HITT- Exploring conversational AI and its impact on customer experience- April 1, 2025

In a recent discussion, Sam Nelson delved into the transformative role of conversational AI in enhancing customer experience. She highlighted the growing preference for chatbots over human representatives, emphasizing their ability to provide 24/7 service and improve operational efficiency. Sam shared her insights on various applications of AI, including healthcare, finance, and hospitality, where it aids in tasks like appointment scheduling and fraud detection. The conversation also touched on the importance of understanding customer needs and the ongoing evolution of AI technologies. Overall, the session underscored the necessity of integrating AI effectively to meet rising consumer expectations.

Transcript is auto-generated.

Today, we welcome to our call Sam Nelson once again. I think she’s actually taken up partial residency here. We keep bringing her back week after week after week. Today, we are going to be talking about AI and CX once again, but some very important questions about the types of responses that we’re getting from all of those different CX interactions that we make.

Are they real? Are they Memorex? Are they bots? Are they not? We don’t know. Sam, welcome to the call today.

I think you brought Megan with you as well. What are we gonna talk about today?

We are gonna talk all about conversational AI as it pertains to CX. So this ought to be a good one, Doug. Are you guys ready for it?

Absolutely.

Alright. Let’s do it. So first and foremost, Sam Nelson, VP of CX here at Telarus, if you don’t know me. And, we’ve also got Megan Ty here on the call, our CX and AI solution architect.

Quick note in the chat. So, if you just switch that little drop down in the to field to everyone, everyone will be able to see any of the questions you might have. We love, love, love participation on this call. If you’ve attended any of my previous, hit series calls, you know that absolutely love participation. Alright?

Oh, will not allow you to do that for some reason. So I guess people can only chime in to the host and panelists. That’s okay. There’s no drop down this week.

Alright. No big deal. K. Just ignore me.

Alright. So all of the chat activity is gonna come directly to me. Yay. Yeah. Me and Megan. So, keep it up.

Chime in with questions. We love, kind of off the cuff questions and and what have you. Right? So, that said, bought or not, the rise of conversational AI in CX.

This is the hot topic of today. But before we get started, you guys all know, I love to get to know you before we kick things off. I love to see who’s on this call and what y’all know. So how familiar are you with selling conversational AI today?

And we’ll we’ll go over what it is and all that, but I just throw it out there. Right? One, not familiar at all. Two, I’ve sold some, wanna sell more.

And three, I’m an absolute rock star. Okay. So rock star in there. That’s awesome.

Alright. Some, supplier call outs. That’s great. Love this participation.

We are kicking it off with with April Fool’s Day with lots of participation. I love that. And hopefully, y’all aren’t joking with me. Right?

Okay. Yeah. Two point seven. Very funny. There it is. Right? I was waiting for that one.

Alright. So haven’t sold much. Haven’t sold much. Okay. No worries. No worries at all. So, we’re gonna go over, let’s see, today.

First off, what in the world is conversational AI? What’s the opportunity? We’re gonna talk through some use cases to better understand sort of how different industries are adopting conversational AI. We’re gonna chat through some positioning, some discovery questions, and then, of course, go through some next steps. And, again, keep lighting up the chat. We are here. Megan’s is gonna be lighting up the chat as well.

So make sure you’re chiming in with all your questions, comments, concerns, April Fools jokes, any kinds of jokes. Right? And, again, yeah, we’re here, like, in two weeks. I think I was literally here last two weeks ago.

So not quite sure how that happened, but, hey, I’m happy to be here. And, yes, I will be establishing residency. So, take that. Alright.

Story time. So my favorite. I love, love, love to start with story time. Stories what is it?

What did they say? Stories sell, numbers tell. Yeah. That’s what it is. So story time.

Before we get started, k, on a serious ish note, so the number nine eight eight as opposed to nine one one, is the suicide and crisis lifeline. Now for those of you who don’t know, I am actually volunteer on the weekends. I throw in a few hours of volunteer work for nine eight eight.

One, because it feels great. Right? I’m giving back. But two, it allows me to kind of stay in touch with, contact center slash c x slash u c technology.

It just keeps me in the know. I yes. I’m like an agent. Right? And I am answering calls. I’m answering texts. I am multitasking as an agent, and helping people out.

So, the reason I bring up this story is because I started doing this a few years ago. And, at the time, it was very much, you know, just straight into whatever the the client want to talk about.

But now I’m actually getting asked if I am a bot or not, and it’s wild. So I’ll answer a text back to someone, and one of their first questions will usually be, is this a bot question mark?

And, I’ll, of course, I’ll respond no. This is a real person. Right? My name is Sam. Like, let’s talk through we’ll what oh, why’d you call in there? Why’d you reach out today?

But even more so on the phone now, people are saying, yeah. Before I, like, say anything else, is this a bot? Like, am I talking to a bot? And I go, holy cow. Like, we are now in this era of where we literally cannot determine if we are speaking to a bot or not.

And, again, this is something that’s popped up pretty recently. Like, I started getting these questions, since the beginning of this year more than I’ve ever gotten them before.

Right? Yes. Jeff Atco. You’re definitely a bot. Thanks for chiming in. So, just to to put it on a serious note, this is real.

And so we have to discuss kind of what conversational AI is, what are bots, sort of what are the benefits, what are kind of some of the challenges people are seeing with them. But even more importantly, like, how to have these kinds of conversations with, clients today. Right? Because it is so so relevant.

So let’s get right into it. Okay. First off, what in the world is it? What is conversational AI?

Okay. So the definition, it’s AI slash artificial intelligence powered voice and chat technologies that simulate human conversation. Right? So let’s say you reach out to a company and, a voice comes on the call or someone chimes in on the chat, and it’s very possible that that is a bot.

Right? So here are the different flavors of conversational AI listed here. You’ve got your voice bots. So think, interactive voice response, IVR, or, like, your virtual agents, the ones on the phone saying, hey.

What can I help you with today? Or tell me more about, you know, why you’re calling in today.

You’ve got chatbots as well. So think of SMS. Right? You when they say text, hello to, you know, two two seven two five whatever.

Right? That is SMS, or social media even. Right? Like, if you reach out, on Instagram or Facebook or whatnot, and you start to see some automated responses back to you, that’s a chatbot.

Right? Even on a customer’s website I’m sorry. On a company’s website, you go to a website and you see that, chat box pop up. It usually in the bottom right hand corner.

That is that version of the chatbot. And then you’ve got these, like, multimodal, right, which are blending voice and text together.

Now a big challenge here, which I’ll talk about a little later, is this omnichannel capability of if I go from, like, one to the other, right, is it a seamless experience? And that is actually a really big challenge for many companies today is, hey. I was just talking to someone, on chat, and now I’m talking to someone on the phone. And you should know, because I’m a very needy, customer with very high expectations now.

Right? You should know what I was talking about in the chat when I call in. Right? So, that’s definitely a big challenge coming up today.

This is, again, super, super relevant.

Now the evolution of conversational AI has been really, really quick. Really, really quick.

In fact, if you think about bots before, many of them were just scripted. Right?

You would have a tool and you would have say, you know, I don’t know, whoever, the marketing team, the ops team, and you would have them actually script out what a bot would respond with. Right? And you may you may give the the customer options to select throughout. So it was almost like, you know, a clicking interactive, like IVR, right, essentially, in a chat window.

Or you would tell it what to say, on the phone. But now now we’ve migrated, right, to this natural language understanding, this generative AI era, where now bots can actually start to mimic sort of the, the emotional or the, like, the tone or the mannerisms of the person that they’re interacting with. It’s it’s pretty neat to to see just how far it’s come in such a short amount of time. In fact, I put here as an interesting stat is that modern conversational AI systems can actually handle eighty percent and over of routine interactions without any human involvement whatsoever. Right?

And I got a great question in the chat. Will a copy of the presentation be available? All of this will be available in Solaris University along with the transcript. Alright?

So with that said, it’s come a really long way really quickly. And the good news is that, companies are seeing this evolution, and they’re starting to really integrate a lot of this technology because it really helps solve for a lot a lot of different issues that they’re experiencing. Right? And, so we definitely need to dive into what exactly that means.

So let’s talk about the opportunity a little more. Right? All this stuff is really cool, but what does it mean for our community as technology advisers in this space? Right?

So this number, two hundred eighty two billion. So to give you an idea, during last year’s holiday season twenty twenty four, AI powered chatbots contributed to a four percent increase in just online sales, And that actually totaled two hundred eighty two billion dollars. K? So it’s funny. We’re now talking about AI powered chatbot performance. Alright?

In fact, when we look at it’s next stat. A significant eighty two percent of consumers in twenty twenty four indicated they would opt to use a chatbot over waiting for a human representative. So now we are trained as consumers to figure it out on our own. Right?

I remember a long time ago, when I was working in the finance industry before all of this, and I was working at a banking center, and the goal was to talk to people in line to get them to go use the ATM outside because we wanted to free up our people in the banking center to help with more complex issues like fraud, like, etcetera, etcetera. Right? And so it’s the same concept now, but it’s all digital. It’s all virtual.

Right? And so now we have been trained to seek self-service options.

Right? We will exhaust as much as we can before, heaven forbid, waiting on the phone for a live person. Right? In fact, now a lot of companies are leveraging the opportunity to speak to a live person immediately as a benefit for doing business with them.

For example, if you have a status with a particular company or a credit card, sometimes when you call call the number on on the back of the card, depending on your status, right, you might actually get directly to a live person. Right? So now companies are actually using that as, like, the competitive advantage. It’s nuts and loyalty.

And then, of course, the last one, the last stat here is by twenty twenty six, okay, contact centers could see a decrease in agent labor costs amounting to an eighty billion dollar, decrease cost decrease in agent labor costs. Right? So this is the this is the dramatic kind of outcome that we’re gonna see by that time is, you know, companies are gonna actually save that much potentially. Right? With this use of conversational AI and just how quickly they’re adopting it. Alright?

So now that we understand the opportunity and clearly it’s out there, let’s talk business impact a little bit. Okay? What are the impacts of conversational AI?

So first off, it enhances customer experience because it’s twenty four seven. Right? It never needs to take a break.

It doesn’t have any labor laws specifically, right, that it has to follow. It’s just always there. It’s always on. I mean, at some point, people have joked with me, like, when are we gonna see AI Sam where she’s just available all the time?

Well, guys, like, you never know. Next week, I might be on again, but it might be a hologram. Like, you don’t know. Right?

So, twenty four seven fast accurate service. Right? And, of course, it’s gonna be needed to be trained. Right? I’m gonna have to train it. You’re gonna have to, you know, optimize it here and there, but it’s now in a state where these things can actually learn pretty quickly.

And immediate benefits include, like, reducing operational costs right away. Right? So deflection, which is what I talked about earlier is, I don’t know if people really want AI, Samantha, but it is what it is.

Operational costs. So, yeah, deflection is essentially taking all those folks who are, you know, coming in, reaching out, but it’s a very transactional stuff. Like, what’s my balance? Right?

You want those people to go to a self-service versus an an aid a live agent who can maybe help with, like, fraud cases or emergency cases. Right? Call handling time, that comes with the deflection. Right?

Because if people aren’t bogged down with so many calls, right, they’re available there to handle the most important ones, and that’s gonna make them overall just way more productive. Right? Is that I’m not dealing as an agent. I’m not dealing with all of these calls, or all of these, texts about, hey.

Where can I find this resource? Right? A bot can go ahead and do that.

Another one is around revenue. So you’re talking to anyone in a sales organization. This is extremely powerful. And we do have suppliers in the portfolio, by the way, who, like, address all these impacts.

But driving revenue is a new one where literally the bot will perform outbound activity, not just inbound. Okay? It will actually outbound to people, whether that’s, you know, say, okay, appointment reminders, but also, like, hey. Don’t forget.

You left x, y, and z in your shopping cart. What questions do you have about what you left in there, right, on the website while you were looking? So we’re now starting to see AI chatbots, contribute to things like lead conversions, or even lead capturing. So, like, when you browse a website, sometimes you’ll just see something pop up and say, I saw you were looking at this.

What questions do you have about that? It’s as if you had a personal shopper. Like, if you ever go to Nordstrom and, like, people follow you around it’s one of my favorite stories. They follow you around.

They’re like, do you need a room like, do you need a dressing room? Can I put that in the dressing room? Can I it’s the same thing, except it’s virtual? Right?

So they’re following you around, making sure that, you know, you are being helped, here and there as you navigate.

And the last thing is, overall, the AI capability is, it goes way beyond just responding and interacting with with clients. Right?

People are now using the data that it captures to better improve the experience that their customers have. Right? Digitally, at least. And so it they could provide this kind of different level of personalization as well as take those analytics and make actual data driven business decisions, which traditionally companies have had so much, like, so much of a struggle with.

It’s nuts. They’ll just arbitrarily say, oh, yeah. This is what our customers want. Right? Well, how do you know that?

Right? So, business impact, really, really important to understand.

K? So now I’m gonna dive into use cases. And this will go pretty quick, but I just wanna give you an idea of sort of the top, the top three, in kind of these hot verticals that we’re seeing. And, again, this is what we’re seeing, as well as a mix of some industries, kinda industry standard stuff.

Okay. So in health care specifically, bots can be extremely powerful with these things. One, appointment scheduling. So not just appointment reminders anymore.

Okay? Actual appointment scheduling. Wouldn’t it be so nice if I didn’t have to wait, on the phone to talk to someone to schedule my appointment? Wouldn’t it be nice if I could just talk to, like, text a a bot or whatever, right, and say, hey.

I’m available to stay this day this day. For the folks who don’t prefer text messages, it would be nice for a bot to call someone and actually get that appointment scheduled. Right? And it sounds pretty real.

It’s not like, when would you like to schedule your appointment? Right? That was my best impression. I’m not doing it again.

So appointment scheduling is a fantastic feature. Insurance verification. Okay. This is a big one. So you know when you’re at the front desk and you’re checking in for an appointment and it takes a minute, right, and they ask you for your insurance card?

What they’re doing is they’re inputting that data, or they have to actually call and reach out to the insurance company to make sure that all that data is accurate.

Wouldn’t it be nice to just have a bot or some kind of system in place to do that before you got there so that you didn’t have to wait? Right?

And another thing is prescription refills. We often then forget about this because a lot of us automate this stuff, which is great, but not everyone is like that. Okay?

So oftentimes, you can have bots actually reach out to remind people about refills, or to assist with, hey, people calling in to get their refills, filled, then that’s where that can help out. K? So that is health care specifically.

Financial services. Alright.

This is the big one. So one, fraud detection. That is definitely, like, the number one that we see by by all means. Like, the other stuff I mean, if there’s anything you target, it’s fraud detection. Right? So as soon as something happens on the card, I wanna be able to know about it, especially if I didn’t make that purchase.

If I did not absolutely did not schedule a, you know, trip to Europe and there’s all of a sudden five thousand dollars on my credit card that’s taken up my credit and it was not me, I want to know. And I don’t wanna find out about it on my own.

Right? I wanna know, when it happens and what the company is gonna do about it. Right? Are they gonna take care of it right away? How are we gonna get this handled?

So funny because when I was working in finance, they say, okay, Sam. You’re a banker now. And, there are three things that people really don’t want you to mess with. Right? It’s their kids or money on their food.

Okay. Noted. Those are the three things. So here you go. Here’s one of those things.

And so fraud detection, is absolutely the top of the list, and chatbots and AI conversational AI essentially can help with that. Right? It’s reaching out, saying, hey. Just letting you know this happened.

Was this you or not? Please verify if it was you. K. Maybe I did plan a trip to Europe.

Right? Like, April Fools on my husband.

Alright. The other one is self-service banking as well as loan status. So believe it or not, like, people just wanna know. Like, what’s the status of my loan, or, in banking, like, what is, my balance?

Right? But when we look at conversational AI and how that fits into self-service banking so when you log into your banking app, a couple of pretty big institutions have this now where there’s literally a, a bot that reaches out and actually says, like, hey. Have you, I’m your virtual assistant. How can I help you?

Right? In in the app itself.

So it’s there. It’s ready. And we have several suppliers who can also help with this. Now FYI, you’re probably thinking, well, Sam, how do I know?

Like, which suppliers focus where? We’re here to help with that. Right? And there are so many suppliers now who focus on very on on particular verticals.

So, let us walk you through that and talk through your use cases with you so we can help steer you the right way. K?

Alright. Retail and e commerce. Oh, this is one of my favorites. So the one at the top is product discovery because of how interactive it is.

Right? Order tracking and returns, like, that’s pretty typical. Right? But let’s talk about product discovery for a minute.

So, I think I touched on this a little bit earlier, but if you’re on a website and you start scrolling, you leave stuff in your cart, I might get an email later saying, hey. Don’t forget about the stuff you left in your cart.

But I have been on websites now where I’m looking at, let’s say, for example, okay, a shirt. Right? I’m looking at a shirt. Actually, like, when when I was looking at this.

Right? Roba. Like, I was looking at this, this particular shirt. I was on there and, something popped up and it said, hey.

Did you know we have that in these colors?

And I was like, who is this? Who’s watching me? Right? That was my initial reaction.

But it did pop up saying, hey. How can we help you? It looks like you’ve looked at these things, and would you be interested in these complimentary items? So you guys believe that the bot recommended maybe some pants and some shoes and some other accessories that go well with this shirt.

Alright? So, it’s a fantastic way to just have these automated interactions with customers, and they’re getting much better. They really are. They’re getting, really, really good at detecting customer activity and then orchestrating what the customer journey looks like.

Everything from the second I pop into the website all the way to checkout, as well as after checkout. Right? So after checkout, I fully expect someone or something to communicate with me about where my order is, what my order number is. Right?

I expect live updates. Right? I love the ones who say, hey. They are three stops away from your house.

You can expect it between this time and this time. And whether or not that data is real, I love it. Right? I love that stuff.

And so, order tracking is phenomenal, but also returns. Right? I’m a big fan of the return system these days. Folks, like, Amazon makes it pretty easy to return stuff, so I expect everybody to kind of follow that.

Right? And so imagine if I could just text a bot and be like, this didn’t work out, send me a label. And it just did it for me. Like, that would be ideal.

If I didn’t even have to log in to Amazon app, I could just text and say, hey. I wanna return this. It might be available. I don’t know.

Right? Someone someone go figure it out and tell me if that works yet. But if I could just text and say, this didn’t work out. Send me a label, or I’m gonna return this.

I’m headed to UPS right now. Right? That would be ideal. So retail, ecommerce, absolutely not going away.

And, guys, don’t think that, all of these opportunities are enterprise because they’re not. They’re not. In fact, you’ve got small retailers, even mom and pop stores.

Even these, like, ecommerce platforms or marketplaces that don’t have a ton of employees, right, but they do a lot of transactions, don’t discount those. Even, like, the small doctor’s offices. Right? But don’t discount those as well. It these use cases span across the industry, and they’re all addressable by suppliers in our portfolio.

K? The next one, travel and hospitality. We sometimes we forget about this, But, yes, it’s out there. Like, remember the days of travel agents? Right? Well, guess what? Like, bots have completely taken that over.

Flight updates. Right? We we love this one. You get a text. Sorry. Your flight’s been delayed.

Might not be the best news, but at least I know. Right?

At least I know that it is gonna be delayed, so maybe I’ll, you know, go post up in another gate for a minute and, you know, call some people. Right? The the thing is with especially with travel and hospitality, just don’t want any surprises. Right? No surprises.

Booking changes. If I need to make a booking change immediately. I remember we I used to work, one in the company, but I there was an app, and we’d use it. And I could get someone live on chat and just tell them exactly what I needed to do, and they would take care of it for me. Really neat.

Now a lot of that is just self-service. Like, push these buttons and you’re done. But that was, like, really cool technology, and that was, like, two years ago. Right?

We used to that was so cool, and now it’s actually become a standard.

So that’s what I’m trying to emphasize is we’ve witnessed this stuff, like, firsthand, and then now it’s kinda just expected. It’s an expectation. So we have to be able to help companies fulfill those expectations.

Alright? And then the next one is virtual concierge. So like I mentioned, right, it’s someone who’s there to someone aka a bot who’s constantly standing by to help you, with whatever it is you need. And, hopefully, that bot doesn’t need to transfer you to a live agent.

They can just help you right away. K? Alright. So that’s the use case. Travel and hospitality.

Again, if you missed it earlier, let us know, what your use case is. We’d be happy to point you in the right direction, right, to, to the right suppliers.

K. Positioning.

Oh, this is fun. And look, this chat is lighting up, so thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

I know next time, we will make sure we turn on the everyone capability, but we are seeing all those chats come in to the host panelists, so thank you for that.

Alright. Let’s talk about positioning.

Alright. If you haven’t taken a course on selling to business outcomes, There’s a lot of resource on it.

I actually have a course on it.

Spoiler alert, it’s coming.

Alright? But you have to shift from tech talk to the business outcomes.

Right? Shift away from, hey. Have you seen what all these AI bots can do to, hey. What is it that you are looking to achieve leveraging technology this year going into next year? Talk about the goals because if you start with the goals, then you can work your way backwards and diagnose. Because if you position something like conversational AI and saying, oh, sure all the cool things. Right?

It’s a bright shiny object, but in a minute, it’s not gonna be shiny anymore. So you have to make sure that it fits in a customer’s environment and it’s relative and totally, pertinent to their specific business outcomes.

Okay? That is the key. And also for you, it positions you to be extremely sticky in that organization. Because guess what?

Assuming this all works out, you’re there for the long run because you know what the business outcomes are. Right? So you’re gonna help that customer go from discovery all the way through to optimizing AI continuously. AI is one of those things that constantly needs to learn.

Okay? It’s not just a set it and forget it. Absolutely not. You have to consistently be revisiting its effectiveness as it’s in the technology stack, or else it can become completely useless.

If any of you have ever like, I’ll give you example. If any of you have ever used, like, a chat GPT, something like that, and you’re giving it some repetitive tasks, have you ever noticed that it starts to, like, test you a little bit? It starts adding things here and there that you’re like, we’ve been having the same conversation. Why did you put that there?

Why did you add an emoji? Like, we didn’t I didn’t tell you could do that. Right? But that’s what’s gonna happen.

In any solution, it’s gonna start to make these recommendations and start kinda doing its own things. And so you have to constantly be providing it with guardrails, and as it evolves, you have to change those guardrails. And so as we talk about business outcomes, you have to be the one to help them and help customers understand that it has to be constantly almost babied, right, to be able to to meet those outcomes consistently.

Okay? The next one, by all means, leverage the trend. Right? Leverage the trend.

So AI budgets, they’re growing, meaning that we now are starting to see companies actually dedicate specific, like, groups of people to AI discovery.

You know, think of, like, AI tiger teams. They’re coming up with these all the time. CEOs are saying, hey, you, go figure out what we do with AI. Here’s money.

Go. Do it. Right? Build a team. I don’t care. But figure out what we gotta do so that we can start using it.

Whatever that means. Right? And so by all means, leverage the trend. Use it as a conversation starter.

Right?

A great one if and and if you’re you probably heard this before, but a great one right now would be to reach out to some folks and be like, hey. I was just on a session with a couple of AI experts, and I’ve got some really cool stuff to share with you. When would you be able to, have a meeting with me? Would you be able to even better, would you be able to meet with me later today at x y z time so I can catch you up on what’s new?

Right? There’s no reason why customers would not want to hear that, especially from you, especially the ones who know you. Right? So leverage the trend.

Okay? Start with the low risk, high impact use cases. Okay. This is really important.

So AI can do a lot of thing, but it’s really important to understand what the easiest path of entry is with regard to AI. And I will tell you that is in the customer experience technology space. Yay. And that is not an April fools joke. Okay?

Start with these sort of agnostic, low risk, but high impact use cases, meaning, twenty four seven chatbots. By all means, that is, I would say, the number one that people usually like to test the waters with when it comes to AI. Right? They’re like, cool.

I just want a bot to free up my people, but also provide twenty four seven support. Boom. Done. Right?

Like, that is a quick use case, and these suppliers, implement very, very quickly, and I mean quickly. Like, we’re talking, like, within thirty to sixty days quickly. Right? And it’s nondisruptive.

It could sit just right on top of whatever they’re using, or maybe they’re using a solution and they don’t know that chatbot capability is available. Talk about, like, an expansion opportunity. Right? So start with these low risk conversations and then loop us in and we can help you explore more about how AI can, be infused in their technology stack.

Alright? So some basic discovery questions. Of course, there’s so many more. Right? But here are just a few for you is, you know, one of my favorites with regard to the kind of lowest hanging fruit there is, like, how are you leveraging automation tools or chatbots?

What’s working? What’s not working? And what this begs the question is when you say how and if they’re not actually using any of that stuff, the next question for them is, well, like, how should I be? Should I be?

Tell me more. Right? It begs them to ask the question of of, hey. How should I be?

Right?

Another one is, you know, how do you capture and analyze customer interaction data today? Right? How are you making data driven decisions today? Right?

How are you capturing the data to make those data driven decisions? And I almost guarantee you that they’re not. Okay? I would say at least fifty, maybe seventy percent of them have no idea.

They’re just kind of basing it off of what’s selling well, or or what they’re, you know, they’re most relevant for, like, you know, offering or or whatever it is, and they’re just making willy nilly decisions. So I don’t know. Because that’s why so many, like, phone trees and interactions never get fixed because people don’t look at the actual data itself. Right?

And the last one is pretty agnostic, but I just wanna throw it out there. Is what are your biggest, x goals for this year? So maybe it’s what are your biggest customer experience goals, or what are your biggest, say, revenue related goals this year? What are your biggest marketing goals for this year?

Just insert whatever function in x. It’s a great way to start, and that can go down any swim lane, whether that’s CX or cloud or cybersecurity, or advanced networking, mobility IoT. Right? Just some great questions that you can use to generally start talking about this stuff.

But when we talk about AI, it’s absolutely most prominent in the customer experience world. In fact, we’re now, helping clients on their path to leveraging LLM or large language models. Right? How do they do it safely?

And so now, it’s pretty recently, we have suppliers in the, in the portfolio that can help with a path to LLM safely. K? So just some discovery questions for you. Next steps to is to get familiar.

Okay? So I know it’s a lot, and I know this is so much to cover in just, like, forty minutes. It’s impossible to cover everything AI. But get familiar.

Okay? Look up. Like, what is a large language model? What is NLG or natural language generation?

Right? Just get familiar with some of this language, but it’s also some that you can maybe plug to into a customer conversation, who isn’t familiar with AI yet. Right?

You know, with regard to sentiment analysis and intent detection in real time, this is really, really powerful.

Really powerful.

Where not only can can bots and and tools and AI tools now determine kind of how the customer is feeling, but they are able to establish the intent of why someone might be reaching out in in real time. It’s no longer after the interaction. Right? Like, honestly, as a customer, I don’t really care what you think after my interaction is done because it’s already happened. Right? But if you can tell what’s happening during the interaction and help me address my need in real time, that’s extremely valuable. Okay?

The next one is voice cloning and emotional tone matching. So this is this is kinda nuts. I kinda talked about this a little earlier.

But when we look at emotional tone matching, this is extremely valuable, when it comes to wanting to relate more, having a bot relate more, I should say, or AI relate more to, the customer, whether that’s, you know, in the way that they talk or their little mannerisms or what have you. Right? And even in, like, physical bots, have you seen any of those crazy videos where someone looks at a bot like this and the bot looks at them like right? It’s matching what the emotional kind of, like, literally, the physical, cues are.

Right? So it’s it’s nuts. It’s come a long way, but just kinda get to know, like, how that’s relatable in c x. Right?

We all know that when we talk to each other, we actually kind of adjust the way that we talk to each other. Right?

As as salespeople, it’s what we do naturally.

The last one, omnichannel integration. I talked about this earlier, but I’m gonna bring it up again because it’s so important. Okay?

Omnichannel integration. If I am talking to you on chat and I am transferred to someone on the phone live, I fully expect that person on the phone live to be familiar with what I was chatting with whoever about, whether that was with a bot or with a live person or whatever. But I want to make sure that there’s a seamless integration there, because how many times have we had to repeat ourselves on, like, what our problem is or what our account number is or member number or whatever. Right?

We wanna be able to provide clients or I should say, help businesses provide clients with the most seamless experience possible. Because, again, as consumers, we are super, super needy with extremely high expectations, extremely high. Like, again, and I use this all the time. I will literally add toilet paper to my Amazon order so I can get it today between five and seven PM.

Okay? Like, it’s only eight forty here Pacific time, so I still got time. Right? I want my stuff now, and in fact, I wanted it yesterday.

Alright? So that said, next steps. Okay. I know there are lots of questions in the chat.

Tons of questions in the chat, so we’ll get there. But engage the team. So Megan, Ty, and I are on, of course. Right?

And, Mikey b is, on a call, but he couldn’t be here. So get to know your key suppliers.

Feel free to pick our brains. There will be a follow-up email on this stuff. But get to know kind of who plays in the space and which specific clients they address, right, or that they help or support. That is so important. I will tell you right now.

Suppliers are focusing on verticals and vertical specific use cases. Get to know who fits where, and we will absolutely help you with that.

The last thing, stay up to date on the latest trends and and news. Okay?

My favorite is The Neuron.

Again, The Neuron, which is a newsletter I get every morning. It’s like a five minute read on, like, the latest in AI. It’s It’s not always CX related, but it’s definitely good to know. And another one I stay up to date on is c x today dot com. Those are sort of the two that I go to every single morning. Quick five, ten minute read ish for both together, and I’m off to start my day.

So those are our next steps.

I think now we probably just wanna open up for questions.

Let’s see.

It’s so funny. I love all this chat stuff. We can bring everyone back, on the call, Chandler, if you’re there.

Let’s see. Alright. So we’ve got we’ve got a lot of questions.

Hopefully, Megan trying to keep up with some of them.

Some of them I may not. Like, Patrick, I see your question. I may have to get back to you on that one.

I’m trying to go through all of these here.

Yeah. I think the gist of it is, you know, we need to it it’s isn’t isn’t gonna work from day one flawlessly. Right? We all know that.

But it it takes a lot of time, I would say, to to help condition it, to keep improving it, to give it feedback, to keep fixing it. And then to if there’s questions that’s being asked of it, it doesn’t know, it has to escalate to a live agent. I mean, I’ve seen it where you get looped in and it’s completely frustrating if if it doesn’t escalate to anybody. But if the bot doesn’t know and isn’t aware, it has to be able to at least recognize, hey. Let me let me transfer you to one of our employees or agents or something.

I’ve seen that, and that’s very effective.

Let’s see. What are some of the questions?

I think we there was something here I saw. We have any email templates.

I have for prospecting. So I have some questions, Michael, specifically created for, like, health care and and finance because we get those requests all the time, those two verticals.

So I have something here. Let me make a note and I can send you. And there’s just questions to open conversations, and you can incorporate that into an email as needed. But I don’t think we have any, like, formal email templates.

I see one about what’s the path recommendation after CX. Megan, what are you seeing as the most common?

Yeah. So I was saying it’s usually, it’s day two. Right? Because when you think of CX, it’s normally, oh, let’s get all the CCAS in place.

All the omnichannel. What channels do you need? And I think on day two, though, on day one, I typically see its voice. Let’s just stand a voice.

On day two, then you move into further deep integrations on what into whatever applications you need. Day three could be, well, let’s let’s focus now on our website and social media and social media listening. I’ve got a customer right now who says, you know, we wanna get this address now, but, by the way, we gotta talk about social media. We’re we’re looking to expand into that later on.

So I would think CX is always a work in progress.

I would say during the conversation, we need to try to cross sell. Right? Ask them about where are they storing all this data once they they capture this information.

Do they need, help with some some security? Right? We we know security is a huge, huge concern when it comes to AI and CX. So I feel like it’s a work in progress with CX.

So I don’t I feel like it’s not done. So it’s not like, hey. What’s the next path? It’s what are the paths that we’re doing in conjunction with that conversation?

And then think about day two, day three. Where is that customer growing into? And, usually, this all this conversation comes out from from the get go. Right? You understand their road map, and just continue to build upon that.

Yeah. That’s a good call.

Yeah. Usually, what I what I’m seeing is there is obviously a, a security concern, right, with putting anything AI into an environment. So, that’s definitely relevant. And then from a, cloud perspective, the data.

Right? Like, the data is only as good as or the the the AI is only as good as the data it receives. And a lot of it, can be, you know, messy or dirty, and that causes a lot of issues for clients. So, you know, before even implementing AI, they really have to look at the data that they’re putting into it.

Oh, so, Sam, could you repeat the resources that you mentioned earlier earlier? Probably Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Uh-huh. And I popped it in the chat as well, but it’s the neurons. So if you go to w w w dot the neuron daily dot com, as well as c x today dot com.

Yep.

I think there’s a question here. What’s a reasonable time line from implement from signed contract to getting it implemented to close to a hundred percent?

Oh. So a lot of these vendors will say, you know, we can do this.

I would say to be safe, they want at least three months, three to four months, to try to iron out some of the bugs, get things fully working so you can start really testing it and using it and continue to get bugs out. But these things can take up to a year, right, for it to really be smooth sailing.

But I would say at a minimum, three to four, down and dirty, and then up to a year, sometimes even eighteen months, okay, depending on the complexity that the customer is needing. And that’s even that’s even in an SMB and mid market. That that’s not just for enterprise.

Yep. Yeah. And to clarify, it’s not the it’s not neuron dot a I. It’s the neuron daily dot com. That is the newsletter.

Yeah. With regards to the timelines and stuff, there’s actually what a lot of companies will call a nesting period, where they have the tool there and implemented, but it does need that time to sort of learn. Right? And you start to work out all the kinks and what have you.

A lot of AI suppliers even have, like, proof proof of concept stuff so that they can take a segment of your the the customer’s production, and they, just run it. And so it, it already kinda starts to learn prior to implementation. So, just be mindful of what’s available for a supplier because they’re they’re they’re all different.

Mhmm. And Tom Cross does bring up a point that you start with the use case first.

And so in our conversations with your customers, let’s let’s find out what they’re using today. What are the use cases? You know, usually, they come to you because they’ve got a problem.

Right? What whatever it is. And so as we talk through that, let’s find out some of the use cases. How is the system being used?

What’s the experience been like? And then we can help hone in and and figure out, okay. I think what they need is this. Right?

So I’ve got a customer right now where we thought I think one of our partners thought we’re gonna replace the whole on prem, solution when in fact they’re like, no. No. No. We’re still in contract for that, but here’s where our problem lies.

Things are being routed to the wrong place.

Can we automate that in a better way? Because we only have six people answering these calls, and they’re, like, spending too much time answering calls that shouldn’t be going to them. And so we’re we’re looking at a conversational AI right now for, again, right, for smaller, that’s health care, by the way, for a smaller company. But their volumes were maybe, you know, twenty thousand calls a month that they’re struggling with. So, we were able to bring in a few solutions to help them.

Alright. What else do we have?

Yes. I am, James. I’m James asked, am I available for discovery meetings? Yes.

That’s all I do every day.

And I’ll deal with you on the call, so feel free to reach reach out to me. I cover the west and some central, and then Mikey be my counterpart of courses for the east, and we we help each other out in some central. So for sure, bring us in. We are here to help you figure out the questions, and let’s get through this and and bring them some solutions.

It was like he was setting me up for that. Thanks, Doug.

Right?

James was like, cool, guys. Let’s wrap this up. At the end of the day, just bring in Megan.

I love it.

Excellent. Doug, any anything that we missed?

I think you’ve done a really good job of hitting all the highlights on this. I would just emphasize on that last one. If any of you are lucky enough to get Mikey b or AI Megan Tai or even Sam Nelson on one of those discovery calls, you are gonna have one of the best experiences of your life.

They are so good at this. The pages of notes that I get out of these calls, every time we have them on is amazing. So, no, I think you’ve done a great job with it. Either, one of you wanna take on either one or two more in there or just have anything you wanna wrap us up with today?

There was a question here. John is asking about hardware.

Really no hardware needed to start, John.

Everything is cloud based. That’s the beauty of this. Right? Everything is cloud based. So talk to me if if you if you have more questions around that, and maybe I’m not not understanding it correctly. But, yeah, every no hardware needed. The vendors will handle all that from their end.

And then, Doug, if we can clone your voice and use it for AI outbound calling, I think that would be awesome.

I am happy to do that anytime.

Cool. No.

I think that We’re one of these more Dougs.

Right?

So It does.

It does. It really does. No.

Yeah, folks, I would say reach out to us. Don’t be afraid. Yes. We’ll hop on client calls. Start with the outcomes.

Check Solaris University for additional resources. And if you missed any of the beginning of this call, it will be in Solaris University as well.

Sam, Megan, wonderful job today. Thank you very much. Always love talking about this, massive opportunity for our advisors. You do such a great job of breaking it down, making it under just understandable, and helping us all feel excited about it. So thank you very much.