HITT- Today's CX Landscape- Jan 14, 2025
In a recent session focused on high intensity tech training, experts discussed the evolving landscape of customer experience (CX) and the significant role of AI in shaping future strategies. The panel, featuring industry leaders, emphasized the importance of leveraging multiple engagement channels and the anticipated growth of AI agents in 2025. They highlighted the need for organizations to build credibility and understand client systems to effectively integrate AI solutions. The conversation also touched on industry-specific needs, particularly in healthcare and finance, and the growing trend of hyper-personalization in customer interactions. Attendees were encouraged to stay informed and engage with the latest developments in CX technology.
Transcript is auto-generated.
Introduction to the CX Landscape
As always, your comments and questions are welcome in the chat window for our live q and a, which follows today’s high intensity tech training.
Look at this lineup discussing Telarus customer experience practice.
It’s a look ahead at the trends, strategies, and technologies shaping the CX landscape in twenty twenty five. We’ve got Jason Lowe, J. Lowe, solutions architect for AI and CX, Michael Bayarjian, solutions architect for UC and CC, the one and only Megan Tighe, director of CC and UCC solutions, and all of it hosted expertly by Telarus VP of CX and creator of the world famous minute snippet CX series on LinkedIn. It’s our friend Samantha Nelson. Sam and all, welcome to the Tuesday call. Let’s get to this.
Let’s do it, Doug, and thank you. I I thought I was in trouble for a moment there when you called me Samantha. So definitely woke me up, and I’m ready to go.
Talk about the team that wins the Super Bowl.
Look at this lineup, folks. We’ve got some amazing resources here, and what I would first encourage you all to do is chime in on the chat. Let us know where you’re tuning in from.
Obviously, don’t do that if you’re driving, listening from your mobile, but, we’d love to hear where you’re tuning in from.
And also I always call every week while I’m driving from my mobile, Sam.
Oh, man. Okay. I knew it. I’ll call you the virtual background.
Sorry.
Dang. Alright. Well, now we’re really in trouble, Doug. Gosh.
No. We got people from everywhere. Look at that. Everyone’s chiming in. Jersey Shore, Idaho. I love it.
No. But today is is gonna be a great session. And make sure you’re asking all the questions, that that go through your mind kind of as we’re going through the session. Pop them into the chat. We are watching very, very closely.
But we really want this, session to be really conversational.
We believe me. We love talking about ourselves.
Like, who doesn’t? But, we definitely want it to be a fun, conversational, sort of dynamic.
So please, by all means, pop your questions in. We’re gonna watch it really closely. I will even pause and just go right into it. And you’re gonna hear from everybody today, okay, especially at the end when we host a formal q and a.
Understanding CX Structure at Telarus
So with that said, Chandler, let’s head to the next slide. Awesome. So this is more of a recap slide for everybody. For those of you who maybe have or have not seen it yet.
But this is the way that the CX practice area is structured here at Telarus.
And so when we look at, you know, what to expect for this year, it’s going to be very similar to kind of how we were set up, you know, you the previous year. And a big reason for that is because we’re continuing to see, expansions in these point solutions, that you see at the bottom. Right? So just to kind of set the foundation here, CX is the kind of blanket term for all the technologies.
You’ve got your core in the middle, your UCaaS, communications platform as a service, as well as CCaaS. Right? And at the bottom, you’ve got all of your ancillary or your bolt on products, and this essentially gives you, the bidirectional selling motion that we all crave when looking for more, paths to revenue. Right?
And so, instead of just saying, hey. You know, we’re gonna fill, these pain points for you in your core solutions. You cannot go in saying, hey. How are you leveraging, you know, multiple engagement channels within your company, to increase, you know, customer engagement or customer satisfaction, or how are you leveraging artificial intelligence in your technology stack today.
Right? All different lines of questioning to help you find, more opportunity.
Market Opportunities in CX
So with that said, I wanna go into, the crystal ball a little bit here. And I told everybody’s, everybody’s got their crystal ball. Mikey b, though, has an eight ball. So, take everything he says with a grain of salt today.
Right? Because he’s gonna be shaking that thing and showing us, what it says today. But, Chandler, let’s head to the next slide, because I just wanna kinda give you a visual of sort of market opportunity here, and this is all taken from Grandview Grandview Research. You can all go on and look that up.
But, a quick visual here in that to show you that this industry is not slowing down by any means. Right? When we look at, sort of this up into the right motion, Everything’s growing really, really quickly. And so when we look at, you know, unified communications as a service, even the contact center software market, it’s up into the right.
We’re looking at, gosh, a hundred and forty nine billion by twenty thirty, for UC, and then contact center, a hundred seventy two billion by twenty thirty. And note that in the contact center software market, you’ve got all of those, different, components within that service. Right? So it’s inclusive of things like the reporting, the workforce optimization, you know, ACD, all that good stuff.
Okay? I don’t want you to get confused on, hey. Where does kinda AI fit in all this and and that kind of thing? So, with that said, we want to go into because I wanna get the conversation rolling.
Prioritizing AI in Customer Experience
We wanna roll into, trends, but what I actually like to call them instead of trends are priorities.
Because, when we look at trends for the year, we need to figure out how to turn those into priorities for us, in order to, have relevant conversations with end customers. Okay? So let’s dive into, the first priority. So, Chandler, let’s head there now.
Priority number one, AI, AI, AI. And this is where, I want to, pick on mister Jay Lowe here with us, our resident CX and AI, solution architect here. J. Lo, when we look at AI this year, there’s this concept of AI agents and, you know, you dive into the research.
It’s it’s pretty phenomenal. I don’t know where you put all of that, in your brain.
But give us a little bit of insight as to, like, okay. First, what what the heck are agents? Right? What is agentic AI? And, like, what’s happening, in the market this year with regard to to AI that you’re that you’re predicting, and you foresee as a big priority this year?
Well, it’s that’s a great question. So and and thank you for the kind words. I I do have to say that if you think of agents, a lot of people are thinking like a a press agent or a, you know, something like that. An agent is something that or someone that does something for and in your behalf.
Basically, it’s an AI system that’s able to do complex things, you know, makes decisions. It’s able to learn. It’s able to adapt and do things without, like, human intervention very on very, very often. And it it really is neat because it can operate an AI agent.
Speaking generally, it’s going to be able to operate in a lot of different dynamic environments. It’s going to be able to self direct, which is kind of the big thing that everybody’s looking for is these AI entities that can act like a human being and really direct its own behavior and its own actions. And the biggest thing there is the ability for it to learn and adapt over time so that it can be more and more human like or act for and in behalf of the human a little bit more. And so making those decisions based on the inputs and the outputs that it’s able to do, integrating to the external world via API and maybe even via other methods is what’s going to give AI agents the power moving forward.
And so what’s going to happen over this next year? I think we all feel pretty comfortable in saying that AI is not gonna get any worse than it is right now. And AI is actually doing some pretty cool things as it relates to autonomous agent capabilities right now. So it’s only going to get better.
The pace at which the innovation is happening is continuing to follow that exponential scale. So a lot of people are saying that twenty twenty five is really going to be the year of the autonomous AI agent. And what that’s going to affect in CX is that you’re going to have these autonomous AI agents that are very much going to be able to help people that are doing face to face interactions or voice to voice interactions in CX and sometimes even being the primary individual or entity that someone is working with to affect some sort of a change with the companies they do business with.
That’s super interesting. And when and so when you say autonomous, I just want people to make sure they hone in on that one word. It’s like it’s really something that’s thinking on its own, right, and making its own decisions. Is that would that be correct?
Yes. Very much. It’s autonomous means that it’s a it’s a entity that is separate that can kind of sense and interact with its environment. It can process information that it receives on its own without external influence on the way that it processes this information. And then it’s able to execute some tasks, I guess, would be a good way to put it. Execute based on some predetermined objectives or some predetermined goals.
And then the cycle of learning there is that it’s able to iterate and it’s able to improve the way that it does things based on what it learns through experience.
That’s awesome.
Now Tom actually popped in a great question in the chat.
He actually asked him, if I had a customer help with AI prompt engineering and training, is this something that Telarus can help with?
That’s so funny, Tom. I should just Venmo you, you know, some some funds here because you’re helping me go into my next slide.
Overcoming AI Implementation Barriers
So, Chandler, let’s actually go there now.
So one of them, let’s go to Tom’s point. Right? Is at the bottom right, the top barrier when implementing AI.
And this was a study sponsored by Microsoft late last year, so just really a few month couple months ago.
A top barrier is that, you know, folks lack both the technical and day to day AI skills in order to use AI effectively.
And so a lot of folks do, want resources around prompting, you know, around AI training generally. And there are several resources out there. What I will tell you all, I know this is being recorded, but I already got the green light, so it’s all good. We are coming out with an AI essentials training for everybody, to take. That’ll be available for the, technology adviser community, but, does talk a little bit about the art of prompting. However, what I will say, is that there are some great resources out there, around AI prompting, as well as AI news. So, hey, JLo, while we’re on this topic, can you share just maybe some of the resources that you personally check, whether that’s, like, five minutes every morning or something, or weekly that you check into that’s usually helpful to stay on top of sort of this AI curve?
Sure. You bet. So a lot of people don’t realize okay. We all know that social media is kind of weird right now because of a variety of different things going on.
And, politically, it’s a little bit of a quagmire as it relates to x and these different social media platforms that are, you know, fomenting a lot of different things. But I can say this about x. It is my primary source of real time information as far as what’s going on with AI innovation and capabilities. It’s where I find out when things are happening the fastest.
And so that is something that I monitor. I have a set of AI people that I follow. You can get on there and just search for AI, and it’ll give you a bunch of people that that you can certainly follow and and keep an eye on. But there are three email newsletters that I like to recommend to people.
These are good, better, and best. And I know that, Sam, you pay attention to a few of these for sure. So the first one, and Sam’s favorite, is one called the Neuron. So if you go out and you take a look at the neuron dot a I, that is a daily email newsletter that gives you kind of a good idea of what’s going on with AI and also gives you some things to try out to get a little bit more familiar with AI.
The second newsletter that I like to recommend to people is one called The Rundown. That one is a little bit more advanced than Neuron. It’s a little bit more comprehensive, and it also gives you some different tutorials or avenues to learn some additional things about AI. The third one is one that’s a little bit more advanced, and it’s called t l d r dot a I.
Now it stands for too long, didn’t read, but it is an AI newsletter that’s pretty neat because it gives you a serious daily digest of everything that has happened or that is going to happen in AI. But what it does is it gives you a brief summary, and then it gives you a link to the larger article to discuss that particular subject. And it also gives you an estimate on how long it’s going to take to read that so you have the choice as to whether to ingest that summary. And if it’s something you’re really interested in, click on the link, do a deeper dive, and you’ll find out more.
I love it. Thank you, J. Lo. Super helpful.
I think we could all use a a little bit of AI, you know, just to kick off our day, despite the fact that it’s really kind of unavoidable at this point. Right? We really touch it and have experience with it all throughout the day, I feel like, every day. So with that said, just to give you some insight into, you know, what what’s happening out there in terms of AI and and people implementing it, you know, in in the industry.
AI’s Impact on Productivity
Top leaders using GenAI, they’re realizing an ROI of of ten x. That’s huge.
And it’s taking just under eight months, right, for for organizations to realize the value of implementing AI, within the thirteen months. Now, there is a chart that we have in our tech trends report that actually indicates the top uses of AI within companies.
And the number one goal or the number one outcome desired is actually around productivity. So right now, they are talking primarily about the efficiency gains, increasing overall productivity. It is not to replace humans. Okay? I wanna stress that. It is not to replace humans. That is not the number one priority.
Rather, it’s to supplement workflows, making those humans more efficient.
Prime example here, if AI can handle, really basic customer inquiries, like checking a balance on your bank account so that it frees up agents to handle more complex issues like fraud. Right? That’s going to make the business run a lot more smoothly, increase overall customer satisfaction, and all of that. Now, the reason we’re bringing up all this AI stuff, is that now is the time. Right? If you haven’t started, now is the time, to help customers with those AI conversations.
Asking the question, hey. How are you leveraging AI in your tech stack today? What does your AI road map look like for the next, next year? Right? And a lot of them have no idea. So we do have an AI readiness resource, that we could send you afterwards.
If you have not, attended or signed up for our CX Ascend, events yet, do so. We’re gonna that’s where we go into the born in AI approach, that you can all incorporate into your conversations this year.
Alright.
Sector-Specific Innovations in CX
So let’s head into the next slide, Chandler, because I wanna pivot to priority number two.
And this is where we talk more about sector specific innovation, industries like health care, financial services, retail.
Right?
These specific industries, are actually looking deeper into, you know, different different technology priorities, especially around things like patient experience, member experience, etcetera. Right? So, Chandler, let’s move to the next slide, because this is where I actually wanna pick the brains of our famous Megan Tighe and Mikey b.
Who wants to take on health care? And and give us kind of the lay of the land, what’s happening, what’s popular, common themes in in, you know, health care to start, and we kinda go from there.
You want Mikey, you want you want me to take it? I’ll start.
Box, paper, scissors. Ladies first, for sure.
The eight ball. For sure.
The eight ball is saying and, again, this is just kinda goes with what we hear, Mikey and I and JLo, and we’re we’re helping our our TAs here every day on opportunities, and this is what we’re hearing from our health care, customers. And and mostly their clinics. Right? Multiple locations, different clinics.
And so I would say the number one and most popular ask is, kind of going back to what you’re saying, Sam, is that some of that automation or self-service is to free up their agents or their front desk workers or whatnot, in at the clinics. And it’s about the appointment setting, you know, and I think we can all relate to this. We’re all patients of, you know, something or other, and, it’s it’s nice to be able to get an appointment reminder. Right?
But more than that, what I’m starting to see, pop up even more is being proactive. Healthcare really wants to be proactive now to help save them money. Right? So they want to be able to make that outreach to patients, not just for appointment reminders because that is a lost revenue for them if if patients don’t show up.
So that’s critical. They want to remind you to show up and have you confirm the appointments. But more importantly, what are those patients where they haven’t heard from in a while? But, hey.
We haven’t heard from you, Mikey, in a year. It’s been a year. So they wanna make that proactive outreach to say, hey. Just a reminder, you know, give us a call or, how’s your health?
What’s going on? And it and I was talking about my dog earlier, but it it it extends to the veterinary world as well where they’re saying, hey. You got Louie has a vaccine that’s he’s, due for in the next couple months. Give us a call because you forget that kind of stuff.
So we see health care doing a lot of proactive outreach even in the insurance space. They’re reaching out now and saying, hey. Can we speak with the patient? What’s going on?
We wanna interview them, make sure everything’s good to go. And, and so you’re using AI on the back end to kind of prompt all that information, maybe tap into the databases, run some lists of patients you haven’t heard from in a while, versus the ones that have upcoming appointments. So I see a lot of that, come into play or being asked for, from our health care customers.
Yeah. And there’s a a little bit of a cautionary tale here, though. Right? When you’re working with these health care organizations, same thing with banks and credit unions, they don’t traditionally move fast. So if you walk in there, like, let’s talk about AI and what AI can do for you, it’s probably not gonna go over very well. Right?
The Importance of Modernization in Healthcare
It’s all about modernization.
Right? How we can modernize their workflows and their overall infrastructure.
Phone system.
K? So first, you have to get them to buy into moving to UCaaS. Once we’re in UCaaS, then we can start talking about the value that AI brings. So it’s really building blocks. So going back to Sam’s kind of bidirectional selling, right, Just be careful in health care and finance not to lead with the the new stuff. Right?
Build up your credibility first of, like, listen. I’ve had customers like you. These are the stepping stones to modernize.
And that AI piece is sort of the top of the pyramid.
Now you might get lucky and have a organization say, listen, we’ve already moved to a cloud based phone system, but now we need a AI agent to handle scheduling and everything else. And that’s when you do a little bit of a cabbage patch dance. You’re like, alright. I don’t have to sell myself.
I don’t have to sell cloud. They’re ready to go. Let’s just bring in the team and the best supplier. So just a little bit of a cautionary tale.
It’s okay it’s definitely okay to talk about AI because you have to.
Just I wouldn’t stick your chin out there and lead with it, unless you know that’s the path you’re gonna take. Do you agree with that, Megan?
Yeah. Totally. No. I think you’ve got a great point, Mikey. I think use cases. Right?
Because these these are very slow moving industries. They’re afraid of technology. They know they have to modernize. They just have no idea how to do it.
Navigating Slow-Moving Industries
So talk to them about use cases. How are they doing it today? How can we help improve that? And, right, we’re we’re gonna figure it out.
We’re gonna see the gaps there and and then be able to talk about potential AI to help with some of the pieces. But, yeah, we don’t wanna go in and scare them because it is just gonna shut them down, and they’re just they’re afraid to make a change.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. All good point.
Yeah. And just a couple of things on that. So, how many people out there know know my buddy Sean Kane?
Right? The the king of quip, I call him, because he’s got great one liners. And so something I say every single day to every single partner, numbers tell, but stories sell. Yeah. You’re gonna get a quote eventually with the numbers on it, but unless you can curate that story and that use case and how it applies to them, you’re not gonna get to the quote.
K? So numbers tell, stories sell. Sam?
Yep. No. I love that. I mean, you do have to start with, the story. Right?
Start with the outcomes that the customer desires. So, Yvette actually asked a great question was, what about revenue cycle management? And when you look at something like r v c or, I’m sorry, RCV, that’s the process of, like, actually scheduling appointments all the way through the payment process, to the follow ups, to the appointment, reminders, and and things of that of that nature. Right?
For those of you who are not familiar with kind of what that cycle is.
The goal in looking in that cycle is, okay. Let’s pick apart each component of the cycle. Where can we improve efficiencies in that cycle? Right? There’s not gonna be one size fits all to manage the entire cycle. There’s gonna be different components in each one, and so you then have to look at, okay, what are your desired outcomes in each one? What are the what are the hurdles, and what do you desire to happen within each component of that cycle?
And that goes really for, I would say, anything. Right? Even in in finance, you know, everything from a new member. Right? Say a credit union, for example. What does that revenue cycle management look like, component look like for that particular member? Anything in finance, Mikey b and Megan, that that are, like, recurring themes right now that you’re hearing that’s hot, maybe some major requests coming from finance customers?
Authentication Challenges in Finance
I hear a lot about authentication. You talked about fraud earlier, you know, freeing up your agents to handle with, fraud. So a lot of these credit unions are saying it even if it takes a minute or two for an agent to authenticate their member and make sure who they are, who they say they are, it that takes up time. Right?
Right? So it takes away their efficiency, their productivity. So they want more of that on the front end maybe with some conversational AI, maybe something that pushes out a link to for you know, or a code for two, two factor authentication just to make sure that the members are, are in fact authentic. Right?
So they they want some of that. I get that asked a lot then, authentication on the front end before it goes to a live agent if needed.
Yeah. I love that.
You know what the fastest way to lose a customer, Sam? It’s when you’re talking to a credit union and you call them a bank. That’s the fastest way to lose a customer. Right?
Ouch. Right? Because they they you know, you have to speak their vernacular, their language, not your language. So I appreciate my my good friend Phil Chandler reminding health care has patience, finance has members if it’s a credit union, customers, if it’s a if it’s a traditional bank.
We’re you know, the other thing is health care and finance, they don’t have CRMs. Health care has a EMR, electronic medical records, electronic health care record system, and finance has what’s called a banking core. So what kind of CRM do you use? You got a Salesforce shop here at at Smith Bank? And I’m like, no. You know, we use Fiserv, FIS, COCC, Correlation, Jack Henry.
And you’re gonna say, I never heard of those. And that’s okay.
Don’t say it out loud. Just write it down. Come to us. We have some great vertical specific, suppliers that understand that language and are just wonderful resources to talk to your clients. Just write it all down. Invite us to those conversations.
And what we found that a lot of times we’ll say, yes. We can integrate with FIS whatever. It’s gonna cost x dollars. Is that worth it to you?
Right?
Also with quite a few finance customers, they’ll be multi supplier. To Megan’s point, not all of our suppliers offer a authentication piece. Right? So that might come as a over the top IVA intelligent virtual assistant to handle that and then pass that off to a separate contact center piece that passes off to a separate, UCaaS piece. So it’s always very interesting when we talk to our clients, we talk about that Robert Frost moment with two paths diverse in the road. You want an all in the one UCCCAI, or are you willing to go best of breed, the best over the top AI, plus the best over the top contact center, plus the best over the top phone system? These are important conversation to have upfront with your clients.
Education Sector Considerations
Yeah. For sure. And on the last one, education. Now I know there are several, use cases here. Right? Whether that’s recruiting, and then there’s also, use cases like fundraising, right, for alumni.
But talk about some of the gotchas in education if there are any. Right? We can go through use case after use case, but I think what a lot of our technology advisers are looking for is, like, what do I need to look out for? Because, you know, you’ve got education and you’ve got government and all these contracts. They can get pretty dicey. What do we need to look out for?
Well, I think there it’s different. If you’re dealing with k through twelve versus higher ed, there there’s a difference there. I think k through twelve, oftentimes, it’s about, well, hold on. We we need phones in the these classrooms, but but it’s not gonna be high usage.
What do we do with this? How can we how can we right size what we need? Right? And, of course, nine one one is absolutely critical from from every single classroom.
So we talk about that piece. Hard phones is huge. Oftentimes, they don’t wanna give up their hard phones. And so we find ways to to right size them. And, usually, it’s a call path model. Right? Mikey and I, we talked about this quite a bit is we like to approach with a call map path model if needed.
In education, again, to Mikey’s point, it’s not not necessarily a CRM. Right? So it’s something different that they’re using for admissions, their office in admissions. So just have those conversations.
Ask them about what what software, you know, systems or records that they’re using. Do we need to integrate? What does that look and feel like? You know, how are the educators, communicating?
Are they using their mobile phone? Are they working off of their laptop in front of the classroom? Or is it all hard phones? Right?
So all these things, just think about think about the environment, what what you should be asking them to pull the information that that you want, to understand their environment a little bit better.
Higher ed, though, Mike, it’s a little bit different than k I feel like k to twelve, maybe it’s a little bit more simple.
Higher edge, you’re looking at other things too. Right? Like, the those emergency campus phones, what we call the blue phones, throughout the parking lots and whatnot, if we have to roll that into the entire solution to support that piece.
And what are some other things, Mike, that you can think of for the higher ed?
I can’t believe it’s been thirty one minutes, and we haven’t talked about Microsoft Teams Voice. I think that’s a new world record. You know?
That’s weird.
So what I think Teams Voice is terrible for k through twelve. I think it’s a great option for, higher ed. So with k through twelve, they’re coming off an on prem system. So there’s, like, pot lines and SIP trunks and overhead paging and all this old school stuff that you have to keep in mind. With higher ed, they’re a little bit more willing to modernize, and they tend to have a call center as well, admissions team, the IT help desk for sure. So there’s a lot of factors in play when it comes to higher ed, and I think they are a good fit for a team’s conversation versus k through twelve.
Yeah. And I think you’re right. And I think in higher ed, I think, Sam, you were talking about recruiting whatnot because I asked that a bit as well. Is this a priority for you?
So they they want some sort of an outbound campaign, with inbound, of course, you know, feeding of the data. So just ask these questions. So think about it. Right?
Universities or colleges are always trying to go get out there and and recruit against their competitors to bring in more students.
I think the gotcha, Mikey, when it comes to education, sometimes we’ll have to ask them, do they have to go through a formal contract?
Yeah.
And part of the question you’re talking about RFPs and then you have to bring in a well, do we need to have a specific contract vehicle? So we have to ask these questions because and it it may eliminate some of our vendors that can help us. Because some of them, if you go into specific contracts, they’ll bring in someone like that Carahsoft and whatnot and cut us out of it. So we just have to be really careful.
There’s just lots of things to think about when you’re dealing with with the educational sector and government to your point, Sam. So we have to ask them all these questions. RFI process, is it formal? What kind of contract vehicles if we need to to bring that in and consider?
You know, we get this and and last point here, Sam, is if you’re working with higher ed and they send you a blanket RFP that you had no hand in and you haven’t sold to the school or the college before, I will say most of our suppliers will probably pass on it because the resource suck for that versus your relationship with the client, it it doesn’t add up.
So with RFPs, the more you can influence that, the more you’ve sold to that school, that university, that college, whatever, suppliers will will put more effort into that. Otherwise, they’ll send you some blank some generic answers and, you know, say, hey. Let let us know if we actually made the cut. You know? So blind RFPs, tough. Ones you influence, amazing.
Yeah?
Yep.
No. All great insights, and super appreciated that, guys.
I think what at the end of the day, we’re trying to say is, bring in your resources early, so that you can assess if the opportunity is viable. Right? And that that goes for all of us. Reach out to any one of us, and we’re more than happy to help you assess an opportunity before it goes, you know, too far down the road, to save everyone, time.
The Rise of Hyper-Personalization
So, Chandler, let’s head into the final priority here, which is hyper personalization. This is one of my favorites. Everyone experiences this every single day. But a big priority this year is around hyper personalization, which is essentially, you know, delivering that real time individualized content.
And what companies are looking to do is examine all the different touch points along the customer journey, and take into account all of your digital behavior. So, Chandler, go to the next one. And this is the last slide I have for you. This is the, the screenshot slide for so to speak.
But when we look at our expectations as consumers, right, we want our packages to be there the same day. Right? And that wasn’t like that even just a few years ago. And so, seventy one percent of consumers actually expect personalized interactions, because naturally as humans, we like content that’s easy to understand.
We like to work with companies where we feel valued, and we also want content for us that’s relevant to us that’s going to potentially save us time. Right? And so when we look at some companies who have incorporated hyper personalization technologies, which are, by the way, embedded in several of our CX suppliers, they’ve actually reported that this type of personalization, ultimately boosts customer spending. Right?
If something is more relevant to you that’s pushed to you over social media or snail mail or however you, they have identified that you consume your information, the more likely you will spend with that company. And so just, looking at some components of, you know, how exactly it’s boosting customer spending. Well, when you look at customer engagement, right, we actually have connections with brands that we buy from, whether or not you you realize it. Right?
There’s a reason why you continue to purchase products and services from particular companies.
But not only that, this type of technology is helping increase conversion rates. Right? Again, targeting content.
And then last but certainly not least, what companies are able to do now is make data driven decisions based on the insights that they’re gathering. So, you know, for example, they’re gonna look at, hey. What’s the profile of Mikey b or Jason Lowe or Megan Tighe? And all of our profiles are gonna be completely different. So how do we, as a company, target those three individuals based on their preferences?
When are they looking on social media? Do they use social media? If so, what channels of social media are they looking at? Right?
Lots of of different ways for companies to to go deeper with, segmenting customer profiles and targeting those profiles.
The one of the best examples is, you know, when you’re going through your your your feed or your social media feed or whatever and you see, content and you’re like, hey. I was I was just googling that the other day. Right? And you see it pop up in your feed, like, how did that happen?
Well, folks, whether or not I mean, you’re all here virtually. Right? So, whether or not you realize that you have a digital footprint, and companies have that kind of data to say, oh, this person is interested in this. I’m gonna pop it into their feed.
And if you spend time looking at the ad, it’s clocking how long you are looking at the ad.
Okay? Like, don’t think for a second that it doesn’t realize, that you’re spending time watching the ad.
It happens to us daily. So just another priority to consider for this year. So to recap the three priorities, you’ve got your AI, and then you’ve got your sector specific innovation, and the third one being hyper personalization.
And these are all key areas, not necessarily in that order, but all key areas, that you have to consider when having conversations with your customers.
Now I think the last thing I wanna point out, because there has been some questions about, AI security and and what have you. Right?
Understanding Data Cleanliness in AI
And, Chandler, we can go to the the next one here, q and a, because this kinda dives into that. But when we talk about data, there’s a lot of data out there. Right? And so when people say, hey. I wanna use AI, and I have a lot of data for it to use, there’s this concept around data cleanliness.
Right? And, JLo, I kinda wanna pick your brain on this one.
But can you talk to us a little bit about data cleanliness, how that might actually bleed into some of the other swim lanes of technology that we have here at Telarus, and why is that why is that important?
Oh, and you’re on mute.
Thank you. Now you all know this is live. Right? Okay.
So that that’s a really, really good question. AI is only as good as the data that it has access to and that it’s trained to. It’s it’s really kinda garbage in and garbage out. So this is really important as it relates to how it can affect things in all of these different technology areas.
You can only make we as people can only make decisions based on information that is structured in a way that we can understand and that actually is something that relates to what it is that we’re trying to do. AI is the same way. Unless you have AI with data that has been structured or groomed or, you know, consolidated in a way that it can easily understand, reference, and utilize for future capabilities, it’s really not gonna do you much good. So there are a lot of AI projects that actually require some serious data changes, some serious data structure changes, whether that be converting things from a, you know, a data lake to a data lake house to a, you know, all of these different types of things.
And that all really is important because once you take care of that step, then the other stuff becomes a lot more capable. This is true in cybersecurity.
Cybersecurity guards can only do things if it knows what it’s actually looking at. In cloud scaling, it can only help with, you know, resource allocation and deprecation if it actually has data on what’s actually happening in the background. And in CX, specifically, how that data is used is ways to make sure that you’re, for example, using bots that are giving the best use cases for it to handle those level one and level two queries that don’t require a human being. We talked earlier about how bots can free up people to focus on the more particular and more nuanced conversations that people need to have with their vendors or with their companies. And the only way that they have more time to be able to do that is if these simpler use cases have been broken off. But how do you identify what those simple use cases are? You have to have the data to back that up before you develop those use cases that are handled by conversational or rather LLM driven AI interfaces.
Great point, Jason. Yeah.
Data is you’re like like you said, garbage in, garbage out. Right? The AI is only as good as the data that it receives. So all great points. Thank you.
Integrating AI with Customer Experience Strategies
Doug, I think we are, at time here. Certainly went longer than the thirty minutes we thought we were gonna take. Right? But we had a lot of really great questions from, from the chat.
You’ve done a great job of addressing many of them already. This is our second State of the Union presentation for twenty twenty five powerhouse lineup of Telarus experts discussing the customer experience solutions and strategies landscape.
And we’ve got great questions that have come into the chat, some of which have already been addressed. I want to try to consolidate a few of these, though, and just throw it out to the panel. So much of our discussion today has been around AI in addition to CX and the integration between the two. For our partners who are interested in pursuing this discussion with their clients, do you feel as though it’s incumbent upon them to be able to educate their clients not only on the CX opportunities, but on the AI that affects all of those opportunities? And what is the best way to initiate that discussion or to educate their clients on AI alternatives that affect CX?
I can take that one if you guys want. So, I think that perhaps the the inner workings of AI and how it’s working across all of these different things might be a a level that’s not necessarily needing to be explored quite yet. What you can do is you can explore the different use cases and the different tools that can actually do it in all of these different areas.
You can use AI as a term to get people’s attention, but they don’t need to understand exactly how neural nets work or, you know, the differences between deep learning and and machine learning and generalized AI. What they need to know is the use cases, and that’s how they’re going to learn the best way. And so if you have an ability to talk to them about what problems it is that they’re trying to solve, translate that to use cases that can be addressed by AI, which we can help you with. You have a whole bunch of solution architects, not just in the CX space, but also in cybersecurity and cloud hyperscaling, IoT, a variety of other things.
We as solution architects, we have that ability to say, alright. They wanna solve this problem. What products or what capabilities can actually address that? So, make sure to utilize your Telarus resources.
Customer. That’s really going to be the biggest bang for your buck and the best use of your time in trying to get in the door with your customers and figure out ways to do business with them as it relates to AI. Does that answer that sufficiently, Doug, do you think?
It does indeed.
I wanted to consolidate a couple of others as well. We’ve talked about a number of industries, that are currently using and are considering using, various new CX and AI technologies.
What, in your opinion, are some of the industries that are leaning toward a more human centric model of agents and information versus those that wanna go full bore on automation, AI, and move away as far as possible from that human element in the interaction? And are there different strategies that our advisers should be using in approaching those different industries?
Industry-Specific Approaches to AI Adoption
I I can speak to my own experience. I think when you’re dealing or when I’m dealing with the manufacturing space, I I mean, those guys are really slow to move to modernize.
And oftentimes, we’ll talk about the are you looking for automation self-service where it can help and, you know, what are your customers’ complaints along hold times and whatnot? They don’t care. They say we want live answer. Right?
We want the phone to ring, someone to pick up. We don’t want them to go through a phone tree. So you’ll you’ll find that they they just want very, very high touch customer experience, and they don’t need all that automation, all the AI pieces. They might say we’ve heard about it.
We’re not quite ready yet for it. So you just kinda go at the pace of of the customer and just be very, very, conscientious of the industry that they’re in. Just understand. Different industries will move at different paces.
They they have different expectations and just kinda go through that flow. Again, you know, to Jlo’s point, what we mentioned earlier is all about the use cases and what are they trying to accomplish. Why are they why are they even talking to us? Right?
So what’s what’s prompting this change or wanting to make a change? What are they looking to accomplish?
Maybe there are some things that are popping up. Maybe it’s just an antiquated system and they know they have to get off of it. You know, kinda start start small and basic and scale from there. So just be really aware of what their environment is and ask them about that that tolerance level of their employees and their environment or their business model as a whole.
How much technology, how how how advanced do we need to go for them or or maybe not. So that’s what I kinda do. Right? Just be aware of the verticals that you’re talking to and understand they move at different paces and just listen to what they have to say.
You’ll you’ll hear right away if they’re really open to it or if they’re like, nope. Put on the brakes. Don’t sell us what we don’t want. Don’t talk about it.
You know, just kinda gauge that. That’s been my experience.
Here’s the other thing, Doug.
You always ask, so what are your hours of operation? Oh, we’re eight to five. What happens at five zero one? Oh, the caller comes in.
They go to voice mail. Okay. And are you certain those voice mails get returned and you’ll see a little smirk or a little smile? What?
You know, we try to really handle that. Why not just bring AI in for after hours to start? Right? Extend your hours of operation of the customers that you can or members that you can service.
And then once you get comfortable with that, then you can extend it in hours maybe during the lunch period when you’re super busy.
We have twenty agents and eighteen of them go to lunch between twelve and one, and our customer service goes way down, our queue goes up. Why not implement it then? It doesn’t have to be an all or nothing approach. It can be an extension of your existing team.
We’re seeing that quite a bit as well. The flip side to this, and not to, move off of AI, but the flip side to that is we’re seeing a big pickup on the BPO side. Right? What does BPO stand for?
If you know, put it in the chat. You’ll get a very special prize for Megan.
Megan, you need to figure this out. Okay?
The thumbs up.
You you get you got a thumbs up, Megan.
Oh my god. And then you get to take a picture of that. That’d be amazing. Thank you. BPO.
So we’re seeing a a big pickup in the BPO space because your customers can’t hire enough people and they have such a high churn, and maybe they’re not ready for the AI route.
They they want that human touch. We’re seeing such a big pickup in BPOs, and we have some amazing BPO partners in our ecosystem. Reach out to me or Megan or JLo, and we’ll walk you through that.
But it’s definitely a conversation to have. What happens at five zero one, and how can we make that better?
Mike Mike, you make a great point. Megan, you make great points. I would add a little bit of color to what Megan said. Megan is absolutely right.
Certain verticals are definitely a little bit more focused on adopting AI versus others not. But there are also nuances within verticals that I would add an additional tip on. Look at the demographic, and I hate to say this because I’m an old person. Right?
But the older people are or the older the target audience is for the product or service that the company is offering, the less likely they are to have a customer base that’s going to be comfortable with true automation and fully bot based communication.
So if take a look at the company. Even within certain verticals, you may have those that are high-tech with a younger demographic of purchasing customers. You may have some that are a little bit mid tech that maybe service those that are a little bit older. Just take a look at their audience. If their audience is older, maybe a little more people centric. If their audience is younger, definitely more technology, AI, and bot based CX centric.
Awesome.
Mike, earlier you’d responded, in the chat, and we covered this a little bit in the conversation as well about rightsizing staff using AI.
Brilliant discussion on that. I wanna throw back to Sam for just a second. Sam, as as folks who are trying to provide CX, look at how they hire in today’s market. Are there particular types of agents to which they should be looking to staff their their CX environment? And for those who are seeking to work in the CX industry, are there types of characteristics and familiarities that they should be actively working to gain? How do we advise our clients at this point as to the type of people they should be looking to staff a CX organization?
Hiring Trends in Customer Experience Roles
Oh, that’s a great question.
Could you ask AI to come up with that question? Because that’s just, like, too good.
Very good.
Credit for that one, but it would it came from all of these other questions in the chat.
No. I love that’s a great question. So I think it starts with the outcomes. Right? Of course. Because you have to determine what’s most important to the business and understanding, what exactly they desire.
After that, then you work your way backwards and figure out, okay, not only how many people will you need, but what kinds of people are you looking for? What skill sets are we looking for, in these agents? And a big request that we’re we’ve been getting recently as well is upskilling, the the agents, right, at a company, the human one at least. Right?
And so there are now solutions out there that will help with things like simulations and coaching, and all of these other process, improvements or script improvements, to making those agents better, and, essentially, upskilling them. Right? And then as the company starts to identify what’s working best, in customer conversations, they then can tailor further tailor the recruiting efforts around which types of agent skills that they desire. But even more importantly, breaking those skills down and saying, okay.
You know, which which ones can AI, help sort of expedite or alleviate. Right? Whether that’s, typing something into a system, or handling a quick transaction. Maybe that’s something that AI can take on the responsibility of, and then you can focus on upskilling agents, in having more complex conversations.
Right?
So that’s a loaded question, but the the reality is you have to unwrap the spaghetti around that question, to determine what components we as the technology adviser community can actually help impact.
The idea again is to break it down break down the outcome into little digestible pieces and figure out what technology can help augment those pieces.
Excellent.
Megan, I wanna come back to you for a second. We had talked briefly a moment ago about BPO, business processing outsourcing business process outsourcing. And you had brought up in the chat several of the innovations that have occurred, both in terms of the technology and elsewhere, which have made BPO a much more attractive option, for various reasons. Wanted to give you a second to expand on that here with everyone on the call and talk about some of the most recent innovations, in BPO that make that so attractive.
Innovations in Business Process Outsourcing
Yeah. They, so and I’d see Luis is asking about it as well as the, when we say accent masking or neutralizing, you know, a lot of BPOs are outsourced in the Philippines or in India as we know, and you get, you know, customers who are speaking English, and it’s immediately they just wanna shut them out. They don’t even wanna give them the the opportunity to help them, if they’re calling in for support.
So we have some supplier like Sanas, s a n a s, that will actually neutralize that accent. So we we’ve been on demos with them, and we’ve asked them. We’re like, well, is it offensive to the agents that we say, hey. Let’s mask or neutralize your your accent?
And these agents overseas actually love it. They say, no. It removes any biases or prejudice. We just wanna do our jobs and and and help our customers so we can neutralize the accent.
They get over that, and we’re we’re just there to help them, you know, customers. So that’s huge. In addition, though, not just neutralizing it, all four the four of us here, on this call today, we’ve been through some demos recently, and I I think I’m starting to see a trend here. We’re seeing demos where as an agent is speaking live, you can just switch it to a different accent altogether.
So if, say, I’m on the West Coast, I’m I’m servicing customers in southern, Texas, and I wanna switch it to a a southern accent to better relate to my customers in in those regions, I can do that on the fly, but it’s in my own voice, for example. So we’re seeing that happen in real time. It’s it’s amazing. So we’ve got some vendors like, NICE and TOPdesk who’ve who’ve demoed this to us, and they can show this to us in real time.
So it’s it’s changing the accents. It could even be, you know, transcribing the conversation even though you’re speaking a different accent. So we’re seeing a lot of this come into play and everything’s done in real time because, I mean, this is what our agents are asking for, everything in real time, analytics, transcription, translation even. So we’re starting to see that happen, moving forward, and I think a lot of the BPOs are gonna ask more for that for that technology because it exists now.
The Rise of Omnichannel Support
Here’s the other thing that, Doug, just from an agent perspective, omnichannel is becoming much more prevalent. So if I’m an agent, I’m just not a voice agent anymore. I’m gonna be able to need to be able to to not just speak, talk good. I was an English major, so I can say that.
Right? Speak properly, but also to write properly as well. So what’s interesting and multilingual. What’s interesting is most of the suppliers on our ecosystem that offer SMS or chat functionality have language translation built in.
So if the customer is chatting with me in Spanish, it comes through as English to me. I type in a response in English, and it shows up as Spanish to them.
What languages are supported?
It depends on every supplier, but most of them use Google as the translation engine, and they offer several hundred languages. So so that’s something else to think in mind that what AI can really do is make you very fluent from a text basis in multiple languages.
The Impact of AI on Multilingual Communication
It’s a fascinating discussion. The world we live in, the technology is just incredible.
Sam, brilliant discussion today.
Take us home. Last words from you, and where should our advisers go for more information at this point?
Yes. Keep an eye out for, event announcements. We’ve got a lot going on with our CX Ascend events. But also check out the gear ups and anchor ins. Lots of really valuable information around sales tactics, marketing tactics.
Take a look at Telarus University as well. I mentioned an upcoming training, AI essentials. Look out for that. Watch our newsletters that come out.
But even more importantly, reach out to us. We are very accessible. You’ve got the team here that wins the actual Super Bowl, the real one that matters. So by all means, reach out to us.
We’re here to be your best resources for everything CX related.
Fantastic.
Sam, Megan, J. Lo, Mikey b, thank you so much for the fantastic presentation today. Really appreciate it. We look forward to seeing you again soon.