2002’s Star Wars: Episode II Attack of the Clones introduced the Kaminoans, a civilization skilled at cloning. Like many skilled at developing specific technologies, the cloners of Kamino didn’t spend much time thinking about the impacts of their work. They were skilled at genetic engineering, and they found customers willing to pay for those skills.
Today, cloning people is still taboo but closing voices, faces, and video imagery of people is big business. Despite the glut of customers willing to pay for these new technologies, questions regarding the ethics and long-term impacts of them remain unanswered. While I didn’t head to the Outer Rim for this conversation, I did enlist the help of Luke Jamieson who lives 9,000 miles away from me. Luke is a Global Thought Leader on the topics of EX, CX, and the future of work.
We discuss:
- The key factor impacting AI adoption
- The Role of AI in Contact Centers
- Evolving communication preferences
- Potential Security Risks of Voice Biometrics
- The Future of Customer Service
Connect with Luke on LinkedIn
Music courtesy of Big Red Horse
Transcript
Rob Dwyer (00:03.744)
Yeah, that's the big secret, but I have the real Luke Jamieson here with me and I'm excited to talk to you about all kinds of fun AI stuff. Luke, how are you?
Luke (00:17.734)
I'm good mate, how are you?
Rob Dwyer (00:20.832)
I mean, I am much better than that recording, but I will say it's a little creepy. It's creepy enough hearing your own voice, right? So you and I have done all kinds of video content. We hear our own voices. I'm sure you have the same reaction that I have, which is just like, you don't really like that. It's weirder when you hear your own voice and it's not actually your own voice. How, how did you first react when you heard?
Luke (00:32.139)
Uh-huh.
Rob Dwyer (00:51.625)
your own voice cloned.
Luke (00:57.577)
It was uncanny how accurate it was. And it's, yeah, scary. And I think when I first created the clone.
the thoughts that ran through my head were, do you really wanna give away your voice to a third party and create this clone? And I'll talk about some of the stories I've done with that clone since. But then I realized that, hey, I'm on a podcast every other week and if anyone wants my voice, then it's out there. So, you know, too late. But no, this is the real me. And you can tell because as I say, you don't work with animals or children.
And I've got a dog on my lap who is excited that I just got home after dropping the kids off at school. And, uh, yeah, it was, uh, I rushed in. So there, this is real. There was no, uh, one hour prep beforehand. Get myself ready. It was dropped the kids off, haul us back here to get on, get on the podcast. So you've got the real me. I promise.
Rob Dwyer (02:02.892)
Not even your kids will love you as much as that dog does, I guarantee you.
Luke (02:07.614)
I'm not sure, but mate, I have a cracking story for you. And I know this has got nothing to do with, uh, with this episode, other than maybe it's just trying to be as authentic as possible, but I know last time when I was on the podcast, we talked a bit about like Australia and animals. And you know, how there's this assumption that, you know, there's just kangaroos everywhere kind of thing. I'm not joking you.
Rob Dwyer (02:11.576)
All right, let's hear it.
Rob Dwyer (02:32.02)
Oh no.
Luke (02:34.526)
I'm just coming up the road. I'm about a block away from my house and a kangaroo jumps out in front of the car and then goes into the, the petrol station or the gas station and just hops into the gas station. And I've just like hit the brakes, grab the phone quickly, caught a video of it. So I will send you, I'll send you the video so you can see it's real, but a kangaroo just, yeah, kangaroos everywhere here, mate. It's just, that's how it is.
Rob Dwyer (03:04.336)
I think I've ever had a better anecdote told on this podcast and the fact that this just happened is maybe my favorite thing of the week.
Luke (03:14.398)
Yo, there you go. So it's real kangaroos are everywhere in the stream. It just, they just hanging around the gas station and yeah, it's real.
Rob Dwyer (03:22.532)
I don't know how I would react to that, but I have a feeling I would.
Rob Dwyer (03:30.784)
Well, I would probably do what you did. I would probably record the whole thing. And then think afterwards. That was really dumb because who knows what.
Luke (03:42.706)
Exactly, exactly. But it was, yeah, great. It was just, yeah, so, so perfect timing. I thought, you know what, what a great story to kick off a podcast about, you know, just the difference between, uh, real and authentic versus, you know, this generated fake versions of ourselves.
Rob Dwyer (04:04.656)
So I'm curious, are we going to be able to tell for sure that this video is real and not just?
Luke (04:14.474)
I think so. I think so for now. I think, I mean, there's, there's some interesting stuff happening on, even on the video side of things, right? We're seeing deep fakes left, right and center. And, and it's pretty good. It's pretty good, but Hey, look as, um, as big as my ego can get, I just don't think that, um, you and I, just that famous yet that people are deep faking us other than ourselves.
Rob Dwyer (04:27.298)
Yeah.
Rob Dwyer (04:41.708)
No, no one's deep faking us. That's for certain. I don't think anyone really cares that much. I am curious, though. Obviously, we're still in the early stages, I think, of what we are going to see from AI, even though it's been all the rage for the last year and a half. But it's still incredibly early.
Luke (05:00.353)
Mm-hmm.
Rob Dwyer (05:10.52)
what you've seen.
Rob Dwyer (05:14.404)
What are the implications or what could you possibly see as it relates to customer experience with AI? There are all kinds of things that are out there today, but what, like, just go wild. Like, what could happen?
Luke (05:32.47)
let me tell you a real story that happened to me recently about, so not just what could happen, what is happening. I received, so I was on Instagram scrolling and I see this book come up. Someone's like, ah, a free book. You know, and I was like, sure, why not? Let's get it. Plugged in my details, book arrives in the mail and I'm thinking, you know, obviously nothing
comes for free. And so I wasn't super surprised when I didn't get a phone call in a couple of weeks later saying, you know, Hey, calling from X company and did you get the book? And I'm like, yep, got the book. Haven't read it yet. We go through this dialogue. He then, you know, the guy on the end of the phone and he's got, I'm hearing contacts in a noise in the background. There's natural pauses, ums.
as totally feels real. And you know me, I've got like 15, 20 years experience in contact centers. So, you know, you'd think I'd know what I'm talking about. Anyway, we get to the point where it's like, hey, well, we can actually help your business. And, you know, would it be good to book in a time with one of our consultants? I'm like, sure, you know, whatever, why not?
Rob Dwyer (06:42.326)
Right.
Luke (07:01.246)
I'm free at one o'clock tomorrow. And then it comes back and the person says, are you free at 3 p.m. on Friday? And I'm like, no, I'm free at one o'clock tomorrow. Are you free at 4 p.m. tomorrow? And I was like, are you listening? Like, no, I can do one o'clock tomorrow.
keeps offering these things. I ended up going, are you a bot? And I thought the response was epic. The response was, ha ha, do I really sound that bad? And I said, well, yes, are you a bot? And then it came clean. Yes, I'm a virtual assistant, but the people in our business are real and we can still help you with your business. It was so good, Rob, it was so good. It had me fooled.
And the contact center noise and the fake contacts and a noise in the background. I was like, wow, this is like, this is just epic. And look, I felt the problem is I, I actually thought it was really good. And I don't know if I would have done anything differently if I knew it was, it was automated and, and GNAI.
because I think I just had a curiosity, right? And more than anything, I would have been like, oh, let's see how this goes. But it was the fact that I didn't know, it was the fact that I felt like scammed or hoodwinked, or they'd pulled the wool over my eyes, that I was so upset about it. I was like, for someone who's got so much experience in contact centers, I should have been able to figure that out, and I couldn't. It was just so good. And that's when I felt disappointed. And I think that...
Rob Dwyer (08:22.864)
Alright.
Luke (08:48.334)
the, that'll be one of the questions that, that comes up with, with all of this from a, particularly from a, from a contact center perspective is disclosure. You know, what are we, what are we, how are we going to tell people, you know, how clean are we going to be on, on our transparency when it comes to, are we using AI or not? So there's definitely a use case. I know this is a great use case. I think outbound calls that are happening over and over and over again.
Rob Dwyer (09:00.208)
Mm-hmm.
Luke (09:18.798)
kind of makes sense, you know, they're hard work. If it's just booking appointments, I see no reason why you can't use it. And Google came out with their, was it Duplex? A few years ago, and I think that shocked everyone. I think everyone thought, ah, you know, it's manufactured, it's not real. It's real, it happens. So look, I think that's one, that's definitely one implication is that feeling of trust.
Rob Dwyer (09:30.816)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Luke (09:47.614)
So, you know, the building of trust, you know, and I think trust comes from two things. It comes from
Luke (09:56.278)
a sense of autonomy and control. So you've got control over that situation and confidence, confidence in the product, in the person you're speaking with. And if you don't have one of those, you start to erode that trust. So, yeah.
Rob Dwyer (10:14.26)
Yeah. So a couple of things hit me about this. Uh, I had a conversation. I've been almost a year ago at, uh, a, a trade show and we were talking about what was going to stop. Uh, virtual assistants, virtual agents from becoming more and more prevalent.
And my gut said, it's going to be pushback from consumers. And you certainly feeling that I got tricked. I think that feeling is one that we're going to have to get past before consumers don't have a negative reaction to it. But I do wonder.
how long it will take before we do trust that virtual agent the same way that I trust, for instance, Google Maps. And I will tell you, like, for the most part, when I'm driving and I've got Google Maps navigating for me, even when it goes, because I've learned my lesson, when it says, hey, you need to get off the highway right now, and I'm like, ah, what are you talking about? And then I turn the corner.
Luke (11:33.814)
Hehehehe
Rob Dwyer (11:35.136)
After I missed the exit I'm like, oh well, that's why there's a traffic pile up crack or something and now I'm gonna be stuck here for 20 minutes going nowhere and so now I pay attention to that and I put more trust into it and Then I did five years ago
Luke (11:56.874)
Yeah, it's interesting. Trust is gonna be a...
It's, it's, I've been wrestling with this as a conundrum, right. Around trust and AI because when we talk about trust with it, with a third party, the company or something like that.
Rob Dwyer (12:05.412)
Mm-hmm.
Luke (12:19.074)
think sometimes we overvalue it. And I'll give you an example. So you just talked about Google. So you've got a Google account. You've got YouTube, you've got Twitter and that. If that's what it's still called, or Zito, I don't know. You've got these social media platforms, right? Do you trust them with your data?
Rob Dwyer (12:42.777)
Yeah.
Rob Dwyer (12:48.656)
great question because I can tell you that while I don't implicitly trust my head my actions say I do because I've given them my data.
Luke (12:59.31)
Uh-huh. Exactly right. So I don't trust them. Not at all. I know that when I mention a jet ski in passing conversation, it's gonna end up in my feed somewhere. So, and I've done tests on this. You just sit there and start saying shoelaces four times over and all of a sudden you start getting like, like the most random things start getting advertised to you. I don't trust them at all.
Rob Dwyer (13:12.751)
Yeah.
Luke (13:25.298)
yet I am happy to give all this information because of the service I get back. And so there is a trade-off between the service we provide in, in customer experience, customer service versus that, that level of trust that somebody's wiggling to give that stuff up for. So, so I'm still, I'm still wrestling with it. I don't, I don't have an answer to it because, but I, so, so I think that that's our first thing we were like, oh, we don't trust, we don't trust these, these AI bots or whatever.
Rob Dwyer (13:30.128)
Mm-hmm.
Luke (13:54.878)
I don't think that that's going to be, I don't think that's going to be the driving force behind it all in the future. Um, I don't think it's going to be cost driven either. I think that's, that's the first, one of the first things people think about. It's like, Oh, where can we save money? I don't think it's going to be that. I think it's going to be around how do, how do we enhance the, the opportunity? How do we enhance the service? Um, and how do we make the lives of humans better? And I think that's smart companies.
are going to realize that and realize that the saving on time within an employee's work day could be spent on achieving the greater mission that the company initially set out for. And I think that that's where the real value comes from. And it's not just for the company, but then for the employee, because then the employee is doing work.
Rob Dwyer (14:41.101)
Hmm
Luke (14:52.726)
that is meaningful, has impact, is aligned with the mission, is aligned with their purpose. So I think there's a lot of good that can come from this if we apply it correctly and in the right, with the right intent. Look, we'll talk it, we can, I'm gonna go down a rabbit hole on this, mate. You know me, I'll talk for ages on this stuff. But I think we're about to really shake up some social norms on a lot of things. And...
Rob Dwyer (15:14.965)
Ha ha ha.
Luke (15:21.994)
Like I think the eight hour workday is at a real, could be at a real risk, which I'm totally happy about. You know, I think that if, if we can use AI to reduce the amount of time that we have to work, who's who said that, you know, that we had to have an eight hour day, like I know unions kind of had a big part of that, you know, eight hours work, eight hours play, eight hours sleep. Why can't we just do four hours? You know, and spend more time with our family.
Rob Dwyer (15:28.055)
Yeah.
Luke (15:50.394)
Who said it had to be 888? Let's mix it up. So I think there's some cool stuff that could come from all of this.
Rob Dwyer (15:50.905)
Yeah.
Luke (15:59.086)
I don't know where we might as always losing track of what the question was
Rob Dwyer (15:59.553)
One of the things...
Now, it's fine. One of the things that I have worried about for a while, and I think I've changed my mind on this, but I really thought one of the problems, and it is a problem, don't get me wrong, but the way I view it is a little bit different today. My thoughts on what happens when AI gives you the wrong information, right? And we've seen this. We've seen big news stories.
about an airline, about a car dealership and AI, essentially giving out misinformation and then the fallout that comes from that. Some of that fallout is just bad press. In one case, it was actually going to court and losing.
Rob Dwyer (16:55.096)
But, and this is the big but.
Humans mess up too. I mean, humans give wrong information when you call a contact center. Like agents are wrong sometimes. And agents are wrong sometimes in big ways. And so I don't know that companies are going to look at how error prone AI is as a determining factor of whether or not we're gonna rely on AI realm of customer experience.
Luke (17:03.055)
Mm-hmm
Rob Dwyer (17:30.376)
from an agent perspective, right? Customer service or sales or whatever. What I do wonder, though, is we as humans like to hold people accountable to mistakes. And will companies worry about how do we hold AI accountable when it messes up? What does that look like? I don't know the answer to that. What are your thoughts on that?
Luke (17:32.425)
Mm-hmm.
Luke (17:43.095)
Mm-hmm.
Luke (17:59.41)
You're right. Humans mess up, but what, what happens? So what happens now when, when a human messes up, I think back to when I'm running contact centers and an agent messes up, you know, we're not, I think good employers don't sit there and just walk them out the door, right? Unless it's malicious. What's the first thing you do? You, you put them into training. How do we, how do we better mitigate this situation? I think it's, I think it's going to be a similar thing. We start to just, we train the AI better. And I think we're going to see.
Yeah, I've seen those stories too, right? And it's good. It's a good story when, when AI says the wrong thing and we can, and someone makes money out of it. I've worked for organizations where we've given incorrect unit prices on, on shares and things like that. And we've had to pay out money. Seen it hundreds of times. It's going to happen with AI, but I think, I think the interesting thing is where some of that technology is going.
So, so I think our initial fear around gen AI comes from the fact that a lot of these early models, right? These chat GPT, et cetera, just trawling the web and, and the size of the data source that it's searching from is just, it's, it's hard to fathom. And so it could come back with anything. Uh, and so, but what we're, what we're seeing now is this real shift in how, how do you
set some guidelines around it, where's the parameters? And so, I don't know if you've heard of RAG, R-A-G, Retrieval Augmented Generation. Okay, good. So, knowledge management systems, they're really good at retrieval. Great, brings you back the right piece of information, but is it personalized? No, it's the same thing for everyone.
Rob Dwyer (19:35.66)
I'm glad you brought it up.
Luke (19:50.894)
Uh, Jen AI, great at personalization, not so accurate. You know, I, I Jen AI, I, um, chat GPT myself, uh, out of curiosity to see what it came up with and mate I have won some pretty epic awards. I tell ya, I didn't realize I was in the Forbes fastest 1000. It's, it's pretty cool. Uh, yeah, I, I just wish Forbes had told me. Yeah.
Rob Dwyer (20:07.701)
Yes!
Rob Dwyer (20:12.444)
I could have told you that. You didn't ask me. I would have. I would have told you all the amazing things that you've done. Oh.
Luke (20:21.55)
Um, but yeah, so, so it, you know, it got some stuff, right? Like it got some stuff around like my passion for employee and customer experience, it got some stuff right about my, um, work in gamification. But then the awards just started going ballistic. And so we know it's not accurate. Uh, it makes stuff up, uh, hallucinations. And so, so when we combine those two things together though, when we provide, uh, combined with rag.
retrieval and augmented generation, you start to get really accurate and personalized stuff. So it's not even, we'll call it small language models, not large language models, that we're starting to contain this data and it's pretty clever stuff. So I think we'll see less and less errors coming from stuff like this. And I think that this is a good thing for the contact center because I think for the most part,
one of the, you know, when we talk about, you know, contact center roles, we talk about them as, as stepping stone roles or entry level roles. And yet the whole industry sits there and complains about why the churn rate is so high in, in contact centers. And it's because that's what we advertise them for, right? We advertise them as stepping stone roles. And then we were surprised at people moving on 12 months later. I think what this does is it starts to, to shift the parameters of what is
what a contact center agent does. And what's gonna happen is that a lot of that, that low hanging through that easy stuff is gonna be handled by AI. And that just leaves the meaty stuff. It leaves that connection that we need to have, that human-to-human connection. And well, we can chat a bit about the importance of that as well if you want, but this idea that contact center, like call center, customer service people.
that their role is going to be more meaningful and have more impact. I think that's good for everyone. It starts to put a lot more value around that role. I think we'll start to see that contacts in a role as a white glove service. And I think that that's good for the industry. I don't think people are going to go away. And this...
Luke (22:39.662)
I think that there's a reason for that and that is that we have a desire to have connection and we want to, you know, we do want to connect with people and so there's always going to be that need. So I think, you know, I could talk about some of the stats, there was a state of the nation report that happened last year in Australia and it said that one in three Australians are lonely.
And that to me is a shocking statistic that says that, you know, we are, it doesn't, and it didn't matter whether you were a male, female, whether you were part of a large family, whether you, you know, it didn't matter. It was just this feeling of loneliness. And I think things like, you know, TikTok and social media and automation has a lot to answer for when it comes to that.
because it's provided this barrier to us connecting with people. And some people, some generations are actually getting used to this. So I hosted a couple of round tables recently where we talked, it's a similar topic, talking about automation and AI handling queries. And there was a real obvious divide in the room. Now,
probably giving away my age, but sort of that, at Gen X upwards, we're very keen to, we'd rather talk to a human. Frustrated by the thought of talking with a bot. That having a chat bot is just one more hurdle to get over before I really just get to speak to a person.
Rob Dwyer (24:17.977)
Yeah.
Luke (24:31.898)
yet sort of that gen Y and I'll say below were really, were on the other side. They'd rather speak to, they'd rather not speak to a human. And when I sort of dived into that and was like, so talk to me, why is that? Why do you not wanna, why would you not wanna speak to someone real? And they're like, oh, it just causes too much anxiety and too much pressure and.
And I was just like, wow, that's, that's a real shift. So, so I think that could play into some of that adoption as well.
Rob Dwyer (25:09.152)
I think there's something about the communication.
Rob Dwyer (25:16.624)
channels changing at that kind of inflection point that you're talking about with generations, right? It's when texting and instant messaging kind of took over the ecosystem of being able to communicate with your friends, with your family.
I know my kids definitely prefer often that instant message, the texting, that kind of thing that they sometimes just even asynchronous, right? So it might be a video like Snapchat, but it's, it's not synchronous. You're not on a call. And certainly when you talk about that anxiety of having to talk to a live human being, that is a very real thing.
Luke (25:49.806)
Mm-hmm.
Luke (25:54.016)
Hmm.
Luke (26:00.36)
Mm.
Luke (26:03.499)
Mmm.
Rob Dwyer (26:04.148)
some people that I know that are younger than me. And so I think there is something there and it may be that.
Luke (26:12.114)
Yeah. One of my mates, he's like, I was going to say one of my mates, he's like 20 years younger than me. Uh, he's voicemail messages. If you, if you're thinking of leaving a message, it means you're old. I'm not going to listen to it. Just text me. It's hilarious.
Rob Dwyer (26:28.843)
Right. I think there's a commercial here in the states for one of the insurance companies that's talking about being like your parents. And the bit, if you will, is, you know, should they leave a voicemail? And the answer is no, you just text them like this.
Luke (26:50.668)
Yeah.
Rob Dwyer (26:50.84)
That's the answer. You brought up something that I want to get. I don't know if you've heard about this, but I want to get your gut reaction. You brought up TikTok. Did you know that in the Android app, it's not live yet, but voice cloning is there's an option for voice cloning in TikTok. And we started out the episode with cloned voices. We kind of talked about our voices being out there.
Do you have any concerns about TikTok and voice cloning or what do you think about that? What's your gut?
Luke (27:33.59)
Look, I'm not on TikTok. But it does concern me a little bit just around some of the moves that organizations are taking around voice biometrics being your password. And there is a telco here, an internet service provider here that you can say, my voice is my password.
Rob Dwyer (27:36.139)
Hahaha
Luke (28:03.49)
dot company, my voice is my password. And I was curious as to whether my voice clone would work. And so I created knowing that was what it was, I created the voice clone and then call them and I played it right next to it and I got through. And so that scares me. I immediately turned that function off as something.
Rob Dwyer (28:25.75)
Mm-hmm.
Luke (28:31.858)
Uh, that, that no longer is, is the way that I will authenticate. And, and I'm seeing, um, government organizations here, uh, talking about it. I was at a conference recently and, uh, they're up on stage and they're talking about how they're introducing this as their, and this is their next big thing. And yeah, so that, that scares me particularly government because, you know, we've got everything with them. Right. And so, yeah, I've got, I've got massive concerns around that. I've got. Um,
Rob Dwyer (28:55.989)
Yeah.
Luke (29:01.366)
I don't know. Did you see, did you see this week that, uh, no, I'm, I'm a big country music fan, but, um, I did see this on the news. So I'm, I'm caveating that with country music. Cause I don't want to be associated with the fact that I know anything about Drake. Uh, but Drake is, um, Drake put out a song, right? You put out this song this week, uh, where he's just basically, um, trashing another artist, um, and having a dig at them. But he,
Rob Dwyer (29:27.216)
Mm-hmm.
Luke (29:31.002)
had Tupac and a Snoop Dogg on the track, but it wasn't them. It was just, it was just voice cloned and he just introduced that into his, into his track. You know, there's, there's some, there's so much to unpack here from just a, what is socially acceptable around this stuff, you know? So
I, it scares me. It scares me. There's, there's some cool stuff that we can do with it. You know, I've, I've put my, my voice clone into like songs and all of a sudden I can sing really well, which is, which is great. So I'm all for that. But.
Rob Dwyer (30:17.124)
I need to try that because that's a skill I do not have. So thanks for turning me on to that.
Luke (30:20.758)
Yeah, yeah, there's some fun stuff to be had with it. What's the benefit though? I've got to think about what is the benefit. And I do use automated voice on a pretty regular basis now. So when I create a lot of product videos and not everyone wants to hear my thick Aussie accent. So they, so I use a...
things like what we use to generate our intro, I'll use tools like that to, yeah, to create other, use other accents, you know? So the product video has an American accent over it or a British accent. So I think there's some real benefit in it, but yeah, it's...
Rob Dwyer (31:09.04)
I think I need to tell you about two things that you are very wrong about. The first thing that you are very wrong about is saying that not everyone wants to hear your thick Aussie accent. That's a lie. I'm just going to tell you right now, I'm quite confident that is a lie and not true. The second thing is you mentioned chat GPT hallucinating.
Luke (31:14.574)
Okay.
Rob Dwyer (31:36.368)
about you and I think what it was really doing was fortune telling for you. And so you're getting these things mixed up. So I just wanted to make clear that I see some things that you're saying that are not true and I am not the kind of podcast host to just let that kind of thing slide.
Luke (31:36.696)
Mm-hmm.
Luke (31:40.464)
Ah, okay.
Gotcha.
Luke (31:55.314)
I love it Rob, thanks mate. And Forbes, watch out, here I come. Ha ha ha.
Rob Dwyer (32:02.316)
So you've hit on a lot of really intriguing things. But I love that you talk about the purpose. And I think this is something that we've seen this in the past with some silly things that you could do on Facebook. And then that data ended up getting scraped from Facebook without user's knowledge. And
Cambridge Analytica was using this to target people and influence how they voted.
Luke (32:39.889)
Mm.
Rob Dwyer (32:41.292)
I think people should think about all of these AI solutions potentially when they're giving their data and considering like, what is the end goal? What good am I doing here? What is this going to help me accomplish or my organization accomplish before you go into it? Because I guarantee you, 99.9% of people are not reading the terms of service.
And they are not understanding really what kind of contract they're entering into, because they are in fact entering into a contract that is legally binding. And they have no idea what's going to happen with that data.
Luke (33:11.765)
Oh no.
Luke (33:19.338)
Mm.
Luke (33:23.862)
Yeah.
Luke (33:27.247)
There's a lot of first children just getting lost, you know, just getting signed over.
Rob Dwyer (33:33.164)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. There are there are plenty of first borns that are not actually yours. But you didn't you didn't read the contract, right? Just you entered into it.
Luke (33:42.839)
Yeah, that's right. Facebook owns them now.
Luke (33:47.814)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it reminds me, yeah, irrelevant, but it's a good joke. I think it's a James Franco joke. He says, he starts whispering to his wife and his wife says, why are you whispering? And he says, oh, because I don't want Mark Zuckerberg to hear. And his wife laughed and Siri laughed and Alexa laughed. So, slightly off topic, but I just, you know. Yeah.
Rob Dwyer (34:16.448)
Yeah, we are always being listened to. And to your point, and I think most of us have experienced this, right? We get served up ads based off of conversations that we're having. And it can be a really eerie kind of thing. But at least that's an ad that I can ignore. And I could be like, well, OK, unless it's something really weird that I don't really want to be associated with. That was.
Luke (34:31.829)
Mm-hmm.
Rob Dwyer (34:45.732)
the result of some weird conversation that I was having. When it comes to AI, though, I could be potentially signing away the right to use my image or my likeness or my voice. And this was something that we actually talked about on a recent episode. Kent Marie did join the show, and he talked about how he licensed his likeness.
Luke (34:45.966)
Mm.
Luke (35:03.038)
Mm-hmm.
Rob Dwyer (35:14.36)
to a video game that just came out. And that particular contract allows that company to use their likeness, his likeness, however they want in whatever they want. And he at least knew what he was getting into, because he was getting paid for that. But a lot of these services, you're just
Luke (35:16.679)
Mm-hmm.
Luke (35:32.233)
Mm-hmm.
Rob Dwyer (35:42.192)
You're setting it up for free, you're logging in, and then you're giving data, and you don't really know what the long-term consequences are. They may be nothing, or they could be something much more serious down the road.
Luke (35:45.646)
Mm-hmm.
Luke (35:56.67)
Yeah, it's really interesting. I mean, the worst case with me signing over my voice is that your Roomba is gonna be going around your house going, oh mate, your bloody house is a bit dirty, eh? But you know, we are knowingly or unknowingly training the future of AI, right? And I heard that, interesting, I thought this is interesting. I don't know how true it is, but.
It could just be a massive conspiracy theory, but you know a lot of the capture where you start to, you have to say, you know, identify stairs, but all that data isn't just getting fed to AI for the future, like so that I can identify what is that image, right? So.
Rob Dwyer (36:36.589)
Right?
Luke (36:41.215)
I wouldn't be surprised.
Rob Dwyer (36:43.584)
I wouldn't either. I do want to talk about something that you touched on earlier, and that is this idea of white-glove service with human beings Do you think that the future differentiator from a brand experience is going to be that yes, I can talk to a human Frontier Airlines is a great example, right?
Luke (36:54.532)
Mm.
Luke (36:58.634)
Mm.
Rob Dwyer (37:13.22)
A year or so ago, they eliminated their customer support via phone. You can't call them today. And they're a budget airline. I don't know how much money they saved on that, but I imagine they saved quite a bit. They certainly haven't turned around on that. Is that going to be the luxury?
Luke (37:20.834)
Mm-hmm.
Mm.
Luke (37:31.819)
Mm.
Rob Dwyer (37:40.568)
customer service or brands, do you think?
Luke (37:44.686)
I think so, yeah, I think it is. And I think that that's, you know, I think it's an exciting time to be in that customer service space because of that, you know, you start to, I, you know, I think that's, it starts to put some real value around the role, which I think is, which is a good thing. You know, will there be a lot of roles lost? Probably, you know, that's, I think that's inevitable.
And it's a little bit sad and you know what, there'll be some impact, some big impact, particularly in some of these countries that a lot of BPO's are outsourced to and use a cheaper labor to achieve that. So, you know, I worry about those regions for sure. But yeah, I think it is. I think it's going to be white glove. It's going to be the differentiator between
run of the mill brand and a luxury brand, you know, speak to it, speak to a real person who actually cares and wants to converse with you. And I like, I like the idea of it. I think it's, I think it's a, it's a good thing.
Rob Dwyer (38:55.276)
And you just said a word that popped up in an article I wrote recently, and that was care. I really do think that is going to be one of the things that brands have to focus on is hiring people who care, who care about the brand, who care about the customers. And who are really proud of the work they're doing. You mentioned that, right? That kind of serving a purpose and.
Luke (39:17.591)
Yeah.
Rob Dwyer (39:22.86)
aligning with the mission, the vision, the values of the company that they're working for. And I think that's where you will see customer service really soar when you have people working for your company, representing your company that really care about it.
Luke (39:42.218)
Yeah, I agree. And look, I think AI is gonna help that too, right? I think it's gonna be an org, the future of a customer service agent is gonna be augmented and they're gonna have AI serving up sort of next best actions and maybe even empathetic statements to help them move through what might be a very challenging conversation.
And I like that too, because what it does is it takes away some of that cognitive load that we, that we put on ourselves as, as agents too. Uh, and we're so focused on the process and getting it right and make sure you security check them and don't say, um, and say their name three times on a call. And don't forget to offer further assistance and make sure you've ticked all these boxes from a corrective. All that kind of goes away. And what you're left with is this raw. Interaction.
where you can connect with somebody and feel what's happening and be, uh, you know, feel that, uh, that just that, that deep connection where there's, you know, empathy, sympathy, um, all of these, all of these emotions that we forget simply because, uh, because we're so focused on the, on the tasks.
Rob Dwyer (40:38.52)
Mm.
Luke (41:02.346)
And so I think that there's some real benefit that's gonna happen in that space too. I think the future of customer service is definitely augmented. Yeah.
Rob Dwyer (41:10.98)
Yeah, I absolutely agree. And I think AI can really help with a lot of the tedious tasks that happen that are to do's on a checklist as opposed to the things that actually impact the business or impact the experience or impact agent performance. We're going to see.
Luke (41:25.751)
Mm-hmm.
Luke (41:32.414)
Yeah. Mm.
Rob Dwyer (41:38.148)
those things continue to be augmented or taken over by AI. And in many ways that will also make the job of you're a frontline supervisor simpler because I can focus on coaching instead of all these other tedious things that get in the way of helping my agents be successful in...
Luke (41:46.486)
Mm.
Luke (41:54.421)
Mm.
Luke (41:58.976)
Yeah.
Luke (42:07.259)
Mm.
Rob Dwyer (42:07.464)
in everything they do when they come to work every day. And ultimately, I think everyone wants to be successful at work. So the more that we can provide them the tools to help them do that, I think the better off everyone will be.
Luke (42:10.743)
Mm.
Luke (42:22.358)
I also hope it takes away some of the rubbish that humans have to deal with, you know, like...
Luke (42:31.826)
So I'll give an example. There's particularly like social media. There is people out there sitting in like a customer service call center type role that are looking at content and filtering content before it hits these platforms. And they are seeing the worst of humanity. You know, I had, I was engaged a couple of years ago to help an organization.
Uh, that was the frontline agents. That was their job was to filter content and they had surprisingly really low employee engagement and they were looking to, you know, can we use gamification to help drive employee engagement? And I ended up walking away because I was like, there is nothing, there is no gamification, there is no employee engagement that is going to fix the trauma that these people are seeing day in and day out. And these agents were leaving.
Rob Dwyer (43:26.028)
Right. Yeah, you can't make that fun.
Luke (43:29.034)
No, you can't. And three months later they're leaving and they've all got PTSD. And, you know, so I, I hope to see some of this AI that is image recognition, video recognition, um, to be able to filter out some of the worst of humanity. So that, so that we don't have to, um, subject humans to that sort of thing. So that's where I see some real benefit in, in some of these things. Um, because when we start to lose our humanity,
around these things and when we start to desensitize ourselves to some of this content, that is not good for anybody. So, you know, there is definitely some good to be had with the speed in which AI is developing. Yeah. But look, I think through all of it, the key message I think is that we need to keep humans in the loop. They can't disappear in that customer
Rob Dwyer (44:15.962)
Yeah.
Luke (44:28.53)
Ultimately, we want to connect. You know, there is a deep desire within our DNA to connect. It's how we survived, you know, when we were, you know, just learning to stand upright, is that we all just get together and we look after each other. And I think that the more we can do that, the better our society's gonna be.
Rob Dwyer (44:54.084)
I love that message. I am on board with it. And I think if we learned anything during COVID, that's one of the things that we learned was how important it was to be connected, to find new ways to be connected when we were physically separated from our friends and our family.
Luke (45:05.233)
Mm.
Luke (45:16.113)
Mm.
Rob Dwyer (45:18.868)
I don't think AI is going to change that. So it's still important to make that connection. And speaking of, kind of glad I connected with you again. Thank you so much for not only being on the show, but getting live kangaroo footage or coming in straight after dropping the kids off for joining.
Luke (45:22.024)
Mm.
Luke (45:31.987)
Yeah
Luke (45:42.566)
Yeah.
Rob Dwyer (45:48.472)
with man's best friend on your lap. These are all major accomplishments. And there's probably gonna be a Forbes article about them in a couple of hours after we go live.
Luke (45:54.734)
It's all real, man. Ha ha ha.
Luke (46:01.902)
I love that. I love it.
Rob Dwyer (46:05.772)
Luke Jamieson, thank you so much for being next in queue. I really appreciate your time today.
Luke (46:13.602)
Thanks mate, thanks for having me yet again, appreciate it. It's been, yeah, fun as always.