top of page
Indeed Wave.PNG
DS_logo_Primary.png

Queen of Chatbots, Quincy Valencia from AMS


CHATBOTS, CHATBOTS, MUTHA F&%$IN' CHATBOTS!!

Joel and I are always talking about the latest and greatest chatbots so we thought we'd bring in an expert. Someone who has flown from coast-to-coast in search of a chatbot, NO, not just a chatbot but several chatbots which could serve her client's needs.

Welcome Quincy Valencia, Head of Innovation and Solution Architecture from Alexander Mann Solutions.

It's another Uncommon EXCLUSIVE, matching you with only the best Chad & Cheese Podcasts. Get it? They're a AI candidate matching company you idiot!

PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by:

Chad: Say hello to the easiest way to find INTERESTED and QUALIFIED CANDIDATES.

Joel: You mean Uncommon's automated sourcing that turns passive candidates into interested and qualified applications?

Joel: 75%! That sounds like magic or something...

Chad: Close, it's called auto-ma-tion... and it's simple feed or post your jobs into Uncommon, the platform identifies your job requirements and in seconds Uncommon uses those requirements to search over 150 million candidate profiles and pull back only candidates who meet those requirements.

Joel: Plus you can connect your email and Uncommon will provide automated outreach with your customized messages to activate those passive candidates.

Chad: Even better, Uncommon shows exactly how the candidates meet all of the job requirements with a side-by-side comparison view against your job requirements.

Joel: Which means you won't be asking yourself "What in the Hell is this candidate doing here?"

Chad: No, but you will be asking yourself "Where has Uncommon been all my life..."

Joel: Seriously, Uncommon is the easiest way to find qualified candidates, active or passive.

Chad: Visit Uncommon.co, use discount code CHADCHEESE for 20% off

Joel: Uncommon.co...

Announcer: Hide your kids, lock the doors. You're listening to HR's most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman are here to punch the recruiting industry right where it hurts. Complete with breaking news, brash opinion, and loads of snark, buckle up, boys and girls. It's time for The Chad & Cheese Podcast.

Joel: It's an exclusive show.

Chad: Chatbots, chatbots, motherfucking chatbots.

Joel: Not Chad bots, but chatbots. Nobody wants a Chad bot, that's for goddamn sure.

Chad: Everybody wants a Chad bot, asshole.

Chad: Today on The Chad & Cheese Podcast, we have Quincy Valencia, from Alexander Mann Solutions. I believe her title is Queen of Chatbots. Quincy?

Quincy: Indeed. That is absolutely my title. It's new. This will be new to my company when they hear it, but I'm the self-named Queen of Chatbots. Thanks for having me, guys.

Chad: Not self-named, we named you.

Quincy: That's true.

Chad: You've been bestowed upon by-

Quincy: Thanks.

Chad: So fresh from Dublin. What the hell were you doing in Dublin?

Quincy: Yeah, we had about 130 of the senior leadership for Alexander Mann Solutions, getting together in Dublin, talking about how we're going to address all problems, talent-related, before they even emerge in the marketplace. It's an exciting time.

Joel: And what is Alexander Mann for those who don't know.

Quincy: Alexander Mann Solutions is literally the global leader in RPO solutions as designated by our clients in the latest HRO Today Baker's Dozen, we do have the number one ranking there, globally and also an EMEA and APAC, so go us.

Joel: Is that the pay-to-play Baker's Dozen?

Quincy: No, it is not the pay-to-play Baker's Dozen.

Joel: Okay.

Quincy: Stop that, it's not true. It comes straight from our clients.

Joel: Do we remember the '80s show, Quincy M,D,? What was the name of that show?

Quincy: It was M.E., actually.

Joel: Yeah. Was it a source of pain for you growing up?

Quincy: No, actually, it's because I'm 110 years old, I actually predated Quincy M.E., a little bit. Not as much as Chad predated him, but a little bit.

Chad: Oh, yeah. Me being one day older than Joel, I guess we're just both old

asses.

Joel: All right. Moving on, moving on.

Quincy: Before we move on, I just want to say, I'd actually be a huge fan of a Chad bot, over a chatbot, because then maybe we can turn him off.

Chad: Oh, that's not cool. See this is why-

Quincy: Oh, you're so sensitive.

Chad: This is why we bring Quincy on to the show. We had Adam, Adam Godson who's a very close friend of Quincy's and she's like-

Quincy: He is.

Chad: ... she's like, "What the fuck. Why wouldn't you bring the Queen of Chatbots on?" I was like, "You know what? That's probably a good idea. We should probably do that."

Joel: Queen of Chatbots.

Chad: It really is true. It's true.

Joel: That's on her LinkedIn profile, by the way.

Quincy: I'm the Queen of all bots by the way, not just chatbots.

Chad: Oh, all bots. I like that.

Quincy: I just elevated myself there.

Chad: So we're talking about chatbots today and this is going to be a very broad discussion.

Chad: But, first off, I want you to tell the story of why you have so much deep knowledge when it comes to bots.

Quincy: Yeah, sure thing. We at Alexander Mann Solutions specifically, are quite the innovators when it comes to automation and artificial intelligence in a process. In a very British sort of way, we do it quietly, but we get things done. So even internally, we don't toot our own horns much. We actually have our own family, we have about 20 different bots in use. And as we look to add this expertise knowledge to our clients to help make their processes better, we just in and develop it and do it our own. So we've developed our own full family of bots using both internal developers and partnering with key industry experts out there to help us do that.

Quincy: As we look further, first of all, the world of the applicant tracking system is going to go by the wayside at some point in time. And if we look at the entire ... yeah, it is.

Joel: Can you say that again?

Quincy: Yes, the world of applicant tracking systems is not long for this world. Because, it's typically a horrible user experience, in almost every case. So when we're working out there to look at how do we improve the experience for all stakeholders in the process, so not just your candidates, but your hiring managers, your recruiters, if you have them, your talent acquisition leadership. We think that we can do that with AI and that brought us to the chatbot story. And I've been living in that world now for quite some time looking at how we use that, how can we shift the paradigm of what people think of as a chatbot into something that's actually going to be an extraordinary experience for our clients and their users.

Joel: I feel like I just watched a Netflix trailer. Like I'm ready to dive into this, I'm going to go.

Quincy: Sweet.

Chad: Let's do it.

Joel: She just destroyed ATSs, like let's go.

Chad: I love it. I love it. Okay, since we've gotten so deep, so fast, I'm going ask a very deep question. What's up with all the female naming with chatbots?

Quincy: Gee, I don't know. Actually, I think it's based on the patriarchy, to be honest with you, everybody thinks of HR as a girl. I think that's what they're doing, so I think that's where it comes from.

Chad: You don't think it has to do with women are actually easier to talk to and man are just assholes and they don't listen in the first place?

Quincy: I mean, while that's true in some cases, I don't think that's where it came from. I think people, they think of HR, and they think of recruiting, and historically they think of women. I think that's where it comes from. I also think that it's mostly men naming these chatbots and they prefer to name it a girl name. But that's my opinion.

Joel: I'm going to go even more elementary than this. Some of our listeners will not know what a chatbot is. Is it that little widget on websites? Is it text messaging? I want to start with your definition of what a chatbot is, in particular when it pertains to recruiting.

Quincy: Yeah, it's a great question. I think if you look the core and the start of a chatbot, it is going to be, people will think of it as that little widget that pops up when you go somewhere. In the recruiting world, it'll be on somebody's career site, it may be when you go out to buy a new mattress and a little chatbot comes up to help take you through the process. But really, it's an artificial intelligent assistant that functions through natural language processing that has answers to some of your basic questions.

Quincy: And in the recruiting world, it could be, "What's it like to work there? What are the hours? Can I have visible tattoos and work there," to help get through the process in a way that's 24/7 available. And that, frankly, frees up some of your recruiters and your other higher value human assets to do more meaningful and deeper work.

Chad: Is that why you have like 20 different chatbots that you guys are working with? You're talking about backend, like onboarding, and even beyond that, employee engagement chatbots, talking about candidate engagement chatbots. And you're also talking about recruiter assistant types of chatbots. Is that why we need so many of these things?

Quincy: Well, I think you just hit the nail on the head. If you go, and I've spent quite a bit of time with a lot of the founders and CEOs of a lot of these different bot system, and if you say, "So why is your chatbot different than the other," they faint and they vomit a little bit, and they cringe because none of them, they don't want to be seen as a chatbot. That's an outsider's view of what they do. It's not just about chats, not just about help desk functionality. It really is about looking at the process, the entire recruiting and talent life cycle end-to-end and seeing how we can enhance that experience and really, again, add value to your process overall. So calling them a chatbot at this point is almost a misnomer. Almost none of them are simply a chatbot.

Chad: So where are your clients looking for chatbots first, or do they not even know? Is it all just this kind of noise that everybody's like, "Hey, I need to talk about chatbots," and they have no fucking clue what they're talking about, whether it's front end, whether it's back end, whether it's even process methodology pieces.

Joel: Yeah, remember in March, Chad, in Dublin where, I forget who it was, said, "Companies are coming to them saying, we need a chatbot," and they say, "Why do you need a chatbot." And they say, "Well, we just need a chatbot because it's the hot new thing." Are we still at that point, or are people more evolved?

Quincy: Depends who you're talking to, it's a little bit of both. If I had a dime for every time I've walked into a client or a prospect and they've said, "How do we put some of this AI stuff into our process," I'd be a pretty rich woman. It's not about adding a chatbot or any sort AI to the process. If you're starting with that question, you're starting in the wrong spot. It's, "Let's look at your ...", again, it's your end-to-end talent solution and see what the process is, where we can enhance it, where we can really add value and then we'll determine if some sort an AI assistant is the appropriate mechanism to do that.

Quincy: Some of the companies out there are quite sophisticated and they've already done it. They started where the commencement of chatbots was to begin with, which is with, "Let's put a help chatbot on the front so people can get their basic questions about a company answered," and then had some modicum of success there. And then it moved to, "Let's help them figure out, ask questions about the job specifically," and then, "Let's move into prescreens." So as it evolves, at further spots along this process as others, but starts there and then ends up going all the way through. Like Chad just said, "Let's help with onboarding. Let's go all the way through to employee engagement once they're on board."

Joel: Are there any level companies that chatbots just aren't for, or does every company have ... should be investigating this?

Quincy: Yeah, that's a really great question. I haven't thought of it that way before. I think it depends on what it is you're going to use it for. Again, if it's just chat up front and it's just help desk, I think there's tremendous ability to put that in and use it for most size and scope company, probably the bigger, the better where you have more questions coming in. You're freeing up, again, more resources to do it. Maybe the smallest companies-

Joel: And high frequency.

Quincy: Yeah, so maybe the smallest companies out there don't have it in a straight chat, stereotypical chatbot, but I would also argue that it could help to, for those who don't have a recruiting department at all, or a talent department at all, or you're depending on generalists to handle the entire process and they have so much on their plate, they can't do it. I think you could really use that to enhance the process, again, all the way through where currently, it may not be the best.

Chad: I think we're always talking chatbot, chatbot, chatbot, but companies really should be focusing on process, process, process. And what parts of the process can be actually lifted or supported by using this type of technology, whatever type of technology it might be. Is that where you're trying to turn their heads and say, "Look, we've got to get deep into your process?" Because in most cases, like you're talking about with applicant tracking systems, in some cases, not even applicant tracking systems fault because the companies are using 1990s process methodologies that they used before they actually bought an applicant tracking system. Then they forced them into this antiquated bullshit process. Is that really like the base, the essence of where these companies need to start?

Quincy: It is. You totally hit the nail on the head. For the record, I'm not anti ATS, they serve their purposes. They're certainly great systems of record, compliance is a thing, whether we want it to be or not, and they help companies there. But if you do what you said, Chad, which is shove in any sort of technology, whether it's a bot, whether it's ATS, whatever it is, and say, you keep your antiquated process exactly as it today and let's conform the technology to support our antiquated process, you're still going to have a bad process. Now you have the added complexity of technology that may or may not be able to support exactly what you're trying to do. Let's look at what you're doing.

Quincy: Let's look at the experience first and then put in humans at the right spot where it's going to most enhance it and put in technology where it's going to most enhance that experience. And it's the same, you started with ATS, it's the same thing for automation, and certainly for these bots that are coming in, the chatbots. So let's look beyond just the, "Can we take it through ...", let me back up. If you talk to, I'm not even going to say who it is, if you talk to people who are heads of these companies. As I said before, if you call them chatbot, they fall on the floor. They started there because that's where their users started. But they're taking that journey so far beyond just the up front chat.

Quincy: How can we really manage the entire application process? First and foremost, the companies are getting what they need from these candidates, but they're getting it in a more timely manner, they're bringing candidates in faster, the conversion rates are so much higher. If you look at a typical conversion rate today, the drop off rate between bringing a candidate in, to who actually completes the prescreen or application process, drop off sits at about 59% in general. And when you start adding in a way that they can actually engage and not feel like they have to take a shot of whiskey and put aside four hours the night before they start looking for a job, you're going to have a better experience. You're going to have greater results, really is the bottom line there.

Quincy: Let's look at it. Ask the right questions, look thoroughly and completely through your entire process, and think outside the box. How can we go, which I hate that phrase, and I can't believe I just used it, but they're limited today in a lot cases by the imagination of the user and buyer. And let's look at ... and it's because of the paradigm of, "We absolutely have to have humans at this point of the process." As yourself why. Maybe you do, but what is it doing there? So how can you use a, we'll still call it a chatbot since that's the name of the show, to make it better across the board from end-to-end.

Joel: I'd like to take it a little step further. Let's play make believe. I'm an employer, I know this chatbot thing is happening, I'm new to the game. I have a list of a dozen that I need to talk to. What are the questions, what are the hard questions that an employer should be asking these chatbots to make sure that they're selecting the best one for them?

Quincy: That's the right question to be asking. Before you even engage, you look at your process, you determine you can add in a chatbot somewhere to enhance it, and look and see what parts of the process that you think you want to enhance, and you're going to ask the different providers if they can do that and do they have capability in that area. It starts from, what channels do you support? Is it just that little icon on the screen at the front or can my candidates engage through text or through WhatsApp or through WeChat or Facebook Messenger? Because the key, especially in this market today, is engaging candidates where they are and in a way that's going to be most accessible and most pleasing to them.

Quincy: You have to make sure that it's a multi channel application first and foremost. You have to look at their integration capabilities, do they have [ATIs 00:14:43], what sort are they and how does that work with your current tech staff. Because at some point, you are going to have to get information, again for compliance purposes, but certainly for reporting analytics from one system to another. What languages do they support if that's applicable to you. And when they say what languages they support, is it just a Google translator or do they really have some more in-depth and complete of local nuanced language capability or is it just Google Translate, which is a problem.

Quincy: I have a funny story about that if I could, really quick, to show why that's so important. A hundred years ago, I worked for a company that I won't name, but it was a large home improvement retailer and there was a huge-

Chad: It sounds like Home Depot. Go ahead.

Quincy: It does sound like that. There was a campaign to pursue bilingual candidates, specifically Spanish speaking. Our amazing employment branding team, which they were by the way, I went through and they had all these signs made up. They were doing local signage and giant banners to hang in the front of the building. And the words that they put out there, about five minutes after the banners were hung, the corporate office's phone started ringing, it was incredibly offensive apparently. The words they used for [foreign language 00:15:53] which is, "We're hiring," but in certain countries and areas and certain dialect, it's soliciting as in, the lady of the night soliciting. And you don't want to be the poor person who has to go in front of your CEO and explain to them why that's what you're advertising, really not on brand for that particular company. Like I said, it's really important to make sure you understand their language capability and whether that's important to you and where they're driving it.

Joel: How about for the cost conscious employers, is there a chatbot? Are there variations in price where you'd want someone to send someone for the cost conscious employer?

Quincy: Are there what? Say that again?

Joel: Cheap. They're looking for a deal. They're cheap. Let's be honest about it. They don't want to spend a lot of money, they've heard these things are commoditized anyway. Where would you send them for lower level pricing versus maybe higher level gold level pricing?

Quincy: Plenty of them because you get what you pay for. If really all you want is a front level, "Can you answer a few questions," any of them can do that for you. That's not going to be their bread and butter and why they're hiring. If you ask that question, "We want X, can you do that," and if it's, "Yes," I'm sure you can all get a price point of what you want. But understand that doing that isn't necessarily going to give you the outcome and results that you need. Sure, you need the cost, but you need, what's the user interface? What's the admin control capability? What are your analytics capabilities? What data are you collecting and how can you track it? What type of support do you have? Those are some of all the questions that you need to go through.

Quincy: And if all you want is a box of rocks, somebody's going to give your box of rocks, but I would argue that that's going to be potentially more detrimental than positive.

Chad: Then you're going to get the hooker banner, is what she's saying.

Quincy: The hooker banner, that's right. Is that really what you want? And maybe you do, maybe that's your brand? Hey, good on you.

Chad: It could be your brand, it'd be fine. It would be the Chad/Cheese brand.

Chad: So the multi channel support like they're talking about, are most of these chatbot platforms, whatever you call them, are they supporting texting, SMS texting?

Quincy: Yeah. I think that's the first that they're supporting, most are supporting texting. But ask them, is it native to their platform? Are they using another person's texting capability to do that? And the reason it's important because there really could be another system that's best in class for that texting capability, but the more technology you start frankensteining together, the more opportunity it is for failure. And, again, you want to make sure that you're enhancing the experience and not detracting from it. So be careful there as well.

Chad: We're hearing at least rumbles out there when we talk about chatbots. Big names like IBM and then you're like, "Oh, the Watson," and then you hear companies come back and say, "Yeah, no, that's shit." And then MIA has 40 million dollars or something like that in funding, and it doesn't seem like any of these big names are really taking a lead. Is that, not that you have to name anybody, but is that what you're seeing? Is that there's just big difference in what these companies and how they actually provide it. In some cases, just because they have a big name, doesn't mean they're going to have the best tech.

Joel: So is your question, is there a brand leader at this point basically?

Quincy: There are several, and it depends what you're trying to do. That's a really good question. There's some companies that I know pretty intimately that are doing great things in their sectors. If you look at AllyO, for example, who I know the Chad & Cheese show are a big fan of, if you look at what they're doing in trying to turn their system of capability really into an end-to-end system, they are really taking a lead there. If you look at ... and their analytics are insanely strong. If you look at Olivia, for example, also leading there, but they're looking at the experience more holistically from both ends, so they actually have an app on the back end for their hiring managers to engage, which is critical to get a system embedded into a process. If you look at Caron, which is out of Toronto, their assessment capability, their native assessment capability, is unparalleled in a way that does not hinder that experience.

Quincy: So my caution would be just because somebody has been there longer, or just because their name is bigger, make sure there's actual substance behind what could essentially be smoke and mirrors and depending on a name that people know. And understand what it is, what do you want them to do? Understand that as well.

Joel: We've heard a lot about job seekers almost preferring the chatbot experience versus the black hole.

Quincy: Yes.

Joel: Is it your contention that it'll always be that way or do you think we'll hit a point where we hit chatbot fatigue and this thing is, there's some backlash against them?

Quincy: I think it's actually opposite of that. This is where, two things. It's funny, I forget who it was, I think it may have been an iCIMS poll actually that I read recently that candidates surveyed, of those 76% get more frustrated in that black hole with a recruiting experience and not hearing back, that of not hearing back after a first date. It's a problem that we've all known and accepted for 10 or 15 years, or longer. It's a problem. You brought up my good amazing friend, Adam Godson. I heard his podcast with you. Here's one thing that I'm actually-

Chad: Make sure you listen to it over, and over, and over.

Quincy: Oh, I fall asleep to it at night.

Chad: It was that boring, okay.

Quincy: No, it lulls me, it's great.

Quincy: In most technologies, and I think this is true, the reason that these chatbots have been slower to catch on, relatively speaking, to the others, is because usually tech advancements everywhere are driven by consumer tech and it hasn't. The chatbots have not really taken off from a consumer tech standpoint, and that's really true for various and sundry reasons. But just to be really clear, the recruiting and hiring experience, and even the internal engagement, has historically been so poor, that our candidates and applicants are looking for anything, it's like gasping for air to make it better. And this is where I really think this chatbot is taking the lead from a recruiting standpoint, that may eventually catch on in the consumer space. But the difference is, if I'm a consumer and I'm on Amazon, I want to browse and look around and get to that pretty quickly. If I'm a job applicant, I want to engage and that's what a chatbot can offer the opportunity to do, if properly executed.

Chad: It's like Oliver asking for more gruel, "More gruel, please. More engagement, please."

Chad: I think it's pretty simple. If you are staring into a black void, there's that or you can talk to a robot, whether it's a Alexa, or My Google Home, or something like that.

Okay, I'd rather do that than have nothing at all.

Quincy: And program it right? Make sure that your brand is reflected in what you're putting in there. Explore the actual capabilities of the system you're putting in. Is it really just a one-to-one if they ask this question, given this answer? Or does the technology support contextualization where they can really interpret how deep is their NLP capability? It's not like you're trying to lie, you're not saying they're talking to a human when it's really a bot. I think people are really okay with that. Just make sure that your program is ... I was at one, I forget, oh, it was funny. It was actually, it was Caron actually and they were showing us, somebody starts dropping F bombs in the process. Her response is, "Oh, my," it's just what are they going to say, "I don't understand what it is you're trying to tell me?" Or are they going to say, "That deal's better."

Chad: Language, that's the one.

Chad: So Quincy has a much broader range than chatbots, but we definitely wanted to focus on this because you have been focusing here lately. Here's one thing that I want to ask besides chatbots, because there's so much chatbot distraction right now, so much noise. What great tech, what great tech are companies missing because of all the chatbot noise? What other types of technologies should they really be looking at heavily along with chatbots?

Quincy: Some of the people have been talking about, but now have never really used and some are pretty basic, but RPA capability do wonders for some of these companies. Here's an example. We had a challenge with a client of ours, AMS, who we needed to get 70 thousand documents from out of one system into another system. We needed to organize it by, download all the 70 thousand documents, organize it by candidate, create share portfolios for each, set the appropriate document in folder security, rename the file systematically, so on and so forth. And there's a couple different ways you could do that. You could release 10 people from their day jobs, give them 10 weeks to work, spend 35 or 40 grand, human error, bored, and low job satisfaction, that sort of thing, or even create a bot to do it, it's RPA.

Quincy: And all you have to do there is free up a few SMEs, allow some time for development, allow the bot to run. And the result in that particular case, it was no mistakes, no tantrums from anyone who were bored, and zero errors, zero. It was done in 36 hours, it would have taken four to six weeks to do previously. So really, that's an actual case study that happened that we managed for them with one of our bots, that you can see surely wide application of that throughout RPA process there. There's a lot of buzz around taking unconscious bias out of the process and there's also been a lot of negative press, like Amazon's. Don't shy away from it. This is where automation, I think, is really going to help the recruiting process and help companies get the best quality talent they can.

Quincy: Nobody, or most people, let's just assume and give the benefit of the doubt, nobody's intentionally discriminating or biased against anyone. You can't help it, it's in your brain. It's in your psychology. It's in your DNA. So let's put some robotics there, they're going to help scientifically, and proven to take some of that out, so that you really are getting access to and exposing yourself to the actual best qualified candidate for a job as opposed to hiring managers' gut feeling or a recruiter who was having a bad day.

Chad: Take the dumb human out of the equation.

Quincy: Yeah. Nobody's talking about Cyberdyne here, it's about adding humans to the process where they're actually adding value and let the machines do where they're actually adding value, which we all know they can do things faster, they can do things cheaper, and they're getting so sophisticated at this point, they can do it sometimes with an experience and a quality level that's higher than what humans can do.

Joel: And Quincy, my last question, in regards to your comment about cheaper, how do these companies stay out of the commodity trap? For example, MIA taking 40 million dollars, they better come up with something more than just a chatbot, right?

Quincy: Yep. Yeah, it's true. Let's look at, again, start from what's adding to the experience, adding to the process. Are you enhancing your NLP capability so that it feels more engaging and feels more human-like. Are you looking deeper than just chatbot and looking where you can apply that same foundational technology at different places in the process, all the way through to existing employees. Is there a way to engage for career coaching? Is there a way to engage for internal mobility, and that sort of thing? Look beyond, again, I started before, there's a paradigm of, "We absolutely have to have humans here and there's no way a robot could really do it," challenge yourself and the companies need to challenge themselves to make sure that that funding they're getting is being used in a way that's going to move them beyond where the capability is today and not play into those old school thought processes.

Joel: Can I get in one more question where we're not quite at 30 minutes yet. I know you'll edit this out a little bit. Two questions I had, one is, the question of scale. For most of these companies, someone has to talk to the employer to ask what questions do we want to ask. So I have a question about how they're going to get over the hump with this scaling issue for most of them. And the second thing I'm curious about your opinion on voice. So you have an Alexa and other voice assistants, does that ever trump the chatbot experience?

Quincy: Yeah, your first question about scale, the technology's going to help you to do that, as it learns. Look at it this way. You're going to launch a system, you're going to launch with a hundred or a hundred fifty questions and answers and possible variations to that. And that's a really mild investment of time and energy to do that. As organizations, you already have those answers somewhere, it's just compiling them and putting them in there. The machines learn though, it is a very Cyberdyne-type moment. As it comes in and you're getting more answers to more questions and you're getting more input and more feedback, it's going to feedback to you what it is you need to focus on, which means what could have taken three weeks to start, or a month to start, is now going to take a day, at most to come back on. So trust the technology if you're going to invest in it and it will help you scale pretty organically there.

Quincy: And then secondarily, what was the second question, Joel? I got excited about the first one.

Joel: Voice, voice assistance versus chatbots.

Quincy: There is a ton of stuff to come out of that, I think. But if you look at, everybody knows what Google did, everybody's seen that video. But that was literally years of time and effort that they put into that, for that AI system they put out there. And it's got applicability of one, and it really is one-to-one. Certainly something to watch. I think there's a lot of money being invested in that, a lot of capability into that. Yeah, sure, I think we'll all go that way. At some point, we'll wake up and say, "Toothbrush, brush my teeth for me," and that'll be fine, but it's out there. Watch for it, it's not ready quite yet.

Chad: On that one, they need to an extent because using voice activation for chatbots. I see them really turning into or morphing into, whether I'm using my Google Home and it is somewhat of a chatbot for saying it can take me through a process methodology. The technology starts to meld into each other, don't you think?

Quincy: Yeah, of course it does. You nailed it there. It's taking, it's a natural extension of what it's doing today, but you still have the issue of scalability so use case for that is so specific, it just takes longer. But it's going to happen and as it continues to develop, it'll happen more quickly.

Chad: Well, excellent. Quincy Valencia, Queen of Chatbots, everyone. No seriously, we appreciate you taking the time. I know that you've been doing a ton of research around this. And we've been talking about it a lot on this show so we wanted to bring somebody in who actually knew what the hell they were talking about.

Quincy: Hey, I appreciate that you consider that to be me, so thanks a lot.

Joel: Quincy, for those who want to learn more about you or your company, where would you direct them?

Quincy: AlexanderMannSolutions.com.

Chad: We out.

Joel: We out.

Quincy: All right, thanks.

Stella: Hi, this is Stella Cheesman. Thanks for listening to The Cheese & Chad Podcast, or at least that's what I call it. Anyway, make sure you use this dial on iTunes, that's really Android phone for me or wherever you listen to podcasts. And be sure to give buckets of money to our sponsors. Otherwise, I may be forced to take that coal mining job I saw on monster.com. Me, out.

bottom of page