As AI reshapes how businesses operate across industries, we asked CX experts an important question: How do we maintain meaningful human connections while leveraging artificial intelligence?
In part 1 of this 2-part miniseries, we spoke with industry leaders Joel MacCharles of Polaris Reach and Cheryl Tjok-A-Tam at Tjok Consulting. Today, we're continuing the conversation with more leaders from Aspect and Miratech.
These experiences reveal that the best business outcomes come from thoughtfully integrating human talent with advancing AI technology, not replacing people. Keep reading to gather important insights and practical lessons about how businesses can navigate the AI-augmented world of work.
Amanda Traynor, Territory Director; Canada @ Miratech
Amanda Traynor is a key contributor to Miratech's Canadian team, and has previous leadership experience at Talkdesk, Nuance and Avaya. Her work bridges the gap between global enterprise innovation and startup agility, helping enterprise clients transform growth and innovation strategies.
Q: How is AI transforming the way partners and providers collaborate?
In my experience, I'm finding that AI is really transforming the way we collaborate. It's becoming less transactional and much more strategic. We’re able to share intelligence and we can now co-analyze the customer data together, the market signals, usage patterns, and really identify opportunities to tailor go-to-market strategies that really drive positive outcomes for our clients.
Dan Nordale, EVP, Contact Center @ Aspect
Dan Nordale is a Revenue leader who brings innovation to CX organizations, elevating the human experience while driving sales and service performance. He collaborates with contact center leaders, technology partners, and Aspect's teammates to enhance Workforce Engagement Management solutions and redefine customer experience.
Q: How will the introduction of AI actually change the job description of a seller in the contact center?
The job description of the seller will change based on this changed role of facilitating the last mile of the purchasing process. This requires different skills and a different demeanor.
We will probably define different success criteria as well. Less around closing, more around delivering the right experience to buyers and ensuring they purchase the best configuration of product or service to achieve the optimal outcome.
Q: What skills do sales teams need now that they didn't need, before this advent of AI?
We see this as bigger than a contact center issue. We need people to be able to understand technology changes and to absorb change into process. What we know in this advent of AI is that changes to process and changes to technology are far more rapid than they've been in the past. We need people to be able to absorb those changes and put them into good use, to drive greater productivity and greater outcomes for consumers.
Q: What can established organizations learn from younger, digital-first employees
The biggest thing that you can learn is the ability to experiment. Younger employees have grown up pretty fearless around trying new things. If those new things don't work, they refactor, and try again. I think that's really good cultural element for many organizations to incorporate into their normal practice.
Q: How do you balance human connection with AI-driven insights for customers?
I think that balance is very different between situations, products, and customer segments. I think buyer needs for human connection will tilt you in certain directions to meet those needs. Immediacy and accuracy of answers might tip the balance in another direction. In the long run, brands will require human connection to strengthen the service or brand promise that’s advertised to customers.
Q: How has AI changed the job of the seller in the contact center?
Sellers are engaged far deeper in the buying cycle with that prospective buyer than they were previously. It can be challenging to to re-diagnose needs, to make sure the buyer's on a good path. So it's made the role a bit challenging. Sellers have become more of an educator-corrector, for that buying journey, as you engage later.
Ian Storm, Director, ISV Partnerships @ Aspect
Ian Storm is Aspect's Director of ISV Partnerships and a versatile SaaS strategy expert with over 10 years of experience driving end-to-end transformation across enterprises and high-growth startups. He brings a multidisciplinary background spanning product, sales, marketing, implementations, and customer success.
Q: How do ISV partnerships help bring innovation into the contact center space?
I believe that my team plays a critical role when it comes to bringing innovation into the contact center space. ISV partnerships create an infinite game in business that creates endless possibilities. When you go at direct sales alone, you have a very limited number of problems you can solve for a very specific type of customer. However, with a strong ISV partnership, you create endless possibilities for how to solve complex customer pain points that would otherwise not be possible.
Q: What role do partnerships play in helping customers adopt AI effectively?
Adopting AI can be difficult for customers. It's an area of interest and intrigue with all the great headlines on how to maximize the most value out of your tech stack. This is where partnerships become essential to that process.
The purpose of AI is to gain deeper actionable insights into complex data. With partnerships, we're increasing the odds of success by looking at your processes and your data holistically rather than working in a silo. That way we can drive meaningful outcomes for your business.
Q: How do you balance speed-to-market with building lasting value through partnerships?
The balance between penetrating the market fast, but building lasting value through partnerships can seem like a difficult balance, but it's beneficial to both sides.
If you think about innovation, you're working in a silo with only your perspective. That's how you end up on the bleeding edge. You're focusing on a very narrow perspective and narrow use case with your experiences.
Whereas with a partnership, you're looking at the customer from end to end and increasing the odds of figuring out those really complex user problems. That way, they're on the leading edge instead of the bleeding edge, and can maximize the benefits of the partnership.
Q: Where do you see the next wave of collaboration opportunities emerging in our industry?
I feel like most of the market is going to say it's speed, getting closer to that real-time data access. For me, I actually think it's depth of accessibility. Some of the more complex enterprise tools have always had a concept of data hierarchy. I think where we’re going next is making that hierarchal data accessible for the full employee experience.
In the past, it's required a team of data scientists to get this information usable and actionable. Now, I think partnerships are headed to where we can get deeper with those insights, to share more broadly and more easily within an organization.
Preparing for the future of AI-human collaboration
These insights highlight a critical shift in the way organizations approach AI and workforce intelligence. As AI continues to shape the CX landscape, the most successful companies will be those that thoughtfully integrate technology in ways that empowers, not replaces, human talent.
We'll keep diving into these discussions with industry leaders. Together, we'll continue this important conversation, exploring strategies to balance advanced technology and human potential to drive exceptional business outcomes.
