Episode Transcript
[00:00:23] Speaker A: Welcome all, and thanks for tuning into Metrosite, a podcast from Metrogy. I'm Beth Schultz, Metrogy's vice president of research and principal analyst.
[00:00:31] Speaker B: I'm Robin Garrett, CEO and principal analyst.
[00:00:34] Speaker A: So today we wanted to spend some time talking about enterprise Connect, which is just around the corner. March 25 through 20 eigth at the Gaylord Palms in Orlando, Florida. If anybody has been around for a while, you should all know that this is the premiere event for the communications and libration industry. And Metrogy, as always, is excited to participate in the conference program.
Robin and I will be presenting as our colleagues Erwin Lazar and Diane Myers. And we'll have an EC preview metrosite with those two as well. So watch out for that next episode. Now, Robin, you have some great sessions lined up for the CX Contact center track. You want to talk to us a little bit about?
[00:01:17] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, definitely. And what's great is that they are based upon research that we just completed here at Metroge. So one of them, which I'm really excited about, is agent assistant, virtual assistants. How are companies supercharging their agents? That's the title. And I'm going to be sharing some really fascinating research on how companies are using AI to improve agent productivity and specifically agent assist and that area. And when you do that, how that affects customer satisfaction, how does that affect other metrics, things like sales and productivity and all that type of thing? So it's going to be based on research that we just completed, almost 700 companies actually in this study, and we'll talk a little bit about what is agent assist? How are companies using it? What kind of business success factors should you be looking at? What can you expect to see from agent assist? How widespread are things like the use of screen pops? Is it distracting? Is it helpful? And are they more widely used during interactions in certain channels? Is it more widely used in web chat than it is in voice and so on? And also, what role does generative AI play in agent assist? That's obviously a big area of growth in most companies right now is generative AI and leveraging that and using that. So what is that, and how does that play into agent assist? So that's one of the sessions. And then the other one that I'm doing is called job shifting. Where and how is AI eliminating and adding CX positions? So that's one of the big things we always hear about, right? Is that, oh, AI is going to take my job well, is it? What are we seeing so far? And I will say that this is the first year, we are starting to see some measurable layoffs, but we're also seeing jobs being created. So I've got a good panel to talk about this. We have Josh Godlas from Genesis. We have Andy Trava from Nice, Mahesh Ram from Zoom, Steve Brock from Avaya, and Ray Kase from Talk desk. And we're going to be talking about all different things, know, like how AI is affecting hiring practices, what they're seeing among their customers, if they're seeing these layoffs, if they're seeing new jobs being created, and if so, which jobs?
Basically what they're doing to help their own customers to be well positioned as AI adoption grows. How are they going to show Roi, how are they going to be selling a technology when in some cases, in fact, it is going to replace people, but in other cases, and maybe even some of the same cases, it's also going to create jobs. So we're going to talk about the whole impact on jobs.
[00:03:58] Speaker A: So just to be clear, this is a panel. Your job shifting is a panel, but agent assist, virtual assistant, that is solo. You full on retrograde data, 45 minutes, not to be missed, right?
[00:04:12] Speaker B: Okay, definitely. And interactive. I always take questions as I go along from the audience, so that's always good to have that interaction.
[00:04:20] Speaker A: Now, a couple of weeks ago, we were also in Florida, Fort Lauderdale, at the future Expo, at it expo, and we saw that your AI related sessions were hugely attended. Right. So I would imagine that these are going to be really well attended as well. Certainly AI generative AI, very top of mind, especially as CX and it leaders are looking how to create that sort of the best workforces that combine both AI with their live agents and use AI to improve operations and so on.
[00:04:53] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.
[00:04:54] Speaker A: Do you have any recommendations? I'm kind of wondering on what folks are going to sit in on your sessions and then they're going to go down to the expo floor. So what are your recommendations in terms of what attendees should kind of take down to the floor with them from your sessions? What they should they be probing sort of their vendors or potential vendors about?
[00:05:15] Speaker B: Well, if I'm on the show floor, I mean, I always like to see proof and documentation and the vendors will oftentimes say that here's what we can do. Well, show me that that's what you can do. And once you see these products and services kind of come to life, I think it stays in your mind better. You can understand what it can do for you more.
I also ask about like vertical industries. If you're in an industry where you really want products and services that are very focused toward you. See what these particular vendors that you're interested in offer for your vertical, your industry.
Boy, all sorts of things on analytics I think I would be looking at. So great. You have this technology.
What kind of data can you give me about what product or service I'm using? How can I take this data and then make sense out of it? Do something with it, improve whatever I am doing with my customers through this product, with data that backs it up, with analytics that can tell me how to do continuous improvement. Those are things I'd love to see on the show floor, actually.
[00:06:18] Speaker A: That's great. And then what about you yourself? I mean, you've just given advice for the enterprise professionals that are there, but what are you going to be looking.
[00:06:27] Speaker B: For that stuff myself too, to be honest. But I think I'm looking a little bit more at what's happening in the supervisor assist area. So we've talked a lot over the years about agent assist, what's going on with supervisor assist, what technologies are helping on the supervisor side? We have some of that in our research, and the business success metrics are pretty compelling there. I would look at voice of the customer as well. I think there's a lot of technology and a lot that we can do with voice of the customer that we're not right now. So how can that help? How can AI basically help drive success? So things like inferred sentiment, for example, where in voice of the customer I always want to get feedback from every interaction, but in reality I don't. Well, AI can predict what a customer would have said their CSAT score was if they had answered the question or answered the survey using sentiment analysis, NLP and other know they're predictive and things like AI can actually predict what my response would have been. Take that and multiply by every single customer. There's a lot you can do with that. So I think that those types of products and services are really interesting and they have a lot of interest. Another big area of interest is agent wellness. So what's going on there? How can I help my agents not be so burnt out? Because when you think about it, agents live agents are now getting all the complex calls. They don't have the little breaks in their brain where they can just give someone an overnight mailing address anymore. Everything is very complex. So how can we help those agents? How can we make sure that we're not going to lose them? So that kind of gets into turnover rates and stuff. But how can we help that integration of platforms? That's always interesting. And it's not just UC and CC. I'd like to look at other platforms that might be integrated, know, CRM, AI, platform, cpas, all of that. How are we integrating these platforms and making it easier for companies and like to look at what kind of tests and tools do companies offer to their customers to help them see where they are today and what the technology can do for them tomorrow. So any of these kind of like pretests of, okay, how many of your client calls that come in can you automate through AI? So testing like that and what companies offer to their customers for that? And obviously a lot on the next frontier for large language models, there's going to certainly be a lot of talk about how companies are applying generative AI, but there's also a lot of fear around generative AI. People are concerned about loss of the human touch, people are concerned about malicious use of the technology. So how are vendors addressing those types of things when it comes to generative AI? So. Oh gosh, I probably have a long list, but those are things that are top of mind.
[00:09:22] Speaker A: Well, and they're also exciting. I mean, really pushing ahead now with AI for CX. So great time to be exploring what's going on.
[00:09:32] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure.
[00:09:34] Speaker A: Yeah. So just to quickly recap again, Robin is doing two sessions at Enterprise Connect. One is on agent assist and virtual assistants. And that is Tuesday, March 26 from three to 03:45 p.m. And then her session on job shifting. That's a panel. And that is Monday, March 25 at eight to 845 for the early birds in the crowd, which I am not, by the way.
[00:10:00] Speaker B: So I'm going to have to get to bed real early the night before.
[00:10:06] Speaker A: Robin, you always rise to the occasion, no matter what.
Anyways, and then just a quick heads up on our other sessions that metrogy is participating in at Enterprise Connect. Our colleague Erwin Lazar has a one on one sit down discussion with tech vp at Hanover.
I believe it's Hanover Ray or Hanover re. I apologize, I don't know how to pronounce that company. But anyways, it's on automation and AI. That should be really interesting.
He's also doing a panel on UC and collaboration security and then next gen 911. This is a repeat session topic for him, and he always does a great job on both of those last two sessions. And then Diane Myers is going to be presenting a session on managing the migration from on prem to cloud. And then I'll be doing a session on how to use collaboration data and participating in a panel on where technology is taking employee experience. And I know I'm really excited about going down to Orlando, Robin, I'm sure you are as well.
[00:11:15] Speaker B: Definitely.
[00:11:16] Speaker A: I know Erwin and Diane are.
[00:11:20] Speaker B: Conference enterprise Connect is always one of my.
[00:11:23] Speaker A: Yeah, so that kind of wraps up our quick preview on what's happening with Robin and CX down at Enterprise Connect. As always, we're happy to hear from you. So do feel free to reach out to us via the contact button metrogy site or directly if you have our emails, and give us a holler at Enterprise Connect. That's all for now. On behalf of the metrogy team, goodbye till next time and take care everybody.
