AI’s Role in Customer Service Transformation Featuring Megan Glasow

Welcome to Amazing Business Radio with best selling author and customer service and business expert, Chef Heiken. Chef will talk with some of the smartest thinkers in business to help make you more successful in your professional and personal life. This is Amazing Business Radio with Chef Heiken. Hello everybody, Chef Heiken here back with another episode of Amazing Business Radio. Today we're going to be talking with Megan Glazo. She is with proficient. She's the VP over there and we're going to be talking about what AI first transformation means. Now even though we're going to be talking about AI, this really applies to everybody and how you would think about using AI in your business from the most simple ideas to the most extreme. And I'm going to tell you we had a lot of fun in this interview. One of the things we talked about is crap systems. Well it's exactly what you think it is. Well we'll get into the interview in just a moment. I do want to make sure that you understand that when Megan refers to the agent, she oftentimes is referring to the digital agent, the AI agent. And a gentick AI is when that AI experience then not only is interacting with the customer but then takes certain actions so that people don't have to get involved in the loop. Doesn't mean they're replacing people. It just means they're handling some pretty simple things to allow people who are actually working and interacting with customers be more effective and more proficient. Alright so with that in mind, let's real quick and announcement. If you have an amazing story that you want to share or you have a question that you want to ask, reach out to me on any of the social channels. If it is a question, use the hashtag #AskShep. I'll answer the question right there on the social channel. Maybe I'll answer it on this show when we have the appropriate guest or maybe I'll answer it in my newsletter and I would love for you to subscribe if you're not already a subscriber. Just go to hikeand.com hycan.com. It is free. Doesn't cost anything. Why you're there? Check out my annual research on customer service and experience. Also free. You don't need to give me an email address for that. Just click on the button. It instantly loads and you have access to all of this great research that we did to help you make more customer-focused decisions. Alright let's jump into our interview. Megan welcome to the show. Hi Shep thank you for having me. Well you are all the way from Fargo. You bet. Fargo just like the TV show. How is it in Fargo these days? It's cold and usually cold. Sometimes can get really warm but usually cold, quiet and fast paced all at the same time and the nicest people around. They really are. They really are and you gave me some interesting trivia before we came on and I'm trying to set you up for just tell me what's special and fun about Fargo. The woodchipper is alive and well and if anybody wants to visit it you can at the visitor center in Fargo. And if you don't know what the woodchipper is watch the movie Fargo. Yep. You know what we're talking about. The woodchipper is not like this little animal or chipmunk kind of you know this is a machine. Fargo is about a murder so let's put one plus one together and guess what you get an amazing movie. So well that's cool Megan. You are also the VP of Salesforce at proficient and we're going to talk about proficient what you do and you are our thought leader for the next few minutes as we talk all about customer experience. So why don't we start with proficient. We when I talked a little bit about and I did a little research as I always do and about all I can do is read I read LinkedIn I read websites and do everything else but you use the word transformation when you describe proficient. So let's talk about the transformation that you deliver to your clients or customers. Yeah I'd like to just drop a little nugget that I think proficient is one of the best kept secrets in the industry for for you know. When you think transformation and the way our clients describe working with us is when they have those really really complex problems that they can't solve alone maybe it's because if there's limitations of capacity or they want more thought leadership or it's limitations in understanding a tech or a platform that they need or all of the above they call us for those complex problems. We are looking to kind of sit with our client and understand where they are where they are going and where they need to go and figure out how we get them there in a way that's really collaborative. We take a lot of pride in co-creating value with our clients you know understanding what their outcomes are and those become our outcomes and are what determines if we're successful in working with them and so it's really a partnership with our clients is typically what we're known for in the market. And the way to transform is by using a little tool whose initials are AI. Yes AI is very important in everything that we do. We are also transforming our own business around AI across multiple platforms. We are bringing an AI first mindset to everything that we do how we deliver how we scope how we partner how we innovate with our clients and as you know it's what everybody is thinking about all of our clients are thinking about it how do I do it where do I start what do I need how do I measure value is this the right tool all of those questions. Wow and so AI first let's apply it to the customer experience. How would you do that? So I think that there's an element of what should be AI what should be human and how they should work together I think it's kind of three elements to that and so when you think about let me sit with our clients and say you know just having this conversation the other day where it's here's how we provide you know both sales support to our clients once they bought something great that's how you do it today now what points along those journey along that journey can you insert AI to maybe do something independently that allows your people to provide a more empathetic customer experience human to human and then at what points in the journey is it kind of human in the loop maybe AI takes it to a certain point and then encourages you know a human to jump in and so it's sometimes even rethinking the process like the business process that our clients have to even achieve that and so we do a lot of work with our clients taking a what's the new process what do we want it to look like and when you think about the customer experience I tell our clients a lot it's not about meeting it used to be let's meet where the customer where they are right using technology I think with AI we can you know to use kind of a hockey go where the puck is going to be like how do we get oh that was good a Wayne Gretzky moment you bet you bet you bet you even said right up front before I got on I know you play hockey yep yep I do my research too yeah yeah yeah but I think it's real right I think it's it's curating where you want that customer to go and being prepared to catch whatever that that customer needs at that time or they maybe don't know they needed but you're ready I think that's what AI allows a lot of our clients to do so a little bit of proactivity yeah yeah being proactive not reactive I mean and like don't automate crap processes either right okay that's good don't automate crap processes I'm going to mark that that is a good quote very professional and scientific can you tell but it's so true I'm looking at our stats and findings from our actually 2026 study which just literally two weeks ago we got all the data back and it's a it's a 57% of customers say that self service options provided and powered by AI type or AI or chat GPT type technologies frustrate them because crap processes yeah I think that's we're going to title this segment is a crap Megan Klaasau speaks about crap processes but but it's real right you think about these clients in like the legacy processes the legacy data and to your point they're unhappy with what these self service AI agents are serving them up probably because there's a lot of product information content is not in the right spot product data maybe it's dealer data like to you know we serve a lot of different industries and and having that you know in a way that makes it actually useful to what the client or the customer is trying to achieve I think is so important yeah the problem with and you use did you just say legacy is that a word you just you yeah well basically it's their antiquated systems which is why they're crap processes and systems and what happens is companies you look at how much it costs to implement what you guys do and what so much of AI is done today it is a fraction what it costs five years ago a fraction and really an even huge or bigger ginormous fraction of what it was ten years ago and if you bought something five or six years ago your CFO says no it's not appreciated yet we not keep using it because we got to get the most money out of it meanwhile competition is passing you by because they're using these new systems which by the way the system they're doing today should never be referred to ever again is a legacy system because today's systems allow you to constantly upgrade and and keep up with updates so that you don't have a true legacy system that can change you can't on something really important that a lot of our clients are talking to us about which is the CFO saying I've spent this much money now where's the value and we're seeing that as a almost this reckoning in the tech space especially as we cross over into this agentic everybody loves to use that term but even just activation of AI the the value realization or measurement is sort of the new change management and a lot of our clients aren't thinking that way and they're struggling with that business case and so that's another thing back to kind of you know what does proficient do we're really finding ourselves sitting there a lot helping our clients put a value on the systems that they do have and the processes that they do have and then try to say okay if we evolve and change like what does that look like then from a value realization perspective so I envision a scale that if one side is crap to use your word and the other side is stellar or proficient it's you that was good and so now you've got to say okay and there's probably some type of an analysis that you can do with your clients where you recognize your client is falling somewhere in here and actually that's not a bad suggestion for our listeners who might be involved in making decisions about AI is to say to yourself you know compared to what you know is the best and I always say sit down with your team and talk about most of us have used AI at some level or know we're using a company that uses it what do we like about it what are the things they're doing that we love and you can even look at a consumer retailer like like a Walmart or an Amazon or somebody that really knows how to sell you and service you with AI type technologies and say okay how do we stack up against this and that would be at one end your word crap and the other end I don't know them yeah it's stuff we just stuff we do all the time with clients but I think more importantly what you hit on is really important is getting our clients to own that vision we can come in and say hey you're here you should be here but I think it's important for our client for anybody to have ownership in that if you're whether you're in the C suite or you're you know a manager or a director level is like owning what you want that vision to be and I like I love that you're talking about the consumer experience because I always thought you don't have to look in industry can look at a gene of an industry is to decide what you want that ultimately is what do you want customers to feel when they interact with with your brand whether it's an AI agent a person a store a web property what do you want them to feel what do you want them to remember and then from there you know that's the the soft stuff and then from there you know we build clear tactics on on how you do that but to me I tell my clients it's convenience they're people are going to choose the most convenient thing for them amen that's that's just the way we're all wired and it's going to get exponentially more that way as the younger generations become the primary consumer and a lot of our clients aren't ready for that yeah and that younger generation by the way is what's driving a lot of the digital experience although interestingly this year we ask a question or survey if you have a problem which do you prefer to do first self-service or use the phone 68 percent said the phone okay now last year it was still 68 percent the year before it was 70 in the year before that 70 which by the way 2 percent negligible or insignificant as far as that is concerned but here's what is significant is that last year 88 percent of baby boomers the older generation was driving this higher versus Gen Z the younger generation which was in around 51 percent I believe well this year boomers dropped to somewhere in the mid 80s but this is what blew me away Gen Z jumped to 60 percent that is significant saying I prefer to use the phone but I'm not trying self-service first and then there's a percentage that say if you don't offer me self-service even as an option even if I want to use the phone because I know I'm probably going to have to go there for some of what I call about I still want to have at least the option if you don't give them that option they're gone they're going to go find because most companies have a competitor that will in fact give them what they want the optionality do you think some of that is when they call though the younger generations anyway they're expecting some sort of automated experience even initially that quickly gets them where they need to go and and then do a human and this by the way is what we suggest to our clients is that you go automation or you know something even a phone tree but make it easy and make it and then make it not only easy to use but easy to get out of I got a great stat I don't have in front of me because it's a humorous stat but it's have the question is have you ever been on a phone tree or some type of a technology like that and find yourself screaming agent representative and then just hang up out of fresh and the companies that are doing that are making a huge mistake and something you set a moment ago that I think is important you say what would you like your experience to be I think that you always start with the end in mind and then work backwards and start working on the system because most of the time it's not the people on the front line that are breaking this the bond or the relationship between a company and customer it's the system behind the scenes that's driving it which by the way may be something the people are using and because it's so bad they can't deliver a good experience either and I think you know what do you want it to be and then when you start comparing yourself to other companies like I recommend we do outside of your industry not just competitors because all you're going to do if you're in a dog industry or let me use the word if you're in a crap industry now I got to go back to dog because you're going to just be the best dog in a horse race I mean it's not good but if you start looking at world class companies you go from best in industry to best in class that is a bigger deal very big deal and you hit on something too that we are seeing significantly right now in the market which you know everybody's that hey we want to do AI let's we want to deploy that agent right that's going to drive the cell service okay great and then we get into it and to your point the system or what we like to call kind of the backbone the CRM backbone which is a combination of things it's process data people systems all antiquated in a way that's not able to to deliver that experience and so it's not hard to build the agent if you will and activate the agent it's hard to get the people the data and the processes in a place that to your point make the agent beneficial for when that customer calls as hey here's what my problem it actually knows how to route that customer's problem and can even maybe like you know sends tone of voice sends different things that might trigger it to do something different or make a different decision but that that's a data a lot of times it's data does it have the right data to make that decision yep and the AI agent as you refer to it should be able to an agent's not human agent it's for those listening it's the digital agent AI good systems recognize the anger if it's even if it's a chap pot the words that a customer uses the exclamation points in capitals and maybe some of the terrible things they say because they know that the robot truly won't get offended and they it should the machine should recognize I need to get this person over to a human quickly you have a concept I want to hit on because we're going to run out of time other words called the customer zero approach and when I asked you about this before we jumped on the interview you said well we do this ourselves and so you practice what you preach you you didn't say we drink from water the we drink the we don't use we drink the same water no you said because you're in Fargo and obviously what else do you do you drink from the same glass of champagne you bet only the classiest out of Fargo yeah there you go so let's talk about what the customer zero approaches because I think you claim it accelerates outcomes which is what we want positive outcomes but here's a big one it builds trust and trust today is huge it's been a major focus for me anyway for the last year or so as I've seen more and more companies lose business because the confidence that customers have of them is dropping yep trust is just a foundation you just said it I'll reiterate it it's important to us at proficient with our clients with our partners in anything that we do so for us you know to be able to go out to our clients and say hey we can support your agentic enterprise transformation because everybody loves that which is just fancy words for we need to do better with our customers and we need to drive more more revenue and more value worked cost takeout or whatever the metric is that they're they're going after from a business perspective and so we took it upon ourselves at proficient to look at our own front office and back office operations across the entire you know spectrum of our business and effectively say where can we insert agentic experiences and how can we rethink how we do business how we engage our customers how we go to market how we drive customer loyalty customer service how we invoice clients everything right how can we leverage AI to drive all the same outcomes that our clients are looking for so that I can sit next to the CIO and the CMO and the chief revenue officer and say well here's how we activated agents you know in the field with our sales team to create more efficiency for them whatever the outcome might be and so we've invested in not just sales force but other capabilities and technologies within our own enterprise to basically drink our own champagne and let clients know like here the challenges here's what we're facing here's how we did change management which by the way is very different than traditional change management here's here's the struggles we've found like data or other things and so we want to be able to bring trust and credibility to that conversation we also want to do the journey go through the journey with our customers we're all going through this together and the best innovation comes when we sit close with our clients and really like innovate together both their business and our business yeah that's when you become a partner and not a vendor yeah there's a line here and I'm going to take everything you just said and bring it down to the customer experience world and that is that service centers can now become profit centers by using AI and hands CRM to predict needs prevent issues and convert support moments in the growth opportunities in other words we shouldn't be seen as a cost center we should be seen as a revenue generation a customer retention center some of the most important pieces of what we do because once we get them in the door if they come to the customer experience part of what we do we got to figure out a way to keep them make them want to keep coming back and trust that we'll do it every time share that experience right oh yeah that's ideal like they need to become your biggest advocates um follow your new customers yep all right let's wrap it all up with my final question is there one last nugget of wisdom that you would love to share with us before we get off today I do everything in threes so I'm going to give you three really quick nuggets I promise the first one is AI is not a monolithic effort and you shouldn't treat it that way it's a bunch of micro efforts that drive the type of transformation that you want the second thing I'll leave everyone I'm just trying to understand so don't use it for one thing use it for a number of a number of things but also break it down you know a lot a lot of times you know the history in our industry is like we're going to do this big transformational project people think it's multi-million of dollars in multiple years and yeah but it's really a bunch of small efforts get the agent out there prompt it refine it try something you know like fail fast pivot quickly like that that mindset needs to really come back really fast I think to drive the right level of adoption around AI can't just sit and wait and plan and do a big bang rollout like it's all of these these traditional ways we used to think about implementing new technology or changing process and you need needs to be just these micro moments that you look at and get really good at and then you keep rolling and expanding from there the second thing the monolithic we get it the second thing is measurement is the new change management to me so you know instead of just communicating things and training people it's really you know create your own champions and stories like we just talked about with customer service I think that that's just a different way of driving adoption and more ground swell of support for what you're trying to do to enhance your customer experience and then the final thing I'll reiterate that we talked about earlier is that the wood shipper is real and we welcome everybody to Fargo to our tourist center and I will be there and I'm happy to host wow well those are great and speaking of threes you're and here's a little trivia about Megan Glazo Glazo there we go like a Glazo and that is she's a basketball player and she thinks in threes because I'm sure her favorite shot is at three point shot yeah there you go I was very good I listen all right everybody what a great time thanks so much I got a lot of takeaways today but I got to tell you I got to think real hard about this survey crap to whatever it's a good one anyway Megan you've been awesome love the interview ladies and gentlemen this is another great week and next week we'll be back with another amazing interview on amazing business radio and until that time this is chef I can remind you to always be amazing this podcast is a part of the C-suite radio network for more top business podcasts visit c-suite radio dot com