👉Love customer experience and love travel? You’ve found the right podcast, a show about creating great customer experience, with a dash of travel talk. 🎤Each episode, we’ll talk with our guests about customer experience, travel, and just like the best journeys, explore new directions we never anticipated. Listen here or watch on YouTube youtube.com/@cxpassport 🗺️CX Passport is a podcast that purposely seeks out global Customer Experience voices to hear what's working well in CX, what are their challenges and to hear their Customer Experience stories. In addition, there's always a dash (or more!) of travel talk in each episode.🧳Hosted by Rick Denton, CX Passport will bring Customer Experience and industry leaders to get their best customer experience insights, stories and hear their tales from the road...whether it’s the one less traveled or the one on everyone’s summer trip list.
I'm Rick Denton and I believe the best meals are served outside and require a passport
Music: Funk In The Trunk by Shane Ivers
CX Passport is a podcast for customer experience professionals that focuses on the stories, strategies, and solutions needed to create and deliver meaningful customer experiences. It features guests from the world of CX, including executives, consultants, and authors, who discuss their own experiences, tips, and insights. The podcast is designed to help CX professionals learn from each other, stay on top of the latest trends, and develop their own strategies for success.
📖 Our book is here! Get your copy of The Loud Quiet – Love, Laughter and Life in the Empty Nest, here: https://amzn.to/4sC0EV7
🎤🎞️Get real results and separate hype from reality “The one with CX automation” with Jasen Williams Global VP Corporate Marketing for episode sponsor Verint in CX Passport Episode 168. What’s in the episode?...
CHAPTERS
0:00 Introduction
2:26 Power of storytelling in business
6:13 AI allows cost cutting AND better customer experience
10:18 Balancing Human and Tech in CX
14:40 GREAT example of using AI to improve agent experience
only four months ago you was still seeing AI marketing which was closer to a smarter planets and curing disease and the city of the future. These big abstract notions for what AI would do one day gave opportunity for experimentation, but it didn't give you a path to something that was tangible.
Rick Denton:
Customer Experience wisdom, a dash of travel talk, we've been cleared for takeoff. The best Meals are served outside and require passport. Welcome to today's CX passport. Today we are chatting with Jasen Williams, the global vice president of corporate marketing at Verint, the sponsor for today's episode. Jason has been with Verint for about seven years guiding them through these transformations as they build on their workforce engagement and optimization experience to become leaders in customer experience automation. With two decades and Capital Management and b2b sectors. Jason brings the season perspective to marketing. His role and Verint isn't just about leadership. It's about managing a team of storytellers who craft narratives that resonate across industries. Did you catch that word? I'll say it again, storytellers. Story is a big part of Jason's approach. He isn't just about the corporate life, known about his dedication to mentoring up and coming professionals. He's an advocate for that same power of storytelling in both your personal and professional growth. Jason comes to us today from Georgia now not Georgia, the country but the state of Georgia and the US. A devoted Bulldog Jason, I will do everything we can not to get into college football talk, but you never know. It might sneak in there from time to time. Today, I'm looking forward to diving into how Jason helped position veteran through its evolution, and the lessons he's picked up from decades in this space. Let's get into those intersections of marketing storytelling and technology with Jason Jason. Welcome to CX passport.
Jasen Williams:
Thank you for the kind words. Thank you for the introduction. That was great. Yeah,
Rick Denton:
and I hope Georgia is treating you well today. I do promise we won't do college football talk. It helps that we're in the offseason right now. So we'll just jump into storytelling, because I think that's one of the things that really intrigued me when you and I were first getting to know each other, this idea of storytelling, we hear about it so often in business, especially in the customer space. This isn't, though just a recent trend for you, it's been a part of your approach to your entire career. So given all the energy in b2b tech right now, why is storytelling even more important today?
Jasen Williams:
It's a great question. So I had a mentor, tell me early on, he said, you know, if the winner is whoever tells the highest highest resolution picture of what success looks like, whoever paints that picture, probably gonna win. And if you look at like the way things have evolved, we're so far past, particularly in b2b software, b2b Tech, past speeds and feeds, even what how it works. And what does it do? We're into outcomes, where too, I have a problem, you have a problem. Let me talk to you about how I can help you address that in a very specific ways. Not platitudes, not hype around, you know, oh, AI is gonna solve all your problems. It's it's more about like, what what can be done right now? Not two years from now. But right now, and I think a lot of our story is very much around around that model. It's like, how are we helping people already? How can we help somebody like you, in very clear terms?
Rick Denton:
You You said something that will actually there's a couple things that I want to pull out later, I want to pull it that AI I want to pull it that timeframe that you're describing, but something else you said in there? Without saying the words It sounds like it's it's about the outcomes, not the features? How does story help you craft this a narrative around the outcomes, rather than just a list of benefits, whether that's your career, whether that's the product, whatever it is, we could talk and benefits but people care about outcomes. How to story help that?
Jasen Williams:
Yeah, like there's, there's a there's an end goal in mind, you know, whether it's, I mean, I need to improve my containment rate. I need to I need to provide work life balance for my employees. I need to accelerate my time to market whatever the thing is that you're burning platform this year, your critical issue, like how do I align what I'm trying to do when I'm trying to sell when I'm trying to market to your to your pain, and for us, like in areas like workforce management? We're looking at ways we could address this problem that every call every contact center has, which is managing work life balance. Let's, how do you provide flexibility to the employees? How do you break through with supplements? That's never before possible? And and then we explain what what better looks like, you know, how do you give somebody the ability to go from changing their schedule once a month, to changing three or four times a day. Like, once you start to get somebody's attention with something, they weren't expecting the unexpected. It opens the door for a different kind of conversation. And you could tell your story. I
Rick Denton:
like that. I like that that phrase, they're catching them with the unexpected as well. So, in this, you've actually seen quite a lot of, I guess, just different approaches to customer experience. You've seen it in your past, you've seen it as Verint has made its move into customer experience automation. I know that when I've been in conversations, it seems to be more binary than it should be many of you either customer experience initiatives as this path to lower cost or improved experience, but that never the twain shall meet right. Doing both was out of the question. How have you seen AI change that paradigm of either or?
Jasen Williams:
Yeah, I think that's the you're asking the right question. It's it was people historically, and certainly in my career, and especially true among a larger organizations, when they need to pull cost out of the business, they did so by bringing service personnel headcount out of the business, and predictably, service levels deteriorate, you know, and then of course, correct that problem. By throwing more people at the at your, your service problems, your customer experience, challenges, and costs explode. There hasn't been there's this pendulum that just keeps swinging wildly back and forth, particularly in a lot of organizations that are that there's no middle ground on a consistent basis, what we're doing. And what AI is making possible today, for the first time really, is the ability to address both the top line and the bottom line, the driving this customer experience forward and cutting, cutting costs out of the business, because we're delivering on CX automation ability to do these two things simultaneously. If you give present AI not as a replacement of people, but as an augmenting of the workforce, and you're giving them tools to respond faster to scale, both the employee, the manager, the analysts that are that are supporting the C suite. And you're giving the consumer the ability to put their hands on self service capabilities that are much more frictionless, that are avoiding some of the conversations to start with. With the context center, you're you're starting to see these things come together. And they're not these transformational projects, which everyone was focused on. Particularly pre COVID, these two three year projects, these are things done now. And seeing results in 3060 90 days. That's that's the difference. And today versus a couple of years ago as AI is matured. Yeah, people can do can do this. Do these two things that were always in conflict simultaneously.
Your CX Passport Captain:
This is your captain speaking. I want to thank you for listening to CX passport today, we've now reached our cruising altitude. So I'll turn that seatbelt sign off. While you're getting comfortable, hit that follow or subscribe button on your favorite podcast app, so you'll never miss an episode. Love if you tell a friend about six paths bored leave a review so others can discover the show as well. Now, sit back and enjoy the rest of the episode.
Rick Denton:
Glad to hear that both are available. I where I'm where my brain is somewhat going here. Is that a statement like that? And I know in our conversations, I know there's some real meat behind that. Like there's actually reality between No look, if you don't just approach AI as a cost cutting tool. And I think a lot of it's the mentality that I'm walking into this conversation, not just saying I want AI so that I can reduce costs, but rather I want a no actually I want to solve a challenge. And AI is the tool to be able to do that. And it seems like the conversation has been so heavily. I want ai i need AI it's such a classic example of the hype cycle that it's this idea of it's a word, it's a phrase, it's out there and I need it now I don't even know what I need it for. I just want it and usually by now with a new idea that hype cycle has has faded, but we're still seemingly it feels like just in the meet. Still have that AI as hype. How are you balancing that hype versus the reality of what it can do? How are you kind of segmenting, maybe even for your clients? Hey, look, this is what you're hearing, this is the actual reality of what this can do for you.
Jasen Williams:
Yeah, that's, that's the hype is so different now than even you know, 24 months ago, 24 months ago, you you was still seeing like aI marketing, which was local closer to a smarter planets and curing disease and the city of the future these big abstract notions for what AI would do one day, and it gave opportunity for experimentation, but it didn't give you a path to something that was tangible. What variants doing is, I think that's a pretty big differentiator is we're focused heavily on tangible and pragmatic return on investment that you can get from using our AI we the way we package and the way we deliver AI is through a series of specialized bots, with 40 Plus bots, right? Each one of these things, each one of the bots does a very specific thing extremely well, with a very specific ROI associated with it, whether it's a wrap up, or scheduling, or coaching or quality related. And when you break it down to these, these more tangible, tangible and pragmatic or not sexy marketing words, they're there, they're unexpected. And what they're doing is they're giving us an opportunity to say, look, consistently, you know, we're seeing wrap up capabilities at the end of a call with a contact center agent taking 30 seconds out every one of those conversations. Okay, for very specific, measurable ROI, you can look and you see, well that worked on on my group of agents that I started with, that worked in under 120 days, I'm ready to go even faster. Like those are the kinds of conversations that are very different than the old model, which was, well, first thing you should do is, is if you're going to work with with with a vendor, as you need to rip and replace everything you've got in your contact center, and then at 18 to 24 months, even though we both know that the AI market is going to have changed dramatically, you know, we're going to be in a different place. And that's not that's not the model. If you want to go down that path to change everything out. We can we can help you with that. And that's great. But we can also put you in a position whether you're on cloud or on prem to be able to move incrementally with a team. Yeah, it's something specific. So that I think that's, that's the breakthrough for the hype question. Yeah,
Rick Denton:
and that chuckle and those that were watching saw the grin, and those that are listening, hopefully heard some chuckles throughout, in that year, right 18 To 24 months ago. I mean, I'm amazed that climate change hasn't been solved based off of what we were hearing 18 to 24 months ago, right? You know, there'd be world peace, and everybody would just be sipping sipping their drinks, while the robots did it all for us. So those practical examples that you're talking about there, Agent assist, note taking wrap up, all of that goes back to even that conversation that we just had about, hey, you can have a better experience and cost cutting because take that if you're able to extract 30 seconds, from an agent's time, well, then that makes more agents available to be on call actually being able to take that call, which guess what reduces the amount of time that a customer has to wait. So not only did I save my cost, I improved my customer experience that actually can happen. I want to take that though, and go a little bit into the human and tech space a little bit. Because one of the things that AI does make many somewhat anxious about is that we're over indexing on technology, we're over indexing on digital there is that that threat of have we abandoned the humanity in our customer experience? And at least for now, customers are primarily human, although we know we have robot customers as well. How should accompany how should we balance that human and technology when we're looking for these customer experience improvements and create that tangible business result that we were talking about?
Jasen Williams:
Yeah, I think that there's a couple of there's a couple of areas that are very human and the in our approach one is looking at the work life balance question employee engagement. It's fascinating that the idea that bots are one of the primary use cases for we're seeing a lot of immediate ROI is in his employee engagement or work life balance the idea that you could move from there's no point in me requesting time off today, but to go to my kids spelling bee or to take 15 minutes and go walk my dog well I'm working at home because my boss isn't my supervisor is never gonna say yes. Okay, well, what if you had unlimited scheduling The shift swap capabilities that's just walked out a shift change capabilities, scheduled capabilities. Without anyone, any human having to intervene, that didn't create chaos and enhance the schedule. Like, that's, that's new. That's not something that was never available before. And it's addressing in a very real, very employee engagement kind of problem. There's, there's some of the investment is going into that. And then there's other things where you're seeing a lot of AI helping with coaching, whether it's coaching, visual interaction, like I you're talking over this guy, this is not going to end well. Or this is this person becoming increasingly frustrated, and they're high value, you need to pause and offer them safe credit. There's, there's those kinds of moments. There's also just the idea that people want to do a better job like they want they don't want their time wasted. Well, customer vote, we know the customer feels that way. But the agent does, too. He doesn't want to look around, tapped toggling through a lot of different apps to find the to find their answers like bringing answer forward to so it's a lot of work on for us in the cost. And the contact center is agent experience. On the day to day, the the emotional side of employee engagement, employee experience is big. So AI is doing more than just saying, Okay, here's a function, and it needs to happen 2540 70% faster. That's all that's all given that it has to happen. So we're working on the other is as well.
Rick Denton:
Jason, I'm really intrigued by one of the solutions that you said there, that is an I actually was never a contact center agent. But I was working in a retail store and I even at the retail store level, what kind of a pain level there was associated with just simple shift changes, not just for me, the employee, but the manager having to deal with it. And so your idea of this real time in the moment, and the manager doesn't even the team lead doesn't have to burden themselves with it, they can actually just, it just happens and there is enough capability on the phones in the context at the time they need him. That's this is the first time that I've heard of that use case and I'm particularly intrigued by it and that I'm a little bit my synapses have frozen a bit and you know what happens when you get frozen like that? You need to take a little break. And so I'm going to encourage us to stop down right now let's go into the first class lounge let's have a little bit of fun here move a little quickly but we're going to have some fun as well what is a dream travel location from your past
Jasen Williams:
from our past I would love to go back to South Africa I went I went with pre kids and my kids are pretty small. They're almost old enough to go and remember and really enjoy it. But seeing lions and the spectacle of South Africa and Cape Town or our Cougar all that stuff is out a month ago again that was that was pretty spectacular.
Rick Denton:
I've I've heard nothing but great things about it I actually have a brother in law who just got back from a work trip into South Africa and I've certainly with six passport there's been a lot of BPOS on the show and a lot of the BPOS are out of South Africa now I know places and specific food items that I need to go there so I haven't been there but I can see why it's a dream travel location from the past what about going forward? What's a dream travel occasion? You've not been to yet
Jasen Williams:
I haven't been to Greece i would love to go to Greece I feel like I would I like to I'm intrigued by the just the spectacle the history and everything else was on I think I would enjoy fishing there but my kids are being the Percy Jackson books and all the mythology is just really hitting with them and I would absolutely be up their alley so I think as a family I would love to go to Greece
Rick Denton:
you know I like the fact that it would be your your kids that are bringing that dream travel location into sort of the the present the desire because of what they're reading what they're consuming I have a bit of a more selfish reason to go to Greece I think it looks pretty and I like food and but the the the Percy Jackson is a gateway into desiring Greece's is that's a lot of fun. Well, let's stay in food. What is a favorite thing of yours to eat?
Jasen Williams:
Oh, sushi. I love sushi. I love barbecue. We're joking about this. Tonight there's two things that are the most opposite sushi serve a completely raw and barbecue was smoke this for half a day. You know? I couldn't have two more opposite thing because it wasn't my two favorites.
Rick Denton:
I hope that there's some universe where you have actually opened up a pig pickin and sashimi rest Restaurant and somehow combine both of those row loves together. I'm just thinking about the what that restaurant style would be. Let's go the other direction. What is something growing up you're forced to eat but you hated as a kid.
Jasen Williams:
Oh, those little green English peas. I just think they're repugnant. But my, my wife eats them. My kids are still pretty skeptical, but I have no ceiling as an adult. Okay.
Rick Denton:
I love that. And I love the visceral reaction that I get with that question, although I love those little peas. So it just shows how different now this is. Sadly, it means that we're about to exit the lounge. But I do want to know what is one travel item, not including your phone, not including your passport that you will not leave home without? The
Jasen Williams:
honest answer is chargers. But I was thinking about that. And there's a app I love fishing Booker, which allows you it's like, open table for fishing. So you can go somewhere you've never been before and get hooked up with a captain when you don't know what you're doing and go out and have a good time with weather with your buddies or your with your kids. So that was a that that's that's pretty awesome. That's something a little additive for vacation that I love very much.
Rick Denton:
Takes passport listeners and viewers. I'm going to get the link to that app there because I have not heard that one. Jason tell tell me the app name again fishing Booker, fishing Booker. And it books like fishing holes, captain's boats, Captain and
Jasen Williams:
it's incredible. The awesome you you pick anywhere. And if long as there's a pier or or Marina, the there's a guy on there that'll pick you up from there and take you fishing
Rick Denton:
that is brilliant. You know, that's one of those exams, we were talking about the human and technology aspect before he went into the first class lounge. And that's one of those examples where the digital aspect actually becomes something that a customer really thrives and seeks out, right? You're, instead of wandering around several marinas hoping that you can find someone you've got your app, you're ready to engage with the app. And that's that's where that that digitization actually creates that it kind of creates it perhaps even more humanly than walking around painfully trying to find that booking. You know, my example in that case is always booking restaurant reservations when the last time we got a call for that, right? Yeah, right, exactly. I want to get tactical. And I want to do it with something you said earlier. And it was this idea of a lot of companies will have this vision of I'm hoping that I can do AI or technology and do it and see the benefits in two years. And that's where I might be coming into the conversation. How can I accelerate that? How can I actually get into this in not one to two years away, but get into this space right now, if I'm that company.
Jasen Williams:
For us. we've architected the AI capabilities, all of our specialized bots, to work on prem or in the cloud. And in most cases, regardless of whether or not you're using all of your stuff for some of your stuff, even some of your stuff from Baron, it works with a lot of other people's software, just depending on the various use cases. So number one, being able to say I don't have I, I've got capabilities, if I'm a user, if I've got capabilities that I love, we look at that user that and say You're wonderful the way you are. Here over here is the specific thing you want to improve. And we've got a bot for that. And you can add it to your existing infrastructure, and you're going to be up and running in whether it's 30 days or 120 days, somewhere in that in that timeframe. And that is the ability to say okay, I don't have to change out my my my telephony, I can keep my ACD where it is that I can still bring in a lot of new AI into my shop, I don't have to move my workforce management. And I can get this schedule flexibility that we were talking about earlier. All of that, like very attention getting very loud, always surprising. We were our CEO was meeting with a very well known online retailer. And it kind of they ended the meeting, you know, there's two things that happen. One was, you know, hey, it was it was good to hear, you know how you can help us enhance our data story, our data, infrastructure or ecosystem and you've got some AI in some pots that we would very much like to bring into our context. That's all great. But the other thing as he gestured to his team was the my guys said this was two years away. So I have a separate meeting that we're gonna have, I believe, you know, like like this that says, hey, look, we can get going right now. And that that is very unique. Ai, getting people to get going right now. Yeah, AI business outcomes now is what we're all about.
Rick Denton:
Let's Okay, so when I smile, because I talked about storytelling at the beginning, right, and there you are sharing a story, and it caught my eye there. I want to talk about what you just said, it's related to that the head swivel of, well, you told me it was two years, and now we're going to get this done. Now, there's a lot more that goes into that than just the technology of that, right? There's buy in, there's change management companies are, by their nature, they're a collection of organizations, they're a collection of teams, they're a collection of well, you know, humans and humans are kind of messy, we all have our own perspective. So a great idea to Team A may not be a great idea to Team B, how, and maybe even stories, what have you seen really help influence getting the buy in for these ideas, these initiatives to go from a two year idea to we're doing it now.
Jasen Williams:
Because there's a lot less friction, of the idea of being getting started now that having to rip and replace anything that's working. Like for the for the brand, we're able to say, look, if you want to get started with just the contact center, let's say in El Paso are the contact center that works on product X, or the group that is just in the Netherlands, we can take a subset of the employees and get started and show immediate results. That's not a that's not a proof of concept. It's not like a pilot, it's more of a working model that's immediately going with a tangible, specific ROI that you're able to look at and say, Okay, this did or didn't work, if it did, which it's going to, let's go bigger. And we'll add another call another division or department or a product line or whatever, and dramatically accelerate like adoption within within an organization that is pulling both any, you don't have the technical risk, because you didn't swap anything out worded. You're gonna have to rip and replace anything, but you're also pulling the risk out that you're not making a wholesale change, you don't have to. So it's it's, yeah, that has resonated resonates very well for us.
Rick Denton:
What about Okay, so I can see that I can see that working for the decision makers, the leaders team leads executive, that sort of thing. What about at the employee level? Because especially when we're talking about technology, and then even more so because of the way AI has been discussed as such a cost cutting measure? How have you helped? Or where have you? Let me say it differently, how have you seen it be successful? at the employee level, when we're talking about change, like we're describing here?
Jasen Williams:
There's a couple of examples in the time flex scheduling capability we talked about earlier as the most obvious and I buy in right away on that, wouldn't I, if I were to go from like I said, go from one change a month per employee to one case, the company went from two of five a day. They its employees get it immediately. There are other things, a lot of what AI will take care of are the things that you do not like about your job. No agent likes to do call summarization. No one. Right. That's, that's automate. That's easy to get by on on coaching, when it's done appropriately, and not in some court, heavy handed manner. People are receptive to I could have done this better. And here's where here's exactly what I could do. And let me go sign up for a course that would make it when it's appropriate for me to take it to improve in this area. Like, there's a lot of those kinds of moments. There. It's it's augmenting the person it's not. Yeah, it's not saying I need you anymore. It's saying this is the thing that you didn't want to do to begin with. Now done much easier.
Rick Denton:
And you know, what, I kind of I think I want to end there, because that is a mentality shift, and almost a communication shift that I think companies need to have when they're thinking about why is it that I want to do a technology why is it that I want to automate why is it that I want to use the ubiquitous term a AI? And it's that idea of okay, well, what are the pain points that are being relieved? And is this the right tool for it? And when you're talking about coaching, my gosh, I can absolutely see agents saying, Great. Now there's going to be a technology that listens to all of my calls, because how many agents have a reasonable disagreement with will? Yeah, okay. You chose the one call that was the worst that I've ever been in. And that's what you're coaching me on? Where's my suite of behaviors represent something totally differently? And technology can help? Help certainly overcome that? Yeah, Jason, I've learned a lot today. I've appreciated kind of the walk through how we've come to understand that there's the human and technology and hype versus reality and get it in now. And I imagine others might want to know a little bit more about you your approach to customer experience, and more about Verint in general as well, what is the best way for folks to get to know more about you and Varun offer variant
Jasen Williams:
we're easy to find and varun.com. We've showcasing a lot of our our bot capabilities there, as well as you know, the applications that we bring to market. For me, luckily, with unusual spelling of my name, I'm extremely easy to find on LinkedIn. That's, that's the easiest way to get a hold of me would be just searching Jason Williams on LinkedIn, I'm pretty easy to find with the spelling.
Rick Denton:
Very good. And listeners, I will get all of that into the show notes there. So absolutely. You can find Jason's LinkedIn profile, you'll certainly be able to find the variant website as well. And, and I do want to thank Verint again, for their generous sponsorship of the episode today. It is a delight partnering and CO creating with y'all, Jason, this was a enjoyable and informative conversation for me today. I enjoyed it. And I thank you for that. So Jason, thank you for being on CX passport.
Jasen Williams:
Oh, thank you so much, Rick. And yeah, have a great rest afternoon.
Rick Denton:
Thanks for joining us this week on CX Passport. If you liked today’s episode I have 3 quick next steps for you Click subscribe on the CX Passport youtube channel or your favorite podcast app Next leave a comment below the video or a review in your favorite podcast app so others can find and and enjoy CX Passport too Then, head over to cxpassport.com website for show notes and resources that can help you create tangible business results by delivering great customer experience. Until next time, I’m Rick Denton and I believe the best meals are served outside and require a passport.
