Latest / The Tech Matchmaker / All-in-One Support Ops: How Assembled Unites WFM, AI Agents & CX Innovation | Annelies Husmann
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 everyone. Today we are chatting with Annalise Hussman, is the VP of Sales at Assembled about workforce management. Welcome to the podcast, Annalise. Annelies Husmann: Gina, thanks so much for having me. Gina Gibson: We're so glad to have you. And so why don't we just start with the basics, tell us a little bit about yourself. And we always ask everybody to tell us something that we wouldn't find out about you on LinkedIn. Annelies Husmann: You bet. So my name is Annalise Hussman. I lead the sales organization here at Assembled. are a mighty team of about 40 sellers, but Assembled is about 200 folks globally. And happy to dive into that a little bit later, but something about me that you couldn't find on LinkedIn. So you can the travel piece. But I think my fact is I've been to over 40 countries. I've snuck into a country once on purpose and once on accident, but that's for another time. Gina Gibson: Stay curious, stay bold, and keep exploring what's next. Annelies Husmann: you Gina Gibson: Excellent. so much. And what is Assembled, Annalise? What are the specific problems you're solving for your customers today? I guess give us your elevator pitch. Annelies Husmann: You bet. So Assembled is the modern support operations platform and we're trusted from companies ranging from DoorDash, Etsy, and Robinhood. we believe the future involves AI and human agents. And we're only platform that lets you build and deploy AI agents, increase the efficiency your in-house agents, ⁓ and manage your ⁓ all in one Gina Gibson: if somebody was hearing about your company for the first time, what's the one thing that you would want them to remember? Annelies Husmann: I think that one thing I'd want them to remember is that, you know, we were born in workforce management. We were born in support. And we deeply know ⁓ customer and what it takes to make people wildly successful. And then it wouldn't be a podcast without talking a ton about AI, you know, we had that workforce management and agentic AI experience all in one place. But I think makes Assembled so amazing and such a powerful partner for everyone in the market is that we were again we were founded in support and we really know what good support looks like. Gina Gibson: That's wonderful. And would that be your kind of unique feature or aspect about your solution that your customers kind of constantly rave about? is there something else where they're like, this is what we love about Assemble. Annelies Husmann: I think the all-in-one platform, absolutely. And I think what we've been seeing a lot of traction and excitement in the marketplace lately is taking our workforce management customers and then bringing them into the AI world. Specifically, think one of the things that people are really excited about today is the ability to use our AI chat agent and our co-pilot all in one place. And so I think that's been a really powerful experience for all of our end users. then a really powerful efficiency gain for our customers because they're able to, ⁓ know, contain ⁓ automate away some of the work ⁓ and superpower their agents with our co-pilot to make even more efficient and more effective. And so, I all that one platform is amazing. ⁓ Gina Gibson: And is that your, sorry about that, is that your biggest differentiator for your competitors? Like from your competitors is the whole, like everything in one platform or what would you say your biggest differentiator is? Annelies Husmann: Gina, I would. I would. It's that you can start workforce management. You can start with an agent at AI solution, or you start with both in one. And again, having that single pane of glass across everything is that amazing solution. So as you, you superpower your agents with a co-pilot, we're then able to say, can ⁓ now reassign resources different places in real time. ⁓ And I think that's been super benefit to some of the largest companies we work with. Gina Gibson: And I would also add that your teams are probably some of the best to work with and really flexible and wonderful people as well. So I think that's a differentiator out there that's very important and not to be overlooked. How do you keep your product? Like how are you innovating and how do you stay ahead of the industry trends? Annelies Husmann: Ooh, I love this question. lot of it, I think, comes down to where came from as a company. So our came from a support operations background, but they also were of the first machine learning ⁓ engineers at a company Stripe, a payments processing company. And so they have this of being innovative, being engineers, and then bringing that to market. And so I think that just because of the genesis of where we were born from, our co-founders. It's afforded us to at the cutting edge in ⁓ many Gina Gibson: would agree with that. ⁓ was probably one of the first ones out there too from a processing perspective. You've mentioned some really great customers. Do you want to walk us through one of your favorite customer success stories and talk about they measure the impact of your solution and how it helped their trajectory in their business? Annelies Husmann: Sure. So I can talk about a company named Canva. And Canva is an incredible company. And they're taking on a market leader ⁓ that has $100 billion valuation. ⁓ So a bit of that David and Goliath scenario. But I think what makes Canva so special is that they're just with customer happiness. And so customer support has a big focus of and a big part of their success. So I think that what's interesting about Canva is they were a workforce management customer of ours, and they wanted to push into ⁓ the front as well. And their wasn't about using AI to replace humans. It was about their agents ⁓ better and making agents happier. And this team, and their team is secret to their success, like I said. And so AI is making their teams even better. And what we love about partnering with this company is that that truly embodies our philosophy as well, is that you need amazing human agents and then AI just helps them become better. I think, go on. Gina Gibson: And I don't, yeah, I was gonna say, don't know if you're finding this too, but I think with. The emergence of AI and with everybody talking about it, what I love is that it really has placed greater emphasis on the employee, right? And the employee experience. And like said, you know what? First, everybody is like, ⁓ it's gonna replace the agents. Now we know it's never gonna fully, right? But it's more about enhancing their experience. And I think having a product does that is really supportive and it really shows the emphasis continues in that matter. Annelies Husmann: 100%. of our customer success ⁓ here always says their superpower cape. That's we're looking to do is give them their superpower cape to be even better. Gina Gibson: I know you've mentioned, you know, starting in support. Is there any verticals ⁓ types of businesses that you've seen greater success with or do guys have a particular vertical you like to stick with or you across the board? Annelies Husmann: Great question. I one of things that makes my job so much fun here at Assembled is that we do well in so many verticals and across the board. So whether FinTech or HealthTech or any B2C, B2BC B2B2C company, excuse me, we great customer stories there. And so I think the common denominator though ⁓ is companies are invested in customer and making their support teams successful. providing a great customer experience, that's we do really well with Gina. Gina Gibson: And other than AI because I know everybody you know that's like you said it wouldn't be a podcast without talking about it Are there any other emerging trends that you're seeing in the industry at all? Annalise that you guys are particularly excited about or that you're focusing on or preparing for or any Exciting developments with the product that are coming down Annelies Husmann: I think that, I mean, again, if we were playing, you know, CX right now, I think we've hit most of the words on bingo card today. I think that of the things most excited about and that we're going to continue to push in is this marriage of the and the AI experience all in one platform. And so we're constantly innovating. We're bringing in new reports and new data and just new visibility into our platform ⁓ for how those worlds are really coming together. And so I think that's what I'm most excited about is that full visibility. Gina Gibson: Excellent. And so just to wrap things up, Annalise, I've always been a big fan of James Lipton. And so we close out the podcast with a few rapid fire questions. So is your favourite word? Annelies Husmann: chocolate. Gina Gibson: What is your least favorite word? Annelies Husmann: a couple words. I'm running late. Gina Gibson: what excites you the most? Annelies Husmann: ⁓ that's a great question, Gina. Personally, I have two small children, so ⁓ are very exciting and they keep me on on my toes. So is definitely the personal side of the house. I would say the professional side of the house. I love with great teams ⁓ and I like I've hit the lottery with the team I'm working with at assembled. Gina Gibson: Lindsay, if someone wants more information on Assembled, who should they reach out to? Annelies Husmann: Well Gina, hopefully you think forward and then if anyone else is looking for more information on Assembled, I'd love to connect on LinkedIn anywhere else online. Gina Gibson: make sure to have that posted below so anybody that wants to reach out and connect with Annalise can. And thank you so much for joining us today and sharing your insights about your platform the agent experience and the AI, joining that together. It's always wonderful to learn from folks in this space. And so thank you so much for joining us. Annelies Husmann: Gina, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.