0:06 Valerie Mcsorley here, Executive Producer of this year's Call Center Campus.
0:11 And I'm delighted to have the chance to sit down with Jim Ayub and Melissa Wood.
0:16 They are our presenting sponsors of this amazing event we have put together and they are also our day one keynote speakers.
0:24 So they're going to join us at the beautiful Wigwam Resort just outside of Phoenix.
0:29 The space is unbelievable.
0:31 It's a retreat in itself and fits the perfect theme of Desert Oasis because leaders need a chance to just take a break, take a stop.
0:40 Oasis is our places where historically people came together to share new ideas, to take a little bit of a respite and to be engaged with all kinds of new ideas and information and networking, which is what we're going to do at Call Center Campus in a few weeks.
0:55 It's coming up fast, May 17th to 20th.
0:58 So, you know, I charged Jim and Melissa with coming up with a keynote around what leaders are feeling right now in the space.
1:05 So I'm so excited.
1:07 You, of course, everything you did, you nailed it.
1:09 And they're going to be talking about the prickly truths, the prickly truths of leadership right now in the age of AI.
1:16 The leadership piece is my passion.
1:19 I love building leaders.
1:21 I have dedicated my entire life to it and I feel confident.
1:27 There are many ways to go about leadership, but I have seen some behavioral patterns that work and I want to share that with the Benchmark Portal team and with Valerie at the Wigwam Resort.
1:38 And I want to share with you guys when you come in.
1:40 I know that I have something that can help you to be successful and I'm not going to leave you empty handed.
1:46 Jim and I are not going to do that.
1:47 We're creating right now a digital toolkit so that you can have some things when you leave.
1:54 Awesome.
1:55 So this is not your ordinary.
1:56 Anytime you take Jim and put him in front of the crowd, you're not ordinary.
2:01 It's not going to be ordinary.
2:02 I can say I work on these things 6, 9, 12 months out.
2:05 Jim Ayub takes the stage.
2:07 I don't even know what's happening.
2:08 No, and then I don't make my baby.
2:10 I have to buckle up my seat belt.
2:12 Here comes enough going to happen.
2:15 That's enough.
2:15 That's the fun.
2:16 I mean, that's like, OK, where are we going to go?
2:18 Gosh, something a little bit different.
2:20 This is not only my life coach.
2:22 She is our Dean of Leadership Development.
2:24 Like I said earlier, I'm just so excited because I do believe the reality is 90% of these AI companies are failing within the first year, which we're going to talk about.
2:35 I'm going to show some real numbers, real Fortune 500 customers that I have who actually saved money, but it's not just from the technology.
2:45 It's about having your leadership ready, because that's really what we're going to do.
2:49 I'm also going to be bringing in what the vendors will all hate me about, but I'm going to show you four or five questions to ask them which will make them run.
2:58 Because I do believe in my heart that a lot of these people who built these tools never took a call day in their life, have no idea how to run a contact center, and they're just solving problems.
3:09 They're just not call center problems.
3:11 I think within 20 minutes of the questions that I'm going to arm our people, our audience with, you'll be able to know immediately if you're talking to a partner or just a vendor.
3:21 And I say all the time, I'm not here to pitch or to close.
3:25 Melissa and I are here to talk about an honest conversation about where we are and how to prepare your leadership to be prepared for this augmentation of AI, which is the big buzzword.
