Latest / The Tech Matchmaker / How CollaborationRoom.ai Is Reinventing the Contact Center Floor | The Tech Matchmaker Podcast
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. 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. Hello, everybody. Today we are chatting with Jason Hyland, is the CRO of CollaborationRoom.ai about bringing remote teams together collaboratively. Jason, thanks so much for joining us today. We are so glad to have Jason HIland: ⁓ thank you very much, Gina. I was super excited when you invited me I'm looking forward to having our conversation today as always. ⁓ Gina Gibson: Wonderful. Well, let's start with the basics, Jason. Tell us a little bit about yourself and one thing that people might not find on LinkedIn. Stay curious, stay bold, and keep exploring what's next. Jason HIland: ⁓ okay. Well, ⁓ you've already said it. I'm Jason Hyland. I'm the Chief Revenue Officer at Collaboration Room. I guess that's what I do, not really who I am. ⁓ who am I? Well, let's see. I'm an Indiana kid ⁓ who in the desert out here in Phoenix for the last 15 years. ⁓ I married to a wonderful woman named Lindsay. We are non-breeders, ⁓ meaning we no kids. We leave that to, you know, we're fantastic aunts and uncles and that's what we like, but we have lots of fur babies. I would not be surprised if you hear some dogs or. It happens every now and then you may see a cat tail go in front of me here. I'm like Dr. Doolittle in here. I'm just I'm a gym rat and I enjoy being outside and traveling. The one thing that most people probably wouldn't know is that I am actually ex-military. I did eight years in the army. That's how I paid for college and it might be on my LinkedIn but most people when they meet me don't, you know, I don't necessarily scream. military. that thank you. Yeah, we got we got America's birthday tomorrow. So we'll be celebrating. Gina Gibson: Thank you so much for your service, Jason. Yes, wonderful. So Jason, what is Collaboration Room? And ⁓ maybe what specific problems are you solving for the contact centers? Jason HIland: Ha! Yeah, you know, I never get asked what collaboration room is. this is such a ⁓ well, what we do is we solve problems that contact centers all across the world have really been trying to overcome for the last five years since the pandemic. You know, prior to the pandemic, I don't know, probably 99 % of all contact center agents all over the world were on on a floor, you know, a traditional floor where it was engaging, productive, compliant. Gina Gibson: I'm Jason HIland: easier to train and coach. And then the pandemic happened and you know, these contact center agents got thrown around like a game of 52 card pickup, you know, and they're, they're everywhere. And when I talked to most contact centers, have been trying to cobble together tools for the last five years to solve for this. And our CEO Samir was the CIO of a large contact center, about 6,000 agents when COVID hit. ⁓ So started building collaboration room really out of survival mode, not like, hey, I see a problem. I'm going to solve it for the whole world. He was just trying to solve it for his for his company. so he started building it. And what we are is we are a virtual contact center floor platform. So we help contact centers, frontline leaders to be able to engage with, train, coach, support, manage agents, no matter where they are in the world, whether they're remote, hybrid, on a floor, multiple offices, ⁓ we bring everybody together. So doesn't matter where they're working and you're going to get that same productivity and engagement. And then depending on the type of business our clients are working in, we've developed some AI compliance tools within the platform that make sure that that dispersed office conducive to the same rules that enforced on the floor. instance, if we see a cell phone, we'll let the supervisor know if we see somebody know, shoulder surfing over the agent, the odds are if they're working from home, that person probably shouldn't be looking at the data. So we really just try to take the floor, the traditional floor, mirror it, and put it on monitor so that, you know, everybody can continue to work from home, but the contact center doesn't have to give up all the things that made the floor great. Gina Gibson: That's interesting. And you kind of touched on it a little by saying he started building it out of survival mode. With it being built in-house, when we were looking into it, know, patented and built, what are some of the features or tools that you guys have that you're super proud of that nobody else in the marketplace really offers? Jason HIland: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, well, you know, a lot of people when I when I talk about our platform verbally, because you imagine you're a supervisor sitting at your desk and you turn on your monitor and you're seeing of your agents ⁓ they're like, ⁓ sounds like Teams or Zoom. What really makes us different right off the bat is our patent. So we're Zoom and Teams can stream multiple videos. Most platforms, every other platform, can only really show you one monitor at a time. So if we were on a Teams call right now, you and I could be on here, but either you or I could show our monitor. with our platform, when the supervisor looks at their screen, they see ⁓ live stream video of every agent, no matter where they're working, and of their monitors streaming simultaneously. Right now it's two, we're adding a third monitor for some clients. ⁓ So I sit here and watch all of my agent's videos ⁓ and their monitors streaming simultaneously. it's just like that supervisor was sitting on the floor again and they can see what's going on and they can tap in and listen to the calls. They have the AI tools to let them know kind of like, what emotion the agent might be in or they have, are they struggling a little bit just by their facial expressions? ⁓ can raise their hand. They can make calls and all that. Now ⁓ not one of those platforms that just puts ⁓ on camera and they have no idea who the person behind the curtain is. ⁓ if I saw around the other way from the agent's perspective, what they see is their supervisor. And actually what they see is anybody in that particular room with a supervisor or higher role. So where most platforms that have evolved since the pandemic really focus on security and compliance, recording everybody, recording keystrokes, recording monitors, that's all data that like 99.9 % of the time you're never going to review again. We focus on the engagement between the supervisors and the agents. make sure that that's because that's the most important relationship in a contact center. So a two way street on our platform. ⁓ But I'd say the patent makes us the most different. But all the other tools that our clients have asked us to build within the platform that are specific to contact centers ⁓ is makes us even more different from like a teams or a zoom that ⁓ that back to the cobbling together of tools that weren't built for the job, but they're doing what they can with the tools that they have where our tool was purpose-built for exactly what contact centers need with remote and hybrid agents. Gina Gibson: And you touched on a few things too, Jason, but what are some of those issues that they run into in the contact center? Like you mentioned, you know, being on the cell phone or somebody in looking over their shoulder, have you. What are some of the other issues that people might not think of ⁓ they're, you know, dealing remote agents? Jason HIland: Yeah. Yeah, I think right off the bat, it's the engagement between the agents and the supervisors. you know, when we talked to supervisors early on in the development of the platform, we just said, look, you know, ⁓ do you need to be successful? And they said, well, we need to be able to see our agents and what they're doing. So that's where we came up with the patent. And you know, we started the other tools because they're like, we can't be looking at everybody all the time. All right. So now we have some alerts based on the AI hand raises, emotions, you name So right there is we're giving the supervisors back their eyes because we as humans, we perceive 80 % of our world minute to minute, second to second based on vision. And we, know, during the pandemic, we took supervisors eyes away from them and then expected them to do just as good of a job. you know, Mother Nature laughs at us when you're going to take away 80 % of what I gave you. and then think you're gonna be just as good. but then when we turn it around the other way, when we asked agents, what you need? What is the hardest thing for you working from home? It wasn't loneliness. It wasn't problems. They were like top two, three, four. But the number one was they've been wondering where the hell the supervisor is for the last five years. ⁓ So what's about our platform, if you ask our agents is they believe they're supervising their supervisor as much as they're supervising or supervisor is supervising them. And that's called engagement. You know, that's, that's a two way street. And then probably the one thing we're probably the most proud of that most people never think about so far we've had six reports of supervisor being able to save the life of an agent who was working from home when a medical emergency occurred. ⁓ And the kicker on that. We've got about a hundred clients, 18 countries. Those six reports only came from two of those clients. ⁓ So, Gina Gibson: Okay. Jason HIland: statistically, you know, if you extrapolate that out, we believe we've actually helped save a lot more lives. They just haven't reported us, right? We reported those to us. So we didn't build for that, but it's our proudest achievement by far that there are six people still spinning around on this rock because of some technology that we built for engagement and productivity. Gina Gibson: I'm so glad you brought that up. It was actually gonna be one of my questions for you because I know through the different conferences we've met at and different customer demos we've done, to me that is absolutely one of your shining qualities is the life saving capability. Jason HIland: It is I've never sold anything that saved somebody's life and I you know when I talk to Gina Gibson: Yeah. Jason HIland: clients or prospects and I ask them, I'm like, you know, just out of curiosity, has your C cast ever saved a life? Has your QA as your conversational AI ever saved a life? Is there anything you've ever put into your contact center that has saved life? And what people tell me is they're like, wow, I don't think about that. But you know what? If you've worked in a contact center, you've seen this stuff happen. You've seen somebody go into a medical emergency like we've had two heart attacks, two strokes, one athelactic seizure. Gina Gibson: Yeah. Absolutely. Jason HIland: Then one we're not sure about, you know, it was probably more sensitive so they just told us, hey, you know, we were able to help them but didn't tell us the reason. But everybody I tell that story to will tell me like, yeah, I've seen that happen in the office. Or they'll tell me like ⁓ we some agents ⁓ or agent that we thought quit, ⁓ they quit. ⁓ Yeah, is a, like I said, we didn't build for that, but it is by far our proudest achievement. Gina Gibson: I love that. Now tell us one of your, give us a success story, Jason, about how you improve stats or engagement or the collaboration. One of your faves. Jason HIland: One of my faves, I can't use their name because some of these don't allow us to use names, but I can tell you that they're a publicly traded company. They have about a thousand agents. what they did was after the started winding down because of nature ⁓ of the that they work, it's all financial. They brought everybody back. They brought all thousand of the agents back into a contact center. And what happens, what happened to them happens to a lot of people when they try this. They traded productivity, security and compliance, training, coaching. They traded those problems that they were having in remote for other problems, which were recruitment and retention and morale. They brought all these agents back and they were losing their best. ⁓ other contact centers were picking them off. I ⁓ talked to one contact center. They actually look online to find agents on like Facebook who have said that the contact center is bringing them back in. Then have their recruiters target. Thank those areas they know they can pay them even slightly less but give them a remote. Anyway, they brought everybody back in and it didn't go well. And they reached out to us. They had a partnership with one of our clients. They're like, hey, we heard about this. They brought them on and they started the platform in office at first, just managing multiple offices. And then they slowly started moving their agents back home. And this summer they're down two of their three contacts. centers which will save them millions I mean like I really want to say a year I mean these were some pretty big you know real estate and that's just it contact centers you're not in a real estate business Gina Gibson: Wow. Yeah. Jason HIland: You know, so if you can, if you can, and that's probably my favorite, cause they're like, like the CFO came on and like, Jason, I don't care what you charge me. You've already got your ROI. And when I can, the CFO tells me, ⁓ don't care how much you charge me, that made my like day. That might make my millennium right there. ⁓ ⁓ yeah, that's just a cool story of somebody who brought people back in and found out it didn't work. And then we gave them a path back to it. Now, you know, and ⁓ is important because they were losing, Gina Gibson: Thank You Yeah. Jason HIland: The people they were losing, single moms, single dads. people that had the job and then moved when COVID happened and they didn't live anywhere near. These were people that were getting ready to lose their jobs ⁓ because they were being brought back in. And that's of the coolest things about remote is it brings people ⁓ back into working world that would otherwise not have that opportunity. Another one, ⁓ I don't know I can say their name, but it's a BPO out there that specializes in ⁓ Gina Gibson: right? Jason HIland: work, remote work, for military spouses. These move every two years and some of these spouses have never been able to hold down a job. Remote ⁓ has them to do that. And so it just people something that they might not have been able to have. as a kid who grew up with a single mom, that's really important to me. ⁓ Gina Gibson: Okay. Absolutely. Now Jason, I know we've had times where people have said, hey, that might be a little bit too big brother-ish. Tell me what you say back to them. Jason HIland: Yeah, I get that a lot. You know, I used to argue when I first started doing this and arguing with somebody on whether something is good brother or not is like arguing with a Republican that they should be Democrat or vice versa. You're never gonna win it. I never had somebody say, ⁓ Jason, you're right. my response now is, ⁓ I get it. You're right. There is a little bit of a big brother nature to this. But what I also asked them to do is I asked them to change their perspective. You know, I'm putting, well, let me do it this way. Let's talk about the floor. I asked them like, tell me about the floor. And they're like, what do mean? I'm like, were there cameras? They're like, yes. Like, were they recording? And they're like, yes. I'm like, did the agents know who was watching them through those cameras? No. Did they need a key fob to get from one room to another just to use the restroom? Yes, like okay, so I'm putting one camera on them that they see I don't record anything. It's just all live streaming showing them everybody that can see them and telling me that this feels more big brother Than the ⁓ and most kind of take a step back at that and I always say, know if you change your perception you change your Perspective you change perception ⁓ Gina Gibson: Mm-hmm. Jason HIland: And so yeah, we do have some big brother components to this. Being able to see if there's a cell phone, seeing if there's another person in the room. If you want to call that big brother, I just call it supervision. It's a different term, but I do not argue with them anymore. I almost like lean into it. Yeah, there is, but bet you if you just step back and think about it, it's less big brother than the floor. We're like a little brother. ⁓ Gina Gibson: Yeah. Yeah, little brother, I like that. Jason HIland: Yeah, little brother. Yeah, we're just like that little like little guy, you know, banging around on your knees, you know, so ⁓ it people about it. ⁓ Every client asks because they're always like, ⁓ are my agents going to quit when I turn this on? And and say, got 100 clients. Every one of them is referenceable. What we typically see is that about every 100 people you put on our platform to ⁓ will quit ⁓ because but most will back and say, yeah, I don't really mind. Gina Gibson: Yeah. ⁓ Jason HIland: those guys quitting. They didn't want to be supervised is really what it came down to. They had gotten really used to doing just enough work to get fired. ⁓ But seat is too valuable ⁓ for doing just enough work to not get fired. ⁓ Gina Gibson: Right. Right. Right. Definitely. next for Collaboration Room? Like what does the next five years kind of look like? Do you guys have any new product features or anything coming out that you want to share with everybody? Jason HIland: boy. You know, we've got so many ideas coming into this. You know, one of things I love about ⁓ working here ⁓ are a very client driven roadmap. Now anybody can say that I've worked for enterprise wide technology software as before where, you know, clients would give you ideas and you're like, ⁓ that's a great idea. I'll put it on the roadmap. And the roadmap was just this big, deep, pit ideas went to rock, ⁓ you but really everything ⁓ build is not on us sitting in our little dark dimly lit rooms with a bunch of developers. Gina Gibson: Yes. Jason HIland: and like, you know, what are we going to do now? When a client comes on board with us, first off, have four weekly calls where, you know, right off the bat, we're working with them, hey, how's it going? What questions you have, what could work better, what could work different? And then we start moving those out to every two weeks and then every month and then, you know, maybe quarterly, depending on the client. But in every one of those meetings, we're listening feedback. What could we do differently? What could we do better? And so ⁓ have about sprints about every three weeks we're pushing out that I just went through the list you'd be like that doesn't sound sexy but to our clients ⁓ they're ⁓ that's exactly what we needed to be able to do this and do this and do this ⁓ but of the things that you know to actually things that we're focusing on a little bit more ⁓ is ⁓ it little bit more ⁓ making it fun may putting some tools in there that are ⁓ a little you know they get people excited they can they can have a little bit more fun on the platform Gina Gibson: you Okay. Jason HIland: ⁓ And then second is looking to now that we feel after the last four years we've gotten the platform in standalone mode exactly where we want looking at integrating into some of the other platforms. That might be a gamification platform. That might be ⁓ also we're talking some of the CCAS systems ⁓ that when you're looking at that agent you'll be able to see their status. You know, they're on a call for this long. They're in wrap this long. All that kind of stuff. ⁓ those are a lot of things but ⁓ of the Gina Gibson: Perfect. Jason HIland: A lot of the cool things to our clients, if I brought them up right now to you, you'd be like, that doesn't sound big at all. But that's what I love is it's all based on what they want. Gina Gibson: Hehehehehe Excellent. And just to wrap things up, Jason, I've always been a fan of James Lipton. So we end with a little bit of a few little rapid fire questions. what is your favorite word? Jason HIland: Alright, let's do it. My favorite word, I don't know if I can say that one here. was born and raised in a UAW town in central Indiana. Most of my favorite words are four letters. You know, I would say, ⁓ gosh, is it that my, I don't a favorite word, but I'm gonna tell you my least favorite word. ⁓ It's the supposed, because I can't it right. ⁓ Gina Gibson: He That is the next question. Jason HIland: It's a few of my words in my Indiana accent. If I'm saying it quickly, supposed comes out as post. I'm supposed to do this. Or I'm supposed, I put a T on the end of it and I get called out on it all the time and I literally hate that word, but I use it a lot. Gina Gibson: And finally, Jason, what excites you the most? Jason HIland: ⁓ what excites me the most is, you know, ⁓ is gonna sound like, you know, like fodder whatever. I like helping people. ⁓ know, I've in the sales game for a long time ⁓ and, know, ⁓ will me hey, ⁓ I think you're really great ⁓ sales rep. ⁓ my response that is, I'm really not. I'm not a great sales rep. I'm really great at teaching people and doing my best to help people. if that ends up with that person buying, then yeah, you can give me credit for the sale. ⁓ I ⁓ I'm empath by nature. I just to help. And you know, ⁓ my wife is this high D competitive person and here I am, this empath that just wants to hug everybody and tell them it's going to be okay. And And she doesn't love hugs. So that doesn't always work out well, but ⁓ no we just ⁓ love helping people they're going back to the saving those people's I can't tell you how that made me feel when I heard about it and So yeah, it's helping ⁓ people a a problem or whatever It's ⁓ it's ⁓ me up the morning and make and when I ⁓ when I go sleep at night You know and I think to myself like I helped this Gina Gibson: You Jason HIland: person, maybe personally or professionally, that's what makes my eyes close easier right there. ⁓ Gina Gibson: I love it. Jason, if somebody wants more information about Collaboration Room, who should they call? Jason HIland: Well, right off the bat, they can just call you. Gina is one of our fantastic partners here at Collaboration Room. She knows the platform very well. She knows how to get a hold of me. You can always look for me on LinkedIn and stuff. I'm always doing silly things on LinkedIn, lots of little videos and such like that. It's my creative outlet. But yeah, just go to Gina, you know? And she'll put you in contact with me, and then we'll take it from there. Gina Gibson: Excellent. And we'll make sure to have your LinkedIn in the, when we release this too, Jason, but a big thank you. Yeah. Jason HIland: I want to know real quick, what's your favorite word? What is your? Absolutely. That's that. All ⁓ favorite word. ⁓ Gina Gibson: Absolutely. Yes. Least favorite word for me is can't. Jason HIland: Alright, and what do I know what do I not know about Gina that I really want to know about Gina? Gina Gibson: Yo. very passionate about giving back in the community. So my true passion, what makes me happy is I get to sit on the Board of Directors for Dress for Success Phoenix. And it is ⁓ something that ⁓ makes me happy and I'm very passionate about. Yeah. Jason HIland: Yeah. I love that. love that. My wife and I, she's very involved and I get to be involved with several women's charities and pet pet, we're big pet people here, know, ⁓ Pet Project and such like that. So I love the fact that you love giving back. That says a lot about a person right there. ⁓ Gina Gibson: Excellent. Yes, absolutely. Jason, thank you so much for coming on and sharing your time with us today. And we, I loved learning more and hopefully helping people learn a little bit more about how our remote workers can work more collaboratively together. Jason HIland: Thanks for having me. Well, Gina, you're the best. Thank you so much for inviting me. I hope you have a great Fourth of July weekend, I can't wait to see you again soon. ⁓ Gina Gibson: to. Absolutely. Thanks again, Jason, and thank you for your service. Jason HIland: ⁓ thank you.