Latest / The Tech Matchmaker / Cutting Through the AI Noise | Fred Stacey on What Really Matters in Tech | The 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. 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. Tech Matchmaker: Good afternoon. Today we are chatting with Fred Stacy, the CEO from Cloud Tech Gurus about the benefits of using Tech Gurus for sourcing and as well as your favorite topic, AI readiness. Fred Stacey: Just today when you are chatting with Fred Stacey. Gina Gibson: Stay curious, stay bold, and keep exploring what's next. Tech Matchmaker: Fred, give us your pitch for what Cloud Tech Gurus does. ⁓ Fred Stacey: So think of us as the company and organization that knows the suppliers, industry when it comes to contact centers, how customers interact and for the right outcomes, what are the right solutions to bring in? Through amazing people like yourself, who clearly know they're doing. Not saying you're one the best, you It's a simple model, right? You know, it's advisory service that helps companies really understand, you know, the landscape of the market, who are the right suppliers, and to really take a hard look at when it comes down to making those decisions. Because, I mean, you know, ⁓ 200 vendors in North America, 2000 plus AI suppliers, you know, and those numbers are just growing. Yeah, so would, being former agent and, you know, leader inside contact centers, Maybe back then there were like 10 players. You know, now there's thousands. We're to help simplify, make it easier, be more and get the right solutions. Yeah, so. Tech Matchmaker: Excellent. What's the one thing, Fred, that you would want people to remember about CTG? Fred Stacey: amazing. mean, if we're going to remember anything, it's we've got an amazing group of people like you, Gina, you know, and others who are just extensive in centers, experts in the field. You know, we always, always look for wins. know, there's there's one core value that I often share that people always get a chuckle about. But I'm serious about it is, you know, no assholes, you know, I hope you don't mind me swearing, by the way. ⁓ Tech Matchmaker: I'm Fred Stacey: This is just the way I am. ⁓ You already know this. I'm pretty transparent, but that is one of our core values. And we take that seriously between our partners, our gurus, ⁓ clients. We do things very straightforward. transparent. There's no better way to be. So when it comes to ⁓ knowing that you're going get a straight shooter to talk you through that tons of experience, there's no better place to go. Tech Matchmaker: Not at all. Excellent. I think it's also one of the factors that makes you unique in the market, right? It's always about the people. Now, Fred, I know that CTG has a new product coming out onto the market. Would you like to talk a little bit about a sneak peek for us as far as what that looks like and what the benefits for our customers might be? Fred Stacey: lot about this. And I talked a lot about this on social AI readiness is much bigger project and oftentimes a downplayed ⁓ project a lot of suppliers are talking about. No, no, no, you don't have to be ready. We'll just plug in and we'll all your data and we'll magically come up with this and you know, it'll just work. Trust us. You know, but the reality is AI readiness as much in our in my opinion. It's very much like the digital transformation conversation, right? We talked about it at the contact center and customer experience lens because we are part of that digital transformation. We helped a lot of companies migrate their customer interactions to the cloud and to Omnichannel and still are going through that process as you very well know. There are companies that you wouldn't believe that are Fortune 500 that still really haven't transformed completely digitally. So AI falls into that category and we keep seeing clients throw stuff at the wall and see if it sticks when it to AI. This is not tech, but as you very well know, and many of the audience probably does, ⁓ since November of a lot of changes have happened. It's no longer about NLU, NLP and workflow actions in the backend and machine learning, through supervised learning getting better, stuff is a long ways. And it continues to, mean, I did. Yeah, continues to change daily. I there, I spent a lot of time in this and I am not I'm not claiming by any means that I am completely up to date and know and understand everything. Yeah, so to companies get ready for artificial intelligence from a contact center perspective lens, but also impacting the rest of the organization is an absolute critical step that a lot people are just not talking about. And there's not a lot of organizations that have the depth and the resources and the subject matter experts, because AI is not just a single consultant in. As you very well know, you can do a lot of stuff as a very smart individual. But when it comes down to really preparing and understanding where has your network architecture is your data really structured and normalized? Do you have all the right, ⁓ know, documents and processes and change management. And ⁓ mean, this goes across and I always say this people processes and technology in that order. So together a team of subject matter experts was not but here we are. so, you know, two simple things, you know, one is a maturity assessment, very lightweight, you know, gathering documents, content information for people, through way of a. you know, essentially a survey think of it that way, but then having actual subject matter experts in each one of the, the expertise of that survey to be able to validate and assign a red, yellow, green, give some, you know, feedback, comments, information, and work with the team internally in a client. keep it super lightweight for the contact center in order to keep that cost really effective so that almost anybody of any size can really bring in. you know, and do a maturity assessment. you know, and then of course there's a full blown enterprise, you know, which, you know, everybody wants a quick quote on stuff like that. It's like, that doesn't, that's not the way it works. You know, there's a big difference between going on site with a 10,000 seat, you know, five international and two domestic location contact center organization versus going to one site, you know, with a small team. yeah. So, you know, a that's, that's a real full blown. Tech Matchmaker: Yeah. Fred Stacey: 360 degree review of an entire contact center organization, providing, ⁓ know, not just a, you red, yellow, green, but also, you a full two to three year roadmap, you know, along with products and ROI analysis and you know, everything you would expect from what you get from a top five consulting firm, except you're getting experts in the contact center field, and the price going to be, you know, reasonable, right? so Yeah, again, really excited about bringing this to market because there is a serious need. You know, ⁓ there's much misunderstanding ⁓ and so you know, fluff and noise in our space you know, companies just really need to get a good handle on where they're at and where they're heading. there's there's companies like us. I mean, we just happen to be one of them. Yeah, but. are bringing some of these solutions to market. And we figured no better than an organization that lives, breathes, eats and sleeps, contact center and customer experience. Tech Matchmaker: Absolutely. I mean, it fits into the portfolio so well, right with the gurus. Are there any, and I know we've talked about AI, but is there any other emerging trends that you're seeing in the industry right now that you're kind of particularly excited about or preparing for? Fred Stacey: ⁓ yeah, yeah. Emerging trends. Yeah, this is, I'll tell you one, and AI is the driver of this. I'm excited to get IT more engaged and seeing this is forcing them to get out of their silos. Artificial intelligence is look, you know, for the longest time when we sold premise, it was IT leading and the practitioners, the people running the centers. were kind of an influencer, right? And they were, does this look like it'll work? Maybe they sit on a couple of demos and give their check off. Then cloud came and then it went to the reverse direction where they see X leadership and contact center leadership on the process. And IT just did the validation of APIs or integrations. And now we're actually reverting to where there is no site, there can't be a silo there. Your IT team, your operations team, your, I mean, human resources, your data. mean, everybody has to be involved in this and whether they, whether you like it or not, got to work together. There's no longer room for silos because artificial intelligence goes across the whole org. it just happens that the contact center is the tip of the spear. I, you so that, change, although people might actually see that as a problem, I see it as a really good thing. because two for too long. we go through these silos, whoever leads the, organizational acquisition of technology or services, it doesn't matter to me. I everybody to get involved and have a stake and take some ownership. And I it's great for organizations. I think it'll force those silos to come down. Tech Matchmaker: I agree. think too that it's very interesting when you bring IT and business together, right? Because AI does span the entire enterprise. It's not just in the contact center. So it's a great point you bring up. ⁓ Fred Stacey: Yeah. And I love it. IT to be involved. I mean, they no choice. They own the data. They own the infrastructure. They darn well better own at least a portion this moving forward. But they need to work with the business practice. So yeah. Tech Matchmaker: Yeah, absolutely. So Fred, just in wrapping, can you give me two or three points as to why anybody, why would our customers want to use a guru and why would they want to use an advisor? Fred Stacey: Well, other than they're amazing, you know, bottom line is, know you know, I ran centers, you're down in the weeds, you can't see forest from within the trees, you certainly when you're running ⁓ a center or an organization or multiple centers, you don't have time to keep up with this technology, you don't have time to really dive in and you're not taking a third party approach to this. So bringing in a guru. I mean, just makes sense. You in some models, if it's, you know, BRD not very complex, it's free a lot of times to the client. Yeah, sometimes there are chargeable events, you know, on site when you have to get a little bit deeper in the weeds, and that's okay. But it's not, ⁓ you hundreds of thousands of dollars. You know, very targeted and understanding our gurus are amazing at knowing how sift through you know, what are the outcomes that the company needs? You know, what are their real challenges? you know, and bring the organization together, you know, to really help, you know, refine and select the right organizations ⁓ to at. And if it's not, a lot of the people will raise their hand and say, look, we need AI, let's go with, you know, AI or AI, whatever. because they've heard about it. And sometimes that's not the right solution. It's not even the right category to be looking to solve their problems. or they don't know and they can't possibly be aware of all the solutions that are out in the market. mean, you know, the ability to analyze and understand using AI, you know, who the right agents are to hire, right? We just, when, I mean, there's some amazing technology out there that people aren't even, ⁓ know, they just go about their day because they don't have time to do the research. And that's where we come in. ⁓ Tech Matchmaker: Thank you. Absolutely. Thank you. So Fred, I've always been a fan of James Lipton's, we end with the rapid fire. So your favorite word? Fred Stacey: It's my favorite word. I don't know that I have a favorite word to be quite frank. I don't know. Yeah. Isn't my favorite. I try to avoid the bomb. Yeah. probably shit. ⁓ Yeah. mean, yeah, that that one probably comes out more often because there's so many use cases for it. Same way with the bomb. But, you ⁓ know, I try to a good job. I always remember my mom in the back of my head saying, you know, they're Tech Matchmaker: No problem. What's your favorite swear word? Thank Fred Stacey: shows that you're not very intelligent, although the actual data shows that people that swear are actually more often highly intelligent. Yeah, so but she always used to tell me, you know, there are better words that you can choose that will show your intelligence. You know, so nonetheless, I try best. But sometimes they do Tech Matchmaker: are very excites you the most in life? Fred Stacey: Learning. That's just something that I've always loved. And I terrible at it when I was young. And, you know, I mean, it's not a justification, but I really believe that there's something to be said about the model of learning, what you want, and how you want it. That changes the dynamics between traditional education, and, you know, real life, world learning. And I just I love learning. you know that especially right now we're living in an amazing time. I there's enough time in the day for me to learn everything. You ⁓ know, I've got access to everything. So yeah, I'd say above everything that that would be it. Tech Matchmaker: Wonderful. And if somebody wants more information on using Cloud Tech gurus or using a guru, who should they call, Fred? Fred Stacey: This is what your information will look ⁓ You on. You I feel like I was set up there. Absolutely reach out to Gina. No brainer. Yeah, she's amazing part of the group. You know, but I think everybody already heard you can find me on LinkedIn. If you want to connect, you're always happy to connect with new people. But yes, reach out to Gina. Tech Matchmaker: Perfect. Thank you, Fred, so much for joining us and sharing your insights. always such a pleasure to speak with you. Thanks so much.