Latest / The Tech Matchmaker / Season One Finale: The Future of CX Is Smarter Orchestration — Not More Automation | Tech Matchmaker
Transcript
- Gina Gibson: Welcome to the Tech Matchmaker, the show where contact center challenges meet their perfect tech match. I'm your host, Gina Gibson, and in just 15 minutes, we serve up the smartest, coolest innovation shaking up the contact center industry. Whether you're searching for your next solution or just love staying ahead of the curve, we've got the insights to keep you in the know. Let's dive in and discover what's next. I promise you it's going to be fun. Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the season one finale. We're chatting with Molly Moore, Chief Operating Officer for LiveOps. Molly, it is such an honor to have you with us. Welcome to the Tech Matchmaker. Thanks for hanging out with us on the Tech Matchmaker. I hope today's spotlight sparked some fresh ideas and real solutions for your contact center. Want to dive deeper into the tech we featured? Hit up the show notes for all the links and extras and be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. And if there's a challenge you want us to tackle, don't be shy, reach out. I'll catch you soon with more innovation, more use cases and more ways to keep your business moving forward. Molly Moore: Thank you, Gina. I am honored to be here. Gina Gibson: Awesome, so let's start with the basics. Tell us a little bit about yourself. Molly Moore: Sure. So I joined LiveOps almost a year ago now and was consulting them with them prior for about six months. And I've spent most of my career building and scaling service and technology based businesses. And I've worked both across really large global enterprise companies as well as startups and everything in between. I hate to say how old I am, but really, you know, I love businesses that are focused on growth, operations and go to market strategy and expertise. Gina Gibson: Stay curious, stay bold, and keep exploring what's next. Molly Moore: execution those are kind of the core things I think that ⁓ You know I have strong experience in and what drew me to live ops is that the customer experience is going through a pretty massive Transformation right now and AI is changing how work gets done for not just obviously customer experience businesses But everybody but you're really in this CX space customers still want that empathy but Expertise when it matters most and it's just so interesting how technology can be applied to that expertise and in providing a better experience and so LiveOps sits right in that intersection of the human expertise and technology. Gina Gibson: love that. What's one thing about you Molly that we won't find on LinkedIn? Molly Moore: Let's see, I'm from a very small town in southern Oregon and I ⁓ have worked since I was maybe 11 years old and ⁓ I put myself through college both by working at Fish Cannery in Alaska and a lumber mill in Roseburg, Oregon. Gina Gibson: Wow, that is impressive. Absolutely. Why don't you go ahead and give us your live ops elevator pitch. Molly Moore: Sure. So we're really focused on helping brands deliver exceptional customer experience by combining ⁓ experienced agents with intelligent technology. So we'll talk about this, I'm sure, but we operate a very hyper flexible on-demand ⁓ workforce of highly skilled agents. are 1099, so they aren't our employees. And I'll talk a little bit about that, but really pairing that expertise with AI powered tools. And most importantly, I think our data insights to really help the companies we work with scale. and support quickly while maintaining quality. So we're not just providing people, we're helping companies make smarter CX operational decisions with that right mix of the human expertise, the automation and technology. And I think one key thing is we really lean into the consulting side of things. So we feel with 25 years in business, we're experts. So we are really helping the clients we work with transform their own businesses. sorry, it wasn't really an elevator pitch, probably more like a, you know, I don't know, a half mile walk pitch, but there you go. Gina Gibson: I love that and you mentioned it with your staffing model but the on-demand agent model it is a pretty big departure from how most BPO's have traditionally been staffed. How do you find this impacts your ability to like your talent pool that you have access to and how is that a competitive advantage for you guys? Molly Moore: Yeah, it's really material. you know, we were the first to market with the IC independent contractor model or gig space 25 years ago. We were the first to do this. So this kind of innovation really runs through the core of our DNA. ⁓ And so what was fascinating to me when you hire or not hire, but bring on agents ⁓ who don't sit at a desk 40 hours a week with a, you know, whether or not they're busy and they're kind of stuck there versus giving people the flexibility to be able to work when they want to. ⁓ And from the location that they want to, it's a huge difference maker in terms of quality because they're coming with passion. They want to be there. They view themselves as CEOs of their own business. And I've talked to many of our community of agents and they, I mean, they literally will say we saved their lives because one of the we do is we really serve the underserved. So if you think about folks that are in rural communities that maybe the job opportunities are really minimal, ⁓ or people who are ⁓ disabled, or maybe they're single parents, or they're military spouses, and this gives them an opportunity to have a career that they wouldn't otherwise have. And so our agent community tends to scale at the higher, They're older than a traditional brick and mortar, so somewhere between 35 and 45. They're almost all college experienced or college graduates. They have multiple years of experience working in some kind of fashion, so they're bringing just a level of experience that translates to real quality for our clients, which makes a huge difference. Gina Gibson: I love that. And how do you ensure that quality and consistency at scale? Because you are a larger organization as well. You know, what happens when the unexpected hits and you have a sudden volume surge or major client campaigns? Like talk to us a little bit about how that process works. Molly Moore: Well, you start with ⁓ really recruiting the right people. So you match the right people to the right roles. know, of course there's, you know, things that are required in many businesses. Maybe there's a specific certification that is needed or there's a need for bilingual. Like, you know, those are, those are the obvious, but what we are looking for the personal, you know, personality or character traits that makes sense with each of the brands that we work with. We try to find people who have a brand alignment to the given industry. So let's say it's a pet industry and we've so you actually look for people who love pets. And so again that brings a passion that you just can't certify or train to ⁓ in a way that you know other businesses might approach this. So that's that's the huge core of it is the right experience people bringing them to the table. Then having strong what we call certification not training but having really strong certification and specialization. ⁓ programs we if you go to our website LiveOps.com ⁓ we win awards every year for our certification programs our client may come to us with an eight or six week training program we take that down to two to three weeks and we deliver better quality and productivity sooner we have all the stats to back this up so that is a huge area of focus for us ⁓ and our business and then you know obviously technology is critically important and then in this context around quality. It's the data that helps guide us and monitor that performance and working with the clients being very transparent around what's working and not working. We, from the very get-go, make sure we are really sharing with our clients, you know, where are we having issues or problems? We actually, as we bring clients on board, we're really looking for that kind of profile in a client that wants to have a back and forth. And we just see with that a better experience. all around for both parties as well as the end client experience which is the most important component. Gina Gibson: Absolutely. Let's talk about AI for a little bit. You mentioned it at the very beginning. Where do you see most companies today, because it's changed in the last six months, I think, where they're making mistakes when it comes to adoption? I think as AI evolves, think the mistakes evolve as well. But I'd be interested to get your take on that. Molly Moore: ⁓ my. Yeah, thank you for asking. We're seeing a lot of them and we've made plenty of our own mistakes along the way. ⁓ So I think everybody's learning, but there's a few common patterns we're seeing. I think one is ⁓ moving too quickly to automation without redesigning the underlying workflows. So if you don't rethink how the work gets done in using AI, you're just layering AI on top of the inefficiencies. And we see this over over again. ⁓ Also, lot of CX leaders have been burned by tools that promise more than they can deliver. I'm sure you've got statistics on this, Gina, around failures in AI that are just happening all the time. So that's created some real skepticism from the buyers, especially when those tools are being introduced into environments that are already fragmented with systems that don't integrate well and that data isn't always clean. ⁓ And so I talk to all kinds of CX leaders and that's they're just really struggling with that data fragmentation. So they really as they're bringing in partners, there's no tool that's just going to solve things magically. You have to have your your stuff in order. Right. So it's really, really important. And then I think businesses are underestimating the importance of the human experience. So clients, they still want empathy. They want reassurance, ⁓ especially in more complex Gina Gibson: Yeah, absolutely. Molly Moore: or high stakes interactions and that also goes for the agent community as well. So making sure you're bringing along the humans as you're these tools out to understand the impact and ⁓ provide certification or training as needed. And then many clients, they're not ⁓ thinking about how they're testing and measuring impact. So they're spending millions of dollars on tools and they don't have a way to tell or show their leadership that there's outcomes that they've tied back. to like customer sat, resolution time, cost efficiency. So these just become experimentation. And so then as you're trying to drive an overall strategy throughout your business, you how are you going to get support down the road? ⁓ And then sorry, this is a long winded answer because we're just seeing a lot of stuff. Okay, so ⁓ from a governance perspective, AI tools and the needs behind them and where the pain points are should all be defined by Gina Gibson: ⁓ it's good. It's Yeah. Molly Moore: the business and the business leaders, not by the IT departments. We're seeing a lot of times where IT is trying to kind of shove down these tools because they're excited, which I understand, but they're not at the beginning really looking at what are the problems that are needing to be solved. So where we see businesses being very successful with ⁓ AI is where they have governance committees or business committees that are driving these IT initiatives. or AI initiatives through to IT who then does the execution. So we see that a lot. then, you know, now that there's just been this rush to automate everything, you know, that's often created a worse customer experience. So you see these things get rolled out and they're not thinking about the client and you know, what does that mean to them? And then how do they get out of this AI, you know? know, loop ⁓ and talk to a human. So that creates more friction, more frustration and more effort for the, for the customer. So I think over the next few years, the companies that win are going to be the ones who take a step back and redesign the entire experience, not around AI, but around the customers. And they have to take a very disciplined approach around this. So testing before scaling, focusing on the real business outcomes and putting the right governance. in place to deploy AI responsibly ⁓ as this shifts and evolves over time and bringing those humans along. Gina Gibson: Yeah, and you know, one of the points that you made about the IT and I'm seeing it like initially kind of started in the business and it was great, right? Because to your point, they're closer to the end customer. And I've been seeing a lot more where it's shifting to IT owning it. And to your point, there's just not that awareness of the end customer or the same focus on customer experience. So I think that's a really great call out. Thanks for that. ⁓ Molly Moore: Absolutely. Gina Gibson: Now talk to us a little bit about Live Nexus. It was launched earlier this year. Can you tell us what it is, what the vision behind it was, and what maybe some of your early results are? Molly Moore: Sure, so as we've talked about, AI is really transforming the customer experience, but most organizations are still learning how to apply it effectively. So We think about AI as augmenting the human experience rather than replacing it. And I think a lot of people are saying those words, but how do you truly do that? So Live Nexus is a platform we're using to test and deploy AI capabilities such as agent assist tools, automation, intelligent workflows, all the things. But the goal is creating an environment where technologies and humans work together to deliver better outcomes. So it's how we are turning AI ideas, that's a mouthful, into real business outcomes. ⁓ you know, it gives a platform for the companies we work with and even prospects, we're working with prospects today on this as well, to test solutions in real operations with real clients. data, prove that value and then scale what works. And so we can do this outside of the operational environment with real data and allowing folks in the CX space, the leaders to be able to test things before deployment and so that we don't get this black eye of, you know, not being able to scale something into production. So with that over time, and as we see success, the most successful capabilities we will productize, they'll become standardized offerings from us and will help our clients modernize their experience with confidence. because we're, you know, what we're seeing in the market is there over, you know, clients being overwhelmed by the number of tools available. So this gives a clear way to test them, implement them and scale in a way that really improves outcomes. Gina Gibson: And I was gonna ask you how do you stay on top of the trends in CX, but you're breaking new ground with this because it's an offer that not, I haven't heard about in the market yet today, so I think it's a wonderful offer, but how do you guys stay on top of the trends for CX? And kind of what's next for LiveOps? Molly Moore: ⁓ yeah. So a couple of ways, mean, obviously talking to our clients and prospects, I mean, that's a, that's a given. ⁓ I, I do think that, ⁓ you know, again, we've talked about already mentioned multiple times, it's going through this transformation. Part of that I think is really learning from the big technology companies. So we purposefully spend a lot of time with technology companies that are outside of customer experience because they are really paving the way. You know, I think CX companies are coming along quickly now with AI but and traditionally have not You know spend a lot of time as really being tech companies I think several will say they are but you know you dig under the covers very far and they really aren't so really learning from these bigger tech companies spending time with leaders there and then hiring from them, honestly Sorry, but that's what we do And so I think you know leading Gina Gibson: Yeah. Molly Moore: to tech is a key thing just to stay on top. ⁓ We are of course members of CCW. I'm an advisory board member that is the best organization. I can't say enough about them ⁓ and just being able to be on that board where there's ⁓ representation from many different industries, ⁓ enterprise clients who are really paving the way and are experiencing these problems live and to be able to learn from them and from frankly other providers. that has been really ⁓ core to us. And then we're also a member of ECAC, which is the Enterprise Communications Advocacy Coalition, and this group focuses on advocacy and education around regulations impacting our industry, ⁓ which is great and that's really beneficial for us and gives us a voice in Washington and state ⁓ government and better visibility about what's coming, but there's a lot of discussion around AI in that forum and the impacts and being responsible with AI. So you know just kind of having this whole industry around us and making sure we're really open ⁓ and with live nexus it really allows us to test. We're not only testing for you know what some other clients you know what our clients are driving from a demand perspective but we're testing things that we think are going to be difference makers and we're thinking three to five years ahead of what will the customer experience look like in the next three to five years. And I think the biggest shift we're going to see is that most companies will realize they approach AI in CX the wrong way. And that means using AI where it really adds value ⁓ and keeping humans where judgment and empathy matter and orchestrating the two in a much more intentional way. ⁓ And so our thesis is the future of CX isn't more about more automation. It's about smarter orchestration across the business. And, you know, we believe AI is going to become embedded in almost every interaction, not as a standalone tool, but something working behind the scenes to assist both customers and agents. Gina Gibson: Couldn't agree with you more on that. As we wrap up, is there anything you'd like the audience to know that I haven't asked you, Molly? Molly Moore: ⁓ I guess just wrapping up and when we touch on this, but you know, the future isn't about replacing people with technology. It's about combining the strengths of both. And we're focused on building that model and helping companies navigate what the next generation of customer experience looks like between people and technology. Gina Gibson: Yeah. that. And to finalize things up, I've always been a fan of James Lipton. And so to end the podcast, we do a few rapid fire questions. So what sound or noise do you love? Molly Moore: ⁓ boy, okay, I'm scared. running water. Gina Gibson: What sound or noise do you hate? Molly Moore: ⁓ airplanes. Gina Gibson: And what profession other than your own would you like to attempt? Molly Moore: ⁓ Actress. Gina Gibson: Love it. Molly, if somebody wants more information on using LiveOps and ⁓ or Nexus, who should they call? Molly Moore: Well, certainly go to LiveOps.com. ⁓ They can reach out to me. I'm easily findable on LinkedIn. Feel free to ping me. Of course, Gina, you are an amazing resource and partner of ours. reach out to Gina if you have questions. Gina has been so helpful in us helping find some amazing vendor partners and her business think forward is incredible. So can't thank you enough. Gina Gibson: Well, thank you so much. I'm so glad you could join us today. The work you're doing with LiveOps is really making a difference and hearing about how you help staff or help your employees in remote areas and that kind of thing, giving opportunities. I just absolutely love that. So it's a wonderful touch. So thank you so much for joining us today and I look forward to chatting again soon. Molly Moore: Thank you so much. Appreciate it.