Shawn Cordner (00:12.974)

Hey everyone. Welcome to the Amplitude of Tech. I’m Shawn Cordner, Chief Marketing Officer of Amplix. Thanks for joining us for another episode. Today we had Andrew Griffiths from Outsource Consultants. We talked about all things BPO, when to use them, when not to use them, and how AI is changing the landscape of the contact center. Interesting conversation from a point of view and perspective that I haven’t really had the opportunity to hear from in the past. So this was a good one. Hope you enjoyed it.

 

Shawn Cordner (00:44.782)

So you and I met because we had a conversation, I guess maybe six, seven months ago, our company started working together and we had a great conversation. So I thought maybe we’d hit it off on a podcast as well. So let’s give it a shot here. Maybe just start off with who you are, who your company is, what you guys do.

 

Absolutely. So I’m Andrew Griffiths. I work for a company called AppSource Consultants. As Shawn mentioned, we’re partnered with Amplix and it’s a very similar organization with one major exception. Instead of CX Technology, we work on the CX Labor side. So we are predominantly a BPO advisory firm, that being in my opinion, one of the two major mainstays. There’s the technology piece and there’s a labor piece and the…

 

partnership our organizations have as the acknowledgement of you need both of those pieces in today’s market. Sure. We’ll talk more about that, but that’s basically what we do.

 

And just in case someone out there doesn’t know what a BPO is, can you talk about that briefly?

 

Yeah, thank you. The acronym curse is strong. So business process outsourcing means a lot of things. can be all manner of sort of office work outsourced in our world. It’s mostly around the customer experience. So it can be anywhere from customer service to order taking to more complicated things in specialty, such as healthcare and legal. So basically anywhere where

 

Andrew Griffiths (02:15.394)

Maybe you’re having trouble hiring the right talent and you want to outsource that to a different entity. There are professional, this is what we do for living organizations that hire that talent and manage it on your behalf and you can, you can hire that workout.

 

Is there a difference between outsourcing and offshoring? feel like those are kind of used in a but maybe you can, you know, a definition.

 

You know how to rile me up at the start of a podcast. Absolutely. They’re, they are used interchangeably and probably they shouldn’t be for the simple reason that outsourcing is I’m hiring a different organization to do that particular work type contact type for me. Offshoring inherently means that they’re not in the U S so, there, would say that offshoring is a subset geography defined. It’s a subset of.

 

of outsourcing. So it would be accurate to say if I offshored, I’m probably also outsourcing, but not necessarily the reverse being true.

 

What’s the driver of, you know, when someone would outsource, you know, to a domestic BPO versus a BPO that might be located overseas somewhere?

 

Andrew Griffiths (03:38.252)

Yeah, there’s a bunch of different drivers of how you get to the right solution. It’s the same as it is with any problem, right? The classic way of let’s define why we have an issue, what the causal factor is, and then we start to solution. So if the issue you have is, can’t find people in the US to do this type of work and be consistent and provide a great service, that might be because

 

That type of work isn’t liked by us employees, or it might just be that you happen to be in a very high price market and, somewhere else in the U S it makes perfect sense, right? It’s the U S is not one contiguous hole in terms of the labor side of things. you may decide that the U S is a great place to keep the business because you need to. There’s a, sort of compliance reason you do government work.

 

It needs to be onshore US, but doesn’t necessarily have to be in house. So then you would outsource within the US. The big driver of going near shore or off shores, the two sort of major markets we look at is price point. More cost effective, but also if you look at those regions, contact center work is viewed quite differently to how it is in the US. I think we’ll loop back to this when we start talking more about

 

how things shift over time and some hypotheses around maybe what it can become in the future. But right now today, the typical or stereotypical at least context and work isn’t, it isn’t something that people aspire to do long-term. It’s usually, it’s usually a gap fill or this fits for other reasons. It’s not considered a career. It’s not highly sought after like some other professions in the U S it is in other countries. It supports families.

 

It’s considered a career path that often is missed. Brands look to work with offshore or near shore, BPO’s price points, the big driver, but the way those people show up and the way they support your clients can be inherently different because they’re seeing their role differently to how it might be perceived in the U.S.

 

Andrew Griffiths (06:03.394)

And of course, we’re talking generality. There’s always exceptions. There’s some fantastic US employees that are really excited about doing contact center work, but on the whole, as a nation, there’s a difference there, which shows up meaningfully in how customers are supported.

 

You know, no matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to get five minutes into a podcast without talking about AI. So I’m just going to seal and get into it here. But, you know, I, one of the benefits of having AI in the contact center, that we talk about a lot is the ability to deflect these kinds of transactional calls or calls that, are repetitive. That those are the things that I think often, make it my numbing work.

 

Give into it, it’s gonna happen.

 

Shawn Cordner (06:49.43)

in a contact center. It can also oftentimes take out some of the emotion in an interaction and that improves quality. I think what you’re seeing is some movement in domestic based contact centers leveraging AI to make that a kind of higher quality, more desirable type of job. How’s that impacting the BPO world right

 

We’re at very early stages of seeing that, I believe. The ideal future state scenario is humans doing meaningful work that help other humans and the machines taking care of the mind numbing stuff. That would be the perfect ideal and we’re absolutely working toward that. I think one of the critical pieces as we talk about the first few years with AI being mainstream and CX.

 

think we’re past the point now where the early promise of this will provide better outcomes for significantly less money. I think that’s done. Like even industry titans who produce this software are saying this is not a cost saving exercise. This is an outcome improving exercise. And I think we’re starting to see the lives of contact center agents are going to change for the better.

 

but only if, and I’m going to sound mildly callous here, but only if the business objectives are solved in a way that supports them. So we have this opportunity now to say, maybe it’s not about cost savings, maybe it’s about business growth. And if we start to change what our world’s Amplix on the technology side, outsource consultants on the labor side can bring together from a solution set,

 

We can absolutely be the growth engine of the company. When we start to shift from the traditional model, and I’ve spent a significant amount of my career selling technologies and the value prop was, Hey, we can get you to the same spot for less. Hey, here’s your ROI model. Here’s your savings. And we were super happy patting ourselves on the back, getting all excited about a 20 % savings in costs. There was, I feel like those days, thankfully are coming to an end.

 

Andrew Griffiths (09:12.204)

And it’s not about how cheaply can you get it done. It’s about how can I do it in a way that’s differentiated from the other people that I compete with and therefore gain more market share, therefore grow my business. The theory of why this is coming to fruition now is with a lot of the other advances in the world, the ability to offer a truly differentiated service or product becomes less and less. there’s

 

more opportunity for the experience that surrounds that product or service to be differentiated than it ever was before. Plus now we’ve got AI as a driver of opportunity if we run this correctly. So the theory is use these two tool sets intelligently together cooperatively to drive a lower cost, but then reinvest that cost in a better experience and use that to drive the business.

 

I haven’t met a company growing at a high clip that says I have a decreasing dollar figure budget. It’s the ones that are flat or decreasing that have a lower dollar figure budget that asks for savings on solutions. So it’s a question of which side of that growth trajectory you want to be on.

 

Yeah, leveraging these tools can allow growth and scale to happen maybe at an increased clip, but without the linear increase in costs as well, right? So it might not, you know, there could be some cost savings in the beginning here as a byproduct of it, right? But over time, the gap, the margin is going to start to increase.

 

Yeah, I don’t mean to come off that I’m opposed to doing things more effectively and more efficiently at a lower cost. That’s, you’re right. This is how a lot of it starts. The budget creation model that our organizations work with in its most simple form. And most people have their own version of this, but the most simple form is we’ll come in, we’ll do a labor optimization that unlocks a budget. They can then take that budget and say, I want to make strategic AI investments in my CX.

 

Andrew Griffiths (11:14.658)

And I’ve already got the money to do it because we optimize the labor through the multiple ways that we can do it without source consultants. I can now have a budget to go spend it risk free with Amplix to deploy technology. don’t have to prove out my use case. I don’t have to have case studies that don’t really apply because they apply to somebody else’s business. Not two hours. I can do it risk free. This instead of spending $5 million over here, I took it down to four. I’ve got a million dollars of

 

created budget to go invest in technology and we know right it’s not there’s not a guarantee that things will work the same for you as they did with somebody else from an AI perspective but there is a certainty that if you pursue it you will find even greater savings that million dollars becomes two or three million dollars in savings the question then when you get through that phase and everything’s worked successfully is is that your objective was your objective to save half of the budget

 

Well, no, the objective is to grow the business. That’s what creates value within the business. We now have a bigger part because of the collaboration between our two organizations to help them say, okay, now I have two or $3 million. How do I go gain market share? How do I do a better job? How do I meet my customers in a way that my competition is not so that I start to get that reputation for being, my goodness, they’re so good to deal with. And then we start a game from there.

 

We are seeing a lot of pressures to reduce budget and just kind of prepare for a potential economic downturn given some of the headwinds that they’re facing in the market and uncertainty that’s out there. So I wonder, are you starting to see kind of an increase in activity of people starting to look to move their contact center operations out of the US?

 

We see a few different trends. It depends on the moment. It’s been, I think I can describe it accurately as unpredictable and maybe turbulent. So I think there’s a fundamental, let’s make sure we have a plan and that we’re taking steps towards executing that long-term plan. I think…

 

Andrew Griffiths (13:29.838)

not getting caught up in the short term. This week’s news is X, therefore I need to adapt to that. And you can’t because by the time that news is hit, there’s already the next news thing coming out, which contradicts the first one. So chasing that seems risky, but looking at how do I consider two things? One, cost control and two, leveraging CX as a business growth tool. If you’re taking steps in the right direction in both of those,

 

I would say regardless of what the markets are doing and regardless of whether we’re in an upswing or downturn, you’re still on the right track. yeah, the big deal is don’t search out maximum savings and reinvest none of it.

 

would think part of it too though is where are you making your investments or are you comfortable making investments, right? Building a contact center in the US today, you know, it’s risky, right? You don’t know if it’s a good time to make a long-term bet or where you should make your long-term bets, right? So maybe you just don’t make that bet. Maybe you’re temporarily going to outsource whether it’s domestic or offshore or nearshore. But the whole point is

 

I’m not building this contact center, owning this contact center, managing these operations. I’m going to give this to someone else and just kind of wait this out.

 

And if you’re in one of those circumstances where it’s unclear what the right geography is, because you’re concerned that something may occur, maybe you’re about to win a large contract that requires you to have those people in the US. We have plenty of partners. have a portfolio of 300 plus partners, and we can find one that you can invest in the partnership. Maybe a nearshore is the right fit because you have Spanish and English language requirements and…

 

Andrew Griffiths (15:22.114)

price point considerations, but they have a US location. They have a US resources. And if you needed to pivot some or all of that business at some point in the future, it’s not a throw out the relationship and start a new one. can look at what do you need today? And this is, this is one of the trends that we’re seeing. You guys probably are too. People’s decision making is less about what do I need today? And it’s more about how do I serve today’s needs? And also

 

leave myself with a maximum flexibility going forward. So we can engineer in, you you can come and say, I think a year from now and three years from now will look like this, but it could also look like this. Bring us six scenarios and we can design a solution between the two organizations that gives you the flexibility to be okay in any of those scenarios. It actually makes the process way more fun than, can you solve this problem? Cause

 

You know, you and I’ve been doing this long enough. The answer is yes. It’s like, that’s relatively easy. But when it’s, then isolate me and insulate me from these potential risks going forward, that’s, that’s a much more fun engagement.

 

What would you say are some of the key decision factors that someone should take into consideration about whether they start to think about moving their contact center operations to a BPO or using that BPO to kind of manage the growth and the scale that they would need to keep up with demand or starting fresh and you need to build a contact center for the first time? Do you keep it in house or do you go outside?

 

Yeah, I think one of the key things and it’s, it’s to most people listening to this, they’ll probably be like, well, that’s an obvious point, but I will state it anyway, just for the one in a hundred that this might save them a bunch of heartache. Don’t think that a broken process internally outsourced automatically fixes itself.

 

Shawn Cordner (17:21.943)

Yes.

 

So if you’re not, if things are not right and it’s not a technology issue and it’s not a people issue, it’s a process issue that has to be worked through. Now, if you think about it, I always like to think of a BPO as this is what they do. This is all they do. They’re really good at it. And the right fit BPO can help with a lot of those process issues, training issues, help you work through it. But there may be a point in time where.

 

it’s broken enough that even that isn’t sufficient and some external recalibration help consulting is needed. think making sure that that’s taken care of is an important part. So that goes back to your question of, if I’m in a newer organization, just ramping up, we often see it with startup organizations. They don’t really yet know the questions that clients are going to ask and what their corporate

 

response will be to that. And there’s been a few conversations we’ve had, which you’ve just got to take the calls yourself to start with. If you’re super new and super small, developing how you want your clients treated is a back and forth iterative process that’s going to be really slow if you’re not doing it yourself. So there are times where outsourcing is not the answer. There are a few and far between, but sometimes

 

There’s a life cycle of, six months of you doing this by that point, you’re going to know. then, then that would be the right time.

 

Shawn Cordner (19:01.582)

How do you know if the problem is a broken process and why is the answer AI?

 

Well, why don’t you answer that one since you already know the answer to.

 

Well, you know, my guess is there’s a lot of tools, obviously, that allow you to kind of mine your interactions and give you insights into how those interactions going that can be aligned with outcomes, right? So AI can then tell you where it’s broken and where there’s opportunities for improvements. But, you know, someone’s got to be kind of driving that AI bus, right? And someone’s got to kind of understand the bigger picture.

 

to use AI as a tool, not necessarily as a solution.

 

I think you’re right. I think various forms of analytics are super helpful combined with the experience. So in our organization, we have a team of folks that have been in these seats of working with BPOs, outsourcing business and working at the brand. And they’ve been there, done that, and they’ve learned the things that are necessary for successful outcomes. And sometimes they’re super subtle. Sometimes they’re really obvious, but

 

Andrew Griffiths (20:15.582)

Knowing those, knowing what to watch for, knowing what the data is telling you, because we don’t lack for data in today’s world. And we’re starting not to lack interpretation of data, but sometimes context is still hard. Cause one person’s good is not the same as the next organization’s good. like average handle time, some, some companies that’s the critical metric and other ones like, don’t care. I don’t care how long it takes. I just needed to get to this outcome.

 

because the cost of the call is irrelevant compared to the value of the outcome being what I need it to be. So I think you’re right. I think it’s a combination of various forms of data collection and data analysis with AI probably being a part of that these days and experience and human interaction. mean, that’s the human side is going to feature through all of this, right? It’s the combination. The two is where the magic happens.

 

figuring out how to solve your problem or running a successful operation, applies equally in both cases.

 

Yeah, there’s an art and a science to everything. I think that the original conversation that you and I had, we really kind of nerded out on was we talked a little bit about the alignment of developing a customer experience journey with

 

what I do in a user experience journey for a website and kind of how do you architect an interesting journey, right? And so if I think about user experience on a website, what we’re doing is we’re pulling a lot of data, right? All the analytics of who’s visiting what site, what’s, you know, what pages are pulling traffic, where are people going on that page? How long do they linger in any one particular spot? When do they bounce? When do they not bounce? We take all this data and that starts to paint a picture, but

 

Shawn Cordner (22:12.902)

you really need the, the artist to then tell you how to transfer that into a better journey for the user so that they can get from point A to point B. And also to make sure that you can get them where you want them to go. It’s not always about just where they’re trying to go. You know, you have a goal of them coming to your website and so you want them to accomplish something. They want to accomplish something. how did those two things come together? And I do feel like a.

 

You know, building a customer experience journey is a similar kind of, of, exercise, right? It’s, it’s an exercise of understanding data, understanding goals, how that aligns with the business goals. How do you create, you know, the, the fastest, shortest, most effective route, or maybe it’s not always the fastest, you know, shortest, most effective route, right? Sometimes you want them to take a little bit of a detour. When can you get away with doing this? So I guess what I’m saying is, you know, there, there’s.

 

a lot of commonality between these two things. And I think AI gives you a lot of that data to work with, but it doesn’t necessarily help you then translate that into the map. So with all that rambling that I just did, what are your thoughts on customer experience journey building and how can we leverage AI in that process?

 

Yeah. I do think there’s a temptation to become analytical in terms of what’s the most efficient. So I’m always skeptical of efficiency without effectiveness. So like your journey, as you were mentioning from the user experience, it’s not always the fastest. That’s the best. Maybe having more time, maybe having some intrigue, some entertainment value, some

 

time with a brand. So you start to build a connection. Maybe that’s more valuable than just, I came for a specific answer and I need it. It’s context dependent. If I’m in a medical situation and I need an answer as to whether I need to go to the ER or not, probably taking me on an intrigue journey would not go particularly well. I would not thank you for that. However, if I’m looking to buy a high end product and it’s a long decision making cycle,

 

Andrew Griffiths (24:28.234)

And I need to feel like this brand aligns with my personal values and the people that buy this brand are similar to me. There’s, there’s a longer journey there that’s more nuanced. So I think you’ve got to look at what are you trying to get done? And this, kind of leads to this theory of fully automated experiences or fully automated customer experience, think has its place.

 

We’ve had it for a long time. AI gives us some other deeper options. And let’s, let’s be clear that this has been building of the decades I’ve been in this industry. Automation has always been a thing, but it’s just getting more sophisticated. So more of that bottom level of interaction can be automated, but there’s a time where I need an interaction that’s with another human and there’s value to that. It’s interesting. I I’m not a fan of.

 

demographic based stereotypes. They tend to bother me, but I also at the same time need to keep an eye on what are the newer generations gravitating toward because that does, it does shift and alter things. And there is a sort of crowd level mind swing that could potentially affect the industry. My teenage kids are

 

Well, if that happens, I just need to talk to somebody. It’s like, well, that’s super interesting considering that you’re plugged into three different screens at any one time. That’s you go to. So I, I, I’m absolutely convinced that the future of a person talking to a person is going to be stronger than it is now because there’s value associated with that. And that’s still considered the premium way of solving complicated

 

emotionally driven decisions. If I need to know where my package is, no, I don’t need to speak to somebody. I just need to know where my package is because I kind of need it. understanding by further automation, I free up the resources to do a better job of those other interactions. I think that’s where the growth is going to come. The ideal scenario is we solve the US labor problem.

 

Andrew Griffiths (26:53.794)

because these jobs become interesting. They become people helping people have a better day, get what they need and feel supported. If that’s the agent’s role, it’s better for the agents, it’s better for our difficulty in filling these roles within the US market. But also it means that

 

The experience provided to the client is we’re putting the effort and the resources where it’s necessary rather than trying to fit one solution into solving everything and using the same human led tech supported, which is what we’ve had in the past solution for everything from the most basic to the most complicated. can do much better with this bifurcation model that is what we see coming.

 

going to probably be a time where it becomes a differentiator that you’re going to talk to a real human being when you contact customer support,

 

Yeah, absolutely. It’s like the premium service. So you say that and I completely agree, but look at airlines. So when the flight’s delayed, if you infrequently fly that airline, good luck, look on the website and we’ll update you. If you’re a 1k frequent flyer, you can call and they’ll help you. Or you can go in the lounge and talk to somebody, right? The level of

 

support based on how valuable you are to that brand exists today. I think that’s going to start to proliferate through and it’s almost like the magic differentiation is don’t force people to spend a ton of money with you to provide that better service. If you start to provide that without all of those conditions, then that’s how you grow market share. So yeah, I do think it’s a competitive differentiator.

 

Andrew Griffiths (28:55.68)

now and I think it will become more of one going forward.

 

It’s funny they use that as an example, because for me, that’s a situation where I need a person. I don’t want to deal with AI in that kind of situation because to me, there’s too much on the line. I’ve been in situations where I needed to be in a place at a particular time, got delayed, flight got canceled. No one knows what’s going on. And, and to be honest in those situations, I don’t even call in.

 

I find a human being in that airport that’s wearing that logo on their shirt. And I talk to them human to human because I can appeal to their humanity. can appeal to their empathy. and I just, I don’t, I don’t think I can do that. I know I can’t do that with AI. I don’t think I can do that with a human over the phone because they’re not looking in my eyes and seeing the desperation, right?

 

You know, it’s, also a lot easier for them to say, sorry, I can’t help you and hang up and move on to the next one. Whereas if you’re standing in front of somebody, so maybe that’s just a weird little quirk about me, but I think that does speak to what you’re talking about is, is there’s just kind of these things that each of us has that innately we really, we feel as though we need that human connection in order to get it fully resolved.

 

And I go back to it’s, it’s probably not age related. It’s probably individual preference related when I want just a quick answer and I’m happy to text with a bot and the bot tell me and I’m good. Right. My preferences for when that transitions to, want a human contact is different to the next person’s and that’s okay. And we should be designing solutions that allow the end user to make that choice. So while we’re on the subject of flights and delays.

 

Andrew Griffiths (30:45.394)

I was in the line for a flight. So there’s a few months back and there was a guy standing next to me. He was using a GPT to try and figure out why the flight was delayed. So it was super interesting experiment because this GPT had access to a ton of information. We were learning things. was to do with the destination airport, not the airport we were in. Cause the plane was sat there. The pilot was in the plane. The crew was there. Like, can’t we go?

 

It was the other side. So landing in Denver, as it turned out, was the problem. But what happened was the information he was getting was not accurate because he described his situation. They told the GPT that he was frustrated with the delays and it inherently has this people pleasing element to it. So it was telling him it was going to be okay and he’s going to move soon. It was completely wrong. So it’s just, it’s interesting that

 

There are times and places where it does a really good job and there’s times and places where it doesn’t do a good job. And of course, anybody who’s in the industry is like, well, it’s, it’s evolving and it’s Sure it is. And it will continue to do that. But one of the principles that looking at this overall, if AI does a better and better job of taking things and even from a empathy and emotional response perspective,

 

There’s AIs now that are starting to look at that and they can tell the tone of voice and they can change how they react to you. Even as all of that develops, all that’s going to happen is we’re going to shift where we want that human interaction and our expectations as consumers is going to increase. We’ve proven that look back at what happens in our lives today versus a hundred years ago when electricity was this newfangled thing.

 

Right? We’ve massively shifted our expectations. We have an innate ability to do that as humans. We’ll continue to evolve and expect more. So we’ll expect more of the machines and then we’ll expect more of the humans that complement the machines or vice versa. The work collaboratively together and we’ll just, there’ll always be that need. Just what that need is and how it fits into the overall picture will shift over time.

 

Shawn Cordner (33:06.508)

think that’s a big barrier that has to be overcome is that it does hallucinate. doesn’t make things up. It does people please. It seems like it’s built in the mob. If you looked at my chat GBT, you would think I’m a perfect human being the way that it talks to me.

 

That’s a great question, Shawn. I’m glad you asked.

 

Yes. Right. And I really appreciate all the support and the ego boost that I get from it. But it does make things up and you don’t know when it’s making things up. And I think people don’t understand inherently that it’s different when they’re dealing with an AI that is built for a company, purpose-built, trained on their data versus something that is just accessing the internet because

 

That’s really the wild wild west, but that doesn’t mean that it’s infallible. that, so it’s probably better. You could, know, if, that airline would have had their own GPT that you were, would be able to ask that question to, you probably would get your odds of getting a correct answer. Probably a lot better than asking chat GPT, right? But it’s not a hundred percent.

 

Yeah. And I think this, this comes to, we’ve talked about cost reduction. We’ve talked about revenue growth. other major lever in business is risk. So if you take a human only solution, there’s risk. Humans are infallible. Training’s sometimes not where it needs to be. and then you look at technology alone and yes, there are things you can do to reduce hallucinations. You can.

 

Andrew Griffiths (34:43.188)

limit the data set, you can control that data set. But it’s interesting. You can do it one of two ways. If you do it wrong, the let’s say there’s a 5 % risk in both of those scenarios of something undesirable happening. You can end up combining those in such a way you have a 10 % risk factor. That’s worst case scenario, or you can do it in a more considered way where you take the strength of the person and you take the strength of the machine, you combine them together.

 

And you can’t get to a zero risk, but you can get down to a percent or two. So it’s the reason that the collaboration between our organizations is as exciting as it is, is putting these two pieces together can be a massive benefit. You can get above human performance and above machine performance by bringing those two together in an intelligent way. But if you do it wrong, you get the worst of both worlds. So.

 

There’s an important level of nuance and back to the point we made earlier. It’s not just a fixed, I got it right in 2025 and I’m Right next year is going to be different. Right next month might be different. So continually having the ability to evolve that and use the solutions that are available in the most effective way requires in our case, two teams of people.

 

I think what we’re dancing around is the word trust, right? Humans to be able to trust in other humans and also in the tools that they’re using on a day-to-day basis. so I think there’s going to be a curve of trust with AI and we’re probably too trusting of certain AI models right now and maybe not trusting enough of others. But I wanted to give you an example that I think can bring us back into

 

you know, the BPO world, which is, I was just recently talking to the, head of IT for one of the largest hospitality groups in the country. And they were talking about a solution that they deployed and it was for, localization of accents. And he was talking about all of the outcomes, the great outcomes that they were getting from that. But ultimately what I gathered from him is that it increased trust.

 

Andrew Griffiths (36:59.071)

yeah.

 

Shawn Cordner (37:09.922)

You know, people just have this kind of innate in-group out-group thing. It’s evolved in us over hundreds of thousands of years, you know, to be wary of the outsider and someone that’s different. So when you hear someone that’s reflecting back to you, you know, your regional dialect or the way that you talk in your town, if it doesn’t create trust, it at least reduces the friction that could come with talking to someone that doesn’t sound like you.

 

Yeah, it’s a fascinating piece of technology and there was a lot of concern. think the early versions of that did make the person very synthetic. were, they were heavy handed. what we, what I’ve observed with that technology and of course, being in some of the markets we’re in, it’s a hot piece of technology for the reasons you stated. It’s, it’s taking a more, a lighter touch.

 

So there’s a point where you’ve got a completely synthetic voice that may as well be a bot So all you’re doing as a human then is telling the bot what to say Or you’ve got a accent that’s incompatible with the ear of the consumer Somewhere between those two extremes is is a happy place where I know I’m dealing with a human It’s a obvious interactions obviously human, but I’m not having to figure out what they’re saying. I’m not having to ask them to repeat themselves

 

and getting frustrated because the communication is not clear. That ability to combine in an effective way is another example of there’s a sweet spot. like a lot of things, been in this industry a long time, something new comes out. We get really excited about it. We deploy it at a level that’s probably more than we should. And we go through this sort of pendulum effect where we swing way too far.

 

And then over time, the pendulum just reaches that happy place in the middle and it slows to the point of, okay, this is, this is the balance spot. but yeah, accent accent localization technology is, I think hitting it’s stride right now.

 

Shawn Cordner (39:19.21)

And that’s interesting and maybe that could lead us into a little bit more of the business conversation around this, but that seems to me like a technology that you could easily take a wait and see attitude, right? So you’re saying that adoption is very high right now. So have we gotten past the wait and see attitude of implementing AI in the contact center and are people started to full throatedly accept that it’s time to move into this realm?

 

I think I’ve done well to get to this point before I give you a depends answer. think it depends on the person and it depends on the technology. So there are things from our observation that technology we just talked about, accent localization, 100 % QA, certain things are pretty much accepted by the majority. There’s always going to be outliers. But you get into some of the…

 

the sort of heavier automation and the fully agentic, I’m going to do everything and make all the decisions and not have any human interaction. There’s not very many circumstances that that’s happening. Probably smartly, right? I’m not advocating that it should be, but I think AI is such a broad term, even AI within CX is applicable across so many things that it’s a tough question to answer with a

 

singular yes or no response because it depends on what am I using the AI to do.

 

Shawn Cordner (40:52.268)

Yeah, I wonder too, like, how do you build the business case for that and how do you account for the risk of the different, you know, levels of automation that you’re suggesting being implemented? just maybe kind of talk to me about what is the executive level conversation that you’re having in, when it comes to AI implementation and maybe even just in a broader sense when it comes to outsourcing the contact center operations.

 

I would say that we’re still responding to that initial promise that AI and it’s what, is it two years or three? It’s been a while, right? Since it hit the mainstream. It came in with, we’re revolutionize everything and you’re gonna get consistent, awesome results for far less money, right? That’s the check it wrote that it hasn’t cashed and probably never will. However, it does lots of great things.

 

What we’re trying to do is say, if the outcome that you’re looking for at an executive level is superior CX for less money, then we can get you there today with a combination of AI and labor. And that combination and what’s right for you depends on things like your data set, things like the readiness of your clients, things like risk tolerance. So we can tune that balance.

 

And maybe we’d be slightly conservative. We roll it out. You started to see positive results, better CX for less. And then over time, how that’s balanced can shift. Cause if we go back to the model of ultimately the role of our two organizations is to create a budget so that these brands can afford to spend that money to grow their business through CX. That’s ultimately where I see our objective is to create the ability to be better.

 

not to stay at the current level and do it for less. Because let’s be honest. If you went and surveyed a hundred people and said, who’s happy, generally speaking with bank insurance company, retailers, whoever you deal with from a customer service perspective, who’s happy with the level that you’re getting in 2025. I doubt you’ll see any hands go up. If you do, be a single digits. So if we’ve got that massive chasm of.

 

Andrew Griffiths (43:16.588)

difference between what people want and what people are getting, then I see it as the role for us to effectively risk mitigated, produce this free budget to go spend on reducing that gap. So I’m going to start off with the blend of labor and tech that allows you to start the journey. And as you get comfortable, and as we learn more specific to your organization, that starts to shift and free up more budget to spend on

 

being better and being differentiated and gaining that extra revenue.

 

You said something, the conversation is, do you want to have better CX for less? Right. I jotted that down. is that ever the conversation in the boardroom or, in the C suite, or is it more. We need to reduce churn or we need to increase our poo. And I guess what I’m asking is does a contact center practitioner, someone that’s, that’s actually managing, the experience, do they sometimes not speak the language?

 

of the board of directors and does that gap sometimes make it difficult to get the investment? before you answer, I just want to give you an example is I was just on a Gartner webinar talking about how to get the executive suite to invest more in brand activities. And the first thing that they said is you need to stop talking like a marketer, right? Don’t use words like brand awareness because that to them,

 

is kind of this amorphous thing that doesn’t have any clear ROI to it, right? Doesn’t sound like it’s impacting the bottom line in any particular way, even though I as a marketer know that it is and I know the importance of it. So switch your language to pre-funnel conditioning, Which implies this idea that we’re starting to build the funnel even before they’re in the funnel and that will lead to sales and that will lead to revenue, right? So I don’t know.

 

Shawn Cordner (45:18.231)

Is there a mismatch in how practitioners are speaking versus how they should be speaking to the C-suite?

 

It’s hard to dictate how people should be speaking, but I do see, we see a trend of if you work with somebody who’s a CX leader, um, between our two organizations, pretty much any problem you’ve got, can help you solve. Where projects don’t get executed is they then go to executive leadership team and they talk about all the same things we talked about with them.

 

And you’re right. You’ve got to be mindful of what is that person’s role in the company and what are they tasked with doing. Executives are tasked with the same things, physically the same things, but they have a list of things that they need to deliver within that calendar year. So if I’ve got by the end of 2025 to deliver these results, that’s what you need to translate into their world and talk to them about. Is it revenue growth? Is it risk mitigation?

 

Is it capturing market share? What were your three strategic objectives in your role for the year and how are you doing and how does this project accelerate delivery of that? Because if you’re talking about things that are apparently detracting from delivery of those, then you get put in that bucket of, okay, not now. If you can align with those objectives,

 

then you usually will be able to have the conversation, tell me more, how does that work? And the temptation then is to go into, well, we’ve got this and we’ve got this CSAT score and we’ve got this MPS and okay, no, that wasn’t really what they’re asking for. It’s to help me bridge the gap between my world and yours and help me understand. And ultimately, if it’s, I’m now part of your growth trajectory and here’s how that works and here’s how we can do it.

 

Andrew Griffiths (47:22.55)

within the spend that I currently have. That’s a very different conversation. The prediction is if we do this right, we’ll start to see CX owners at the boardroom table in a way we haven’t in the past. IT and CX leaders have not typically been able to get to that level where they’re seen as part of the solution. If stuff doesn’t work, they’re in trouble, right?

 

They need to support and they need to keep the lights on or whatever term we use, but they’ve not not had the strategic position to be able to say, this is how we’re going to achieve the objective of growth. And I think that’s if we use the opportunity that AI is providing for us, this is our time to change that.

 

Shawn Cordner (48:14.776)

What is the importance of alignment with other stakeholders in the organization when you’re talking about contact center initiatives?

 

It’s interesting. we’ve had some really good success with coming into organizations through non-typical methods. So we could be sat, you know, the random places we find ourselves with business travel at a conference, talking to somebody. And I always love to ask the question of, what, what’s going on? What are you stuck on? What are you seeing? And usually it’s, it’s funny.

 

Usually a lot of what stuck is not a lack of ideas, not a lack of solutions. It’s something risk or budget is stopping them moving forward with the thing they know they need to do. So we’re, we’re able to say, huh, if you didn’t have that budget constraint, where would you be in a year versus where are you going to be now in your current trajectory? And when they map that out and understand, wait a minute, the CX decision maker might actually be.

 

my path to getting what I need done because that budget creation model isn’t exclusively, you don’t have to keep that budget within the CX world. It might be something else. It might be marketing, right? Marketing is a growth lever. You know this better than I do, but if the marketing person isn’t getting the budget they need because they haven’t been able to convince the CFO that that’s the right way to do things. Maybe the conversation is CX is such a heavy spend on labor.

 

A labor optimization there allows freeing up a budget, which allows a very least approved for concept, probably complete funding of that marketing initiative. And then you’re able to demonstrate that growth. That’s a different conversation to, Hey, if you give me this money, I can return this. Well, you haven’t proven that you can. It took money that was being spent somewhere else. We optimize that. We used it to prove this concept.

 

Andrew Griffiths (50:15.008)

It was widely successful, widely successful. And now we’ve got these results to prove it different, different position you in. So we’re actually seeing some cross functional collaboration that maybe, I mean, the simplest example is somebody with a BPO and they’re doing fine, right? There’s been a 20 year relationship. They’re doing fine. It’s okay. Nothing, nothing worth disrupting.

 

But then the biggest thing holding the company up is that marketing budget. Everybody knows it, but they just can’t get it on stock. Maybe a change that we can help with on that BPO frees up the budget to get this marketing thing on stock. All of a sudden, that BPO provider that’s been doing an okay job at an okay price is the holder up of the growth of the company. And the project has different meaning to the future for that organization and therefore different emphasis put on it.

 

I think looking at what you and I do, what our organizations do and what that can mean if used intelligently within the forward motion of a company starts to get us into projects that wouldn’t exist otherwise. It’s not, I think one of the mistakes we make is thinking that we’re the be all and end all. And the reason you’re doing it is because you want better CX. It’s not necessarily always the driver. It might be.

 

I just need something to get unstuck somewhere else and then it’s this flywheel effect of things working.

 

Is it safe to say that better CX is a, an easy outcome to achieve? shouldn’t say easy, but, a reliable outcome that you can achieve, by leveraging a BPO.

 

Andrew Griffiths (52:02.946)

The right one? Yes. The wrong one? No.

 

Is it because of their experience, you know, they’re, they’re, they’ve built the processes, the training because their people take it as a career, as opposed to a job. Those factors.

 

Yeah. I mean, if you look at, you know, lot of mid-sized to larger companies, they’re doing so many different things and they have a level of expertise. But even when we look at enterprise customers, sometimes the level of sophistication in the contact center world is not what it is if you have 5,000 seats of it it’s all you do because you become obsessive about that. So it’s, it’s a focus thing and.

 

Anytime you look at somebody, take elite athletes. They are that good at that because they’ve given up a bunch of other stuff. think businesses and individuals, there are some similarities when you look at that. And there’s very few businesses that are really good at everything. So what we see is a lot of them saying, you know what, this CX thing, ugh, it’s harder than I thought it was going to be. I thought you’d just pick up the phone and, you know, deal with people and it’d be fine.

 

It’s harder than we thought and it’s not really core to who we are. We need it done well. We just don’t want to do it. Can somebody else take this? And that means that our head space from leadership, that means our focus can be on creating the best widget or the best whatever. So it’s just a, it’s the ability to find those that are passionate and highly involved in the art of customer experience. Cause I do think there’s a science and an art to it.

 

Andrew Griffiths (53:47.948)

and letting those folks that are passionate about it do it on your behalf. We do it all the time in business. We don’t try to be experts at everything. And very few examples of companies that have been successful with the strategy of we’ll do it all and we’ll do it all to the highest level. There are exceptions, but very few.

 

Yeah. Yeah. I used to work for a, uh, a CLEC and the CEO used to say, we’re a customer service company. just so happens our industry is telecom. We had outstanding customer service. We always kept that in house and it’s because that was the focus. was the emphasis. You know, client centric, um, or customer centric. And so I think if, know, what was the shoe? Uh, Zappos, right? Zappos is another one that’s.

 

Yeah.

 

Shawn Cordner (54:34.594)

That’s a customer service company really that just happens to deal in footwear, right? made that their primary market differentiator was good customer service.

 

You could have a telecom provider that says I’ve got the best network in the world, but I, I’m not particularly interested in anything but engineering and developing that. And I somebody else to run the customer interactions because we’re network guys, same business, different mindset. Yeah.

 

that same CEO used to say our tagline was we suck less. That didn’t have the same ring as, as the other one, but it was true. We did suck less. but I guess where I’m going with that is, you know, your point is an excellent one. If that’s not what you’re built to do, then why try to be the best at doing it? It’s just an uphill battle. It’s going to be costly. There’s going to be a lot of risk. There’s going to be a lot of,

 

failures along the way, it’s going to be costly to get there. Why not just trust it with someone else? So you’ve got the potential to have better performance and outcomes. Got the potential for cost savings. Those are two pretty big ones, but are there any other outcomes that you might be able to get with a BPO?

 

You know, better performance for less is kind of the tagline,

 

Andrew Griffiths (55:57.752)

Things like risk, you can get a different geographic footprint. So depending on the scale, we look at things like what happens with geopolitical problems, what happens with recruitment problems. If you’re, let’s pick on healthcare, a healthcare provider in a region in the US, sometimes it’s really hard to get people. you’re not, we’ve had many healthcare organizations come to us and they’re not saying we need to save money.

 

They’re fine with that, but that’s not their primary objective. The primary objective is I can’t reschedule the people that need rescheduled because I can’t get to the phone because I don’t have enough people because the people I hire to do that job. Sometimes they even move within their own organization. Like that, that entry level position is super hard to keep filled because they get cherry picked off to go do other roles within that organization or they get offered more money to go work somewhere else. So.

 

I think solving the, I have a retention problem is probably the biggest other. So that falls into that bucket of risk. So being geographically concentrated in one area provides lots of potential risks. And literally you now can have a global set global network of locations. You don’t have to go build them, but you have access to resources across the globe that

 

pretty much no matter what happens, you’ll have the customer support. So mitigating that risk would be the other area.

 

I would assume, especially if you’re a seasonal business, maybe retail, and you don’t have to worry about the ups and downs of scheduling.

 

Andrew Griffiths (57:40.364)

Yeah. Yeah. There’s lots of companies. It’s weird, right? If you look at most seasonal peaks, they all seem to be in Q4. Healthcare has got open enrollment. Retail has the holiday shopping season. There’s a few like pest control that have a wonderful time because their peaks at the opposite time. But for the most part, all the peaks hit the same. So you’re competing with lots of other industries for the same labor pool. It becomes difficult.

 

So yeah, scalability.

 

Andrew Griffiths (58:13.954)

making the scalability somebody else’s problem. Right. The scalability headaches don’t magically disappear just because you have a BPO. It’s just not something that you have to deal with. You’re outsourcing that problem to somebody else who’s well versed at doing that. And that’s, it’s a very good question as you’re going through the vetting process of finding a BPO, which is what we spend our lives doing. Hey, how do you scale? What are your strategies for this?

 

A lot of the feedback that’s given to brands is how to be able to scale and do it effectively and how to work in partnership. So it doesn’t remove the problem, it just removes the problem from being your problem.

 

Um, last thought I had was what about training, rolling out a new product, for example, I mean, is it, or they may be more nimble, uh, and, and able to take something new, a new feature, new product, whatever, and get the team trained up faster than, uh, a contact center that you’re running yourself potentially.

 

Yeah, this is another example of doing it right is the best combination of the brand and the partner and technology. So there’s great tools for training. AI plays a part here. The principle of please don’t practice on my customers. AI role plays fantastic for that. So the dream state scenario is that the brand has good quality training content.

 

They share it with the BPO partner. The BPO partner runs through technologies that allow them to rapidly roll it out to the agents and test for proficiency. So when the product rollout hits, they’re all ready for whatever comes. So yeah, it’s, it’s combining the skillsets and the familiarity. We were talking earlier today about something that the first time you do something or the first time in a while that you do something, there’s always that learning curve.

 

Andrew Griffiths (01:00:15.638)

I’m not like re-learning curve. If you think about it, the BPO is dealing with many different clients going through similar things. So they’ve done it much more recently than you would have done as a brand. If you do a product rollout once a year, it’s been 12 months and it’s kind of like airports. Apparently travels on my brain, but airports, the first time it snows in a snowy climate, an inch will shut the airport down. You get solidly into the winter and a foot doesn’t shut them down. So.

 

I think that’s what the BPO brings is that recency bias that allows them to be more efficient.

 

Sure. Yeah. That’s one of the benefits that we talk about with clients a lot is, you might be tackling two, three transformation projects in your career as a CIO. We’re doing two or three a week. So we’re just, getting the reps in where the muscles warmed up. We adapt and adjust usually a lot quicker than they’re able to.

 

My last question we heard, when it’s a good idea or what the potential benefits and outcomes are, but when is it bad idea to outsource?

 

You know, it’s like anything in life. It’s not the answer to every problem. So we, I can’t remember a scenario where we’ve told somebody, this is what you should do. And it’s outsourcing our O more is the discussion around what could it do in your scenario. And ultimately from our perspective,

 

Andrew Griffiths (01:01:55.222)

It’s the client’s decision. We’re not here to tell them, despite the name of the organization, despite what we do for living, we’re not here to tell you that outsourcing is your solution. most of the times where I’ve actively discouraged it has been around those startup organizations. Like I don’t want to rob you of the opportunity to more rapidly learn how to position yourself in the market. So if you’re at that phase where you’re super new, that feedback’s critical, that ability to iterate your products and service.

 

If you put another entity in the middle of that, yes, you’ll still get the feedback, but it’s, you kind of need it quicker and more direct for that, that part of your life cycle. so give it six months and then we’ll have this conversation again and I’ll be in a better place to help.

 

Yeah, that’s very insightful and you probably can do it anyway because you probably haven’t built up enough of a knowledge base, which means you probably also can’t train an AI model on it. really, in the beginning here, you just need to grind through it and own it, right?

 

Yep, yep, for a period, for sure.

 

Well, Andrew, I appreciate your time and expertise. When my beard grows up, it wants to look like your beard.

 

Shawn Cordner (01:03:08.6)

the mentorship there too. This was awesome. Thanks for your time. Appreciate it.

 

Yeah. Thank you. Did we manage to geek out in the same way that we did last time? Awesome.

 

I think we did.

 

Cheers.