Replacing Your Call Center With AI Is A Huge Mistake (Marina Alex)

marina alex episode: This is the huge business mistake. Implement AI bots in call center. Looking up what's the weather like today in ChatGPT? You have to start with AI and executive level. But we don't sell any AI tools. It's not only the exciting part, but there is also the scary part of AI. I can find information about any person in in this world. My guest today is Marina Alex, the co founder at AIM Alliance. Marina, thank you for coming on and sharing your thoughts today. Thank you for inviting me. Thank you. So tell me, how did you get into this work in the first place? Wow, it's a deep question for one hour podcast, right? I will give you a summary for the last 20 years. First of all, for last 14 years, I have been working as a digital transformation consultant. And last four years, when AI came, for sure, as a consultant, I decided, okay, I have to know AI, right? I have to understand it and help my clients. This is how. I jumped very deeply in AI and we created AI consulting company, AI education company. And this is what we're doing every day right now for local, small, and medium businesses. Got it. And help me more understand what's behind that word AI consulting, because I suppose that you're not sending out AI agents to do the consulting with these businesses. So Can you take me more, you know, behind the curtain and what you actually do in the day-to-day with these SMBs? Yeah, and everything I'm going to share with you next several minutes, if you're a consultant, I would inspire you to have some notes because it will help you make a lot of money, okay? The mistake is that everybody is crazy about AI automations, AI bots, right? And sell AI tools, create AI tools. But the reality is that businesses they need to have basic things first, like to understand what is AI, like what is that? Okay. How AI can impact revenue and operation, and explain in very basic words, in business words, how AI will impact business. Then educate how to use copilot if they have Microsoft how to use cloud for example right and other ai tools and just teach them and only after that start thinking about automations because the problem is that people when okay let's create automations let's create ai bots right and then they take very broken process in the business and just scale it And it can kill the business, right? That's why if you really want to make a lot of money and create a lot of value for your clients as a consultant, you have to really help them solve their business problems by using AI. That's why, for example, in our case, we don't sell any AI. We help build AI dashboards, for example, for the company, right? Because usually in business. They have manual reports in Excel and they're waiting for these reports and somebody spends hours and hours to put numbers all together, right? Yes, we help companies to build those dashboards, but we don't sell any AI tools. We're like, okay, tell me what is your top three problems in your business, and let me help you to solve those problems by using some AI solutions. Got it. And Marina, I'm always trying to make this as practical as possible. So what would be your first three steps if a S and B is listening and they haven't adopted AI and but they might be just, you know, looking up what's the weather like today in Chat GPT? What is kind of your first moves that you would do to, you know, speed up and improve processes? Mm-hmm. First of all, I would meet with founder or with general manager or the main leader of organization, like CEO, for example, right? And I will ask, okay, tell me, what's happening? Do you use AI or you don't? Like what is your relationship with AI? What is your vision? Right? What is your challenges? And after usually in this level, like, hey Marina, I don't know what I don't know. And in this level, they usually like, yes, I use Chat GPT. free version, okay? And but I don't know how to implement AI in a safe way in our company. That's why usually they don't have any rules of the game and everybody in the company they use whatever they want to use. The problem is that they use free versions of AI or different versions, right? They have silos between information. And to come back to your question, the first step, like, okay, tell me what's happening. And in this level, we have deep assessment to understand, like, okay, w what is your main problems in the business, right? And where we can return revenue if we implement AI. Because okay, we will invest in AI, I don't know, ten thousand, five thousand, three thousand dollars, whatever. We need to return those money as much as we can, as soon as we can, as a business, right? That's why after that, altogether, after assessment, we understand, okay, let's implement AI in this area. I will tell you a secret. Are you ready for the secret? I don't know. Let's hear it. Yeah. The best practice the best practice to implement AI is to start with the head of organization with leadership team. With executives, teach them, explain them, help them use it every single day to explain them what is the difference between enterprise version of co-pilot, claw, chat GPT, and regular version. Explain them risks, teach them, and help them to use it every single day. And after that, when they feel comfortable in their level, and you can help them free up at least eight hours per week. And they have time, after that, they will go to their employees and they will help their employees to to start use AI and create some rules and and some procedures of of that in their company. That's why the secret is to start always from up to down. The mistake is around the world by the way, in Europe and in America as well, that people they start Implement AI bots in call center? My question is for our audience and please write down your answer. We will read it for sure under this video. And it's question for you. Do you love to talk with AI when you call to the bank or you call to insurance company? No. No. No one likes that. Exactly. But what they're doing, they implement AI and they replace humans who is pretty cheap people in this level for AI and they're very proud. This is the huge business mistake. You have to start with AI and executive level, free because they're most expensive people. If you free up eight hours for every single leader in their level, you will save a lot of money to the company. And then you reinvest those money and you hire humans and increase salary for call center and give them AI to help them to answer for questions, but it should be humans. And then you can market everywhere like, hey, in our insurance company, only humans will answer for your questions. And this is what you need to do. But people do opposite, and it's a it's a very big mistake from customer experience perspective. yeah. And you already kind of mentioned the biggest mistake, which is you know implementing AI when there are broken processes and it's the core isn't functioning well. So do you have any kind of you know thoughts around actually rebuilding the structure from scratch before you start implementing AI? Very good question. the step number one You have to unite data in organization because AI works with data. And if you have a bad data or old data or this data doesn't connect with each other, it will be difficult for AI to give you the best results. I will give you a very simple example. Okay. For example, several weeks ago we came to one of our clients, right? And they told us, like Marina. We have about twelve different software in the company because every single department they use different software. They have CRM system, they have like a lot of different software. The first step was to have connection for data perspective between all of them, right? And then only to implement AI which will have access to all data. This is first step how you can really start implement AI. This is number one. Number n the the second one is all leaders leaders and executives they spend a lot of time to have meetings, to schedule meetings, to send follow-ups, and they spend like eight hours in average ten hours per week just go from one meeting to another, from Zoom to Teams, and they just on meetings, right? And You have to help them to change their processes, right? And implement different communication style to help them to have less meetings, but have more productive meetings where there is a team work together, they have a planning session in the beginning, they have in the end of the week, they see the results. And usually we implement approach from IT, it's 25 years old. Scrum, Agile, Kanban, this is very strange words from IT, but this is the type of management which they used for last 25 years. And we implemented for businesses as well. And after that, virtual employees only. Yeah, I I really like that you said this about kind of gathering the context when it comes to using AI because like the amount of people that think that AI can just come up and reach your mind, it just doesn't happen. And it's one of the reasons why I think a lot of people struggle with AI in general is because, you know, they go into a new chat window, they don't have any context around who they are. They didn't set up, you know, the the foundations, and they don't build the context you know, time from time, so it doesn't compound as you use it more and more. My next question for you is what do you usually hear as kind of you know one of the biggest misconceptions regarding AI and you know the use of it in businesses? First of all, they very often they say, Hey, AI doesn't work. Right? And then you when you see what they do, they really create very short like check my email or write an email without any good prompt, without any Unboarding of your AI. That's why the first step should be AI is it intelligence, right? You have to onboard your AI like you would onboard humans. You need to teach about who you are, what is your expectations, what is your goals, what is the the company marketing style, like everything, right? And then when you teach your AI after that to ask. good questions, right? And nobody taught us how to ask good questions. And this is what's happening. People they use Google approach. I call it Google approach. When you Google something, right, and you have very short sentence and it worked for last 20 years. With AI, it doesn't work. You have to give the role like, hey, be an marketing expert or be my personal assistant. Do XYZ, right? Because I need and give some background, right? What what you need, why you need it, and what is the definition of results. And what is there what you like and what you don't, some rules, right? And this is changing our approach how we ask questions. Because for humans, we never say, Hey, John, be my personal assistant. Do X like we we never talk this way, right? It's very strange. But with AI, we have to learn how to do it. And in this case, AI will provide the best results. And another thing is that people, because they ask wrong questions, right? And they have bad results. And for sure, ChatGPT and other Claude, Gemini, they have mistakes for sure, right? Like, my gosh, AI has a lot of mistakes, a lot of hallucin hallucinations, right? Yeah, okay, but you're the boss. You have to read what was provided by AI and judge and say, hey, I don't like it. This is mistake, this is mistake, this is mistake. Or, for example, in my case, even if I like what AI provided for me and my gosh, this is brilliant. I never trust, I I create a prompt like, hey, be an expert in this area. do deep assessment of this file and find any mistakes. And AI is checking itself, right? And usually find a lot of mistakes. But it's I do believe that it's our humans' responsibility of results which AI provided for us. But people what they do? They just copy paste and send it to the their clients and then my gosh, it's terrible AI. No, it's your responsibility. Right. Yeah, that this is also like an interesting topic, that you know as you have employees, you also provide training. Like and how come that you don't provide training to AI, you just say it a few words and then you are mad about it not you know, not knowing what to do when you didn't give it the training that you would do with a real human. So, you know, there are just so many things What I find really interesting is also the other side. and it's something that I think you've posted about in the past, is you know, all it's not only the exciting part, but there is also a scary part of AI. So my question to you is, you know, which part scares you? Is it the data or the people or maybe something else? I think I'm very innovative person. It doesn't scare scare me at all, right? Because it's it's like electricity. Electricity 100-ish years ago scared everybody, right? And some people told, my gosh, it will kill everybody, right? Then internet came and everybody, my gosh, internet will kill us. Internet will take all jobs, right? Now it's next level. Okay. Now we have AI, right? It's it's like electricity. It's like internet. It will change us for sure, right? But also it will help us. For example, as you notice, English it's not my native English language, right? It's my second language. And before, if I need to publish any article or post in my Facebook, I needed to hire someone who will read all my mistakes and give me the right version. And it usually took almost two weeks b between my idea. and up an opportunity to publish. Now if I have an idea and AI check my English and I can publish it, right? It speeds up me dramatically as a the world. That's why I don't scare of anything. In my case, for example, I use all AI. In my chat GPT, I have I connected my chat GPT with my old banks, right? And I have conversations, how much money did I spend, what should I do, right? I'm okay with that. For sure there are not much privacy and a lot of transparency because now if I have good prompt and I go to Cloud, I can find information about any person in in this world. Right? Email, LinkedIn profile, it's perfect for sales. And but on the other hand, it's new world. And you have two choices to adapt or be outside of this world. Yeah. Adopt or get left behind, as I like to say. Exactly. Yeah, you can use horses, right? Or drive a car. And many people they I prefer horse. Okay. I don't see any any people like this anymore. Only Amish probably, that's it. Yeah, yeah. you also build kind of the the sway system and you know on your side you have like average twenty percent annual revenue increase. So what's the thing that makes the difference between a business that uses this kind of system you know in compared to not having it? Mm-hmm. first of all, especially with AI, the traditional management doesn't work anymore where We had marketing department, sales department. This is why I created Sway system, simple way how to run business. And I took the best practice from their world, right? And the idea is that hey, the old system doesn't work. We have to do something different. Why we can increase for an average twenty 20% and even more when we work together as a cross-functional team, where we have in the team Like I will give you an example, restaurant. Okay. In the restaurant, you usually have waitress, they have percentage, right? You have a kitchen, you have bar, and every single department, if you notice, they don't speak with each other. Like kitchen and waitress, they don't like each other at all. And if you unite them around profit or revenue goals and say, Hey guys, we have twenty five people in this restaurant, this is how three million dollars goal. If you achieve this goal as a team, you will have extra bonus. And after that, they're like, wow, we should work as a team. And they start to support each other. And waitress, they deliver feedback like, hey, these pancakes, the people didn't like those pancakes, and person on the kitchen will change it, right? Because they work all together on the same goal. That's why the structure of the company is changing. It became more flexible, more flat. For example, in traditional management you have a lot of layers. You have managers, many, many man managers, right? And somewhere employees. And the company for making decisions became very slow. You can't do it anymore. You have to be very flat. You have to have people who really want to change something and be proactive, right? This is why the system helps increase. a revenue in average for twenty percent, but double many times, right? But the idea is simple. When people work all together as a team and they have common goals, they are not stoppable. If people have silos in different departments, different KPIs, different goals, right? They don't care about each other. Like I'm from sales, you're from marketing. We're like Tom and Jerry. Have you watched cartoon Tom and Jerry? Yeah. We hate each other, but we can do Can cannot live without each other, right? But if we say we were hey, this is your common goal and this is your common price, common bonus, we will support each other. Does make sense? Yeah, yeah. So I know we're running out of time here, Marina. but if there is someone that's listening and is interesting in you know getting in touch with you, what's kind of the best place to follow you and continue the conversation? LinkedIn. LinkedIn is the best way to connect with me and the best way to find clients for yourself, guys, because this is it's just the best place to really build business. That's why if you need if you have any questions, find me in LinkedIn. And if you if you're a consultant and you're looking for clients, use LinkedIn. use local businesses. DM them and say, hey, I'm local. I can help you. What is your problems? Right? And this is the easiest way for consultants right now to serve local businesses, then market themselves across the country. That's why if you focus on your location and everybody knows your name, you will have great income for sure. Amazing. So links are down below. Marina, thank you for coming on and sharing your thoughts. Thank you for inviting me. Hopefully. And by the way, guys, create some comments for us. Ask questions how we can provide more value for you and what should be next episode, right, in this podcast. Amazing. Thank you.