, we have to start to get across as an industry and that meaning as, as a BPO, as, as an outsourcer, we need to start talking through some of the changes that are evolving and some of the things that I think you should need to start be looking for in a contact center outsourcer of today compared to even what you would do a year or two or three or four years ago, things have really evolved, things have really changed.

02:08A lot of organizations from the contact center side are struggling to keep up with that. Struggling to figure out what they need to provide to customers. I think customers are confused on what they should be asking now too. So wanted to take a couple of minutes. And again, we're here. I'm live on Facebook, live on LinkedIn, live on Twitter. If you have any questions, please let me know. we can get a discussion going as well. But I wanted to talk through some of these things that maybe a lot of the outsourcers are not talking about because there's a little bit of preparation into what the next steps are in this new world of AI and what we should be looking for. So I wanted to give a case study, I guess of Expivia of our contact center and how we're what we see is some of the needs of customers that they're not sure about how to take the next steps.

03:12So we want to kind of be that group or one of the organizations that can help organizations or different companies that are looking to outsource, take that next step down a technology path, down an AI path where maybe they don't have the resources or not really sure what to do next. There's a lot of really cool outsourcers out there that are really embracing this, this technology. And, you know, I don't think we talk about it enough. And I think the smaller contact centers, like my contact center, right? We are the ones that are, that can move so quickly on this stuff. So, you know, I think think that's probably why you don't hear, as much from the big guys, right? Because, you know, there's a huge kind of pool and kind of ean flow that they need to do to move, you know, move the Titanic, so to speak, right?

04:04a couple of inches where I think some of these smaller quote-unquote, you know, under 1000, under 2000 seat BPOs, we can sprint and kind of get things, you know, I think I want to start there is that's the biggest thing is number one is we are planning, you know, in the next three years for about a 20 to 30% reduction in an overall outsourcing and contact center headcount. Not just due to kind of that first touch chat bot that's going to handle everything. I think that there's a piece of that, but I think there are added efficiencies that we're starting to see within AI tools that they're talked about, but now we're actually starting to see them realized. And we're starting to even be able to kind of create some of the tools internally at a smaller dollar amount about that I think we can really, you know, kind of make us a huge benefit to customers. So, you know, it's one thing when you hear a sales guy, a technology sales guy, say, hey, you're gonna, your NPS is gonna go to up 20% and your average handle time is gonna be dropped by 33%. Like, like all that stuff at the beginning was all BS, but now we're starting to really see as we dig into tools, start to utilize them in different ways that there are some some real kind of cost savings that we can find for customers. And I think a lot of things are going to change. So the number one thing that I think that we have seen is, you know, we are no longer call ourselves really an an outsourcer or BPO, right? We're a technology company, right? A CX technology partner that specializes in outsourcing, or before it was, you know, we're a contact center outsourcer that was really good at technology, right? So we've totally flipped kind of that whole thing on its head. And just talk about now being about that AI or CX technology partner.

06:05And again, guys, remember, this stuff is a year old at max, right? So when you hear everybody talk about AI powered this and we're fully AI. Yeah, and I'm not saying that, that's not total, that's total BS. But remember, we're all kind of working through this. And I think some of us are just a little bit of ahead of the game. But when you hear about fully AI powered, or, you know, just be careful with that. All right. I think we do say AI powered. I think I use that AI powered because there's a lot of tools now that we didn't have before, that we're now utilizing because of AI. And, you know, those are the things that I want to kind of talk about here today, too, of how they can benefit you. And then, you know, when you're doing an RFP for an outsourcer, what are some of the things that you should be asking for now, right? That I think can give you good, great cost savings and also, you know, raise your, you know, your NPS or CSAT, or whatever those metrics are. And we'll talk about that here in a second as well.

07:07Actually, let's start there. One of the main things that I have found with AI is that you can't just kind of throw it against the wall and hope. You have to use it strategically to answer specific questions or to solve specific problems that you have. Now, I'm not saying it can't do all of these, but if you really pinpoint and say, hey, we want to raise our customer experience, our CSAT, our NPS, we want to raise those scores. then there's tools for that. Hey, we need to lower our handle time, right? There's tools for that. Hey, we wanna make the actual agent experience better. It's so confusing now, how do we utilize AI to make that agent experience, better, which then we believe will translate to both of those things, a higher CSAT, higher NPS, and also looking at a lower handling time or lower amount of time that customer has to be on the call.

08:06We like to lower costs. We shift away from the contact center into more of a technology model. And again, there's times and places for that. And think that all that stuff is good. But that's how we need to start the process. is, what problems do we want to solve? And maybe it's all of them, right? Maybe we want lower costs and we want higher CSAT scores and we want, you know, the agents that do take calls to have the best experience ever, which is amazing. But don't think that one tool is going to do that because number one, it's not. And we need to be road mapping, you know, this out, you know, to a specific kind of end point that you have and then move on to something else and then kind of create this kind of AI-powered customer experience. The other thing that I'm seeing is that a a lot of the CCaaS guys are coming out with tools, still,re pretty expensive.

09:06I think that we're starting to look at building, right? And I think you're starting to see that even in the smaller BPOs, looking to build out specific tools, right? at a lower cost point using LLMs, or using whatever internal AI, maybe that we can kind of get our hands on, or start to play around with. But for the most part utilizing the LLMs, and those large language models from whether it be ChatGPT, whether it be Sonnet, whether it be Llama, any of those, and trying to again solve problems with that. And I think again, that's where the whole becoming a technology partner first, that specializes in outsourcing, really, really makes and makes a difference. You know, I think you guys know, I mean, if anybody's been following me at all, you guys know how we fully developed. You know, OttoQA, right? So we are fully automating, all scoring of quality forms for our customers internally. So for most of our customers, again, we're not a huge BPO, right? So, you know, our average customer is probably 20 to 30 to 40 seats, right. We have some that are 5 to 10 seats, some that are in that 80 to 100, right. But those are few and far between. Most of them are in that kind that kind of mid area. [QA coverage remark omitted] So, you know, that's a huge change and a huge shift to not have to charge have a huge value add actually save us money, right, but provide a bigger value for customers than if we were using a QMA platform from a CCaaS provider that we're doing three calls per agent per week per our SOW.

10:54Again, that's an unbelievable use case that we're starting to build out. And then starting to build things on top of that. You get a full coaching model, to have agents be able to redo calls that maybe they made mistakes all day, they made an error with, but literally calling the same customer that they just talked to, but us sending out that transcript to AI using an AI voice and having basically an AI avatar of the customer, be able to react to a different outcome that the agent is now going to give them after we've kind of coached. I think that those are some of the really cool experiences that you can build out on your own or that an outsourcer is building out on our own to provide value to customers and either keep the same cost, lower cost, but add a higher level of value.

11:52Those are the tools that I think are winning today, right? You know, it's still, if you go out on your own and a you have, you know, whether it's CXone, Five9, Genesys, Genesys, any of the, you know, main players, if you go out to an Emilia, an Emilia, any of those AI, poly AI providers, it's crazy expensive still, right? Your ROI won't be there for a while. And I think a lot of that is set up in the setup, set up in the setup, a the setups are so crazy expensive. The usage model is there, which is cool, right, but it is still really expensive and high. You know, they're rounding up the crazy, you know, numbers. So I think that's and outsourcer can kind of come into play, right? To say, Hey, listen, we already have this stuff built out. We have to do a small build out for you, right?

12:48[pricing remark omitted] Cause we kind of have everything done. We kind of understand the process, building out your model from a self-service standpoint that can bring you ROI much quicker because especially if we're starting to build things on our own, but still maybe utilizing some of those tools in conjunction with each other, it's still going to be less than I believe what you would start to pay if you had to start from scratch and go out on your own. If there's a BPO that's charging you crazy, crazy setup fees, I think that you need to run away from that. I was never a believer in setup fees. I know a lot of BPOs do do that to cover their training costs, right, and cover that, that upfront cost-to they have and so Let's talk about what you should be asking from an RFP standpoint. So if you're you're building out an RFP, and what should BPOs, what should contact centers have today?

14:03That should be almost like a skills based routing If you didn't, or Omni, Omni channel. There's still contact centers that are selling Omni channel. If you don't have Omni channel, experience out. And I think again, that's for a lot of mistakes. things get made. And we start at the customer level and then work our way in. I would start with looking at things like the customer or your, your BPO should have agent assist, especially if you have a complex type of, of a program. Maybe you have a, you're a retailer with, with a ton of different skews. Right. You have so many different products that, um, um, that an agent, it's just really hard for them and normally they'd have to look up things that's your

[Gap 14:55–15:24: no reliable transcription]

15:24that that's something that has been, again, I hate the phrase low hanging fruit, I use it so much, I need another phrase for that, but we've seen agent-assists do a lot, and so I think that's one of the things that you should think about if you have an RFP, if you're looking for an outsourcer, do they have this technology, how do they apply it for the use cases that we would have? The second really easy thing is auto summarization, right? able to take the call, summarize it in a way that makes sense for you, you know, put those notes in there into the auto summarization, right, to kind of tell it what you want of how the outcome of calls happen, then be able to put that into your CRM. Again, what is the use case for that, right, that use case could be for anything, right. Number one, if. If you have issues with quality of memo and notes in your CRM from your agents, this is a good, you know, tool to have if that's to you guys, but I think more importantly, if you have long after call works, right?

16:29If you have long wrap times, if the agent has to do two to three to four minutes of work when that call is RPA, if there's a lot of things they need to do, but if they're just memoing, making sure that the account is documented properly, then auto summarization is the no brainer of no brainers. [pricing remark omitted] I also think that if you are, if you don't know what tool, if you have the technology in your, in your contact center to build something out, auto summarization is crazy easy to do. You kind of almost figure out the prompt right away for it depending on what you want.

17:20And to be able to put it into, to a quick integration into your CRM is, is a pretty light lift. So that's something that, again, for us, we don't even really charge for that, because it's really such a small offering and small cost for us that we are charging literally a penny of a penny of a penny of a penny of a penny for that, where some of these guys are really gouging that price because they think it. It's such a cool technology, and it's really probably the most basic AI technology that there is for the contact center. So I would ask and make sure that you're getting a good price on that. I think, looking at some of the advanced routing, looking at CXone, you guys know, I'm a CXone guy. They have a tool that has been really now powered now by AI, which is WFI, which is workforce intelligence.

18:20If you're using Five9 Genesys, Dialpad, all these companies have a tool like this, where basically you're looking and has the ability to, instead of. A, a human being moving people in and out of skills, but having now AI powered kind of a brain, move agents in and out of skills based on business rules of handle time or service level. That's a really cool use case that you can utilize now, Now, again, I tell every time I go to talk at an interaction, which is a C on one event, I say, guys, make make sure that you're utilizing this, you doesn't cost anything. And it's an AI powered tool that I think is really cool. Now the other thing, that I think people don't talk about are these legacy tools, right? You know, ask about the BPOs workforce Rangit, is there WFM? How good is their reporting aspect? How good is their forecasting? What type of AI technologies does that have embedded in it? You know, the, that's one of the huge thing that nobody talks about that I've seen the one of the biggest changes with is WFM. And how smart that that tool is now getting, you know, from a forecasting standpoint, from a, from an intraday forecast, right, and being able to make really the split decisions that can tie into WFI, or to move agents in and out. So you're, you're almost having like a, a robot controlled contact center, right? And that's kind of what we've gotten to, right? That kind of our, our WFI, almost talking to our workforce management, and being able. To move agents kind of in and out of skills fluently, you know, based on the forecast that's coming, based on what's happening in the IVR, if we're getting a little bit of a, of a rush, or we're getting crushed during a certain time of day that we didn't expect, to make those split second decisions that, again, I think would be harder for you If you don't know what you're doing, if you don't know what you're doing on a real core CCaaS platform, and again, another kind of value add of chatbots, because I think that, you know, I would be remiss to not talk about them, right? They're an important aspect of what is coming.

20:38It depends on how deep you want to go down the rabbit hole with that. You know, the number one thing that I would say, if you're doing an RFP for a contact center outsourcercer, I would not say, hey, do you have self-service AI, chatbots, virtual, virtual assistants, whatever you want to call them, do you have that, right? Because that's what I hear like, do you guys have that technology? Well, yeah, everybody kind of has the technology, but are you ready to utilize it to its fullest extent. Meaning, what integrations do you understand that you're going to have to have as many things integrated as possible to make it work? Whether that be your CMS, whether that be your KMS, whether that be any type of data sets that you have, obviously your CCaaS platform, having all of these things kind of tied together, is the number one aspect.

21:29, the number two thing is, how is your KMS? I would ask in the RFP, can you help me build out the KMS? What resources do you have available to help the organizations that don't have a KMS or maybe have one that's old that has bad data? Or how do you keep your KMS? How will you help us keep our KMS up to date and how will you integrate it into our IVAs or into our chatbots? Those are the things that. And people again, we're not understanding, we're not being an outsourcer, being a CCaaS provider, we're not talking about those enough of the kind of the steps. And again, guys, I've done multiple podcasts on that. Go check it out on what you need to do to really become fully AI powered. What are the steps that you need to do maybe this year to kind of get to that level so that next year.

22:19You can start to buy technology. I think that that's something that's pretty important and something that I think you need to kind of really start to think I, before you just have an outsourcerYs to say, Hey, we want you to do full self-service, we want you to do all this stuff. And the outsourcer says, okay, that's fine. And then they don't really realize it either, because they're just saying yes to everything, right? You have to be really careful with who you're talking to, what questions they're I'm going to ask you, making sure that you understand everything that you need to kind of meet that standard that they can give you. I can give you that, need to do to get to that spot. I think that's the important thing. The other thing that I like to ask, and I was asking an RFP is have you kind of, what other tools have you looked at the legacy tools and have you kind of advanced them?

23:16Like do you have advanced analytics that have some type of AI power in them? Meaning not just looking at trending keywords and that, but they're integrated into your supervisor, right, right? So it can tell, talk through real-time sentiment, right? Right, it starts to go down on an agent, boom, supervisor gets notified, supervisor can get on that line. Like those are some of the things that- every BPO should start to be having now, right? Those aren't like the cool, check this out. No, they're the kind of the 2024 must-haves in the contact center. And I think, you know, that's- That's really important. The other thing I would start to talk to in my RFP is how good are they with integrations? Again, we talked about the KMS, but the integration piece I think goes beyond just the AI. Obviously, you need it for AI. But can you do it for cool, just regular things?

24:17I still think one of the coolest things we do has nothing to do with AI. But when you can route off of data, I don't know why. For me, that's always just so cool, right? So when a call comes in, to go look at different fields in Salesforce, and depending on what that field says, send it to maybe a self-service, send it to a specific agent, send it to a group of agents, right, to have this kind of really cool routing aspect. When you're integrating data sources with telephony, I still think it's crazy, crazy cool. And because we always were good at that, and probably because I liked it, and I would always recommend it, we always got to have a little bit of a step up of getting customers to be able to kind of move down that AI road, because integrations are kind of secondary to us. I know a a lot of BPOs as, as well, but they're, are just so easy to do. And again, once you get that done, there's so much stuff that you can do as well. Let's see, just trying to think if I missed anything here, checking out some, I think that's the other thing too, is this is good. I I'm glad I went through my notes here. I think every single outsourcer should have quarterly technology reviews. So that's kind of what we do. Now granted, we're talking weekly, But to really have an hour, have an hour and a half long meeting where we kind of develop their AI roadmap, we can demo any kind of technology that's maybe we're utilizing for other customers that's just coming out.

25:57Show new use cases. Technology is moving so quickly that you can't wait really year to year to do this. And it needs to be a quarterly at least, hey, this stuff's coming out. your RFP that you're talking through that how often are they going to help you kind of roadmap and get to where you need to be from a technology standpoint so that depending on what you want to do you can always kind of stay ahead of the game I think that's really important as well. I think as well guys if you're not using you know even the desktop version within your organization. Even if it's one-off stuff, start to utilize that. There's so much that you can do internally that you don't even need an outsourcer for anymore, to be perfectly honest, with some of the technology and some of the s information. Your KMS, using a personal GPT, that could be something really cool, especially for smaller contact centers that you can do.

27:06I still think It's so crazy inexpensive that no matter what size you are, from a five-seater, if you're a five-seat, 10-seat contact center, [pricing remark omitted] So again, we've, we've seen those huge savings in there. I know, you know, transcripts, the cost of that is just plummeting right now. I'm excited for ChatGPT 5. I think that you will start to see some real audio, you know, get a lot of questions on sentiment, you know, and we're still utilizing prompting in transcripts for sentiment, just like kind of analytics. But until we get real audio where we start to talk about sarcasm, we can start to really notice changes and raises and. Lowering voices, I think that's the big next step. So yeah guys, that's kind of what I wanted to kind of talk through today. If there's any questions or anything, please DM me.

28:23You know, I would love to talk with you if anybody's looking to outsource even if you want to go near shore offshore You know what speed is fully onshore We don't have an offshore presence But I have a lot of connections, you know near shore offshore if that's where you want to go So if you just want to kind of talk about your AI plan, I'd love to kind of talk that through. If you're looking to outsource anything anything from your conduct center here in the States, we'd love to at least be part of your RFP process. Love for you to be able to ask questions of us. And I think you'd be pretty surprised and happy with a lot of the answers that you got. So appreciate it. And I will talk to everybody next week.