AI's Elevation of Customer and Employee Experience
Greg Moss, I've got great news.
Speaker 2:Tell me.
Speaker 1:We're back. We're back for another episode of the Upstack podcast. I know. Highlight highlight of the day, highlight of the year. Every time we can get together, it's always a good time.
Speaker 1:And and I I find more often than not, I learn a lot about a lot of different things, and I think today is gonna be no different. I wanna harken back. It may even been one of our very first episodes. You know I like to look back before we look forward.
Speaker 2:You are a look back And you or
Speaker 1:I am. I am. But my hindsight's far from 2020. You introduced the concept of the AI hype cycle, and I wanna prepare you today, Greg. The AI hype cycle may be in jeopardy after today's conversation.
Speaker 1:Yes. Yes. Now granted, I think we started talking about that back maybe early twenty twenty three. So post chat GPT four, and what was that? November 22.
Speaker 1:Time has flown. Think it's 2025, not to date the episode, but we know that AI has come up quite a bit in various conversations. And and I imagine today will be no different, but maybe in a different context. We shall see. You also recall that we did a series of episodes on our technology technology trends report, and we dug into various solutions verticals and pontificated about what the future might hold.
Speaker 1:Well, we're in the future now, and I think it's time that we revisit one of the more popular topics in that trends report, that being customer experience.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah. Definitely definitely a lead into AI for sure, Alex.
Speaker 1:That that just it seems like when it comes to the application of AI, when we when we speak with our customers here at Upstack, CX, customer experience, is where we're looking, and it really comes down to how how best can companies streamline positive, beneficial interactions between customers and their company. And the tech trends report highlighted things like conversational AI, automation, all these major tools to watch out for in the CX arena. But, again, I feel like there's more there, and it's time to dig into it. So that's why I'm thrilled to introduce our next guest, one of our own. Adam Godfried is the director of advisory services for CX solutions at Upstack, specializes in guiding clients through CX transformation projects, and has a decorated resume of helping organizations optimize their customer experience while driving sustainable growth.
Speaker 1:Adam Gottfried, welcome to the Upstack podcast.
Speaker 3:Good to be here.
Speaker 1:Happy to be here. He's here. We are we are thrilled to have you, and you're officially in the hot seat here. When you've got CX in your title, you're in for it. We have we have so many questions, but we'll try to go at a at a steady pace here so as not to well, not to lose me, basically, or any of our our listeners.
Speaker 1:Adam, I think it's it's most helpful. You know me. I love to set the stage, Craig. Let's set the stage. Obviously, a member of the Upstack team.
Speaker 1:Your subject matter subject matter expertise lies in customer experience. But I am curious, how did you reach this point in your career? What what is your professional background?
Speaker 3:Yeah. No. Again, great to be here. Joined Upstack around four months ago, and prior to that, spent about twenty plus years in the customer experience contact center space working for various industry leading providers. Recently spent just over seven and a half years at RingCentral running their contact center sales practice in the upmarket.
Speaker 3:An incredibly exciting environment of rocket ship growth and really working with clients of all different shapes and sizes and industries and requirements and really seeing the adoption of the cloud and then the introduction of AI really to kind of complement what has been in place for quite a while in the sense of self-service. But really seeing that just the evolution really just booming and all the options that were available. Prior to there, I spent about twelve and a half years at a company now called Alvaria and was called Aspect Software, running various different parts of the sales organization, as well. And and, you know, it's interesting being a part of that journey. It was on prem to single tenant hosted and then sticking your toe into the cloud environment.
Speaker 3:So over the past twenty years, really watching companies navigating their business challenges and objectives with technology that evolved dramatically over the last twenty years really made it a perfect fit here at Upstack to take that and bring it to our clients here as well as work with all of our trusted advisers here with our clients to help them navigate through the ever changing, continuously changing landscape now that is really heavily focused around AI and automation across the board and to really complement all of those solutions that have been around now for quite some time. But it's exciting because it just seems like there's new solutions popping up left and right that are really delivering great value to our clients. So I'm excited to be here and excited to have this conversation with both of you.
Speaker 1:We are gonna get into it here, and you you kind of laid it out. Clearly, you've had a front row seat to a lot of evolution and innovation in customer experience arguably before it was called customer experience. Okay. So, Joe, you mentioned on prem to cloud and now with AI, and it's it's, you know, clear applications in in CX. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Craig, if I may, I'm gonna fire off a few more questions, but interject wherever you see fit as always. What are some of the, you know, the the innovations we are seeing more recently specific to AI as it relates to to CX? And I also know in our pre call, just to spoil a little bit, we're talking customer experience, but we'd be wise to also discuss employee experience as well. So maybe innovation across both of those spaces.
Speaker 3:Yeah. No. You bring up a great point because I think what we're seeing now is a blending of both worlds. Right? When you look at customer experience and employee experience, and then you look at how artificial intelligence has been layered across both, I look at that as a three legged stool where you have both the employee facing portion, customer facing portion, and AI layering, making everything together.
Speaker 3:They're really working continuously together to drive resolution and results for companies that before, by looking at them in silos, made it pretty challenging to accomplish that. And if we look back maybe five, six years ago, there was a big push for the combination of UCaaS and CCaaS. Right? We didn't even call them CX and EX, really. But then there was a recognition of, well, this is technology, but we really have to look at the people that are using the technology.
Speaker 3:Are those the ones that are benefiting from the technology? And experience got layered into the language to where the tools can be great, but what is the experience of those that are using it and benefiting from it? And then I think when you look at artificial intelligence, again, some of these self-service applications have been around in some form for quite some time, but now it was taken to the next level when ChatGPT came on board or was announced. Right? And then we started looking at these large language models of all sudden the acceptance around how can these really take business to the next level.
Speaker 3:All of a sudden, that started to get layered into the UCaaS and the CCaaS, the CX and the EX. And it's almost CX plus AI, EX plus AI is now the new norm. And when you look at companies that are out there, roughly, you know, 50 of employees or companies, sorry, 50% of companies have their employees utilizing some version of AI, and 50% of companies have their customer experience portfolio having AI as part of that strategy. So we're at the point now where it's really one out of every two companies are using AI, right, to some degree already to get, today. So it's it's exciting to see this evolution happening so quickly.
Speaker 3:And I think what we've seen in the past twelve months is really that adoption of let's try it out. Let's get a use case. Let's prove it out. Some worked, some did not. But really in 2025, we're seeing a new approach where companies are saying, let's utilize these tools.
Speaker 3:Let's get them in place. Let's prove it out and get buy in from everybody, and then let's start to grow it. So it's just truly exciting time right now where companies are just taking advantage of tools that have been around for a while, but they're just getting a lot better.
Speaker 2:I think I think that's incredible, and I think you're exactly right. This is probably, if not the best use case, one of the best use cases for AI in today, right, that you could show value. I've noticed that, you know, obviously, concerns, LLM, you know, confining confining LLMs, you know, when you have a large language model and it's within a specific organization, that's your large language model. That's it. It's it caps out.
Speaker 2:Right? You know, the ability to communicate outside of that LLM with other LLMs to increase the value, is that something that these companies are open to long term, or is it something that they just say, hey. You know, this is our secret sauce. We're gonna keep it and and hopefully it works.
Speaker 3:Yeah. That that's a great question, Greg. And that's where I think it's exciting being in our position as advisers because there are so many players out there that are taking advantage of the large language models and utilizing them strategically based on the dialogue that is taking place and which large language model would be best applied to that application, whether it's a sequence of numbers, whether it's words. Right? So they're actually fine tuning the models based on specifically what is being transcribed, what is being said.
Speaker 3:So some organizations, they're utilizing one. Some are using two, three. We're starting to see that acceptance of using multiple to deliver the best possible outcome for the customer. So that's the exciting part, and there's so many options out there. I think picking the right provider that utilizes the right LLMs to address the right type of communications companies are looking for is a key strategy in really finding the right solution going forward with.
Speaker 1:Clearly, there's a large or wide suite of products that could be categorized under CXEX that leverage AI. So what what are some examples? CCaaS is I imagine still fits in there, but, clearly, the the segment has evolved significantly. So what are some other products that we should be aware
Speaker 3:Yeah. So there are companies out there that have specific use cases, specific solutions. You know, when you look at organizations that have maybe some some agents that are in areas of the world where the, whatchamacallit, the accent is incredibly difficult to understand, where they're able to take that and neutralize it. Right? Specific use case there that is is very simple, but also incredibly powerful when someone is looking at moving outside and utilizing resources that are in other parts of the world with very strong accents.
Speaker 3:You look at an organization that is, in the thousands of employees that have grown through acquisition to where there are multiple sources of information that employees need to do their job daily. And as opposed to waiting for maybe a team lead or a supervisor or a leader or someone from HR become available to solve or to provide some information for them, they can quickly search and get the information that's needed and go ahead and perform their duties without having to wait ten, twenty, thirty minutes or maybe even hours or days before they can get that answer. So those are a few there. You also have tools when you look at agents within a contact center as they're dealing with a very complex scenario and there's information of how to get that job done, but they have it in a binder or they have it somewhere else. Well, now the system can literally listen to the conversation that's happening real time, scan through all the information that that company has provided for tools and information for that agent to do their job, and the system will recognize what's being said through that accuracy of transcribing it real time, make a recommendation, and provide the information right there for that agent to utilize and get that back to, the customer and resolve that issue.
Speaker 3:And the one thing that's exciting right now, Alex, is that, you know, typically, you look at that as something like maybe two seconds to get that information to the to the agent, but now you're talking milliseconds to get that information. So that speed and the accuracy now allows agents to ramp up quicker because they're getting that real time coaching. And, also, the customer experience is not suffering from maybe a newer agent who is ramping up. They're still getting that same consistent experience. So those are a few examples.
Speaker 3:One very niche and others kind of broad that help a large population and also help things like agent retention and attrition, which are very costly to a contact center. Right? So those are just a few of the examples.
Speaker 2:I mean so first of all, it's absolutely amazing how how much growth has happened within this particular segment. I love being an adviser because, you know, I really get a holistic view at a market. Right? Small clients, medium clients, large clients across practically every provider who's doing things right, who's doing things wrong.
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:When you look at this particular area, it's gotten complex. Right? So when you look at what people are offering, it's not just pricing anymore. Right? It's all these ancillary things that could potentially benefit the client, some of it measurable and some of it not measurable.
Speaker 2:So so how are you, as an adviser, dealing with the complexities when you're starting to make recommendations across these different platforms? Then it's not just price anymore.
Speaker 3:Yeah. No. That's a great question. So it's really a matter of understanding what the business outcomes they're looking to achieve. Right?
Speaker 3:So what's driving this project? It could be containment rate. Meaning I have interactions coming into my my call center, and a lot of the interactions, 60% of them are very simple, repetitive questions. Well, I wanna have 95% of those interactions contained within that initial outreach within the intelligent virtual agent. Well, then it's a matter of let's understand the industry.
Speaker 3:Let's understand the use case. Let's understand what conversations are taking place. We gather that information, come back, spend time with the different suppliers to validate which ones make the most sense based upon what they're looking to execute and where they've had the experience. I think whenever you're working with a client, understanding what the outcome is they're trying to accomplish is key. And then interviewing and spending not interviewing, but spending time with the suppliers and really making sure that what the outcome is they're trying to accomplish, they can actually do.
Speaker 3:And, hopefully, they've already done it for somebody else can speak to it with their experience. But I think also it's important couple other areas. Having buy in from the people within the client, right, that are going to be benefiting from the technology to be on board. And I'll give you one example there. As an organization, you know, as a in a contact center, you have interactions that are nonrevenue generating, and there are actions that are revenue generating.
Speaker 3:So the the goal here is as you're going through this exercise, educating those that will be benefiting from the automation because now they're freed up to take more of those opportunities to then work with their clients and find additional ways to cross sell and upsell those clients, or maybe before they were stuck on the phone answering repetitive interactions. So I think when you break down the conversation around that, now all of a sudden the client realizes it's not only a cost savings for those other interactions, but now I'm looking at a way to grow revenue and have more successful teams within the contact center. They're gonna drive more revenue, more activity. They're gonna be happier. Most likely, they're gonna stay.
Speaker 3:Right? Attrition rates go down, and it's a win win with adding the technology. So I take that kind of approach across each solution, whether it's also the the tools that help agents or employees or, digital transformation with omnichannel, introducing other digital channels, and so forth. So I think it's important to understand what they're trying to drive, but then also highlight other outcomes that they'll receive through these type of technologies.
Speaker 1:That's especially valuable considering kind of a universal challenge we hear from IT leaders, almost agnostic of industry, is proving ROI, proving that technology is actually a value driver and not a cost center. You've just laid out a few use cases that frankly address that challenge seamlessly. We've touched on the rapid evolution of solutions in this particular vertical around CX, the adoption of CX is is driving a lot of that adoption. It almost feels like See, I'm gonna coin a phrase that you offered up, Adam. You're 2025, the year of AI adoption, I believe.
Speaker 1:I think you you're having T shirts made or something like that. I hope I can get one. Is is the market getting saturated from a solutions provider standpoint? Does it seem like everyone and their cousin has a CX AI enabled CX solution that IT leaders should be considering, or are there are there still plenty of room for further innovation to take place?
Speaker 3:You know, it's funny you say that because as soon as I think it's saturated, all of sudden, multiple organizations pop up and they've got something else that's unique. Right? Or those that have been in in the industry for a while, all of sudden roll out an idea that they have. One case in point was a provider that's been in the industry for a long time around, coaching agents within the contact center. Right?
Speaker 3:Concept has been around for a long time. Well, all of sudden, they informed me that they have an AI component that now can monitor and recognize when an employee may be close to churn. So now you can focus on them and help their behavior and get ahead of it and try to avoid that costly occurrence of having to replace an agent in the contact center. So I think what we're seeing in the marketplace is a lot of the CCaaS providers, they are building in native AI components that they've had, and they're investing heavily in them. There are others that are choosing to partner.
Speaker 3:Right? They decided we have some AI components that we're gonna use in part of our solution, but we're gonna partner with others for the core intelligent virtual agent capability or even in the workforce engagement management side because they wanna hyperfocus on what they're doing. There you go. I guess we've got a sponsorship there.
Speaker 1:Always.
Speaker 3:But that's where I think when you look at that, and there's also the point solutions, someone that had some type of translation service that they built from scratch and they're marketing that out and they're partnering with other providers. So I think we're going to continue to see that innovation. I think we'll find some that get acquired and some that build strategic partnerships where that's really where they put a a bulk of their resources towards. But I think the exciting thing about this industry, it's always changing, and there's always new partners. There are always people splitting off from one organization with an idea and running forward and getting, a following and really delivering impactful technology.
Speaker 3:I think it's just the kind of the the way of of, the world right now. And we're still at that point. I know we talked about this as well in in the prep call, but I still feel like companies are coming out of COVID contracts and really reevaluating, you know, what I bought before. Is it the right solution now going forward? And they're taking a step back, and they're analyzing what's out there on the market.
Speaker 3:Great way to bring an up stack to help you in that process, but they really wanna say going forward now with the adoption of AI and the capabilities, what is the right platform for me and my company going forward? So
Speaker 2:So, Alex, you you bring up a good point. Right? And so, Adam, correct me if I'm wrong. Are these new innovations presented like a marketplace? Right?
Speaker 2:Like, where where you have the core product and you're able to add on as things develop. Is it more of a marketplace offering? Like, can you like, as these things develop, can you just add them on?
Speaker 3:Yeah. Absolutely. So that's I think we're seeing also the flexibility. There's an acknowledgment within the industry that because the AI hype, right, as we we talked about that last year, where there was a goal to push it forward and really maximize the investment in it quickly. And that led to a lot of projects that was all hype.
Speaker 3:Right? They kinda tried to bite off more than they could chew. And I think what the industry has realized is it is a take a bite, take a bite, and then you can go for a big bite. You have to prove it out and make sure it works, get the buy in from all those within the organization that, yes, this works and the company is benefiting. And now let's go move into the next use case.
Speaker 3:And then to your point, Greg, around kind of adding more, that could be a different portion of the solution that does something different than the initial portion, but the engine has proven out. Right? So maybe customer facing first, then we're gonna look at the agent side. Right? And then we'll look at the employee side because these organizations, many of them have solutions through acquisition already that could be an AI engine.
Speaker 3:The next could be portions of channels that now can be enabled with that same engine that simply get provisioned later down the road.
Speaker 2:Are there cost implications? For instance, DeepSeek is a really good example of efficiency. Right? And I think the AI the cost to run AI is expensive, at least at this moment. Companies like DeepSeek are hopefully paving the path to lower those costs.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. When you with your time at Ring, was there ever any sort of issue around how do we justify the spend?
Speaker 3:Well, that's always part of a discussion. Right? That's for the ROI. It's a great I love having those conversations because I think when you look at these technologies, you have to look at, well, what is the reduction in the cost to the contact center? Right, when you look at this?
Speaker 3:A human engagement cost about $8, and when you look at an automation, it's about 50ยข, right, give or take. So it's incredible savings there. So that's one part of it. When you look at the improvement on customer satisfaction because of the consistent delivery of customer service through automation, there's also an uptick in customer satisfaction. And then you look at agent productivity because of the tools I mentioned earlier about helping them do their job, sometimes you see increases up to 50% improvement in productivity.
Speaker 3:Right? So all of these things, yes, there's a cost to AI, but I think what we're starting to realize this year is the true benefit of implemented AI implemented correctly is quite rewarding. When done correctly and done in phases and proved out, that's justifying and actually making the cost look quite attractive. So I think there's a it's a fine line, but I think each customer has to look at what the upside is and then weigh that against the the price point of implementing AI solutions.
Speaker 1:I meant to tap on a few things you just said. It sounds like companies can almost incrementally invest into these solutions without breaking the bank. It actually isn't that massive upfront investment you can begin to implement and expand as you see not only the technology addressing the challenges that your business may face, but also as opportunities arise. When you see, wow. Agent Assist is really changing not only my employee's experience, but it's making for more meaningful customer experience.
Speaker 1:It's maintaining or improving our brand reputation. It's improve improving customer retention. It's increasing lifetime value of those customers because they're sticking around. What more can we do here? Where can we explore further?
Speaker 1:If it's working from a customer facing standpoint, what else could it do for us? But the this this rapidly evolving ecosystem allows for that. I wanna call experimentation. These are critical business investments, but it seems like that's possible, which isn't necessarily the case when we're talking about, say, Greg's favorite topic, the location. You know, investing in data center space.
Speaker 1:Like, that's I don't think there's any, you know, testing. No no no little nibbles there, rightfully so. But that that's that's very beneficial to an end customer knowing that that's possible. The you provide a lot of very interesting use cases. You mentioned if a company's leveraging offshore talent, maybe to to populate a call center and that region where they're pulling their offshore talent perhaps as an accent or a dialect that can be modulated among other examples.
Speaker 1:I'm curious. Is there an ideal customer profile or company for CX solutions? Sounds like there's a imagine a high volume of of interactions with the customer base, which could apply to a number of different industries. But is there a profile that you have in mind? Because if if I'm a listener out there today and I'm thinking this is interesting Mhmm.
Speaker 1:It doesn't make sense for my business. What would that profile or profiles be? Maybe start from an an industry standpoint and then go from there.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I think when you look at these type of applications, really anything that's a b to c. Right? But we look at and then also b to b when there's a volume and there's I think whenever there is either a large volume of interactions or each interaction is high dollar value. Right?
Speaker 3:Whether it's the the type of clientele you have, the value or price tag of your service, or, again, that's the volume of interactions. But I think right now, we're seeing tremendous transformation is in health care, in financial, and all across the board in both of those categories, especially when you have, like, a hub and spoke, a bunch of locations, and then a centralized contact center. I think in both of those type of organizations, you're seeing an effort to take activities that take place typically at the branch level or the clinic level and centralize them. And here's the interesting part because you then take the consistent activity in each one of them and centralize and have that consistent experience. But now you have the people at the clinics at the branches actually being able to focus on those who are coming into the location and not dealing with activities that should be handled at a centralized location.
Speaker 3:And then you layer in automation and self-service on top of that, it even drives that much more efficiency and savings, but, again, continues to deliver a great experience. You then look at retail. Retail is always one that is evolving and and really taking advantage of technology. You know, one of the biggest questions coming in is Wizmo. Right?
Speaker 3:When I first heard that years ago, I'm like, what's Wizmo? Where is my order? Right? How many times are you wondering where is my shipment? You know, if I could get a proactive notification, not have to call in, wonderful.
Speaker 3:When I call in, they know what product I ordered. They can give me an update. You know, they know who I am. Manufacturing is really is an industry right now that's evolving, especially now. A lot of companies coming back, bringing manufacturing, to The US.
Speaker 3:That's gonna be a very big opportunity, I believe, for for companies to do it right from the beginning, manage all those interactions coming in asking about same thing. Where is my order? Where is the delivery? Are there products that are back ordered? Parts that are coming in late that's gonna delay a a batch of equipment.
Speaker 3:So you have all those industries, but then you have, you know, hospitality, you name it, travel, logistics, you name it. There's every industry right now is taking a look at their tech stack and saying, the people I have in place, the processes I wanna execute on, and my customers, is the tech stack really gonna help us accomplish what we wanna do? And I think that's where at Upstack, and as Greg mentioned, the trusted adviser model, is critical for someone to come in from an outside perspective, hear what you're trying to accomplish, understand what you currently have in place, and then guide and say there's options here. And by the way, we're gonna help you understand the benefits of implementing this type of a solution to your business and to your people and then also help you quantify that. So it's not, I think if you look back a couple years ago and people were trying to make the move from on prem to cloud and take advantage of all these applications, it was unsure of how to justify it and really maximize that investment.
Speaker 3:And I think nowadays, we've seen a couple years of people doing this and the benefits they've received where now we're armed to really help that come to fruition very quickly. And just by spending some time with our clients and really understanding the details, we can help them build that.
Speaker 2:I personally love that. Right? And what I've always fought against, at least with the larger organizations, is a gardener who kinda just takes these really broad strokes and gives you nothing. Right? They'll put the quadrants together, and I think someone like you really could get extremely detailed around a customer specific requirement.
Speaker 2:And I think that's really, really important in today's day and age with technology changing so quickly. How do you do that? And that's amazing. So
Speaker 1:Yep. Especially keeping up the operating your day job, but also keeping up speed on rapidly emerging and changing technologies. That's that's a bit challenging. So the good news is there's someone who can help, but his name's Adam Adam Godfrey. When we talk about industries, retail, financial services, health care, you mentioned manufacturing.
Speaker 1:Travel popped up. Are there other industries? It seems like the application for CX pretty pretty wide. Are there industries that should be paying attention that maybe aren't at the moment?
Speaker 3:That's a good question. It's interesting you asked that because over the past, like I mentioned, seven plus years, there were industries and companies that never used contact center in the past. And actually in talking to them, they would say, we're not a contact center. I'd say, you're right. You're not a contact center, but you can benefit from the technology that is typically used in a contact center.
Speaker 3:And one big thing that companies love about the technology that is typically part of a contact center is the data. Right? When you can collect all this information and make it actionable on what you're planning to do with your business or get ahead of challenges that maybe you would not know about until they unfortunately impacted your brand recognition, that's where technology like this that we're speaking about can help any company. And there were organizations that would move forward, they would use, you know, less than 10 contact center licenses because they had a small group that was connecting with their customers, and they used they just use hunt groups, but they didn't have any data. And now they get intel on what's happening.
Speaker 3:And as they're going moving forward on making business decision decisions, they can actually mine all those conversations and dialogue for key insight to help them with those decisions. So it's a I don't if that was a trick question, but in my opinion, I think any Never trick questions. Any company that that's right. But any company looking for data to help themselves make decisions really should take the time and look into some of the tools that are out there that, again, historically are are available for contact centers and understand how they can benefit your business. Because, truly, the insight you get can take months, if not years, to try to compile and understand where you can scan all this information real time.
Speaker 3:You see all these trends, and this is the beauty of it. You're not waiting a week or two to where the data is outdated. You're getting it real time so you can take action and make an impact right away.
Speaker 1:So things like audience sentiment analysis and and the like, interesting.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. Keywords proactively popping up of maybe new markets that you need to look into where you're getting a lot of questions about, do you guys offer your services in these markets? Well, maybe now we ought to go look at growing into this market knowing we've already received, you know, 50 calls about having service in those markets. And you have their information already, you now can do an outbound campaign, reach out to them, and say, we're offering our product and services in this market now. And so all that type of activity, now you're having laser focused outreach.
Speaker 3:You know your customers, and you know what they're looking for so you can service them much better.
Speaker 1:And AI has kind of cracked that open. The application of AI within CCX has made that suite of of products through the solutions vertical accessible or maybe of interest to in to a broad range of industries?
Speaker 3:That's correct. That's correct.
Speaker 2:It's really accelerated things. You know? It's it's
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Exponential curve in order to
Speaker 1:When we think about providers or suppliers within CX, Adam, have you seen suppliers start to specialize in the solutions they offer based on industry or or company size? You know, here is customer sentiment data tracking for manufacturing, for example. Have we reached that point? We're already specializing?
Speaker 3:That's a great question because there are point solutions that are typically industry specific that historically were a CRM. Right? They were a scheduling tool. And then they're starting to broach into the contact center space. Right?
Speaker 3:They're offering a contact center like option, or they're pursuing that. They're trying to broach into that market where it's all inclusive. Right? So they have a customized CRM ERP application that now can also do contact center like features and capabilities. Now that always becomes a discussion around, well, what is the most important component to your tech stack?
Speaker 3:Is it a true contact center solution, or is it the component of that CRM that is industry specific? And that's where it becomes a really a a big decision as to, can they do everything I'm looking to do? Because that's where I think in my experience, companies are always gonna try to broaden their portfolio. They they run into an opportunity. They see that there's an opportunity to get revenue.
Speaker 3:They pursue it. But then all of a sudden, the focus is not there. There's not more business to support that, and they're kind of lack of better terminology dies on the vine. They go back to what they're good at. So I think that's another thing as you're looking at what suppliers to go forward with.
Speaker 3:It's not only what they have today in place, but it's understanding their long term plan. Where are they investing? What are they focusing on applications that are important for you long term that you wanna see evolve? I think also looking at different organizations of where they get started. You know, if an organization is started in a certain industry and they know that industry, everyone they hire knows that industry and they're really in tune with it, and that's your industry, you wanna you wanna go forward with that that platform as opposed to a similar application that is started off in, let's say, supporting IT and help desk.
Speaker 3:But they're now branching into other industries, and they don't have that industry knowledge. So I think that's a big I'm a big believer that you wanna look at the DNA of a company that you partner with and make sure that they're aligned with what you're looking to do.
Speaker 1:So A part of we're not gonna ask Adam to share the recipe for his secret sauce, but I get the sense that's part of your assessment. Challenges the business is facing. Let's let's look at your existing tech stack. Maybe there are things that we could utilize in different ways or we find new point solutions to to bring in.
Speaker 2:No. I mean, I I have I'd like to manifest I'd like the three of us to manifest something. See, I'm from New York. I'm a quick talker. I like people to talk quickly to me.
Speaker 2:And when I call into these services, right, you you know, it's like my Peter Tia book. I have it on 1.5 when I listen to it. Right? Could I set the speed of this person on the phone that's talking to me? Let's manifest it, guys.
Speaker 2:Let's get that built into the AI stack here.
Speaker 1:I'm all about manifesting these days.
Speaker 3:Gotta have the Philadelphia where it's 1.25, Greg, because that's what I use. It's fine. I'm up to one five yet. I'm at 1.25. So
Speaker 2:What if I'm talking to you like this?
Speaker 1:But what if it's in a Bronx accent, though?
Speaker 2:I could do it. I could I can I'm okay with that.
Speaker 1:Woah. Nothing more comforting than a Bronx Bronx accent. I've got we're not Adam, you're not at the hops yet. You can't you can't go anywhere. Curious external factors.
Speaker 1:Are there external factors or maybe outside pressures that are are forcing businesses to make a change
Speaker 3:in the CX space? There's competition. Right? So the adoption of AI right now is really high. Everyone's looking at it.
Speaker 3:Everyone's using it to some degree, whether internal or external. And I think what that's causing is a need for everyone to look at it because those who are using it and they're doing it correctly are going to have a consistent experience that their customers are gonna be thrilled with. And, also, they're gonna be doing it at a much lower cost. So as you're looking at your own company and what you should be doing with AI, kind of be in touch with what your competitors are doing. And I think, like anything, if, you know, if it's there and it's working and it's saving money and it's delivering great customer experience and it's help empowering your employees to do more, it's a win win win, and it's time to now look at it.
Speaker 3:So I think that outside pressure, Alex, you're talking about, it's competition. And I think, like anything, there's disruptors that come up that start off with these technologies right from the get go. And so they're delivering that same they're delivering that experience right from the beginning, and they're gaining market share. But there's also realities to it. Right?
Speaker 3:I think the one thing we hadn't talked about or maybe I I didn't bring it up earlier is when you look at all these solutions that are AI driven, it's about the data. Right? So a big investment upfront, meaning just you have to look at it, is the data. Is the data clean? Is the data accessible?
Speaker 3:And can it be used in these type of applications? So I think that's an important first step is to really understand where does the data reside that we wanna utilize within the AI frame. I think that's important.
Speaker 1:Makes sense. So the the CX solution that you may select and onboard is is only as good as the data that's feeding it.
Speaker 3:Correct.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Are there
Speaker 2:Sorry. Go ahead, Alex.
Speaker 1:I was just gonna say, are there are is are there other infrastructure implications? Thinking out loud, we can edit this. Are there other aspects of a company's IT infrastructure that they should evaluate before considering bringing on new CX solutions or CX solutions in general?
Speaker 3:I think this is where Greg was gonna talk to it. Right? Sorry. Probably
Speaker 2:I mean, as far as infrastructure, I mean, if it's cloud versus data center, I mean, they have to obviously have I'm assuming with all the applications now in the cloud, there it's a hosted it's hosted by the vendor. Right? So Right. If it's a Ring solution, you know, they're they're gonna bring that service to you as it's almost like a SaaS platform. You know, the idea that the complexity in these so just to the data.
Speaker 2:Right? The LLMs and the complexities in how you train them and how you ask them questions. Are the vendors that we're bringing to the table qualified to help businesses vet that, or are there third parties that come in and actually help you kind of fine tune and and turn the dials to make sure that, you know, the the questions are proper and, you know, the data becomes rich and and meaningful?
Speaker 3:No. Great question. And so the suppliers are doing their own implementation, and some of them have very complex installs and others are fairly straightforward and and quicker implementation. But then it depends on what you're solving as well. So that kind of dictates that.
Speaker 3:There are third party companies out there that come in and will test the effectiveness of it and do a review. I think we do have some access to some of them. This is all gonna be removed. Right? We're just talking.
Speaker 3:But that's where I think they do we do have them, but that there's company called Sierra that's out there Well, they'll come in and review it. But, typically, the implementations, they are done by the suppliers.
Speaker 2:Interesting. I mean, it just goes back to Alex's question around specialty. Right? I've noticed that a lot of the CX companies have a core competency. Right?
Speaker 2:You'll see probably 70%, eighty % of their business come from a particular sector. And I think that's really driven by the fact that they have that rich experience. And they could say, hey. You're a health care company. Here's the, you know, six things you really need to sort of think about as you collect this data and build this model.
Speaker 2:So
Speaker 3:Yeah. Well, one of the point I totally forgot, Alex, when you mentioned earlier about trends you're seeing. So Avaya and Sprinklr both made decisions recently. Avaya is not gonna, you know, work with anybody who's less than 200 seats.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 3:Wrinkler is only focusing on their top, I think, of, like, 300 customers or something like that. Wow. So I I may be wrong on that number, but it's something like 500 or whatever it may be. So they are it's interesting. So they're I don't know if I can mention that here on the podcast.
Speaker 3:I guess I could, but I don't know if that would be perfect.
Speaker 1:And what's burning that move? Is it cost control? Is it where they see the upside? Is it
Speaker 3:Yeah. They're just looking to focus on, you know, expanding into their account base. And I think that's what people are like, RingCentral has laid off numerous rounds of people recently, and I and a guy over there told me they're probably gonna look to do the same thing. I don't know if that's true or not, but I think people are just recognizing they've got a laser focus and invest their time where the money is going to come from. And that's where I think and I put a a LinkedIn posting with a sprinkler.
Speaker 3:You know, if you feel like you're not, you know, sure of what your future lies, reach out to Upstack. Let us help you. So it could be a trend. There could be a couple providers doing it. I don't know.
Speaker 1:Even though we're we're looking very far to the future, the future is approaching us more rapidly thanks to to AI and CX more specifically. What major predictions do you have, Adam, for how the CX market will play out this year and even beyond, whether it's innovations or tools that'll be prioritized over others, merging emergence of certain players. What what do you see in in your crystal ball?
Speaker 3:Yeah. I see AI is really gonna be adopted on both sides of the the fence. One is the customer experience side, and one is the agent experience side. And I think we're gonna get a true validation of what it can accomplish in the communication space. I really do.
Speaker 3:I think we're gonna see transcriptions get more accurate. I think we're gonna see the containment rates continue to climb because we're gonna fine tune the large language models and then NLU, NLP, you name it, to where we're gonna be able to accomplish amazing things. And I think we're gonna see probably some consolidation in some of the the suppliers, whether they're acquisition of some of the point solutions and companies want to, you know, add them to their portfolio, which always adds some complexity. And I think, you know, we'll see some potential mergers of some of the players in the field as well. I just think there's a lot of solutions that complement each other really well, and I think that's just inevitable in the software world.
Speaker 3:If you I mean, I've been this long enough where I've seen it happen where industry leading solutions all came together and formed one organization. So I think that's probably inevitable in the next year or two where we start to see some of that take place.
Speaker 1:Will that be to the benefit of the end customer or the detriment? That's consolidation.
Speaker 3:That's a great question. But I think it really depends on how the companies handle those consolidation of technology stacks. I've seen it handled very well, and I've seen it handled not so well. And I think if anything, the industry has learned that to make acquisitions and keep things siloed really is not a long term plan. I think that there's a acknowledgment that you have to take these technologies and blend them together.
Speaker 3:But, again, that's up to those companies to decide of how they handle that. But I I think that's gonna be the trends we're gonna see. And I think further adoption, like I said, is gonna be inevitable. I think every company was directed last year to find a way to bring AI by the sea level. I think this year, they're actually implementing it successfully and seeing the benefits of it.
Speaker 2:Alex, I think I think that if we keep the AI and the agent moving together, we can achieve the singularity possibly as
Speaker 1:S. Seven twenty. One one can dream. I think one thing we've definitely achieved is is I think we put the hype cycle to rest a little bit. I think CX is is toppled the hype cycle we have.
Speaker 1:It's always been an arms race when it comes to technology, but AI, its application CX, given its broad application in CX, I think it's it's making it more applicable than maybe ever before. So here's the 2020 file, the year of applying AI AI hype cycle. We hardly knew you. We miss you already. But, Adam Adam Gottfried, thank you so much for your time today.
Speaker 2:Thank you, Adam.
Speaker 1:You'll you'll be back. We have a feeling. And, until then, thank you for joining us on the latest episode of the Upstack podcast. We'll see you next time.
Speaker 2:Thanks, Adam.
Speaker 3:Thanks, everybody.
