Shawn Cordner (00:12.568)

Hey everyone. And thanks for joining the Amplitude of Tech podcast. I’m Shawn Cordner, Chief Marketing Officer of Amplix. Today I spoke to Joe DeLuca. He’s the senior director of voice contact center and collaboration at Wyndham Hotels and Resorts. This is a great conversation about the hospitality industry, the trends that are happening and technology in that space and how AI is transforming the guest experience. Hope you enjoy it.

 

Shawn Cordner (00:39.31)

All right, Joe Deluca, thanks for joining me on the Amplitude of Tech podcast.

 

Thanks, Shawn. A pleasure, Abby.

 

do it is to get second introduce yourself to the audience

 

Sure, sure. So Joe DeLuca, I currently work for Wyndham Hotels and Resorts. Wyndham Hotels and Resorts is a headquartered in Percipiti, New Jersey. They are the largest 100 % pure play franchisee hotel company in the world. So we are a global organization. have over 95 different countries, 5,500 different properties across over 27 different brands. I’ve been with Wyndham for…

 

eight years now and I’m the senior director for all of Enterprise Voice Contact Center and collaboration globally. So all of the Enterprise Voice, Enterprise Telephony, Contact Center Technologies and collaboration suites that support all of our contact centers. So that’s been responsible. So I’ve over 20 years in the industry and

 

Joe DeLuca (01:47.106)

Went from a very large ship, you know, managing contact centers, design and architecture, and now working hospitality. It’s been a nice little bit of a shift over the past eight years.

 

Joe, that’s a huge job with a huge footprint as well. So, you know, I’m wondering if maybe we could just kind of start with zooming out and talk about the big picture in the hospitality space right now. So because you guys are global, there’s a lot going on in the world. There’s macroeconomic headwinds that everybody is facing right now, all businesses across all industries. There’s geopolitical tensions. So with all these things going on right now,

 

How is that impacting the hospitality industry?

 

That’s a great question, Shawn. I I think it would be really difficult to think that it wouldn’t impact hospitality, right? So, you if you think about, you know, just what’s going on domestically and, you know, just the level of uncertainty, notwithstanding everything from an economics perspective, I think that’s another part of the conversation here. you know, travel in general.

 

especially international travel. There’s a lot of trepidation for folks wanting to travel to the U.S. significantly, you know, coming from Northern borders all over our Canadian brethren. There’s a lot of people who traveling to the U.S. based on principle, believe it or not, you know, let alone fear and uncertainty. And that’s definitely impacted hospitality.

 

Joe DeLuca (03:31.168)

over the past year, to say the least.

 

Yeah, I read just doing a little research for this podcast episode. I read that both annual occupancy and revenue per available room declined in 2025. And that’s the first time that’s declined since 2020. Do you attribute that to all this geopolitical?

 

Yeah, it’s interesting. It’s not something that gets the public attention to the extent as I think that it should, but there is that impact. And again, that uncertainty. So I mentioned people traveling down from Canada. That’s pretty significant. And then you think about…

 

our southern border, notwithstanding the overall impetus as to why we’re doing what we’re the way it’s being approached now and just the overall sentiment, Texas is essentially a transit hub, right? Where people that are coming from our southern border who are…

 

getting into this country and ultimately finding their way to other areas throughout the US. And just the decline alone in that state, just from that perspective, has been notable. And then, of course, obviously, you think about people coming in from Latin America and Europe and Asia Pacific and so forth. Similar dynamic, right?

 

Joe DeLuca (05:10.774)

Right? know, coming in, you know, folks that have to come in with visas as well. they think this, so there’s a lot of direct impact from that perspective. you know, and you look at where we are in Wyndham, having such a breadth of brand offerings and, you know, all the from your economy to your, all the way up to your, you know, upscale, mid-scale and upscale brands. It’s a pretty significant part of our portfolio. So there’s definitely been an impact for sure.

 

So what we’re seeing across all industries really is that businesses are kind of tightening their belts and just taking a defensive posture, right? Not spending money needlessly, making investments wisely, maybe pulling back on making investments that they intended to make, taking a cost savings posture where possible. So are you seeing those kinds of trends in the hospitality industry?

 

Yeah, think the cost savings has always been paramount. But if you look at it from the perspective of just the overall investment in technology and the things that ultimately from our standpoint, it’s all about driving direct contribution, increasing value for our franchisees.

 

The most logical path is, is, is, is through technology, you know, and so I have to put in so many opportunities come out it from that perspective. So yeah, there’s, there’s definitely been a little bit of a recalibration to a certain extent. And, and if anything, I think as we start to, you know, go into 2026 and even looking beyond that, there’s a little bit more hesitancy, hesitancy to say the least, any additional capital outlay.

 

and ultimately what, what that, what that ROI translates to. And so it does, I was telling people, it’s, there’s, there’s a significantly higher burden of proof around value, that, that I think across the board, this is something that, that, that, well, you know, we’re experiencing, we’re seeing, it’s, it’s, it’s not mutually exclusive to Windham, that’s for sure.

 

Shawn Cordner (07:29.23)

That’s a way to put it, a higher burden of proof on value. I guess that kind of takes us into the conversation of technology as a cost savings vehicle, right? Because there’s two different ways that you can look at this. There’s finding cost savings within your tech stack, which is a relatively straightforward endeavor. It’s looking at where you’re spending the money. Can you lean on vendors? Can you get a better price by going to market? Are there modernization opportunities where you can

 

escape some technical debt and implement newer technology that’s going to be more cost effective for you. But then there’s using technology within the organization to drive cost savings or increase productivity in a nonlinear kind of way. Right. So how can I invest, you know, a hundred dollars or whatever in technology here and then realize $500 in cost savings or productivity enhancement somewhere else in the business. So

 

How do you go about looking for those opportunities to leverage technology to drive savings elsewhere or productivity gains elsewhere? And then how do you make that business case to the point?

 

It’s an interesting question and it’s a little bit loaded to an extent because you have to look at it from a couple of different lenses. You have it internally and what you kind spoke to moments ago regarding you’re looking at your text actors. How do we address potentially renegotiating from a vendor perspective? Where are there opportunities for optimization and consolidation looking at the broader

 

a landscape around, you know, your, your, applications, you know, and your services and, know, just how many redundant solutions do you have in the enterprise and having that, having that full snapshot and understanding, you know, where there is opportunity there and there generally is. And it’s, know, and I think that it’s it’s a unique scenario for some organizations, but for the most part, it’s, it’s, it’s a place where, you know, once you do take a step back.

 

Joe DeLuca (09:37.038)

and truly catalog what you have in your inventory. And you start to realize that, you know, from that particular lens, there’s a lot of things that you didn’t even know, right? That, you know, those things, you know, could be brought about by just various shifts and, you know, where budgets were controlled, right? You whether it’s from the business and, you know, the shadow IT and, know, and all that stuff, ultimately at the end of the day.

 

presents, I think, a huge opportunity there. So it starts there, but then you also have to think about it, you know, in terms of services that are delivered. So how do we effectively address some of the business problems that our franchisees would have, right? And you think about that in this context, I think, looking at that and understanding that labor is one. So the cost of labor, I mean, this has gone up exponentially.

 

You you think about, you know, the minimum wage requirements and the, and, know, and the increases there. There has been definitely a hit around labor that’s impacted. so COVID was just a huge paradigm shift for so many industries, but in hospitality. And when you think about the, you know, contactless approach and how consequential that could be.

 

and how it was back then, of course, and what that really bred in terms of, you know, how do we effectively address the concerns that happen, you know, on site and on the property, you know, when it comes to ensuring that we’re delivering a service and we’re providing opportunities for our franchisees to provide a service that embraces that philosophy, you know, we’re doing it’s just going to be, you know, whether it be a single touch and a minimal touch and so forth. So a lot of things.

 

In that regard, around labor and the constraints there is a huge opportunity. So it’s a one business problem to solve for a franchisee. delivering that while simultaneously also looking at those opportunities to increase revenue. You know, so I mentioned earlier on about driving direct contributions, you know, moving the bookings away from where a lot of people, you know, find themselves on a

 

Joe DeLuca (12:02.958)

within an OTA, an online travel agency like you’re booking.com and travel loss and so forth, where the margins are really challenging, you know, for both the franchising and for Wyndham. And how do you move that into a more direct booking scenario? And so a lot of that ultimately speaks to, again, opportunities around technology and utilizing technology to deliver that.

 

know, automation, you know, how can, how can we automate processes and ensure that we’re optimizing the ability to have a reduced labor pool, if you will. That’s not only just at the front desk, but it’s also the cleaning the rooms and so forth. So you’re taking all of that. Right. And, and then from there, at that point, there’s just, it’s just different pieces you want to chip away at.

 

Couple interesting things popped up in my head there. The first one being working backwards. If you’re looking for ways that you can automate the on-site experience and maybe have less labor involved in the process of dealing with people as they’re checking in, checking out, providing on-site support, are consumers ready for that?

 

question. So I think it’s important we distill it down as to what exactly that means. I think, know, I’m going to assume we’re talking about utilizing, you know, artificial intelligence, you know, potentially a conversational AI of things that we’ve actually have done, where you’re removing the human component away from a particular interaction.

 

This is a great part of the conversation, I think, because honestly, this is where it’s really important to understand how that is delivered and it’s approached. And then I think that’s really what’s going to drive what…

 

Joe DeLuca (14:05.076)

one would naturally assume people are going to have an aversion towards and what they would be truly ready to accept. So yeah, yeah, that is definitely a tough one. And there’s a lot of different ways that we really just walk through that one. Yeah.

 

I don’t think you’re going to wake up tomorrow and start seeing Tesla robots at your first, you know, the front desk, right? That’s not going to happen that quickly, but I do. I think that the industry has started to move in that direction. Like with COVID actually, you started to see a lot of kind of, contactless check-ins and contactless checkout and, more of the transaction that you wouldn’t typically do in person was moved, from, you know,

 

dealing with a human being in front of you to actually your phone and an app, right? So that process has probably started and I think people are more and more accustomed to dealing with AI and non-human interactions, non-face-to-face interactions, at least I’ll say, in more of their business, I’m sorry, more of their day-to-day as kind of a consumer, right?

 

What do you think that evolution is going to look like? Because like I said, it’s not going to happen overnight. We’re already working towards it, right? So what are the next milestones?

 

think it’s got to start definitely with addressing the well-hanging fruit. And this is all relative to understanding not only just simply the problem you’re trying to solve for, but all of the respective use cases that get you to some of that equation. And this is where the conversation, I think it’s easy to talk about this relative to…

 

Joe DeLuca (15:56.366)

the things that you can do versus the things that you should do. And those particular journeys, it’s important. So we’ll look at this from a conversational AI lens where you’re looking at it from a voice channel perspective, people are calling in and going to that comment around low hanging fruit. So where do you start? How do you effectively…

 

start to address the, you know, the containment deflection of your low value or no value calls that are coming into the contact center or being handled by our franchisees. You know, and so from that perspective, it’s looking at those use cases and what we have done that we put essentially front-ended a virtual agent that will answer.

 

Any of those calls, your FAQs, your knowledge-based questions around a property, are you running a shuttle? What’s your pet policy? Do you have a restaurant? Can I check in early? Can I check out late and so forth? And all that stuff and deflecting that. we go back to the whole thing around solving for the labor challenges, the property. It’s a cumulative effect in terms of just how many calls.

 

the front desk would ultimately have to address that at the end of the day, you know, amounted to out of booking or, or, or, or maybe it’s already a booking either just looking for additional. At the end of the day, there was no additional revenue. There’s a cost savings just right then and there. taking it, taking that iterative approach to addressing it to with the, we’ll just cut the easy stuff, right?

 

and keeping the more complex part of the interactions and ensuring that those can be compartmentalized into different subsets of use cases, I think is tremendously important. And important really from the perspective of, and in answering your question, or your people ready for it, well, it’s gotta be successful. It has to deliver what…

 

Joe DeLuca (18:12.11)

the customer and the guest and the caller is asking for. So if you have a generative agent, virtual agent, or wherever you want look at that, from a natural language processing perspective, can’t effectively understand languages and dialects and understand the caller itself. then they’re just going through this period of frustration, which already started at a very low level anyway, because those expectations.

 

or, or, or, or already set. know I, at my agent, it’s kind of ironic for someone who’s responsible for delivering these types of solutions. I’m the first person who’s going to get wildly colorful and want to speak to an agent and, or a representative or a human being. it’s just, so my tolerance is, is already at a certain level. So it’s, it’s, it’s meeting them and understanding those expectations. Um, but you’ll get those use cases, right? That’s where.

 

with full support.

 

Yeah. And I’m the same way and you’re a Jersey guy and I’m a Philly guy. So I think part of that is just in our DNA, but, uh, but yeah, I’m exactly the same way. usually my frustration comes from when I have an expectation of how something’s going to go and that expectation isn’t met. And I can usually point to that being just poor CX design, right? They just didn’t think through the journey. didn’t think through the personas of the people that they’re dealing with and what those use cases are going to be.

 

And what the expectation of how I want to pursue resolution for those use cases, right?

 

Joe DeLuca (19:46.51)

Well, that’s so true. It’s funny. And so, you know, I think the operative word here and you, you, you said here is expectation. And that is the thing is, is, is our expectations. then it is great because you could, you could look at this across the generational spectrum. You know, our expectations are just becoming increasingly more demanding and, and, and, and, and, and emotionally based. If you think about, you know, just your, your, your,

 

just doing some online shopping, whatever it is, and that page is not loading, or your cart doesn’t update, or whatever it is, your tolerance. again, that emotional experience that you start to go through, it has some very significant impacts in terms of retention and loyalty, and whether that person’s gonna continue or gonna go to a competitor.

 

Whatever it is, whatever it is. And it’s funny because you know, we didn’t grow up with these devices in our hands. We didn’t grow up with the internet. We didn’t grow up, you know, with being able to just pick up or even just dictate into something in our hand and have a meal delivered to us. know, however, and this is the generational comment here is, we still have that fostered.

 

And it ultimately ingrained in us and it’s something that so the, the, the expectations or, or, or just consider considerably higher just in it’s year over year. And how do you keep up with that? How do you keep up with that? Because it’s, it’s, it becomes a, a, a, quite a race against, you know, keeping up with that progression of the technology and the capabilities, you know, to be able to.

 

meet those expectations and how do you deliver that? again, it’s a balance, I think, but we’ll be chasing that for quite some time.

 

Shawn Cordner (21:52.076)

It’s unbelievable how quickly it moves and how normal changes, right? What you consider normal because in the dial-up days, you would be willing to wait two business days for a page to load because that’s just what it took. Right. And you didn’t have any other frame of reference. But now if you look at, know, we, we manage our website and, we have to do page load testing. And if the page load is longer than a few milliseconds, we start seeing the bounce rate increase on the website. Right. So it’s like.

 

People can’t wait milliseconds for the page to load before they’re on to the next page. And that’s crazy. And that puts a quick burden on the tech stack, right? You really have to, you have to understand all of these metrics and what they mean to the user experience and then how you can impact those metrics in a positive way. And you need to stay on top of them and you need to have a strategy about how you’re going to continue to deliver a high quality experience.

 

home with us.

 

Shawn Cordner (22:48.642)

with all of these variables that are outside of your control.

 

Well, it’s so true. It’s so true. it can make or break a solution, can make or break just the old delivery unit, can make or break a business or a brand. And people are so incredibly fickle as well. And you think about that, it’s definitely a challenge. And it’s going to be interesting to see how the, when you mentioned it, just the pace.

 

And the growth around how those, I think in many respects, one could say, it’s like, wow, you know, that’s kind your expectation is a little unrealistic here. And, know, and, but, but, but in many respects, it’s, it’s, it’s actually not. And, you know, in technology and individual companies and solutions and services that have been able to deliver at and deliver it consistently.

 

Those are the ones that continue to elevate that bar. Think about Amazon for crying out loud. Amazon, that’s the gold standard of customer service. The absolute gold standard of customer service. And look at their business. But you have to keep up with Amazon. You think about what, from an e-commerce perspective, what they did to retail and the precedent that they have set.

 

with that customer experience and that delivery and that consistency. mean, it’s just, it’s driven, it’s driven stores, it’s driven entire businesses to the ground. Right? You know, and you, so you, know, and you, and you constantly see that, you know, that comparison too, to Amazon, like, you know, so we, you know, Walmart and Target, what are we doing to ensure that we can compete, you know, with, with just this juggernaut of service?

 

Shawn Cordner (24:46.688)

It’s insane. They disrupted the brick and mortar retail space. They disrupted the online retail space. They’ve disrupted the logistics space. They’ve disrupted the customer service space. They’ve disrupted the cloud compute space. mean, they’ve had an unbelievable impact on how we as consumers interact with brands and what our expectations are. ChatGPT is another perfect example of this in that OpenAI has

 

really kind of fast forwarded how people are willing to accept AI in their world and what their expectation of an engagement with AI would be. mean, prior to chat GBT becoming what it is today, when you dealt with an AI or you know, whatever you would call it prior to the AI making it into the lexicon, right? You had an expectation that it was going to be clunky and it was going to be weird and you weren’t able to talk to it in natural language and you probably weren’t going to get the result.

 

And today the expectation is that whatever AI you’re dealing with, whether it’s chat GBT or Claude or whatever big model it is, or whether it’s just a little chat bot on a small website, you’re dealing with it as if you’re dealing with chat GBT. the expectation is it’s going to deliver that same kind of experience, that same kind of speed, that same kind of natural language that you’re used to dealing with. And so they’ve completely shifted how the consumer is willing to accept AI in their world.

 

No, I think you’re spot on. I mean, that is, and that is, you look at, you look at these disruptors or these, these true differentiators and how they are driving so much of that demand and, and, and, and, and, and so much of, just overall consumer sentiment and how critically and intrinsically tied into just an experience it is.

 

And it’s funny because it’s, you know, I used to say, you know, people refer to things and they use it to CX and it’s just like, CX, well, you know, well, yeah. And it’s, it’s, it used to be, it used to be a conversation that would kind of happen out on the fringes and it would really only be understood to base, you know, for people who, who had to, you know, directly deliver this stuff where we’re in customer service. But now you talk about it’s customer experience. It’s, it’s, it’s more broadly understood as to.

 

Joe DeLuca (27:09.3)

how people interact and what people’s expectations are. And that understanding, it’s dangerous in many respects also too, because the power behind it, and this is where you think about technology, you think about social media, and you think about how all of this stuff is ultimately packaged together and at our fingertips, the power of the review. Right?

 

And it’s just, it’s not, it’s something where it used to be, it’s like, you know, this person really had, you know, he care about, you know, the steak was, it was too well done or, you know, hey, listen, the waitress or the waiter, you know, they took forever to serve it. And you could talk about that. And to a certain extent, you know, it was on the…

 

the impact that has now. you know, so all this ties back directly to the customer experience. Because, you know, it’s like, what are you going to do? I actually had a friend of mine, I was talking about this for the impact of the interview, he had purchased a small light for his like a Koi pond on Amazon.

 

And it was, and it was junk and, you know, you know, it failed at whatever it was, 20, $34, whatever, whatever, whatever it was, he placed the review and gave it the one star and, you know, and say, listen, this really was junk. Ultimately, he went through what, what was, what, what really just transpired over just a period of almost an entire year where the seller was going back.

 

and asking them to, you take this down? we’re trying to incentivize, almost bribing them outright. Well, we’ll give you $40. And really to the point where they understood the impact of that. And so that experience and the empowerment that the consumer has over the entire process is

 

Joe DeLuca (29:28.876)

really pretty fascinating and pretty incredible.

 

Which I think is a good thing for consumers overall, right? And it’s a good thing for brands too, because you should be out there with the mission to put out a good product and to meet expectations or exceed expectations and deliver on the promise that you’re making to consumers. That’s what a brand promise is all about, right? It’s what I’m going to do day in, day out better than anybody else. And that’s the promise that I’m making to you. And if you’re not living up to that, then it’s okay to have that called out. But I part of the problem though is

 

And this is a problem really just with being online and social media is we outsource our critical thinking now. So, you know, I used to be a chef and like long, long time ago, and that was always our mantra was, you know, if someone has a bad experience, they’re going to tell 10 people. If they have a good experience, they might tell one or two, right? So you really need to provide a great experience, not just because you want that social contagion, but also you want to mitigate all that, you know,

 

that order of magnitude more bad press that you’re getting. But now with social media, you’re not looking at any one or two reviews and you’re thinking, oh, this person sounds like they’re a little bit of you know, pee in the ass or whatever, right? what you’re doing is you’re looking at the aggregate, you’re looking on Amazon and you’re saying, oh, there’s 5,500 reviews here and it’s 4.25 stars. That’s probably a good product. And then you might skim one or two of them, right?

 

You don’t know if they’re all written by AI. don’t know if all those people were bribed. You have no idea. You’re making an assumption.

 

Joe DeLuca (31:06.638)

No, it’s true. have to make that calculated, yet informed decision around what’s going make sense. And it’s funny because you see we’re outsourcing critical thought, right? And it’s so true because if there’s one just really sad and restingly depressing dearth in society today, that’s the capacity for critical thought. everyone just, hey, listen,

 

it’s, it’s, it’s far easier to know the truth than it is to seek it. Whatever that is. And so tell me, tell me, tell me what’s true. Well, tell me what it is. Tell me what’s real. You know, no one wants to stop and pause and not be reflexive and, and, and, and, and take, take the time to look at something one or two or three steps removed away from the way it’s being fed to you.

 

And, you know, let’s get to retail and news and whatever it’s just, but it’s, the dynamic is the same. No, but you know what? It’s interesting though. If you think about it, you know, outside of just as being a pretty sad indictment on where we are at society today, the technology and the conversation that we’ve had around, you know, the expectations, you know, one begets the other. and, and so it, you know, ultimately breeds a degree of,

 

apathy and laziness, you know, where people don’t even want to look at that point. It’s just like, well, another time. Another time. Yeah, so feed it up for me. So, yeah, it’s interesting thing.

 

Speaking of apathy and laziness, and I’m going to bring this back to something that you said earlier that I didn’t want to lose track of, is, a large chunk of your business ostensibly comes through these booking sites, right? Like, I don’t even know what they are anymore, priceline.com or Expedia, know, whoever’s still out there. And so you take a hit and margin when somebody books through those platforms. Is that fair to say? Okay.

 

Joe DeLuca (33:14.946)

significant.

 

And so if you’re able to go to market directly and reach that consumer and get that business without going to the platform, you’re maybe not increasing your overall business, but you’re taking the business that you have and you’re making a more valuable business, right? It’s higher margin business for you. So there’s a strong incentive for you to do that. But of course it’s going to take a significant investment for you to get there. And that’s where the apathy and lazy comes, laziness comes in. And I’m a good example of this.

 

is I use those booking sites because I don’t want to sort through all of these direct sites. I’m not going to go to a hotel’s direct site because I want to do a comparison. want to make judgments based off of my perceived value of the property and how well it aligns with the things that are important to me when I travel versus the cost because I’m willing to give up on things that I would like in exchange for a lower rate.

 

For me, it’s a very specific kind of trade off. There’s some things I won’t trade off. So those sites are powerful for me. all that’s to say is how does a company like Wyndham, and you don’t have to speak for Wyndham specifically, but how do you go about prioritizing the technology investment for something like that? Because that seems like that would be very creative and you would want to put a lot of investment into building up that aspect of business.

 

No, no. So there is, there is. And you’re, you’re, you’re, again, you’re spot on from, you know, from that perspective, you got to say to yourself, how do we effectively, you know, compete with the OTAs? How do we drive that consumer base away from what is perceived to be just easy or, you know, at at better rate? Yeah. So, so, you know, at least cost, you know, broader choices, whatever.

 

Joe DeLuca (35:06.734)

That’s where the technology needs to come and come into the fold and ensure that you can you can drive that incentive to move in that direction by providing an enhanced experience. know, so if you think about how and no one has done this yet. And when I say done this, I’m not talking about no one’s tried this, no one’s attempting to, you know, but no one’s really done it truly effectively. But when you think about, you know,

 

what, you know, what Google does today and being able to, you know, book a search. I will, I will utilize, it’s funny to bring up chat, GPT. I went to the UK, me and my fiance over, during the fall, over the fall. And I, I had essentially planned the whole trip through chat GPT. Right. you know, at the end of the day, I will be honest and tell you that it wasn’t entirely accurate.

 

When we were there, there were some things that we had to adjust as a direct result. Nevertheless, you know, that experience and the ease of that experience and being able to plan out to the future, dream building, trip building, whatever you want to call it. You know, that is a really critical milestone that needs to be achieved to be competitive from that perspective. So if you start there.

 

where you start at that experience and you’re able to bring people directly to your website and incentivize, you know, becoming a loyalty member and all the respective, you know, rewards and benefits of that membership. know, then you have everything continuing through maintaining loyalty and retention and so forth, right? You know, but it’s the technology and needing to…

 

really meet the consumer, you know, and we’re going to go back to that expectation from that perspective of being able to provide that experience because that’s where we’re going. Right. That’s where we’re going. know, hook or crook. This is, this is good to be the future of just guest and consumer interaction. You know, people are getting, it’s going to be at the point where no one’s going to want to interact with anybody.

 

Joe DeLuca (37:28.33)

You know, and right now there’s still a significant percentage of a consumer base that wants to speak to a human being. You know, listen, it’s not going to be a hundred percent. You’re always going to need to talk to a human in many, in circumstances. There are going to be some certain verticals in which that AI use is not going to be conducive.

 

Right. To really just shifting their business in a major way. They’re going to have to take smaller little iterative steps and smaller chunks. But that’s where we’re going. it is, again, a bit, it is a race. It’s like the arms race with AI. And who’s going to develop this first? And who’s going to develop it successfully? Because that’s another thing too. I think, you know,

 

There’s so many parts of that that we can distill down in terms of, how do you do it? And what does success really mean?

 

In C a world where, you know, brand like Wyndham has a travel concierge, you know, AI platform on their website and you can go there and say, this is where I want to go. These are the things that I want to do. I want to make a stop over here. I want to make a stop over there. And then it kind of helps you plan that whole thing. And, and that would potentially avoid some of the disconnect that you experienced with chat GPT versus reality because

 

you’d be using better data, right? And it would be coming from a place of more accurate, right?

 

Joe DeLuca (39:04.206)

So that’s it, you the nail on the head, data. So you think about, part of this whole endeavor is to ensure that you’re driving towards offering a level of personalization with each and every experience. So how do you really effectively just sweeten up that interaction where you’re able to just to ease or just say, I wanna go to Europe, I wanna go to a place but I…

 

You know, I really just don’t like the rain or really and I don’t I want to eat a certain type of whatever that would be. but but being able to Leverage those data sets and Subsequent interactions and honestly in many respects it could start out with an initial interaction just based on algorithms and everything else though that obviously, we know tracks the consumer today, you know

 

And all that stuff could be effectively curated into a, a, a Uber personal experience around that individual and their desire to travel to a specific location or, or, you know, or plan out something like that. That, that is a, that is the pinnacle of, of this whole effort and where it’s going to be taken to the next level, you know, to the point where, where the

 

The need for a human interaction is, is, is not just simply secondary. It’s a, it’s an afterthought, you know, that is so inconsequential to most interactions. Um, but that’s where we’re going. And that’s, that’s definitely where you’re going to want to be in, in hospitality is just one. Yeah. You know, it’s going to be, um, it’s going to be interesting to see over the next 18, 24, 36 months.

 

Yeah.

 

Joe DeLuca (40:56.074)

If even, when you think about the speed in which it’s the improvements, I just, I go back and I think about 24 months ago in terms of capability. And there’s things that I would have, I would have recommended against even thinking about, right. Just because of just general readiness or capability and, and just, it’s kind of kept it on that forward thinking bucket. You know, it’s forward thinking.

 

But we’ve fought forward and we’ve also moved there. So it’s going to be something.

 

I had the same experience as you this fall. It was my girlfriend’s birthday and she was born on Halloween. So I took her to Ireland, Northern Ireland. It’s where Halloween was born. And I planned most of the trip with Chachi BT, but I’m not an idiot. So I shared it with her ahead of time because I want to make sure was, you know, things that she wanted to do. And my girlfriend’s a traveler, very, very well traveled. She’s been to over 50 countries.

 

And, and she has a specific way that she likes to travel. So as we went through this, she flagged a lot of things that chat GBT suggested as being not realistic or probably not as interesting as it seems or whatever. And so we made these adjustments. And then when we actually got on the ground in Ireland and then Northern Northern Ireland, she was right. She was a hundred percent right. And the reason I bring that up, not to get points, but I will share this clip with her. but also because I wanted to just.

 

explore the idea of how we’re going to go so far with AI and so much of the transactions that would have been done with human beings will be with AI that at some point brands are going to start to say our differentiator is that we’re human and we’re not using it.

 

Joe DeLuca (42:46.868)

So, know what? I can see that, and it’s interesting you bring that up. I think that, and this is where, as we start to keep an eye on the pulse of things and just watch how the technology progresses and different organizations take different approaches and liberties in terms of how they’re going to approach, we are…

 

At the point where we, because there’s still a lot of trepidation around its use, regardless of how much it’s improved, we are one pretty solidly well publicized failure that could shift a lot of that. And I’m not saying shifted fundamentally to the point where it’s just like, oh, well, we’re going the opposite direction, but shifted to the point where, where there’s, there’s a low and all of sudden what was a nice trajectory of, you know, 36 months.

 

you know, can turn into a 48 or, or, or beyond. So it could slow things. And that’s where, um, that particular angle, um, if it is, you know, conducive to an overall business model to maintain. And so I think it’d be very effective, you know, where it’s just like the, we’re, we, it’s the human touch. I like that. I like that.

 

You know, if you listen to podcasts, I listen to lot of podcasts and, I heart radio is a huge podcast platform. And whenever you listen to an I heart radio podcast, the, the Sonic branding at the beginning says, guaranteed human. So they’re already kind of latching. And I think you’re going to see it more in the creative space, right? Because, the, the, creatives, whether it’s art, whether it’s, you movies or.

 

TV or something like podcasts where there’s intellectual property involved. I think that people still want to feel that it’s derived from a human experience because it’s more relatable to them. And those are the areas where relatability to a human experience are actually more important, right? Not transactional.

 

Joe DeLuca (44:56.91)

I so agree. I so agree with that. that’s, and it’s, and it’s interesting because, you know, you think about the, the, areas in which AI is going to lose its luster the fastest, its use in the creative field. So you think about music or movies and, and, you know,

 

It’s, I mean, there’s a lot of movies out there. mean, so I’m not talking about the Marvel universe and stuff and clearly there’s, you know, right. Yeah. But, even now, you know, some action films and, you know, there’s so many stunts and different things that just, that AI is just used exclusively. Right. You know, there, there is definitely a fine line. And I think we’re pretty close to crossing it in many respects where it’s just, all right, you know, guys, this is too much. This is not even entertaining.

 

You know, and so it’s going back to your comments around the human element. And so the human element here is direct, but it’s also indirect from the creative aspect of it and knowing and understanding that, well, you know what? The people who actually look at, you know, film and writing and advertising different things has art. You know, it’s hard for it to not become a…

 

almost offensive to a certain extent to the person who’s the true creative, the person is, you know, is able to sit there and, and, know, from a more visceral perspective, you know, put that, that, that pencil to paper or the, the paint to the brush, to the canvas and so forth. Um, yeah, yeah, that’s, that’s, uh, that’s something that’s going to happen sooner than later if we continue the pace we’re going, that’s for sure.

 

I think you’re seeing it already in certain places, right? Like the, new mission and possible movies that just came out. Tom Cruise doesn’t need to be jumping out of airplanes anymore at his age, right? He doesn’t need to do that, but we show up and we pay that money to see that because we’re like, wow, Tom Cruise just jumped out of an airplane. Right. And so if that were AI, wouldn’t have the same impact. You wouldn’t have that same feeling because you just can’t relate. You can’t relate to the AI experience.

 

Joe DeLuca (47:11.276)

Anyway, it’s going to get old quick and it’s going to be worn out to the point where it gets pushed because where does it stop? You know, it’s one thing to show a stunt and it’s one thing to show something that just, you know, quite honestly, think about, you mentioned Marvel, but you know, for the longest time is amazing. They really couldn’t effectively do the Incredible Hulk justice.

 

Cause who the heck, know, mean, it’s great. Lou Ferrigno. you know, mean, anyone remembers that, but that, that, that ultimately is going to get to a point though, too, where all of that stuff and you start to, it starts to bleed into the actual actors. Um, and I think there was a, there was a movie, um, they, when they redid roadhouse and roadhouse. And if you watch that, you know, even though just the

 

the fight scenes, the MMAs, they were AI. And the whole opening word of it was AI. But it, to the point where was just like, people start to say, did it really need to use this? Do we really need to use AI? What do you got? you trying to save money? Did you not want to pay the actors? it, was every, and those are the kinds of things you’re going to get people, soured with quick.

 

Yeah, I think that will be the fall guy, the remake of the fall guy. They did real stunts in that movie because that was kind of the whole point of the movie, but it’s a different experience. know, you, you can tell that it’s a human being that’s involved and it just, it feels different. um, I want to get back to technology for a second. Um, this is maybe kind of a complex question to answer, but you know, we were talking about how.

 

Yeah.

 

Shawn Cordner (49:04.79)

in your space, if you’re able to go to market direct to the consumer and kind of get around the platforms, the travel platforms that are aggregating your competitors, it’s a huge benefit to you because you’re going to see increased margin on that business. And that makes me start to think that there’s a bleed over here between marketing’s role and responsibility and initiative like that and IT’s role and responsibility in an initiative like that.

 

And you have to look at that investment as being both. It’s a technology investment, but it’s also a marketing investment because it’s going to take marketing to be able to get you in front of those users. So how do you go about collaborating with other stakeholders within the organization, other business units within the organization, writing a business case like that, selling that internally and where does the funding come from? Where does the budget come from? Is that a marketing budget? Is it an IT budget?

 

both? does that work in an organization as big as Wyndham?

 

That’s a good question. I think it’s important to understand. Well, I’ll tell you how we structure ourselves. we, you know,

 

an organizational perspective, we have developed a steering committee on AI. So there’s a steering governance committee on its use. Everybody essentially has a seat at the table from each vertical. So there’s from finance to marketing to HR to IT and in each respective vertical within IT, course, because you have the…

 

Joe DeLuca (50:44.108)

You know, all channels represented, I’m, you know, we’re still talking about from my perspective is the voice channel, but you have digital and so forth. You know, everybody is, is, is, is at the table and it goes in this, you know, it’s all the way on up and just this layer down from there. And that’s where the overall fundamental understanding around what AI can do, what it can’t do and what, and what is, is going to me.

 

That’s the stuff that ultimately, you know, in understanding that there’s one overarching set of business goals that everyone is aligned with. That’s the point in which you bring all that together. And so that’s what ultimately translates into how budgets get approved. I mean, there’s other steps throughout the process for that, but it starts there.

 

And everyone has a solid understanding of what we’re trying to achieve and the benefits that can be derived out of this. I think that’s been incredibly effective. And it’s a question that I’ve been asked before and it makes a lot of sense because I’ve spoken to peers and other industry verticals as well as in hospitality. And one of the biggest challenges is around, you know,

 

Well, bringing an AI based solution and offering to the table, um, and getting folks on board with understanding the value behind it, you know, and not the value behind what you and I know as a, you know, the never ending multitude of well curated vendor demos value. I’m talking about the actual value and how it makes sense. Um,

 

That is where a lot of organizations, think, could improve upon. And starting out with just a foundational structure around AI and technology in general. From there.

 

Shawn Cordner (52:55.382)

There’s going to be trade-offs too, right? Because I’m sure there are a number of AI initiatives that could potentially add value to the business, but you can’t boil the ocean. So how do you figure out where you’re to start and what you’re going to focus on? What are the trade-offs?

 

The trade-offs, that’s a loaded one because the trade-offs can be, you know, they could be political and organizational. know, so there’s certain ones from that perspective. know, where, and this is, I think this is important, where there are potentially competing initiatives or overlapping initiatives.

 

and understanding is this is another thing. This is where the whole overall impact analysis really comes into play and understanding was like, guys, you want to go ahead and do this and we’re going to need to make 250,000 API calls into this database and we’re going to have to extract from here. But we’re also doing this here.

 

And there’s funding to go ahead and increase the base capacity of that transactional flow. There’s a lot of that overlap there. So honestly, where the answers to some of those questions, when you start to really just unpack each of these initiatives and proposals in the broader scheme of what we could do organizationally.

 

So that is part of what gets factored in and why that committee and just that whole framework is so important.

 

Shawn Cordner (54:43.63)

I imagine you have to also weigh what the risks are obviously, right? But also just from a governance perspective, what is the organization ready for? Or do you need to evolve the governance infrastructure for a certain initiative that maybe you’re not prepared for today and that could make this a bigger project than project B that you’re evaluating.

 

That’s a question. think that we have definitely, definitely made the appropriate iterative steps to address that, at least address it to the point in which there hasn’t been any real gotchas or any real pushback on stuff where it’s just like, well, we don’t know how to deal with this. You know, I mean, there are some things that ultimately do go back to some of the initial,

 

Concerns that a lot of people add the stuff that you hear advertised more publicly, you know, around the guardrails to address hallucinations and obviously, you know, data security and, you know, and how do we ensure that all of this stuff is appropriately contained, you know, and especially when you start to utilize, you know, some of these enterprise grade, large language models and, you know, there’s a lot of framework that’s around.

 

how that gets addressed, you know, but I think that’ll still, when you think about that challenge and you think about that relative to the pace of technology in relation to the pace of the legislation around how to appropriately deal with it. And that’s another ever changing thing. And you think about that, you know, that that’s another difficult path to go down.

 

And I think, they’ll always be, because I don’t think the paint, we’re, we’re going to be able to keep those effectively in line. You know, I think this, that is something that’ll be fluid. be a lot of, there’ll be a lot of just governance changes that prompts different, pieces of legislation that will protect privacy. and, know, and, you know, I think it’s as things get better.

 

Joe DeLuca (57:00.96)

And things are more broadly understood and all of the guard rails and, you know, and, safety levers and everything’s in place to ensure that, those protections are in place and you are not allowing anything to, you you think about agentic AI, just run roughshod on its own. You know, I mean, you know, we’re at the point now where we, need an AI governing the AI.

 

Right? know, AI agents or, or, or watching AI agents and regulators. It’s, it’s, it’s not, it’s not the simple, Hey, you know, we’ve got a human in the loop, which is, you know, as a phrase, you see, you know, a lot earlier on while that’s still an important thing to ensure that you maintain at a certain level. the automation around that is now been shifting towards, AI itself, which is pretty wild. Right.

 

Really wild too.

 

Yeah. And who, who’s going to watch the AI that’s watching the AI. And I always had that question about human in the loop too, is if the whole point of AI is to go at a scale that you couldn’t do with humans, then how is the human in the loop going to manage the scale at which the AI is running?

 

It’s true. It’s true. And the thing is, too, this is another thing that I think that a lot of organizations run into as well. start to, I let’s say you build the overall requisite framework and you have your ever so imperative data layer solid enough and consolidated enough and you got everything you put in front of it.

 

Joe DeLuca (58:45.486)

You know, just the general framework around the structure. The cost is still pretty. Prohibited in many respects when it comes to delivering these solutions, these are, these are, still not cheap. Yeah. You know, and I think that there’s a lot of work that needs to get done around how those individual models. mean, you think about, mean, you know, even, even open AI.

 

I don’t know how they’re, I mean, they’re still functioning at a pretty significant loss. know what mean? That’s it. So that, that’s, think is wholly instructive. If you think about that, you know, downstream and anything else that’s happening out on the periphery that, that it’s expensive. It’s expensive to build, develop and maintain. Um, which is why, you know, you, you, you even more so now that by build partner conversation has to be for, you know, in the forefront, you know, well, you know, do we, do we use.

 

our own developers, you know, there’s still a lot of work around, think, addressing the costs. And it also makes it more challenging for providers, whether it be, you know, just your conversational AI providers, your CCAS providers, or any other vendor that’s putting together a solution that leverages an enterprise, great LLM and NLP and all this.

 

or anything else that ultimately, how do you still put that effective commercial wrapper and reasonable margin around this particular service offering? think that’s another big challenge too, is to manage all that. And I know there’s a lot of organizations as they start to contemplate that, are still trying to work through the model themselves and understand it’s just like, wow, do we…

 

Do we make this just consumption based? Do we make this license based? How do we effectively structure this to ensure that this can be a competitive and profitable offering?

 

Shawn Cordner (01:00:54.924)

Well, you don’t have that conversation with that structure where you’re talking about the build versus the buy. And on the build side, you’ve got really kind of two different pieces to it. You’ve got the build for internal use, like, you know, maybe a dynamic pricing engine for you guys to set the rates for your hotel rooms based off of all these, you know, hundreds of variables or, you know, I, there was a use case that one of our previous guests talked about, you know,

 

It’s a logistics company and they have all these shipping containers coming in and they use a custom built AI engine to figure out exactly when that ship’s hitting the dock because they get charged for every minute that they’re at dock. And so they optimize offloading that ship. And that’s to me an internal build use case, but then there’s the external build use case, which is creating a product with AI. But, both of those build use cases, you have these externalities around,

 

Well, like AWS, for example, a weeks ago, just announced a 15 % increase on compute, right? How do you budget for that? Like costs have been going down on compute for years and years and years. don’t think anyone expected it to jump up, right? So now if you’ve got your AI workloads on AWS, they’re all of sudden 15 % more expensive. there’s energy is going to be another challenge with this, right? These data centers, there’s all these externalities that are going to potentially impact the

 

build model that if you own it, you’re going to have to deal with it. You’re going to have to absorb it. Regulatory being another one. We’re in this weird vacuum of regulatory guidance where the federal government’s put nothing out. They’ve said states can’t regulate AI, which I don’t think is going to make it through the Supreme court, but who knows? And you have hundreds of laws on the books. anything could happen. Regulations could change and that could impact the model that you’ve already built. So I guess what I’m asking is.

 

the buy conversation seems a little bit easier because it’s someone else’s problem, but the build conversation sounds a little bit harder. So how do you navigate that?

 

Joe DeLuca (01:02:58.51)

I think starting from there, an understanding where the life cycle of a particular initiative and expected product itself is scrutinized at a much deeper level. And what I mean by that is it’s an understanding, it’s like, right, well, you know what? We’re…

 

we’re going to figure out whether or not it makes sense to, you know, pull in and going to build this. We’re going to own the IP, you know, soup to nuts. And we’re going to support this and operationally, you know, going to have all the wraparounders and it’s going to address this use case here. Well, how does it scale? Right. How is this going to effectively scale? Is that going to make any sense? And how else are we going to be able to utilize this? So, so having that additional layer of scrutiny and understanding the broader

 

you know, landscape of opportunity that a particular offering or direction might take you, I think is, is, is super important to figuring out, you know, where that’s going to make sense. And then, and then there’s the risk too, right? You know, and, that’s where, you know, it’s interesting because there’s so many different ways to look at, you know, AI and, all of these competitive solutions and it’s there really is.

 

so few, if any, differentiation out there. Everyone is again, buying for that same piece of pie and no one’s really doing anything fundamentally different. They’re all pulling in from the same enterprise grade LLMs and other back-end, know, engines on the back end. How do you look at it from that lens and understand where, well, you know what, let’s say for example, a C-Cast provider, you know, has an inherent advantage around owning the

 

core routing engine of an enterprise. And so from that perspective, them building something or having a specific offering, and they may have purchased themselves, right? So they’re going through the same exercise here. They’re at an advantage inherently just from that perspective that it’s easy to turn something that that on and off. But there’s also

 

Joe DeLuca (01:05:24.428)

some pretty solid pitfalls here. And in terms of addressing the, the inevitable vendor lock in for customers who decide to go down that road and say, how deep down, how deep down this journey am I going to go? How vested am I going to be in this one particular partner? know, and while there’s great advantages over here and maybe, and maybe, you know what they’re, they’re, they’re delivering it at the cheapest unit cost. Right.

 

And so, and they can because of that particular reason, they’re able to bundle this in, all the other respective incentives, you know, what does that really mean from an organizational perspective? As you think about this two, three years out, if you want to pivot and the, the, the cost and the impact and risk around backing out of something like that, you know, and then you have all these other bespoke solutions out there and offerings that, that, that folks have. And, and that’s where I think it’s super important for all of these providers.

 

delivering any type of AI services to ensure that they don’t marginalize the, the broader partner landscape, when it comes to packaging their offerings, you know, so, so this is easy to get dovetail into a question of, of, you know, competing solutions and providers and so forth. not playing nice in the sandbox.

 

And where do we reach that point where we’re chopping off our nose with Spider Face? It’s going to be interesting to watch. I will absolutely say that.

 

Yeah, maybe it’s not too much different from any other core technology and the life cycle of those technologies, but it’s just happening so much faster. And it’s, it’s.

 

Shawn Cordner (01:07:21.186)

very dynamic, it’s harder to anticipate what that could look like in three years than with any other technology that we, that I’ve seen in my career at least.

 

Yeah, it’s, it’s, that’s the thing is it’s just a, um, you know, how can you still ensure that you, can, you can deliver something to market and scale appropriately, um, and de-risk it all at the same time.

 

Yeah. Speaking of risk, wanted to ask too, how do you view the risks of AI entering into your supply chain? So, not just the AI that you’re purchasing, right? But also suppliers that are using AI in their operations and the potential risks of, you know, them maybe not having good cybersecurity practices or governance practices and how that could potentially, you know, flow down to you and impact your business.

 

think that, you look at it from that perspective, there’s a lot that when it comes to controls that you could still maintain to ensure that any nonsense or just really bad decisions, that are made that are happening outside, are not going to impact or have the least of the least, probability of being able to impact. I think honestly, it really starts there from

 

because you’re not going to be able to, you know, outright. And even if you put it in, the appropriate contractual legal framework in terms of third parties and, know, and, and indemnity and, and, and, and so forth. If you don’t have those appropriate security controls in place and the framework around that, which includes a whole.

 

Joe DeLuca (01:09:11.95)

program around vetting and so forth. It’s, it’s, you know, it’s bound to happen. If people are like so many things, trying to deliver something too fast, for the pace that it really should be moving at. And that’s another thing too. And that’s, that’s that’s a, another huge problem, that a lot of folks have. you have, you know, from a

 

executive level, know, you’re being pushed to deliver results. You’re being pushed to, you know, bring a product to market. You’re being pushed to contain costs. And, and there’s, there’s, there’s a definitive set of expectations around, you know, not only just that initial investment, but the continued investment and future investments. You know, how do you effectively address that? And, and.

 

ensure that, that you can scale and move at the pace that, is expected and, and, and, and, and deliver. I think that’s where it’s, it’s, it’s also super important to level set right at, right. Or, know, right at jump street with what exactly this, this can truly do. And it’s funny because, you know,

 

And I’ll just use an example and it’s relative to, because we’ll experience, you think about expectations around containment and automation, and you start to develop an ROI based on specific expectations, you you’ve already, you’ve already set, say it’s going to be 80 % for argument, say, you know, you’ve already set the tone and the pace and the structure around, you know, what this

 

solution is expected to deliver. And in all actuality, you know, all of the true work around understanding the fundamental aspects and nuance of the individual use cases and how it’s going to align with that realistically is huge. It’s huge. And I think that’s where a lot of folks could get tripped up and, you know, just

 

Joe DeLuca (01:11:35.374)

And this is where, and this is tough because this is where again, you get this nice shiny object that’s presented by a vendor and these expectations are not realistic and doesn’t contemplate a lot of the other nuance around what the technology can do on its own, but also what impacts business processes into a particular use case or flow and how significant that they can be.

 

Because there are certain business processes that start out at the level of intractable. Right? You know, and this is non-negotiable. Yeah, this is the way that’s, but if we do it this way, you know, this particular experience is going be, well, we can’t change this. And then you start to shoehorn in a technology solution, trying to solve for an objective that has business processes that there’s…

 

They need to be in lockstep and fully vetted and understood from day one, from that perspective.

 

I think that’s so important because we’re in an environment right now where AI is just such a buzzword that, you know, executives are expecting AI implementation just for the sake of AI implementation. Boards are expecting it. Wall Street’s expecting it. Other investors are expecting it, right? So there’s pressure to adopt it. And you hear so much buzz about like that MIT study that 95 % of pilots fail and

 

You know, there’s all this data that people aren’t seeing an ROI. And I think it’s because they’re, they’re not going into it, looking at the business and finding, the outcome that they’re trying to achieve first. They’re trying to say, here’s a place where we can plug AI into our business. And then they’re trying to manage the ripple effects from there. you agree?

 

Joe DeLuca (01:13:29.028)

and that’s, that’s, you know, and it’s dangerous. It’s dangerous because at that point it’s, you know, it’s a shame because you, it, it, it, it’s too much of that can, can, can actually also negatively impact the current trajectory of how these things are delivered. That’s another variable that, that needs to be taken into consideration. So it’s not just simply the, you know, you know, as I said earlier, the well publicized failure, which is real, right? It is also.

 

the approach where ultimately, you know, that’s going to resonate and be like, you know, and it’s going to negatively impact, you know, just the pace of rollouts, the ability for, you know, for organizations and vendors to sell their solutions, you know, and, know, and that’s the thing. That’s why,

 

That level of transparency and insight, I think is critical for a provider to convey and work with their customers to vet out and not leave it to them. know, and so having the people on staff to ask the appropriate questions and really dig into it to ensure that, listen, you know what you’re asking us to do.

 

may not necessarily bear the fruit that you think it would or should. And this is the reason why. Yeah, absolutely.

 

I that’s really good advice. just want to wrap up with one last question. The audience listening to this, there’s a lot of technology leaders, contact center leaders that are listening to this. Probably not as big as Windom, right? Probably mid-market businesses. What advice do you have for people that are in your role at these organizations that are maybe a little bit earlier in their adoption curve for AI?

 

Joe DeLuca (01:15:27.582)

I would say, start off at looking at your use cases, right? So really truly just kind of going back to what I was just saying around, you know, vetting out those use cases and understanding, you know, what you want to achieve and understand the technology, right? You know, if, if you’re not staffed to have, have the ability to really just dissect that.

 

Bring in a partner, bring in a partner that understands. it’s honestly, this is, you know, an Amplix would be perfect. But well, unintended segue or plug here, quite honestly. But the truth is that’s what you need to do, right? You know, from that perspective and then make sure the organization understands. You know, you are not going to get the support. You’re not going to get the funding if it’s not…

 

appropriately fostered across the board. You know, it’s just, you know, people are, because you’re going to have, you’re going to have no end to your naysayers, no end to your detractors and no end to the folks that are going like, you know, we’re going to use the, you know, the, the, the words like, know, hallucinations and, know, all the things that, that, that are, that actually become buzzwords at this point. and they’re going to get into, to, to certain people’s ears and, you know, just make sure that.

 

There’s that level of organizational collaboration and understanding around that. And to think it’s starting that way and just breaking it down into real pragmatic chunks and bringing that all together is probably one of the best things to start with.

 

Yeah. And I like what you said earlier about the steering committee, right? Having a committee with stakeholders from all of the groups within the organization. So everybody has a voice and everyone could feel as though they’re part of the process and maybe have some ownership in the outcomes so that they don’t just sit there and pick it apart as the bumps in the road.

 

Joe DeLuca (01:17:35.938)

It’s because they’re easy to pick apart.

 

Joe, thanks so much for your time and expertise today. Appreciate it.

 

Thanks for having me.