welcome to the secrets to contact success podcast connecting you with the latest and greatest tips from the best and the brightest minds in the industry i am blessed stevenson founder of bravotrek our sales leadership system enables contact centers to increase revenue and achieve their sales growth targets today i'm joined by rob inslo and darren preen from cloud tech gurus uh robin derek welcome along thank you for having us thanks very much good to have you here darren let's start with you tell us a bit about your background and also about cloud tech gurus certainly well um i formerly was in real estate and then commercial real estate until uh the end of 2008 and you remember what happened then and uh i never would have left that industry i loved it but uh it broke me so i had to look for something new and i just fell into the contact center industry and for about 12 years i either was in sales or running sales for various sas companies primarily cloud contact center platforms right and uh and it was a good industry for me and i'm thankful that i fell into it um since i couldn't sing or dance i had limited prospects for what to do after commercial real estate so i was lucky to find the contact center industry and i love the people and i love the industry and in my time working sales and running sales for companies i found some commonalities uh when it comes to sourcing technologies and i found some common pain points and problems so uh and we'll we'll delve more into those later but what we we actually formed cloudtech gurus to create a better way for companies a better more efficient more effective way for them to source technology solutions contact center and also communications in a few other areas and uh and we think we've done it we think we've come up with something that's revolutionary revolutionary and we think that we will transform how companies source technology solutions in the future so it's been a big passion project for me and my partners and uh we're just so thrilled to be on here to talk about it cool cool thanks jared rob how about for you what's what's your background and i know that you're passionate about the work that you do uh with cloud tech gurus just tell us about uh why you're so passionate yeah very passionate i think um you know i think john c maxwell said it best it find something you'd like to do so much you'd gladly do it for nothing then learn to do it so well people are happy to pay for it you know i i entered this the contact center industry working for my first call center in 2009 and then my first ccas provider uh entry-level sales developer position in 2010 and then worked my way uh up through through uh uh on to inside an inside sales floor and then a field sales position in under two years and so you know i was just fortunate um and and i worked hard but uh along the way i really you know it it became something that not only did i become more skilled at uh just like with anything but but uh my background you know i'm an entrepreneur at heart and so when you know when uh when this opportunity with cloud tech gurus came along it was a no-brainer and it's something that i it's true i always kind of fascinate it was fascinated and and fantasized about becoming you know either deloitte or or accenture consultant you know instead of selling just one solution and this is fantastic because it gives us that opportunity to walk into you know a room and and help a company uh be object objective uh you know and have their best interests in life that's what i love about it cool and uh i love your backgrounds and it's really clear and in terms of your kind of value proposition that you're you're technology matchmakers so i just uh i just curious about you know you're effectively your middlemen so what's the value you add to both your suppliers and your clients yeah so first and foremost to to our suppliers about 60 percent a lot of our obviously all of our vendors and suppliers are technology providers i would say around 60 north american uh revenue for software companies comes from and you know darren it has i've i've sat with him and watched him coach and really teach that concept to ceos of companies that you know might might not have ever heard of that and so it's it's uh so the advantage to them is is being able to to help get their you know product out there with you know a legion you know sales team uh legion you know and sometimes hundreds of folks independent contractors all were independent consultants all working with their own books of business and to be able to get it out there without even really putting anything down so no money down on that sort of investment uh just the willingness to pay on the back end on on the on the call center side it's truly a no-brainer because we not only when call centers come to us do we invest you know 60 to 100 hours in painstaking scrupulous research helping them vet out vendors but we do it free of charge because we get compensated by our supplier base and we're vendor agnostic and so they like that and they like not having to you know be bombarded by sales people yeah having just one person to manage all those relationships very cool uh darren one of the things you mentioned to me uh in a previous discussion was you know you really want to source kind of ultra modern customer centric technology with a great value proposition and uh i'm just curious about what sort of technologies are in high demand right now you know right now i think what's what's the hardest is solutions to help companies automate um in some cases in the in customer care for example boy cobit was sure something uh because it identified uh the opportunities where ai and automation solutions could radically improve the customer experience so i remember when uh when i reached out to my satellite radio company and had to wait in queue for over an hour just wanted them to do with that thing they do where they you know ping my radio so that it would work again yeah i'd waited an hour in queue for that um that's something that ai could have handled and uh where they would have had a customer that was much happier and i would have gotten in and out of their queue in about a minute yeah taking an hour of my time right so they're looking at ai they're looking at what areas can ai handle customer care um versus requiring a live agent and the good news is when i was a call center agent those low-level repetitive interactions that's probably why i quit working for the phone company as a call center agent in the late 90s it was just want you just wanted to bang your head on the desk it was just mind-numbing but i loved when i'd get something complex or challenging or you know a big opportunity um that took some creativity and uh and literally what companies have found is that there are interactions that ai can handle especially it's gotten to the point where they ai it can handle really complex interactions we've got one supplier where it can even handle up to 200 client objections just mind blowing it sounds human it uh it speaks like a human not like a robot it can answer it can go back and forth uh very advanced and uh and ultimately companies are finding that if they look at what can ai handle the interactions that it can handle and this isn't just voice it can be across all the digital channels and whatsapp and everything else too the ones that can handle it handles better faster and cheaper than uh with a live agent and more often than not with a higher cx score and if you've got a problem and you want to interact with yours with your vendor your supplier your your electrician or whatever you know ultimately you just want what's going to get your problem resolved or get your question answered as quickly as possible and if ai can do that better than a human and certainly better than a long queue then that makes a lot of sense so they're finding that it's going to improve their customer experience while reducing their costs and it behooves them to look at solutions like that so they're more open now to it than they ever have been and then other automation like robotic process automation we're able to take those manual tasks processes procedures data entry or even taking data from disparate systems and trying to do some trying to do something with it well these solutions can completely automate that and again these are all things that when a call center agent gets a call and they have to take information from one system copy and paste it and then put it in another and maybe there's two or three systems they're doing that well they hate it it's time-consuming and mind-numbing and uh and again if you could automate as much as possible manual processes tasks data entry um it's going to allow the agents for employees to focus on what's their core competency and their and their real jobs the real point of having that role and again it makes their experience the work experience better they're not doing a bunch of things that they can't figure out why they're having to do in the first place right and uh and then the end result is ai does it uh that works 24 7. uh rpa ai 24 7 no sick days no maternity leaves no health care benefits no attrition right yeah and uh and so it's working all the time it does the work of anywhere from two to six humans right so you know let's say that if we look at the time it takes humans to do you know manual tasks and processes and data entry and let's say that person makes 30 grand a year and you have an rpa solution that could do the job of four people so you have four people making 30 grand a year let's make it 25 easier math that's 100 grand a year and the rpa does it for maybe you know 10 10 to 50 grand boy that's pretty pretty uh good return isn't it totally totally so it sounds like you're you're extremely excited about ai uh in particular uh is there anything else that you're kind of excited about in terms of the technologies that are coming through right now so i like the ai i like the ai assistance where essentially this doesn't have to be just for call center agents so imagine in any department of a company you've got somebody who's the very best they're your smee right and if uh and you think to yourself well i wish i could clone them well we've got ai that can clone them not just what they're saying and doing but their cognitive reasoning behind what they say or do and then here's what the end result is so you have new hires coming on and they have their training and let's say training usually takes six weeks well with this with this ai you're able to reduce the training to two or three weeks because it's going to be guiding them through their interactions or uh flows and uh and basically so it reduces training in half it's going to have them performing like your top level person in a matter of weeks not months um so you look at all the costs that it just saved as far as training time and and the speed to getting the agents to performing at the highest level possible and then even taking veteran agents or employees and it's guiding them through their workflows and interactions as well and the end result is uh interaction time is reduced and so really mind-blowing stuff if you could training time and a half and get your employees to be peak top level performing employees in weeks that's just in the roi is 90 days it's just it's a no-brainer awesome disruptive very disruptive and we're always looking for disruptive solutions where there really isn't anything like it in the market and where the roi and the value proposition is just crazy uh like we have one for gig workers for example uh the gig economy is here and so far gig workers have been uber drivers lyft drivers uh usually had to be doing some kind of driving right delivering food and now we've opened up gig workers for contact centers and other types of businesses and literally you have access to a global workforce of independent contractors that have been carefully vetted certified uh qualified and that can be used for a contact center or any virtually any kind of role really um and it reduces the cost of talent acquisition and staffing by about 50 percent and you have talent and uh and a global workforce that you couldn't have either way and imagine surges and spikes uh you know back to the contact center world you know during certain times of the year you need to increase your workforce by 30 40 50 and then lower other times where you need to reduce it you know you can now staff at maybe 80 percent of what you would typically need and use gig workers for all the rest it's it's going to transform the way companies are staffing in the future and it's so great for the public too think about folks that are disabled or think about uh stay-at-home moms that you know they've got degrees and maybe they even had high-level executive roles in companies but hey they they have four hours on a monday and uh in three hours on a tuesday morning well now they're able to find work that isn't driving in high-paying jobs and opportunities with companies that are looking for talent globally that they can use awesome awesome uh and is that part of your business are you are you sourcing those those people through one of our partners we are brilliant rob come back to you uh just curious about some of the performance improvements that these sorts of technologies are achieving for contact skills like real world examples in terms of the some of your clients what do you what do you see uh you know it just really runs the gamut in terms of you know what what types of solutions uh you might be referring to uh but um staggering results when it comes to you know vendors for example that are protecting your existing revenue yeah vendors for example that will you know completely quadruple your output in terms of lead generation um you know so so we've we've got some incredible success stories but but we have uh there's there's one sms provider in particular conversational ai that has generated so much revenue about 25 million in additional revenue for one of their clients in the past 12 months alone and um you know it's been uh in essentially what their technology does is something that is very innovative in terms of you know the execution of ai and and the strategy behind it and so their technology will tap into your existing database it will begin to engage with that database uh via sms and then when it when that conversation matures enough it will send those warm transfers back to the call center and it's been it's been incredible it's amazing yeah dad did that we we met with one of our suppliers today for a training session and basically they have a.i that predicts and prevents uh essentially escalation uh in customer care so the escalations to managers and supervisors and everything else it predicts and analyzes and prevents uh these types of things the savings we learned today was 30 to 60 percent i think 60 was like on the high end but even at 30 percent or 40 savings over how they're handling escalations and service desks and and ticketing that's mind-blowing it is that is it's incredible stuff uh okay direct oh sorry rob you're gonna say something oh i would say the only other thing i would maybe mention is just the the uh we have we have one other solution that and again these are we're kind of conveying to you these these are solutions that you just don't find everywhere right and that's because we we're on the hunt we spend 30 to 40 hours a week as as at cloud tech gurus vetting out new vendors and the best technologies out there innovative cutting edge stuff but we've we've got a a provider that essentially i would describe them as a twilio on steroids but they are a c-lac but essentially what it allows you to do you know as a as an it manager is completely throw your pbx out the window throw bgp out the window for backup because this provider provides a 100 uptime guarantee and has a patented architecture data center architecture uh six data centers they've never gone down um and so when you and everything's api based right so it really becomes you know becomes impossible uh to uh to experience downtime and so the thought of that is a little foreign i think to some mighty managers and yeah um you know call center i.t folks that that you know manage those sorts of things because we we all know how expensive circuits are uh to maintain and to it's just a nightmare tens of thousands of dollars so so just curious uh you guys are based in uh the us i think rob you're in utah and darren i believe you're in arizona am i right scottsdale arizona yeah cool so uh for contact center leaders uh uh uh either north america or even uh the asia pacific area or anywhere else for that matter they're looking for a particular software solution but you know they don't have the time or necessarily uh they may not have the expertise on their team to really kind of do the ground work to identify the companies that are providing these sorts of uh cutting edge solutions how do they get hold of you well you broke one quick content in addition did not want to do the the painstaking research but not wanting to you know google search vendors and then have to do multiple discovery meetings with multiple vendors and then have sales people where every week after they have their pipeline meeting with their boss they start pressuring their prospects to close right they want to avoid all of that all those headaches and frustration they can reach out to us by visiting our website www.cloudtechgurus.com you we even have uh all kinds of really cool marketing about uh next generation and disruptive technology they can add themselves to our our email list and our newsletter list um and of course on our website we have our phone number as well and through through linkedin we live on linkedin and so that's also a great way to reach out to us fantastic fantastic thank you uh darren i really appreciate it rob thank you thank you stanley pleasure well that's it from us today for listeners you'll find the link to the show notes in the episode description below and if you'd like to connect with rob or darren on linkedin you'll also find the link to their linkedin profiles in the description too along with a link to their website and if you'd like to follow me on linkedin you'll find links to my profile there as well well that's it from us today have a productive week
2021-09-25