HITT- AI in customer experience: point solutions vs platform solutions- Feb 25, 2025

In this session, the focus is on the role of artificial intelligence in enhancing customer experience, particularly comparing AI-driven point solutions to comprehensive UCaaS and CCaaS platforms. Mike Baillargeon discusses the implications of Avaya’s recent layoffs and the challenges faced by clients outside their top customer list. The conversation highlights the effectiveness of AI-powered chatbots in reducing customer service burdens and the importance of integration for successful implementation. While point solutions offer quick fixes, platform solutions are better suited for complex needs and long-term strategies. The session emphasizes the necessity of a clear AI strategy and the value of engaging with suppliers to improve customer service.

Transcript is auto-generated.

Introduction to AI in Customer Experience

Today we dive deep into artificial intelligence again, but this time specifically in customer experience, CX. We’re going to tackle the question, are your clients best served by an AI driven point solution versus a full scale UCaaS, CCaaS platform? This is a critical issue and it has many ramifications. Today, we show you how to address it with your clients and our presentation today is hosted by who else? Telarus VP of CX, Sam Nelson. Sam, it’s always a pleasure to welcome you to our Tuesday call. How are you?

I am good. How are you, Doug?

Fantastic. Thanks.

Yay. So before y’all pin me, I want to make sure you all know that Mike b or Mikey b or Mike Baillargeon is here with us today. He is our CX slash AI solution architect on the East Coast. Many of you know him. But he’s actually got a couple of exciting updates to share before I head into this presentation.

Breaking news. Breaking news. Right? So, our friends at at Avaya came out with a couple of big statements in the last two weeks if you hadn’t seen them and what the ramifications are. The first one is they’ve made a tactical decision to lay off a ton of people. But beyond that, they’ve made a tactical decision to only support their largest fifteen hundred customers globally with an on prem PBX.

What does that mean for you? When you’re prospecting and your client says, oh, we we’re a hundred person company, and we use the Avaya IP Office, they ain’t in the fifteen hundred. Right? We’re talking massive hospitals, massive universities, massive massive BPOs globally.

Right? You find an Avaya IP Office that is a target rich environment for you. So what does it mean to that customer? Probably no new updates, no new fixes, just bug fixes only, but, no new features. So if they’re happy with a dead platform, that’s great, but, most companies aren’t. The second announcement was around their CCaaS. So a couple years ago, Avaya released their, what they call their experience, contact center experience platform or Avaya experience platform.

And, they made an announcement recently that they would only, accept leads for customers with two hundred two hundred agents. Think about that. Think about your your own client base. How many customers do you have in your client base that have two hundred agents?

Not employees. Two hundred call center agents. It’s probably a very small number. So what that tells me is they’ve they’re moving out of our channel a bit, and they’re just focused on keeping their on prem call center customers on an Avaya platform.

What does it mean to you?

Come talk to me. Come talk to my good friend, Megan, on the West Coast.

We have awesome contact center, players, whether it be an over the top player or an all in one player. So you find an Avaya, you found a lead. Sam?

Love it. Thank you, Mikey b. And just a friendly reminder to everyone that if you are typing in the chat, Mikey b is watching it closely, as well as myself, pepper us with questions.

Engaging the Audience

Also, if you notice there’s a little to and a drop down, you can send it to everyone or to just the host and panelists. Either way, we’ve got your back, and we will make sure that you are all set with all the answers that you need. So with that, okay, time to pin me to the screen because we are going to talk point solution versus platform and then choosing the right fit for your customers. So I think I just mentioned the, capabilities in the chat.

So before we get started getting to know you, let’s get some crowd participation here. How familiar are you with selling CX technology? Give me a a one. If you’re not familiar, tell me more because, obviously, you’re here.

Two, I’ve sold some, but I wanna sell more. No. Three, I’m an absolute rock star. Oh, we’ve got a negative one in the chat as well.

Negative one is totally fine. Or even a zero. Okay. Oh, a five. Okay. Okay. Overachievers.

I see you guys chiming in on the chat. I love it. Look at this. We got all all kinds of great oh, okay.

Six hundred seventy seven. Okay. Alright. Who’s showing off here?

Sam, should we should we quiz that person? Can we should we quiz that person?

We can give it some hard questions.

Right. Right?

That is so funny. I I love this. And this is the kind of participation I’m looking for. So, if built it before it was a thing. I love it. Zachary Schechter on with the with the the latest here, of course. Okay.

So as you can tell, I love, love, love participation.

Right?

And ACD as well. I’m too old for this. I love it.

Love participation. So if you have any questions, any input, any comments, go ahead and pop them into the chat because most likely, you’re not the only one with that question.

Some just don’t, you know, feel comfortable asking. So by all means, this is a dynamic session. We’ll keep it exciting.

Agenda Overview

I’m not just going to talk to you. I’d love to know what you’re seeing out there because the only way that we stay relevant and help you stay relevant is if we hear about it from all of you. So with that, let’s go ahead and dive right into the content, and Mikey b will continue to light up the chat with all of you, and I’ll be looking over here and there. So today’s agenda, set expectations here. We are going to review the strengths and limitations of the two options, whether that’s point solution or, full platform solution. We’re gonna go over the differences between the two.

I’m gonna talk through a couple of key use cases.

We love use cases because then you can go back into your, customer database and look for similar clients who may have the same challenges or the same scenario. Right? And then last but certainly not least, we’re gonna talk about how to position each one effectively, whether that’s a point solution or a platform solution.

And, of course, any best practices, share that stuff in the chat. We love to hear it. Rising tides lift all ships.

So let’s roll.

And if you missed the opportunity to ask Mikey be a question, he did put his email to chat just now, mike b at teleris dot com, and, me, it’s s nelson at teleris dot com. So, yeah, it stands for customer experience. Yes. For those of you who may be in the zero or in the negative numbers as earlier, but here we go.

Visual Aids in Presentation

K. Story time. So before all of you light up the chat asking me what this technology is that I’m about to show you if you haven’t seen this before, it’s what we call a light board. Okay?

It’s something that basically, it’s a it’s a glass. Right? So here we are in the interrogation room. This is glass, and I’m gonna go ahead and draw something out for you to help illustrate this story.

So long time ago. Right?

No. Not from a galaxy far, far away. I’m just kidding. Alright. So I’m gonna draw a little timeline here.

And what this represents I’m gonna blow this up just a little bit and make it a little brighter. Okay. Yep. Story time. Alright. This represents a customer interaction. Alright?

And here are the different pieces of the interaction, whether that’s the beginning, the middle, the end, all the way to when they’re done interacting with the company. Right? In other words, this represents the experience that a client has, digitally. K?

We’re not talking about in person, although there’s a separate one for in person. Okay? Now back in the day, we really only had, all of these UC and CC players handling the entire interaction. Right?

They came up with these great platforms all in one, right, who dealt with everything from the beginning of the customer interaction all the way to the end. Full service, fantastic, incorporated all of the employee experience components as well as the customer experience components. Some even just focused on the CC or contact center only components.

The Shift to Point Solutions

Right? And now that that landscape has changed, but we’ll get there. So let’s talk about why point solutions now are so popular. K? This is really important to understand because, if you know the history, then you know where a lot of customers are coming from and why point solutions are really making an entrance now. Okay? So bear with me here.

Pre COVID, right, we, had all of these platform solutions. Great. Fantastic. And they’re still fantastic today. But COVID happened. What happened to us?

Right? We had to stay indoors. We got locked up.

Everything we did was digital. We interacted with each other digitally.

We couldn’t go to the store.

Right?

Brick and mortar was almost, you know, nonexistent for a while. Right? And so what we did as consumers is we prioritize, digital doorsteps. Right? Because that was the only way that we could interact with other businesses.

In other words, we would leverage things like okay. Yep. You’re right, Zachary. Like, your stores were open oddly enough.

Right? If you wanted to if you wanted to, bear the storm there. But, at the end of the day, if you think about it, we’re all forced to go virtual. And what this did for businesses is it actually required for them to revisit what their virtual or digital experience looked like.

Okay?

And with that trend as a result of COVID, there was, this ignition of sort of rocket fuel in point solutions. Now point solutions, and I’ll get into the definitions in a bit, but just to give you an idea, point solutions are ones that literally handle different points, right, within this in in the case of CX, this customer interaction.

So out of the woodworks came several point solutions that helped specifically with maybe just the, you know, beginning of the interaction, maybe just the middle, maybe, just the end. Okay?

Some examples here. Alright? Now I know there are probably a bunch of suppliers on this call. I’m gonna probably gonna get an email afterwards being like, why didn’t you mention me and all that good stuff.

Right? Yes. This is just for example purposes. Okay? So, a couple of, say, point solutions here, you know, capacity.

Right? I know boost is on. I saw boost on the call.

You know, we’ve got, we’ve got yellow. Right? These are, like, some conversational AI solutions.

Okay? Yeah. Boost represent.

And so what these folks are doing primarily is handling the initial part of the interaction. So when you call a company and it now sounds like a real human, so it connects AI. Yep.

You, you call in and a and a a robot sounds like human says, what can we help you with? And they take you as far as they can, until they potentially have to pass you to a real person. Right? Now there are some AI solutions out there that are so good that if you ask it to to transfer you to a human, it will transfer you to another bot that sounds like a human, and you wouldn’t even know the difference. Right? That’s just how good it is now.

So say they handle the beginning of the interaction, maybe they help the customer all the way through. That’s fantastic.

But what happens with all the data that’s collected, right, in that interaction?

That’s when you get to, like, quality assurance, quality management. And, again, these UC and CC providers, they still do, like, some of this stuff. Right? And they’re getting a lot better at it. But yes, Kyle. We got you.

But, when you look at the point solutions that came out claiming best of breed because this is where they were born. There’s a difference, folks.

Based on, you know, where they were born and their capabilities and how deep they decided to go in these just point solutions to address specific pain points or, specific use cases. Lots of vertical use cases coming up. Right? That’s why they’re here now. So on the other side of the house, say, like, quality assurance, quality management.

In other words, what are what are customers saying? What are, you know, contact center agents saying? What are just employees saying? What’s anyone saying?

Right? What’s the voice of the customer? On this side, you got folks, you know, like Level AI. You’ve got folks like Observe dot AI, who are handling that.

And then you even have these other random point solutions, kind of on top of all of this, who are also doing new things like accent neutralization.

Right?

Ones like like Saunas. Right?

Now like Chris with a k. Right? Who are actually providing real time language translation. So you’re starting to see a theme here where there’s a lot of these kind of point solutions addressing these different components of the customer experience. Right? Now that’s not to say at all that these platform providers don’t have that. In fact, what they’re doing more of now is that you’ll see that several of them have marketplaces where you can integrate these other players into very, very easily because they know that point solutions can be valuable as well if in fact it is needed.

Understanding Point vs. Platform Solutions

Okay? So that’s sort of the story behind why we’re here, why we’re talking about it, why it’s important to understand sort of these key differences. Okay? I’m gonna go ahead and take a moment just to erase this. My favorite some of my favorite glass cleaner. Right? I see the chat is lighting up.

Andy Torres with some great questions there.

Right?

Oh, that’s a great question from Michael Brennan.

Does this easily mean that partners are compensated for those built on solutions through marketplaces?

Right?

That is a fantastic question, and the answer is it depends. It totally depends. So what I recommend you do is when you come across maybe a customer who is looking at a point solution or considering or you’re like, oh, this kind of, like, smells and tastes like a point solution situation, come to us and we can help guide you through that. Okay? And, yes, register, register, register. Register early and often, and that will help solve a lot of, those little nuances.

K? Alright. So by now, hopefully, you know, but just in case, what really is the difference?

So a point solution, it is officially now, a stand alone tool that solves a particular problem or a particular use case.

Okay? And now platform solution. Right? It’s that full end to end platform that’s handling everything.

So, shout out to to Kyle on here, eight by eight. Right? You’ve got Go to Nextiva. You’ve got Zoom now doing that.

RingCentral. Right? Like, I can go on and on and on, Dialpad, but these folks have everything from end to end. Alright?

So that’s the key difference that I want you all to understand as we go through this.

When to Use Point Solutions

So we’re gonna start with point solutions.

Right? So when does a point solution make sense?

So there are a few different situations. Right? One is, this one is really popular. It’s simply when a rip and replace is just not an option. So for example, a customer does not want to completely rip and replace what they’ve already got installed, probably because they’ve already made that investment.

Right? And it’s just they’re stuck in a contract. These CX contracts are anywhere from, you know, three to five years. Right? And maybe they’re on year two. But who knows?

But sometimes it simply just is not an option for them to completely live in the place.

The second piece is, say they’re looking for just a really quick fast solve for a very specific challenge.

So I’ll give you an example of this a little later, but, you know, if you have an influx in interactions coming in that maybe a bot can help with instead of, bogging down agents who need to help with more complex tasks, that’s a great quick solve. Implement a chatbot. It’s one that we’re all very familiar with. And as consumers, we all have interacted with them in one way or another. Alright?

But also, this third one, really interesting. It’s a fast, low risk way to introduce AI. Okay? So hang with me here.

A lot of customers these days are trying to figure out how to leverage artificial intelligence in their technology stack today. Right? And so I would encourage you to ask your customers, even if it’s just a a a cold outreach. Say, hey.

How are you leveraging artificial intelligence in the technology stack today? Right? How are you leveraging artificial intelligence to meet your goals this year going into next year? Those are some great sort of can openers, to open up that conversation.

But having these point solutions readily available allows for customers to take advantage of some of that best of breed AI, components that have come into the market fairly recently, without disrupting too much of what’s already going on, in their current solution. Okay? So that’s really when a point solution makes a ton of sense for a customer. And, again, we’ll we’ll help you figure out when that is as well.

Case Study: AI Implementation in Retail

K. So here’s the case study. Alright. Oh, blocking me out here. Alright. So, let’s take a midsize retailer, for example.

Okay? This is these are real. Alright?

So challenge for a midsize retailer. This is very popular because everyone’s kinda looking to grow their online presence.

The customer service team in this situation was really overwhelmed with some common inquiries or transactions. So they had customers calling in asking for where their orders were.

They were asking about store hours because they had multiple locations, and each location was, right, in growth mode.

Some people even, reached out, emailed asking about return policies because they couldn’t find it on the website because, again, it’s a it’s a retailer with growing online presence, still fairly new to the ecommerce stuff.

And so what happened in this situation was the customers were experiencing super long hold times.

And I don’t like waiting on the phone either. Right? Even over a a chatbot. I don’t even like waiting there, right, for for a long hold time.

Implementing AI Solutions for Efficiency

So, what did this customer do? Well, they implemented an AI powered chatbot. And what the chatbot did was it handled all of those frequently asked questions. In fact, it not only did that, but it also integrated with, the customer CRM or customer relationship management tool, as well as the new ecommerce platform that they were using.

And so that way, when, anyone chatted in to the chatbot and said, hey. Where’s my order? The chatbot could very easily provide that data, literally within seconds. And what that does is it frees up, frees up the the agents for more complex issues. And so the results results were great. Right? There was a forty percent reduction in live agent calls.

Now, again, and Mikey b pointed this out in the chat that they were not looking to replace people. Okay?

What they did was they actually helped these people become more effective in their roles, in that they were able to handle more complex issues that required a human being. Right?

Especially in a case of, say, customer loyalty. If there’s a VIP customer. Right? You wanna open up those live agents to those VIP customers.

A great example of this is if you’re a VIP, say, with your credit card and you call in and someone answers right away. You’re like, I love this. Right? I don’t have to navigate through a menu.

There’s someone there who’s just gonna take care of me because I’m reporting fraud, Right? Or whatever it is.

So with that said, they also experienced improved response times. And then as a result, their CSAT or customer satisfaction scores went up. Right? With a very simple, quick solution that just sat on top of what they were using in this situation.

Key Takeaways from AI Implementation

So a couple of key takeaways here, is that it was a quick win. So a lot of these folks can close in less than ninety days, and there was CRM, prebuilt CRM connectivity.

So a lot of, a lot of folks need to connect to things like HubSpot or Salesforce or, you know, some other, you know, key key commerce platforms out there. But there are so many point solutions now, who do have those pre integrations. Alright?

Oh, there’s a good question in the chat. I’m I knew I was waiting to see Agent Force. Right? I was waiting to see Agent Force pop up, and we can chat about that later.

But Agent Force, Salesforce, totally different conversation. We can hit that at the end if we’ve got some time. Alright. Put a put a pin in that one, Mikey b.

Alright. So to sum it up, a couple of point solution considerations to take. K? So I put kind of the check marks and, like, the, like, stop not stop signs, but, like, the nope.

So quick wins, pretty easy to implement, and, they actually usually, provide lower upfront costs. Right? Because it it’s a quick tool. It just sits on top.

It’s nondisruptive, that kind of thing. Now, some other things to consider when looking at some point solutions, especially ones who may be fairly newer to the market, they might do something very specific for a vertical. Right? And they just came out with, a specialty in home buying.

Right? Or apartment rentals or whatever it is. Right?

A lot of times, those folks, because they’re so new, a lot of them still have to work on the integration component. So keep that in mind. Make sure that the point solution is going to integrate with the customer’s existing tools. Otherwise, it’s gonna be an absolute headache, right, for the customer to manage that.

And that leads to the next point, which is multi tool management. Right? A lot of times with these point solutions, you got multiple dashboards, the point solution, the full platform solution, another point solution, to go into and actually manage. Right?

You have to consider how easy is this tool for the customer to manage. And in the world of artificial intelligence, you know, scalability and cons constant monitoring and retraining of, the AI tool is super important. How easy is that going to be for the customer?

There are several point solutions out there who make it super easy. Okay?

But if you’ve got these two things, then it really leads to the third thing on overall inefficiencies.

K? So just some considerations to put out there. And again, disclaimer, not telling you to not look at point solutions.

Okay? But I’m just pointing out some little gotchas that you wanna consider. K? Cool.

When to Consider Platform Solutions

Alright. So let’s pivot. Let’s go to when a platform solution makes a little more sense. Alright?

These situations, you got a client maybe who’s looking to fully modernize their customer experience solution.

So in the case of, like, some that, are just no longer supported, end of life, maybe they’re on prem and they wanna move to cloud, they wanna move everything together.

Right?

UC and CC are unified communications as well as contact center functionalities in one or separately or whatever it is. But these bigger lips need to be addressed by a full platform solution.

Alright? So let me give you an example, just about the way. So, when we’re looking at, this is also a true story, but a national health care provider, a couple of challenges they were experiencing, now these are actually very common, more common than you think. So look out for these challenges.

But, with patient services, because they don’t go by customer service because they do service patients, they the agents in patient services were actually using, several different modes of communication, different channels. So that’s phone, email, chat, text. And they weren’t talking to each other, which is a huge problem because, that made patients, have to repeat more information.

They were spending more time on the phone. So let me give you an example of this. Let’s say I call in and I give my member number, and I tell them why I’m calling in. They say, great.

Let me transfer you to another department. And I get to another department, and I have to do that all over again. Wouldn’t it be nice? Wouldn’t it be right?

Wouldn’t it be nice if they just knew, what I was already calling in about and they could just address my issue right away? Right?

Enhancing Patient Experience with AI

It’d be so much more seamless and a much better experience for me as a patient. And so, what they did was they implement a full AI powered CCaaS platform, and that handled everything from your intelligent call routing to, the self-service options, like, when is my appointment. Right? That was a big one.

And also appointment reminders.

But it also gave, some general sentiment analysis. So, what were some common escalation points for a patient, what were maybe some triggers that led to escalations, how often was a manager called into, and why were they called into specific interactions.

Right? And those are all great examples of of this in this particular use case. And what were the results? So when we look at call handle time, that’s different than the number of calls coming in.

Right? So when I say a thirty percent reduction in call handle time, the time that’s actually being used for that interaction in particular. Right? So that means in a a thirty per thirty percent reduction applied to how much time all of these call center or contact center agents had to spend with actual patients.

K? The patient experience was significantly better. Right? In fact, what this company did was they implemented a kind of text to phone situation where, you know, you could text in, from the app convenience saying what you need, and then they would transfer you to the phone, and that agent knew exactly why you were reaching out based on what the patient put in the chat.

And then, of course, super scalable. Right? No problem. Out of seat here and there. Boom.

Boom. Boom. The technology advisor was super happy about this, of course. And then as that, CCaaS platform continued to roll out new features as they all are these days, the customer was able to take advantage of all of those new features.

So key takeaways, from this is that, omnichannel unification is a really, really good, indicator as well as maybe, you know, there’s a need for a bigger sort of overhaul or a platform solution required here.

And just keep in mind that, change management, folks, change management is hard. So you just have to be able to talk to the customer about the long term benefits of why the change. Right? And these that’s why these deals take a long time.

Typically longer than a point solution because they’re not just addressing a particular point in the interaction, they’re addressing the entire experience. And that takes, not just a lot of time, but nowadays, more than ever, it takes a lot more decision makers involved and at the table because everybody, typically, especially with AI, wants to know how they can, take advantage of, you know, this particular solution that they’re implementing in their departments as well. Now that might be a good thing. Right?

Because then those departments can fork over some funds as well to invest in the solution, but it does require more talking points.

Alright. It’s, there’s a great question in the chat about, did the patient experience improve the frustration?

Curious if this shifts the focus of the frustration.

So, that’s that’s a great question.

So it did improve frustration naturally because, all of the, conversations were integrated. Right? So they could go from a text to a phone call, and the agent had all the context behind that.

Addressing Ongoing Customer Frustrations

But with that said, does that particular item shift to the focus of the frustration?

It does in that every time you talk to a client and say, we fixed this. Well, there’s always something else to address. Right? And a lot of times, what we’re finding now, because we get really deep in conversations, and Mikey b will share this. But we get really deep in these, conversations particularly about AI having to do with customer experience.

And customers find out that they have concerns, that they didn’t realize they had, because of something you position in front of them that solves a particular use case. So then they think, oh, actually, we have that use case or maybe we should have that use case. And so it can lead to more opportunity, which is great, but it can also, sometimes get you into the weeds quite a bit. So make sure you you bring us into the conversation because it can go several different directions and turn into this crazy spider web, and all of a sudden, you find yourself, in a really tough spot trying to keep that customer on track to actually fix and address the initial frustration.

Alright? So, hopefully, that helps, answer that question. Alright. Let’s head to the next piece here. So considerations for, platform solutions. Alright.

Considerations for Unified Solutions

Up here. Starting with the first one, that they are unified, which is fantastic. They all talk to each other because it is one solution. Right?

Scalability typically addresses a ton of scalability concerns. Now you could say point solutions do that as well. Right? But just naturally built into these platform solutions, it’s a big feature for them because it’s just easy to, you know, add seats and they get to, they get to take advantage of everything that has been rolled out for them.

Features in every part of the customer interaction. This is a big one, especially in these big overhauls. Right? Where they’re completely ripping and replacing.

And we’re now at that time, if you think, like, okay, we’re now twenty twenty five.

Twenty twenty, right, was, like, primary primarily COVID years. So if you think about everyone who signed those agreements, those five year agreements, like, now is the time. Now is the time to start checking in because there’s so much new stuff out there. I mean, you wanna make sure that customers are taking advantage of that. Alright?

A couple of gotchas. So, and these are not necessarily bad. There’s couple of gotchas.

Is that sometimes they can be a much larger investment. But if that’s the expectation, then it shouldn’t be an issue. Right? If they’re ripping or replacing, there should be an expectation around how much they are going to invest.

This is usually where a CFO will get involved quite a bit. The larger the investment, higher it goes up in finance.

We can actually help with those conversations.

Quick tidbit there, for those of you who stayed on, quick quick tidbit is that you’re in a conversation with a someone in finance, and they’re like, why are we doing this?

A great way to help you and your champion internally at the customer combat that is, hey. This solution is going to prove return on investment in these particular ways, x y z. In fact, one of the biggest challenges, and you can ask any finance team. Right? Any finance team.

Their biggest challenge is figuring out what the ROI is on sales and marketing initiatives.

Right? Like, how do you measure ROI on an event? Right? And these types of CX tools, there’s so many out there.

They can actually help quantify that in dollar amounts, which is what finance wants. So, that’s a quick tip. Didn’t put it on a slide, but for those of you who are listening, that’s a quick tip for you. Alright?

Yep. ROI on productivity. Boom. Thank you. Mic drop. I love it.

Alright.

Couple of other gotchas here.

The larger the project, the longer deployment it will usually take. K. Just keep that in mind. So expectation setting is super, super important when you’re dealing with these large or even smaller customer experience opportunities.

Have a mutual action plan. If you need one, we have a template where you can plug in little dates and it it lists out all the milestones for you. If you don’t have a mutual action plan right now that you use with your clients, it’s time to implement one. And implement it even for existing customers.

They should all be on some kind of plan whether that’s, hey. I’m gonna reach out to you on this day at this time to check-in and make sure this solution is still working for you. And we’re gonna go over just how effective it is in your environment. Right?

Things like that. And then the last piece is, yeah, it is an overall bigger decision. Of course. So you may have way more stakeholders.

We’re starting to see more sales stakeholders as well as marketing stakeholders, in conversations too.

Alright?

And share the template. Alright. We will send the template out. No worries. Yep. Where do we get a mutual action plan?

So there are a lot of templates out there, but we can also send you one. If you Google Google mutual action plan, there’s a lot of Excel docs that you can completely customize.

Alright.

Guiding Clients Through Technology Decisions

The last piece, providing guidance. So what do you do? Right? When a client, comes to you or you go to a client, you uncover that they have particular, items to address.

What’s the best way, Sam?

And the best way is to start with the outcomes.

Okay? So ask the customer what they are looking to achieve. What are their goals in fixing this issue or exploring the solution?

What is your goal? And, again, for the action plan, we’ll send that out afterwards. Those of you who are asking, happy to do that. But back to this. This is why this is so important. Okay? And we love all of our suppliers that we work with.

But they’ve also done a really fantastic job at confusing the heck out of us and customers in terms of who they’re working with, right, and what they do. Okay?

So how do you guide them? Right? Ask them what they’re looking to achieve, right, with this particular idea that the customer might have or this certain scenario a customer might have.

Let me give you an example. I was talking to a head of digital engagement. Yes. Someone in marketing. And they said, I want to implement surveys.

Now old us might have said, okay. Great. Here’s a solution. Good luck with that. Add it on. Sounds good. K.

No. No. No. If someone says, hey. I need this, ask them why.

Ask why. Why do you want surveys?

Well, we wanna capture this data. Okay. Why is that data in particular so important to you in the business?

Well, because we want to know what’s most popular during each season because we wanna sell more of those widgets.

Great. Let’s talk about being able to tie solutions to that particular outcome. But also, because it sounds like revenue generation is the outcome that you’re desiring.

Right? How is your technology stack completely supporting that goal?

Right? And that will take you down a whole new rabbit hole. And you’ve just opened up the entire stack and not just this tiny need for surveys. K?

See what I did there was I started with the big picture. Ask why. Peel back the layers of the onion. K?

Another great question, like, how well consider how well do the systems integrate?

Okay?

This is a huge one. As you look at point solutions and, platform solutions, like, how does that integrate with everything that everybody’s using? Right? Shadow IT is a real thing. Right? So everyone’s kinda using different tools and band aiding them together, and my IT team, like, don’t listen to me. Right?

Right, is, yeah. People are using all kinds of stuff. So make sure everything integrates together and have that discussion with customers because a lot of them don’t think about that stuff. They’re all, kind of bedazzled by the, bells and whistles and the, hot and new, features out there today. K? So make sure you go to the basics and talk about how things are integrated. And the last thing is, you know, consider their long term AI and customer experience strategy.

AI Technology Roadmap Discussion

One of my favorite questions to bring up is, what does your AI technology road map look like for the next year? Right? What’s your, artificial intelligence rollout plan for the year? And a lot of them a lot of customers say, what’s that?

And so we’ve got a lot of great resources for you. We have an artificial intelligence, road map as well as a checklist that we could share with you to help guide you through those conversations.

Alright? So this is the last slide, and then we can bring everyone back. We can ask questions. My QB can join us as well.

But first and foremost, like, engage the team. Right? Engage your Telarus team, your your Telarus resources.

Do the bedazzled one more time with jazz hands. Bedazzled.

There you go, Hans.

Get to know your key suppliers.

Okay?

Get to know who they are, not just, like, what they do, but get to know the people. Right? Because when you have a customer who, is is coming across, with a with a particular pinpoint and you need to get someone fast, yeah, like, me and Mikey b, we’re definitely there for you. But if I’m on a plane and Mikey b’s talking to the customer, leverage the knowledge of these suppliers.

Okay? And we have fantastic relationships with them, but just get to know who they are in the CX space. There are so many new ones, maybe ones that I talked about today that you’re not familiar with. Get to know who they are.

Staying Informed on Trends

And then last but not least, stay up to date on the latest trends and news. One of my favorites is oh, actually, two of my favorites is u c today dot com as well as c x today dot com.

Those are fantastic. And then, another one is for AI. It’s the neuron.

I think it’s like the neuron dot a I, but it’s just a quick, like, little daily, daily email for you to get the latest and the greatest on AI. So, with that, I think that’s all I’ve got.

So light up the chat. Yep. Mitch agrees. The neuron is great. Hundred percent. Meow. Yep.

But, yeah, let’s bring everyone back, and see if we’ve got any other questions that we wanna address, whether that’s about this stuff or any other topics that came up.

Let’s do it.

Mikey b’s fingers are just smoking from typing in that chat today.

Great questions. Great answers.

Mike, you’re still there. What are some of the ones that you saw that you’d still like to, maybe take a, a pass at verbally and provide some additional context for folks?

Pricing Dynamics in AI Solutions

Yeah. I think what we’ve seen is pricing.

And pricing for AI is still kind of all over the place. But for the most part, the as the dogs bark. For for the most part, I think the point solutions might have a leg up on implementation pricing and overall pricing than the CCaaS partners who try to, add it to their overall solution. So what I say is if you have an opportunity, bring in a CCaaS partner, right, full CCaaS to do the over the top IVA, intelligent virtual, assistant, and bring in a point solution.

Right? It’s what we do. We give our customers choices that they we save them time from googling who has the best AI. Right?

They’ll get eight billion hits. They’ll get Yellow AI, Boost AI, Billy Bob AI. Right? Some person in their basement dot ai.

It’s important that you come to us. We’ve vetted all our suppliers. It is hard to get into the Telarus portfolio.

It is very hard because we vet them much more deeply than our competition.

Why is that good for you? One, guaranteed long term payout. Two, the technology matches the marketing. And three, we get trained in all those products. So if you have an opportunity, reach out to either me or, or rock star Megan, but let’s kinda let’s put the Hunger Games method. Right? Get the CCAS player and the over the top player, and let the best man, woman, or child win.

Hey, Sam and Mike. One thing I wanted to ask, and it kinda reflects a few of the questions in here, but are the short term benefits of, let’s see, just a point solution, let’s get something done in the short term, get it done now, Are the benefits that come back from that worth taking that step and just doing something to get your feet in the game? And does that in any way get in the way of taking a more long term approach later on? Any caveats to watch watch out for?

Amazing question.

The Importance of an AI Strategy

Here if you learn nothing more from me today, than I prefer Starbucks to Dunkin’ Donuts and I live in New England, is that in in AI a customer with no AI strategy trying to implement AI will be a failure. We repeat that. A customer with no AI strategy trying to implement AI will fail. They don’t have an AI team. If they’ve not done any basic research, if they don’t have actual business goals they’re trying to accomplish, it’s gonna be a failure. Half of all AI projects last year failed because they had an indeterminate end result.

Sam, what would be great is if in in this mythical world we live in, we had a document called maybe, like, I don’t know, AI checklist that our great TAs can have and can walk through with their clients.

Sam, I know we don’t have that, but I’ll put it on your to do list.

So we have that. Surprise.

Introducing AI Resources and Checklists

They’re the jazz hands kidding me.

They’re the jazz hands that one was looking for. Right? Is that we do have a checklist, which is a fantastic use a fantastic resource for you to use as you’re talking to, clients because you’re making sure that they’re ready, right, for actual, like, AI implementations.

But also we’ve got a road map document that where, like, if your customer doesn’t know where to start with artificial intelligence at all, like, they just generally want an idea of where to begin and how to implement AI into their tech stack, that road map document will actually walk them through some, like, kind of the lowest hanging fruit parts to start with and then grow from there.

Sam, is the checklist and the road map, is that on teleris dot com, or is that something we would email our TAs?

I’m actually gonna send them out, because they are that new.

Okay. So we’re gonna send them out to everyone here. Mhmm.

Okay. Perfect. And then, of course, we have the a couple of the AI documents as well. Correct?

Yes. We have so many. There’s so many AI resources.

Also, for those of you who stayed on, is that we are releasing an AI essentials course in Solaris University.

Upcoming AI Essentials Course

Look out for that within the next few weeks.

Alright. I’d I better take that before I talk to our TAs then.

We are about out of time for this, phenomenal information and questions, that have come in today. I wanna give, each of you a minute for the last word, then we do have a few special announcements coming up today. We encourage everybody to hang on for the last few minutes for those.

Mike, let’s start with you, and we’ll let Sam wrap it up.

No. The only thing I have to say is when you take a great AX, agent experience, and you add in a great CX, customer experience tool, that equals a great HX, human experience. And that’s what every comp company wants, and it’s what every supplier in our e ecosystem strives to get.

Awesome. And I will end with this. And there was a a Wes put something in the chat about is there a single place all you want to know about AI?

And that’s the biggest challenge. I would say that’s the key theme of today. Right? Is that there is no easy button for artificial intelligence, and you have to be able to meet customers where they’re at and what’s most relevant to them in order to be a successful CX and artificial intelligence technology advisor in the space today. So learn how to use your resources well, learn how to do fantastic discovery, and we will help you every step of the way.

Phenomenal.

Great presentation. Sam, you got rave reviews in the chat for all of your technology and just your presentation skills. Mikey b, he knows everything about this. Don’t be shy. Contact us and let us help you with any questions around AI. Thank you both for being here today. Terrific.

Alright. Thanks, Doug.

Talk to you again soon.