Latest / The Wilmac Wire / Labor Day Break | Revisiting Our Conversation with Thomas Laird of Expivia & OttoQA

Transcript

Labor Day Break | Revisiting Our Conversation with Thomas Laird of Expivia & OttoQA · The Wilmac Wire

• Emily McNulty: Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, welcome, or welcome back to the Wilmac Wire. I hope everyone who's listening to this had a wonderful Labor Day weekend. And if you've got kids heading back to school this week, good luck. I know that's a big week for a lot of families out there, and we are rooting for you. The chaos of summer being over has officially begun. this week we are taking a quick break and re-airing one of our favorite conversations from earlier in season three, specifically episode seven, which originally aired back in February. Our guest today that you're gonna get to hear from is Thomas Laird, CEO of Expivia Interaction Marketing Group and Auto QA. Now, Tom is based just south of us in Erie, Pennsylvania, and he is one of the most Refreshingly honest voices in the contact center space. He honestly didn't hold a lot back in our conversation with him back in February on AI, on the CX industry, on even on what it takes to build and sustain a United States based BPO from the ground up. So if you want an unfiltered take on where the industry is headed with contact centers, with customer experience, with AI, this is the episode for you. We'll be back next week with new episodes. In the meantime, enjoy the week and enjoy this episode of the Will Mac Wire. Thanks for tuning in. Emily Miller: All right, thanks for joining us today on the WillMac Wire. We'll get things started by introducing our guests. So joining us from just south of us in Rochester, New York, in the Erie Meadville area of Pennsylvania with 25 plus years of experience working in the call center industry, reflected in recognitions like ICMI Top 25 Contact Center and CX Thought Leader for four years in a row, and a top CX influencer to follow. serving as a trusted advisor to our partner, NICE, through the NICE CX1 Executive Advisory Board and NICE CX1 Omnichannel Board, among others. Founder and CEO of Expevia Interaction Marketing Group, a US-based omnichannel contact center BPO headquartered in Erie. CEO of AutoQA, an AI-driven quality assurance platform focused on modernizing contact center QA workflows. A great person to follow on LinkedIn who just recently passed 15,000 followers, so congrats. Tom Laird: Thanks. Emily Miller: That was last but not least, welcome to the Will MacWire Tom Laird. Thanks for joining us. Tom Laird: Thanks, that's a heck of an intro. Steve McDonnell: Bye. Tom Laird: I should have shortened Emily Miller: So just leave. Tom Laird: that thing, but no, very cool. I'm happy to be here. Thank you guys for having me. And yeah, Steve McDonnell: Thank Tom Laird: I'm excited for the conversation. Emily Miller: Yeah, as I say, every time I start it and I'm like, okay, yeah, this will be good. And then it keeps going and I'm like, every person we talk to is impressive. So I'm like, I got to figure out when to wrap it up at some point. All right, yeah, Tom, thanks for joining us today. We're gonna start things off with a couple lighthearted prompts in a section we like to call this or that. So I'm gonna pose you two options and you can choose which is your preference. So first one is a little bit more call center industry related. Would you rather be out on the floor with the agents or behind the scenes planning? Tom Laird: I'm an out on the floor and I'm, I hate the work from home. Like I'm, I'm, Emily Miller: Yeah. Tom Laird: know it's, it's, is what it is and we got to deal with it. But I don't even, I don't, I don't know a lot of the newer people like I did before. And I, was a high Emily Miller: you Tom Laird: fiber and you can hear it and it's there's energy and we would always be playing games and you you'd hire for kind of that type of culture of that type of person. So I still come into the office. There's four people in here now. Everybody's worked from home. It's kind of stinks, but yeah, I do miss the. the on the floor, rah rah, high five kind of experience. Emily Miller: Yeah, so Xpev is then hybrid, you could say. Tom Laird: Yeah, I mean, we still have like 25,000 square feet. So if anybody's looking for a onshore on-prem, Steve McDonnell: That's a lot. Tom Laird: I got space. But yeah, pretty much everyone that we have, we have a couple of very small customers that are, that, you know, our financial services that we have in-house, but you know, the core team of there's really only four of us from a management standpoint here. Everybody else for management has worked from home and then really all the agents are, are all work from Steve McDonnell: not to interrupt your this or that, but a quick question on that, Tom. Do Tom Laird: Yes. Steve McDonnell: you feel like it's more difficult for like a entry level or a new person in the industry to be able to train and kind of, they don't get the water cooler touch, they don't get that energy? Is it tougher to get people going than it used to be when everyone was right there? Tom Laird: Yeah, I mean, you know, we still do hire from, you know, about a 45, not all, but I would say 95 % of our employees are in a maybe a 30 to 40 mile radius around Erie. We still try to do all of our training in-house. So again, they'll come for maybe a week or two. At least we got to meet, meet everybody. We struggled with it at first. Like it was literally COVID hit. I remember we're watching Rudy go bear in the NBA get COVID. And that was the kind of the, my gosh moment where Emily Miller: Yeah. Tom Laird: You know, this thing's for real and now we have to kind of really move. And NICE was awesome, right? You know, with the integrated soft phones, which was literally kind of new because we were using kind of the license deal, which was kind of a pain in the rear. So we literally in probably 48, 72 hours, like no sleep. I remember going to buy boxes at Lowe's, right? To load up computers. Cause we weren't ready for any of that. then, but Emily Miller: gosh. Yeah. Tom Laird: to your point, see to figure out how to do that properly then, right? To even not even the onboarding, but like, how do you man? How do you motivate? do you keep the same type of culture going? It was hard. I think we've done a pretty good job with it, but it took us a while. We were not good at the beginning. And I still fight back on some things, but again, you can't really fight with what's going on. Steve McDonnell: Yeah, you know, it's happening and the hybrid's happening. It is interesting. Emily Miller: Mm-hmm. Steve McDonnell: Tom's like the third or fourth person that has brought this up during in our podcast in the past like month. And for whatever reason, all our guests are like, want to be in the office, love the office. I'm with you. Emily Miller: Yeah. Yeah. Tom Laird: I think I have, my ADD kicks in. if I'm at home, I'm like, Emily Miller: You Tom Laird: I'm doing other stuff. my gosh, like ESPN's on, let me check that out real quick. Emily Miller: Yeah. Tom Laird: Like at least if I'm here, I'm kind of locked in at my desk and I feel better about myself at the end of the day, I guess. Steve McDonnell: Yeah. Emily Miller: Yeah, that's fair. That's fair. And good question, Steve. I like the tangent. Feel free whenever to interrupt. okay, next one, Tom, a day out on Lake Erie or a quiet day at home? Tom Laird: I'm a Lake Erie. Emily Miller: Yeah? Tom Laird: You know, here's the thing about Erie is we get a bad rap. Like I know Rochester probably does too, right? But you know, the amazing thing about Erie is again, if you don't use the lake, then I agree. There's not a lot of, not that there's not a lot of things going on, but the lake just is, when you're out there, you could be, feel like you could be in the middle of the ocean, right? And it's. It's an amazing. You're amazing in the summer. When we winter just like Rochester can be a little brutal, but. It's really cool. There's a lot of fun stuff to do and thank God they're finally building out our waterfront where you can go have a beer and you can watch the sunset. You can get on your boat or do whatever you want to do. It's all kind of down there now. So yeah, it's kind of happening now. So it's much nicer than when I was growing up in the 80s and you had like the shingle plant in Hammer Mill Paper Factory, just on the bayfront throwing stuff into the lake. But they've done a really good job of cleaning it up and making it kind of a little bit of a destination. Emily Miller: Very nice, yeah, okay. And last one, customer contact week, so CCW or the ICMI Contact Center Expo. Tom Laird: Probably you're gonna get me in trouble. Steve McDonnell: on the spot. Emily Miller: Yeah. Tom Laird: My answer is none of the above. Emily Miller: Yeah. Tom Laird: And I've had a LinkedIn beef with both of those centers. I'm not an ICMI top 25 person anymore, I think, because of it. Emily Miller: Hmm. Tom Laird: I just think we need to have places to go where people can learn about what's going on, not have to pay $6,000, $7,000 to show up to go. And then when they get there, all that they're really doing is getting sold by vendors. There's not a real, and people, I go back and forth, there's not a real place where you can go and get better, right? Where people can learn. If you're speaking, you're paid to speak, right? So you're slinging when you're there. I've always wanted to do my own type of conference, a smaller, like advice from a call center geek show where Emily Miller: Yeah. Tom Laird: it's just the only people who are speaking are, you know. Supervisors and call center managers and maybe IT guys that like hey, we're doing this stuff really really cool The the user conferences the nicest the Genesis the five nines they used to be like that and I Emily Miller: Mm-hmm. Tom Laird: think they're moving to just kind of sales conferences as well so I've a I have huge Emily Miller: Interesting. Tom Laird: issues with kind of how the industry does their conferences and what the meaning of them are supposed to be and Emily Miller: Mm-hmm. Tom Laird: Just the expense of them is just insane. So Yeah, that's kind of my take Steve McDonnell: would be. Tom Laird: on those. I'd rather Emily Miller: Yeah. Tom Laird: go to smaller shows than, I mean, some of those booths now are just like, even to sponsor is so ridiculously insane. Emily Miller: yeah. Tom Laird: You have to be just a huge big tech company and I think it leaves a lot of people out. I'm not bitter at all. It's not me being left out at all. Steve McDonnell: What would you have you ever thought seriously about doing something yourself? Tom Laird: Yeah, I mean, we have thought about, I Eerie would be difficult just because it's harder to get in with, you know, the amount of flights that we have per day here. But, you know, honestly, a Rochester, a Pittsburgh, a Cleveland, I think that there could be something there where you have, you know, a couple hundred people and you charge 200 bucks so that you can pay for things. Now you're going to still need some upfront money. That's always been the drawback. even doing things virtually, I don't, we could do that pretty easily, but I think I would love to do something someday where it is just a, you know, if you want to be a vendor and you want to be, that's fine. But the people who are speaking are people that are going to add value to everybody that's there. And I just don't see that overall. I'm sure there's some presentations that are good, but you know, it's gone that way of real sales and real high and real big tech in those places. Emily Miller: Yeah. Steve McDonnell: Yeah, mean, they're all enterprise connects ridiculous now, but Tom Laird: Mm-hmm. Steve McDonnell: we used to, mean, we've been partners with nice for 20 years. There Tom Laird: Mm-hmm. Steve McDonnell: was a time when you didn't have to pay and they were like, bring, please bring your customers. We'll pay for your customers. And that has definitely flipped the script. Tom Laird: Well, mean, you've seen the, you know, over that years, right? So there's kind of like the two emerging roads. There was the kind of the in-contact road and then the nice road, right? That kind of merged, but you know, the in-contact was crazy good, right? And it was all user-based. And then when Nice joined too, it was awesome, right? know, interactions the last couple of years has been, I thought, really, really good, but we'll see what's happening now with kind of the nice world. I mean, I'm a huge, nice advocate. I mean, they know my kind of feelings on this. I'm not... I think they're still the premier platform and all that, but when it comes to those type of things, I think they've moved more a little bit nice than they moved the in contact way. And in context, of, Emily Miller: Mm. Tom Laird: you've seen that kind of get kind of moved to the side. But, you know, that's the time that we live in, I guess. Emily Miller: Yeah, no, I love the honesty and that is, like I said, why I picked that. Cause I was like, lighthearted prompt. knows? Everyone knows that the CX industry has like, yeah, no, it was interesting. Yeah. Tom Laird: I'll probably get some emails from him. Steve McDonnell: Something even more lighthearted would be this or that. Do you enjoy coaching the older JV varsity women or your son in fifth and sixth grade? Emily Miller: Yeah, that's a good one. Tom Laird: My son was so much fun because it's, and listen, I love the high school thing. I mean, we compete at a very high level. We can do really cool things. The kids are really, really good and it's a lot of fun. And this was my first time ever coaching boys too. And that was an experience too. Emily Miller: Mm. Steve McDonnell: Yeah. Tom Laird: I can scream at them and they could care less. don't Steve McDonnell: Yeah. Emily Miller: Yeah. Tom Laird: even flinch, because I think their dads all get on them too. Steve McDonnell: You Tom Laird: it was a lot of fun coaching fifth and sixth grade boys with my son, with his school team and all of his buddies. Steve McDonnell: Yeah. Yeah. Tom Laird: and those kids sleep over the house. So it was a really cool experience and I was probably just as big of a maniac during those games as I am during my high school games. So that was the other, I thought I'd be more chill, but once the ball goes up, you gotta win. Steve McDonnell: yeah. Emily Miller: Yeah, I love it. Thanks Tom for doing our this or that with us. was fun to get to know you a little bit better. We're going to start things off by going into that first theme and talking a little bit more about your career journey. So I guess could you start things off by telling us more about how you got to where you are today and how you even ended up in the call center industry? Tom Laird: Yeah, so you hear the, I never really thought I was going to be in the call center, right? You hear that all the time where I was really the opposite. You know, my. My family actually owned, even in the 80s, one of the first kind of BPO's, outsourcers, USA based, worked for a lot of financial services, a lot of banks. we had during the, when I started, I was like 90 years old, like filling vending machines in the office, right? Like people were still smoking cigarettes in their booth. Like it was that kind of, then. then kind of just was able to see the whole transition from kind of the phones and the flip scripts to, moving to a little bit of CTI and a little bit of integration, the first computers came in. We had an Avaya switch when I was like 18, 19, so we're talking like 95, 96, 97, something like that. That was the big thing, the Avaya Diffinity platform. And so again, I was a call center agent for... most of the years, many of the years became a supervisor, went back into kind of the IT space and was back there. My parents basically said, if you want to do this, then you got to learn everything. And then kind of ran the AM shift as kind of the AM production coordinator and then kind of took it over, I guess, as kind of COO. So again, we were up to about, I don't know, eight, 900 employees, maybe a thousand employees at our peak, but all financial services. So Bank of America, Citibank, Chase, GE Capital, a lot of customer support. outbound transition to inbound as kind of technology got better. Yeah, I mean. you know, 2008, 2009, 2010 happened and the Great Recession turned into the Great Depression for especially USA contact centers that were working with like a Bank of America whose stock went to two. They really could care less about really the customer support at that time. They were literally just hanging on. So they shipped everything offshore and we had some private equity guys that came in and kind of bought, you know, bought us from where we were there and, you know, everything's going to be great. We're all going to stay the same while I get back and then fired. pretty much all of us about, I don't know, three, four months later. So the cool thing was I had this awesome group of people that were looking for jobs and said, hey guys, you want to try to do this again. So, you know, went out and found some investors, which was the most horrible thing I've ever done in my life and painful, but we did it. And we started with a core group of people. That's when Expevia started about 2010, 2011. Started with four employees and then, you know, have grown that to, you know, a couple hundred here that we have here in Erie. so again, we're a USA BPO. We're an outsourcer, work for, you know, lots of different clients from financial services to toy companies from a retail side to now getting more into the tech side. Been with, been with Nice, well started with InContact. They probably wouldn't even take us now. Like it was InContact, we were like, Hey, I got four reps. They're like, uh, All right, but they took us and then we've of grown with them, which has been really really really cool and then When this whole AI craze started, I thought one of the things that was lacking was really good, high-end, inexpensive quality assurance using AI. So we started AutoQA and going on about three years ago just for our internal customers. And then when we saw what it was doing for the last, I don't about 18 months, we've been kind of go to market. And that's been extremely successful as well. Family business, I guess. You my brother is still here. My Emily Miller: Yeah. Tom Laird: mom is still working in client support. So it's been a lot of fun, you know, to be able to see those guys every single day. But yeah, I mean, really this has been my life. Have not really done anything else outside of it, which I don't know if that's good or bad, but yeah, that's, guess the 30,000 foot view of kind of where I came from. Emily Miller: Another unexpected response. I love it. Go for it, Steve. Steve McDonnell: have so many questions. Tom Laird: I Steve McDonnell: So I did not expect any of that. that it sounds, which is awesome, like you've been on a really cool journey, I'm sure some pain points, but one of the things we've talked to a lot of people about is the pain of private equity. And especially when it's a leveraged buyout and they come in and promise the partnership in the world and you know. probably, I'd say 70 % of the time at least, it's not working out the way. It doesn't end up working out. They're financial institutions. Yeah. Tom Laird: Yeah, they just lied. I mean, that's what they did. I just real quick, I think interesting story is they would, you I was at that time the head of operation. So they sidelined me. They're like, hey, we're gonna pay your salary. They put me, we had a room that we did like video recording. So it was like a silent room, like a quiet room. So they moved my desk into the quiet room, like where nobody's around, like. And would like if I would go talk to somebody else, they would, Hey, what are you doing? Like it was like this weird Emily Miller: . Tom Laird: fight. was coaching. I coached as we talked about high school basketball. was driving to scout in Pittsburgh. They called me and fired me that way. Like I'm like, you guys can't, we can't talk about this. So I don't know. Like, again, I have a lot of, of, of, guess, bitterness and resentment, but the awesome thing about it is I would not be where I am today. I would not have what I have today. It all worked out because we just wanted it to work out. And I took kind of those experiences and I think everybody can take those experiences. and do really cool stuff with it if you don't. I mean, I had no choice. My wife was pregnant, first kid. I'm like, dude, I have no job. My in-laws are paying my mortgage. I'm like, dude, I gotta do something or we're in deep trouble here. Emily Miller: Yeah. Tom Laird: yeah, it kind of, there was no plan B and you kind of hear about that, right? So when Steve McDonnell: Yeah. Tom Laird: you have no plan B, either you figure it out or you figure something else out. So yeah, so it was an interesting, it was definitely an interesting time. Steve McDonnell: So, did your parents and your brother stay at, were they working before the feed? Everyone. Tom Laird: No, we all, everybody, pretty much everybody in management was let go. Supervisors, IT, HR. Yeah, and then, Steve McDonnell: Is the company still around? Tom Laird: so they are. they're called, right now they're Disabled Veteran Contact Center here in Erie. We don't run cross paths. We don't, we've just kind of, think, because there's still a lot of people who worked for us. Steve McDonnell: that are there. Tom Laird: that were there and that was part of the, I think a little bit of the riff too. But we've kind of left each other alone. Again, even with people and all that, we might kind of flip-flop some people, but I think it's all like, everybody's like, all right, let's just, can we not do it? it is what it Erie's not a big town, right? So if you want to cause problems, it's very easy to do. Steve McDonnell: Yeah. Tom Laird: So I think it was, it all worked out. Everybody handled it pretty well once it was going. Steve McDonnell: And then you went from that bad experience with P and then you had to go out and try to raise money, which is right, right in the same world. Yeah. Tom Laird: Yeah, so I had to do the friends and family thing. No one else was giving me anything. you I would find, and you never get all the money at once. You get like, hey, I'm gonna give you 25 grand and I'm gonna give you 15 and I'm gonna give you, like, all right, well, with this 25, let's do that. But I think I got that coming, but then it didn't come. So it was super rocky. You know, it's funny, my wife, I just thought about this. My wife found in my pocket like, two months ago, there was a letter that I think I wrote my dad in like 2013, like, I don't think that this is gonna work. I don't know what else to do. Like it was like a desperation at that point. Emily Miller: No. Tom Laird: And she, I don't know why it was in my pocket, like a coat pocket or something or an old sport jacket. And she, she read it thinking it was now. She's like, we have a problem. have an issue. Emily Miller: no. Tom Laird: I'm like, no, no, no, wait, whoa, whoa, whoa, no, we're good. We're okay. I'm like, I'm not saying we're, Emily Miller: I'm Tom Laird: we're moving to Miami, but Emily Miller: Yeah Tom Laird: we're, we're, we're okay. Steve McDonnell: she thought it was now yeah that's funny story Tom Laird: I'm like, look at the date on that carrot. She's like, yeah, all right. I'm like, yeah. So I'm like, but thanks. That's kind of cool that, so I kept that. Now I have that and it's taped under my desk. Emily Miller: my gosh. Steve McDonnell: And Tom Laird: yeah. Steve McDonnell: my other question, which I think I just realized reading this, and you're probably going to get to, but Emily Miller: Yeah, now go for it. Steve McDonnell: how you've been running this BPO, Emily Miller: Mm-hmm. Steve McDonnell: brand BPO is your entire life, have been in that world. And then like I think a lot of people are doing today, you're like, well, I see an immediate need that I know I have customers who need it. So let's build some software and then roll it out to the general market. How was the process of productizing it and building it out? Did you have to outsource it? Did you bring people in? Like how did that, because Tom Laird: Ahem. Steve McDonnell: we have similar paths with that and it's always Tom Laird: Yeah. Steve McDonnell: interesting to talk to people who've been through it. Tom Laird: And again, let me just start this off. I love Nice. Like I think their product is the best in the market. We utilize pretty much every single piece of it. The one thing that I thought that we could do a little bit better, because I don't think they're just focused, you can't focus on everything, was QA. it was still very, in the industry, it still very analytic and keyword driven. They would call it AI, but it really wasn't. So again, when we tried and we saw what we could do with it, it really was just an internal value add for our customers. Like, hey guys, look at this, this what we offer. We're giving it to you for free, but we're gonna score 100 % of your calls. We're gonna give you a net promoter and CSAT prediction scores. A of summarization, you don't need to pay for. And when we saw that, like, so we have not a huge staff here of IT, but I got dudes that really like what they're doing. And I got guys that, you know, it's Sunday at five o'clock and they're like, Hey, can you go to your computer? Check this out. Right. So there's no, there's no hours for them. Like they're just working on, I think things that they think are really cool. The other thing is, you know, we, we brought them involved from an equity stake. So, so, you know, they're, they're involved with, with auto from, that standpoint, but no, everything we've done has been internal. Everything that we've wanted to build out. Now we're starting to listen to customers more because we have enough. For improvements, but everything we did were like dude. I want to do that in our Center I want that that supervisor wants that that would be cool and literally we just built this thing for us And anything that we thought would be awesome and cool and I think that's the difference when you have When you build something like that that you love and that you're using compared to like a big tech company that just building software for an industry or for Like there's not the nuanced detail that you can really get into And I think that's it, Mo, for us. That's a little differentiator for us. And when I go on a demo, I can speak their language. I'm not speaking tech. Emily Miller: Right. Tom Laird: I'm gonna speak, hey, I know you got a 16 to one ratio and I know compliance is a real issue. So we can kind of go into here. But no, everything was done in house. We looked at some offshoring and all, but these guys, they're pretty protective of their baby. So the only thing about if we brought in more staff to help, they would do it, but you know. It's amazing what they have built with such a small team and such a cool product. Steve McDonnell: How do you figure out how to split your time between the two? Emily Miller: That was good. Tom Laird: I probably spend too much time on AutoQA right now than I do Expedia. The Steve McDonnell: It's exciting. Yeah. Tom Laird: cool thing is the core team here is they're all, I mean, they've been doing the BPO thing. I mean, the management team with that is super strong. But I think, you know, from a marketing standpoint, we're probably not doing as well as we should from getting that stuff out as the focus has kind of been over here. So it's a battle that I fight with myself. Because to be honest, Expedia still pays the bills, right? Auto is getting there, but the outsource of the BPO is still our main baby. And that's evolving just as fast from an AI standpoint, right? So there's definitely a fine line of where to do what. But again, with the team that we have on the Expedia side, they rock it. mean, literally we've been together for 15 plus years at two companies. from the supervisors to the QA to HR. We know who we're looking for, we know the culture. So I feel a little better, but still I probably need to kind of split that hair a little bit. Emily Miller: Yeah. Geez, I like don't even know where to go from there. That was so interesting to start things off. So thanks for sharing more about that background, Tom. Like I said, when you were talking about kind of how you got into it and how you, when you started it off, I was like, we could have clipped that and put it in every other contact Tom Laird: Hahaha Emily Miller: center person and like podcasts that we've had, every other recording we've had. So I'm going to dig a little bit more into kind of the, that nice relationship that you talked about. So you're very active in the CX ecosystem. You're a strong advocate of NICE, which you just called out. You serve on two different boards with them that are executive advisory boards. Like what has driven that involvement and point of view over time? Like you said, you started working with InContact and it became that, but can you expand on that a little bit further? Tom Laird: Yeah, mean, since we're being, I mean, this is kinda, I don't know why with you guys, it's kinda like a truth serum that's coming out of me, but, so this is probably 2015, just in contact, no nice at that time, and I was complaining about, I don't know, our contract, I don't even remember, and. I think at that point in contact wasn't huge, right? So we were probably, they saw us as an up and coming customer when they saw, you know, starting for four seats, we're probably at 150 at that point continuing to grow. So I think to appease me at that time, which they didn't realize what they were doing, they put me on their, it was called ICVC, which I forget what that stands for, but it was basically their customer board for nights Emily Miller: Yeah. Tom Laird: or for in contact. Emily Miller: Gotcha. Tom Laird: And with that, I met a lot of people and I think I was able to add a ton of value because again, as you can see, I'm not very quiet. I try to be as transparent as I can and I think I helped them a lot and they helped us. We had a really great relationship and then as the nice relationship merged, those people were great too. I've seen the evolution of even the boards, right? Because there was NUG, the nice user group, and Emily Miller: Mm-hmm. Tom Laird: then that's kind of now merging on the contact center side. NUG still exists and that's more user-based where the executive board is more kind of driven by the nice executive. So The amazing thing is like I'm just this small dude like in the scheme of things. I think I'm very vocal on social media. I think that probably helps. But I mean, this board is awesome. I mean, it's it's it's Disney. It's Carnival Cruises. It's Sony. It's you know, all of the Charles Schwab, all of these these major companies. And I think it's still cool that Nice says, you know what we have to look at, even that SMB market, because I'm way SMB compared to Disney. Right. And to listen to to kind of everybody. because they're still a core, their core customer base is still in contact customers, right? And most of those are in that less than 500 seat type environment. So. You know, the boards have been, I think, a win-win for me from a marketing standpoint to be able to talk through. We've Emily Miller: yeah. Tom Laird: been able to play with their technologies first, which is awesome to be kind of test sites. So that is something that I'm so glad that we got into. And again, I think hopefully I've been able to add as much value to them as they to us, but, you know, it's a really good company, a really good group. And, you know, they bailed us out of some tough times and we've, we've kind of been able to, think, help them out when, a customer maybe was leaving and hey, Tom, can you please talk to this guy? 100 % and save some of that. So we've got a real non-vendor type relationship and I think a real partnership and I don't think you can really say that even as Nice has been growing and getting bigger. Emily Miller: right, yeah, I love that. Thanks for sharing. We've talked a lot with community members at the board, so it's really interesting about board involvement. So it's interesting to hear it from more of that call center perspective. But also, so staying on that same vein with NICE. So Scott Russell, he's been in a CEO role now at NICE for about a year. From your perspective, what strategic shifts or priorities has he made that have stood out to you? Tom Laird: I think the speed of things, right? think that's number one. Number two is he's been able to fix fractured relationships that have been there for a long time, right? There's been a fracture with ServiceNow. There's been a fracture with Salesforce. There's been issues where the two companies weren't even speaking to each other. We were a customer of both, right? I have a lot of Salesforce licenses that we have on CX1 and they would push us to, they're gonna fix it. No, they fix it, right? So I think that was a huge to have those integrations tight and to have that relationship rebuilt is a huge thing. The other thing is we are seeing, you're seeing a lot of investment into the AI space. I asked, when I was at Interaction, is Nice now a, are they a CCAS company or are they an AI company? And to be honest, they really couldn't answer that, but you know they wanted to say we're an AI company now. With the CognitG purchase, with those type of things rolling out. You know, I love it personally, just because you have a, I have big brother behind me, right? That I can, Steve McDonnell: Yeah. Tom Laird: I have every tool, right? So if a customer wants agent assist, they want co-pilot, they want, you know, auto summarization, want me, we have QA, right? All of that stuff. And I think, you know, with, with the, the ability of Scott and what they've done with making integrations easier, making, making not just their, their, their, their platform siloed, right? But, but being able to kind of go out into grab data from all these other sources and making it guys, it's okay. to do that right you don't have to use just our stuff you know that was a big a big shift and kind of you know what we've seen and we'll see what happens I mean I was boys with all those guys that in contact that became nice you know the Paul Herbons of the world who was kind of their chief customer officer I mean all those guys are gone so you know there is a new crew in there and again so far I think everything's been really great, but it'll be interesting to see in the next year or so how the new team evolves and where they're going. think they're still on legacy roadmaps, but you're starting to see Scott's footprint on what's going on from a speed and from an AI integration standpoint. Steve McDonnell: Yeah, I agree. I'm sure his PR team doesn't want him to say it out loud, but I don't think Scott Russell wants anything to do with the verbiage CKS moving forward. Tom Laird: No, no. And I think the problem, the only problem with that is, is that they have so many legacy and contact customers and they, you know, it's right now it's, it's the, massive, it's the Disney's, it's the, you know, those guys that are really working, you know, on that AI front. So it will be interesting to see how that funnels down even from a pricing structure, right? To more that SMB world. to where we're starting to see, and again, I think it's great because you can take a small, being a BPO is great, because we can take a small customer of 10, 15 seats, we can, I don't wanna say test, but we can use a new tool, use a new product, we don't have to roll it out to everything. So we've been able to, I think, speed our learning curve up much quicker with, again, NICE has helped us do that as well, to kind of roll some of this stuff out, but it will be definitely interesting to see, but I agree, they wanna go and be kind of a CX AI type company, and then that might evolve beyond that. Steve McDonnell: Yeah, I definitely also get the vibe. mean, so we're the opposite. We were nice partners. And then when they acquired InContact, we started diving into that, which now I think they've clearly put the line in the sand. The InContact acquisition by Barack was phenomenal, probably better Tom Laird: Mm-hmm. Steve McDonnell: than they all thought. And that's what's driving the business now, clearly. Tom Laird: Yeah, it's still a massive, the biggest part of the revenue for sure. Steve McDonnell: Yeah, 100%. And that's where Scott wants to go, CXAI, whatever you want to call it. And I think he wants to get outside of the contact center. I think he wants the entire enterprise platform Tom Laird: Okay. Steve McDonnell: or so to speak. And I think he comes from more of a sales perspective than Barack, who was truly an engineer. mean, he grew up in the ranks of he Tom Laird: Yeah. Steve McDonnell: was a sales engineer for an ice. And so I think he was a little bit more risk averse. Tom Laird: Mm-hmm. Steve McDonnell: And I think that's a good thing for customers and partners that Scott is definitely more outward salesy. I want to do what's right by the partner. I want to do what's right by the customer. And I'm going to grow. We're going to grow. And obviously, it seems like The analysts and everyone, that's the most important thing. Nice has got to get past that three, four billion to get moving up into the more software giant world. Tom Laird: Yeah. Steve McDonnell: So, and he seems, as you said, one of the other thing you said that stuck out that I agree with and I keep hearing, even we had our partner managers at the five nine SKO and the word around there was Scott Russell is moving at Mach speed. Tom Laird: Any more? Speed. Steve McDonnell: Everything Emily Miller: and Steve McDonnell: is going fast. Tom Laird: Well, even like I try to do a video on every nice kind of software update, right? Every release Emily Miller: I'm Tom Laird: and even releases are coming out. They're not quarterly releases anymore. They're fast and furious. Like I think I just got another one the other day. I'm like, dude, I'm making another video on this. Emily Miller: You Tom Laird: So, but I agree with all that. My only thing that I hear from customers as well is the AI stuff is amazing. but I still got a huge stack of legacy stuff. I have WFM, I have analytics, I have this advanced reporting, I have all of this stuff that I'm using. And again, you don't see the... major advances in that stuff, right? Things are moving from, you know, who they purchased, from again, from Carnegie to move into different things. And I think you saw that at interactions last year, you know, there was a huge, people would just come to say, hey, I just have nicest WFM. I wanna learn more about IEX or I wanna, and there wasn't stuff there. So. And again, I think everybody's figuring this stuff out, right? This isn't like where they're ignoring anything, but I think they've heard from customers as well, like, hey man, this is great, but remember why we're here, right, as well. And I'm not moving to AI in the next three or four years, so what are you gonna do to help me with all this stuff that I have of yours? And are we gonna continue to make it better? And I think that's kind of the fine line as well of stuff maybe they don't wanna deal with, but that's still their huge customer base. Steve McDonnell: I think that's in general right now software companies, especially SaaS. was about to fire, speaking of LinkedIn, was about to fire off an opinionated post about the software Emily Miller: Thanks. Steve McDonnell: stocks this week have not gone done well. And if you listen to the analysts and the financiers and everyone, it's because AI is going to make it all basically plug and play easy. Someone can build their own service now in 10 minutes by prompting. And people that are in it like us are like, well, the reality is there's so many legacy products out there that people invest in. There's all sort of silo data out there. It's just, it might happen in 10, 15 years, but it's not happening Tom Laird: great. Steve McDonnell: anytime soon. So a lot of the speculation Tom Laird: I Steve McDonnell: is kind of crazy to me. Tom Laird: mean, amount of things that are dead is amazing to me. Like I'm Emily Miller: You Tom Laird: amazed that I lived in a life that I've seen in the last six months. So many things die, right? The call center, the IVR programmers, graphic designers, web designers, they're all dead. They're all gone. Steve McDonnell: Everything is supposed to be dead, Tom Laird: And listen, to your point, I'm not naive enough to think that that probably will happen at some point. Let's just kind of let this thing play out and let's not make bad decisions based on, you know, kind of a FOMO attitude of some of these things that aren't really true, right? There are legacy AI, legacy, whatever that means, right? Like, like mature, auto QA is mature, know, auto summarization, agent assist, right? Those are kind of some of the quote unquote mature that I think you can find value in and ROI and right now they're easy to set up and they're reasonably priced. And then you start to look at that more customer facing AI that you can get into. But again, I just posted something from Gardner today that they said only, and I might screw this up, but really only 20 % of companies of customer service and call centers have actually reduced head count. And they said by 2027, most of those jobs will be back. Steve McDonnell: Yeah, I believe that. Tom Laird: So it's just not there yet. It's coming. It's getting better. mean, for a sonnet or Opus 4.6 just launched right before this call. And I just built a auto QA website just cause that's kind of how I benchmark it. Right? Like I have a build a website every single time and how it gets better. And it's awesome. So again, it's coming, but I think let's all just understand really the realities of Steve McDonnell: before you dive into, know you have some Emily Miller: Yeah. Steve McDonnell: questions as AI is leading right into this, but Emily Miller: Yeah. Steve McDonnell: I wanted to ask Tom just on the general, do you follow, call it clearly we're not, we're very close with Nice, like Nice as well, but do you follow the, and we just said that they didn't want to use the term CCAS, but do you, do you follow the general landscape of the CCAS kind of ecosystem with Nice's competitors? Tom Laird: Yeah, I so I mean, I do a lot of kind of referral work and consulting work as well. So Steve McDonnell: Mm-hmm. Tom Laird: I I demo everything all the time. I mean, I don't know. Are you trying to give me trouble again? Yes, yes, yes, yes. No, Steve McDonnell: I just wanted to get your general opinion. Tom Laird: and I do it. I see there are, I mean, I can go on an analyst tangent and all the analysts know, like I'm very, like I. I get frustrated when you see Gardner waves and you see magic quadrants and you see that I don't think match anything that's happening with what I see, what I'm demoing, what I'm trying to tell customers. It's very difficult when you have a small 50 seat customer that, you know, maybe should be on a smaller CCAS platform that is maybe AI forward because they want to do some things that when you see a nice and a five, nine and a Genesis and they're like, well, I want to see them. I'm like, we can do that. but I don't think it's gonna be good for you. No, I wanna do it. So again, I have issues with that, but I guess that's more my job is to kind of guide them. But yeah, I mean, I think you're seeing, you know, the CognitG thing freaked a lot of people out because a lot of the other Ccast were using them and they had to kind of now figure out a different route, a different way. Nice has always been. To me, all the ACDs are relatively the same. Your skills-based routing and how calls come and go, it's a dime a dozen. Nice differentiates on the kind of their, I say third party tools, but they're kind of ancillary tools. They're WFM. Everything is native to the platform. Their analytics is unbelievably bad ass, right? It's the best in the industry. So you start to look at, well, if they're doing that really, really well, I think they're gonna do AI really, really well. And again, there's up and comers, know, Zoom's up and coming that I think is, you know, I'm hearing a ton about, especially in the BPO space, but you still have it. I mean, I still think, you know, it's nice in Genesis as one and two. I think five nine is kind of there. And then you can have a conversation of what is best. know, rings coming up, you know, with their platform, Zoom's coming up with theirs. I mean, we have a ton of, ton of UJet customers on AutoQA. So again, then you, you know, you can talk about Amazon and all that too. So yes. They're all trying to figure it out. And the problem is how do you differentiate when you're all doing the same thing and you're all trying to do the same thing and you're all trying to kind of take and use AI to take away calls. And then, you you're going to have a race to the bottom of who's cheaper because the everybody's going to have the same stuff. So again, that's kind of why I wanted to stay again. I could never do that. Like we're not going to compete with those guys. But I think the worst thing to do for a company that is getting into the AI space is to go into voice. I mean, that's being played out over and over and over. There's so many awesome, cool things that we could be doing with AI in the contact center space. And I've kind of pontificated on that on LinkedIn. think I did a whole thing on, like, we're just building the wrong stuff. In 2025 2026 because all that's gonna come this kind of voice AI But you know, there's so much cool thing so many cool things We just again with auto we want to be part of that small piece of doing something really really cool That's different that nobody else is doing that saying my gosh. Yeah AI can be used for that, too Steve McDonnell: What was your take when Nice acquired Gaggenjie and for the price today? Tom Laird: Expensive. Expensive. But, you know, I mean, there wasn't at this point, there wasn't a lot of players, right? Like, like Steve McDonnell: Yeah. Tom Laird: that. And I think it's not like they don't, they don't have the money, right? They've done a really good job with, with, with saving up for. And I think that's one of Scott's deals too, right? Is, what can we go out and purchase? What can, how can we stay ahead of everybody? How can we make sure that they're chasing us constantly? And to be honest, people will disagree with this, but overall, I think Nice has done an unbelievably good job of kind of bringing these other companies under their platform and making it relatively seamless. Now the first kind of maybe iterations of that are a little bit rough. But you know, I think they're good at that. It's a strength of theirs. So I mean, and that's not really easy to do. So I think, you know, once they're there, start to get a little momentum with that as well, to be able to quickly integrate into their platform and make it relatively seamless under the hood. You know, I'm excited. I mean, the, the, live box dialer, like they have the best dialer in the world. They purchased them. I know it's kind of out, but it's, it's not fully out. Like that's going to be awesome because the, the proactive X, the dialer that nice has, and they admit it. It's not great. But so they went and they fixed that. They purchased somebody who has the best dialer and I think you're going to continue to kind of see that. And it's going to be a struggle for other companies to exist other than if you're in Amazon or if you're going to kind of just then start to maybe merge some of these companies together as well to go compete, which is probably what's going to happen at Five9, right? When they hire a kind of a private equity guy as their CEO to kind of look to go, who Steve McDonnell: Yeah. Tom Laird: else are we going to go buy, purchase to go compete with Nice? Steve McDonnell: I mean, I've said it a few times. I have no idea why they haven't done it already or if they're just figuring it out. But I would imagine Toma Bravo has their eye on 5'9", Tom Laird: Correct. Steve McDonnell: with Calabrio and Barron sitting in the background, ready to go. Tom Laird: Correct. So that's the three, right? And that's the, if you put those together, and I think that was the exact post that, I mean, I think we all kind of see that. But yeah, mean, that's the landscape now. It's going to be very difficult for some of these smaller. Now, unless you're going to differentiate, right? Like Noblebiz. Noblebiz is a very small, I love those guys. They focus primarily on outbound. They do some inbound CCAS, but they're very, very strong. And they're going after debt collectors and they don't want the 2,000 seat inbound. I'm sure they take it, right? But that's not their ICP. So, you know, there's going to be more differentiation in the space of, we're just going to go after this type of customer. and then again the enterprise guys are just they're gonna be the enterprise guys. Steve McDonnell: When is the LiveVox integration gonna be? Tom Laird: I mean, it's kind of there. I don't think it's GA yet, right? And I could be wrong. But it's not, Steve McDonnell: It's not, yeah, I don't think it's, yeah, we had. Tom Laird: yeah, it's not as the last release, but I've seen it demoed. So it's there. I don't just think it's there ready fully yet. But I think honestly, that's huge. And when people realize how good it is, now we'll see how much they charge for it. Steve McDonnell: you Tom Laird: But... You know the the they were always awesome like and again, I think that was a good decision for them, too They tried to get into the c-cast space like dude. We're not good at this, right? So, you know, can you just come come by us? Because we do have the best I think dialer in the world. Yeah, it's interesting Emily Miller: I love it. All for the tangent, Steve. You know I'm the organized person, but I expect Steve McDonnell: I know. Emily Miller: this out of you. I expect this out of you. All right. I know we're coming up a little bit on time, but Tom, before we wrap things up, I wanted to ask, in hindsight, obviously you've integrated quite a bit of AI type technologies into your center, within the XBIA. You've seen it too through kind of your network. Like in hindsight, what do you think, was a big lesson learned experiencing it that you'll take into kind of those next steps, those iterations of AI as it keeps coming in. Tom Laird: I knew it, but didn't push data and understanding data enough on customers that wanted to do cool things early. So we very early, so two years ago-ish, even probably a year and a half ago, we pushed projects that we probably shouldn't have because the customer wasn't ready, but they were just so gung-ho with it that we tried to make it work. So we won't even attempt to do that now until you kind of, we'll walk you through it and try to help you with a kind of a template. But again, we talked about kind of silo data and being able to integrate with different platforms. That infrastructure needs to be built out. It's kind of like when you're painting and you hate to tape, right? But if you don't tape, the thing looks terrible. And really, you have to do all of that work ahead of time and be really, really good with it. And anybody who tells you like, just give us 100 of your calls. We'll create all your flows for you. Just run. Because again, we've seen that, we've tried to do some of those types of things. So it's not easy, but it's awesome. I think that's the thing. And the other thing is I'm learning or have to teach other customers it's not inexpensive. Everybody thinks AI is just gonna be crazy cheap. The integrations are crazy. If you look at any, what people are paying for, a level, an observe, any of those type of things, even a million, a million, right? It's massive. Your ROI is like 72 years down the road, right? Steve McDonnell: you Tom Laird: So you really have to think through kind of what the use case is and will that ROI be there? And that's why, again, I think, and not to do a little sales pitch, but you're kind of the start with the legacy kind of tools, like automate your entire QA. The technology is that you don't need anyone in QA anymore, right? Have them go be coaches, have them go back on the floor, have them supervise. There's instant ROI in some of those spaces. So again, put your toe in and then build from there. if you're going to go, you're a 500 seat center and you want to go all AI, you better have your ducks in a row before you go. Or trust the person that you're working. Because a lot of people will take your money, but they're not going to deliver. Emily Miller: Awesome. All right. Thanks, Tom. Steve, you have any other any other questions for Tom before we wrap up? Steve McDonnell: No, I feel like we could go for another hour here to be honest. Tom Laird: you Emily Miller: Yeah. Steve McDonnell: But I know you're strict with the normally the 35, 40 minutes. Emily Miller: Yeah Steve McDonnell: We're well past that. So thanks, Emily Miller: All right. Steve McDonnell: Tom. This was super fun. Yeah, ton of fun. Tom Laird: Yeah, man, you guys, this was a lot of fun. Good questions. you know, it's, I think, again, being honest with this stuff is kind of the best medicine so everybody can really see what's happening. So I appreciate what you guys are doing here. And Steve, to get you on the advice from a call center geek as well. We'll flip that around. Emily Miller: I was just Steve McDonnell: Yeah, love it. Emily Miller: about to say. Steve McDonnell: Love it. Emily Miller: All right, Tom, is there any initiatives or programs at Expevia or Auto QA that you want to share with our listeners before we wrap? Tom Laird: Yeah, mean, just I would love if you, if you, you know, check out the auto QA, try.autoqa.com. You know, we're not just a fully scoring your QA. I mean, we're doing net promoter and CSAT prediction scores. We allow you to build avatar. So of actual customers to redo the calls that your customers failed. We're trying to do really cool stuff with AI. so, you know, check that out or just again, just search for Thomas Laird on, on LinkedIn. If you want to kind of hook up there too. Emily Miller: Yeah, love it. Thanks for sharing Tom. And again, appreciate your honesty and transparency joining us on the podcast today. Like Steve said, was a lot of fun. I learned a lot. And like I said, a lot of unexpected twists and turns that I am here for. I'm here for it. And I'm okay with going over because it was such a great conversation. So like Tom called out, you can find him on LinkedIn under Thomas Laird. You can find Xpevia Interaction Marketing Group's website at xpeviausa.com. AutoQA's website is autoqa.com. and check out Tom's podcast, Advice from a Call Center Geek. We'll definitely have to get Steve on there as a guest, Tom. So thanks again for joining us. It was a pleasure. Tom Laird: Thanks guys, appreciate it. Steve McDonnell: Thanks, Tom, I appreciate it. It was awesome.