Deepgram, RingCentral Cut Support Handle Times 60% With AI
Ai4
Deploying agentic AI slashes routine contact center workflows and costs, but strains remaining staff with non-stop complex calls and exposes enterprises to direct legal liability for chatbot misrepresentations.
## Background
Published on YouTube by Ai4 on August 22, 2026, this panel session explores how artificial intelligence is transforming customer experience (CX) and contact center operations. Moderated by PadSplit CTO Erin Fusaro, the discussion features industry leaders from Deepgram, RingCentral, CXPA, and Franklin Templeton discussing strategies for automating workflows, personalizing support, and balancing AI automation with human interaction.
## TL;DR
The panel details practical enterprise implementations of AI across customer support and service workflows, highlighting solutions like Deepgram's autonomous Tier 1 support agents and Franklin Templeton's unified Intelligence Hub. Panelists present a structured 'Automate, Assist, Analyze' framework that transitions organizations from reactive firefighting to proactive anomaly detection and total conversation intelligence. Crucially, the discussion emphasizes that AI deployments must rest on solid data governance rather than messy legacy infrastructure, citing cautionary legal precedents like the Air Canada chatbot ruling. The consensus concludes that AI excels at rapid information synthesis and routine resolution, but must be paired with seamless, context-rich handoffs to humans for emotionally complex interactions.
## Atmosphere & style
The discussion has a pragmatic, practitioner-led tone that replaces breathless vendor hype with grounded, real-world operational realities. The panelists share an easy, collaborative chemistry, enlivening technical architecture debates with memorable analogies like the big data 'George Foreman grill' trap and self-deprecating banter about managing legacy systems older than their staff. It feels like an authentic insider debrief that treats AI neither as a silver bullet nor a novelty, but as a high-stakes operational discipline balancing algorithmic efficiency with the irreplaceable value of human empathy.
## Key takeaways
- [00:04](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLMHDyO5a2U&t=4s) Organizations must balance customer-centric AI automation with company profitability (EBIT), avoiding deploying AI for its own sake without a clear, self-funded ROI roadmap.
- [05:28](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLMHDyO5a2U&t=328s) Deepgram implemented an autonomous 'Agentic Applied Engineer' alongside human staff to handle high-volume Tier 1 technical inquiries while preserving hands-on engineering support for complex enterprise clients.
- [07:34](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLMHDyO5a2U&t=454s) Modernizing telephony with AI reduced Average Handle Time by over 60% and post-call wrap-up from 7+ minutes to 2.5 minutes, while cutting telephony spend by 50%.
- [07:34](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLMHDyO5a2U&t=454s) Automating routine contact center calls creates a cognitive load dilemma, where human agents are left managing a continuous stream of complex, high-stress issues without natural cognitive breaks.
- [12:03](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLMHDyO5a2U&t=723s) RingCentral structures the AI customer journey into three stages: Automate upfront interactions, Assist live agents with real-time copilots, and Analyze 100% of conversations post-call rather than traditional 10-15% sampling.
- [12:03](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLMHDyO5a2U&t=723s) Post-call AI conversation intelligence shifts quality management from merely diagnosing representative failures to isolating and replicating 'gold nugget' behaviors across the entire workforce.
- [16:24](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLMHDyO5a2U&t=984s) Proactive predictive analytics enable background anomaly detection, automatically spawning remediation workflows before downstream end users notice or report service disruptions.
- [23:07](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLMHDyO5a2U&t=1387s) Automated IVR systems must include immediate human bypass options, ensuring customers who request an 'agent' are instantly routed to live support without being trapped in automated loops.
- [23:07](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLMHDyO5a2U&t=1387s) Context continuity is critical during digital-to-human escalations so that transferred customers never have to repeat identity verification or prior conversational context.
- [27:48](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLMHDyO5a2U&t=1668s) Enterprises should avoid the 'George Foreman grill' trap of dumping messy, disparate legacy data into AI models, focusing instead on high-impact areas with clean data and clear business objectives.
- [34:08](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLMHDyO5a2U&t=2048s) CX research indicates it takes 11 consecutive positive customer interactions to recover from a single severe service failure, making tight AI guardrails essential in high-stakes environments.
- [34:08](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLMHDyO5a2U&t=2048s) The Air Canada chatbot legal ruling established that companies are legally responsible for factual assertions and policy commitments made by their automated agents.
- [40:08](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLMHDyO5a2U&t=2408s) Real-time AI sentiment analysis dynamically detects caller emotional distress during live conversations to trigger proactive interventions and churn prevention workflows.
- [42:25](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLMHDyO5a2U&t=2545s) AI agents and human agents are complementary rather than directly comparable: AI excels at speed, data synthesis, and task execution, while humans remain essential for empathy and complex emotional connection.
## Detailed walkthrough
### [00:04](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLMHDyO5a2U&t=4s) Introductions and the Current AI Landscape
The panel opens with moderator Erin Fusaro, Chief Technology Officer at PadSplit—a two-sided marketplace dedicated to affordable co-housing—setting the stage for a discussion on how artificial intelligence is transforming customer experience (CX). She asks each panelist to introduce themselves and highlight the single most important AI-related priority currently on their radar. Kiley Williams, Senior Engineering Manager of Field Engineering at Deepgram, explains that Deepgram provides a foundational voice AI platform enabling developers to embed voice capabilities into software. For Williams, the top focus is delivering an exceptional, highly personalized customer support experience that feels seamless and indistinguishable across all customer tiers, from hobbyist developers to enterprise accounts.
Heather Gillbanks, representing the Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA) and executive editor of the newly published *CX Book of Knowledge*, brings a practitioner's lens with over 30 years of experience driving transformation. She describes herself as "customer fixated" while remaining acutely mindful of financial realities: "I also understand EBIT's a thing. So, you really have to find a balance between the customer and the profitability of the company." Gillbanks notes that her biggest operational headache is cutting through aggressive vendor noise, noting she receives between 30 and 40 outreach requests a week from vendors asking for "15 minutes of my time."
Amir Hameed, Senior Vice President of Global Technical Solutions at RingCentral, outlines his focus on cloud communications, contact centers, and agentic voice AI. He emphasizes meeting clients where they are—frequently entangled in legacy infrastructure—and building practical, self-funded transformation roadmaps. By realizing immediate cloud migration cost savings and reinvesting those gains into incremental AI rollouts, organizations can generate clear ROI rather than deploying "AI for AI's sake." Lily Li, Head of AI Adoption and Solutions at Franklin Templeton, rounds out the introductions by detailing the challenges of driving enterprise AI strategy across a regulated asset manager overseeing approximately $1.8 trillion. Her focus is leveraging multimodal intelligence across client data, market insights, and investment expertise to build institutional-grade, proactive, and personalized engagement at scale.
- **Erin Fusaro**: CTO at PadSplit (two-sided co-housing marketplace).
- **Kiley Williams**: Senior Engineering Manager of Field Engineering at Deepgram (foundational voice AI platform).
- **Heather Gillbanks**: Transformation veteran and Executive Editor of CXPA's *CX Book of Knowledge*.
- **Amir Hameed**: SVP of Global Technical Solutions at RingCentral (cloud communications and contact centers).
- **Lily Li**: Head of AI Adoption and Solutions at Franklin Templeton ($1.8T asset manager).
---
[05:28](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLMHDyO5a2U&t=328s) Deepgram's "Agentic Applied Engineer" and Scaling Tier 1 Support
Williams dives into a concrete implementation shipped within Deepgram’s Applied Engineering organization. Deepgram maintains a core commitment that whenever a customer reaches out for help, they interact directly with an engineer. However, after opening up developer support to every user—including solo, independent developers—ticket volume exploded across thousands of accounts, creating an acute scaling challenge.
To preserve white-glove engineering support without multiplying headcounts linearly, Deepgram developed an "Agentic Applied Engineer" in December. Rather than acting as a rigid, scripted bot, this agent operates as an autonomous colleague working alongside human engineers to resolve Tier 1 inquiries. With every customer interaction, the agent continuously learns and refines its technical problem-solving capabilities. This automation handles repetitive tier-one tickets while liberating human applied engineers to provide intensive, hands-on architectural guidance to complex enterprise implementations.
---
[07:34](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLMHDyO5a2U&t=454s) Telephony Modernization, Slashed Handle Times, and the Cognitive Load Dilemma
Gillbanks shares a real-world enterprise call center transformation where an outdated legacy telephony stack was replaced with an AI-first telephony solution. While the project was initially justified to the CEO on the premise of reducing the organization's telephony bill by 50%, the downstream operational efficiencies vastly outpaced initial projections.
```
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| CALL CENTER EFFICIENCY METRICS (AI-FIRST) |
+------------------------------------+-------------------------------+
| Metric | Impact / Result |
+------------------------------------+-------------------------------+
| Average Handle Time (AHT) | Reduced by >60% |
| Post-Call Processing / Wrap-Up | Slashed from 7+ min to 2.5 min|
| Telephony Infrastructure Spend | 50% direct savings |
| Offshore BPO Headcount | Significantly reduced |
+------------------------------------+-------------------------------+
```
While stripping routine "scut work" allowed top-tier ("A-player") agents to deliver higher-touch service on complex cases, Gillbanks highlights a critical, unforeseen side effect: taking away routine, simple calls left agents handling a non-stop stream of cognitively demanding issues. Agents who were average or struggling performers found themselves overwhelmed by the continuous mental load. Fusaro agrees, adding that mitigating employee fear around automation requires pairing AI rollouts with proactive upskilling programs that channel staff expertise into more fulfilling, higher-value work.
---
[10:03](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLMHDyO5a2U&t=603s) Franklin Templeton's Intelligence Hub: Unified Advisor Workflows
Lily Li outlines an institutional deployment at Franklin Templeton: the "Intelligence Hub," an AI distribution platform launched in January and utilized daily across the entire US Wealth management division. Previously, wealth management personnel were forced to navigate up to 15 fragmented systems to assemble market insights, client histories, and trade reports.
The Intelligence Hub unifies territory management, advisor engagements, pre-call preparation, and post-call action items into a single operational interface. Li shares that when the system experienced a brief technical hiccup, the flood of urgent complaints served as definitive proof that the team had fundamentally adopted the platform into their daily workflow. Crucially, benchmarking against non-users demonstrated clear, measurable business impact beyond vanity efficiency metrics, including broader client coverage, richer engagements, and demonstrable sales lift.
---
[12:03](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLMHDyO5a2U&t=723s) The End-to-End Customer Journey: Automate, Assist, and Analyze
Amir Hameed outlines RingCentral’s structured methodology for embedding agentic AI across the complete three-stage customer interaction lifecycle:
```
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| THE 3-STAGE AI CUSTOMER JOURNEY FRAMEWORK |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| 1. AUTOMATE (Upfront) |
| * AI Receptionists handle hours, locations, routine FAQs. |
| * Digital agents filter and route high-volume inquiries. |
| | |
| v |
| 2. ASSIST (In-Flight) |
| * Context-rich handoff from digital agent to live human. |
| * Real-time agent co-pilots and supervisor dashboards. |
| | |
| v |
| 3. ANALYZE (Post-Call) |
| * 100% conversation coverage (vs. legacy 10-15% QM sampling). |
| * Deep pattern analysis for regional churn & script flaws. |
| * Conversation scoring to identify & replicate "gold nuggets". |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
```
Hameed stresses that historical quality management (QM) could only sample 10% to 15% of recorded calls, leading managers to misdiagnose root causes or accept localized churn as an unavoidable cost of business. With modern AI conversational intelligence, 100% of interactions across voice and digital channels are transcribed, scored, and categorized. Fusaro and Hameed highlight that this visibility shifts the quality management paradigm: instead of merely diagnosing failures, organizations can isolate the "gold nuggets" of top-performing reps, establish what exceptional performance looks like, and replicate those behavioral patterns across the entire workforce.
---
[16:24](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLMHDyO5a2U&t=984s) Proactive Operations and Predictive Anomaly Detection
Turning to predictive analytics, Fusaro asks how organizations can leverage data to resolve customer pain points before customers even pick up the phone. Williams demystifies the term, noting that predictive analytics is fundamentally about operationalizing deep data visibility to transition from reactive ticket handling to proactive remediation.
Because Deepgram processes massive volumes of real-time voice data across diverse enterprise verticals, autonomous monitoring agents continuously sweep system telemetry 24/7. When anomaly patterns emerge—such as localized geographic latency spikes or industry-specific transcription degradation—the system automatically spawns sub-agents to isolate and resolve the root cause. This allows engineering teams to remediate infrastructure or service anomalies before downstream end-users ever experience a failure or submit a ticket.
[18:37](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLMHDyO5a2U&t=1117s) Proactive Customer Experience and Predictive Personalization
Delivering an exceptional customer experience means resolving problems before a customer even realizes they exist. When systems detect anomalies and patterns proactively, operational teams can address issues in the background, creating an effortless experience where everything is seamlessly handled without customer intervention. In financial and investment services, proactiveness extends to investment expertise: analyzing market activity, past client behaviors, preferences, and product intelligence to offer portfolio optimization recommendations before the client requests them. Organizations do not need to restrict themselves to a single generation of technology; rather, predictive AI models (developed from the late 1990s through 2020), generative AI (accelerated since ChatGPT's release in 2022), and modern agentic AI can work together across data lineages to cover both the upside and downside risks for clients.
Personalization also requires integrating predictive intelligence with core systems of record to handle different customer tiers appropriately. Empowering agents with a complete view of a customer's history, active services, and investment portfolio prevents repetitive questioning and respects the customer's time. For high-value clients or "high rollers," AI can bypass standard customer service queues entirely and route inquiries straight to a senior portfolio manager. Treating premium clients with the level of service they have earned fosters loyalty. However, panelists note that messaging and segmentation must be carefully calibrated to audience expectations—proactively solving a problem must never accidentally trigger new customer anxieties.
```
+------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Unified Data Intelligence |
| Predictive AI (1990s-2020) + GenAI (2022+) + Agentic AI (Modern)|
+---------------------------------+--------------------------------+
|
v
+---------------------------------+--------------------------------+
| Automated Analysis & Triage |
| - Anomaly Detection (Silent resolution of issues) |
| - Portfolio & Product Intelligence (Proactive recommendations) |
| - Customer Segmentation & Systems of Record |
+---------------------------------+--------------------------------+
|
+-------------------------+-------------------------+
| |
v v
+-----------------------+ +----------------------+
| Standard Tier / Self | | High-Value Client |
| Context-Rich AI Flow | | Direct Senior Route |
+-----------------------+ +----------------------+
```
[23:07](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLMHDyO5a2U&t=1387s) Human-in-the-Loop: Deciding Where Bots End and Humans Begin
When designing automated customer journeys, establishing clear handoff boundaries between digital agents and human representatives is essential. One strict rule shared by the panel is an instant override: if a customer explicitly asks for an "agent," they should immediately be transferred to a live human without being forced through a labyrinthine, frustrating interactive voice response (IVR) tree. While early chatbots from five years prior were noticeably rigid and irritating, modern digital agents have advanced dramatically in vocal inflection, natural speech cadence, regional accents, and conversational speed.
```
+-----------------------------+
| Customer Initiates Contact |
+--------------+--------------+
|
v
+-----------------------------+
| AI / Digital Agent Handling |
+--------------+--------------+
|
+---------------------+---------------------+
| |
[Customer requests human / [AI successfully resolves
Empathy limit / Policy trigger] inquiry within guardrails]
| |
v v
+-----------------------------+ +----------------------+
| Full-Context Hand-off to | | Interaction Complete |
| Human Agent (System Update) | | Logged to Records |
+-----------------------------+ +----------------------+
```
Even with these advances, automated agents have inherent limitations. While they can perform sentiment analysis, they cannot replicate genuine human empathy. When digital agents exhaust their scope, the transition to a human must be frictionless, carrying forward the full conversational context and identity verification so the customer never has to repeat themselves. Furthermore, AI agents should not only face external customers; they can also serve as internal copilot assistants for frontline staff. By providing real-time data and recommendations, these internal tools can scale an account manager's capacity from 100 clients to 1,000. To ensure safety, enterprises must implement "human-on-the-loop" governance with explicit circuit breakers, auditability, explainability, and compliance guardrails.
- **Instant Human Routing:** Customers who say the keyword "agent" should bypass automated trees immediately, regardless of account size, avoiding "futuristic IVR jail."
- **Context Continuity:** Digital-to-human handoffs must transfer all collected customer context directly into the system of record.
- **Internal Scaling:** Internal-facing AI agents augment sales and support teams, dramatically increasing the volume of accounts a single representative can manage.
- **Trust & Compliance:** AI agents must "earn the right" to assist teams through transparent citations, source linking, and auditable operational parameters.
[27:48](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLMHDyO5a2U&t=1668s) Tackling Messy Data and Legacy Systems: Avoid the "George Foreman Grill" Trap
For established enterprises, AI cannot simply be dropped onto messy, disparate data and decades-old legacy architecture. Teams looking to modernize must resist the impulse to chase every shiny tool as early adopters and instead start with rigorous discovery: understanding the specific domain, defining the end-state business objectives, and identifying why a migration is needed. Bolting AI onto unstructured, unvetted data only magnifies existing errors and results in expensive failures without measurable business return.
Panelists caution against treating modern AI like the early big data boom, when organizations treated Hadoop like a "George Foreman grill"—dumping massive quantities of unstructured information into data lakes and expecting magical insights, only to receive "garbage in, garbage out" and digital slop. At the same time, companies should not freeze their initiatives while waiting for completely immaculate data. The recommended path is to scope out high-impact, manageable starting points where data is relatively clean (such as telephony systems) rather than attempting to overhaul massive back-office ERP systems that, in some legacy environments, are literally older than the employees operating them.
- **Discovery First:** Clearly define the core business functionality and "why" before selecting AI tools or attempting channel migrations.
- **Data Governance Over Hype:** Clean data acts as the fuel for AI; poor quality input inevitably produces AI hallucinations and administrative "slop."
- **Legacy Realities:** Panelists cited working with legacy insurance copy books that predated modern computing and ERPs older than the staff operating them (prompting onstage banter about tech aging everyone past 45).
- **Pragmatic Scoping:** Avoid waiting for the "perfect moment" or 100% pristine data; deploy scoped solutions in areas with clean datasets to achieve quick, demonstrable wins.
[34:08](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLMHDyO5a2U&t=2048s) The Cost of Failure: Rebuilding Trust, Hallucinations, and the Air Canada Case
Customer trust requires substantial time to establish and can be destroyed in a single botched interaction. Traditional customer experience research demonstrates that when an organization makes a major error, it takes 11 consecutive positive interactions to counteract that single negative experience just to return the customer relationship back to baseline ("zero"). Because rebuilding goodwill is an incremental and costly process, AI systems must be tightly constrained against critical errors.
```
+------------------------------------------------------+
| 1 Severe Customer Experience Error |
+--------------------------+---------------------------+
|
v
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Requires ELEVEN (11) Consecutive Positive Customer Interactions |
| Just to Return Goodwill Back to ZERO |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
```
A prime cautionary example of unconstrained AI failure is the widely publicized Canadian court case involving Air Canada. A bereavement traveler used the airline's website chatbot, which erroneously stated that the passenger could purchase a ticket immediately and apply for a retroactive bereavement discount within 90 days. When the customer attempted to claim the refund after attending the funeral, human customer support agents refused, citing strict airline policy against retroactive bereavement claims. The dispute proceeded to Canadian small claims court, where the tribunal ruled that the airline was legally liable for the misrepresentations made by its digital chatbot. This case underscores that organizations must hardcode strict parameters and circuit breakers to eliminate hallucinations in high-stakes operational and financial policies.
- **The 11-to-1 Rule:** It requires 11 positive CX touchpoints to overcome a single negative customer interaction.
- **Legal Accountability:** Courts have established that companies are legally responsible for factual assertions and policy claims made by their public-facing chatbots.
- **Zero-Tolerance Zones:** Hallucination mitigation must be prioritized in critical compliance, pricing, and policy domains to avoid catastrophic legal and reputational damage.
- **Retention Measurement:** Evaluating the long-term ROI of conversational AI requires tracking concrete retention metrics, beginning with total user engagement time in-app or in-game.
[37:15](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLMHDyO5a2U&t=2235s) Measuring CX Impact and Proactive Resolution Across Industries
The conversation centers on how resolving issues rapidly correlates directly with customer retention and ongoing engagement on a platform. In fast-moving environments like the gaming industry, a technical glitch or hack can immediately halt a user's experience. If the system can automatically grant credits back or resolve the problem without friction, players dive right back into playing rather than leaving in frustration. Proactive resolution is especially powerful: before a frustrated player even needs to reach out, the platform identifies the incident, sends an in-app message or places a call saying, "Hey, we had an issue, but we credited your account a thousand points," immediately restoring goodwill. Tracking this uninterrupted continuity and engagement shows what truly keeps people using a product.
Traditional contact center metrics remain highly relevant alongside modern AI evaluations. Key performance indicators such as containment rate, average handle time (AHT), and first contact resolution (FCR) must be tracked alongside repeatability—monitoring whether customers keep returning with the identical problem. Furthermore, establishing baseline Net Promoter Score (NPS) and satisfaction surveys prior to deploying AI, and contrasting them directly with post-deployment figures, is vital to audit vendor promises. If customer retention or happiness drops post-launch, it does not mean discarding the AI entirely; rather, teams must tune and tweak the system to resolve the disconnect. Given the soaring expense of customer acquisition cost (CAC), retaining existing customers in a competitive landscape where users have abundant alternatives is paramount.
- Proactively handling glitches with automated credits or alerts prevents churn and preserves active session time.
- Core contact center benchmarks like containment rate, AHT, FCR, and call repeatability remain fundamental metrics.
- Pre- and post-deployment NPS and CSAT comparisons are essential to evaluate if AI actually delivers on promised retention gains.
- Retaining an existing account is dramatically more cost-effective than absorbing steep customer acquisition costs.
---
[40:08](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLMHDyO5a2U&t=2408s) Enterprise Relationship Coverage and Real-Time Sentiment Analysis
In institutional asset management and enterprise financial services, customer retention operates at a massive scale where the ultimate metric is measured in bottom-line capital flows. With institutional clients, family offices, and national advisory accounts, client retention hinges on expanding coverage so market leaders and field sales representatives can conduct deeper, high-value conversations. AI platforms deployed to these client-facing professionals actively surface relationship sentiment and anticipate client needs. The resulting uptick in meaningful coverage and touchpoints directly translates into stronger trust, deeper partnerships, and quantifiable revenue growth.
Simultaneously, AI is transforming how organizations interpret customer sentiment. Historically, customer experience teams spent weekends manually tagging verbatim text feedback pulled from post-interaction surveys. Modern AI models analyze sentiment dynamically, determining not just how a caller felt retrospectively, but detecting real-time emotional shifts during an active conversation to trigger immediate live escalations when needed. By combining decades of historical churn data with real-time text and speech evaluation, systems can detect subtle churn triggers and automate proactive follow-up workflows.
```
[ Incoming Interaction / Call ]
│
▼
[ Real-Time AI Sentiment & Text Analysis ]
│
┌────────┴────────┐
▼ ▼
[ Negative Sentiment / [ Resolved Normal ]
Known Churn Trigger ] │
│ ▼
▼ [ Standard Logs ]
[ Auto-Spawn Ticket /
Proactive Outreach ]
│
▼
[ Live Agent Call: "We noticed an issue and want to help." ]
```
- High-stakes enterprise CX relies on empowering field leaders with AI insights to drive proactive advisory coverage and track capital flows.
- Automated sentiment analysis replaces manual survey verbatim tagging, pinpointing real-time caller distress during live calls.
- Full-text search and historical churn modeling automatically spawn tickets for proactive follow-up calls before accounts churn.
- Authenticity and operational transparency remain foundational to ensuring automated tools reinforce rather than erode customer trust.
---
[42:25](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLMHDyO5a2U&t=2545s) Q&A: Evaluating AI Agents Versus Human Agents
As the panel nears its conclusion with two minutes remaining, a question is taken from the audience regarding whether AI agents are fundamentally better or worse than human agents. The panel clarifies that judging an agent as "better" or "worse" is entirely subjective and context-dependent. When an interaction demands fast information synthesis, rapid task execution, and predictive anticipation, AI agents hold a clear advantage because they can instantly aggregate massive datasets across multiple systems.
Conversely, when an interaction escalates into high-friction territory requiring deep empathy, active emotional listening, and genuine human connection, human agents remain indispensable. Successful customer support architectures deliberately balance both strengths: leveraging AI agents to manage data-intensive, speed-critical requests, while establishing fluid escalation paths to human representatives when authentic personal care is needed. The session concludes with an invitation to continue discussions offstage and a round of thanks to the audience.
## Notable quotes
> [00:04](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLMHDyO5a2U&t=4s) I also understand EBIT's a thing. So, you really have to find a balance between the customer and the profitability of the company. — Heather Gillbanks
> [00:04](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLMHDyO5a2U&t=4s) 15 minutes of my time. — Heather Gillbanks
> [00:04](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLMHDyO5a2U&t=4s) AI for AI's sake — Amir Hameed
> [05:28](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLMHDyO5a2U&t=328s) Agentic Applied Engineer — Kiley Williams
> [12:03](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLMHDyO5a2U&t=723s) gold nuggets — Amir Hameed
> [23:07](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLMHDyO5a2U&t=1387s) earn the right
> [27:48](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLMHDyO5a2U&t=1668s) George Foreman grill
> [27:48](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLMHDyO5a2U&t=1668s) garbage in, garbage out
> [37:15](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLMHDyO5a2U&t=2235s) Hey, we had an issue, but we credited your account a thousand points,
> [40:08](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLMHDyO5a2U&t=2408s) We noticed an issue and want to help.
## Mentioned
Erin Fusaro, PadSplit, Kiley Williams, Deepgram, Heather Gillbanks, Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA), CX Book of Knowledge, Amir Hameed, RingCentral, Lily Li, Franklin Templeton, Intelligence Hub, ChatGPT, Hadoop, Air Canada
## Video description
Erin Fusaro - Chief Technology Officer, PadSplit
Kiley Williams - Senior Engineering Manager, Field Engineering, Deepgram
Amir Hameed - Senior Vice President - Global Technical Solutions, RingCentral
Heather Gillbanks - Executive Editor, CXPA Book of Knowledge
Lily Li - Head of AI Adoption and Solutions, Franklin Templeton
This session will explore how AI is revolutionizing customer experience (CX) and customer service by automating interactions, personalizing support, and improving response times. Panelists will discuss how AI-powered tools, such as chatbots and virtual assistants, are transforming customer service operations in contact centers, enabling faster resolutions and reducing operational costs. Learn how organizations are integrating AI into their CX strategies to improve customer satisfaction, streamline workflows, provide 24/7 support, and retain customers. The discussion will also examine the challenges of balancing AI automation with human interaction and strategies for creating a seamless, customer-centric experience.
Deploying artificial intelligence in customer experience delivers measurable cost and capacity gains, but panelists stress that sustained ROI depends on strict error governance, proactive issue resolution, and deliberate human escalation paths.
Operational Gains and Agent Workload Pressures (5:28)
Modernizing telephony and tier-one support with AI-first systems produces steep efficiency improvements. Heather Gillbanks of CXPA highlighted an enterprise call center deployment where an AI telephony implementation reduced telephony infrastructure costs by 50%, cut post-call wrap-up times from over seven minutes to 2.5 minutes, and lowered average handle time by more than 60%. Similarly, Deepgram rolled out an autonomous Agentic Applied Engineer to absorb surge volumes of basic technical inquiries across thousands of developer accounts, freeing human engineers to handle complex enterprise implementations.
However, stripping routine tasks introduces a notable operational strain. Gillbanks and Erin Fusaro observed that eliminating simple inquiries left human staff with an unrelenting queue of cognitively demanding issues, which overwhelmed average performers. To prevent burnout and fear of automation, organizations must accompany AI implementations with intentional upskilling programs that prepare frontline workers for higher-complexity interactions.
Proactive Remediation and End-to-End Orchestration (12:03)
Panelists emphasized shifting customer service from reactive ticketing to predictive, end-to-end resolution. Amir Hameed outlined RingCentral’s framework covering upfront automation (handling basic FAQs), in-flight assistance (providing context-rich handoffs and co-pilots), and comprehensive post-call analysis that evaluates 100% of interactions—contrasting with legacy quality management that sampled only 10% to 15%. This exhaustive coverage helps identify churn patterns and operational gold nuggets from top reps.
Predictive analytics also enables silent issue remediation before users notice an error. Deepgram runs continuous telemetry sweeps that trigger autonomous sub-agents to resolve regional latency spikes or transcription degradation without human tickets. In enterprise asset management, Franklin Templeton uses unified advisor hubs to analyze customer history and market data proactively, surfacing product recommendations and routing high-value clients directly to senior portfolio managers.
Handoff Boundaries, Messy Data, and Trust Governance (23:07)
Panelists warned that AI cannot simply be applied on top of chaotic data lakes or obsolete legacy architecture. Chasing tools without clear business discovery risks repeating the big data era's mistake of dumping unstructured information into data lakes and producing unusable outputs. Successful modernization requires focusing first on bounded, high-impact areas with relatively clean data, such as modern telephony records, rather than immediately trying to overhaul decades-old core back-office systems.
Clear guardrails at the boundary between bots and humans are equally vital for customer trust. Panelists agreed on an immediate override rule: when a user explicitly requests an agent, the system must hand off the call with complete conversational context. The penalty for unconstrained automation is steep, as demonstrated by the Air Canada court ruling that held the airline legally liable for bereavement policy misrepresentations made by its chatbot. Because customer experience research indicates it takes 11 consecutive positive touchpoints to recover goodwill from a single severe mistake, critical policy and pricing decisions require hardcoded limits and auditability.
Balancing Retentive Metrics and Real-Time Sentiment (37:15)
Long-term AI success requires tracking traditional contact center benchmarks—such as containment rate, first contact resolution, and repeat call frequency—against baseline Net Promoter Scores to confirm vendor performance claims. In consumer scenarios like gaming, automated credit distributions immediately following a technical glitch preserve active session time, mitigating costly customer acquisition expenses. In institutional financial settings, expanding advisory coverage through AI platforms deepens relationship sentiment and capital retention.
Sentiment monitoring has evolved from retroactive survey tagging into dynamic real-time evaluation. Modern models track vocal distress during live interactions to trigger immediate human supervisor escalations and automated follow-ups. Panelists concluded that AI agents do not inherently replace human agents; AI excels at rapid information retrieval across disparate databases, while human representatives remain indispensable for authentic empathy and high-stakes problem resolution.
While AI automation provides immediate call center savings and scalable coverage, the panel concluded that its effectiveness hinges on clean data inputs, strict factual guardrails to prevent legal liability, and seamless escalations to human agents when genuine empathy is required.
[0:04] Heather Gillbanks: I also understand EBIT's a thing. So, you really have to find a balance between the customer and the profitability of the company.
[0:04] Heather Gillbanks: 15 minutes of my time.
[0:04] Amir Hameed: AI for AI's sake
[5:28] Kiley Williams: Agentic Applied Engineer
[12:03] Amir Hameed: gold nuggets
[23:07] futuristic IVR jail
[23:07] earn the right
[27:48] George Foreman grill
[27:48] garbage in, garbage out
[37:15] Hey, we had an issue, but we credited your account a thousand points,
[40:08] We noticed an issue and want to help.
Original transcript
[0:04] Hello. Hello. Uh, I'm Aaron Fizaro. I will be
your friendly moderator for this discussion. Uh,
[0:12] I am the chief technology officer of
Padsplit. Padsplit, we are a marketplace,
[0:17] two-sided marketplace for, uh, co-housing.
Let's start off with some quick intros. Um,
[0:24] I'll start at the end at uh, Kylie. So, what uh
what do you do? Who are you? What do you do? And
[0:33] uh like what's your number one thing on
your radar with regard to AI right now?
[0:39] Yeah. Hi everyone. I'm Kylie Williams. I am the
senior engineering manager of field engineering
[0:43] at Deepgram Graham. We're a foundational
voice AI platform that enables software to
[0:49] uh enables developers to uh provide voice
in their software. Um, one of the the the
[0:56] the number one thing for me is providing a an
exceptional customer experience. Exceptional
[1:02] being that uh it's an indistinguishable feel
indistinguishable feeling for people when
[1:07] they're interacting with our platform with our
our uh team of customer support uh engineers and
[1:15] they feel like they are getting that personalized
service um no matter what they're going through,
[1:19] no matter what level of uh of customer they are.
So that to me is what AI is really allowing us
[1:25] to to do. Awesome. Next, I'm Heather Gilbanks.
I'm here representing the Customer Experience
[1:31] Professionals Association. We recently published
a book called the CX Book of Knowledge. So,
[1:35] if you're into CX, check it out. I actually
have a copy here to give away to somebody. Um,
[1:40] I do not claim to be an AI expert other unlike
most of the folks on this panel. I'm here because
[1:45] I know how to do transformation. I've been
doing transformation for over 30 years. To me,
[1:49] it doesn't matter whether you're talking about
digital transformation, customer, whatever it
[1:53] might be, it's all the same. Um, couple things to
know about me. I am customer fixated, which is how
[1:58] I ended up in the customer experience space, but
I also understand EBIT's a thing. So, you really
[2:03] have to find a balance between the customer and
the profitability of the company. Um, and I'm also
[2:09] not here to sell you anything unless you're hiring
a transformation or customer experience lead. Um,
[2:13] but top of my priority list right now as a person
who's primarily a practitioner is trying to figure
[2:18] out how to sift through all the vendors. We I was
talking to somebody about this at lunch recently.
[2:23] I get 30 to 40 outreaches a week from people who
just want 15 minutes of my time. If you do the
[2:28] math on that, that's, you know, that's a pretty
significant chunk of of time. So figuring out how
[2:32] to sift through those folks and decide which ones
to meet with is pretty important for for those of
[2:37] us in the practitioner space. Awesome. Amir.
Hi, I'm Amir. Turn the mic on test. Okay. Uh
[2:45] Amir Hamid and I'm the senior vice president of
global technical solutions at Ring Central and we
[2:51] basically provide cloud-based communications for
both internal communications and contact centers
[2:57] customer experience as well. And really we've been
kind of focused on aentic voice AI. So I have the
[3:04] pleasure of leading a team of global experts and
basically we talk to customers day in day out.
[3:10] And you know speaking of transformation that's
really what we're doing. We're seeing customers
[3:14] in various stages of transformation. Some of them
are stuck in legacy systems. And then we try to
[3:20] kind of understand where they are today. We paint
a picture of where we can take them and then we we
[3:27] do the hard work of kind of getting through. And I
think the key is, you know, now that we're talking
[3:32] about aentic AI and all this, it's got to truly
deliver value, right? So we try to do things like
[3:38] self-funded road mapaps where if we're talking to
the customers, we build out an ROI to say, hey,
[3:43] if you were to first migrate to the cloud, you can
see these benefits off your legacy platforms and
[3:49] then again we bring in more and more of the the
AI solutions and as those benefits are achieved,
[3:56] they kind of help fund moving forward. So
it's really not a uh a a automatic turn it on,
[4:02] right? you you've got to really look at the
customer's environment, see what their pressing
[4:06] needs are first, and then determine which
AI makes the most sense to deliver that ROI,
[4:13] or else it's just AI for AI's sake, and that's not
going to help anybody. Agreed. Pragmatic use of AI
[4:21] is one of my uh big tenants right now. Lily. Hi
everyone. I'm Lily Lee. I'm head of AI adoption
[4:31] and solutions at Franklin Templatin. If you guys
don't know the company, it's a asset manager who
[4:36] manage about $1.8 trillion. So big deal regulated
industry. U my focus I guess as part of my job is
[4:43] really enterprise AI strategy enablement and
looking for transformation solutions that we
[4:48] built across using AI as a catalyst enabler in
particularly for this panel context right for the
[4:56] customer experience standpoint that we're really
looking for a connecting client experience and
[5:02] engagement with the leverage of all the mode
intelligence that we can really unlock from
[5:08] client market product and investment expertise
that we have and really make it more proactive,
[5:16] persistent, consistent as well as personalized and
for a companies like us that we want to make sure
[5:22] definitely we create things are institutional
great and then institutional great at scale.
[5:28] Awesome. Well, thank you all for being willing
to entertain me today. Um, let's start with a
[5:35] real example. Uh, and I'll call on Kylie for
this one. Can you tell us about an AI project
[5:41] your team has shipped uh or is building right
now for within the realm of CX and what problem
[5:49] is it solving and what's it moved the needle on?
Certainly. So within the field engineering team
[5:57] uh we have a team a sub team called applied
engineering and one of the the core offerings of
[6:03] deepgram is that anyone you talk to as a customer
is going to be an engineer when when you're coming
[6:09] for help anything that you you need assistance on.
And recently we've opened up our support platform
[6:14] or support capabilities to everyone. So even if
you're a single independent developer you can
[6:19] come get help. Now that introduces a a a problem
with scale. You know there's we have thousands
[6:26] and thousands of customers. So how do we scale? So
we've introduced the agentic applied engineer and
[6:32] we believe that uh being able to serve that tier
one of ticketing is can be done with agents but it
[6:40] can be done with agents at a in a place or excuse
me in a way that doesn't sacrifice the ability to
[6:45] provide that exceptional experience that I that
I spoke about. And so that's something that we
[6:50] started building out in uh roughly December. Um
it's if you do reach out to our team, there is
[6:56] an agent, there is an Agentic applied engineer
that we consider a colleague that is working
[7:00] alongside our real engineers. And every single
time that they interact or someone interacts with
[7:06] that Agentic applied engineer, it gets smarter,
it gets more intelligent, it works with us. And
[7:11] that's one those are one of the things that uh we
find we're able to to do more for our customers.
[7:16] Now what that does is that frees up the human
engineers to provide even more exceptional service
[7:21] to our customers that really really need that
hands-on touch. So that's one thing that we're
[7:27] really proud of that uh is running day in and day
out for us. Yeah, absolutely. Does anybody else
[7:34] have a story they want to share? I'm pretty sure
that's why they invited me. [laughter] I'm one
[7:40] of the few customers who's allowed to talk about
actually having done this. Um my use case is way
[7:45] simpler than yours. Um we are um the company
I was most recently with we had a large call
[7:50] center situation and uh we basically replaced our
telefan systems with an AI first solution and I
[8:00] sold it to the CEO on the basis that it was going
to save us 50% on our telefan bill as compared to
[8:05] the previous vendor. um which was great and that
was true but then we started digging into some of
[8:11] the AI capabilities and we've been able to reduce
our average um handle time by over uh 60% and the
[8:20] post call processing time has gone from uh just
over 7 minutes to about 2 and a half minutes
[8:25] which if you're not familiar with call centers
that's a huge piece of the cost. So for yeah
[8:31] for my offshore BO we were able to cut the um we
were in the midst of a renewal so we were able
[8:36] to really reduce that headcount quite a bit which
had additional savings and like you were talking
[8:41] about being able to free people up. So what we're
finding is that having taken some of that scut
[8:46] work off of people's plates our better agents are
able to take that cognitive load and they're able
[8:52] to give better service to the the customers who
call in with a little bit more complicated things.
[8:58] What's an interesting flip side to that that we
were starting to see is also that some of the
[9:02] agents, maybe the ones who are not the A players,
they're not able to handle that cognitive load.
[9:07] So, I would just give you that little caution that
you need to think about that as you take the the
[9:11] simple work away, can the humans that you have
left, can they handle that that remaining work?
[9:17] Yeah, I've gotten feedback on um you know, as
I implement AI across my whole organization,
[9:25] um there's the overwhelming sort of unspoken fear
of, you know, if we if we automate this stuff,
[9:34] what are the employees that we have going
to do? And [snorts] um so pairing your AI
[9:42] um journey with upskilling the folks you have and
giving them the opportunity to take on things that
[9:49] maybe uh they can use their expertise in that
uh the AI is automating. Um it gets a lot of of
[9:57] good adoption. Folks are are excited about the
opportunity to do something other than what AI
[10:03] is automating. So cool. Lily, you had something.
Yeah, I also have well obviously we we are also
[10:09] doing AI contact center which is probably um
something similar so I'll probably skip that
[10:13] example but I do have another kind of example
on more of an institutional scale side that we
[10:20] do have um launched and distribution AI platform
called intelligence hub earlier in January this
[10:27] year. So ever since launch our entire US wealth
team are using them on daily basis. So in the old
[10:34] days that have to navigate a lot of workflows and
and information sources from about 15 systems. Now
[10:41] they can actually start their day and manage
their territories and advisor engagements and
[10:47] pre and post engagement activities thinking about
uh you know actionable insights and trade reports
[10:54] and focus list non-focus list prioritize their
day all in one place. And one day we actually
[11:00] had a little bit hiccup and we got crazy
of complaints. People saying why this is
[11:04] not working. So that's one good sign that you
feel about people are actually really changing
[11:10] some of the way of working fundamentally and
then getting getting the benefits out of the
[11:14] platform. By now we're actually already seeing
measurable values out of it. Here what I'm saying
[11:20] is values not productivity because we have very
clear benchmarking against the folks or who have
[11:27] not used that before that we've seen incremental
client coverage we have seen um more value added
[11:33] engagements and also um potentially sales lift
associated with the platform. So this type of
[11:40] transformation is require people really to think
about how to work end to end. Obviously AI is a
[11:47] really fundamental of it. However, there's still
also some deterministic you need to consider to
[11:51] put into automation. So, it is a full to a
point or all of you guys are talking about
[11:56] full transformation, but AI it's really a core and
center. Awesome. Did you have anything you wanted
[12:03] to add? You you look like you have Yeah. Well, why
should I miss out? No. [laughter] I think I think
[12:08] from uh so I don't agree lots of value across
the board. I think the way we're looking at
[12:12] it is we're kind of breaking it up into chunks,
right? So we we try to follow the full customer
[12:18] journey and apply AI accordingly. So upfront we
want to automate as much as possible. So I think
[12:24] you gave a great example. You know it's not about
replacing humans per se. Those those same humans
[12:29] shouldn't have to you know get on a call or or
answer a text and and talk about you know uh
[12:35] location hours services that they provide. We can
easily automate that with with an AI receptionist
[12:41] as an example. So we would do that right up front.
We'd leverage the AI. Then when you're actually in
[12:46] a conversation where you need an agent, then
you'd have a handoff. So you've got the the
[12:52] uh the digital agent handing off with context
with all the information over to a human agent.
[12:58] And that and that human agent we want to apply
AI to assist. So now we want to assist them
[13:04] because again at the other end there may be a
high-profile customer. You want to have all of
[13:08] the information available to that agent so they're
empowered to have a very meaningful conversation
[13:15] whether they're trying to to sell whether trying
to service it doesn't matter we want to give them
[13:20] all of that assistance from an AI perspective and
of course the supervisors in the contact center
[13:26] would also have all of that leverage and then
then post call we want to analyze right and I
[13:32] think this is the real value especially I'm coming
from a voice perspective a gentic voice AI and you
[13:38] look at contact centers and you know you look at
historical or legacy quality management and the
[13:43] tools that we had it was very difficult to analyze
even say 10 or 15% of the conversations you try
[13:50] your best and say I think we've got a problem
over here so I'm going to analyze as much as I
[13:55] can there but now with the tools that we have AI
conversational experts something that we've got
[14:00] you know 100% of all conversations can be deeply
analyzed you know with pre-built uh formats with
[14:08] with uh certain things that you're keying in on
and then you can actually come into problems and
[14:14] all of those patterns are are available to
you, right? So you're not missing anything.
[14:18] So for example, in the quality management
realm, you know, maybe you've got a certain
[14:22] um churn rate that's acceptable to you. So you're
looking across the nation and you're going to say,
[14:27] "Okay, well this churn rate is okay. Oh, but this
area it's a little bit high." So you're just going
[14:32] to focus in on that area. you're actually missing
out because those other areas while the churn rate
[14:37] may be high, if you're actually leveraging AI to
analyze those conversations, maybe there are key
[14:43] repetitive problems that are happening in the
northeast or in the southwest that you can now
[14:49] analyze independent of the rest and not accept a
certain level of uh of churn. Like why should we
[14:55] accept that? We want to be able to do that. And
again, so again, leveraging AI from the beginning
[15:00] to the end of the journey is is really what we're
focused in on. And we're and we're doing that for
[15:05] customers of all shapes and sizes, right? From
from the very small to the very large enterprises.
[15:11] Yeah. I think that reminds me of something that
I've learned [snorts] I think over the years that
[15:17] AI is making a lot easier which is [snorts] um I
think in the past we tend to look at what's not
[15:25] doing well and then figure out how to fix it and
something that now you can look at uh very easily
[15:33] where are things going really really well and are
those things or those patterns are they able to be
[15:39] replicated in places that maybe aren't doing well
or in places where they don't exist that might
[15:44] even allow another place to do even better. So
using it not just to find and solve problems but
[15:51] looking at what is it that we are kicking butt at
and can we replicate that. Um yeah so like AI has
[15:59] helped a lot with that 100% and that's what we
do as well. We actually score the conversation.
[16:03] So to your point, what does great look like? And
then how do we replicate it and leverage that for
[16:08] training? Because you may have certain agents that
have just absolutely excelled. They're delighting
[16:12] the customers all the time. Now you know exactly
every single, you know, conversation interaction
[16:18] that they're having. What was it? What was the
gold nuggets that they were doing that others
[16:22] aren't and then replicating it? Yeah. All right.
Well, let's uh drilling into that a little bit.
[16:30] customers like tech has gotten uh gotten really
advanced and customers basically expect you to
[16:38] to some degree uh read their minds. They expect
a certain amount of personalization. Um how are
[16:45] you using predictive analytics to get ahead of
uh problems before the customer even reaches
[16:52] out to complain or ask for assistance? Uh anyone
want to take it first? Yeah, I'll take that. So
[16:59] predictive analytics, it's a a fun word. It gets
tossed around quite a bit and it's it's data.
[17:05] It's working with data. It's looking what you
have. It's looking at what you know and trying
[17:09] to glean as much as you can around the context of
what's going on. And so as I mentioned, Deepgram
[17:14] is a foundational AI voice AI platform. So, we're
feeding a lot of customers and we're seeing a lot
[17:20] of voice data come through and we're seeing a
lot of data that is potentially having issues
[17:26] um especially the issues he was just talking about
and and what we can do is say hey let's try to
[17:31] figure out something before a customer raises
their hand and so uh one thing that I tell the
[17:36] team is hey we are we do have a support arm of our
team and instead of being reactive we should be
[17:42] proactive I love when I get notices from different
systems or tools that I use and say, "Hey, there
[17:48] was something that's a little bit abnormal. We
fixed it for you." And so, how far can we go and
[17:53] thinking ahead of the customer and thinking ahead
of our our people and starting to say, "All right,
[17:57] we notice an anomaly. Let's figure out what this
is. It might be geographic. It might be related to
[18:02] this type of customer or this vertical. Why are
we seeing this? What's going on?" And before a
[18:08] customer can even notice anything might be going
on before anything even reaches them. And so uh
[18:12] when it comes to predicting and understanding and
trying to figure out what are the trends that that
[18:17] are telling us more than than we've seen in the
past, that's what we tend to look at. We tend to
[18:21] look at our and again those those agents that are
uh running alongside us, it allows them to always
[18:27] be on. And so instead of a human having to be up 8
hours and saying, "Hey, I noticed something while
[18:32] I was online," that agent is constantly combing
and looking and spawning sub agents to say, "Hey,
[18:37] I noticed an anomaly. Go run off and look over
here." and if you come back and you see something,
[18:42] let me know. And then we can start to figure
out we're seeing anomalies and patterns that
[18:46] can inform us in ways that we can then inform the
customer and that makes them happy. It again goes
[18:51] all the way back to giving them that exceptional
customer experience. And an exceptional customer
[18:55] experience is if you really have to do nothing.
Everything is just done for you. It's fixed for
[19:00] you. You don't even know there's a problem. And
so that's something that's that's critical for our
[19:04] operations. I I want to echo on that proactiveness
because I think you're absolutely right that the
[19:10] best client experience supposed to be you're
doing all the work that client before realize
[19:15] they actually need them and I think you mentioned
something about like the fixing the issue analyt
[19:23] in a lot of times in investment space or financial
space that you like to have your engagement
[19:28] leaders your market leaders and your investment
expertise to actually identify your needs of
[19:34] your portfolio. based on the market activities,
based on the offering of product intelligence
[19:38] that we have and all the client behavior and their
preference in the past and actually proactively
[19:43] give you recommendations of how to really
optimize your solutions and those are things
[19:48] that we're actively thinking and putting into our
platform and engagements and also like the way we
[19:54] think about proactiveness and and the technology
that offer you don't have to really limit to one
[20:00] technology, right? So we say predictive AI
that's probably like the late late 90s all
[20:05] the way to like 20 probably 20 and generated AI
that you heard about 2022 introduction of chat
[20:11] GBT and last year Gentic AI they all can all
work together and to really extract them all
[20:19] out of the data intelligence that you have and
all the linear you have between the data across
[20:25] different dimensions of the journeys. I think
that's something for you to all considering like
[20:30] very comprehensively to make sure that the
needs and the issues are both on both side,
[20:36] right? The the downside and upside all cover for
your customers. Yeah. And I think you started off
[20:41] by talking about personalization, right? So
that's a deep understanding of the customer.
[20:46] So obviously we talked about the problems that
they have. You want to anticipate it, but I'm
[20:50] I'm looking at it from another angle as well.
You you talked about financial services. Well,
[20:54] you've got tiers of customers, right? You've
got tiers of customers and if your agents are
[20:59] empowered to have access to the various systems
of record, you know everything you need to know,
[21:05] what services they have, what are they likely and
then you can actually use the predictive analytics
[21:10] from a from a services offering perspective to
say, hey, you know, you're already here. Um,
[21:16] this is something that you might want to consider
next. And then the person feels like, hey, you're
[21:20] not wasting my time. I don't have to tell you
what services or what products or what investment
[21:25] portfolio. it's already all there and then you
can also offer that level of differentiation
[21:31] right because obviously you've got various people
who can respond to various uh customers and again
[21:37] if you're high rollers they need or and expect
a certain level of discerned service and I think
[21:43] leveraging the AI knowing everything about them
but making the agents aware of it to say hey
[21:48] you know what maybe I don't even want an agent
speaking to that person you know if this person
[21:53] comes to us it's going to go straight to a senior
portfolio manager, somebody uh more senior that
[21:59] can have that level of conversation. Show them
the respect that they're kind of expecting to say,
[22:04] "Yes, you you uh you've earned my business. You
clearly want to keep my business because you're
[22:09] not putting me in a queue. You're not treating
me like everybody else. You're giving me that
[22:13] status that quite frankly I've earned based on my
business." Yeah. It's almost uh so putting on my
[22:20] product hat, but when you think about personas
and audience and segmentation of your audience,
[22:27] it's understanding the goals of your customers and
then really focusing on the ways in which you can
[22:36] uh sort of serve them, answer their
questions before they need it,
[22:40] highlight the things that they might be concerned
about, which is very different depending on sort
[22:44] of the the customer segment that uh is in the
pipeline. Yeah. And I think to add on to that,
[22:50] making sure that your messaging matches what
that segment or group expects is really really
[22:56] important. You don't want to solve a problem
proactively and cause a problem in the process,
[23:01] right? You want to make sure you're What do you
mean? I love doing that. That would never happen.
[23:07] Great. All right. Um let's see. So, as AI takes
over more of the customer journey, we're talking
[23:15] about customer journeys a little bit here. Um,
how do you decide where the bot stops and where
[23:22] a human needs to step in? So, um, like what's a
friction point that you think virtual assistants
[23:29] will help make disappear in the next few
years? Uh, anybody want to take that one first?
[23:34] I mean, we we set a very strong rule where I
was that if the person said the word agent,
[23:41] they would go immediately to a human. I don't care
if they're our smallest customer. If you want a
[23:45] human, you should get a human. And you shouldn't
be forced to go through a labyrinthine IVR to get
[23:50] to them. You know, that that just frustrates
people. So, that was one thing that we said,
[23:55] no matter how great the AI is, if
they just want to talk to a person,
[23:57] let them do it. My father would appreciate that.
A lot of people do. Yeah. Yeah, I mean I guess
[24:04] the counter to that is certainly five years ago
you could you knew you were talking to a chatbot,
[24:09] you didn't like it and it's like what's happening?
Um I'll be honest the the advances are so strong
[24:15] now that I don't mind it. I don't mind it
because um if I can get the information that
[24:20] I need irrespective whether it's a human agent
or a digital agent, I'm just fine with it. I'm
[24:25] absolutely fine with it. What I'm not fine with
coming uh coming back to your answer is if I've
[24:30] had an interaction with the digital agent where
they've already determined who I am, what I have,
[24:34] what my issue is and for whatever reasons they
need the handoff because as a best practice you
[24:39] always want to have a human in the loop and there
are certain uh times where the AI has exhausted
[24:45] its value and you've got to you've got to code
that right into your agents like now you know we
[24:49] need like for you know you know um agents can do
a little bit of sentiment analysis but they can't
[24:56] truly empathize the way a human can and when
true empathy is required you want to shift to
[25:02] a human uh as quick as possible but at the same
time that handoff has to be seamless with all
[25:08] of the context given with it so when you when you
do that I think irrespective whether it's a human
[25:14] agent or a a digital agent or back and forth it
doesn't matter as long as that journey for the
[25:20] individual has all of the context available and
then all of that information that was gleaned is
[25:25] then fed back into whatever system is of record or
whatnot as you resolve the issue. Um, like I said,
[25:31] I don't I don't mind digital agents anymore. I
think they've gotten and and you're going to see
[25:35] it out in the floor. You can come to our booth
or any booth. You I mean the the uh the tone,
[25:40] the inflection, the accents, the the speed in
which people talk depending on which region of
[25:46] of the US or wherever you might be. It's it's just
amazing now. And uh so personally I'm not averse
[25:52] to it. But I would agree if a customer really
wants to speak to an agent, they should absolutely
[25:58] have that and not be in some sort of futuristic
IVR jail. I I like to add another angle of this
[26:06] because we when we think about agent, there's more
than just the agent directly facing your customers
[26:12] and customers. You can also have a lot of agents
supporting your sales staff, your service staff
[26:18] or serving your clients and amplify that serving
and scaling that serving in a sense that in the
[26:24] past they probably only be able to manage 100. Now
they probably can't cover a thousand and that also
[26:30] grow your business and booked and in that case
I think the new model coming into the way there
[26:37] could be some sort of human on the loop where
you don't have human to do every micro actions
[26:42] or decisions however human needs to really set the
gu guideline policies and circus breakers or rules
[26:49] to determine to your questions where to stop the
bot the agent the multi- aent systems at certain
[26:56] guardrails And based on how your how your um
business operates and how the risk rules you have
[27:01] to comply. Meanwhile, also your agent has to earn
the right like they have to earn the rights to
[27:08] um be utilized by those um individuals or teams
by their you know explanability, auditability,
[27:16] the transparency, the link sources, all
of those needs to be like fully earned
[27:21] the trust of your your sales force your
your um servicing force so that they can
[27:26] actually ultimately provide the best client
engagement and experience to your end clients
[27:32] And that um I would say that's the guideline. The
oversight accountabilities will set the rules for
[27:39] the breaker or an operator to go beyond agents
or humans. Yeah. So, uh I know we've got a lot
[27:48] of different size companies here represented uh
both on stage and also out in the audience. So,
[27:56] um I know most of you are probably not starting
from a blank slate. Who knew? Um, so you're
[28:03] bolting AI onto systems that have been around for
a decade and in some cases probably much older
[28:08] than that. Um, so for the folks in the room that
are wrestling with messy scatty scattered data
[28:17] um or just in general having to deal with legacy
systems. Uh, what's your advice? I'll take one
[28:25] here. So, one of the one one of the things that
I really really preach to the team when they go
[28:32] out and consult with our customers is to really
understand the data and the domain that you're
[28:38] working within because there's all this cool and
and glamorous and shiny stuff that that can that
[28:44] can be done. But if you really focus and say what
am I trying to do? What am I trying to augment?
[28:51] What am I trying to enhance? And what they're
talking about the agents and the human agents
[28:56] and not having to have everything be agentic
to the customer to the end user but being able
[29:02] to support your in-house agents being able to make
their lives a bit easier. Trying to understand and
[29:07] we we've seen this many times over. We we've seen
the trans different transformations and different
[29:11] really cool technologies and everyone wants to be
an early adopter. But if you really take a step
[29:17] back and and take a deep breath and look and say,
"All right, let me adopt this over here and figure
[29:22] out that I want to go from from IVR to something
a bit newer. Why do I want to go that way?" So
[29:28] asking why and continuously asking why and trying
to understand what the re reason is behind this
[29:35] transformation that you're pushing, that's really
going to to start to to clear up the needs and the
[29:41] data and the needs and the the complexity that you
might have. Yeah, I I would agree. So discovery
[29:46] is absolutely key, right? We need to have that
discovery uh you know understand uh the why of
[29:51] why we want to migrate. But coming back to your
question, you you talked about you know legacy
[29:56] systems and and the data itself. Well, the reality
is you know as a best practice you have to ensure
[30:02] that your data is clean. So I think there's a lot
of planning that happens upfront to ensure that
[30:08] you know again data is the fuel for the AI. So if
your data is messy, you're just going to amplify
[30:13] that mess that the AI is not going to give you
those business outcomes that you were promised
[30:18] if the data itself is suspect. So I think it's
extremely important again as you mentioned that
[30:24] discovery. Why do you want to do what you want to
do? What is your expectations? How would you uh
[30:29] you know what's the end state? Why do you want to
get to that end state? And then let's take a real
[30:34] reality check of where we are right now. Are you
truly ready for AI? Because if you're not ready
[30:39] for AI, bolting on AI uh solutions here and there,
it's just going to make it messy and someone's
[30:45] going to get fired because they spent a heck of
a lot of money and it's not driving any business
[30:49] results. And it it was something as simple as
taking a step back kind of kind of walking slowly
[30:54] to to run later, but first make sure you clean up
your data, make sure it's not messy, so that all
[31:00] of the AI that feeds off the data is truly going
to provide benefits for you. Yeah, I think um it's
[31:08] a step that a lot of companies skip is looking at
the quality of their data and uh having come from
[31:17] the olden days when we were all excited about
Hadoop and I remember folks putting they they
[31:24] were sold on Hadoop being the George Foreman grill
and they put all of their data in these giant data
[31:29] lakes and then they waited for magic to happen and
it turned out garbage in garbage out. Um, and the
[31:36] thing that I think AI does really well is if you
have great data, it will bring out great insights.
[31:42] If you have not so great data, it's going to
very quickly give you a lot of slop. Um, so
[31:48] like your data governance, your data cleanliness,
understanding what is in there and what it means
[31:53] is is deeply important to getting the value out of
it. Um, so like the prep work is super important.
[32:00] I I completely echo all you guys mentioned about
the data but then what I'm saying next will sound
[32:06] like a a life advice don't wait for the perfect
moment just don't wait for that perfect data
[32:12] or perfect moment to come and then start your
transformation and I think that's like one thing
[32:18] I will add on to the importance of data and the
other thing I will mention is also forget about AI
[32:25] forget about AI or technologies think about what
core function you want to deliver out of your own
[32:32] industry businesses and see with the new processes
that you want to deliver with the value you want
[32:38] to drive what legacy system or what data you need
to clean what legacy system you need to really
[32:45] change or update or evaluate where you need to
plug in AI to drive the most valuable components
[32:51] out of it so I think that's probably another way
for you to both align with your leaders and get
[32:57] your clear values out of your might also help
you to create the functionality that's going to
[33:03] be really lasting and long-term strategy for
your farm. Yeah, AI is a large topic and so
[33:12] uh don't allow yourself to get so stuck in
everything isn't perfect, but like scope it
[33:17] out and figure out where is the biggest impact and
then you know get get a piece of it out. It's just
[33:23] tech like so don't let the mystique of it terrify
you. Um, it is not in fact a George Foreman grill
[33:30] or a magic box. Yeah, that's actually why we
started with the telefan system because we had
[33:34] relatively clean data and we knew that we could
dip our toe into the water and and get some pretty
[33:39] quick success out of it. But yeah, to go back and
and clean all the data in all the systems. I have
[33:44] ERPs that are older than the people using them.
I'm not making that up. That's the truth. So yeah,
[33:50] I I used to work for the Travelers and they had
uh data in um old copy books that went back to
[33:58] before I was born and I'm old. I'm 45. So um it
was a lot of data. Sorry, Heather. It's okay.
[34:08] I'd like to see 45 again is all I'm going
to say. [snorts] Tech has done a number
[34:14] on me. Um so all right. So, here's one that I
think you may or may not have answers to. Um,
[34:23] but trust takes a lot of time to build with your
customers. And, um, one really bad rogue chatbot
[34:32] interaction can take things sideways. Um, so tell
us about a time AI got it wrong um, and frustrated
[34:41] a customer and what happened and how did you
recover? I don't have an AI example, but I do
[34:46] have a statistic for folks. Traditional customer
experience research tells us that when you mess
[34:51] up, it takes 11 positive interactions to get over
that one negative interaction just to get back to
[34:57] zero. So, you really, really, really want to make
sure that you don't let this happen more than it
[35:02] absolutely has to. And that's true whether it's
a human or a bot. It doesn't matter, right? But
[35:06] just keep that in mind that it takes a long time
to rebuild that trust incrementally. Yeah. And I
[35:12] would just add um you know within our uh AI agents
we build parameters in to kind of absolutely
[35:18] mitigate hallucinations and certain areas that
are absolutely where you don't want to go. Um
[35:23] you know I I I live in Toronto, Canada and there
was a pretty famous story of Air Canada right
[35:28] somebody had passed away and so uh the individual
went online and the bot told them that hey don't
[35:34] worry you know after within 90 days if you get
back to us we'll discount your ticket because it's
[35:39] bereavement. So the individual went, attended the
funeral, came back and spoke to a human agent this
[35:44] time. And the human agent said, "No, absolutely
not. This is our policy. There will absolutely be
[35:49] no refunds after the fact. You should have told us
beforehand, and that's how we would have done it."
[35:56] And so this actually went to the courts in Canada.
It was it was a pretty famous and and the courts
[36:00] came back and said sorry you are resp whether it's
your human agent or your digital agent or your
[36:05] chatbot if something is stated as a fact you have
to honor it. So so again coming back to you know
[36:13] you want to mitigate eliminate the hallucinations
especially in areas where it could get extremely
[36:20] serious. So I'm not going to say AI is perfect.
It's not perfect, but there are certainly certain
[36:25] uh areas where it can be catastrophic and that
you absolutely can and and and just absolutely
[36:31] have to shut down. Yeah, for sure. Um so we
gloss we talked about it a little bit earlier
[36:40] and everyone talks about how AI can cut costs
and response times. Um but does it actually keep
[36:45] customers around? So customer retention is a key
um sort of metric. What metrics are you tracking
[36:53] um or seeing other clients track uh that connect
AI investment to long-term retention? Um I can
[37:02] take it. Uh so one of the things that that we've
uh that I've seen just over my my my career in
[37:09] conversational AI is how much time customers
are spending whether it's in app in game uh
[37:15] on your platform and that is directly correlated
to how quickly you can resolve issues for them.
[37:22] For example, in the gaming industry, if you have
customers that write in or dial in and you're
[37:28] able to a glitch happens or a hack happens and
you're able to get them credits back immediately,
[37:33] they're going to go back to playing the game.
And so, you're going to have happier players,
[37:37] happier customers that are doing more because
you're able to help them more quickly. Otherwise,
[37:41] they'll get frustrated and they'll leave.
And so if you're able to get back to them,
[37:44] if you're able to identify, again, going back
to what I said about proactively seeing what
[37:48] happened, they get an inapp message or they
get a phone call, hey, we had an issue, but
[37:52] we credit your account, thousand points, whatever
it is, then you're going to be happier, right? And
[37:58] um and so just sort of thinking about what it is
that's going to keep people using your product,
[38:04] using your platform. Um that's those those are
the the areas that you do want to measure. Um,
[38:09] it's going to be different for every industry and
it's going to be different for a lot of different
[38:12] companies, but seeing that a customer is able
to continue doing what they were doing and not
[38:18] have interruption, maybe they get a notice and
a notification, that's going to that that that's
[38:23] what matters and being able to track that
that level of uh of of engagement is what
[38:27] matters. Yeah. And if we bring it to a traditional
contact center in terms of KPIs, you know, you've
[38:32] got containment rate, your average handle time,
certainly first contact resolution. I mean those
[38:37] things are still very valid but also repeatability
right is the customer coming back asking the same
[38:42] thing if you've deployed AI I think another uh
really important thing is doing a a um a survey
[38:50] in advance the NPS score things like that prior
to the AI and then post uh deploying the AI and
[38:57] then actually comparing the two and saying hey we
were made all these promises that the AI would do
[39:03] uh you know specifically on retention well is that
actually happening and are our customers actually
[39:08] happier or not? And if they're not, it doesn't
mean the AI gets thrown out. It means you've got
[39:13] to tweak it. Maybe there's something in there that
is not clicking for your particular customers in a
[39:19] particular space. So, I think uh those traditional
KPIs absolutely still apply, but certainly
[39:25] followed up by surveys and NPS scores because
uh at the end of the day, if you can't keep
[39:30] your customers, I think you mentioned it earlier,
right? uh how how how much more difficult it is
[39:35] to acquire a customer versus keeping a customer
happy. And if you've made that customer I rate
[39:41] uh it's a very competitive world. They h everybody
has options. Yeah. Like I have to think about
[39:47] things like customer acquisition cost all the time
and it's very expensive to acquire customers. So
[39:53] it makes a ton of sense to um focus on like how
do we keep them? How do we keep them around long
[40:00] term? Um yeah. Yeah, I I would say in our industry
it's probably even larger scale. So one it would
[40:08] be very very clear at the end of the measurement
of capital flows that's like very uh measurable
[40:14] but in the meantime um the the retention is
really based on how how much coverage our um
[40:21] people on the field our market leaders ourselves
people can actually interact and spend meaningful
[40:26] conversations with our clients because a lot of
our clients are group of advisors they could be
[40:30] family office institutional like national accounts
they're all large large clients and um you know
[40:36] really paying attention to how their sentiment is
going and how their needs are being felt that is
[40:42] really going to be very clear to see um the trust
being built the relationships so as I mentioned
[40:48] that the platform that we offer to our field
people are already showing those valuable um value
[40:55] added engagements increasing you're seeing the
coverage increasing and those are direct linked
[41:02] formula that we're leading towards the post AI
high um improvement in terms of the actual sales
[41:08] numbers. So, we're really seeing that it's coming
down to the bottom line. Yeah, the sentiment's a
[41:14] really interesting one because for decades, many
of us have spent our weekends tagging verbatim
[41:18] that was, you know, written in by somebody on a
survey, right? And now the AIS are able to give
[41:23] you a much better approximation of what was that
person really feeling on that call or even better,
[41:29] what is that person feeling on that call right
now? and do they need to be escalated to a person
[41:34] at this moment and then you add to that you do
have those decades of data you know what those
[41:39] triggers are what those things are that make
people churn the AI can do full text searches
[41:44] for you it's a super simple thing but if it's
doing that in the background automatically and
[41:49] then spawning a ticket to have somebody call right
like you were talking about the proactive service
[41:54] right hey we noticed that you had a problem with
the quality or you know the box wasn't good or
[41:59] whatever it is in in your particular industry
that thing that triggers people to get upset.
[42:04] If somebody calls them and says, "We saw that you
called in and it wasn't resolved. We want to help
[42:08] you." That goes a long long way with folks. Yeah.
I think authenticity and transparency goes a long
[42:15] long way. And the more uh that we're able to use
AI and not lose that um is key. All right. Well,
[42:25] we got two minutes left. Uh and so if anyone has
a quick question uh I'll take a question otherwise
[42:33] I'm going to do a little soft shoe or you know
so the question was are AI agents better or worse
[42:43] compared to the human agents? I can take that
really quickly. Um better or worse is subjective.
[42:51] If if you want something to get habitate to happen
and get resolved quickly or you want something to
[42:56] just try to think ahead of you, then AI agents
are going to likely have a lot more information
[43:01] they can collect altogether. Um, but if you want
to escalate quickly and have that empathy that
[43:05] Amir was talking about, you're going to probably
want to have that conversation with a human. So,
[43:09] I think we can talk a little bit more after
this, but yeah, that's my quick answer. Great
[43:13] questions. Thank you all again. Thank you all for
coming and listening to us. It's been a pleasure.