Vanessa Gates 00:00

Hey everyone, welcome back to Masters of Support. I am your host Vanessa Gates. And today I have with me my lovely Plavoxer, Siobhan Miller. She is our VP of Product Management. Welcome, Miss Siobhan

Siobhan Miller 00:13

Thank you, Vanessa. I’m so excited to be here.

Vanessa Gates 00:16

Yes. So before we get started, I love to start with a little icebreaker with our guests. And I like to base it off of our core values. So as you know, one of our core values is “Enjoy the little things.” So what do you like to do outside of Playvox, that you’d like to do?

Siobhan Miller 00:35

That’s a good question. That’s my favorite core value. Um, yeah, so I’ll say to Playvox so I think I have a lot of… my hobbies tend to be a little bit more pandemic-influenced. So um, you know, Netflix and reading, I love a good Sci Fi series on Netflix. Or Amazon or any of the streaming channels. I also am a big reader. I really like the old-school 70s spy novels, so anything with the Cold War I get really into. And then like I picked up some stuff during the pandemic, because we were all home right. So I started crocheting. So for a while I went through this phase of everybody was getting a scarf or a blanket for Christmas and, and yeah, puzzles, like those kinds of things. And then also, obviously, now that restrictions have been lifted, seeing my family, seeing my friends, being able to go out again. So I kind of enjoy that.

Vanessa Gates 01:29

You live in an area that has beautiful weather this time of the year. So I’m sure you’re out by the Riverwalk and just enjoying all the beautiful weather in the DMV area. So I’m very jealous because I’m in Florida, and it’s hot right now. But we get to enjoy the beach. I am sweating all the time when I’m outside. So enjoy that beautiful weather for me.

Siobhan Miller 01:50

Okay I will,

Vanessa Gates 01:52

Yay. So the reason why we have you here today is we want to have a discussion about something that has been causing a little bit of headway in our industry, you know, getting people excited about it. And that is Auto QA. Let’s, let’s talk about that.

Siobhan Miller 02:10

Sure, yeah. So Auto QA is, it means it’s a very different definition for many different people. So the idea of automating quality has been around for a really long time. You know, quality is 20, 25 years old, we’ve been doing it for decades. And, and so, you know, our, our, our customers and our users and our industry, super professional looking for ways to optimize the quality process as much as they can. So I think initially, when we talked about Auto QA, it was more automating the workflows. So we’re identifying the problem, we’re going straight to coaching, things are automated, we have like a reporting structure. But as we’ve added AI into the conversation, we’re starting to see a lot more things around efficiencies, particularly around scoring. So I think for, depending on who you talk to, it can be “Hey, like, I want you to auto score my scorecard” or “Hey, I, you know, we identified our problem, we want to schedule coaching automatically,” those kinds of things.

Vanessa Gates 03:10

That AI it’s, it’s, it’s a conversation that we can’t ever not have. So why are people so excited about Auto QA?

Siobhan Miller 03:19

Yeah, so I think, um, I think the AI makes the possibility so exciting, speaking of, you know, sci fi, but yes, it’s a little more common, I think, than aliens. But, um, but yeah, I think for the, you know, for most of our customers, I would say, you know, industry median, maybe in terms of looking at interactions and evaluating interactions is 2% – 3%. And when you think about, you know, the purpose of that evaluation is to identify, like, you know, how do we make it better for customers? How are we making it better for agents? Are we hitting our compliance targets? all of those different pieces, and just being able to look at 2% – 3% is something that is, it’s a little frustrating, even if we optimize it, even if we’re using great statistical sampling, you know, we

still have a bulk of our interactions that aren’t being looked at. And when we think about, like, where we’re investing a lot in quality, a lot of times it’s in the evaluation, it can be a little frustrating, right? Because we’re as as much as we’re doing. And as as much as we’re optimizing, we’re still still kind of getting the best guess, whereas we could, you know, have a really direct view of what’s happening in there. And there’s a lot of really great insight in those interactions we got, if you can imagine it’s 2% – 3% now, but if we could get it in all the interactions, that would be amazing and drive a lot of business value for us and for our customers.

Vanessa Gates 04:38

Absolutely. I feel like 2% – 3%, yes, like you’ve mentioned it, you do find a lot in that 2% – 3%. But that margin seems so little. So essentially, Auto QA is going to be like you said to you know, to repeat what you said is it’s going to bring that margin up to a higher percentage and I would hope that eventually you know, that 2% – 3% becomes a 100% Or even just, yeah, but 80% of your of your margin?

Siobhan Miller 05:04

Yeah, I mean, the potential of it is amazing, right? It’s really, really cool. And it’s definitely creating a huge evolutionary change in the industry.

Vanessa Gates 05:12

So what are the implications of looking at so few?

Siobhan Miller 05:16

Yeah. So I think, you know, obviously, you’re if you’re looking at 2% – 3%, I think there’s a couple of issues. Right? So the first is, you know, kind of sometimes you might have a misalignment between coaching and learning. So if we’re looking at evaluations to understand like, what are the best practices that our agents are doing to engage with our customers, what’s delighting customers? And then where are the gaps we need to close? You know, we’re still just looking at 2% – 3%, which is a good sample, but we might not be optimizing our learning and training, right. So maybe in the sample, we have, you know, we’ve got two agents that have issues that you know, that have shown maybe a skill gap. And so we’re going to coach them one on one. But if we looked at the other 98%, hey, there’s, like, 20% of all of our agents have this issue. And maybe it’d be better as a learning intervention, right. So I think, you know, being able to focus on those pieces is really important. And then I think that’s the first one. The second one is, you know, there’s a lot of times like things will surface in the 2% -3%. But we’re not really catching those issues early enough. So it’s less of an investment to catch an issue early and kind of remediate it, as opposed to waiting until it breaks through to that final 2% – 3%. And that can cost us as a business, etc. So just being able to get to see things as they happen. And then to really align and optimize, you know, our learning and training to make it a better experience for our customers and also for our agents, right? If we’re only looking at 2% – 3%, we don’t really know how our agents are doing all those other interactions, and we might be focusing not on the thing they need most, it just happens to be the thing that we evaluated.

Vanessa Gates 06:56

So this technology, it’s been around for a while, right? Do you think customers would be jumping on it? You know, why isn’t there a wider adoption for it?

Siobhan Miller 07:07

Yeah, so I think, I think there’s definitely adoption for some pieces of it, I think, um, you know, it’s such a change in our industry, and in every industry that’s applying AI, like every industry goes through this and sees it right, it’s just, it’s so radically different to take something manual and make it automated, I think there’s a couple of issues for our customers. The first is that like, like, the AI potential is amazing. But there’s a lot of vendors that are kind of making it an all or nothing proposition. So instead of giving people the ability to kind of do baby steps and find some efficiencies, you know, helping me better target the interactions, I want to look at, they’re kind of coming in and kind of doing like a complete revamp of your contact center and your processes. And there’s a lot of change management that goes into that. And it’s a it’s a big resource investment. Like it definitely the payoff at the end is is really important and really worth it. But not everybody is at the same stage. Like you might have a really small team, you don’t have those resources. Right now we’re going through a very interesting economic time. So people are really holding back some of their investments and waiting to kind of make big splurges. And it can be a big splurge. So I think some of it is the offering that’s out there, or the opportunity isn’t quite as available just because of the intense resource it takes to successfully implement a fully automated quality project auto scoring soup to nuts. But there are opportunities for kind of steps along the way. And I think that’s why sometimes customers aren’t jumping on it right away, because the the challenge seems so big, whereas there really could just pick it off in chunks. I think that’s kind of where the where the problem lies.

Vanessa Gates 08:50

Shameless Playvox plug, “change is good.”

Siobhan Miller 08:56

So why are we here?

Vanessa Gates 08:58

So you mentioned, you know, why? Why they’re not you know, why it’s not an adopt. It’s not a wider adoption. So how can customers adopt the technology, then?

Siobhan Miller 09:12

Yeah, so one of the things that we’re doing, you know, we are making a big product announcement this week at QATC, we are actually going to start rolling out some auto QA technology, you know, and we’re starting really focusing on out of the box solutions to help customers get value without that huge resource in intensity. So we’re actually gonna be rolling out of beta in the next few weeks, that we’re really excited to get our customer feedback on what we’re doing. And you know, this is like a first step, first step in the journey. You know, our plan is to provide customers with access to as much automation as they want, or as little automation as they want, you know, if they feel ready to make that big investment. You know, that’s something that we’re planning to roll out in the coming months and quarters, if they just want to kind of just get some value from some automation and take the value of AI and get an overarching view of 100% of their interactions. Without that intense resource investment, they’ll be able to do that too. So we’re really, really excited to kick this off. This is kind of the next phase in Playvox’s evolution. And we’re super excited about it.

Vanessa Gates 10:14

Woohoo, change is Good. Let’s do it now.

Siobhan Miller 10:17

It is good.

Vanessa Gates 10:19

So Siobhan where can our listeners learn more about Auto QA? And the rest of the Playvox’s Solutions?

Siobhan Miller 10:28

Yeah, sure. So the first place, obviously, the website, that’s a good place to start. And then also if you’re at QATC, we’re here this week, stop by our booth, we’d love to talk to you about it and the rest of our solutions. And then we’re also gonna be doing a webinar in the next couple of weeks. I don’t remember the date Exactly. But we’re going to talk more about auto QA and how you can go ahead and do it. And if you’re a Playvox customer, you know, look for things in the product on the web, reach out to your customer success manager super happy to kind of like talk you through what we’re planning on doing.

Vanessa Gates 10:59

Yeah, and just so that everybody knows where we’re talking about in the resources, if you just go to playvox.com/resources, you’ll be able to get linked directly to our resources page, where we have amazing ebooks, blogs, some of our on demand webinars, and then that’s also where you can register for the upcoming webinar. So if you have any questions, we’ll make sure that we’ll also link that at the bottom of this podcast episode. Siobhan, this has been so awesome. I’m so excited rollout for Auto QA. It is going to be amazing. And thank you. Thank you. Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to meet with me today.

Siobhan Miller 11:41

Of course, my pleasure. I’m never too busy for you, Vanessa.

Vanessa Gates 11:44

Ooh, thank you. I feel honored. I want to thank all of our listeners that are listening to us today. Thank you so much for taking some time out of your day to listen to me to listen to Siobhan we remember to hit that subscribe button so you’re always informed of when our next episode is released. Other than that, as always, like I like to say, remember, be a good human. Have a wonderful day everyone. And I’ll see you in our next episode. Thank you have a great day.