Exposed: The Unvarnished Truth About AI Deployment in Contact Centers

00:00Hi, I'm Tom Laird here. You've heard me break down Comcast 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 nice studio and integration services. It's the same honest advice- A weekly podcast with a focus on all things call center will cover it all from call center Welcome back everybody to another episode of the call center geek, the call center 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 of ExpiD interaction marketing and of auto QA. It's good to going to be back. We're going to get back into our routine, of once a week podcast.

01:24So thank you guys for joining. 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, I think that this is a little bit of a controversial. It's a little bit 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, The CCW everything seems everybody seems like, you know, we're all managers and IT professionals to do some. I don't know what that is. They don't know what 100 to 1,500 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.

03:19I'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 i'm not lying when i say three people out of 1500 have raised their hands so the honesty is also there because nobody knows what's going on nobody's We need to start, we need to start the actual tools that can be utilized. And most of this stuff is not. The other thing that we keep forgetting as an industry, 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 lawmaker and it's way easier to do in the cloud and the vast majority of contact centers the vast majority of contact centers are still not even in, let me think about that for a second.

04:40We're talking and moving to this 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 all these otherB tools let the first touchpoint AI. AI chatbot that everybody thinks It's not there yet There's 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 auto QA as a step Do I think that the auto QA platform that we're using now is going to be even in existence in its same form in five years? Heck No, and it might be three years, maybe 18 months, but we're going to keep evolving that. But it's a bridge, right? There's a paradox that's happening out here in the marketplace, and it's a perception.

05:31If you're utilizing AI in your contact center, then you think everybody else is about it all the time when people can't even talk your ling in the middle, but, you know, the perception and the FOMO that is being pushed by AI technology companies, by the, the mychatbot.com is great companies. You know, we're not there, and you're not falling behind. [QA coverage remark omitted] But don't let anybody's demo, don't let anybody's sales presentation, don't let all, all the the stuff that you see on LinkedIn and think that you need to move into something that you're not comfortable with that you're not there yet. Some of the things that I have discussed in the past, but again, let's just bring these he's to the front of the table. Most people are not, most companies are not in the clock number one, number two, most don't have the integrations that they need.

06:44The lack of integrations in the, the frank and stacks that you see from a CX standpoint for most companies, it does not allow for easy integrations and to get to the data that you're gonna 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, 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, you're going to get crap coming out of it. [pricing remark omitted] We're not at a usage model when almost all customers would prefer that, right? TheyB prefer it, but you know what, the those guys, right, that are providing the technology, it's not conducive to them. That that makes no sense to me either.

08:10And there's going to be some real differentiators that are coming into the space. Again, I'm just a littleaughed on 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. [pricing remark omitted] You want to do 500, you want to do 300 calls, you want to do I don't care, right? And I think that there's a huge issue with that. [pricing remark omitted] And nobody's going to like this video and nobody's going to like this podcast because because 90% of everybody who follows me is a CX technology person, right?

09:10All these things kind of and, We need to do it, we need to do it, we need to do it. The things you need to do to do AI right? Let's talk about what we need to Let's talk about building out our KMS. Let's talk about those kind of tools. Let's talk about the policies and procedures. What How comfortable are we from a security aspect to use large language models? Are we in all? Is there an appetite for it. I think that stuff's really important to do in 2024 the LLMs. 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. Nobody wants to talk about that, right.

11:20Cause you're not selling product. It's a disaster, right? I still think you can do the AI thing

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11:39that everybody wants to go full AI. I thinklandish.com. I think most companies don't. They want to even think about them. So I'm not saying slowing down because so many of these guys are moving so far ahead because so many of these guys are moving so far ahead- the stuff that's okay. It's not great, but I think that if companies that are. selling these products 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. There's going to be a bubble here 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 chat It's not. No matter what anybody wants to say. There's a lot to think about and digest there. But it's just, it's frustrating for me to see, you know, the speed.

12:47of the technology because it's easy to use, it's awesome technology

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13:09So again, there's a huge spot in the market for companies that want to... To just be frank here, Now you can start down this path. 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 and this AI I Knew I've talked to a ton, a ton of people on this stuff,

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14:17But 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? All of this stuff, we have expertise in. We know how to do it. It's not just Expivia. It's a ton of BPOs that are out there. Onshore, near shore, offshore, don't care. [pricing remark omitted] And too many people are falling for that.

15:06It is crazy expensive, the minimums that a lot of these AI companies from a self-service standpoint are collecting that they want. [pricing remark omitted] There is 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 kind of things within the IVR from a security standpoint, 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, while you can build this stuff on your own, it is it's extremely frustrating. 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 really struggling, and I think with the results that you're finding. Dig deep into demos. I will tell you that, right? Dig deep. 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 there's no agent that it's going, I'm going to trick it. A hundred 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 if you're utilizing the agent, then again, I still have a full value if you have a really good self-service model already, 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 skews, 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 at 500 seats, 400 seats, 200 seats, the 20-seater, the 15-seater, 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 just all the talks that I have given and hearing people that have either spoken before me or after me. And they always they always talk about the, the why you need it. I don't think anybody needs to hear the why we got to start to talk about the how, How do we do it and how do we do it right?

18:03How 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, no one has them or most of the companies don't. Again, another plug, that's why BPO can really help you. 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 for success for AI. All right, that's 17 minutes of me being on a soapbox. It just, it bothers me to hear it. And I hear people, they're, they're stressed out about it. They're, they talk to me and they're like, we're so far behind, we don't, and I'm like, guys, 2024, just start to build that road.

18:52And you can't just stand on your hand or sit on your hands, sit on your hands, that'd be hard. But, if you're doing this stuff, you're doing this stuff with AI. You're doing this stuff with AI. You're doing this stuff with AI. All for a lot of these things that are not mature yet, right? If you're ready, if you're ready for AI, I would still be easy on the chatbot, OttoQA, if you're not ready There's AI tools for that? Do you wanna lower your handle time? We got, we got tools for that. Do you wanna get rid of your after call work? We got tools for that. Do you wanna improve the agent experience? I there's tools for that. 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 set that stuff up.

20:20But don't freak out. Start to work on that path. Start to get your contact center integrated. Start to think about how do we build, how do we build on K.M.S. All the tools online that you can do that. Don't panic. Don't fall for the FOMO of this thing, but 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. You have more than you think. Don't let. Let anybody rush you, push you into things that you're not comfortable with, that your company is not ready to go for. 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. Alright guys, that's what I have today. I just did a, again, I've been thinking about that a weekend.

21:05I have a couple links on LinkedIn that I, or posts on LinkedIn that I did today. And also, if you look through some of my stuff from the week before, listen to my fill I think

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22:11If, if you want to know some things, again, check out some of my videos on some things, if you're getting pressure to lower head count, if you're be getting pressure to lower handle time, that you can utilize without paying a ton of money for AI, that you can maybe hold the wolves back for a little bit as you're building things out and trying to be the voice of reason. I I think in this world that we're trying trying to just sprint before most companies aren't even walking. Thanks guys, I'll talk to everybody next week.