The AI Transformation: A New Era for Business Process Outsourcing

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 nice studio and integration services. It's the same honest advice expressly applied specifically to your operation. Visit ExpiviaDigital.com to get started 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 improve the quality of yours and your customers experience. this is an evolving industry with creative minds and ambitious people like this- I retool our contact center, retool our BPO for this oncoming surge of AI, but I think - I and It's a big debate among my peers of how do we stay relevant, how do we really not go out of Can we keep revenues at a certain level, you know, with the model that's changing, right?

01:57So the kind of just having an agent in a seat answering calls, answering questions. That model is really going away. three weeks ago to go to the Google campus in Boulder and it was kind of a little, I don't want to say a conference, but kind of a one-day seminar put on by Chrome OS,

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02:27are changing our BPO in in this world. And so many of those, especially the larger CODEC centers are, are really worried, right? Because they see this as just a total knock off the top-line revenue. And they're they're a BPO here and I kind of talk you through some, some of of the things, how I see this playing out. Some of the things that we are making from a change point how we're re-tooling our BPO and how we're trying to deal with now from an AI of that road map and some of those types of things. So again, if you guys But I want to thank you I want to thank you. Any questions that you have, please ask if there's a me talk about this, so please just bear with me for 30 seconds as I kind of talk this through. When we would go and purchase any type of technology for our contact center, for our clients in the BPO space, it had to answer that had to answer kind of two questions for us.

04:03They're going to be massive value for our client or and our customer and is there kind of return on that investment? Is there an added revenue source for Expivia? And we would silo our technology, right? So any kind of tool that we would want to go out and buy, it had to answer yes. both of those questions. And now I think that that model is totally outdated and totally wrong. And the reason is there's so and there's so many tools out there that we are scared. We meaning that the BPO industry are nervous about. You know, one of them that I, I still struggle with is agent assist, right? Let's use that as an example. For me, Agent Assist, I'm a, you know, knock off and again. I'm medium-sized, size to small, teen, tiny BPO. I'm not a 10,000- seat center, you know, we're about 600- and 700 seats. So our average client is in that 30 to and so 60 seat range. If you are a 10,000 seat internal contact center, I think Agent Assist is probably the biggest no-brainer of no-brainers because if you're you're knocking five seconds, 10 seconds, 15 seconds off the average handle time, the amount of savings that you're getting there is amazing.

05:12For me, if I knock five seconds a call on a 20-seat program and I have to maybe charge clients more or revenues from how much it doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense, but let me. It's not a requirement, but it's as close to a requirement as possible. Basically, they're basically they're saying if you don't have this tool, you're not gonna get this program. So we have So, we're looking at K-12, we're looking at, we're looking at a lot over throughout the, all of the, the suite of, the sweet of tools that we're offering our customers. A technology standpoint, yes, you know, a analytics. Maybe that makes us more money, that's a great tool for everybody because it's, it does those, but Agent Assist, it's something that is one, going to get us more business. Right. it and it's something that we're trying to kind of even out the technology so it almost is like a net zero.

06:16now, overall the your organization, not just looking at it at specific tools. And I think that's a huge shift, huge shift in kind of how we're buying a technology. But I think the other main shift is, and I and I love, I kind of love this, this is kind of our new mantra is, we have become a contact center outsourcer that does technology really, really well to now a CX technology partner that specializes in the contact center. the contact center. So that might not sound like a huge shift, but it's a monstrous shift. you can start to think of yourself less as about a place that we fill seats that answer calls, and more as a technology partner that also does that, but as a technology partner first, then this doesn't get as scary. And for a lot of us, this thing, right, right?. So shifting your mindset to say, okay, listen, we have to be a technology partner for our clients. We have to have the tools that maybe they don't know about or a roadmap from an AI standpoint.

07:28For new customers, you have to be comfortable with saying, I know you want, you want 75 seats right now or you want seats, but our plan for our roadmap is to get you down to 42 seats or 15 seats in the next. And those are the BPOs that are using technology in that way that are going to win more business that are going to be the preferred partner of clients. So again, that's my first kind of, I guess, swath into this. But let me give you some the specific tools, I think, to- to maybe start to think about from a technology standpoint that you can start the think differently on how And, you know know, I think let's start with this as just a very basic start. What- what that I I'm utilizing now that are maybe a little bit different. different from a technology standpoint that are adding value to customers and we and we can still raise revenue on number one is analytics.

08:32Analytics. If you if you haven really dug deep into analytics it for for us is the number one way that we're getting new business. It is the tool that I think wows the most amount of people. So becoming an expert, not just saying, hey, we have the tool,? But becoming becoming an expert, I heard a phrase today that analytics can change the thought process from the contact center to the boardroom. And I really like, like that. For us to now, to have the contact center not just be, again, answering calls, but to be giving marketing data, to be giving sales data, to be giving actionable data for the business to grow from analytics. people will pay for. And let me say this too, everybody is Everybody is stuck on a per hour and I'm still doing hour, but what I have found is all of these tools that I'm about to, normally when they were less when we didn't have as many of them, we were adding to our hourly rate.

09:37[pricing remark omitted] And the problem is, is that the bottom line is still the bottom line with the cost. And it's still very difficult for them because everything is brand new for them to shift that to shift that thought process into the actual tools of the value that they're getting. So I might be going and adding a ton of value to a client where there is a regular a BPO that is just kind of doing omni-channel, and maybe they have one tool, and they're at 28 or 29, and they, for instance, in price, even, even though the value might be there, was losing, losing us business. [pricing remark omitted]

11:20So from a marketing standpoint I think that's a really important change. The other thing again before a I keep forgetting and I'll get into some of these other tools, but I think the other thing that's really important before I get into them is we, is we've been kind of rebranding the tools that we have, right? Because some of the tools and we use NICE as most of you guys know, there are now AI infused, right? So they're a much better tool today than they for? You all have a tool, and NICE calls it, in workforce intelligence. And basically, that's guaranteeing a service level. So let's say we have an inbound sales skill, and we have a customer support skill, and we have a shipping problem skill. Of course, everybody a wants their sales skill to be DAT 9010 SLA. So using AI, and that's the tool that we use and we're charging for it now, we can basically guarantee the service levels because as calls come into the IVR, it's doing a predicted wait time, seeing what that SLA will be if these calls hit, moving agents in and out of skills without a human being. And so again, that's a tool that we've always had. We utilized it, but now it's gotten so good that we've actually, we're billing for it. And it's not a ton of money, but it's just another added revenue source for us that adds a, I think, a ton of value, value for a customer that is now AI infused.

13:02So look at your set that you're utilizing now, and again, you guys know it, if you have any partner, they're charging you for everything. there's a fee for a monthly, there is a fee to possibly, you, every three months, you're a little bit extra to get the so there there's, there's a lot that goes to another thing, but I think we need to change the process and think about all the tools that we have and looking at some of that stuff to charge a little bit more, but you're also adding a ton more value. We know that virtual agents, let's just talk about them. Everyone needs a generative AI plan. Now that doesn't mean you have to have a tool that is on your suite right now. But whether you're using a partner, an Omelea, an Amelia, a PolyAI, whether your CCaaS 15% of our call volume on some type of AI model, you have to have that plan.

14:12And you have to have that plan now. So start thinking that through from a either a partnership standpoint or where you can move to have something in your back pocket that you can at least talk through and feel comfortable, that you can access that very quickly. You know, the other thing too is I'm planning for 25-30%. or shrinkage in my agent volume in the next two years, right? So if you start to think about that now, it doesn't get as scary I think right again. Think about it like we all have shrinkage problems and we all have We all have call off, I understand that it's not as expensive and the revenue is not there, but all of these agents, they're going to be they're every single day. They're never going to call off. They don't need to take a break. So from that standpoint, there's a good piece to this as, as well, when you're talking about that first touch point generative AI, that chatbot that takes some of that, that away.

15:27So a lot of this is a mental mind standing, hey,

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15:57let alone that can move that as well. So when you start to Let me talk about this too, is every single major Seacast partner is basically your big brother behind us. For me, nice is my big brother. I don't have to have all the tools, but, I know, I can go basically white label their tools and say, these are the things that I offer, because I do offer them and I can get it in a heartbeat. It might not be on my business unit at this second, but you need to think that through, too. Don't go cheap on your Seacast or on, whatever technology partner that you're going, you're going to utilize. You're going to need to have some weird things and customers are going to start from a BPO standpoint when they go pitch and they're talking to customer or BPOs like me, they're talking to other BPOs that have different types of technology in different technology sets, right, just to be able to say, hey, we answer calls and we're really good and we have white glove service and, you know, we can be 24 seven.

17:51Like that stuff's not going to, it's not going to be there. So again, you don't have to purchase all the technology, you need access to the technology. And I think that's a huge kind of shift as well. All right, so let me get back to this. So we talked about analytics. For us, we chop analytics into different categories, right? So we can do just the kind of our baseline analytic platform that, hey, you get for this and we're gonna give you agent sentiment, your customer sentiment, we're gonna give you trending keywords and phrases. If you want us to do some deep dive on a project for analytics and you wanna see, hey, Tom, what is the service level that my customers will actually really adhere to before they start getting ticked off? Is it an 80-30, right? We can do some deep dive into analytics and we can charge a project to say, hey, let's do a test to find out how long customers will wait in queue prospective they get ticked off.

18:49And we can see it, you know, the sentiment starts to drop at two minutes and 24 seconds. So you need a, I don't know the math of that, but two, you know, two minutes, like whatever, 154.30, right, instead of an 80.30 for your SLA. That might save the money over the long term. You added just a ton of value with them and you're also getting, you know, a nice chunk from a project from a different way that you use in analytics. You know, one of the other things is we're offering, we call it gamification or verification of analytics for our clients. So if they want to see individual agents and their sentiment scores by day by hour, that's another tool or another offering that we're giving them, right? So you have to pay a little bit more for that. It's not a ton, but with that, you get a dashboard that looks at every single agent agent and we can basically guarantee that we're using the proper word choice that we're talking to your customers in the right way.

19:51And you now have a dashboard to feel comfortable about that as well. So again, there's different, so many different things that you can use, especially that tool for, not even getting into the customer journey mapping and all that that you can use analytics for, right? To charge for a larger project, to utilize that to say, hey, here's the full kind of customer journey that we've kind of thrown through on the more advanced analytic platforms. That's the, that's the stuff that kind of really gets me going and I think is exciting because it's a new way customers aren't used to being kind of told that they especially, you know, not huge customers that I deal with, right? But the Walmart, yeah, they have their own, huge, huge huge, huge and huge that's going through all that stuff. But again, for the mid tier BPO, even, even that under, I would say 5000 CPPO, and the customers that you're going After those are value ads that before I think we took for granted, or maybe we just had on our platform that, you know, from a project standpoint, that can start to be, you know, another value add that that you can, that you can offer.

21:00I think that the other main thing that we have found is when you start to roadmap this and you need to start to be a technology kind of roadmap for your customer to say, okay, Listen, you know, we're gonna start just really basic. We're gonna be just, we're not even gonna do any integrations. We're just gonna start taking your calls. I know you want us to get up quickly. And then the first piece that I think of this pie too is we call it integrate and charge. Kislyak....................- the.

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21:57So let's just say, okay, hey, you know, we're going to do integration into your Salesforce CRM, we do this full integration, it's great. Now we can, on most of this stuff, but how we can now can build for that or charge for that as well, right. So you know, use integrations like to route calls, right, to be like, Hey, listen, we can have an IP, kind of a VIP routing area where, you know, if you have certain customers that based on their data set are very important. If you have customers that called in yesterday, maybe we want to move them to the, to the front of the important. If you have customers that called in yesterday, maybe want to move them to the front of the line because they probably didn't have a good first-call resolution experience. Customers with the same caller that they talked to yesterday. We can-. All of these really, really cool things. Again, reducing those wait times, for somebody who probably is a TikTok influencer because we have that in our CRM and they know that if they wait a certain period I'm going to go and they're going to blast us on social media.

23:26Those are some things that we can protect people with. And again, in looking at that integration standpoints, and, and again, from a professional services thing, is really important. Start looking at some things that you guys can do on your own from a standpoint of using the, you know AI, the AI tools that are there. developed very easily and I wrote the blueprint for it and if anybody wants to let me know And that's an unbelievable value add that we can now give to customers that- that is extremely. Easy that guys API connectivity. There's a podcast that I did about three podcasts ago on the 10 prompts that you need. Totally the, to even to be able to do that again for more kind of. Of a value add. The thing I guess get on here too is we found a huge revenue source in looking at different customer bases.

24:49We all know that there is our digital, those type of customers. We know that there is there is customers that are on social media, on Facebook. But what about kind of these emerging technologies like Discord? What about these emerging technologies like Discord?

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25:15We have a full integration, where we're doing community management and full analytics on our CC-cast platform, on large Discord communities. Maybe they have 300,000, 400,000, different people or members or members in there. To be able to not only moderate, which is kind of like doing customer support, but also to be able to give them full analytics, again, what is the sentiment of, who, who are the jerks Who are the influencers building them out for different and newer customer bases, whether that is the younger generation that is gaming on Rob-Box and Fortnite and doing that to the NFT space to Budweiser and Starbucks and Adidas and Puma, they're all moving and I'll have really, really large discords. That's something else to start to think about, too, is where can we move our thought We need to make sure we make sure we are on our IT set up or on our outsourcing steps that we're going to be looking-looking at some of the very basic tools. Analytics should be on your platform no matter what. Agent to fight and then getting into things like auto summarization, right?

27:01Especially if you're ao a larger contact center, if there's a huge amount of after call, work, those are all things that you can charge a little bit more for, but still give your customers the value because that's stuff that they would have to pay for. And again, this is the early days, if you if you can become an expert in this stuff, I mean, that's all that we're focused on It's trying to become an expert on these type of tools because, again, most customers have no idea about them. They're doing their own business, they're making their widget, they're trying to sell their SaaS product, and they're not focused totally on the CX experience and what is out there. So if you can be the voice to help them not only be able to answer calls, but then be that technology partner for them moving forward, I think that's where really the BPO changes from just a, you know, button a seat, answering calls, to becoming that, having that tie-in, tie-touch agent that is kind of surrounded by technology and in a technology space where we can do some really cool things for customers, that probably could never do that or wouldn't get the green light or don't have the technology, or don't have the skill.

28:09-skill set internally, to really help with that. So again, again, that's the big shift that I see.

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28:42agent assist, take it, right, to be able to ask, well, you know. this tool that I can use for my QA, those those kind of come up. I think that's when we start to see a little bit of a shift here as well for for the BPO space and having having these partners kind of give us the tools that we think can add a ton of value that are maybe a little bit more difficult for an internal contact center to implement, but things that can add a lot of value, a lot of value as have any questions, any comments? I'd love to hear anything that you think, if you think I'm crazy. If there's anything that you would like to add, you know, please let me know. But that's kind of what I. I had for today and I think it's a really important topic. It's evolving. This is not like, hey, hey, this is what you need to do. This is kind of an 11-8-2023 where we're starting to see things. Things are changing so rapidly.

30:10seconds we were finding as of yesterday less expensive than chat ChatGPT for it's supposed to be better and it's also obviously it is turbo it is way faster. So I think that that is that's had a huge impact and then I don't know if you saw which kind of shook me up a. little bit today and I kind of poo-pooed it at first, but let me see that. It was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, a, it was, or gave the chat to tease its instructions, right? And instructions were, hey, basically, make sure you ask me questions to get to the best answer for this. And he went out on the internet and basically just, that's what chat, TPT, hey, my Tesla, the, and I know it's not a trunk cause it's in the front.

31:20It's what do they call them like a frunk, like one those won't close the whole way. Can you help me an agent looking into a KMS, and it's totally free, right? That's what I got, guys. I don't know if that was helpful. I hope that that is. If you have any other questions for me, you know, hit me. I have a kind............... and Thank you for your time, and I hope to see you again soon. can fight this stuff guys, the companies that fight it are going to be in a really rough spot. I have to use a huge, huge, huge multi-million dollar investment that no one has either. It's just understanding, starting to think the road map for this. how do I make sure that I have the tools or can have access to the tools that my customers are gonna how do I make my customers that I have now from a road mapping standpoint be able to kind-, trust, that my technology is where it's at tool, have access to the tool, but start develop that plan for 2024 and make sure that you're marketing and you're thinking those things through from that standpoint. Because again, again, if you think you're just going to answer calls from an omni, channel standpoint, and omni-channel white glove service is your differentiator. You're going to be in a big trouble. So hopefully that's a little bit of a wake up. But again, thank you guys. If there's no more questions. I'll let you go here. Hit me up on if you didn't want to ask a question here, DM me and we can have a conversation as well. Hopefully that added some value to you guys guys. I appreciate all of you coming. Again, let me know if I can help you in any in the in the future. Yeah. I did a no one. I did a voice or an audio event. You You're thinking to try to test that thing rather than going through the mail and