Speaker0:
[0:00] She’s like a chuckle.
Speaker1:
[0:01] Yep. Go ahead.
Speaker0:
[0:04] And, uh, pretty, pretty. And anyway, I was like, well, we’re out of chocolate. She’s like, give me, give me some, give me a bowl of marshmallows. And I’m going, that’s like the plan I can give you. I should just pour sugar in a bowl. And they survive.
Speaker1:
[0:18] I mean, so let me get this straight. See, in my household, you go to use the marshmallows. What do you, what do you have marshmallows for? Anyways, you have marshmallows for hot chocolate. you have marshmallows for s’mores if they’re the big ones you have marshmallows for rice crispy squares what else would you use them for i
Speaker0:
[0:38] Don’t know so you made homemade twinkies and tried to do.
Speaker1:
[0:41] That okay okay so when we go to use said marshmallows they’re gone there’s like a bag with a hole ripped in it and like one left with a bite out of it so the fact that you had them shows that you have at least they were there that’s
Speaker0:
[0:59] True they’re on the top shelf so little people can’t grab them themselves and uh.
Speaker1:
[1:04] Yeah anyway how old is she how old is she he’s
Speaker0:
[1:08] Five she just started kindergarten so.
Speaker1:
[1:10] Okay yeah like half the knobs on my on my uh um cabinets are broken off because the kids figure out how to wrap their little toes around it and climb like They’re scaling a building or a mountain or something to get into these top shelves. It doesn’t work. I’ve tried to hide. We’ve tried to hide the chocolate chips. We’ve tried to hide. And every time you go like, oh, who stole that? And it was not me. Not me. It was him. No, it was him. It was her. Okay, excellent. All right.
Speaker1:
[1:43] Everyone out there listening, welcome back to Dissecting Popular IT Nerds. Jason Conley, hoping I’m pronouncing that right and phonetically doing this correctly, Chief Technology Officer, Vice President of Products and Engineering and Technology. Either way, Chief Technology Officer, and I’m excited to have you on the show for a couple reasons. Number one, you are one of the few, it’s a rarity that we find someone that is a CTO, CEO, CIO, IT director, VP of IT, whatever, with an extensive background in telecom that really understands telecom. Telecom is usually the, I don’t know, what do we call it? Redheaded stepchild, hated part portion of the business. People don’t necessarily always love that, but you…
Speaker1:
[2:32] Kind of really know it well is that a safe is that a fair statement well
Speaker0:
[2:36] It’s a fair statement and actually you know things get uh dismissed when they become just expected to be there like utilities your electricity goes out guess what oh it’s a big deal but uh nobody thinks that you know electricity is uh you know this uh sexy thing that uh you know uh any anymore guess what when it goes off everybody’s like oh my gosh how could this be possible.
Speaker1:
[2:59] Yes yes and it does happen or it’s uh so telecom if i was to survey and just guess i’m assuming it is either a siloed product in many organizations or it’s a oh no we migrated to teams uh a couple years ago and we don’t even think about that anymore or it’s uh we’re on some sort of ucas product of some sort but you are in a much bigger larger more important space like the cx space or customer experience space with large contact centers and we i don’t think we’ve done i don’t think we’ve ever done a show on technology and contact center and that’s usually because i would say that most it directors are not in charge of the contact center that’s it’s like like their director of operations or it’s their marketing director or it’s some it’s some other person and then eventually someone makes a decision about the contact center and then they go to it and they’re like, Hey, we don’t let you know, we’ve, we’ve got this new product. It’s got to be implemented and you need to be involved in some way, shape or form, because this thing plugs into the network. Does that, is this accurate? Am I, am I summarizing this somewhat correctly?
Speaker0:
[4:12] No, you’re summarizing that pretty correctly. That’s the normal, normal, normal, normal MO and essentially tech, you know, technology, IT only gets tar, you know, slapped with it. It’s like, well, it plugs in. You guys are the ones who deal with, you know, essentially electronics, you know. I mean, to be honest with you, I like introducing myself. I’m just the guy you blame for anything that plugs in that doesn’t work, you know. And it’s kind of true when you start thinking about it, right? It’s like every piece of technology outside of, you know, utilities is really, you know, should go to the it teams.
Speaker1:
[4:49] Yeah i joke but i can’t remember who it was where they they’ve actually gotten a ticket entered into the system you know it department before because the the men’s hand dryer in the bathroom was not working anymore or the hvac or you know something to do with like a lot of hvac tickets come into it department ticketing systems and i’m sure there’s people out there that can relate.
Speaker1:
[5:15] Some of the feedback we’ve been getting from guests is that we need to be more, we want to break up the show more and be very, what is the word? Why is it escaping my mind this morning?
Speaker1:
[5:30] Intentional on some of the topics that we speak about. So my first question to you, and I think it goes very much in alignment with what we just talked about, because, you know, why would IT be a second thought or a third thought when they’re the department that nothing gets done in the business without IT being involved? So they should probably be at the forefront rather than kind of the more of a backseat driver in some places. But how do you align? And in this case, and CX is a good example because it touches various different departments, probably HR, I’m thinking marketing, you know, you got omni-channel stuff. You’ve got the operations department slash, you know, all kinds of KPIs around customer care.
Speaker1:
[6:14] So you’ve got multiple different departments, all with different objectives, but one product that has to meet all these different objectives and all these different people’s uh, uh, wishes, wants, desires. So how do you align as a, you know, CTO, how do you align business objectives with all the different executive personalities, right? When they’re all thinking, they’re probably all thinking different things. What’s, what are your thoughts there or action steps or things that people can actually do to, because this affects, it doesn’t matter whether you have a contact center or not. It could be a ERP upgrade. It could be any number of things, right? How do you align business objectives with all the different executive personalities?
Speaker0:
[7:09] First off, you’ve got to understand what essentially their goal is, right?
Speaker0:
[7:14] So different roles, different executives, you know, the personas. The CFO is always, how can I get this, you know, how can I essentially lower my cost structure while achieving the same results? You’ve got CEOs or chief revenue officers, depending on how your organization is structured, that they want to drive growth, revenue, right? And some of that actually to this point starts with contact center, depending upon what line of, essentially, industry that you’re in. But there’s that touch point to your customers no matter what, and that’s kind of the heart of the contact center.
Speaker0:
[7:51] And then you’ve got your COOs who essentially want the cheapest and most operationally efficient that they can get. Those are all different mindsets. I think the one thing I would say to you, you actually said, you know, steering from the back or, you know, secondary thought. I think the real thing that we, you know, you’ll see this and actually we’ve seen some CEOs come from being CIOs and CTOs now outside of big tech. Right. So I think you’re seeing a shift out there is technology is becoming more and more strategic in every organization. And the key is you know to your point how do you you know essentially support business objectives uh you know and then of course there is the selfish part of this that each you know, executive persona that we just talked about has a different goal per se so you know you have to essentially go okay how can i swiss arming off this enough without diluting it on each of the fronts and then of course at some point you’ve got to think about okay what is the real goal of the organization, right? Because at some point, it’s like we are in a growth mindset. So guess what? The CRO, the CEO, whoever’s driving growth in the organization is going to have a little bit more.
Speaker0:
[9:06] Let’s just say a larger slice of the pie than, say, your CFO and your COO, depending upon how the organization is going. But you’ve still got to focus on that. In contact center, CX technology is at the center of this. Because, one, how much can you automate from a customer engagement? But then also, how much revenue and essentially customer retention can you have with the proper setup? And then, of course, your CFOs, you know, look at the contracts, you know, to make sure you get the best bang for your buck as far as, you know, what you’re spending upon. And that’s also from a labor standpoint as well, because, you know, modern CX technology does allow you to do a decent amount of automation. You know, we’re not to the point where we’ll be completely automated. Maybe never. That’s a whole different conversation. conversation but uh essentially you know cx is really the heart and soul of customer engagement and in my case patient engagement.
Speaker1:
[10:06] It and it is one of the few technology products where you can actually make more money save more money and be efficient all at the same time because you’ve got workforce management that can tie into it you’ve got obviously i don’t know um some real and we We could talk about this later on real AI use cases that are not, you know, overhyped, but actual real AI use cases that can help significantly move the bar from a KPI standpoint. And yeah, and then you can increase, obviously, like you said, in your case, patient engagement or customer engagement, and probably get quite a bit of data and analytics that would help.
Speaker1:
[10:52] I don’t know if you’re upselling you’re not really upselling in the medical world but you know in other places if it was the
Speaker1:
[11:00] Golf bag seller guys then they could see that he was looking at a driver earlier on in the website and hey I saw you looking at the new drivers would you like to add a new driver on at the same time and we’ll give you free shipping I don’t know these are just my thoughts now the key piece though is, why are technology decisions being made without you or without the IT director or CTO? How do we avoid that to begin with? Because a lot of times it might come out of left field, so to speak. Hey, we got this new product. We need you guys to implement it. How do we avoid that to begin with some, I don’t know, some advice for the listeners out there?
Speaker0:
[11:51] I would say that one, you’ve got to build essentially a collaborative mindset. You can’t just be the guy going, hey, I know best in technology and nobody else’s opinion matters, right? We’ve all been in those situations where somebody’s like dictating to a certain degree. So essentially, you know, building those relationships with your CFOs, or COOs, directors, VPs throughout the organization. So it’s like, I have this problem. Essentially, you want your IT organization, your technology group to be looked at as a solution provider problem solver, right? And then another thing that you’ve got to do at the CEO level or however high you need to go is to essentially make everybody understand that technology is strategic in this organization. So that’s how you get a C at the big kids table was the way I always like to say it. Because we’ve seen tons of organizations where CIOs report to CFOs, right? That’s not, you can just signal essentially that you’re not, technology is not strategic to your organization by burying that. Because think about that, right? What’s the CFO want to do? CFO wants to make sure that they get the best bang for their budget and keep their cost structures in alignment with the budget.
Speaker1:
[13:10] What would the opposite of that be? So if technology is reporting to the CFO, then if technology is not strategic in your organization, then what would we call technology there? I’m looking for a title to this show. Let me just be honest. Is technology strategic in your organization, or is it a cost center, I guess? I guess we could just say cost center.
Speaker0:
[13:40] I was going to say shared service.
Speaker1:
[13:42] Oh. Shared service. That doesn’t sound negative enough for me.
Speaker0:
[13:47] No, no, no. No, I think it’s something in that vein of cost center. You know, essentially, is IT overhead or is IT strategic?
Speaker1:
[13:59] Oh, overhead. I like that. Yeah. So you mentioned, you know, basically, is IT a solution provider? Is it a problem solver?
Speaker0:
[14:13] Or an enabler.
Speaker1:
[14:15] Enabler. I like that. Strategic enabler. All these positive words today.
Speaker0:
[14:22] Don’t worry.
Speaker1:
[14:24] Since you are, can you give us a, can you give us a, i want to do for for people out there that that may not have uh you know telecom experience they may have never uh never used a punch down tool and a punch down block or or a butt set you know like that have you ever used a butt set uh okay see you know this is like and for those of you that’s like you know the little thing with the little wires on it that used to launch the little rockets off into space with, you know, the, you know, the old SDs rockets, you know, except you’re listening in on telephone calls. That was like the, that was like the old hacker that you’ve seen the old movies. But, uh, any who, if you were to do a solution scoping training session and you had a bunch of, uh, CTO, CFOs, IT directors in the room that, uh, hated telecom and never did telecom, but they had to be, they had to do telecom now. How would you teach a solution scoping session, where would they begin? What would the A, B, C, through Z of the solution scoping session be?
Speaker0:
[15:32] Hmm. First thing I would I mean, I would go straight to, I mean, what’s the biggest sin of technology? You don’t actually understand the requirements. You just try to find a solution before you understand the requirements. Oh. So the first thing I would say is you have to understand essentially how the business is going to use a CX or could use CX to essentially solve problems, Business challenges, the best way to say it. It’s not just a phone system.
Speaker0:
[16:04] It’s so much more than that, too, essentially. It’s like, oh, I picked up the phone and called Bob over at the other site and talked to him. That’s not what it’s about. I mean, that really is more, it’s a collaboration tool at that point. Okay, well, there’s a lot of ways to solve a collaboration tool. To your point, you could just use Teams and spend an X number of hundreds of thousands, is not millions of dollars on a CX solution to so Bob can pick up the phone and call Bob. So the X solution, you know, essentially it’s like, okay, are we looking to essentially centralize some functions, right? Because essentially the whole promise of CX is to aggregate all this instead of having, you know, one phone number and a bunch of people to sit around and
Speaker0:
[16:45] answer calls that come in. Yeah, don’t get me wrong. Calls are a big part of it. But there’s, you know, in this day and age of omnichannel, it’s like okay how do we interact with each other and our clients and that’s i think of when i think about cx and then you figure out what pieces and parts of current cx technology essentially would allow you to achieve the results you’re looking for so it all comes back to the requirements you know and this is you know us technologists always think we have the best answer we know exactly how to solve this problem do we you should actually listen to the people that actually have to use it you know this goes to requirements it goes to a product management mindset that frankly i you know my title cto so half the time i feel like a cpo trying to understand.
Speaker0:
[17:32] Essentially what what’s the challenge is experiencing you know and i know product management is something kind of new and you know and mainstream outside of you know big tech tech companies but i find that frankly if you don’t understand the pulse of people who use the tech what what are you doing right i mean it’s you you should don’t get me wrong you’re not going to make it perfect and not have people complain about x y and z you gotta you’ve got to try to get the pulse of essentially the people that use the technology and think about you know we’re talking about cx technology guess what contact center agents um you know they they have maybe a much more complicated tech stack than most people understand it’s probably the best way to say especially in the omni-channel world.
Speaker1:
[18:23] Okay, so that’s two things we need to break down. One, where do you start? I love the old, hey, when it comes to our current phone system or whatever, X, Y, Z, fill in the blank. What’s your biggest frustrations, problems, and concerns? Leave open blank space for them to type as much as they want. I love that. You know what I mean? What do you love about the current whatever CX system? Them what do you hate about it so that we can keep what you love and make what you hate go away right but then there’s all the things that they don’t know that maybe they should know that they could have or that would be beneficial that needs to be kind of layered in as well so are you saying step one is survey and talk with your people and ask them what they love and hate and all that type of stuff because that to me sounds like common sense yeah
Speaker0:
[19:13] No that’s that’s the first step and.
Speaker1:
[19:16] In other words, it’s not respond to a guy on LinkedIn that’s messaging you in your inbox that’s talking about CX. And it just happens to be the right place and the right time for him. And you’re like, yeah, come on in. And then they show up with a team of people in suits and ties around a round table, maybe bring you some lunch. I hope so. Maybe Chipotle. I don’t know. And then the next thing you know, you’re like, okay, so it’s the end of the quarter. what does it take to get you into this new um i don’t know nice in contact ring central five nines uh dial pad am i forgetting anyone what else we’re forgetting here talk
Speaker0:
[19:48] To us genesis.
Speaker1:
[19:49] Cloud yes yes all of this stuff uh you know before the end of the month and if you act right now we’re gonna get you in and don’t worry we’re gonna install the whole thing it’s gonna be great and we’re gonna train all the people and then you you you sinned you sinned you committed the greatest sin which is bringing a solution before knowing the requirements and knowing your people. So we’re going to serve our people, ask the questions as the first step in the solution scoping session. What about the things that they don’t know?
Speaker0:
[20:17] Well, this comes to the user education part, right? This is some of the value you bring as a CTO or whatever title you want to put
Speaker0:
[20:25] against yourself is, guess what? Sometimes the users don’t understand capabilities of technology. They just don’t, right? And that’s not their job. So this is where you put on your business hat, understand what they’re trying to accomplish, and essentially bridge that gap is the best way to say it. And there’s tons of different job titles that do this, but the reality is, is that, you know, how should I put this? Technologists are really good at understanding technology. They’re not necessarily good at understanding the business challenges, right? And when you can actually bridge that gap, that’s a skill set that lots of organizations need.
Speaker1:
[21:04] Uh so we have like an a sub if we were outlining this we need like a one listen and find out oh you’re gonna find out listen and find out and then uh but it would be um Find out what the challenges are, the solutions, the business gaps, and then we’re going to bridge the gap. Break this down for me.
Speaker0:
[21:30] We’re going to bridge the gap of, hey, you’re just wanting no static on your line, right? Okay, well, we can solve that problem probably with your existing provider. Provider but you know um you say oh i want to be able to hit you know the extension number instead of dialing out okay you know and we can solve that with your current stack but it’s literally, you know how should i put that did you know that maybe you don’t have to make any phone calls you could actually handle this via a check component or you know any other omni-channel component or Or let’s just say you’re running a contact center and, for instance.
Speaker0:
[22:09] You know, you’re just, it just calls, you know, nonstop calls. When actually there’s tooling there, you could actually go streamline the peaks out of the cycle, right? You know how this goes. Everybody calls Monday morning. You know, I need, I need, I need, I need an answer to this right now because you just opened up, you know, and I’ve been stewing on this on the weekend. Okay, well, here, schedule a call back at 3 p.m., you know, 4 p.m., right? Right. You know, there’s there’s a lot more tooling there than probably most organizations take advantage of. And they’re, you know, they’re just phones. They just pick up the phone. They get all the calls. They get routed to them. Some of them have AVRs, you know, that you can leverage. But for the most part, there’s a lot of tooling in contact centers that most people don’t even take advantage of because they don’t understand the technology. Everything I’ve just mentioned was circa 2014.
Speaker0:
[23:02] Essentially you know um there’s a potential here for us to you know really uplift and enable omni channel let’s what keep me honest phil 2017 is when only channel really started coming to fruition the current iteration of it.
Speaker1:
[23:19] The oh gosh when did we start talking omni channel as if it was like this hype word it’s a good question um i’ll give you 2015 sure let’s do it uh the you you mentioned a lot of yeah to me that would be like standard scheduled callback um skills-based routing for i don’t know the spanish queue or the special help desk queue or technology, whatever.
Speaker1:
[23:53] Let’s go into the bridging the gap into the unknown a little bit more and talk AI here because there’s some AI cases that really do work in the…
Speaker1:
[24:07] In the cx space to allow for better staffing or to eliminate oh i i’ve seen ai use cases eliminate and maybe even upwards of 60 of the initial calls coming in because if you use the correct reporting and you actually find out well why are people calling us to begin with and depends on the organization you know you’re in health care so you know that probably the majority of the people are calling for directions to their appointment or they’re calling to reschedule an appointment or they’re calling to do the majority of the calls are going to be some fair there’s going to be some level of theme or uh regularity to a certain number of calls right and ai uh can you know immediately are you know i see your appointments on tuesday at 2 30 are you calling for directions or are you calling to reschedule press one or two or is it three or is it other or some i don’t know something like that i’m assuming that ai could eliminate
Speaker1:
[25:18] A number of calls so that the human to human experience that’s very important important, um, does get handled as a priority. So like the, the actual calls that are, that are very important to talk with a person, AKA billing, we need the money.
Speaker1:
[25:37] Let’s be honest, like in the healthcare space, it’s like, I need to collect the money. Right. And I’m not saying that it’s not about customer experience. It is in, in, in patient healthcare and, and, and, and all of that. That’s, that’s what it is ultimately. Right. But how do we, and that’s what the contact center of people are going to be rated on or that’s their KPIs. How does AI in the new space, I guess, relate to all of this and how are we going to bridge the gap to the point where people feel comfortable? Because in reality, the old IVRs of just speak into the phone and tell us what you want and probably 80% of the people are like, customer service, get me an agent, get me someone I can talk to, but, but AI is different now. It’s not going to be that anymore. It’s going to be, it’s actually on another level where it shouldn’t be so, uh, blunky, I guess.
Speaker0:
[26:31] Yeah, no, clunky is the way I would describe it. I mean, it was static is the way I would say it. Very static in the capabilities. And, you know, it’s 2024. So everybody at home, take a drink of your favorite beverage. We’re going to say AI a few times. So that’s my favorite drinking game, by the way, Phil. How many times can you say AI in a conversation? Everybody take a drink. Um but no you’re absolutely correct that uh you know it first off is actually you know, llms modern ai even i’ll use the term generative ai but i have a little bit of issues saying that word because i’m like is it really generating anything from scratch anyway that’s that’s a whole other episode probably that we can maybe if it’s.
Speaker1:
[27:15] Learned i mean it would have to learn yeah are you saying it would have to it would have to learn like this person that’s That’s most likely the age of whatever is going to ask for this. I don’t know. I don’t know. Where’s the nearest CVS? I don’t know. Maybe.
Speaker0:
[27:31] I do think that the term generative is a little bit ahead of its time, but the technology has definitely improved over the past few years with the advent of LLMs. So the thing i hear a lot when i talk to like coos of health systems to your point is i have a hundred thousand calls and i have no idea what goes on in them that’s a perfect use case for ai that’s.
Speaker1:
[27:54] Pretty messed up that’s pretty messed up because they should be able to do that from the old days call recording
Speaker0:
[27:58] Uh no they are recording them from a HIPAA compliance standpoint yeah but they’re not really analyzing them can you.
Speaker1:
[28:06] Really review it fast enough yes like for For example, like even when we look at the mobile device management space, right? Like let’s say you’re an organization with a thousand mobile phones, right? And you’ve got Verizon and AT&T, T-Mobile, whatever. Well, I’ve got my account rep. They review my account, you know, twice a month and save me some money here and there. Can they really review a thousand cell phones or a thousand mobile phones better than a dynamic software? Yeah. I mean, probably not. And then once you introduce AI into it, it could probably really say, well, these users are going to most likely do this because of trends in data or whatever it says. But anyways, moving on. Yes, the old school of IP offices and short tails of the world and my tails of the world. And my thoughts are with you. My thoughts are with you, all of you out there that still have them. We know you have them. We know they’re there because you’re buying equipment on eBay to replace handsets. Nortels, Nortels even. What else do we have? Meridians, Meridians.
Speaker0:
[29:12] Cisco call managers that are on-prem that people like Cisco handle.
Speaker1:
[29:17] Yeah nothing wrong with cisco nobody ever got fired for uh for for choosing cisco they only got hired to run the con we only needed to hire three extra people to run the cisco call manager and put them on salary uh for anyone out there you know the the simplicity is so complex uh
Speaker1:
[29:42] Anyways, yes, so go, move on. So data, AI, and in the contact center space.
Speaker0:
[29:49] So, I mean, it’s a perfect use case, right? I mean, AI can analyze and determine what’s going on in those calls. So, like, in my current company, it’s amazing. You know, most people… You know how context centers work. You get a stack disposition from an agent. That’s what they call ACW, if you’ve ever heard that term thrown around. They have to call work where they literally determine.
Speaker1:
[30:10] You’ve got 30 seconds to type in your notes.
Speaker0:
[30:12] That’s exactly right. What happened and why, right? Well, guess what? First off, you could have an AI determine that for you. One. Two, it’s more accurate.
Speaker1:
[30:22] Dang.
Speaker0:
[30:24] Yeah.
Speaker1:
[30:24] I never thought about that. So ACW time. Remember, we used to get dinged for ACW. Your ACW time was too high today because my first, my first real job over that was like over $10 an hour where I thought I was rich was working at quest wireless mobile. We had, we might’ve had two, 300 people in that contact center. And I remember ACW time was like, you know, big after call work. So you, so the calls come in automatically. Thank you for calling quest wireless. Please give me your 10 digit wireless phone number. How can I help you today? Yeah, my phone’s broken. Can you help me plug in my guys? Whatever. Okay, great. Call’s done. done, you got 30 seconds or you got eight, you got to click ACW. So the timer starts clicking for you to do your notes. And then you come out of ACW and the next call comes in for anyone out there that’s never worked in the contact center. So you’re saying AI can eliminate that and do the notes automatically, not only even more accurately, kind of like a text to speech notes in the thing, summarize it. And anyone that’s used, I don’t know, dial pad or looked at your Zoom transcription description after the call, you’ll see that it says, Phil needs to follow up with so-and-so and with Jason on Tuesday at this time. And Jason needs to first send him the bills and the reports for X, Y, Z. And once he does that, they’re going to send out a, I don’t know, a NDA and whatever it is. I’m assuming that’s what you’re saying. And it’s going to automatically put that into the after call notes. And we’re going to completely eliminate or cut in half ACW time, which means more production more productivity i’m assuming that’s what you’re saying no
Speaker0:
[31:53] That’s exactly what yeah that’s exactly what i’m saying and brilliant a.
Speaker1:
[31:58] Real use case guys a real use case no i mean it’s that saves millions literally millions literally millions
Speaker0:
[32:08] No, it does. I mean, if you extrapolate that over 100,000 calls, let’s just use that example that I cited, right, to where now all the summaries are generated. Think about that. 15 seconds times, or 20 seconds. Let’s say you give the agents a 10-second gap between calls to kept surprise. And you save 20 seconds times 100,000 calls. How many more calls could you take or frankly, how many NFTs could you reduce based off of that?
Speaker1:
[32:42] Wow. That’s 2 million. I should be able to move the decimal point. That’s simple enough math. Why did I use a calculator? That’s one of those moments you’re like, oh, add the zeros. It’s it’s brilliant what else give me more give me more i need more i need more that’s just one example what other what else do we got let’s save people millions today let’s give people the aha moment the telecom aha moment oh it’s not so lame
Speaker0:
[33:10] So automated quality assurance is a thing that has to be done you know for compliance we just talked about every call is recorded and it’d be screen recorded because people work in ehr so if you do something you know in an ehr that’s not and actually said on the phone that, you know, click should be captured from a fear of compliance station. Okay, so just more of a paint the picture for everybody of what happens on these calls.
Speaker1:
[33:40] Yes. He ordered him 50,000 Percocet.
Speaker0:
[33:43] That’s right. I was going to say, Phil, typically an agent wouldn’t have that power.
Speaker1:
[33:49] No, no, but it’s just an extreme. My kids call me, they call me Phil. My friends call me Pot, Phil over the top, that i always use these extreme examples i’m like what do you mean why am i so over the top but that’s that’s an example of phil over the top i guess anyways
Speaker0:
[34:05] Um, so like we were talking about a hundred thousand calls that, you know, the COO doesn’t have any idea what’s happening, right? We find that there’s multiple reasons for a call, right? So it’s like, you can analyze, let’s just say, you know, last 10,000 of them, right? Whatever sampling size you want to look for 20%, like the industry standard
Speaker0:
[34:23] that you see from telecom is you should be doing quality assurance. And if you’re doing quality assurance, you should be doing call and call analytics at the exact same time, because you already have to do the analysis. So it’s the same technology, essentially, because you’re doing speech to text and analyzing everything that goes on in the call. That’s essentially this technology has probably existed for, what, seven, eight years that you can do the speech to text in line like that and analyze the sentiment. Yeah, that’s about right. About, say, six, seven, eight years, depending upon which we’re looking for. Sentiment. Anyway, the point, right? Yeah, sentiment.
Speaker1:
[35:00] And basically using word clouds, word clouds, and highlighting certain words. Certainly, I think the CIA and FBI have been tapping phones and whatever. I’ve just got to throw that in there because in highlighting key words that people say or something like that, I don’t know. That’s what you’re saying, though.
Speaker0:
[35:25] No, that’s what I’m saying. The real power of the data, to your point of what can we automate with current omni-channel and current AI technology, is what goes on in those calls. What workflows make sense to automate? What are people asking about? So, to your example, let’s just say the 100,000 number. We analyze those calls. Well, the one thing that, you know, in my current company that we’ve analyzed is 20, somewhere between 20 and 40% of those calls are what we consider opportunity for automation, meaning that they ask for facility directions. They ask for office hours. They ask for, you know, I mean, this is kind of crazy. We all get SMS reminders all the time, right? About our appointments, you know, confirm your appointment on Tuesday, July 17th, 2025, right? Right. And guess what? People still call in to like literally talk to someone or something. Right. And the something is that I inflect my voice on purpose because modern AI can interact with you. Look up the information you’re requesting and give it back to you without you having to talk to a human. Right that’s all totally possible depending upon you know whatever level of integration that your cx platform has with your you know customer relationship management system or ehr.
Speaker1:
[36:52] And the point is is that it can be realistic and a lot better than the old um the old uh so-called smart IVRs because the opportunity for automation has already been determined. And you’ve created a workflow around that, that one use case, I guess, that makes it much more easy and realistic for the AI to answer those questions. I’m assuming because you know in an appointment reminder or a where is my appointment or the directions to the place or something like that um is a is a fairly simple task uh more simple than like you know kind of like advanced AI or what people are thinking like you know robots that can have you know philosophical conversations or something like that no
Speaker0:
[37:46] That’s that’s right and And like, you know, I think we’ve used the term static before. Before you had to say, you know, these 20 key words to get any action, right? Now you can say, you can talk naturally. Whereas, you know, talk naturally and essentially, you know, the, you know, generative AI will literally be like, okay, you said these five words. So I know these five words should be essentially vectored for this type of response based upon what I have in the data set, right? Right. We’ve probably all heard the term rag. Right. Resource augmented, you know, generation. So the idea being that, you know, let’s just say I have a data set that’s, you know, a couple million items about possibilities that you might ask about. Right. This actually goes to, you know, the same idea. You could automate things like.
Speaker0:
[38:36] Prescription refills, right? You authenticate a patient and you have the complete database of all the medications that are currently in your patient data set. So they literally could be like, I need to renew my Prezodone prescription, right? And it goes, yeah, I know what that is. And then, of course, would use some logic to look up your patient record to make sure it’s actually true that you’ve been prescribed that and you’re within your refill allotment and then you know would automate that and send it potentially to a clinician for approval or for for approval for for refill right i mean that’s that that takes, all the human element out of except for a couple clicks instead of somebody having to talk to that person figure out what they need you know it takes i don’t know 10 minutes by the time you You incorporate what the nurse gets the message, has to read it, gets the…
Speaker1:
[39:35] Let me ask you this, because this came up the other day. Can AI be a double-edged sword? Could someone use AI? For example, I’ve mimicked my voice, but I didn’t do it. Greg did it and mimicked my voice and made me speak in French. Could AI be used to mimic a patient’s voice and then you said they called in and there’s some, what do we call it, validation? What did you just say?
Speaker0:
[40:06] Authentication.
Speaker1:
[40:08] And there’s now voice authentication. Could someone use AI to match my voice and then authenticate me when they call in? And it’s not me. To hack the system.
Speaker0:
[40:20] So there’s you know you have to authenticate off three three items right do you know, your date of birth do you know your name do you have the right phone number right so everything you talked about could technically be done you could spoof somebody’s phone number you could mimic their voice you could know their date of birth and know their address that is true you absolutely could um would you know also that that’s their doctor i mean you start stitching all these pieces apart and it’s kind of like there’s enough public information out there about you to where if you’re a target somebody could get you that i mean but if you really think about it it’s kind of like how should i say this somebody wanted to steal your identity They could steal your identity. But why would they steal your identity?
Speaker1:
[41:17] It was just a thought that came up. I mean, if we’re going to use voice authentication, like a fingerprint, you know what I mean? It’s, it’s, it’s copyable now, whereas maybe we just need more fingerprint devices. You know, we need, we need more, I guess we need more big brother, which I would say we definitely don’t. Um you you mentioned the greatest sin earlier but i know what the greatest sin is in health care and that is you know missed appointments and everything like that how does ai from health care standpoint just to kind of help out health care i guess a little bit where we’re on the call is what are some of the biggest
Speaker1:
[41:49] things that ai has helped avoid or fix or save lives uh so to speak okay Okay.
Speaker0:
[41:57] So a little bit of a soapbox moment for me here is that COVID exposed access to health care is actually the greatest challenge of health care these days. Meaning that, you know, if you remember back during COVID, we had an actual resource problem. You know, people literally couldn’t get appointments. We had no beds in hospitals, etc. Right. So access to health care is a major issue in the United States and frankly, worldwide, too. Um so anyway the point is the question what how can modern cx technology and ai help us solve this right and there’s a couple different areas one what about the idea of personalized engagement this is straight out of the you know straight straight out of machine learning to understand that you know phil is a great patient i need to you know tell phil to show up one time five days stays out. And guess what? He’s going to show up for his appointment. Now, I don’t have to waste three or four more notifications on making sure he’s going to show up. Jason does a flick. He never shows up for his appointments. His no-show rate is 40%. So, we need to remind him every day leading up to it. Now, back to the whole greatest sin question that you asked.
Speaker0:
[43:14] White space on a clinician’s calendar is a sin on multiple fronts. One, somebody didn’t get care who’s waiting on care whether it be just literally a regular screening or if they were actually waiting for a procedure you know to that sunk cost for health systems health systems have very tight budgets that’s all there is to it and.
Speaker0:
[43:39] If you’re paying a clinician to sit around and not do anything when they can, you know, essentially that’s like a double, that’s a double whammy, essentially, is the way I would characterize it. Meaning that you’re paying this clinician to do nothing. And then there’s people who could have been seen if your engagement had steered this correctly. So we have this idea of essentially, you know, personalized engagement and then also no show predictors. doctors, essentially, it’s essentially using airline model, right? So if you look at a patient book for a clinician, let’s just use a dermatologist, you know, and maybe not the most, you know, I mean, of course, skin cancer is a big deal, but you know what I’m saying? Maybe not, you know, like a cardiologist. But the point is that, let’s just say, if you look at their patient books, there’s 20 people, like, typically, if you look at like, you know, typical specialties, let’s see somewhere between 15 and 30, depending upon the complexity of what’s going on that day. Anyway, the point is, let’s say there’s 20, which is kind of a midpoint here. 20 people show up that day. Well, guess what? Based on the previous historical behavior, pretty much always signals how people behave. People don’t change.
Speaker0:
[44:50] That’s all there is to it. So literally, based upon this, it’s like, oh, we look at this patient book. Guess what? There’s 1.5 of these patients are not going to show up just based on previous behavior, right? Right. And we should overbook by two people. So you don’t end up with two stranded appointments. What’s the worst case scenario that happens? Yeah.
Speaker1:
[45:10] The doctors work a little bit longer that day or someone gets pushed a few minutes.
Speaker0:
[45:14] Right. Somebody gets pushed a few minutes and doctors work a little bit longer. That’s the worst case scenario. Now, I’m not saying overbook by like 10. You got to be very prescriptive because, you know, we’ve all been in those waiting rooms like, oh gosh, there’s 20 people ahead of me, I’m going to be here for the next four hours. Yep. Right? So it’s a balance, but the data should drive our decisions. That’s kind of what we’ll say. Essentially, that’s kind of what we’ve been talking about is, you know, generative AI, I will use the term generative, it has the capability for us to actually get insights and data to drive our decisions, right? So we’ve actually hit on a couple of key points here as well. And we were talking about call analytics and quality assurance. Guess what? We should use that data to essentially figure out what work, you know, to your point, what workflows we should automate, right? Two, in a time of limited resources and budget, it. We should also use the data that we can get from generative AI and all this data that we have about our patients and their behaviors to help us drive, you know, essentially the engagement. And then, you know, one thing I didn’t also talk about is this, you know, patient outcomes improve by the more engaged they are, right? You show up for your appointments, you take your medicine, you get the, you know, preventative procedures. Guess what? You live longer and your costs of the health care go down on you and on frankly everybody because we could even.
Speaker1:
[46:40] Take it a step further and use that the automation to remind them to take their pills or eat healthy and the other thing too would be is uh maybe take it a step further in a reminder as well don’t forget if you miss your appointment you’ll still get charged and uh because not you know some people have a problem with the airline model like i understand it makes complete sense in the in In this case, it makes complete sense in this case, but there’s, there’s even more that could be done on top of just, you know, booking the, the, the bean counting, the bean counting appointment of the appointment, so to speak. But, and which again, the AI appointment reminders and, um, uh, I guess we could call generative AI around the learning, the certain type of person that’s more likely to miss an appointment than the other person.
Speaker0:
[47:30] Yeah. I mean, there’s a lot.
Speaker1:
[47:31] Cause I’ve been through it. I’ve been to my – my – my – my – ET or sports doctor for my torn, uh, super sprenatus, uh, rotator cuff tear, right? It’s such a, he, there’s only like two, he has two offices and it’s one guy in Connecticut and he’s, it’s there. It’s so important that you hit your appointment on time. His assistant literally calls me the week before the day before and the day of like half an hour before Phil, Phil, are you on your way here to appointment? And I, I know her by, by name right now. I’m like, you know, Cindy, like, you know, don’t worry. I’m on my way. Like the call calls and I don’t even, she doesn’t even need to say hi is, is Phil there. I’m just like, Hey, Cindy, I’m on my way. Don’t worry.
Speaker1:
[48:18] I’m on my way. She’s like, Phil, you’re always great. You’re always on time. I’m glad that you’re like this, but it shows that obviously that’s a significant problem for them. If I’m getting three calls for just my appointment and she’s doing that for all of them, like you guys are really like, you guys are really on top of this appointment thing. You really don’t want me to miss a point. She’s like, Phil, you have no idea how much, like it’s, it’s it like the people that wait in line for these appointments and, and how much money it costs us if someone doesn’t show up or if they’re late or if they’re not on time. And like one time I was there, I’m like right there on time. I’m like, Phil, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. This last person showed up late. I’m like, I’m okay. I’m like, you know, I had to wait an extra 10, 15 minutes or something,
Speaker0:
[48:56] You know?
Speaker1:
[48:58] Uh what’s the um there’s one thing there there’s one thing that uh you know if you can think of this whole cx space and everything if there’s one thing that you could think of that uh your job helps save costs or what’s the one thing that’s like really driving up costs and and killing i guess it would be patient engagement in your world and in another person’s world it would be you know see it would be customer experience because customer experience manager is actually a title and some organizations uh what is the one thing that’s really driving up costs and and killing we will say customer engagement in your case it’s patient engagement
Speaker0:
[49:40] I would say that, well, that’s interesting. Inpatient engagement, I mean, this is the case in any type of customer engagement. But essentially, friction for the engagement, right? I mean, like literally, you start thinking about it. It’s like you have to call, you have to wait on hold for 20 minutes just so then you can be told three months from now and you can get your appointment that you really need two weeks from now, right? Right. So how do you use current technology, essentially CX technology to reduce friction on the on on the interactions and the engagement is is essentially, I think. The perfect use case for, you know, for current CX technology, it’s like, how can I reduce that friction? Because, you know, back to my example of, you know, if you don’t take your meds and don’t show up for your doctor’s appointments, you have worse health outcomes. Guess what? Some people get frustrated and they never go to the doctor, right? And then they end up with some chronic condition where they, you know, literally would have been avoidable if they’d have actually just went to their normal routine medical appointments along the way. So you know and that’s that’s kind of the most pronounced.
Speaker1:
[50:55] Right the
Speaker0:
[50:57] Other the outcome is you lose a customer right because they have friction that’s that’s essentially the number one issue if your customer engagement patient engagement they have other options too.
Speaker1:
[51:08] So yeah so really the question is is what is i guess if you’re a it leader out there and it brings it kind of full circle all the way back to the beginning right which is how do you align business objectives as all the different people in the department. And I think this one thing actually would hit all of the people, which is to find out where is the biggest friction points with your customers? Like why? And if, and if you actually, if you actually interviewed your customers and surveyed them and at least the ones that left or the ones that were happy or, and all this stuff, well, you did this and this is what made us really happy. And this is what you didn’t do. And this is why we left. Or this is like, you know, you didn’t follow up with me or you didn’t have good bedside manner or whatever the heck it is. It could be, you know, in the, in the, it could be any, any, any industry, right? It’s like, you know, whatever, what’s that one friction point? And then I guess how would we use, and then I guess we would build, build into the automation somehow or the AI, like some way of, of eliminating that, you know, you know, in your case, what would it be? Obviously, it’s reminders to show up to your appointment. And then we catch something and we find out what the problem is. But what would it be? Can you think of any examples in another industry?
Speaker0:
[52:25] Another industry. Let’s think about, gosh, we’re tech guys. Think about tech support, right? Yep. How painful is it to enter a ticket and not hear something back, right?
Speaker0:
[52:37] So being able to on-ramp and on, this is a perfect use case for Omnichannel, by the way, is that being able to essentially choose your lane that you want to get into at any point in time, is key for a customer experience standpoint, right? I mean, it’s like, you know, I’m sitting on a subway. I can’t talk right now, but I can chat. Okay, well, obviously we’re having some issues chatting right now. Can I talk to you or somebody to help me solve my problem? You know, and then, you know, I always use the term meet the customer where they’re at, right? And that’s a perfect use case for an omni-channel, you know, CX-based stack is essentially, you know, meet them where they’re at, right? However they want to communicate to meet them where they’re at and actually help them solve their problem. If you think about the whole CX space, the whole CX space is literally, aside from essentially, it’s the lifeblood of the interactions with your customers. It really is. Think about how else you would interact with your customers. Email. You know, I mean, it’s just like, think about the channels that you have to interact with your customers. Whether they have a problem or they’re trying to get something from, right?
Speaker1:
[53:58] It’s, it’s excellent. I, I could talk with you all day.
Speaker1:
[54:02] Um, and we’re going on an hour now. So what we’re going to do is we’re going to save for what I want to do is invite, we’re building a new community. I want to invite you to do a, I don’t know, some kind of solution scoping, uh, presentation, uh, to the private community, uh, invite only of course. And, um, there, There’s one thing that we didn’t talk about that we just need to leave as a cliffhanger ending, I guess, which is security.
Speaker1:
[54:30] And, you know, I’m trying to, you know, security around all of this stuff. The safest way to do, I guess, data sharing across channels in your space, because obviously in the healthcare space, there’s a lot of data that has to exchange hands and do handshakes, so to speak, across many different applications and products, especially if those products are being hosted. And as we know, many of the, at least in the telecom space, it’s just a matter of time before the Avaya’s my tells and short tells that I think they’ve already sunk, right? They’ve already sunk that the ship’s already going down, but there’s like, you know, still people standing on, you know, on the onboard, you know, still taking calls, so to speak, as it goes down. It’s only gonna be a matter of time so how do we ensure that that data sharing across channels and physical humans and all that sharing really happens in in a secure way and we’re going to handle that in a i guess a private invite only session and i’m sure you have an answer for that correct oh
Speaker0:
[55:39] Yeah trust me trust me my uh our health clients would not let us touch their dad It hasn’t wrapped up.
Speaker1:
[55:47] Thank you so much for being on Dissecting Popular IT Nerds. Really been a pleasure.
Speaker0:
[55:53] Thanks, Phil. It’s great.
