Ep.130 The Gen AI Revolution: Expanding Customer & Agent Experience! Pt. 3/3 with Jim Ackley
Welcome to the podcast designed to fuel your success in selling technology solutions. I’m your host, Josh Lupresto SVP of Sales Engineering at Telarus and this is Next Level BizTech.
Hey everybody, welcome back. We are wrapping up this Gen AI track specifically titled Gen AI Revolution and Expanding the Customer and Agent Experience. On with us today, we got a long time friend, Mr. Jim Ackley, Director of Sales at Sumo Communications. Jim, welcome on, man. Well, thank you. It’s good to be here, man. I appreciate it. We got a lot of stuff to unpack today, man. First of all, let’s kick it off, Jim, with your background. So personal background, how did you get into this space? Windy path, linear path and anything entertaining you got along the way were all yours? Yeah, no, that’s good. That’s a good question. So again, thanks for having me on. I think it’s interesting the paths that we take. But, you know, I started back, if you want to take it back to 1990, maybe 89, I was going to the University of Utah and I actually was in school to be an accountant. So I got my accounting degree in 1990. But prior to that, I was doing an internship at the Franklin Institute, if you remember that company before Covey bought them out. And I was doing bank reconciliations. And I’m telling you, it just about put me to sleep. I mean, I was just like, how am I going to do this for the next, you know, for the next my whole life. And, and so I had to make a game out of it. And we took these bank reconciliations and had a lot of fun with them. But boy, it was something that I quickly realized that it wasn’t for me. So I interviewed with a little company in Salt Lake City called ITC Networks, and a little long distance company, we competed with telemerica and, you know, LDDS and MCI and, you know, access long distance and all those companies back in the back in the early 90s, just after the best picture in the long distance space and had a good time selling long distance for a little while. And then it was back, it was probably 96, had the opportunity to move down to Phoenix, me and my wife, my wife was pregnant with our first child. And we freaking hauled everything down there on Halloween 1996, I think it was anyway, it was, it was crazy. So we got down there and opened that office. And next link came in and bought up ITC. If you remember next link, that was the precursor to XO communications. So we had a couple years down there in Phoenix moved back to Salt Lake worked for him for a couple of years and decided it was time to, you know, to take the leap. I was kind of done working for the big company. And I was probably number 12 out of out of 1000 reps making good money. My wife and I literally saved $50,000 over the previous year and a half and said we are taking the plunge. So we I teamed up with the guys at carrier sales. And I just started selling I’m telling you those were some sleepless nights, I would wake up literally at 4am. And I would get to bed probably around midnight. And I just did this over and over. You know, I had a little family at that point, we had two kids and, and another one would come a little later. But it was just a good time to to get in there and busted out. And in about a year and a half, we actually had our income back and then some. And it was funny because at that time, I kind of got the shiny object syndrome, so to speak, and, and was looking for other ways to make money and, and, and got into real estate. And so from about 2005 to 2009, a buddy of mine, and I, we went out and flipped about 25 houses. Oh, wow. And, and it was in 2008, that I actually sold my telecom base. And 2008 was not the right year to do that. You’re going into real estate, you know. So anyway, we quickly got back into the game. And I went to work with Tom McCoy and Rick Du Bois at Zilek, if you remember that little agency out in Draper and built another base. And I figured, I’m gonna, this is probably about 2013-2014. I decided I was going to get into contact center and try to start selling that. And I quickly found out that I didn’t know anything about contact center. And it was, it was tough because to have that conversation with a contact center leader, it’s just complex. And it was, it was a tough situation. So, so I, I think I had some success. I worked with the guys over at in contact and just trying to find projects and aligning deals with, with reps and whatnot. But it just wasn’t very satisfying. I was just out looking and finding and turning them over. You know, I wasn’t really getting involved in conversation. So I remember backpacking with a good buddy of mine, up in the Wind Rivers in Wyoming and was like, dude, I need to go to work for nice. And so, so I got off the mountain. And two days later, I talked to Rusty Jensen over there when he was there. And, and two months later, I started at nice. I’ll tell you, I learned so much about the contact center space. But the thing that was even more valuable, I think then, then learning about, you know, the ins and outs of, of channels and the contact center and how everything fits together and integrations and all this stuff. The big win literally was customer centric selling. And I know that a lot of big companies have sales training. And I mean, I’ve been in sales forever, right? I know how to sell. But to move into a complex sell environment and understand kind of what that means. Oh my gosh, it was, it was frickin money. So, so we, so I stayed there, my plan was to stay there for three years and then get back into the channel. So learn as much as I could get back in the channel and just go for it. Well, two and a half years later, I met Brett Hickenlooper at Sumo Communications, and we just hit it off. The rest is history. And had a really great four year run with Brett and the team. And then it was in late 2022, the good folks at one source came in and bought Sumo. And so I am supported by by one source at this point. And, and they’re just great people. And so I’m the only one left, I think that has the Sumo brand and that may change. But here in this market, people know us as Sumo and, and so it’s been a good run. So yeah, that’s kind of that’s kind of my story a little bit. Anything else you want to know? I love it. No, but what I will tell you is Brett Hickenlooper is the only person to ever get me to do a coil egg shooter at a sushi joint. I would only do that for Brent and nobody else. So we love a good, good, good friend of the family. You guys, you guys got a great name. It’s been awesome to kind of see the run and just excited, excited where we go from here. So well, walk us through maybe it’s progressed us a little bit kind of how you go to market now, right? Your role, you know, as you work with customers, just explain that give us a little bit of commercial for Sumo and the team. Yeah, so you know, a lot of it, a lot of it evolves around existing relationships. And we call it we called it Sumo Apple seed in a lot of ways. So with contact center, I mean, it is there’s a lot of movement that happens. So in terms of finding new projects and going out and working with new people, we find a lot of success in just fostering relationships and moving from, you know, from one company to another where people kind of we just kind of follow people around. So I think in terms of just growing the business, a lot of that is organic, I think naturally in the contact center, they just tend to grow over time. I don’t know too many contact centers that shrink. And, and with that comes opportunities to sell other products and services like you cash or maybe security, I haven’t done a lot of security personally, yet I’m learning more about that as we go. But boy, there’s things that come up. I mean, even a long distance play with a company, you know, little companies out of we have a project that we work with out of Salt Lake that does really, really good things in long distance or, or IoT, we’ve done some good IoT projects, you know, CRM is another thing. So I think once, once I’ve established a good base of customers, it really becomes wrap my arms around them, and see what I can do to help in other ways. I mean, I think a big part of it is just developing trust. And I really want to help people make the right decisions. I mean, it’s it’s important to get it right, you know, so I don’t know, that’s, that’s kind of an overview of that. You’re ever fine in that conversation? I mean, you guys have done a great job, obviously, of growing existing accounts and file, you know, this person goes here, this person goes here, right? You’ve had a history of establishment. So you know, when they move, it’s great for you, because you keep existing and you have the new relationship. Yeah, how do you get over this idea? Sometimes it seems like the biggest hurdle is we do so many things. How do you make sure that those customers that you work with know that you can help them in not just these two areas, but these 600 areas, right? Or however many skews we have on the line card now? Yeah, no, that’s a great question. I think it’s just I think it’s just focused. I wouldn’t call it hard work, but it is just kind of hard work, just staying in touch with the people that are in positions to affect change within an organization and, and opening, opening my mouth, you know, and a lot of the things that I’m bringing on that 600 line card, so to speak, I don’t have expertise around. But it sure is helpful when I’ve got, you know, advisors that I can lean on and pull into the conversation. So I think the big thing on that, I always fall back on, you know, I just want to do the right thing for the customer. And, and I think them knowing that, and then being able to bring in good quality people having that network of really good quality people, the technicians, the technical folks, bringing those folks into the conversation makes makes all the difference. So I don’t know if that answers your question, but it’s my simplistic idea for this. It’s really just get up and go to work every day and foster those relationships, you know, so yeah, that’s good. But there’s so much more to that too. I mean, fostering that relationship, I don’t think relationships drive everything in our market today, because you have to you have to deliver the goods, you know, you got to deliver good content. And where I don’t know a lot of the content outside of contact center and UCAS, I have to learn it, but bringing good people along is it just makes it just makes all the difference. Well, and it feels like I mean, I know you see this in CX, you see it in the other areas too. But there were these ages where we just said, Oh, you need this thing. Okay, I get you this thing. I think what you find out now is that sometimes the session we’re going to get into this in just a second, when you think about AI, and you think about some of the other components about what customers need. Sometimes you’re just having to coach the customers on did you know this was available? Did you know this was available? Because, you know, how we have this compression of knowledge based on all the deals that we see that you see. So to us, it’s naturally like, yeah, you need this thing. And they’re going, Oh, my gosh, I was just starting to Google that I have no idea. Yeah, yeah. I feel like a technology Sherpa in some ways. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love them. You know, we love the mountainous themes over here. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yes, it’s it’s a big deal. It’s a so I agree with you. I think that makes sense. Alright, so so let’s talk a little bit about this kind of this this AI push. So we got a lot of buzz, obviously around AI.
We care about its product ization so that you know, we can help solve these customer experiences. So how do you how do you coach on others to navigate these challenges that all the customers are going to face, right? You know, with regard to CX and AI, customers are just going to get stuff thrown at them left and right. Where’s the greatest opportunity? And how do we navigate that? Oh, man, great question. Well, first of all, I think the AI kind of shift and the push towards AI, I think it’s been here for a while, actually. And I don’t think we realize how much it’s been here. You know, you talked about integrations to CRM and ticketing systems and, and all the different integrations for reporting and you know, I mean, those are those are AI kind of functions, you know, and I feel like it’s been around for a long time. And now it’s starting to kind of accelerate and I’ll get I’ll get into some specific specifics here in just a second. But it does feel like it’s starting to accelerate with with chat GTP 4.0, I don’t know, Omni or whatever you call it, you know, and Claude, you know, you talked about, I think you brought up earlier co pilot, you know, and opening all these things. I mean, with the LLMs, it’s just starting to kind of accelerate to where, you know, before it was it was more of a, of a very narrow scope. And now it’s becoming more general and more broad. Who knows where it goes with this like super scope? Geez. I mean, I don’t even want to pretend that I know kind of where it’s going as far as that goes. But to kind of pull it all together, I think it’s about identifying where there are opportunities to do the things that we’ve always been trying to do, which is save time, save money, be more efficient, create a better customer experience.
You know, those are fundamental and basic things that I don’t think are ever, ever going to change. And technology is just helping us to do those better and better and better, you know, like summarizing a long conversation, so that you can save time for an agent. So don’t have to sit there and type it out with their after call work timing, you know, it just saves so much time, you know, like scoring, as opposed to three or four interactions on an agent every week, maybe it’s all of them now, you know, like, let’s pull it in and let the AI do the hard work as far as that goes. And let managers do what they do best, which is connecting people and train and all that kind of stuff, you know, I think improving accuracy around CSAT is is huge. These are very specific things that we have great companies in the portfolio that do this, and they do it really, really well. I was just on the phone with chatbot yesterday, with Delta, just trying to change a flight, and how much better they’ve become with the data they already know about me. I mean, in three minutes, I can change a flight, whereas before it seems like it took, you know, two hours and you go out of a meeting. Anyway, things like that, that are just, they’re just increasing and improving, you know, customer experience, I think there’s a lot to be said for authentication, which is something that’s been around for a long time. But AI is starting to make it more like, well, just hear my voice. I mean, voice authentication has been around, right? Yeah, but it just is getting better and better and better, you know, using a virtual agent, huge opportunity to just, I don’t know, I just think there’s a lot that we’ve done. So it’s good. All right, let’s, let’s talk about, I want to hear a good lesson learned, right? You’ve had a you’ve had a cool path. Walk us back, you know, the last 1015 however many years, anything that you’ve learned, either a great lesson, maybe from a mentor that you’ve had along the way, or just a hard lesson you’ve learned yourself? Yeah, no, that’s a that’s a good question. I think probably the biggest lesson that I’ve ever learned, I just have to go back to my mom and dad. It doesn’t it doesn’t relate to to any, well, it relates to everything really. But my parents, when I was like, five years old, they got divorced. And I have, I have three other siblings. So there’s the four of us. And man, my parents, when they got divorced, I have to tell you, it was, for whatever reason, I just adore these two people. And I always have. And, and even though they were apart, you know, it was like, I was spent time with both of them. And it just felt like, it just felt like they were amazing parents. They were not helicopter parents at all. In fact, in some ways, it felt like they were kind of out of the picture, which was kind of interesting. I thought it was kind of fun. They let us make mistakes like crazy. And I think the big lesson that my parents and I remember them saying this. And so it’s it stuck with me. And I think it’s one of those things that stayed with me throughout business and whatnot is, you know, take responsibility, you’re responsible, you know, I mean, don’t, don’t think that anyone else is responsible. And the moment that you start to blame anybody, is the moment that you lose your power to act. And it just, it just really has stuck with me my whole life. And I think I’ve taken that into, into business and into the way I run my organization and the way I interact with my customers, hey, if something’s going to be done, I’m going to take responsibility. I was just on with the customer today. And it was just like, dang it, that was mine. And I owned it. And it just, it just, it just helps us move forward. You know what I mean? Yeah. So I don’t know, I think that’s probably the greatest lesson I’ve learned. And I’ve made a lot of mistakes with deals and whatnot. I’ll tell you about one if you want to know about it a little while here. But yeah, it’s, it’s a good lesson for me. I love it. Awesome. Good stuff. Okay, so let’s talk about maybe let’s put ourselves in the shoes of the the agents in the call center. Yeah, what are you hearing or what are you seeing existing customers, new customers? What are the problems that, you know, they’re trying to solve, maybe they think AI is going to do it, I guess, walk us through maybe some of that agent experience what you’re seeing. Oh, my gosh. You know, agents have such a tough job. And I think they still do. I just I’m, I’m amazed still, that an agent will sit down. And they’ve got three screens up, and they’ve got 12 different applications that they’ve got open. I mean, we are here in 2024. You know, I just don’t think that we all know how behind the times, most of our most businesses are, you know, so literally, I think if we come in with an organized approach, to help these business leaders, help their agents, you know, come into work and enjoy their job, because they’re, it’s not frenetic, you know, it’s not like, I mean, you’re able to get to the information. For example, I love one of these tools that one of our providers has, where it’s kind of a coaching card. And it’s all based on transcription and real time transcription and AI. And it’s fascinating to watch as an agent is having a conversation with a customer, they don’t have to be flitting around to different websites and different bits of information, all they have to do is sit and focus on the customer. And as they have these conversations, this real time transcription is digging into their knowledge base, or articles that are important, or maybe it was a promotion that was offered from a, you know, some sort of a promotion that they’re doing. And it pulls it right up in front of them. And they can sit there and just have a relaxed conversation with the customer. It you know, I don’t know if you said it, or someone else I heard recently said, a dollar invested in AI or good technology will always return about three and a half. I think it was a Microsoft study that said that. And so just, I don’t know, I think that agents, agents have a hard, hard job. And when they have management and leadership that can recognize that and give them the tools that they need and consolidate, we just did a deal with this, with a company where we brought in a CRM company, it was a single pane of glass CRM with, and man, we pulled in all kinds of data sources and different systems that they use. And just to watch this unfold and, and, and morph into this beautiful like single pane of glass where an agent can just go, I love this, all I have to do is sit here and have a great conversation with they call it members, they’re they have members, it’s not necessarily customers in that case, it’s a healthcare company. And just to be able to have just, it’s, it’s pretty amazing what we can do. So I think agents struggle, I think agents struggle, but there’s plenty of opportunities to go for us to go help. And it starts with like, I think the leadership. Yeah, I love that. And I hope everybody what other folks take from that is, you got to ask questions to uncover that, you know, I think we get into some of these and we think, okay, this person is the director of customer experience. So this is the supervisor of the call center. And I think the reality is there’s a presumption made that those folks can be innovative, or those folks have the answers because they’ve been in the role. I think the reality is what we have to recognize to your point is ask those questions that uncovers what is that experience like? What how hard is your agent, you know, is your job at you know, and ask the agents. It’s fascinating when you sit down there and you work with the agents and the supervisors experience might be a little bit different than what the actual agents experience is. And just to your point, listen and go, man, if we can make these agents better, to your point, I think said earlier, doesn’t that drive up the ultimate CSAT for the customer? I mean, the ROI and that is, it’s hard, it’s already been measured that because that turn could be so good. Oh, yeah, yeah. And I think supervisors, they have so many constraints on them, you know, they’re trying to, they’re trying to satisfy management that’s above them or to the side of them. They’re trying to help agents all the time. And so I don’t know, I think supervisors, yeah, they they they need good tools, too, you know, and it and good tools are not expensive. You know, I mean, when you think about it, it just blows me away that you know, you have 100 agents sitting in a call center and you’re paying these agents something like three or $400,000 a month in salary, and to bring in, you know, a $30,000 spend on a really, really good platform that pulls all this data together and gives these agents, it just lowers attrition, it just does so many cool things that I don’t know, I just think I think connecting with leadership in a company, and being able to have that conversation with them and bringing the right experts, they appreciate it, they love it, you know, and I don’t know, I just think it’s, it’s a it’s a freaking awesome thing that we do. It’s amazing. I know, we’re just helping. Just helping. We’re just helping them better at the end of the day. Yeah. Let’s Okay, so let’s talk about, you know, obviously, a lot of buzz, AI, AI, AI, I think we’ve said it 433 times. We don’t get any royalties the amount of times we say it, we’re just excited about it. But when you’re in these, you know, these kind of discovery and vetting conversations, are there any misconceptions? Or is there anything? Trends? Good, bad, surprising about AI that you’re hearing kind of voiced from the customers to the prospects?
That’s a good question. Um, you know, I think, I don’t think that at least the companies that I deal with, they’re all thinking about it and talking about it. And how do we do this? Um, but I don’t think they’re very far down the path misconceptions. Maybe it is that they think that AI is going to replace humans, you know, or maybe I think that’s probably the big one. And that’s not so much as that’s a leadership concern as well, you know, but, but I don’t I don’t know that they have a lot of misconceptions, because I don’t know that they walk down the path far enough. And the reason I say that is because I think us as advisors, we’ve avoided this conversation because we don’t feel like we have concrete answers, you know, and, and that’s a decision I made about two months ago, that was just like, wait a second, I don’t I don’t understand this conversation either. It’s moving at light speed, you know, so I need really good people around me that can help me to go in and have the conversation with people that are thinking the same thing that I am, you know, and I don’t I don’t have a lot of answers around that other than I just think that I think that business leaders today, at least the ones that I’m I’m dealing with, they’re looking to start the conversation too, you know, fair, fair. Okay. Let’s talk about let’s talk about, let’s talk about a win here. Let’s talk about give you example. It’s my favorite question, you know, okay, where you got brought in, what were you told the complaint or the problem was kind of what did the tech stack look like before? And then really, how did that environment ultimately look like after?
Yeah, yeah. You know, I kind of want to take this a different direction if you don’t mind. I want to talk about actually a loss that I had. Oh, and spicy. I like it. Let’s go. Yeah, dude, I’d say we have a lot of wins. And the wins are always about being engaged and having the right people in the room and, and, you know, the right personas, you know, you’re well connected, you get your champion, you’ve got, you know, you’ve got good interaction with your champion, you’re maybe your VP liaison, that’s kind of, you know, is, is, is, is championing this product up to the C suite, and you’ve got good connections with potentially the C suite, not there’s not a lot of resistance, you know. But I, I recently had an opportunity with a contact center that was several hundred seats. And it was, it was juicy, it was a good one, you know. And, and I made a huge mistake and fell asleep at the wheel, meaning that I became single threaded. I thought I had the right person in my court. I didn’t push. And I knew this, like every day, I knew I got, I got to, I got to push in and, and go make connections with, with this team over here and this team over here, because the decision in a big contact center project, it comes from everywhere, you know, you’ve got your CRO now, and marketing is really involved in that now. And I mean, the C suite is having discussions. Well, I became way too single threaded, and it cost me the deal. Finally, my champion at the end of the day, changed jobs. And I was left holding the bag. I didn’t have anything, you know, and later I found out that there was a couple of other organizations within the company, there was different factions with the company in the company. I live here in Utah, this is a company in Utah, all I had to do is get in my car and drive down the road and just spend some time with these people. And for whatever reason, I fell asleep at the wheel on that deal. And, and I missed some really rich opportunities to help help a company out. Ultimately, I hope they made the right choice. I knowing what I know now, I think they did because they were connected with some good people too, you know, but I don’t know that was, that’s tough. I hate life learn more when I lose than I want. Yeah, I mean, it’s a good point. If you ever if you’ve watched, if you watch Jordan stuff, right, you watched what motivates some of these guys, the last dance or even in his trainer, Grover Grover, his trainer, the book relentless, you look at the things that motivated Jordan. The worst thing you could have done was get in Jordan’s face and tell him like, I’m gonna smoke you tonight, man, you just don’t have it, do you? Like, you’re not playing very well. And then just a switch flips. And so sometimes these losses, we remember those, we remember the ones that we lost, and we never want to be there again. And we are humans, we are fallible, we all these things are okay. And as long as you walked away from a lesson, I guarantee on the next one, you’re going to grab that person, you’re going to learn who’s procurement, you’re going to learn who’s running customer success, you’re going to get them all on the same page, we’re going to have a weekly meeting or whatever, right, whatever you learned from that. Absolutely.
And take that with you. And it’s just it’s improved you overall, right? And the next time you’re going to squash somebody else out in that just like you have many, many, many other times. Yeah, yeah. Oh, my gosh, it was painful, dude. You ever have that situation when literally you feel like you got punched in the gut? It was one of those and I but when I look back on it, I go I got no one to blame it myself, you know, it’s like, anyway, it was it. It happens. It goes back, it goes back to the I mean, it ties into the the lesson learned from parents, right? There you go. All it all comes full circle. But we just get better as we go. That’s that’s that’s all we can do. I love that. Awesome. Yeah, awesome. All right. So final couple thoughts here. If I’m a partner, and I’m listening to this, and maybe I want to get a little bit deeper into CX, maybe I want to think virtual agents, I want to go agent experience customers, whatever, right? Your path is awesome. I think you’ve learned a ton through that path. But if I’m listening to this, maybe I’m selling in a different area, maybe I’m just not selling into this yet. What’s your what’s what’s Jim’s advice? Stay in tune with that, how to how to start out the noise and just how to advance myself in that area. Gosh, that’s such a good question. Because it’s, it’s a, it’s kind of a loaded question. And I actually really like it. I, I think if someone wants to push into that, that area, you, it’s complex enough that you you need to have the right relationships, you need to have the right team around you. If there’s one thing I’ve found out in this game, oh, my gosh, we do not win alone, you know, and we do lose alone, but we don’t win alone, you know. And so I think it’s I think it’s really important to develop those strategic alliances with people that good advisors that can that can come in and help help you along the way. But I do think there’s also this aspect of, you know, let’s say you’ve got a customer and you’re specializing in, I don’t know, let’s say you’re security specialist, you know, and you want to move into the CX space. I think there is a lot of value in, in just being very vulnerable with a customer just saying, I don’t know this space. But I will tell you, I, you know, I value the relationship that we have. And I value bringing good solutions to your company so that you can continue to succeed. And I think it’s worth having a conversation with, with so and so, do you mind if I bring them in, the three of us can have this conversation. And then we can, you know, we can find out if it makes sense to bring a bigger audience in and start talking about how we can help you with, you know, some of the things in the contact center, you know, I think I think that’s, that’s a big deal. I used to, I used to train sales guys when I was just selling T1s, if you can believe free, yeah, really go. It was interesting, because then it was like, if you know this, this, this, this, and this, these five things, you got it down. You it’s easy, you know, but you have to know these things first. And I think it’s, it’s complex enough in what we do, that I don’t know that that works anymore. You got to have the right people with you. I don’t know. I guess there’s a theme here. I when we’ve been together, you know, takes a village takes a village. I love it. No, that’s, that’s the nature of our discovery conversations anymore. I mean, I don’t I don’t know that, that one thing we get brought in for ends the way that it started out. I mean, even in CX, you see this, right? It’s it’s, okay, well, I have I have this, it’s doing a database dip into here. Okay, well, what’s that database? Where’s that database? Oh, it’s in SQL. Okay, where is SQL? Is it on prem? Because it’s hard to connect if it’s on prem? Or is it already in some cloud infrastructure? Well, it’s on prem, but we’re thinking about moving to the cloud. Okay, can we help you with that too? Because if we can migrate that SQL database and host that somewhere else, probably a lot easier to get some web based connectivity to it from one of our CX providers. And then we can kind of knock out two birds with one stone, right? Well, how are you going to secure that when I mean, it just goes and goes and goes and goes. It’s all so intertwined anymore.
Absolutely. It’s a fun process. Well, you know, it makes me think like, it’s it’s two words come to mind, nimble and present, you know, you got it, you got to be able to pivot. And yeah, I don’t know, that’s it. That’s a you tell me if there’s one project that looks like another one that you’ve done in the contact center. I can’t think of one, every single one of them is their own unique footprint, you know, and it’s, it’s, it’s I think it’s what makes it exciting and interesting to come to work every day and be able to help customers, you know, improve their business. And yeah, there’s there’s just not a cookie cutter business. No, no, no, it’s a good challenge. The brain does not turn to mush here. Because you know, like doing something different every day, this is the world for you. That’s right. It definitely it definitely is. All right, final thoughts, Jim. So let’s let’s look at Jim’s crystal ball here. So in the next couple years, what what innovations would you say you’re the most look, you know, looking forward to and kind of how do we play a part in that? Yeah, um, at the risk of being general, and I apologize, I, again, everything’s so specific when you get into conversation with customers or whatnot. But but I mean, the way I see is, it’s like usable innovation, right? You know, it kind of comes down for me to AI acting like a personal assistant. That’s for me personally. Or if you look back into the contact center, for that agent, you know, allowing that agent, like we were talking about earlier, and this is just so key, I think, allowing that agent to be be like, comfortable, relaxed, present, and really the best human that they could be, you know what I mean? Because boy, when they do that, and they feel like they’re supported, dude, it’s game over. I mean, like, these, these people will love, love to come to work, maybe that’s a relative term, right? But but they’ll do a much better job if they feel like they’re in that, you know, gamification is another component of this, I think that AI can do some really cool things. So I don’t think I don’t really think AI is ever going to replace people in the most valuable ways, which is that that human to human connection, you know what I mean?
I love it. I love it. Usable. I love it. Really? You just have a you have a way of bringing it down to very simplistic terms that we just listen and go, Oh, well, yeah, why didn’t I think of that? That makes sense. So love it. Awesome stuff, man.
That wraps us up, Jim. I really appreciate you coming on. It’s been a good conversation. Talked about a lot of good stuff.
Again, thanks again, man. Oh, thank you. It’s a pleasure. I really appreciate what you andTelarus and the team do in the market. You guys have, have developed something pretty special and look forward to working together for a long time. Love it. Well, that wraps us up for today, everybody. Remember, as always, wherever you’re listening from Spotify, Apple Music, make sure that you’re subscribing. So you get these notifications, we drop these things every Wednesday, so you can get them and just have that leg up against your competition. So Mr. Jim Ackley, director of sales at Sumo Communications. I’m your host, Josh Lupresto SVP of sales engineering at Telarus. This has been the Gen AI revolution expanding customer and agent experience. Till next time.