Brian Nichols 0:00
Oh, hey there, folks. Welcome to this week's episode of CX without the BS. I am your host, Brian Nichols, and looking forward to today's conversation with the one and only Fred Stacy from Cloud tech gurus, we're going to dig into a lot of the the BS that we see in the CX and contact center space. Specifically, what are we seeing with AI and the advancement of AI? Will it replace humans, or is it going to help humans be more efficient? We dig into that and more and also just housekeeping. Apologies in advance for not the traditional format of our CX without the BS episodes regarding our video, because my recording platform stream yard decided to crash as we were getting ready to record. So this call was all done by good old fashioned zoom, going all the way back to 2020, it feels but still a great conversation. And with that, I'll shut up and we'll go on to the good stuff. All right. And with that, returning yes to CX, without the BS. Fred Stacy from Cloud tech gurus, Fred, how the heck are you? What's new?
Fred Stacey 0:59
Oh, I'm good, man. You know me good. Happy to be back, though. Thank you for having me.
Brian Nichols 1:05
Likewise. No, I'm really excited for today's chat. You and the team over at Cloud tech gurus, you guys are really, I mean, you're, you're helping lead the way that CX is not just helping businesses, but you're helping add context to how, right? And you know, before we jump head first in today's conversation, one of the areas that I prepped you beforehand is just I've been hearing so many folks who are concerned about making these big CX investments, because the technology just changes so fast, right? So what ends up happening is people say, Hey, I have this problem. I know I need to fix it, but I'm nervous to actually fix it, because my solution might become outdated, 612, you know, further down the road, in months down the road, and now that investment is obsolete. So before we dig into that question for today, do us a favor, Fred. There's some folks obviously watching the show, and they maybe have not heard of cloud tech gurus, or they didn't check out our last episode. So just give us the quick overview. Who is Fred Stacy and what is cloud tech gurus?
Fred Stacey 2:05
I don't know. Man, that's a that's a much longer conversation. So real quick, 30 plus years in Contact Center, started as an agent, grew into leadership, got pulled into software by my mentor, and spent the last 25 years ish around contact center technology. So I got the joys of green screen all the way through premise to cloud, well hosted, then Cloud 1.0 then to where we're at today. So Cloud tech Arus, we're a TSD Technology Services distributor. So think of us, for the audience who doesn't know the nomenclature, think of us as the middleman you know that knows somebody that we literally know, somebody that does anything in contact centers, from technology to services. I spend, personally half my time reviewing all of our suppliers, you know, looking at, as a former software executive and a user and buyer of this stuff, you know, I've got a unique lens. So I look, I look at companies on size, you know, financial models, infrastructure stack, security, technology differentiators in the marketplace, you know. And we actually have over, well over 200 suppliers in the portfolio of just contact center related technology and services, of course, you know, because you can't have one without the other. You know, even in ai, ai is not going to fix, you know, a lot of the stuff that needs to be done, you know, especially when it comes to humans, yeah? So, yeah, we help clients. You know, clients come directly to us with, hey, you know, I don't know what to do, you know. Or, you know, my boards, you know, breathing down my neck to get an AI solution. Or, you know, we've got a premise based, you know, Cisco and, you know, we need to get to cloud, you know. I mean, there's a million different ways that clients come to us, but really it's about, you know, coming to experts, you know, who really help clients understand, you know, and do the requirements, gathering and the documentation, and discuss based upon the outcomes and what their company needs. You know. What are the right solutions, you know? And then help identify the right companies to look at for those solutions. So we're that middle man, you know, we we help everybody the figure out what is the right path, you know, for their organization.
Brian Nichols 4:28
Yeah, and going back to that first question, right? Because this goes to where I think a lot of folks in this space, not necessarily who are living and breathing it every single day like we do, but folks who they work in it. They know that this newer technology, it's out there, but in terms of taking that leap from whatever they have in place today, if anything, right to then embracing a new piece of technology. And of course, you hit on the key word there that's buzzing around everywhere, AI. And as AI starts to go into the equation, there's a lot of question marks, like. Come there from a security standpoint, from a compliance standpoint, but also just from a human standpoint, how is that going to be received by my agents? How is it going to be received by my customers? So there's a lot of these questions, and candidly, I'm going to call them red flags, not because there's danger behind them, but because, from the buyer's perspective, it's all unknowns, right? This is a brand new world. And back to my original point, the technology is advancing so quick, Fred, that what we think of as AI today, fast forward two years ago, or rewind, rather, two years ago. That was what I call PFM, pure effing magic, right? I remember the best comparison was that Will Smith video that everybody used to show how AI video like, yeah, it's pretty cool, but it's got a long way to go, right? And it was the one of Will Smith eating a bunch of spaghetti. And, I mean, he looks like, I don't know if you ever watched that show Galaxy Quest, but it's when they tried to transport the alien from the planet inside the planet, and it flipped it inside out. That's kind of what the video looked like. But you fast forward to today, especially with Google Gemini solutions for the VO three, oh my gosh. Like you can make a full scene, granted, 10 seconds or so, but it looks like a high quality, like 4k film, and you can have people speak, they have emotions like and it feels real. So the fact that we've gone so much in terms of advancements over just a two year period. Folks see that and they say, what's next in two years? What where will the technology be then? And am I investing in something that is going to be completely obsolete and outdated in 2027 2028 so there's a lot of red flags there. So to those folks, what would you say? Kind of your expertise, like, what would be your guidance?
Fred Stacey 6:43
Yeah, so one, there are plenty of point solutions out there that don't need a huge heavy lift, but before you even get there, what I would say is, there's a reason why we spent, about a year ago, I got together with a couple of other CEOs and pulled together, you know, a team of experts to put together maturity and assessments and AI readiness strategies. You know, the the reality this, this, these products, you're right. They're moving at breakneck speeds, something we've never seen. You know, I mean, literally, every week I get new suppliers reaching out to me that I've never heard of that have, you know, 5 million ARR in inside our space, and I've never heard their name. And this is what I do, you know, I analyze software companies to determine if they would be a good partner and a fit for our clientele. The so you can't keep up with it, but the one that you can do is you can really focus on what you need to do internally to get ready. So yeah, the things that never changed in this game is it's still people, processes and technology and in that order, and everybody's forgetting all this time that we've been doing digital transformation, that they forgot that part of transformation is change management in of your people and understanding you know, and building the processes you know and you know, the data governance and the policies and procedures, documenting all this stuff, preparing it for artificial intelligence, for ingestion, for learning. You know, there's there's only things you should be doing you should have been doing years ago that now are pretty much required, but a lot of companies are just throwing stuff against the wall. Yeah, which it's great for spaghetti, you know, it's an old trick my mom taught me. You can throw a noodle, and if it, you know, stay stuck, then you know, it's good, you know. But anyways, they don't do it too high a ceilings, by the way. You know, otherwise you're going to be climbing on a ladder.
Unknown Speaker 8:48
But the point is,
Fred Stacey 8:50
yeah, there's, there's still all these things that people in the processes are still necessary. You still gotta go in and you gotta talk through your team. You gotta get a clear direction, you know, from top down, you know, this is, look, every division and every company across the whole world will be interacting with artificial intelligence. There, no question about it, yeah, this is not that I see. A lot of people equate this to, you know, IVRS and social media and all the, you know, all the suppliers that tried to make it sound like the world is going to change, and, you know, it never did, right? This is not that. This is, you know, world changing technology, and it is moving super fast, but you still have to do the hard work underneath for your people, make sure that they understand what your vision is, how you're going to utilize it, how they can be better in your organization and help participate in that, you know. And then, of course, all the policies and procedures of data and you know, security policies, and you know how you're going to build all this stuff, all that, all of that stuff still needs documented. You still need to have it in a. Digital format that's ingestible. You still need to work with your people. You know, there's a lot of projects. I think I read like 25% of all AI projects had a agent, at least one instance of a recorded agent, trying to, you know, trying to make AI ineffective, sabotage through, you know, trying to do their own ways because they fear it. You know, that's just, what do you think? You don't tell people what's happening, what happens, you know, the human brain goes to the worst possible scenario, you know. So they're not including them. I mean, the all the things that you should be doing anyways and should have done, building proper change management and people and resources start there. Yeah, well,
Brian Nichols 10:45
I mean, interrupt, but like, it goes back to what you just you hit on right with the people piece, especially, like, sorry if I'm a person as a call center agent or or what have you. And I'm hearing constantly the drum beat of AI is replacing people. AI is replacing people. It's like, of course, there's gonna come a point where self preservation kicks in. I'm gonna be like, not replacing me
Fred Stacey 11:07
exactly, you know. So, I mean, start with the fundamentals, you know. Get your team ready. Make sure you have a clear vision. There are a ton of experts out there, cloud takers, just happens to be one of them, you know. And I think we're one of the best ones, you know. And that's just, you know, yeah, drink my own Kool Aid, eat my own dog food, whatever you want to say, you know. But nonetheless, there's a lot of resources out there. I think the whole idea of trusted advisors is absolutely essential today, you know, whereas before, did you really need to go out and find somebody when there were 10 solutions on the market, right? Yeah, no. I mean, you know, I could do that research. They are back, back when I was still doing it. We had Google and Yahoo, you know, I easily searched suppliers and found somebody to buy, you know? But now, yeah, if you're not working with someone who's been there, done that spends a lot of time inside the ecosystem, is analyzing new technology versus old. You know, you're it's hard, I mean, because I you know you run a center, you're putting out fires all day, right? 12 hours a day of just chaos. When are you going to have time to research what's going on out in the market and who's right and what to do and how to do it. I mean, it's just, it's, it's unattainable,
Brian Nichols 12:28
you know. And really quick to that, Fred, because I do see this quite a bit in the pushback from folks saying, wow. You know, we don't need TAS anymore. We don't need these, these partners anymore, because we can just go and use the very thing AI that we're talking about here. And I can just, I can go to AI, I can ask AI, who's the best C has vendor, who's the best CX vendor, right? And, and I want to get my answers, right?
Fred Stacey 12:51
Oh yeah, oh yeah, you'll get answers, because that's what designed to do, right? Yeah, they're purposefully designed to answer the human you know. Now, now ask me, is it 100% accurate, you know, and you know, are the sightings accurate? Yeah. I mean, how many cases do we have to see of lawyers using stated, stated cases from chat GPT that were absolutely lies, that were completely fictional? I mean, you know, every LLM ever will hallucinate unless you're building, well, no, no, unless it just will, like, I use grok, I'm a big grock guy for certain things, but I still ask for all of the, you know, all of the sightings and source material, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and still have to go back and do validation, you know. So, yeah, I mean, in the end, you're sure go ahead and ask, ask AI to recommend an AI go for it, you know. And I've seen platforms that are trying to custom and tailor to it, and you know, sure, they build in rules and logic, but they're still only off of a certain use case. I would rather find somebody that's done it, it's been there, you know, and can work with my team, yeah, to with all of the human interactions, the process, and yeah, I mean, all of those things in mind as you move forward. So maybe someday when we hit AGI, you sure? But by that time AGI comes, I think we're having a whole different conversation. Man,
Brian Nichols 14:26
oh, for sure. Now for the audience, playing along with the home game, right? We're talking about when AI can reason and like think, more or less like we can and doesn't need us, right? It's artificial generative intelligence. Keep me honest here, right? So tell us more about where you think that's going to fit into the equation in the future. Because, I mean, there's the big use case that came out where Klarna replaced was a 700 people with AI, and then a year later, they hired back everybody, because they're like, oh, this didn't go as we had foreseen, but let's pretend they had AG. AI. Like, do you think that would have been a different
Fred Stacey 15:03
use case there? So the AGI is artificial general intelligence, right? And General. Thank you. Yeah, yeah, General. The other term is ASI, which is artificial super intelligence. So what's funny is, although super sounds bigger, it just means it's super intelligent. You know, general is where it's us, right? It's sentient. It can not only, and plenty of tools today reason, and you can actually see in certain tools the way it reasons through problem solving, you know. So AGI is a whole different ball game on, you know, when AGI comes the idea of it replicating itself and creating separate agents and doing activity on its own. It becomes truly, you know, sentient, the meaning it can go out and make any decisions it chooses. Of course, hopefully the people that are building this stuff are putting the right guardrails and getting them aligned with human, you know, human humans being important to this world. Let's put it that way. Hopefully they do all that stuff, right. And, you know, general intelligence, you know, is, is a boon, you know, for human society right now, if, if we had ASI, yeah. I mean, at that point in time, I think there's, there's arguments to be said that we're, we're heading really close to that. Anyways, most, most of the models can, you know, score on college level tests by far better than humans, you know. And I mean, chess is a perfect example. However, you know, Magnus just beat the chess AI system, you know. So, I mean, what? But I digress. You kind of took me down a different path. Yeah. So let's talk about Klarna. So Klarna, it was an interesting one, because they did absolutely that. They said AI is going to replace all these people, and they laid off a bunch of people now, then there was an article that they started hiring again. And you know, that article kind of twisted how what was going on. And then most people missed the CEOs follow up, which is, no, no, no, we're hiring more people because of demand. So, you know, there's still a question in that. And I, you know, I haven't, I haven't dug under the hood in there. I don't even know if they are public. I don't know if I could look at their financials, but I don't know anybody over there, you know. So if I had to guess, more than likely, they're still significantly more efficient with artificial intelligence today. But Klarna is a software developer, right? Yeah, so much like, yeah. I mean, that's like saying, you know, Google uses AI in their contact center. The big shocker, right? I mean, you know, Microsoft uses, oh, wow, yeah, and they keep water is wet, yeah, yeah, water is wet. This, yeah, so AI, you know, but Klarna is the 1% you know, in my opinion, anybody like into it? Klarna, Microsoft, Google, anybody that's a software shop that is used to building, you know, deploying at scale, technology, supporting and continually, continually updating and innovating software companies. They'll, they'll be building on this stuff forever, and they'll continue to replace, you know, all the mundane stuff, right? The smart ones will recognize what should be handled through automation and what shouldn't based upon the humans need, you know? And they'll, they'll change accordingly. But that doesn't mean that they're not going to move fast and break shit. Yeah, sure. That's, that's what software companies do everybody else in the world. We're all just trying to figure out, you know, how to, how to keep our duct tape and bubble gum of, you know, WFM, CCAs, maybe cloud, some premise, you know, conversational analytics, bots, knowledge management and the list goes on and on. Try to keep all that operating well, and figure out, you know how to, how to prepare our companies and our organizations for the future?
Brian Nichols 19:22
Yeah, well, and by the way, like you hit on all the different areas, and this is, I think, where the rubber really hits the road, and that is when it comes to the customer facing stuff, right? And I know I'm not unique in this example, but I know myself and probably hundreds of folks listening today. They've all been in the situation where they're sitting down and they just want to talk to a person, right? And just a real person, and it's like pulling teeth just to get to the real person. I actually did an episode with Vicky Brackett here back this last episode, and she was talking about a headache she had trying to get. It just a real person. And how ended up, she had to use that old secret trick of maybe dropping a few, a few, uh, four letter words there to get, get the filters to recognize that, oh, this person is not happy, right? Sentiment Analysis not good, and they need to talk to a real person. Then she got the real person, and she was able to get the issue resolved in like, 15 minutes, versus, I think, she was on hold for 45 minutes trying to get to a real person. And I mean that right there, it continues to be the number one issue in the customer experience space, is when people are calling for help and they want to get in touch with a real, live pulse beating human being. Fred, I don't see that going away. And I guess to that, like, what what are you seeing in the tech space, specifically, Contact Center, CX and all that and more that's helping address this very real, I guess, reality that people want to talk to people they don't want to talk to a robot that genuinely can't empathize just based on the nature of it being AI,
Fred Stacey 20:58
yeah, so Here's, here's what I see a lot of. There's a rush to try to figure out and solve the automation side, you know, just to drop money to the bottom line. So right now, everybody's chasing the shiny pennies. They're throwing food up against the noodles up against the wall to see if they stick, you know. And that's really where we're at. We're in the innovator side, you know of this right now. I think the funny thing is, the companies that I see really leading the charge, and, you know, they're, they're focused on this, the customer experience from the CEO down, right? They're going to give that option right away in any type of communication channel. Now the what's, what's even funnier is the government might actually step in and force us all to do something, you know, in between, I don't know if you caught that new bill of outsourcing, you know, so hidden inside, oh, yes, yeah. Tell us more about that. So in, hidden inside of that outsourcing bill is also AI regulation in particular, two things that I think could actually stick one, you have to announce that it is AI, which only makes sense. I've known, and I think those in the compliance world have known, you know that that was coming, right? You know you have to tell somebody who's calling that they're speaking, or somebody that chatting, that they're speaking to AI, I think that's kind of a no brainer, right? Until it just becomes so accepted that no one cares anymore, right? And then then it may shift, you know? And once you've told them, then you have to give an immediate option, and this is in that bill that you have to give an immediate option to talk to a live human. Now, take out all the other Outsourcing Things about, you know, whether this will actually pass in its current form. It isn't going to pass, but I think they can, this administration in particular, can get some of the stuff passed, you know, and how outsourcing or offshoring versus nearshore versus onshore, how that's going to impact businesses. There's, there's a whole that's a whole different animal, but staying on the AI track, just those two things alone. Think about the the Solve for a lot of the problems that would you just mentioned. You know, if you tell them they're speaking to AI, if they're a self service person, they're good with that. Okay, yep. You know, if it's a simple problem, okay, if somebody, you know, if I just got a fraudulent charge on my credit card, I am pushing a zero to talk to an agent, right, you know. So I think just that in itself, if I know, giving the government credit for doing anything you know, kind of feels a little off. But, you know, nonetheless, there's two things. Regulating it might actually have a lot of value, you know, forcing companies to take that seriously. And people we've seen this transition, you know, they've gotten more comfortable with digital they've gotten more comfortable with self service. There's no question that there's a big audience out there that absolutely would, if they had a choice, live in self service, if they can get an answer quickly and accurately. I know I would. I mean, you know, and I'm a Gen Xer, you know, I'd still much prefer to solve my problem quickly with a natural language based search. You know, here's my problem. What's the fix. Oh, there's the fix. Fixed, done. You know, I'm happy. I'm perfect. Now, that's how I look at Amazon, you know, Amazon, it isn't that their customer service and their agents are the best in the world. It's that their product design and the way they deliver and the experience on the front end is almost near perfect, you know. So that's that's the customer experience that really moves the needle for people like me. I'm just too busy. I don't want to deal with it. And I'm sure most people are like that. They're like, Why the hell would I want to call anybody I, you know? I mean, why should I in this day and age? So,
Brian Nichols 24:57
yeah, it's like, when I was trying to cancel, I was trying to. Canceled by XFINITY a couple of years ago. And like you call the person, and that's the one use case I can think off the top my head. I really don't want to talk to a person, because I know as soon as I get that live agent, God bless her. And the lady on the phone, she was such a sweetheart. But you know, Mr. Nichols, are you sure you don't want to get this brand new deal? I'm like, No, I am sure. I've already switched over. Please just help me cancel. And that's, I mean, right there. It's going to be use case by use case, I think, but I guess you hit on something Fred, and it's almost like a happy accident, right? Like we see this with from a health side of things right now, I think it's the RFK administration and the HHS, they're trying to put in these rules about all these, these dyes they're going to remove from foods. And a lot of companies are responding right now in kind saying, You know what? We're gonna do it now. You know we're just gonna go ahead and start pulling the dyes out. And you got other organizations like Aldi, right? Everybody's favorite small grocery store, they're like, Hey, we haven't had dyes in our food since the beginning, because that's just kind of our thing. And I guess that leads to a question. Fred is like, this just sounds common sense. Let people know immediately they're being, you know, they're talking to an AI, and then immediately give them an out to go talk to a human like, why is that not the standard for orgs? Just as they're seeing the writing on the wall as they're getting the real feedback from customers that this is an issue like that just seems like a no
Fred Stacey 26:20
brainer. It does to you, and I for sure, you know. But when you're talking to an executive and you know, you mean, let's say that is a 20, 30% uptick in call volume that actually goes to the agent, how much does that impact your bottom line? It's, it's all business decisions, you know. And there's, I laugh like the airlines, you know? I mean, there's some verticals that just know their commodity. And, you know, no matter what we do, they they have realized that people are going to buy either based upon price or time of flight, and they don't care about the rest. That has become very, very obvious to me. You know, the only thing that really matters to me anymore is the the points program, you know, and picking convenient times that match for my business schedule, right, or personal schedule, you know, so, but I mean, they don't, you don't see, nobody's really trying to be a great service provider. And God forbid, the one that I felt that would never change is now changing. So even, you know, Southwest is is starting to realize that, in the end, doesn't hurt all their their margins all that much to not service as well. So, I mean, you know, here we are, you know, you want to talk about XFINITY and different mobile program or, you know, like utilities, I mean, yeah, market, why do they care? You got one provider to switch to. Now. I, you know, what are you going to do? Yeah. So anyways, I, you know, there's been a long time that I've the journals have all talked and see, see love C suite have talked about the customer experience being their primary differentiator, but when it all boils down to it, you spend a little time with our contact center people and those running the centers, and it's pretty obvious that that's not the case. Yeah. So, you know, hopefully, what I really hope is that this, you know, artificial intelligence, is going to force people to update a lot of a lot of their stack, and it's also going to force them to think about their processes and their people and their resource allocations, you know. And really forces the the what I've always seen, you know, like the departments are very fragmented, segmented, you know. And it is going to have to get involved with ops. And ops has to get involved with it, you know. And AI is going to hopefully break down all those barriers and bring it all together. Finally, I really that's that optimist in me. I really think that this is that kind of technology change where everybody's going to be forced to play in the same pool, and it's a good thing. So, yeah,
Brian Nichols 29:11
no, I'm right there with you, Fred, because, like, I know there's a lot of doom and gloom around AI, you know the just, oh, it's going to take everybody's job. No, I think it's Bill Gates, right? Like, everybody's not going to be having a job by 2030 we're all going to be replaced by AI. Like, I hear this doom and gloom, but going back to your point here, like, there just, is there something intrinsic in wanting to talk to a person, right? Like, to your billing issue, like, I don't want to talk to the AI. I need to talk to a person. I need the person. And there's always going to be a value there for the actual people. And I think that's one thing that we just we have to always kind of go back to, like a North Star, some guiding principles, and that is, people want to work with people you mentioned, like the IVR jail that we've all come to know and hate, right? But like the IVR. Jail that always had an out, and you could go talk to a person. And I think we see time and again that when it's really big issues and you need to be not just heard, but understood, empathized with, we need that human element. And that's just, you know, that's the H i That's, that's what AI can't accomplish. Is that human element? I guess that's H, E, human element, yeah, make sure I get that right. But like, I guess, you know, with that being said, Fred, we talked about where organizations who are forward facing are heading, but what about the orgs? Who they're, they're just kind of in a wait and see mode right now, right? They're just, they're watching, they're seeing their competition, embrace AI, and they're just kind of hanging out, just figuring out the way the land. What would you recommend to them? Because I'm sure they see the value in AI, but as we were talking about earlier, they also see a lot of the big question marks. So what would be your I guess, official cloud tech guru, I guess talking points to them, or things they should start considering.
Fred Stacey 30:59
Yeah, so going back to what I said earlier, you know, AI, readiness, maturity assessment, you know, full roadmap, if you don't want to do that, you know, hopefully your team, your internal teams, you've got good change management in place. You got leaders and project managers and subject matter experts to help start working through this whole process now, outside of that, you know, once you got your internal house ready, you know where you're at today, truly not, not guessing right. You know where you're at, you know where you want to head, then it's a matter of, you know, selecting the right solutions based upon timing, you know. So, I mean, I'll give you a perfect example, 30% this was last year's numbers. I haven't seen this year's yet, but 30% of the Fortune 500 had still had premise space telephony. And we're talking about the biggest companies in the world, you know. So, you know. And some people may say, Well, if it's not broke, don't fix it. Well, you know, what you probably don't realize, is that premise based telephony. First of all, the data structures is completely different. The actual audio recordings and audio path is completely different. So that's eight bit versus 16 bit. It's mono versus stereo. So, you know, accuracy, quality, you know, for AI tools, goes down, you know, by the older technology, you know, and the lack of APIs, you know, meaning that you got a duct tape and bubblegum, some integrations and some data movements and stuff like that. Yeah. So,
Unknown Speaker 32:34
yeah. So
Fred Stacey 32:35
the back to your question, you know, what does the company do when they're sitting there waiting, like I said, if you're not at least taking care of your internal people and processes side while you're trying to figure out your roadmap for the technology, which you damn well should be, you know then and you're one that's going to throw something against the wall and see if it sticks, Do it with the right technologies that are lower lift, that have possible and have already proven ROI you know that you can deploy today, and there are a handful of different technology categories that fall into that right, simulation based training, conversational Analytics, you know there's Agent assist when done well, you know, get your knowledge in order. You know, knowledge management systems, you know, are critical for storage, for digitization, for meta tagging, you know, but you don't even have to do that. The funny thing is, the AI as it continues, you know, to get better at training and tuning and ingestion of information. You know, the unstructured and structured, you know, you there's less worry, you know, about how well something is tagged, right? You know. So that was an early concern. You know, 20 circa 23 you know, it's so funny. That's just two years ago, I know, yeah, but now, all of a sudden, we're so much further along that, you know, this whole thing is changing, and for those that are sitting back and waiting, I mean, look, you got to get started. You know that you can't wait. There are things that you could wait on, right? You know they're like the electric electricity, right? Let's talk about industrial revolutions and put it in terms of, I found that people it helps them understand the like, electricity took, like, 50 years to propagate, right? Manufacturing automation, the Industrial Revolution. I mean, yeah, same, little bit less, right? Computers themselves, from the point that computers were invented until they were in the home and actually changed the world. You're talking like 30 years. You know, from the internet, you're talking about 20 years. This stuff is changing in like, literally quarters, you know, open, AI could come out with a 10. Technology within the next three months that could put an entire segment out of business. You know, within a very short period of time. Of course, this stuff is changing fast. Yeah, I get it. You know, you're going to invest in things that probably are just be one, but if you don't force your organization to learn how to be, how to work in this modern world, you're never going to get there. You're going to fall so far behind that other people are going to outpace you. And this is not one of those digital transformation ideas where, you know, hey, we'll change this, but we won't change the rest of the stack. That that's not the way this is going to work. A there. There There won't be a single department in an entire company that doesn't use AI. So you got to start figuring it out now. And, you know, the data governance, the policies, the security compliance, you know, all those things are necessary pieces. And I've always been, maybe it's this software and entrepreneur in me, but I've always been, you know, move forward, and just that act of moving forward forces your teams to put in the right things,
Speaker 1 36:08
but just smarter, not harder. Yeah, right, like,
Brian Nichols 36:13
yeah. And this, actually, it reminds me of, I'm, I'm a big political junkie, and, like, I love economics and stuff, and one of my favorite thinkers is Milton Friedman. And there's a very famous quote back he had visited China back, I think, in the 70s or 80s, and he had met with the I forget whoever the head was. I don't know if it was Mao or whoever it was back then, but regardless. And they were walking back up by a public works project, and there's a 50 guys that were standing there, and they were going to be, you know, digging out this big hole. And Milton Friedman goes, Why didn't you give them a backhoe to dig this hole? Just, you know, it's a lot easier, it's more efficient. And the leader said, well, because it's a jobs program. So the more you know, the less advanced the tool is, the more people we had to give jobs. And he goes, and he goes, and Milton Friedman responds, well, if that's the case, why don't you give them, you know, like little, tiny hand shovels, right? If the idea is to make it so you're doing more with more people, right? Go for it. But the reality is, at the end of the day, that's not the way to run business, right? The way to run business is to work smarter, not harder, to be more efficient and to embrace newer technologies, because also often the room your competition is they're embracing these new technologies. So to your point, you don't get left behind. No, Fred, this has been a great conversation, and I can't believe we're already hard pressed for time here. So you know what time it is, right? This is the time of the show where we ask that one golden question, and that is, Fred, what has been the biggest piece of BS you've been seeing here in the contact center, CX, AI space, wherever you want to go over the past few months, floor is
Fred Stacey 37:47
yours. Well, I you know, I knew this was coming, so I was kicking around a couple of them. Yeah, what I would say, probably the biggest one is still a continuation of you don't need to get ready for artificial intelligence. It's so smart, it's so capable, yeah, and this comes a lot from the suppliers, you know. Hey, you don't need to be ready. We'll take care of everything, you know. AI will ingest everything. We'll be able to build it, you know. And you'll be getting a return on investment of 10x within whatever amount of time. Look, you know, the in the end, as I talked, you know, the human side, the people, the processes that takes, you know, that takes the humans, to still do the work. Last time I checked, you know, now they're AI tools that can help, you know, move faster, you know. But nonetheless, you still need the humans. So, you know, for companies out there that are saying we don't need to be ready for this, or you don't need to be ready to, you know, to bring in our technology, there are a few point solutions that, without a doubt, you can get, like I talked to there, you can get fast to return on investment, without a big lift with even have an old premise based stuff, you know. But that doesn't mean that your company is ready for what's coming next. Plain and simple, you know, you're the way I look at it is you're either going to move your company to be an AI enabled company, holistically across every department, or you're not, yeah. And if you're not, yeah, you're going to go way of the dodo bird, right? Yeah, and it's the so it's total BS. I always laugh. I hear it a lot. You would be surprised. Maybe you wouldn't, but when you start talking to the suppliers, and people are like, no, just plug us in. Like, yeah, because that's the end of the business, because one single point solution solves all needs for AI, it's not the way it works. Yeah, and yeah. So that's, that's my one big BS, right now, you know, people can keep chanting it all they want in the end businesses that I think are. Learning hard lessons right now, new about not being truly ready
Brian Nichols 40:05
preach. Fred Stacy from Cloud tech gurus, has been a great conversation for folks who are listening today. Maybe they are a business owner, or they're in the CX space, and they're saying, you know, I think it's time for us to start looking at our CX solution or our contact center solution. What would be the best practices there for them to get in touch with you guys over at Cloud tech gurus. I mean
Fred Stacey 40:29
the LinkedIn, cloud tech gurus.com find us out at a lot of events. You know, we're constantly doing all kinds of content. Just put out the launch or launching next week, or no this week. Anyways, shortly, season two of my podcast, contact center journeys, is coming out YouTube, yeah. So a lot of great stories around the the whole idea of contact center, people that have come up through the space. I, like me, there's many executives out there who own businesses, who, you know, senior level leaders, CEOs that started as an agent on the phone. And it's kind of that tell their stories and then talk about that, you know, the industry, yeah, you know. So all kinds of ways, million different ways to find us. But you know, LinkedIn is usually the easiest. You know, no other social media other than LinkedIn, you know, they as far as constant communications, I'm always on it. So yeah,
Brian Nichols 41:32
good stuff. And yeah, my forever co host Tom Milligan, he built up his entire career by starting just like you as an agent. So yeah, no, you're spot on. And this CX contact center world, Fred, it's definitely, it's one to keep our eye on, because things are changing at the speed of, I guess, the speed of AI. But with that being said, we'll put a pin in today's conversation. Brian Nichols, signing off here for Fred Stacy on CX without the BS. We'll see you next time you
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
Oh, hey there, folks. Welcome to this week's episode of CX without the BS. I am your host, Brian Nichols, and looking forward to today's conversation with the one and only Fred Stacy from Cloud tech gurus, we're going to dig into a lot of the the BS that we see in the CX and contact center space. Specifically, what are we seeing with AI and the advancement of AI? Will it replace humans, or is it going to help humans be more efficient? We dig into that and more and also just housekeeping. Apologies in advance for not the traditional format of our CX without the BS episodes regarding our video, because my recording platform stream yard decided to crash as we were getting ready to record. So this call was all done by good old fashioned zoom, going all the way back to 2020, it feels but still a great conversation. And with that, I'll shut up and we'll go on to the good stuff. All right. And with that, returning yes to CX, without the BS. Fred Stacy from Cloud tech gurus, Fred, how the heck are you? What's new?
Fred Stacey 0:59
Oh, I'm good, man. You know me good. Happy to be back, though. Thank you for having me.
Brian Nichols 1:05
Likewise. No, I'm really excited for today's chat. You and the team over at Cloud tech gurus, you guys are really, I mean, you're, you're helping lead the way that CX is not just helping businesses, but you're helping add context to how, right? And you know, before we jump head first in today's conversation, one of the areas that I prepped you beforehand is just I've been hearing so many folks who are concerned about making these big CX investments, because the technology just changes so fast, right? So what ends up happening is people say, Hey, I have this problem. I know I need to fix it, but I'm nervous to actually fix it, because my solution might become outdated, 612, you know, further down the road, in months down the road, and now that investment is obsolete. So before we dig into that question for today, do us a favor, Fred. There's some folks obviously watching the show, and they maybe have not heard of cloud tech gurus, or they didn't check out our last episode. So just give us the quick overview. Who is Fred Stacy and what is cloud tech gurus?
Fred Stacey 2:05
I don't know. Man, that's a that's a much longer conversation. So real quick, 30 plus years in Contact Center, started as an agent, grew into leadership, got pulled into software by my mentor, and spent the last 25 years ish around contact center technology. So I got the joys of green screen all the way through premise to cloud, well hosted, then Cloud 1.0 then to where we're at today. So Cloud tech Arus, we're a TSD Technology Services distributor. So think of us, for the audience who doesn't know the nomenclature, think of us as the middleman you know that knows somebody that we literally know, somebody that does anything in contact centers, from technology to services. I spend, personally half my time reviewing all of our suppliers, you know, looking at, as a former software executive and a user and buyer of this stuff, you know, I've got a unique lens. So I look, I look at companies on size, you know, financial models, infrastructure stack, security, technology differentiators in the marketplace, you know. And we actually have over, well over 200 suppliers in the portfolio of just contact center related technology and services, of course, you know, because you can't have one without the other. You know, even in ai, ai is not going to fix, you know, a lot of the stuff that needs to be done, you know, especially when it comes to humans, yeah? So, yeah, we help clients. You know, clients come directly to us with, hey, you know, I don't know what to do, you know. Or, you know, my boards, you know, breathing down my neck to get an AI solution. Or, you know, we've got a premise based, you know, Cisco and, you know, we need to get to cloud, you know. I mean, there's a million different ways that clients come to us, but really it's about, you know, coming to experts, you know, who really help clients understand, you know, and do the requirements, gathering and the documentation, and discuss based upon the outcomes and what their company needs. You know. What are the right solutions, you know? And then help identify the right companies to look at for those solutions. So we're that middle man, you know, we we help everybody the figure out what is the right path, you know, for their organization.
Brian Nichols 4:28
Yeah, and going back to that first question, right? Because this goes to where I think a lot of folks in this space, not necessarily who are living and breathing it every single day like we do, but folks who they work in it. They know that this newer technology, it's out there, but in terms of taking that leap from whatever they have in place today, if anything, right to then embracing a new piece of technology. And of course, you hit on the key word there that's buzzing around everywhere, AI. And as AI starts to go into the equation, there's a lot of question marks, like. Come there from a security standpoint, from a compliance standpoint, but also just from a human standpoint, how is that going to be received by my agents? How is it going to be received by my customers? So there's a lot of these questions, and candidly, I'm going to call them red flags, not because there's danger behind them, but because, from the buyer's perspective, it's all unknowns, right? This is a brand new world. And back to my original point, the technology is advancing so quick, Fred, that what we think of as AI today, fast forward two years ago, or rewind, rather, two years ago. That was what I call PFM, pure effing magic, right? I remember the best comparison was that Will Smith video that everybody used to show how AI video like, yeah, it's pretty cool, but it's got a long way to go, right? And it was the one of Will Smith eating a bunch of spaghetti. And, I mean, he looks like, I don't know if you ever watched that show Galaxy Quest, but it's when they tried to transport the alien from the planet inside the planet, and it flipped it inside out. That's kind of what the video looked like. But you fast forward to today, especially with Google Gemini solutions for the VO three, oh my gosh. Like you can make a full scene, granted, 10 seconds or so, but it looks like a high quality, like 4k film, and you can have people speak, they have emotions like and it feels real. So the fact that we've gone so much in terms of advancements over just a two year period. Folks see that and they say, what's next in two years? What where will the technology be then? And am I investing in something that is going to be completely obsolete and outdated in 2027 2028 so there's a lot of red flags there. So to those folks, what would you say? Kind of your expertise, like, what would be your guidance?
Fred Stacey 6:43
Yeah, so one, there are plenty of point solutions out there that don't need a huge heavy lift, but before you even get there, what I would say is, there's a reason why we spent, about a year ago, I got together with a couple of other CEOs and pulled together, you know, a team of experts to put together maturity and assessments and AI readiness strategies. You know, the the reality this, this, these products, you're right. They're moving at breakneck speeds, something we've never seen. You know, I mean, literally, every week I get new suppliers reaching out to me that I've never heard of that have, you know, 5 million ARR in inside our space, and I've never heard their name. And this is what I do, you know, I analyze software companies to determine if they would be a good partner and a fit for our clientele. The so you can't keep up with it, but the one that you can do is you can really focus on what you need to do internally to get ready. So yeah, the things that never changed in this game is it's still people, processes and technology and in that order, and everybody's forgetting all this time that we've been doing digital transformation, that they forgot that part of transformation is change management in of your people and understanding you know, and building the processes you know and you know, the data governance and the policies and procedures, documenting all this stuff, preparing it for artificial intelligence, for ingestion, for learning. You know, there's there's only things you should be doing you should have been doing years ago that now are pretty much required, but a lot of companies are just throwing stuff against the wall. Yeah, which it's great for spaghetti, you know, it's an old trick my mom taught me. You can throw a noodle, and if it, you know, stay stuck, then you know, it's good, you know. But anyways, they don't do it too high a ceilings, by the way. You know, otherwise you're going to be climbing on a ladder.
Unknown Speaker 8:48
But the point is,
Fred Stacey 8:50
yeah, there's, there's still all these things that people in the processes are still necessary. You still gotta go in and you gotta talk through your team. You gotta get a clear direction, you know, from top down, you know, this is, look, every division and every company across the whole world will be interacting with artificial intelligence. There, no question about it, yeah, this is not that I see. A lot of people equate this to, you know, IVRS and social media and all the, you know, all the suppliers that tried to make it sound like the world is going to change, and, you know, it never did, right? This is not that. This is, you know, world changing technology, and it is moving super fast, but you still have to do the hard work underneath for your people, make sure that they understand what your vision is, how you're going to utilize it, how they can be better in your organization and help participate in that, you know. And then, of course, all the policies and procedures of data and you know, security policies, and you know how you're going to build all this stuff, all that, all of that stuff still needs documented. You still need to have it in a. Digital format that's ingestible. You still need to work with your people. You know, there's a lot of projects. I think I read like 25% of all AI projects had a agent, at least one instance of a recorded agent, trying to, you know, trying to make AI ineffective, sabotage through, you know, trying to do their own ways because they fear it. You know, that's just, what do you think? You don't tell people what's happening, what happens, you know, the human brain goes to the worst possible scenario, you know. So they're not including them. I mean, the all the things that you should be doing anyways and should have done, building proper change management and people and resources start there. Yeah, well,
Brian Nichols 10:45
I mean, interrupt, but like, it goes back to what you just you hit on right with the people piece, especially, like, sorry if I'm a person as a call center agent or or what have you. And I'm hearing constantly the drum beat of AI is replacing people. AI is replacing people. It's like, of course, there's gonna come a point where self preservation kicks in. I'm gonna be like, not replacing me
Fred Stacey 11:07
exactly, you know. So, I mean, start with the fundamentals, you know. Get your team ready. Make sure you have a clear vision. There are a ton of experts out there, cloud takers, just happens to be one of them, you know. And I think we're one of the best ones, you know. And that's just, you know, yeah, drink my own Kool Aid, eat my own dog food, whatever you want to say, you know. But nonetheless, there's a lot of resources out there. I think the whole idea of trusted advisors is absolutely essential today, you know, whereas before, did you really need to go out and find somebody when there were 10 solutions on the market, right? Yeah, no. I mean, you know, I could do that research. They are back, back when I was still doing it. We had Google and Yahoo, you know, I easily searched suppliers and found somebody to buy, you know? But now, yeah, if you're not working with someone who's been there, done that spends a lot of time inside the ecosystem, is analyzing new technology versus old. You know, you're it's hard, I mean, because I you know you run a center, you're putting out fires all day, right? 12 hours a day of just chaos. When are you going to have time to research what's going on out in the market and who's right and what to do and how to do it. I mean, it's just, it's, it's unattainable,
Brian Nichols 12:28
you know. And really quick to that, Fred, because I do see this quite a bit in the pushback from folks saying, wow. You know, we don't need TAS anymore. We don't need these, these partners anymore, because we can just go and use the very thing AI that we're talking about here. And I can just, I can go to AI, I can ask AI, who's the best C has vendor, who's the best CX vendor, right? And, and I want to get my answers, right?
Fred Stacey 12:51
Oh yeah, oh yeah, you'll get answers, because that's what designed to do, right? Yeah, they're purposefully designed to answer the human you know. Now, now ask me, is it 100% accurate, you know, and you know, are the sightings accurate? Yeah. I mean, how many cases do we have to see of lawyers using stated, stated cases from chat GPT that were absolutely lies, that were completely fictional? I mean, you know, every LLM ever will hallucinate unless you're building, well, no, no, unless it just will, like, I use grok, I'm a big grock guy for certain things, but I still ask for all of the, you know, all of the sightings and source material, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and still have to go back and do validation, you know. So, yeah, I mean, in the end, you're sure go ahead and ask, ask AI to recommend an AI go for it, you know. And I've seen platforms that are trying to custom and tailor to it, and you know, sure, they build in rules and logic, but they're still only off of a certain use case. I would rather find somebody that's done it, it's been there, you know, and can work with my team, yeah, to with all of the human interactions, the process, and yeah, I mean, all of those things in mind as you move forward. So maybe someday when we hit AGI, you sure? But by that time AGI comes, I think we're having a whole different conversation. Man,
Brian Nichols 14:26
oh, for sure. Now for the audience, playing along with the home game, right? We're talking about when AI can reason and like think, more or less like we can and doesn't need us, right? It's artificial generative intelligence. Keep me honest here, right? So tell us more about where you think that's going to fit into the equation in the future. Because, I mean, there's the big use case that came out where Klarna replaced was a 700 people with AI, and then a year later, they hired back everybody, because they're like, oh, this didn't go as we had foreseen, but let's pretend they had AG. AI. Like, do you think that would have been a different
Fred Stacey 15:03
use case there? So the AGI is artificial general intelligence, right? And General. Thank you. Yeah, yeah, General. The other term is ASI, which is artificial super intelligence. So what's funny is, although super sounds bigger, it just means it's super intelligent. You know, general is where it's us, right? It's sentient. It can not only, and plenty of tools today reason, and you can actually see in certain tools the way it reasons through problem solving, you know. So AGI is a whole different ball game on, you know, when AGI comes the idea of it replicating itself and creating separate agents and doing activity on its own. It becomes truly, you know, sentient, the meaning it can go out and make any decisions it chooses. Of course, hopefully the people that are building this stuff are putting the right guardrails and getting them aligned with human, you know, human humans being important to this world. Let's put it that way. Hopefully they do all that stuff, right. And, you know, general intelligence, you know, is, is a boon, you know, for human society right now, if, if we had ASI, yeah. I mean, at that point in time, I think there's, there's arguments to be said that we're, we're heading really close to that. Anyways, most, most of the models can, you know, score on college level tests by far better than humans, you know. And I mean, chess is a perfect example. However, you know, Magnus just beat the chess AI system, you know. So, I mean, what? But I digress. You kind of took me down a different path. Yeah. So let's talk about Klarna. So Klarna, it was an interesting one, because they did absolutely that. They said AI is going to replace all these people, and they laid off a bunch of people now, then there was an article that they started hiring again. And you know, that article kind of twisted how what was going on. And then most people missed the CEOs follow up, which is, no, no, no, we're hiring more people because of demand. So, you know, there's still a question in that. And I, you know, I haven't, I haven't dug under the hood in there. I don't even know if they are public. I don't know if I could look at their financials, but I don't know anybody over there, you know. So if I had to guess, more than likely, they're still significantly more efficient with artificial intelligence today. But Klarna is a software developer, right? Yeah, so much like, yeah. I mean, that's like saying, you know, Google uses AI in their contact center. The big shocker, right? I mean, you know, Microsoft uses, oh, wow, yeah, and they keep water is wet, yeah, yeah, water is wet. This, yeah, so AI, you know, but Klarna is the 1% you know, in my opinion, anybody like into it? Klarna, Microsoft, Google, anybody that's a software shop that is used to building, you know, deploying at scale, technology, supporting and continually, continually updating and innovating software companies. They'll, they'll be building on this stuff forever, and they'll continue to replace, you know, all the mundane stuff, right? The smart ones will recognize what should be handled through automation and what shouldn't based upon the humans need, you know? And they'll, they'll change accordingly. But that doesn't mean that they're not going to move fast and break shit. Yeah, sure. That's, that's what software companies do everybody else in the world. We're all just trying to figure out, you know, how to, how to keep our duct tape and bubble gum of, you know, WFM, CCAs, maybe cloud, some premise, you know, conversational analytics, bots, knowledge management and the list goes on and on. Try to keep all that operating well, and figure out, you know how to, how to prepare our companies and our organizations for the future?
Brian Nichols 19:22
Yeah, well, and by the way, like you hit on all the different areas, and this is, I think, where the rubber really hits the road, and that is when it comes to the customer facing stuff, right? And I know I'm not unique in this example, but I know myself and probably hundreds of folks listening today. They've all been in the situation where they're sitting down and they just want to talk to a person, right? And just a real person, and it's like pulling teeth just to get to the real person. I actually did an episode with Vicky Brackett here back this last episode, and she was talking about a headache she had trying to get. It just a real person. And how ended up, she had to use that old secret trick of maybe dropping a few, a few, uh, four letter words there to get, get the filters to recognize that, oh, this person is not happy, right? Sentiment Analysis not good, and they need to talk to a real person. Then she got the real person, and she was able to get the issue resolved in like, 15 minutes, versus, I think, she was on hold for 45 minutes trying to get to a real person. And I mean that right there, it continues to be the number one issue in the customer experience space, is when people are calling for help and they want to get in touch with a real, live pulse beating human being. Fred, I don't see that going away. And I guess to that, like, what what are you seeing in the tech space, specifically, Contact Center, CX and all that and more that's helping address this very real, I guess, reality that people want to talk to people they don't want to talk to a robot that genuinely can't empathize just based on the nature of it being AI,
Fred Stacey 20:58
yeah, so Here's, here's what I see a lot of. There's a rush to try to figure out and solve the automation side, you know, just to drop money to the bottom line. So right now, everybody's chasing the shiny pennies. They're throwing food up against the noodles up against the wall to see if they stick, you know. And that's really where we're at. We're in the innovator side, you know of this right now. I think the funny thing is, the companies that I see really leading the charge, and, you know, they're, they're focused on this, the customer experience from the CEO down, right? They're going to give that option right away in any type of communication channel. Now the what's, what's even funnier is the government might actually step in and force us all to do something, you know, in between, I don't know if you caught that new bill of outsourcing, you know, so hidden inside, oh, yes, yeah. Tell us more about that. So in, hidden inside of that outsourcing bill is also AI regulation in particular, two things that I think could actually stick one, you have to announce that it is AI, which only makes sense. I've known, and I think those in the compliance world have known, you know that that was coming, right? You know you have to tell somebody who's calling that they're speaking, or somebody that chatting, that they're speaking to AI, I think that's kind of a no brainer, right? Until it just becomes so accepted that no one cares anymore, right? And then then it may shift, you know? And once you've told them, then you have to give an immediate option, and this is in that bill that you have to give an immediate option to talk to a live human. Now, take out all the other Outsourcing Things about, you know, whether this will actually pass in its current form. It isn't going to pass, but I think they can, this administration in particular, can get some of the stuff passed, you know, and how outsourcing or offshoring versus nearshore versus onshore, how that's going to impact businesses. There's, there's a whole that's a whole different animal, but staying on the AI track, just those two things alone. Think about the the Solve for a lot of the problems that would you just mentioned. You know, if you tell them they're speaking to AI, if they're a self service person, they're good with that. Okay, yep. You know, if it's a simple problem, okay, if somebody, you know, if I just got a fraudulent charge on my credit card, I am pushing a zero to talk to an agent, right, you know. So I think just that in itself, if I know, giving the government credit for doing anything you know, kind of feels a little off. But, you know, nonetheless, there's two things. Regulating it might actually have a lot of value, you know, forcing companies to take that seriously. And people we've seen this transition, you know, they've gotten more comfortable with digital they've gotten more comfortable with self service. There's no question that there's a big audience out there that absolutely would, if they had a choice, live in self service, if they can get an answer quickly and accurately. I know I would. I mean, you know, and I'm a Gen Xer, you know, I'd still much prefer to solve my problem quickly with a natural language based search. You know, here's my problem. What's the fix. Oh, there's the fix. Fixed, done. You know, I'm happy. I'm perfect. Now, that's how I look at Amazon, you know, Amazon, it isn't that their customer service and their agents are the best in the world. It's that their product design and the way they deliver and the experience on the front end is almost near perfect, you know. So that's that's the customer experience that really moves the needle for people like me. I'm just too busy. I don't want to deal with it. And I'm sure most people are like that. They're like, Why the hell would I want to call anybody I, you know? I mean, why should I in this day and age? So,
Brian Nichols 24:57
yeah, it's like, when I was trying to cancel, I was trying to. Canceled by XFINITY a couple of years ago. And like you call the person, and that's the one use case I can think off the top my head. I really don't want to talk to a person, because I know as soon as I get that live agent, God bless her. And the lady on the phone, she was such a sweetheart. But you know, Mr. Nichols, are you sure you don't want to get this brand new deal? I'm like, No, I am sure. I've already switched over. Please just help me cancel. And that's, I mean, right there. It's going to be use case by use case, I think, but I guess you hit on something Fred, and it's almost like a happy accident, right? Like we see this with from a health side of things right now, I think it's the RFK administration and the HHS, they're trying to put in these rules about all these, these dyes they're going to remove from foods. And a lot of companies are responding right now in kind saying, You know what? We're gonna do it now. You know we're just gonna go ahead and start pulling the dyes out. And you got other organizations like Aldi, right? Everybody's favorite small grocery store, they're like, Hey, we haven't had dyes in our food since the beginning, because that's just kind of our thing. And I guess that leads to a question. Fred is like, this just sounds common sense. Let people know immediately they're being, you know, they're talking to an AI, and then immediately give them an out to go talk to a human like, why is that not the standard for orgs? Just as they're seeing the writing on the wall as they're getting the real feedback from customers that this is an issue like that just seems like a no
Fred Stacey 26:20
brainer. It does to you, and I for sure, you know. But when you're talking to an executive and you know, you mean, let's say that is a 20, 30% uptick in call volume that actually goes to the agent, how much does that impact your bottom line? It's, it's all business decisions, you know. And there's, I laugh like the airlines, you know? I mean, there's some verticals that just know their commodity. And, you know, no matter what we do, they they have realized that people are going to buy either based upon price or time of flight, and they don't care about the rest. That has become very, very obvious to me. You know, the only thing that really matters to me anymore is the the points program, you know, and picking convenient times that match for my business schedule, right, or personal schedule, you know, so, but I mean, they don't, you don't see, nobody's really trying to be a great service provider. And God forbid, the one that I felt that would never change is now changing. So even, you know, Southwest is is starting to realize that, in the end, doesn't hurt all their their margins all that much to not service as well. So, I mean, you know, here we are, you know, you want to talk about XFINITY and different mobile program or, you know, like utilities, I mean, yeah, market, why do they care? You got one provider to switch to. Now. I, you know, what are you going to do? Yeah. So anyways, I, you know, there's been a long time that I've the journals have all talked and see, see love C suite have talked about the customer experience being their primary differentiator, but when it all boils down to it, you spend a little time with our contact center people and those running the centers, and it's pretty obvious that that's not the case. Yeah. So, you know, hopefully, what I really hope is that this, you know, artificial intelligence, is going to force people to update a lot of a lot of their stack, and it's also going to force them to think about their processes and their people and their resource allocations, you know. And really forces the the what I've always seen, you know, like the departments are very fragmented, segmented, you know. And it is going to have to get involved with ops. And ops has to get involved with it, you know. And AI is going to hopefully break down all those barriers and bring it all together. Finally, I really that's that optimist in me. I really think that this is that kind of technology change where everybody's going to be forced to play in the same pool, and it's a good thing. So, yeah,
Brian Nichols 29:11
no, I'm right there with you, Fred, because, like, I know there's a lot of doom and gloom around AI, you know the just, oh, it's going to take everybody's job. No, I think it's Bill Gates, right? Like, everybody's not going to be having a job by 2030 we're all going to be replaced by AI. Like, I hear this doom and gloom, but going back to your point here, like, there just, is there something intrinsic in wanting to talk to a person, right? Like, to your billing issue, like, I don't want to talk to the AI. I need to talk to a person. I need the person. And there's always going to be a value there for the actual people. And I think that's one thing that we just we have to always kind of go back to, like a North Star, some guiding principles, and that is, people want to work with people you mentioned, like the IVR jail that we've all come to know and hate, right? But like the IVR. Jail that always had an out, and you could go talk to a person. And I think we see time and again that when it's really big issues and you need to be not just heard, but understood, empathized with, we need that human element. And that's just, you know, that's the H i That's, that's what AI can't accomplish. Is that human element? I guess that's H, E, human element, yeah, make sure I get that right. But like, I guess, you know, with that being said, Fred, we talked about where organizations who are forward facing are heading, but what about the orgs? Who they're, they're just kind of in a wait and see mode right now, right? They're just, they're watching, they're seeing their competition, embrace AI, and they're just kind of hanging out, just figuring out the way the land. What would you recommend to them? Because I'm sure they see the value in AI, but as we were talking about earlier, they also see a lot of the big question marks. So what would be your I guess, official cloud tech guru, I guess talking points to them, or things they should start considering.
Fred Stacey 30:59
Yeah, so going back to what I said earlier, you know, AI, readiness, maturity assessment, you know, full roadmap, if you don't want to do that, you know, hopefully your team, your internal teams, you've got good change management in place. You got leaders and project managers and subject matter experts to help start working through this whole process now, outside of that, you know, once you got your internal house ready, you know where you're at today, truly not, not guessing right. You know where you're at, you know where you want to head, then it's a matter of, you know, selecting the right solutions based upon timing, you know. So, I mean, I'll give you a perfect example, 30% this was last year's numbers. I haven't seen this year's yet, but 30% of the Fortune 500 had still had premise space telephony. And we're talking about the biggest companies in the world, you know. So, you know. And some people may say, Well, if it's not broke, don't fix it. Well, you know, what you probably don't realize, is that premise based telephony. First of all, the data structures is completely different. The actual audio recordings and audio path is completely different. So that's eight bit versus 16 bit. It's mono versus stereo. So, you know, accuracy, quality, you know, for AI tools, goes down, you know, by the older technology, you know, and the lack of APIs, you know, meaning that you got a duct tape and bubblegum, some integrations and some data movements and stuff like that. Yeah. So,
Unknown Speaker 32:34
yeah. So
Fred Stacey 32:35
the back to your question, you know, what does the company do when they're sitting there waiting, like I said, if you're not at least taking care of your internal people and processes side while you're trying to figure out your roadmap for the technology, which you damn well should be, you know then and you're one that's going to throw something against the wall and see if it sticks, Do it with the right technologies that are lower lift, that have possible and have already proven ROI you know that you can deploy today, and there are a handful of different technology categories that fall into that right, simulation based training, conversational Analytics, you know there's Agent assist when done well, you know, get your knowledge in order. You know, knowledge management systems, you know, are critical for storage, for digitization, for meta tagging, you know, but you don't even have to do that. The funny thing is, the AI as it continues, you know, to get better at training and tuning and ingestion of information. You know, the unstructured and structured, you know, you there's less worry, you know, about how well something is tagged, right? You know. So that was an early concern. You know, 20 circa 23 you know, it's so funny. That's just two years ago, I know, yeah, but now, all of a sudden, we're so much further along that, you know, this whole thing is changing, and for those that are sitting back and waiting, I mean, look, you got to get started. You know that you can't wait. There are things that you could wait on, right? You know they're like the electric electricity, right? Let's talk about industrial revolutions and put it in terms of, I found that people it helps them understand the like, electricity took, like, 50 years to propagate, right? Manufacturing automation, the Industrial Revolution. I mean, yeah, same, little bit less, right? Computers themselves, from the point that computers were invented until they were in the home and actually changed the world. You're talking like 30 years. You know, from the internet, you're talking about 20 years. This stuff is changing in like, literally quarters, you know, open, AI could come out with a 10. Technology within the next three months that could put an entire segment out of business. You know, within a very short period of time. Of course, this stuff is changing fast. Yeah, I get it. You know, you're going to invest in things that probably are just be one, but if you don't force your organization to learn how to be, how to work in this modern world, you're never going to get there. You're going to fall so far behind that other people are going to outpace you. And this is not one of those digital transformation ideas where, you know, hey, we'll change this, but we won't change the rest of the stack. That that's not the way this is going to work. A there. There There won't be a single department in an entire company that doesn't use AI. So you got to start figuring it out now. And, you know, the data governance, the policies, the security compliance, you know, all those things are necessary pieces. And I've always been, maybe it's this software and entrepreneur in me, but I've always been, you know, move forward, and just that act of moving forward forces your teams to put in the right things,
Speaker 1 36:08
but just smarter, not harder. Yeah, right, like,
Brian Nichols 36:13
yeah. And this, actually, it reminds me of, I'm, I'm a big political junkie, and, like, I love economics and stuff, and one of my favorite thinkers is Milton Friedman. And there's a very famous quote back he had visited China back, I think, in the 70s or 80s, and he had met with the I forget whoever the head was. I don't know if it was Mao or whoever it was back then, but regardless. And they were walking back up by a public works project, and there's a 50 guys that were standing there, and they were going to be, you know, digging out this big hole. And Milton Friedman goes, Why didn't you give them a backhoe to dig this hole? Just, you know, it's a lot easier, it's more efficient. And the leader said, well, because it's a jobs program. So the more you know, the less advanced the tool is, the more people we had to give jobs. And he goes, and he goes, and Milton Friedman responds, well, if that's the case, why don't you give them, you know, like little, tiny hand shovels, right? If the idea is to make it so you're doing more with more people, right? Go for it. But the reality is, at the end of the day, that's not the way to run business, right? The way to run business is to work smarter, not harder, to be more efficient and to embrace newer technologies, because also often the room your competition is they're embracing these new technologies. So to your point, you don't get left behind. No, Fred, this has been a great conversation, and I can't believe we're already hard pressed for time here. So you know what time it is, right? This is the time of the show where we ask that one golden question, and that is, Fred, what has been the biggest piece of BS you've been seeing here in the contact center, CX, AI space, wherever you want to go over the past few months, floor is
Fred Stacey 37:47
yours. Well, I you know, I knew this was coming, so I was kicking around a couple of them. Yeah, what I would say, probably the biggest one is still a continuation of you don't need to get ready for artificial intelligence. It's so smart, it's so capable, yeah, and this comes a lot from the suppliers, you know. Hey, you don't need to be ready. We'll take care of everything, you know. AI will ingest everything. We'll be able to build it, you know. And you'll be getting a return on investment of 10x within whatever amount of time. Look, you know, the in the end, as I talked, you know, the human side, the people, the processes that takes, you know, that takes the humans, to still do the work. Last time I checked, you know, now they're AI tools that can help, you know, move faster, you know. But nonetheless, you still need the humans. So, you know, for companies out there that are saying we don't need to be ready for this, or you don't need to be ready to, you know, to bring in our technology, there are a few point solutions that, without a doubt, you can get, like I talked to there, you can get fast to return on investment, without a big lift with even have an old premise based stuff, you know. But that doesn't mean that your company is ready for what's coming next. Plain and simple, you know, you're the way I look at it is you're either going to move your company to be an AI enabled company, holistically across every department, or you're not, yeah. And if you're not, yeah, you're going to go way of the dodo bird, right? Yeah, and it's the so it's total BS. I always laugh. I hear it a lot. You would be surprised. Maybe you wouldn't, but when you start talking to the suppliers, and people are like, no, just plug us in. Like, yeah, because that's the end of the business, because one single point solution solves all needs for AI, it's not the way it works. Yeah, and yeah. So that's, that's my one big BS, right now, you know, people can keep chanting it all they want in the end businesses that I think are. Learning hard lessons right now, new about not being truly ready
Brian Nichols 40:05
preach. Fred Stacy from Cloud tech gurus, has been a great conversation for folks who are listening today. Maybe they are a business owner, or they're in the CX space, and they're saying, you know, I think it's time for us to start looking at our CX solution or our contact center solution. What would be the best practices there for them to get in touch with you guys over at Cloud tech gurus. I mean
Fred Stacey 40:29
the LinkedIn, cloud tech gurus.com find us out at a lot of events. You know, we're constantly doing all kinds of content. Just put out the launch or launching next week, or no this week. Anyways, shortly, season two of my podcast, contact center journeys, is coming out YouTube, yeah. So a lot of great stories around the the whole idea of contact center, people that have come up through the space. I, like me, there's many executives out there who own businesses, who, you know, senior level leaders, CEOs that started as an agent on the phone. And it's kind of that tell their stories and then talk about that, you know, the industry, yeah, you know. So all kinds of ways, million different ways to find us. But you know, LinkedIn is usually the easiest. You know, no other social media other than LinkedIn, you know, they as far as constant communications, I'm always on it. So yeah,
Brian Nichols 41:32
good stuff. And yeah, my forever co host Tom Milligan, he built up his entire career by starting just like you as an agent. So yeah, no, you're spot on. And this CX contact center world, Fred, it's definitely, it's one to keep our eye on, because things are changing at the speed of, I guess, the speed of AI. But with that being said, we'll put a pin in today's conversation. Brian Nichols, signing off here for Fred Stacy on CX without the BS. We'll see you next time you
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
