Why are CX leaders stuck on the sidelines of AI?

[00:00:00] Bill Staikos: Unfortunately, I'm gonna generalize here. Maybe not. It's the best thing. But, like, unfortunately, most CX leaders are not in the AI conversation, which is kinda bizarre to me. Right? Because when you think about, like, text analytics, it's old tech, but it's AI. It's a form of AI. But CX leaders never talk to the business to say, well, I've been using AI for ten, fifteen years. Here's how. Right? So I think that CX leaders have a real opportunity, a really big wedge to get back into that conversation.

[00:00:35] Nikola Mrkšić: Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of deep learning with PolyAI. Today, I have the pleasure of hosting Bill Staikos, who's the founder of Be CustomerLed, and he spent more than twenty years helping companies really transform their CX functions. Bill, welcome to to our podcast.

[00:00:52] Bill Staikos: It's wonderful to be here. I appreciate you having me on, Nikola.

[00:00:56] Nikola Mrkšić: Absolutely. And, look, I think maybe to kick off, I just saw your post on LinkedIn about kinda like the different categories of vendors that are automating customer experience. And, you know, it feels to me like we're rewriting the taxonomy every two weeks, but I think it'd be really interesting for the audience to to hear how you see the different efforts and strands of kinda, like, companies trying to make a change in customer experience.

[00:01:21] Bill Staikos: Yeah. I think, you know, look, there's there's an incredible amount of investment right now, it seems, in being sort of the interaction later with your customer. Right? And I think that's wonderful because, one, you can quantify that much more easily than you could in other areas, at least today. Number two, I think it's also from a customer perspective, it's valuable because no one calls a contact center to, like, give them an, like, an attaboy or an attagirl. Right? Like, no one call like, you you got a problem. You need it solved. Right? You need progress in that problem. So, like, if you can create a better experience by through through a better interaction layer, I think that you can really have it's like a win win win. One, certainly, the companies out there that are playing in this space, whether it's on, like, the agentic side or sort of the pure support side or sort of the info layer. Like, you can really deliver much higher value. But then number two is you could also achieve sort of business outcomes from an experiential perspective that are incredibly quantifiable and scalable too, right, which is also a key point. So, you know, like, there's kind of, like, a lot of different flavors to this coming in, a lot of players in the space. It feels like everyone's overlapping, like, 20% a little bit in there. And to your comment, I think I a 100% agree. But, again, like, I think we'll start to it'll start to shake out a little bit more over the next couple of years as well, and, you know, we'll see some winners and losers. I like, what's fascinating to me in this is, like, you know, five years ago, we were talking about, like, the genesis of the world and the five nines and others. Right? Like and now it's like this completely different layer that's coming into play. Right?

[00:03:07] Nikola Mrkšić: Yeah. I mean, like, you know, if we just, like, look at that piece, it feels like software at large, be it the hyperscalers or or CRM.

[00:03:17] Bill Staikos: Yeah.

[00:03:18] Nikola Mrkšić: They're coming to the contact center. Right? Now I think Amazon was ahead, right, in that they started a while back with Amazon Connect. But, you know, what what do you think about the Salesforce announcement recently kind of about building their own CKS and moving away from that? You know? Oh, boy. That would we think we're

[00:03:37] Bill Staikos: in any longer show for this answer, man. Look. I think it's look. There, I think it's like Salesforce being Salesforce. Right? Um, I think that there again, like, I think the value layer is in that interaction layer. It's not in sort of the core system. And Yep. You've got these capabilities, and I think like, look. Salesforce knows this probably better than anyone. Like, when you capture that data and you've got and you're at that value layer, you make billions of dollars of revenue. Right? They've proven that through, you know, CRM and what they've built over, you know, decades. I think that they're just seeing sort of the market shifting and changing and the value layer shifting, and now they don't wanna be relegated to the core system view. Right? And that's kind of where they're playing. Again, I'm I'm I'm speculating, but, you know, I think that's kinda what's happening a little bit. Yeah. Even Microsoft kind of now saying, hey. We are CRM, but we're also all these other things as well.

[00:04:35] Nikola Mrkšić: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So Yeah. No. I think it's really interesting because, you know, really, when you looked at looked at, like, the three tectonic plates, there is, like, a communication channel. So let's let's say, I think that as people realize their voice is not going anywhere, that is dominant and will continue to be dominant, then the question becomes, you know, now that we have technology to power it with technology, not just with human labor, it touches the second tectonic plate, which is human labor. Right? That's where we get autonomy. That's where, I'd say, we play and all of our crew, like, Majenta competitors where it's like, hey. Can we, like, build things that meaningfully do much better work? And in that, we're really eating labor cost and the BPO cost. Yep. I think the ones that I always thought had the pull position are the, like, soft Salesforce and other dominant systems of record, be that, like, EMRs and health care, etcetera. Because that thing is really the operating system of that company. Right? And I think that for the longest of times, people thought that, like, CCaaS has a right to win. But the truth is they're not really part of the workflow. They are the utility company. They just provide Yeah. Yeah.

[00:05:40] Bill Staikos: Look. I I think the CRMs are a great place to win. I mean, certainly, given Salesforce's scale, right, I think that they're gonna they're gonna have a meaningful impact in this space. I I don't mean to kinda, like, minimize what they're trying to do or doing. It's there and there is a big fight. Like, it comes down to, like, you know, can other players that are kinda coming up in the marketplace, can they scale more quickly than Salesforce can innovate? Right? Yeah. Like Yeah. Yeah. And that's the trade off. Like, when I was in banking at Chase, like, you had and, you know, this is going back, you know, ten, fifteen years. It was like the fintechs. They were innovating more quickly than a a Chase could, but Chase had scale in consumers. Right? So, like, similar dynamics sort of in play here.

[00:06:21] Nikola Mrkšić: Yeah. Yeah. No. Totally. And you mentioned kinda like owning that interaction later. Right? And, I mean, I think that's, like, a very, very good observation. And it's really kinda like making it an inter interaction rather than just, like, finding a way for for there not to be an interaction with a human. Right?

[00:06:37] Bill Staikos: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, when we were talking a little bit before we got on, right, Nikola, like, I'm such my personal philosophy is that we should be using these capabilities to amplify humanity in a way. Right? If we're using these to just push customers further away and deflecting or whatever other words you wanna you wanna use, like, for me, that doesn't deliver a great experience. And in fact, it could exacerbate an already unpleasant one if you're calling in and you're already upset about whatever that might be you're calling in about, and then all of a sudden you're dealing with an AI that's keeping you from getting your problem resolved in the right way. You know? And I always say, like, don't turn AI into a cheaper human. Actually, turn it into a solution that's going to amplify and improve the experience. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:07:25] Nikola Mrkšić: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think that, like, to me, like, as I got into this space and learned a lot about it, it really becomes also that that transformation becomes about debottifying the human themselves. Right? Because any skilled operation, they've made the humans so constrained that, you know, they know what they need to do to help, but maybe they're not allowed to say. Maybe because of some regulation, they have to, like, go around in circles and tell you that your account wasn't denied, but that you look into it and they're dodging it because, you know, you could sue them if they said something that is wrong. And you look at all that, and you're like, oh my god. Right? Like, it's like, much of customer experience is already so, like, designed towards minimizing risk Yeah. From that is that as you start using AI, maybe you have a chance to redesign some of it. Right? And then those unlocks are really big. But how do you think about, like, justifying my value? Right? Because I've seen everything from customers that justified really well and then tell me about all the extra benefits they got to those that maybe are, like, keeping cards close to the chest because they didn't want a software vendor to know that they've achieved a lot, or maybe we haven't. Maybe we just added slop on top of their. Right?

[00:08:40] Bill Staikos: Yeah. I think it comes down to a little so so, one, I think the the value calculation is there. Right? Like, let let's be clear. Right? Like and whether that's you're speeding up calls, right, or or having more calls you know, more calls, and you're and you're decreasing the sort of the time of each call, whether you're deflecting sort of a call altogether. Um, all of this, if that's sort of the the use case you're trying to achieve, super measurable, scalable, and and quantifiable, and there's real value there. I mean, the ROI is is off the charts. Right? If you think about, like, the average phone call costing $4, an escalation's probably more, let's just say, a 150 to 250. An executive escalation could be thousand bucks plus. Right? So, like, if you're taking that cost out of your out of the system, the ROI is pretty clear. We wouldn't be investing in technologies like yours or others if if the cost wasn't clear. I think as a former buyer, I will say, like, I was always a little hesitant to share ROI with my partners because my the the pricing conversation totally changes right now. Like, if I 10 x the cost, then it's like, you know, I don't wanna be charged, you know, four x, you know, when the when the renewal comes up. But I also think, like, we need to be thinking differently about the metrics that we're using to to quantify value when these actions are already in place. So, like, your traditional average handling time or deflection rate, etcetera, that to me, like, these old ways of of of working or thinking have to have to evolve, for sure.

[00:10:19] Nikola Mrkšić: So so I think it'd be probably very interesting for our audience. Like, you sit down at a party with someone, and they tell you that they're, like, a CX leader. Right? And, like, what's the first metric you're interested in? Like, what do you ask them? Like, you know, if they told you two, three sentences around, like, how's it going? What are you what are you running? Like, what do you wanna know?

[00:10:40] Bill Staikos: I would say well, maybe a couple it's not maybe one thing, but I would say, like, you know, how's the relationship with your CIO organization

[00:10:49] Nikola Mrkšić: Mhmm.

[00:10:50] Bill Staikos: Your product and your chief product officer? I'd think about, like, kinda governance and, like, engagement internally. From an outcome perspective, like, I wouldn't be like, oh, how have you improved CSAT or NPS over the last year? I'm I'm thinking, like, how did your organization help, you know, plug the leaky bucket, and what did that what what did that amount to? Right? Or, you know, your company wants to drive revenue. I'm making it up 10% this year. What experiences are you creating or helping your product organization or COO organization create to help achieve that number and accelerate that strategy? So, like, those are the questions I would be asking to understand. You know, are they just survey only, or are they really, like, accountable to helping grow the business?

[00:11:37] Nikola Mrkšić: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's almost a a gauge of seniority where you just said it. Right? Because it's like, how do you fit in the general company objectives? And the governance I I mean, that you know, to be, like, classical, you know, cynical Serbian guy, it's like, the relationship with the CIO, that question is basically, like, can you even do anything at all with new kinds of technology? Right?

[00:11:57] Bill Staikos: Exactly right. Like Yeah.

[00:11:58] Nikola Mrkšić: Yeah. Totally right.

[00:11:59] Bill Staikos: Yeah. Yeah. But I think that's but this is where I mean, and that conversation has changed. Right? I mean, I think five years ago, I wrote a post, I'm paraphrasing, like, the most important comp as a new CX leader, you have two really important lunches or coffees to have. One, your CHRO so you can connect CX and EX, the employee experience, and the other is with your CFO. Right? The last 12 have proven, like, yes, we still need to quantify and drive business outcomes, but, like, how is all this technology fitting together to deliver a better experience versus achieving results in the silos of your organization? Right?

[00:12:37] Nikola Mrkšić: Yep. No. I mean, the CIO, we're living in an era of, like, the rise of the commercially minded CIO who I think many of them are the future CEOs of those companies. Right? And I've seen them do things for us as we implemented where they just take over the conversation. And often I mean, I have a huge empathy. And, you know, we started the company selling to business leaders. Right? So customer experience, the reporting line mostly of the of the chief operating officer. And to this day, that's our, like, champion. Right? Increasingly, as AI became hot and we as, like, you know I don't know if you know our genesis story, but we're basically three deep learning researchers that started company long before it was clear that this was gonna happen. So pre l, but then, you know, very quickly, post l, we, Brian, the first l l m powered large scale Yeah. Voice agents or regular the I think the the thing we did with PG and E was the first, like, heavyweight complex, LLM powered thing. But what I found really interesting is that that business buyer used to have to move mountains internally, and the CFO would be an ally, exactly like you said. And between those two, The tech org almost didn't wanna touch the CX org. Right? Like, my joke is, like, is your phone working? Cool. You can log in to Salesforce or whatever. It's a record. Is it working? Cool. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Goodbye. Right? And that's kinda like where a lot of those transformations ended up being led by SI's, by other kinda, like, vendors who people who could do what you are doing and talking about, kinda, like, maybe put together a whole, like, business case for a $200,000,000 investment into new technology, new piping, like, BPO contract renegotiations. Like, hugely complicated things. Do you think with AI? Because, like, I think that, like, that CIO being part of the conversation is really important for new AI technologies to get in. I think the fact that the other large software vendors are getting more invested, both like systems of record and hyperscalers, is good because they are the ones that work in tandem with that CIO. But in this new age of AI, is it actually easier to prove that value? Because I don't think it is. I think it's just as hard as it worked before.

[00:14:49] Bill Staikos: I think it depends on where you start. Right? Like like, the super quantifiable spaces for me are where there's direct interaction with the end customer. So I think, like, immediately, my brain goes to sales. It goes to service. Right? And those are, like, really important interaction layers from an experiential perspective as well because having the most conversations with with your customers as an example. The digital space, I think, is a really interesting next kind of phase where you can start to orchestrate in real time digital experiences based on, you know, AI. Right? Like, literally, you know, changing rates on a website, changing you know, nudging a customer down a happy path. Eventually, even, like, now, like, you know, creating real time sort of, like, changes to a website or an app, like, so that customer you know, based on, like, you know, friction detection, so that customer can go achieve, you know, whatever the job to be done is. So, like, to me, like, that's where, like, you'll start we're starting to see more and more impact, one, because it's there's just a lot of data around these in these areas. There will be sales and service still largely human driven, and that's and it's all very quantifiable. So now as you get into, like, spaces like the CFO organization or you get into spaces, even sometimes operations, right, like, we forget, like, product and fulfillment back are are connected. Right? So, like, we'll start to get smarter about those connections inside the walls of the company, and then how do we apply AI to measurably improve those areas. I just think right now, like, it's the interaction layer is super easy to quantify, and that's kinda where we see a lot of these capabilities turning up.

[00:16:33] Nikola Mrkšić: A 100%. I mean, I you know, I've always had these three pillars, and I've always you know, the there's growing revenue. There's cutting costs. There's improving customer experience. And I'd say that for all of our customers, we do at least two of those. Right? And sometimes all three. But the revenue ones are the easiest to quantify. It's where sales happens faster. It's mostly sales. Right? Because we're, like, taking appointments. We're, like, placing outbound calls for following through on an order or something like that. So those have been super, like, easy for the stakeholders to get behind for because, you know, a dollar earned is greater than a dollar saved.

[00:17:10] Bill Staikos: And every company has a leaky bucket. Right? I've no company on Earth has solid revenue and and no leakage. Right? So, like, from an experience perspective, like, I like, any role that I've been on the industry side, that's exactly where I start first. Like, show me how the dollar kind of flows through our systems, and how does each how does that touch from the customer all the way back out? And that, to me, is is super important to be able to identify and map out because then you can then say, okay. From an experience perspective, here's where there's friction, and here's where we're gonna go focus. Like, it's an it's an easy way to prioritize. So I love that. The other things that I would say, like, you know, from experiential perspective, like, risk is another big category, and, certainly, what you guys are doing helps reduce risk. But then also, like, how does culture improve as a result of the of these capabilities? Right? We're giving time back to people, or we're we're upskilling them because now the calls are different. Right? You've changed the shape of the interaction almost as a result. Right? So, like, what's happening there now? And I I think there's real sort of value there that I think it's tough to quantify, but but I think is happening, and I think we need to be paying more attention to it.

[00:18:22] Nikola Mrkšić: That's a really good point. I mean, I really like the way that you're outlining it all as, like, the whole, like, you know, money flowing through the customer journey, etcetera. Because I feel like there's probably two categories of companies. I feel like the one you're describing is probably in the minority. Right? But it's really where they should be thinking of it as fulfillment. Right? And, like, you mentioned, like, the chief product officer. I mean, in tech companies, we always have CPOs in there, but hugely important role. But but, you know, we ship products. Right? And I think that's very much, like, our notation. But when you look at, like, the real world economy, there isn't always really, like, a product product. Because, like, everything's a product. Like, if you're, like, you know, if you're Yeah.

[00:19:03] Bill Staikos: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:19:04] Nikola Mrkšić: You're the ones who you're doing. Right? But I feel like for the other companies, the contact center became that, like, failure management. And it's like, deal with it. Right? Like, are you picking up fast enough? What's your SLA? Are ninety percent of the people getting served within one minute? AHT is measured more so to control the BPO, not overcharging than anything else. Right? Employee experience, they don't even care. Right? Although, really, they should because it will directly impact how good those calls are. Right. Feels like where you kinda, like, move shift closer to your worldview. And I think, hopefully, with AI, we we've seen our champions get promoted and promoted and very quickly start to kinda, like you know, often now, we have a large retailer we're working with. And we did the usual things, like, where is the order, like, a few other things. Right? Even branches of the of the retail shops. Right? And then we start doing outbound calling for customers that haven't placed an order or have expressed some interest, but haven't actually do it. And the ROI just piqued. Right? And, basically, because they have more time, they're starting to kinda, like, just reach out and do more of what the rest of the company used to do. And they don't have enough sellers there. They have sellers for those clients that are definitely gonna buy. Right? But kinda like the elasticity of how how you extend that service really changes, and then they make a lot more money. But do you because I mean, I'm curious how you feel about the whole, like, evolution of a CX leader. And do you think that the silos get a little bit and they all become product, or is it kind of, like, more of a you know?

[00:20:44] Bill Staikos: Yeah. It's a good question. I think people love their silos. Um, they're a comfortable place. Right? Like, the COO CIO's got theirs, you know, CIO, CTO, CF Yeah. Yeah. Etcetera. For me, I think the comp like, when I see, like, a company get it and leveraging these sort of, you know, what they'll call them, emerging capabilities, it's the ones that are connecting the silos versus, like, the like, the term that I there's a couple of terms I really deplore. One of those is, like, breaking down the silos. Like, it doesn't happen. Like, it's like omnichannel. Like, okay, folks. Let's move on. Right? I think they're connecting horizontally, though, whether that's a business or a product. You know, product led companies are great examples. Right? Like, you know, think of a bank. So I have auto. I have home lending. I have credit card, etcetera. These are all lending products. Like, you can underwrite you create an underwriting layer across all all three of those business lines. Right? So, like and then leveraging kit like and there's a journey that you go through. So, like, if you can leverage sort of AI to kind of help a client sort of go through that underwriting journey, you can solve a lot of problems and and reduce costs, right, because you're you're scaling on. So, like, for me, I think it's about sort of how do you connect the silos and start thinking about these capabilities more horizontally across the organization and where can you where can you scale horizontal from a horizontal perspective.

[00:22:12] Nikola Mrkšić: Yeah. You also mentioned, I think, previously that really high performing CX function should be driving a percentage or two, I think, of, like, the revenue of the company. Can you tell us a bit more about that?

[00:22:26] Bill Staikos: Uh, for me, that's like, I'm trying to change the conversation. Right? And I think that that one to 2% for me is about changing the conversation more than anything. Right? So, like, I look at CX as an outcome function, not a reporting function. Right now, unfortunately, too many CX functions are reporting functions. Right? I do my my quarterly NPS, and I deliver a power Point to the business, and we look at themes that are impacting NPS. Okay? Well, I can't show outcomes at scale. Right? It's usually because either as an organization, I don't have enough people, so I'm spread too thin. I'm measuring too much maybe, and that's largely through surveys, or I'm I'm not fixing enough. Right? So, like, so for me, like, the one to 2% maybe is more of a benchmark, but, like, you know, some years, it's higher, some years, it's lower. Like, you know, I've I've doubled that in some years in in different organizations. But I've I've to me, like, I'm trying to change the conversation around think in financial terms, not in experiential terms, NPS, CSAT, customer effort. Like, these are these are reports. These you know, you don't and by the way, as a CX leader, I have no control over an NPS. I can I can measure it? I can ask the question, but I've I've no control whatsoever over them spin.

[00:23:42] Nikola Mrkšić: Yep. No. No. I've I've I've had that many many a time where, you know, our deployments have both benefited and not benefited from, like, changes that are happening. Right? Sometimes you start measuring something and you uncover a whole, you know, a new slew of problems that just weren't prominent. They were there. They just weren't prominent. Right? And then you start automating, and you realize that there's a myriad of things that people are complaining about. But those few metrics that were reported on every year Yep. Very deliberately are not never reported on that. And that, you know, almost, like, it's AI gets blamed for that. It's like, well, actually, you know, you should probably fix this. And the upstream positive impact to the company might be, like, 50% more revenue. Right?

[00:24:20] Bill Staikos: Totally right. Right? Like, look and, like, I I've been lucky to work at a lot of big companies. Right? There there's always at the same few levers that show up again and again and again. Right? Like, we talked about them before, retention, expansion, cost to serve, risk. Like and when you quantify the impact of fixing some of the top drivers of customer of, like, whatever the friction is impacting the customer, it always lands in that kind of range. Right? And if you do well and you focus on the right problems, you know, I think I think you have an opportunity to impact that 2%. Like, at a large bank that I used to work for, we took the top 52 complaints by volume. And each week, we sat down with the CEO of the mortgage business, and we we started at the top. And we said, here's the root cause. Here's what it's costing our company. Here's how it shows up from an experience perspective for our for our borrower and customer, and here's the owner of that. What's and we brought them into the room. The first meeting was super scary because they thought that they were gonna get fired because they had the most complaints in their business. But what they them. The CEO goes, what do you need from me to fix this problem and make it go away? Because it was cost millions and millions of dollars. Right? So, like, once you have that once you change that frame and you say, how do we fix this and what do we need as a business to improve? Like, fundamentally changes the way and perspective of of of leaders across the organization.

[00:25:40] Nikola Mrkšić: Yeah. I mean, like, you know, the whole, like, voice of the customer, you know, surveys and, you know, millions and millions spent on, like, figuring out what customers want. When you when you spend, like, you know, if you think of, like, one of those largest banks in America, I think, like, reliably, three to 400,000,000 calls a year. Right? Yeah. And that's like, hey. You can ask whatever you want. Right? And I think where we've had a lot of success with our AI deployments is that, you know, I understand why they didn't launch those initiatives. The humans are overworked. Maybe they don't even work for them directly. Right? If you if you want to run 10 parallel experiments, which is nothing for an org of that size, but still if you wanted to make sure that you ask that question often when it comes and it comes in frequently, that means a lot of people have to kinda, like, have in their back pocket an a or b flip. And, like, rolling that out to a human org, you know, I think of, like, you know, the kinda, like, chef's roll call in a restaurant. It's like you have three minutes. Tonight, well, they ask you about this product, say this, but you guys say that. And that that that two seconds later, no one's listening to anything. Right? So it's really hard to roll it out. And with AI, you can do it like, you can program it into the AI system and then get, like you know, a lot of our new dashboards, I was just looking one of them. Like, you see the trend, and then you see the confidence interval. Right? And that's, like, you know, I my my my soul sings when, you know, see a book where Gaussian processes from my PhD there. And I'm like, finally, we can actually give people, like, a simple visual way to know whether something is a statistically significant thing. But, like, a lot of them, that just never get done. I think you doing that is really kinda like you're taking on the mantle of COO. Right? Or I think you're enough of the COO. It's not just a traditional CRT business. Right?

[00:27:25] Bill Staikos: No. No. For sure not. Alright? Like, I've been really fortunate to have leaders in my career that pushed me to think differently. I'm I, you know, I try and think differently just I mean, just I look at a lot of other industries and what people are doing, not in CX, but in other occupations and say, how do I then create the parallel in CX? So, like, you know, that, I think, is a little bit different. Yeah. I think c CX, though, can be sort of that that driving accelerator in an organization. And I'll just but a lot of companies don't see that function that way, partly because, again, it's like, we'll run the surveys or but, like, then change the conversation. As a CX leader, like, it's your responsibility. You can't say the business doesn't get it. That's on you as a CX leader. Right? So

[00:28:12] Nikola Mrkšić: Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. How are you how are you seeing, like, the attitude towards AI shift over the past two years in CX?

[00:28:18] Bill Staikos: I think well, that that's a great question.

[00:28:20] Nikola Mrkšić: We're more excited. Everyone's doing it. Everybody has to blah blah blah. Yeah. Well, like, really, like, people sit down. Are they just tired of how much it's like or, you know, like, the real human feeling towards it?

[00:28:32] Bill Staikos: I think that there's just a lot of uncertainty, frankly, in what what is it really meant to do, and how should we be using this? Be right. Because, like, if you think about, like, a couple years ago, everyone was so focused on sort of the efficiency play. Right? Even about a year and a half ago, people were like, okay. The efficiency play is interesting, but, like, how do we accelerate growth with this capability? Right? So that can change the conversation again a little bit. Unfortunately, like, a lot most I'm just gonna I'm gonna generalize here. Maybe not as the best thing, but, like, unfortunately, most CX leaders are not in the AI conversation, which is kinda bizarre to me. Right? Because when you think about, like, text analytics, it's old tech, but it's AI. It's a form of AI. But we but CX leaders never talk to the business to say, well, I've been using AI for ten, fifteen years. Here's how. Right? So, like, I think that now we're kinda coming back to the table to say and that's why I asked, like, how is your relationship with the CIO and and others? Like, we're coming back to say, look. Like, how do we not humanize this tech, but, like, how do we think about this capability to amplify the employees in the company, or how do we use this capability to amplify the great experiences that we've already achieved as a company, right, versus holding that, you know, customer sort of, you know, at bay. So I think they that CX leaders have a real opportunity to really a really big wedge to get back into that conversation. I just I'm still not seeing it. I still see a lot of, like, I'm using AI to, like, expedite insights or get faster insights. Who cares? Like, it's if if it's not increasing the velocity of action, it's just a it's right? It's like, who cares?

[00:30:08] Nikola Mrkšić: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. If you had to bet, like, you know, ten years from now, like, you look at a contact center and its shape, like, how do you think it compares to today's contact center?

[00:30:17] Bill Staikos: Definitely smaller. I think that they're probably over the next couple years, I think that there's gonna be, like, a big coming to Jesus at the enterprise level, meaning that some company's gonna put AI where it shouldn't be, where a human really needs to be the central figure in that in that relationship. Like, I come out of financial services largely, like a mortgage foreclosure. Like, someone's a new house. Like, don't put an AI in front of that person. Right? I think that's gonna happen, and I think so, like, I I think that there are gonna be always experiences that will require humans and always experiences where you can put technology in front. And as consumers get more comfortable with the tech, you know, I think, you know, that'll be that that trust factor will continue to increase.

[00:31:01] Nikola Mrkšić: So highly Yeah.

[00:31:02] Bill Staikos: Yeah. Highly complex, nuanced kind of problems which require a lot of specialization.

[00:31:09] Nikola Mrkšić: Yeah. Yeah. And judgments. Yeah. I I agree with those. I mean, I think, like, the other part that that I'm seeing I'm seeing it even at PolyAI. Right? The technical people and it doesn't necessarily mean that they're, like, technical by education, but really just people who are able to learn, right, and are willing to learn are about to have, like, phenomenal careers because they are the conduits for all of this. Right? And we've seen this with a lot of our champions, and they're kinda like tier two agents that are willing to learn and use these things because they become the orchestrators of a virtually infinite workforce that is simultaneously very smart and completely clueless in that it's AI. Right? So it can do fantastic things, and it can make catastrophic errors all at once. And it's really down to, like, the judgment of that air traffic control Yeah. And the programmers. And they are programmers even though they're writing natural language. Right? It will be down to those people getting upskilled and trusted. And I think I was just saying, like, betting on the right steps to take in the automation journey. But my read of this whole thing is that we're probably having you know, it could happen more slowly or more quickly, but I think, like, the top 10% of the people in a contact center are gonna get paid way more.

[00:32:24] Bill Staikos: Oh, right. I'm totally 100%.

[00:32:26] Nikola Mrkšić: And I'm still fighting for that because, like, the the people working there who are, like, working day in and out, high empathy patients, they're basically, like, in the early years of their job when they're on the phones. They're just taking abuse in every other phone call. Right? And it's like, I just really want that person to have a great life and, like, you know, real kinda, like, that through the organization. And I think, like, the the other part of that is exactly what you're saying. It's, like, getting them interested in, like, the business at large so that they can be COO, CEO on that. Right?

[00:32:56] Bill Staikos: Yeah. Look. I think, you know, this is not my line, but it's a close friend. They always say that your employees' behavior is your customers' experience. Right?

[00:33:05] Nikola Mrkšić: Mhmm.

[00:33:05] Bill Staikos: Well, like so think about sort of those all stars in the in the contact center today or anywhere in the company. Right? They're they're innovating. They're trying new things. They're being open about sort of different capabilities. They start to understand where are the limitations, where are their own limitations, and being honest about those. Right? And then how do I use this to and being honest about those. Right? And then, how do I use this to amplify, like, my value? Like, I totally agree, man. Like, I think that there's gonna be a time, let's just say, over the next three, maybe five years, where that that's really gonna start to shift more and more, and you're gonna see sort of, like, this different class of employee start to take shape in that organization. And they're gonna they're gonna multiply. They're gonna scale themselves. Right?

[00:33:45] Nikola Mrkšić: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No. Absolutely. Maybe Maybe just to kinda, like, wrap it up, talking with those people that are, like, learning and trying out new things, uh, with AI. What is, like, the most exciting way that you're using AI agents in your kinda, like, daily working life?

[00:33:57] Bill Staikos: Well, I I pay for ChatGPT. I pay the for the pro model. I've been doing more and more with codecs. I've paid for Gemini, but that's more because I run my business on Google, so it kind of, like, has benefits. I don't use Gemini that much. And now just kinda given sort of the like, how much has gone to to Claude, obviously, like, I've I pay for that as well, not for their pro model, but I do pay for that and start exploring more and more with co work. I've just I started off with with OpenAI capabilities. I'm very comfortable with them. I Yep. Won't use them, like, whatever the statistic was. I'm probably, like, in the point 01% of use of AI generally anyway at this point. So, like, for me, it's important to play with everything and see what sticks and maybe even use them. Like, there are different tools for different purposes, and, like, I'm just trying to figure out, like, which one is fit for purpose of the right things.

[00:34:51] Nikola Mrkšić: Yeah. Yeah. I think for us, yeah, we're we're really trying to package up a lot of what can be done with coding tools into the platforms. And that's, like, you know, a few bridges too far for the contact center right now. But we're getting pretty close to having an ability to run those experiments that I talked about just with, like, language. Right? And then kinda, like, feeding that that back into, like, meaningful analysis back up to the to their bosses and stuff. Because Yeah. It's really interesting because we see, like, probably 10% of the people, they're really thirsty for it. They've been trying all these tools, and we give them something. Yeah. And they around, and we know what we need to build next immediately. But there is, like, a big chunk of people, probably at least half, where I think there's just this, like, deer in headlights women were all was being shamed for not using it. And because of that, they're too afraid to even ask so they can get started. So that cold start is really, really big in a lot of works we work with.

[00:35:48] Bill Staikos: I think that like, I in a past life, I saw that everybody was given Chatsopiti. Okay? Nobody was using it, but, you know, the company's like, great. Everyone's got it. You know, tens of thousands of employees. Fantastic. Nobody was using it because, like, either they were afraid that it was gonna take their job, and if I put stuff in it, like, then, you know, I'd look across it, like, someone used them to, like, what am I have what should I have for dinner tonight? Here's what's in my refrigerator. Okay. Fine. But, like, not really what the company intended. I think there is, like, change management and change leadership that really needs to be put into place for a lot of enterprises so all of your employees can start to understand, how do I use this in my day to day to amplify my work? And not and where I use the word judgment before, which I think is just such a critical term. Like, how do I use judgment and my understanding of my job to automate the parts that I can't stand anyway to give me that capacity and that space, like, create learning or or more space for learning maybe in my day to day?

[00:36:47] Nikola Mrkšić: Yeah. Yep. Yep. Bill. No. A 100%. Quote, Bill, I think we're out of time, but I really appreciate you joining our podcast. To everyone watching, please like, share, subscribe, and look forward to seeing you in the next one.

[00:37:00] Bill Staikos: Yeah. This was a great conversation. I appreciate you having me on. It was a lot of fun.

[00:37:04] Nikola Mrkšić: Yeah. No. We should do it again. I think that, like, we need to write out that equation of, you know, CX to revenue, and I don't think we got there in this one. So

[00:37:11] Bill Staikos: We can spend easily an hour on that one, man, for sure.

[00:37:14] Nikola Mrkšić: Alright. Alright. We'll work that in as well. Thank you. Have a great day.