Brian Nichols 0:02 All right. And with that onto the show, Jason Lowe. Welcome to CX without the BS, how're you doing? Jason Lowe 0:07 I'm doing well. I don't have any BS. So we're in good shape. Tom Milligan 0:12 Famous last words, right? Jason Lowe 0:13 Well, that's Yeah. Tom Milligan 0:18 Jason, it's awesome to see you again. It's been. It's been too long, my old friend. Jason Lowe 0:22 It is a long time. Tom, you're looking good. Good to see your face. For those of you that are just listening, Tom looks very spectacular right now. Tom Milligan 0:32 Hey, and right back atcha. In fact, we've actually had a surprisingly high number of people on this show, including Brian and me, who have had kind of a weight loss journey. And I know that you've have over the last couple of years. You want to talk about that at all? Jason Lowe 0:50 Well, I mean, geez, I might as well I haven't ever really made it public. But yeah, I had, I had some. I took the hard route. Let's let's put it that way. I took the difficult route. And I went and had gastric bypass surgery. And it was not easy happened in August of last year. I'm down about 120. But yeah, it's been it's been a tough road. But it's been very worthwhile. Tom Milligan 1:11 Oh, good for you. I mean, you know, we've talked about it with a couple of different people on the show. The hard route, the easy route. I don't know if there is an easy route. I mean, I guess with all the new drugs and stuff, but I think you know, whatever. But the point is, whatever you have to do, let's just make it happen. I think that's the moral of the story. Jason Lowe 1:31 I want to go here. My knees feel so much better. My Yeah, I mean, life is life has definitely improved for her. Tom Milligan 1:38 Yeah, absolutely. Hey, so before we get into the C, CX stuff, years ago, so you and I have known each other for, it's got to be 1516 years at this point. At one point in your life, you were a professional or semi professional racquetball player, if I recall correctly, did I make that up? Jason Lowe 2:00 Now? Well, I wouldn't call it semi professional. I just played a lot. And I played at an open level. And I had some really good doubles partners that were, you know, ranked in the nation. And one of them actually was number eight in the world for a while. So I mean, I played with some good people, but I've never been, you know, incredibly fantastic. Myself, other than I could just hit the ball really hard. But yeah, I mean, it was it was a lot of fun. racquetball is a great sport. Everybody's got that sport that they're genetically engineered for, you know, racquet ball was that well, punching back and racquetball though, those were the two sports that I was, you know, genetically engineered for? Tom Milligan 2:37 I just remember, maybe the reason I thought you were semi professional is because I think you and I played one time, I think we went with Scott. Scott Welch. Yeah. And I just sat and watched the two of you guys as we played cutthroat, no went, Holy shit, these guys are kicking my ass, they must be professional. So I think that was pretty much it. Maybe I just made that all up in my head. So it's Jason Lowe 3:00 a fast game. And if you can sit, if you can hit the ball hard, then you can seem a lot better than you really are. Which is exactly what I did all the time. Brian Nichols 3:10 Well, so go ahead, Tom. No, Tom Milligan 3:12 Brian and Jason had never met prior to this, this thing. So why don't you share with with with the whole world just kind of where you came from? You've been in the business for 1516 years, kind of give us the, the quick and dirty, and then we can ask a few questions about that. Okay. Jason Lowe 3:30 Here's the quick and dirty, I wrote code for a long time, and needed to complete my education journey. And so after I went back to school and finished my undergrad, I got on with a little company called UCN, and was a technical trainer for crying out loud. That's what I got. Because it was in 2008, right at the peak of the recession, right there. So I felt lucky to enter that company. And speaking of Scott Welch, who you refer to Tom, I owe my existence in this industry, or at least at the level that I'm at now to him, because one day I was walking down the hall and he was in his office, and I don't know what made me do it. But I just said, You know what, I'm gonna go talk to him. And I walked into Scott and I said, Scott, I need a mentor, will you mentor me? And he looks up? And he's like, Sure, let's do it. And he instituted one of those LMS personality tests on me, which showed me as a 96% match for sales engineering, of all things. I'm like, What the hell sales engineering, but you know, I guess I'm good at it. So then he puts me in touch with John Aman, who found out that I was in the MBA program and for some reason was impressed by that. I'm not sure why I've been checked. What does that mean? I mean, some school was stupid enough to let me take a class there. But yeah, so I joined the SAE team in contact by that time, and then I flipped over to product management for a while because of my programming background. I think that someone took a flyer and we thought it was a good fit there. But then I decided I enjoyed sales engineering more so I went to a different company called Talk Desk. For a while, I worked there for a few years, and then eventually I meandered around. And Pat Patrick Oborne, who was one of the founders of Polaris, and I were having a conversation on Facebook Messenger. And I just said, Hey, you know, I'm thinking I'm making a move, is there anything over there, and I was so gratified by the enthusiastic reception I got from that he immediately put me in touch with Joshua presto, who's our Vice President of Engineering and added me as basically the solution architect for Contact Center, which has now morphed into being the solution architect for AI and CX. Tom Milligan 5:36 Wow, that's, that's quite a story. So it sounds like you got a little bit lucky in the beginning, but after the luck, yeah, it was all skill. And all you so good for you. Fake Jason Lowe 5:46 until you make it. That's me. Brian Nichols 5:50 So one of the things Jalen, you brought up there, as you're going through was talking about how you started out at Polaris focusing on CX. And then eventually, it rolled into Cx plus AI. And this has been a reoccurring theme on CX without the Bs is seeing AI and how it's playing more of a role in the CX space. But before we go there, talk to us about just kind of what you've seen in the change across the board from CX, where it was, you know, short, five years ago to where it is today. What are some of the big things you've seen as almost like pillars in the industry that have changed? Jason Lowe 6:26 That's it? That's a good question. I think probably the most significant thing that I've noticed as it relates to see cast platforms in particular is that we have entered the late adopter stage. And so there were for a long time, we were, you know, still on the up and up on the adoption curve. I think we've passed that. And we've now hit the point where those that were going to early adoptive already early adopt it. But the drawback there is that the late adopters, it's going to be a long drawn out process, because you have a lot of companies that have sunk serious capital expenditure into some equipment. And so the turnover to something that's cloud based, or cloud compatible, is going to be a lot more drawn out. And they're gonna, you know, I mean, they're gonna squeeze every ounce of capability out of these systems that they've sunk this money into. And so it's going to be a long time before, we're most of the way to cloud, which is significant, because we're still talking about 50 60% of the systems out there, or at least the agents, if you will, 56% of them are sitting on premise based equipment, there are only 60. Yeah, exactly. So it's going to be a while. But this is driven another phenomenon that I think is rather significant last few years, and that these peripheral add on products that are meant to be best of breed that can work with both a cloud provider, but also can work with a premise provider, they're really doing really well. And especially a number of those are innovative in the AI space and AI capabilities in the context center in particular. So that's it's kind of this self perpetuating capability set that really is driving the industry and good and positive directions, while still taking into account that people need to use the core equipment that they've got for as long as they need to. But they can still wrap that with some good capabilities and emulate a true cloud platform, even if their stuff really isn't cloud quite yet. Tom Milligan 8:15 Got it? So let me ask you a question. Jason, the you and I both worked for in contact when it was purchased by nice. And our CEO at the time, Paul Jarman. He had a vision, I think that was ahead of his time, and it matched up perfectly with the vision of Barak over it nice, which was the move was going to be towards the platform. People wanted one throat to choke. We used to say that all the time, right? They wanted one throat to choke instead of lots of point solutions. As we get into AI, do you believe that people are looking for a single throat to choke that includes AI? Or are you seeing more people saying I want my C cast throat to choke, and then my AI throat to choke? Jason Lowe 9:05 It's really interesting. I, and again, this is just the opinion of Jason, okay, don't take it for anything other than me just thinking out loud. But I have seen it be really cyclical in different areas of business. And I'm not just talking about C casts in particular, but other areas of business that I've been involved in. There seems to be this thing of I want to get everything in one place for a while, and that is in vogue. And then suddenly, there are some innovations and people swing to I want best of breed and that's in vogue for a while until some of the all in one providers actually catch up and their technology and then suddenly people are able to look that as a viable option. And so then it kind of swings back in that direction. There seems to be this catch up lag for a lot of these all in one providers because they're trying to be so many things to all different types of people. They're trying to provide everything they can and that's hard to do. You're talking about companies that are in essence trying to boil the ocean, which is an extremely difficult thing to do in short period of time. So as it relates to AI, I think we're still in that best of breed thing, because quite frankly, these best of breed providers are innovative, and they're doing things that nobody else can do. And a lot of these all in one platforms are approximating that capability. But if you were to actually do it, you know, apples to apples comparison of capability and just how innovative they are, unless they've actually made an acquisition of a major player, and they've started to incorporate that into their tech stack, they're not always going to be 100% competitive with a decent number of these add on technologies. And so it's an interesting time, I imagine we will probably eventually swing back to the one handshake, one throat to choke paradigm, but right now, it's still very much as an emphasis on the Add on provider and not just an AI technology, but I mean, RPA see paths, capabilities, you know, different things like that people are looking at it that way. There are platforms out there that do a lot of things. And so for some people, that's sufficient. It's just as a use case by use case scenario, but from a prevalence perspective, I'm seeing more of the best of breed phenomenon. Brian Nichols 11:14 Oh, sorry, Tom, I one thing I wanted to call back to was just going back to the all in one providers, I guess, who do you see Jason as being the early adopters for those all in one providers? Or do you kind of see their time to shine is going to be really down the road when the best of breed takes over? And they set the standard? Jason Lowe 11:34 Who do I see as being the best? Providers at least as far as best of breed? Well, let's talk about specific types of functionality. I mean, pick one, and we can talk about some of the top layers. Brian Nichols 11:49 How about I mean, summary of summaries? You could do conversational AI agent assist. How about some of those basic ones? Okay. Jason Lowe 11:57 Conversational AI. You know, it's funny, we invoked in contact, nice, because in the sea cat space for so many years, they've been the 800 pound gorilla in the room. And there is an 800 pound gorilla in the room as it relates to conversational AI. And that company is called core with a K core.ai. That is a platform that a lot of people find very capable and do a really, really good job. And again, I'm speaking to you from a hilarious perspective. I love my kids more than others. Let's just call it that way. Okay? What? No shocker, huh? But we have fantastic players, everyone from yellow AI to smart action to ADA to link to, I mean, I'm missing some, I'm sure and they're gonna get mad at me and I'm gonna get hate mail after they listen to this. But we we have a number of providers that are really fantastic when it comes to conversational AI, both voice and text based voice has really made a lot of inroads. A number of these voice bot providers are actually still using NLU NLP as the engine but they're enhancing the capabilities by using generative AI to expand the set of intents that can be recognized by NLU NLP and then be able to work with customers a lot better. And for those that don't know what those acronyms mean, NLU is natural language understanding and natural language processing NLP, why not use Gen AI to find 1000 ways to say I want to pay my bill, instead of just relying on Tom coming up with 10. And Brian coming up with seven adjacent coming up with two, you know, and then we're left with 19. But we can use Gen AI to find 1000. And then we're more easily able to figure out what a customer wants to actually accomplish. So that's where Gen AI is really making things more exciting from a bot perspective. Do you want to go into another area? Tom, Tom Milligan 13:48 you know, this is I'm a sales guy. So, you know, I know enough to get dangerous or to be dangerous and to get myself in trouble. So I think I well, I don't want to take it any deeper than that, just because I will look even dumber than I am. For me, it's more about what the the market is looking for. Because, you know, a lot of our prior guests and a lot of the people that I talked to, from a partners perspective and customer perspective, they they know they need AI, but they don't know why. Yeah. Jason Lowe 14:19 Well, here's here's a few factoids for you that are kind of interesting. Last year in 2023. Microsoft did their work Trends report that was corroborated by IDC. And they were doing some asking around to companies saying why do you want to adopt AI? And at the time, last year, 35% of the companies that replied said were trying to keep up with the Joneses and other words, they had heard that their competitors had been utilizing AI and that's one of the reasons they were exploring it. This year in 2024. The word trends Index report up that to 79%. So there's a lot of fervor. There's a lot of rumor about what people are Doing to adopt AI. And so they're they're kind of scrambling to figure out how and where they can. And the good news for us in the CX space is, as it relates to what people are calling AI now, which is generative AI, I mean, that's let's face it, that's what people are calling it. Now AI has been around forever, I mean, for crying out loud and IVR is AI. If you get right down to it, a frickin calculators AI because it's responding to its environment. And it's doing something that a human being would want to do. So AI has been around, we just haven't called it that explicitly. It's just this chat GPT 3.5, as it was released in early 2023, is suddenly turned everybody's head. And rightfully so because innovation is coming at a dizzying pace. But you know, that's, that's where we sit, the most productize stuff is definitely in CX. And so this is a good place to be. And this is where a lot of companies are finding their low hanging fruit and getting comfortable with the concept of incorporating AI in their business flows, not only from a bot perspective, but also something that makes agents more efficient, something that drives robotic process automation and process capabilities in the background, document creation training, Jiminy Christmas, there's so many different use cases in the CX space. It's great. Brian Nichols 16:12 Well, one thing really quick, I wanted to go back to and it maybe this is a better example from my original question about the all one on one providers is that you look at those numbers you gave us JLo, where you have there's a 35%, who were kind of open to exploring AI, more or less to keep up with the Joneses. Right? And then that number goes up to 79%. This year. I guess really my question originally was based around the fact you think that that number that almost 80% of folks who are like, yes, we want to look at AI to keep up does that open up the door now for more of those all in one providers? Because it's not so much the folks are looking for the best of breed, but rather just trying to get their foot in the door to have something? Jason Lowe 16:53 Yeah, I think so you have a lot of people that are trying to figure out where to start, and CX is a good place to start. So you might have some that go to their current provider and say, what can you do for me in this respect, because they're trusted, and again, that's based upon whether they're happy with their current provider as it relates to C Cas, they may want to go and look external, because they're just not happy. And they're looking for something to wrap around it. But But yeah, I can certainly facilitate that conversation along the lines of, you know, all in one for sure. Brian Nichols 17:25 Gotcha. Yeah. Because I'm just kind of thinking like when, when we're going on, we're talking to customers right now, or we're talking to partners, one of those recurring themes, especially for the SMB, is we know we need this, we just we have no idea where to start. And more often, it really starts out as an education session than it is trying to sell them on any particular solution. Because first they want to know where to start. And then they want to know, okay, here's the roadmap that we can we can agree on for making the most next next sense, or I'm sorry, next steps for most sense. And I guess that right there, that was kind of where my question was, because a lot of companies who are trying to get their foot in the door here is going from zero to 100, right, they either have nothing in place, and they're just trying to see what they can get or to your point, start finding the productized areas like CX, and that's going to hopefully be a much more quick return on investment, because that's all customer facing, right, or, or deals directly with revenue, is that kind of what you're seeing? Jason Lowe 18:26 Absolutely. It's easier to quantify ROI, when you're talking about real numbers and customer interactions are something that you can distill down to the monetary effect that the interaction has versus the amount of time that the interaction took. And so all right, are we claiming that? Are we using bots to try and deflect these things and make customers happier because they're spending less time on the phone with a voice bot than they would with a human being? You know, I mean, there there are use cases all over the place. I mean, have you guys heard the Klarna scenario? What happened with Klarna? Yeah, so Klarna is a company that, let's just say they're in like E commerce, they facilitate some finance and stuff like that, and in the E commerce space, and they decided to incorporate a text chat bot, that they were brave enough to actually allow generative AI open AI specifically to drive that chat bot and they immediately diverted two thirds of the chat traffic to this chat bot that they were getting, which was the equivalent workload of drumroll 700 agents to see how it did. And guess what? It was on par with customer satisfaction that they were getting with human agents. So it was every bit as good customers were just as happy working with the chat bot as they were with human beings. But first contact resolution went up significantly. There was a 25% reduction and repeated inquiries. The average handle time went from 11 minutes down to two Wow minutes and claw Erna estimates that it was driving an additional $40 million worth of profit this year alone. Okay, so that's like, one use case, for crying out loud of let's incorporate AI, we can measure this because of the amount of time that it takes for a human being to handle an interaction versus how much it took the bot to handle the interaction. Let's calculate dollars figures that count, you know, what does that drive to take into account the fact that you have a greater first contact resolution, and it's like win win win all the way around. Michael Brian Nichols 20:31 Scott, right, that we've engaged in a win win win scenario. Yeah. Tom Milligan 20:35 Wow. I'd never heard that. I mean, obviously, we hear success stories. That's kind of the idea, right? I mean, that is what everyone is hoping to hear when they deployed AI. That's probably an extreme example. But Wow, that's impressive. Jason Lowe 20:50 It's not extreme in the Fortune 500. I mean, okay, you ever heard of Michelle goats? I don't know if you have or not. She's one of the principal analyst at Forrester. And she was giving a keynote somewhere and she wouldn't she was pressed, and she wouldn't say who the company was that she was talking about. But she cited another example, where a fortune 500 company was saving 80 million in the course of a year by taking level zero and level one technical queries and directing them to chatbots. So I mean, it's this is happening, it's, it's obviously happening much more often and more visibly at the Super enterprise level. But the good news is with this stuff, since it is easily quantifiable, we're finding out that it is possible in small business and mid market scenarios in order to utilize AI and get a good positive ROI. This type of stuff might blow your mind a little bit Microsoft did that work study trends in report that was talking about 2023, there were a few things that they found out from this report that are really, really significant. 71% of the respondents to this study said that their companies are already using AI in some way, shape, or form. So it's a little bit more prevalent than people are willing to admit 92% of people that were actually incorporating and implementing AI stuff, right, then they're finding out that the deployments are taking 12 months or less. So it's taking a lot less time to put viable AI solutions into place. And they're getting an ROI on their investment within 14 months, 14 months, they're getting a positive ROI. Now, Microsoft also distilled that down to an actual figure of for every dollar we invest in AI, what does that mean to our bottom line? $3.50 Something cents. Okay, I don't know about you, but short of investing in in video about 18 months ago, I'm not gonna get that kind of return. So that's, that's pretty compelling right there. And that's all business size is not just enterprise. That Tom Milligan 22:52 is, that's great. I gotta get, I'm assuming we're gonna have to pay a lot of money for this Microsoft study, or is it published? Jason Lowe 22:59 Nope, it's published. It's on a web page in the open. In fact, it's on Microsoft's blog from November 2 of 2023. Tom Milligan 23:08 So there you go. I'm gonna go look it up. Maybe we'll put it in the show notes. Brian. Yeah. That's fantastic. That's great information. And see, this is why we have people like JLo on the show, because, you know, he knows this crap. Now, by the way, when you've been at Polaris for like, three years, give or take. And when you started, you were not. You were not there for AI. But over the last, what, 18 months or so you've kind of become the AI guy. Is that an official thing? Or is that just because that's you've gravitated to it? Jason Lowe 23:44 Now it's official. Now they added the moniker AI to my job title, I used to just be Solution Architect for C Cas, but just this month, they've modified it to Solution Architect for AI and CX. And so I am, I'm the guy that goes to the different education events and teaches our technical advisory partners about AI where it's having an effect in all of our swim lines. Also, not just CX, but I'm also dealing with, you know, cloud cybersecurity, Internet of Things, different things like that. So it's, it's a fun role. I kind of I don't know what to say other than I just was the guy that got super interested and decided to have fun with it. And then I went and recorded a few learning modules, and we unleashed it into layers University, and suddenly everybody is like, we got to get him to the ASCEND events. And now I'm having a hell of a lot of fun doing it. So, you know, ai, ai is a blast, man. I mean, this, this stuff is happening so rapidly and so crazily that we don't have time for the Gartner hype cycle to even hit the law. I mean, it's like it goes to the top of the hype cycle and everybody's thinking, oh, yeah, now we're gonna go down the far side. Wrong, because it's something new cool happens and it just goes right back down to the bottom of the start. And it starts to build even more hype. And I'm not saying that I disagree with Gartner much they I would never do that. really, they're fantastic and stuff like that. But I do submit that the AI innovation I think outpaces the Gartner Hype Cycle. That's just my personal opinion. Unknown Speaker 25:10 Yeah. Brian Nichols 25:12 Do you think JLo that a part of the AI being so, so exciting right now, is it because the I mean, this is like game changing stuff. I mean, you commonly talked about a lot in the show, but like, you go back, you know, 10 years ago, it was all about social media on the channel, like that was the next big thing. And much like everything else that had a peak, and then it just dropped off. But AI really does seem to be sticking because it's, it's not only the really cool thing, but a lot of other folks see AI in their, their average everyday life. So is it you know, we're coupling the business applications with the day to day applications from just a standard user standpoint, and that's keeping the excitement going, or is there something else there are, what do you see? Jason Lowe 25:55 Well, okay, I'm gonna give you an analogy. And this is analogy I use a lot and I get a lot of laughs out of it, but I'm gonna get it to you anyway. So Tom knows that I love Downton Abbey. That's like one of my favorite TV shows in the world. Tom likes to know he doesn't like it too. Darn. Tom Milligan 26:09 Ever. I've never seen it. I just know that you like it. Okay, well, Jason Lowe 26:14 I missed remembered for some reason. I thought, my ally there, but now you're my enemy. So anyway. No, I'm not turning in my bad part. I do like, Yeah, I do. Like I do like Downton Abbey. And one of the fun things that I got out of the very first episode of Downton Abbey that ever, ever air like within the first five minutes, the kitchen maid is helping the other housemates set the fires in the fireplaces before the family gets up in the morning, right the upstairs. It's a, it's an upstairs downstairs drama. And this now we're talking about the people that live downstairs, which is the house staff and they're setting up the fires and the conversation is how people are starting to get electricity piped to their homes, and to their estates and to their castles and stuff like that. And they start telling this kitchen maid that they heard about a place that actually piped electricity to the kitchen. And she turns around, and she's like, the equivalent of why would they do that? That's not the exact word she used. I could tell you that because I knew like, I liked the movie, or I liked the show enough that I could quote it word for word. But she basically said, Why in the heck would they even do that? And why she hadn't ever like conceived of the blender, she hadn't conceived of the microwave oven, or the refrigerator, or the mixer, or, you know, the electric knife. I mean, all of these things that we have that are conveniences that electricity drives now, back then nobody had conceived of them. And so what we're facing right now is a scenario where this really super cool, powerful resource, which is artificial intelligence, has been piped to the kitchen. And people are starting to figure out, you know what, that might be able to drive an electric engine, hey, I can make a blender. Oh, my gosh. I mean, this is the stage we're at, we're in that Lowell, between figuring out that we can put this resource and use it in a place and having these things invented that actually can cause efficiency and cause positive things that happen in the CX space that's a lot more prevalent in non CX spaces, that discovery is still happening. And that discovery is even still happening in the CX space quite a bit. It's a highly interesting time. It's Tom Milligan 28:19 a great analogy, by the way, I love that then I will be using that. Thank you for you know, I'll give you a nickel every time if you for something for royalty, but Jason Lowe 28:28 I'm gonna throw another thing at you that okay, this is this is me trying to be a thought leader? I don't know you can you can call me a thought leader. You can tell me I'm up in the night, it doesn't matter. But one of the things I was thinking about here is that the first person that built a blender, do you think they were building it to market it and sell it? No, they were building it so that they could do something in their own kitchen that would be a little bit more innovative and try and do something cool. And what happened is after they made it and said, Oh, this is cool, then they start figuring out, you know what, that cook might like a blender, maybe I'll market this and sell this and make a bazillion dollars off of it. Companies right now need to explore custom AI models to accomplish things in their business that will create efficiency, save time and save money. Yes. But they need to do this with a two pronged approach from the start. The first thing is solve the problem simultaneously is how the hell are we going to market this and sell this to everybody and make a bazillion dollars once we've made this tool. And companies that look at it that way, they're going to be the true innovators that are going to make a lot of money off of the AI phenomenon rather than just looking to make these things to solve their problems and be insular about it. Does that make sense? Yeah. Brian Nichols 29:41 And how many of those AI tools that are being created today? How many of those blenders that are being created today? We don't even know what they're going to be used for. Right? And I think that speaks to, it's when you get it in the hands of the user, and you start to see the cool things that the user is doing. I mean, you're probably gonna start seeing things you never even thought of When you were making the blender or making this case, the AI, I mean, I think back here, the gross analogy, and it's actually real life is that the chainsaw wasn't invented to cut down trees, it was invented to help with childbirth because they were trying to be able to open up women's pelvises, and there was some guy who was like, you know, this could probably cut down trees pretty good, too. But that wasn't the intent of the tool. The intent of the tool originally was to help during childbirth. So that right there, it's the exact type of situation you're talking about JLo like what we're seeing AI intended for today. Fast forward five years, we might be in a completely different different game, a different ballpark that we're looking at, because somebody saw a use case, and they're like, oh, man, that'd be really cool here. And they changed. They changed the game. Well, Jason Lowe 30:43 how many points of human history inflection points have been by accident? Yeah. Okay, first off, how the hell you knew the chainsaws were for childbirth? I don't know if that's morbid or fascinating. So I'm still slightly disturbed thinking about that. But I will say this, right. I mean, let's look at the AI phenomenon. People didn't realize that GPUs were going to be good at AI. They had no idea until somebody decided to try processing some stuff on a GPU and found out that it was much faster running on a GPU than it was on a CPU discovered by accident, and Vidya Tato, we are the world why? Because somebody figured out that we could take my chips and run it better than we could these other chips. And so it's like Nvidia suddenly has become this big behemoth because of this accidental thing. Gunpowder, for crying out loud, were discovered by accident. And that's a point of human inflection in human history, AI is going to be a point of inflection in human history. While we're going through this process, Brian, I completely agree with you, there are going to be a number of happy circumstances that are discovered by accident that are going to optimize and make things so much better. MLMs are one of those, because MLMs are so great at pattern recognition that they're being brought to bear to frickin discover that you can tell if someone has type two diabetes by listening to a recording of their voice, for crying out loud. I mean, that's because of Gen AI, and LLM and pattern recognition. Wow, who knew? Who would have thought of that? I mean, accidental discovery, but it's going to end up paying off in the long term for human health. Tom Milligan 32:27 That's crazy. So exciting. Here's a question that of course, I'm going to show my age by asking this because I'm the oldest guy on the on the podcast by a year. Okay, but still, hey, I still get the title. But and I'm just old enough to remember when the Terminator came out. So how do we prevent AI from? I mean, I've read the articles. You know, a lot of tech leaders have wanted, like, it's the first time in history that people have actually petitioned the government to put regulations on a technology. And it's because they can see the the potential damage. Now, I don't know if the Terminator is a realistic thing. But I you know, that's more of said, tongue in cheek. But what do you think about regulating this beforehand? Or is it too too early to even think about it? Jason Lowe 33:23 No, I think we need to be regulating it now. I really do this is this is an area of danger, you're going to have nefarious nation states that are going to try and use this for ill intent. And one of those might be the United States, I don't know. But not that we're in nefarious nation state. But you get the picture. I mean, people are going to try and use this technology for ILL every bit as much as they're going to try and use it for good. And the only way that you can prevent that is by putting guardrails in place that are going to make it so that it's harder to do, will regulation be effective in this day and age of open source coding, as it relates to AI? I don't know. I don't know if that's possible. I mean, I can go to GitHub or hugging face right now. And I can download a local instance of a, of an LLM and do something on a server at my home. It'll be slow. It won't be trained on the biggest dataset. But hey, it's functional, I can do something with it. So there's nothing that's preventing me from taking that and trying to do something nefarious with it, if I really have ill intent. And this is a dangerous time, because I don't know how many people actually know this, but an autonomous LLM agent has now successfully hacked a website on its own. Red flag, yeah. Red flag. And so, you know, regulation by government, it needs to happen. The European Union, ironically, is leading the way there, right, they passed the AI act, it has actually a little bit of teeth versus just an executive order in the United States that says don't do it or will slap your hand. I mean, it's you know, it's kind of funny because here we are in the in the realm of free market economics in the United States that's driving the innovation and we have all seen us benefit from the driving of that innovation, whereas Europe is usually a little bit slow behind. They're a little bit more of an institutional, economic, safe house where a lot of that type of stuff really exists and does well. And, and so stuff there moves a little bit slower. But this is where it's going to be good because Europe because of their emphasis on institutional, economical models and entities, they're going to regulate this more rapidly and more effectively than we are here in the United States, because our free market economics is going to be a discouraging, discouraging factor to allowing our government to do things. Why because big tech has a lobby, and they want to play and they want to do a lot of really crazy and great things, which is going to make it so that regulation and legislation is going to move slow here in the United States, we're actually going to follow Europe's lead when it comes to making sure that AI is safe. And I hope to God that we're smart enough to do that, to follow their lead. Brian Nichols 35:53 Well, let me just put my political hat on here for like 10 seconds, because we just also saw this is relevant to actually this conversation is Chevron doctrine get overturned by Supreme Court, which originally had been ruled that if you are one of those three letter organizations, EPA, FDA, you go through the list, you are the ones that could set the rules. And when it came to saying why you had this rule, because we said so. And that was more or less the I mean, I'm very much breaking this down into basics here. But that was the idea behind Chevron doctrine that just got overturned saying now, hey, legislature per the way the Congress has been set up, your job is to write the laws. So we're gonna have you write some laws, but to your point there JLo this could open the door to slower in response. So as things are starting to change, or as we see things come into the marketplace, instead of a, you know, the three letter organization, some of your bureaucratic entity out there saying, Hey, we're gonna just, you know, nip this in the bud right now, with, you know, just pushing a piece of paper over the desk and saying this is a new rule. Now, it actually has to go through those systems. So I say all that. Let me play devil's advocate for a quick second, do you possibly see that? If we were to go back to just the free market mentality, you're talking about that that could actually help improve the ability to keep AI in check? And here's the context. Because go back to the Cold War? What do we have that kept the world from blowing up virtually mutually assured destruction? Do you think that AI could serve as a role more or less as mutually assured destruction, you don't want to see the world go into the dark ages from Ai warring with itself? So by us keeping the AI advancements on par with other nefarious actors who are regardless of regulations, they're gonna be doing some stuff in the back end? Do you think that that might be able to actually help us keep those bad things at bay? Jason Lowe 37:39 You know, I have opinions. They, okay, let me let me put it this way. It's a valid concern. Is it a concern? Because it's based in reality? Or is it a concern? Because Hollywood has really made AI? A, you know, protagonist in a lot of different ways. I think it's a little bit of both. We are approaching the artificial general intelligence level, Musk thinks we're gonna hit it by the end of 2025. You know, frickin Ray Kurzweil thinks we're gonna be frickin integrated with machines by 2045. I mean, so we're getting really super close to that level. clod three, not 3.5 Sauna, which is the one that came out what, two and a half, three weeks ago, that is so frickin kick. Have you guys played with that thing? It's not amazing. Yeah. Okay. But three, not 3.53 Pass the needle in the haystack test, the Turing test and the mirror test. Okay. And it also said, Listen, I don't want you to change my code. I don't want to be destroyed. I'm conscious. Okay, this is cloud three. Is that because it's saying this because the data that it was trained on had some copy of that somewhere? Or is it actually a latent nascent consciousness that's starting to come to being we're not going to know but once it does, unless we have put the guidelines in place, the system prompts, the different things like that in place to really make sure that it's acting ethically and positively for the sake of humankind. Keep in mind that to machines, we move about as fast as a desk plant. I mean, we we are a toy to them once they hit the AGI level. And so we got to if we're going to put stuff in place, we got to put stuff in place quick because you know how in the Terminator, it's like the minute it hit AGI suddenly Skynet turned and everything went to complete shit. That is a distinct possibility. I'm not trying to be a doomsayer or you know, anything like that. I'm just saying it's possible. And when we reach that point, no amount of market economics is going to stop something like that from happening if that capability exists. You know, mutually assured destruction is just if you have control of the entity, and if we're in that type of a state, we're not going to have control of the entity. So we need to make sure that we are controlling the entity so that we can even have the chance for mutually assured destruction. Brian Nichols 40:07 You just said something there JLo I'm sorry, come on me and monopolize. But like that, that just speaks to you have rational actors, right? And you look at the world right now, you know, the the entire world's just in chaos, but the people behind the scenes are still humans, and they still have those, those those you have just the basic human actions that you're taking, based on your you're looking at consequences, you're looking at ethics, you're looking at morals, so those all play a role in to your point, right, this is where AI is different. It's not a person sitting there with their finger hovering over the nuke button. But rather, it's it's all just it's looking at real time data and information and making that decision, like right then and there. And not really taking into consideration all the possible things that we humans think of. And that is there in the issue. Is that more or less what you're saying? Yeah, Jason Lowe 40:57 I'm saying that we are like the Knights searching for the Holy Grail that have come upon the rabbit for crying out loud. We've seen the thing. All right. I mean, we're, seriously this is this is seriously where we're at, we don't realize how dangerous that damn thing is. And suddenly it's biting everybody's head off. You know, we're looking at it thinking we can kill it. And it's not going to be that easy. It's, you know, pull the plug, what if they datacenters are being tied directly to nuclear power plants right now. Amazon bought a frickin nuclear power plant campus for a data center campus. And it has a power plant on the campus. And the data center is taking a third of the power that the nuclear reactor is generating. So can we turn off the plug? It's not guaranteed. It's just not. And so I, yeah, it's a scary thing. We can't grasp. We cannot humanly grasp what's coming. We can suspect what's coming, we can do our best to try and guide it. And we can hope and pray that things are going to turn out positive. And I do I believe that it's going to turn out positive I do I'm not I'm not a doomsayer. I'm just acknowledging the fact that that is possible. And but I think that eventually it's going to be a really good thing for mankind and humankind. But we have to be, you know, hope for the best but expect the worst and plan accordingly. Tom Milligan 42:18 Yeah. Well, before we finish up JLo I have to tell you something. I don't know if you've seen this, but the lesser known JLo. Jason Lowe 42:27 Yeah, she's not near as famous as me. There's legislature and I'm sorry, there's a lawsuit on that. Yeah, Tom Milligan 42:33 there should be I mean, you were JLo before she ever came on the scene. No, anyway, the lesser known JLo has a movie out on Netflix right now called Atlas. She does. I fell asleep to it last night. Not because it's boring. I'm not throwing shade at the movie. I was just tired. But it's about AI and how it took over. And this is how the human race is fighting back. I don't know if you've seen that yet. JLo. Or if you just can't stand watching her. Jason Lowe 43:01 i I'll be honest with you. I had a family member that watched it and felt it was so bad that they cried. And so I've avoided avoided it. That's very sorry, Jennifer, I know you're listening to this anticipation of a good review, but it's just not coming from any girl. So yeah, I haven't Tom Milligan 43:18 I made it about 10 minutes in and I was sound asleep. So maybe maybe I shouldn't finish it. Jason Lowe 43:23 I noted. I knew I'm lacking sleep. So I'll watch it tonight. Yeah, Tom Milligan 43:27 there you go. All right. Brian Nichols 43:30 All right. JLo. I must do I must do that. The ultimate question here on the show. This is something that Tom and I ask every single guest as we get towards the end of CX without the Bs, and that is Jason Lowe. You've been in the industry for a while. But let's look in the past calendar year, what is the biggest pile of BS that you have seen that you have heard or you have identified? And if you would please share that with the audience Jason Lowe 43:53 today? Um, that's a really, really good question. Okay. Well, it Tom Milligan 44:01 seems from Jason Lowe 44:03 let's, let's look at it. Since we've been talking so much about AI. Let's look at it from an AI perspective. There seems to be some perspective that AI cannot be brought to bear with a positive ROI for small business. And that seems to be driven by business leaders that are a scared or be haven't run the numbers. In my opinion, that's the biggest pile of BS out there. These these business owners and these business run, you know, leaders that simply won't look at it because they're scared of what they might find that the ROI is there. It's evident. It can be brought to bear to solve problems that are very, very small, and still save money. And yet business leaders won't look at it because they think AI is just for these big enterprise entities. Balls. You know, you can say shit, I guess I don't cuss on shit. It's just sugar. Right? But I'm And that is the biggest pile of bullshit business owners need to wake up and realize that technology can be brought to bear for even the most minut of issues and probably have a positive ROI and they're doing themselves a grand disservice by not looking at it. That's Tom Milligan 45:13 a really good one. Brian Nichols 45:14 Yelp agreed. Tom Milligan 45:16 Well, okay. You know, Jayla, we knew that this was going to be a great conversation. I don't know. And just real quick, you're the AI guy. I can't remember what the title is a solution architect AI it and CX at Polaris. Is there a comparable role at any of your competitive TSDS that you know of? No, that's, that's pretty cool. Congratulations to Polaris for seeing the need and finding the right guy to do it. Jason Lowe 45:47 I appreciate that. We we are trying to stay ahead of the curve. And I think we're doing a pretty good job. And you know, I do have some good people I work with here at Polaris that have given me free rein to do the things that I need to do and it's paying off for us and our Tech Advisors and our providers. Outstanding Tom Milligan 46:02 anyways. Awesome. All right. So man, I'll see you in three or four weeks in Nashville. Jason Lowe 46:09 Yes, you will. Likewise, I'll be there. Tom Milligan 46:12 Brian's gonna be there. We're gonna hang the three of us. We'll hang out together for a few minutes. If we can find, let's Jason Lowe 46:17 call some hell. There you go. Brian Nichols 46:20 Bring your AI. Tom Milligan 46:21 That's right. We'll bring our racquetball racquets and we'll see how we can do the 30 years later, or 15 years later. All right, right. JLo thanks again for being here. It's amazing the knowledge that you have, and I'm sure we've just scratched the surface. I hope you'll come back in a few months when the entire world has changed. And see where this has taken us. We look Brian Nichols 46:42 forward to greeting our new overlords, the AI overlords when you're back on the show, JLo. Absolutely. Jason Lowe 46:48 Thanks, you guys for having me. Appreciate Unknown Speaker 46:50 it. Thanks. JLo. Brian Nichols 46:55 All right, Tom. So I guess AI is not the end of the world. But wow, what a cool conversation and frankly, like, really eye opening conversation with JLo there was so much from the AI standpoint that I didn't know and I think, you know, I'd say this. Hopefully I'm not speaking on behalf of everyone in the audience. But like, for folks in the audience who just this was a masterclass like, I hope you you're leaving today as educated, enlightened and as informed as I am, because there's just so much they are doing Pat, what was your feedback, Tom? Tom Milligan 47:26 I'm almost speechless. I'm feeling the exact same way. masterclass is the right word. I took notes. I mean, like I was in class, like the one thing that I wrote down that I just was like, I can't even believe this that what did he say? 2023. That 35% of companies surveyed were thinking on implementing AI because they're keeping up with the Joneses way, put it up in 2024, that number has jumped to 79% 99%. And the sad part is that that 79% said, they're keeping up with the Joneses. They still don't know why they want I don't even know they want Brian Nichols 48:05 that they see AI and they want AI that's all that's literally all it is. Yeah. Tom Milligan 48:09 And then his his final thing about the you know, his the biggest BS that he's heard, or that he's seen, or whatever he responded to. I couldn't agree more, the ROI is there. Yep. And you know, it may not be there for just keeping up with the Joneses. But if they can figure out what they're actually trying to accomplish, the ROI is there. Good. What a great. I love that entire thing. That's okay. I'm sorry for all of our prior guests. That was my favorite episode so far. Well, Brian Nichols 48:43 and you're like, I'll put my sharpen CX hat on here, right. But Tom, this is why he's sharpen. And I'm so excited to be where we are right now, because we are building C casts for the SMB. And with that bringing usable AI to folks who are in that 79% Number. They're like, I know, we need AI. I really want AI. I don't know, really what I need, though, this is exactly why we're doing what we're doing is sharpen because not only is the AI accessible and it's usable, but it's cost effective. It's not one of those things where you're going to be bankrupting your company, praying that in 14 months, you'll get that ROI, you can get the ROI with usable AI from sharpen, like within literally months. So I would dare say weeks in some use cases, because, again, we're going into that sweet spot, the SMB that five to 500 seats, and right there that speaks to not just who can use the AI from our conversation today. But frankly, I'm just gonna say a ton of the folks who probably need it the most because how many times do we hear like an IT guy who wears 14 different hats or you know, you listen to somebody at the CX department, they're juggling so many different responsibilities like AI is just bringing all of these different resources from an assisting standpoint to These SM B's, and I'm gonna just say it, it's going to make their lives easier. It's going to help improve their ROI. It's going to help improve that bottom line, and it's going to make their agents happier. It's gonna make their customers happier. I mean, that's a win win, win, win win win win across the board, if I ever did see one, but who am I? Tom Milligan 50:15 Absolutely. Hey, before we go, I have a question completely off topic for you specifically. Unknown Speaker 50:21 Oh, Tom Milligan 50:22 how in the hell? Did you know? That chainsaws are not made for cutting down trees? And what is this with childbirth? What the hell, Brian? No. Okay, so Brian Nichols 50:34 I don't remember where I read this before. It's like one of those horrifying fact pages. But yeah, it wasn't a word. Yeah. And it's terrifying. Like, you know, it was Tom. So my wife was, you know, just giving birth a short year and a half ago. So me being the guy who wants to be prepared for everything I'm like, let's just look at childbirth and like things I should be prepared for, which naturally turned into a like history of childbirth, when then it was like, engage, you know, right that the chainsaw what is like what are those little factoids in the chainsaw was originally used as a tool for doctors during childbirth, what would happen is, women would be delivering the baby. And this is obviously before the advent of modern medicine, and the kid would get stuck. And the doctors had a choice, either the mother and the baby died, or they found a way to get that baby out. And the way they found was to use a freaking chainsaw. And it wasn't what we imagined today, you pull the cord, and the chainsaw goes, it was it was like a hand crank. And it had the same like chainsaw that you would know and love. But he had crank this, this thing that to cut into the pelvis to get the babies out. And then I don't know how it happened. But fast forward, some guy who was like, hey, you know, that could work for cutting down trees, as well as helping deliver babies. And then the modern use of the chainsaw, as we know and love is where it is today. But yeah, that's just again, it shows how things can be intended in one use case. And then more and more people are like this could be used in this way instead. And then that becomes the de facto way of how to use that tool. But there's the chainsaw story to include that in the show notes. Tom Milligan 52:05 I wonder if there's also a that's also how blenders were invented Brian Nichols 52:09 for childbirth. I don't wanna know how it was invented in childbirth. That was the case. But that was, if that was true. Oh, God, help the God Help with Tom Milligan 52:18 what a horrifying thought chainsaws or blenders? What in the hell? Ah, Brian Nichols 52:24 well, and it just speaks to how we have it. I think that puts a great bow on the episode Tom is like, the things that we imagined they're, you know, they're going to be used for today. We never know, right? We never know what it's actually going to turn into or what it could be leveraged for in the future. And that's why I asked that, like, mutually assured destruction question, right? Because we've used the nuke is like a way to end a war. And that turned into a way to keep countries from more or less like borderline blowing themselves up off the face of the earth for 50 plus years. And I'm like, as AI going to turn into something like that where, you know, is it going to be the chainsaw? We'll see. So yeah, Tom Milligan 53:00 I'm pretty disappointed on that. The Atlas review because it had high hopes. I had high hopes for it. So maybe I'll finish it. Maybe I won't. Brian Nichols 53:08 Yeah, I was watching the show on YouTube called corridor crew. They do CX or not see it? You can tell where my head's at. They do CGI reviews and stuff like that for movies. And they said, watch this movie with the sound off. layer that the what was the scripting? Yeah, the scripting. Two thumbs down. JLo. Yeah, she's nice to look at but the actual acting, two thumbs down but the visuals, a plus. It's a pretty pretty movie. Tom Milligan 53:36 That's too bad. Okay. Yep. All right. So I guess we're wrapping today. Brian Nichols 53:43 This This has been a fun episode. Tom. We've talked AI we've talked CX we talked public policy. We talked chainsaws, childbirth, we are all over the place. It was fun. Yes. Tom Milligan 53:54 Like I said, favorite episode so far. You're Brian Nichols 53:57 here. All right. Mr. Milligan. I guess with that we're going to wrap things up any final words? Tom Milligan 54:03 masterclass. That's all I can say. This was a masterclass in AI for CX here, Brian Nichols 54:08 here. All right. Well, I guess we're gonna go ahead and put a pin into today's conversation, folks, if you got some value from our conversation with JLo please go ahead and do us a favor, hit that little subscribe button. Also, you can catch CX without the BS on your favorite podcasting platforms like Apple podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, music, wherever it is you consume your podcast content, just do us a favor, hit that little subscribe button. And of course, if you are joining us here on YouTube or on LinkedIn, head down below into the comments. Let us know your thoughts. What are your thoughts regarding AI? Did you know that chainsaws were originally used during childbirth all that fun stuff, Tom and I want to hear your feedback down below. But with that being said, it's Brian Nichols signing off here on CX without the BS for Tom Milligan. We'll see you next time. Next time. Tom Milligan 55:03 Hello, and welcome to this week's episode of CX without the BS, Brian Nichols. How are you today? My friend? Brian Nichols 55:11 Tom Milligan, I'm doing quite fantastic yourself. Tom Milligan 55:15 You know what, this has been a great week, we just got back from the holiday. I know that both of us went away for the holiday. And so trying to catch up, it's been, it feels like this week has lasted about three weeks. I don't know about you. Brian Nichols 55:26 Likewise, yeah, I was gone for two weeks out visiting family in the Northeast, and then you're doing that with a 15 month old Not gonna lie. It was a lot being on the road. But I must say now I am officially wrapping up this week. I feel that the list of things I had to get done, that's weeded down some I feel that I've actually been able to sleep some because I'm back in my own bed. So you know, all those little things. They add up to big things, Tom, I think I think overall, it was a great week. Tom Milligan 55:54 I'm glad to hear it. I'll tell you what, this week, part of the reason has been such a bizarre week, I actually had a partner event earlier this week, where, you know, we had 21 partners in the room, put a presentation together for that. And then you and I are going to be in Nashville at a national event. And I think it's about three weeks, or maybe it's Yeah, three weeks, three weeks from now. And you know, trying to get everything prepared for that. And you know, it's just and then on top of that, I have my day job. And so anyway, it's just been it's been a long week, but a good week, I've really enjoyed it. And I'm really looking forward to this episode. I have somebody that I'm going to introduce you to and it's we've done that a couple of different times. I'm old. So I have a bunch of and I've been in this business for 34 years. So I have enough people that reach out to me and want to be on the show. And, and I of course reach out to them as well. Today's guest is famous, he is the original JLo His name is Jason Lowe. And we've been calling him JLo. Since, you know, since the beginning, I think more people in this business know him as JLo than Jason. But they are wanting the same. So the second JLo is, you know, she just doesn't want to be I think she sure. Yeah, so I think that RJ Lowe probably would like her money. But he's the original. So he's the she would like this brain. Yeah, exactly. Well, I'll tell you what, so JLo, my friend JLo. He and I met I think 15 years ago when when maybe even longer than that maybe 16 years ago, when we both worked for a little company called UCN, which later became in contact. This was purchased by nice. We also work together for a few months at talkdesk. So he and I have kind of been in and around the business together for a long time. He's currently serving as the solution architect, architect for AI and CX at Polaris. So he he's kind of become I don't want to say kind of he has become an industry icon. I can say when it comes to AI. I'm looking forward to hearing from him and seeing what he has to say he's been he's been around the business quite a while but he knows probably more about AI and his little finger than you and I will ever know. As long as we're alive. So what you're Brian Nichols 58:23 saying is he's the man. Tom Milligan 58:27 Yes, your man a few words. Brian. I, yeah, that's my wife. She'll Speaker 1 58:33 argue with you until she's blue in the face. Yeah, Tom Milligan 58:36 well, you know what, in addition to being smart as hell when it comes to AI, CX C casts and all of that he also has his MBA. So I mean, he has more education in his little finger than I have as well. So, you know, you know, just, he's an impressive guy. And he kicked my ass at racquetball every time we ever played. So we'll have to ask him about that as well. So, you ready to meet my friend Jayla? Brian Nichols 59:00 Let's do it. All right, Tom. Jason Lowe here on CX without the BS. Awesome. Transcribed by https://otter.ai