Podcast Summary: Advice from a Call Center Geek!

Episode: Inside Expivia Digital and the State of Contact Center Technology

Host: Thomas Laird
Date: October 3, 2025

Episode Overview

In this episode, Tom Laird, CEO of Expivia Interaction Marketing and OttoQa, offers a "soft announcement" for a newly rebranded technology consulting venture under the Expivia Digital name. He shares insights on the current state and rapid evolution of contact center technology, market trends in BPO and customer experience (CX), the real impact of AI, and ongoing challenges for small and mid-sized contact centers. Tom reflects on practical approaches to digital transformation and discusses the importance of making advanced tools and consulting accessible, especially for smaller players overwhelmed by the costs and complexities of big vendors.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Introduction & Soft Announcement of Expivia Digital

Expivia Digital Launch: Tom introduces Expivia Digital—a technology consulting firm spun from long-standing informal advice to podcast listeners who need practical help with contact center technology, especially around CCaaS selection, AI implementation, and NICE platform optimization.
Target Audience: Focus on smaller contact centers (under 1,000 seats and often as little as 10 or 40 seats) who are underserved by expensive enterprise managed services.
Key Services:
- CCaaS (Contact Center as a Service) selection
- AI and NICE Studio/integration consulting
- Managed services for NICE customers at low price points
- Free quick consults for simple questions

Quote:
"We want to be a real partner with a lot of these smaller contact centers...that are kind of being left out or don’t know where to turn or don’t have the budget for the full meal deal."
—Tom Laird [05:00]

2. Current State of the Contact Center Technology Market

Shift Towards On-Prem & Onshore: Tom observes an uptick in internal (on-prem) centers, especially for healthcare and financial services. There's renewed interest in onshore (US-based) BPO after years of remote work pivoting post-COVID.
AI as a Must-Have, Not a Differentiator:
- Agent assist, Auto QA, and auto-summarization have moved from "nice to have" to table stakes.
- Real-time voice cancellation and translation (e.g., tools like Crisp) are maturing.
Market Readiness: AI features are now mature and integrated into RFPs—no longer something that sets vendors apart, but rather a basic expectation.

Quote:
"Agent assist, auto QA, auto summarization—they’re just, they’re like the must haves, they’re not like, 'Hey, we have this.' It’s not even a differentiator anymore. You can’t even play without these type of tools."
—Tom Laird [10:45]

3. AI Adoption: Hype vs. Reality

No Drastic Reduction in Agent Headcount—Yet: Despite the AI buzz, headcounts remain stable; technology is supporting agents more than replacing them.
AI Shouldn’t Be Treated Like IVR:
- Tom shares a recent Taco Bell AI drive-through experience: many brands replicate outdated IVR approaches, leading to clunky, repetitive AI interactions.
- Calls for a new CX mindset: AI isn’t just an upgrade to IVR, and quality assurance (QA) shouldn’t just automate old workflows.
Resistance to Change: Many leaders still insist on legacy QA metrics and question sets, missing opportunities to reimagine processes with AI.

Quote:
"We are using the same IVR mindset...Is it great for the customer experience? No. But again, where’s that line?"
—Tom Laird [14:25]

4. Exciting Technology Developments

Auto QA & Analytics:
- Auto QA platforms (including Tom’s own OttoQa) are reaching advanced levels, merging with deep analytics and automating a large part of the QA process.
KMS Evolution:
- Knowledge Management Systems (KMS) are finally providing the missing link that enables more effective AI and agent assist rollouts.
Agent Assist:
- More helpful in complex or long-handle time situations and in environments with cross-sell/up-sell needs. Not for everyone, but rapidly improving.
Auto Summarization:
- Still underused, but "the easiest thing in the world to do" for contact centers looking to make a fast impact.

Quote:
"Auto QA is insane...It’s almost turning into full analytics...The knowledge management—this was the missing link...So that you can move to AI, so you can use things like Agent Assist."
—Tom Laird [18:10]

5. Cloud Migration & Platform Competition

On-prem to Cloud Transition Remains Lagging: Many centers, surprisingly, still not migrated to cloud platforms.
Major CCaaS Players Advancing:
- Names mentioned: Cisco, Zoom, NICE (CXone), Genesys, Five9, AWS—all actively updating with strong AI features.
- The industry is shifting rapidly, "changing every five to six months."
Tom’s Ongoing Offering:
- Open invitation for listeners needing help evaluating platforms or technology investments, especially if overwhelmed by choices or stuck with underused tools.

Quote:
"Some of these platforms, Cisco’s coming, Zoom is coming...You have all these guys that are really starting to get really AI forward platforms."
—Tom Laird [22:00]

6. Personal & Industry Engagement

Conferences & Community: Tom recaps his participation in a recent BPO/consultant technology summit, noting the rapid exchange of ideas across 70-80 BPOs and promising to share new learnings in future episodes.
Commitment to Weekly Episodes: Acknowledges recent inconsistency, but emphasizes his goal to return to a weekly release schedule for the podcast.

Notable Quotes & Moments

[05:00] "We want to come in, help the, again, the smaller contact center...figure out how to get the most out of your platform."
[10:45] "Agent assist, auto QA, auto summarization—they’re just...the must haves."
[14:25] "We are using the same IVR mindset...Is it great for the customer experience? No."
[17:30] "Just remember: AI is not an IVR, and let’s not treat it like it, even though that’s all we’ve been used to."
[18:10] "Auto QA is insane...It’s almost turning into full analytics...KMS are getting better...the missing link..."
[22:00] "Some of these platforms, Cisco’s coming, Zoom is coming...You have all these guys that are really starting to get really AI forward platforms."

Important Timestamps

00:00–04:30: Intro & context; Expivia Digital launch and purpose
05:00–10:00: Market needs, underserved small contact centers, focus on NICE consulting
10:45–16:00: AI must-haves, market trends, return to on-prem/onshore, technology RFPs
16:00–19:00: AI and IVR—critique of current approaches, Taco Bell AI anecdote, QA process challenges
19:00–23:00: Spotlight on new tools: Auto QA, KMS, Agent Assist, cloud migrations, platform competition
23:00–End (~26:00): Tom’s engagement in the industry, conferences, recommitment to the show’s release cadence

Summary Takeaways

Expivia Digital aims to democratize expert technology guidance for small and mid-size contact centers, especially around complex platforms like NICE.
AI’s evolving role: It’s now essential, not exceptional, but most organizations still struggle to deploy it in truly customer-centric ways.
CX leaders need to reimagine rather than just automate legacy processes to realize AI’s full potential.
Cloud migration and technology selection remain daunting for many; Tom offers honest, practical help rather than big-vendor sales pitches.
The industry is moving fast—with platforms, features, and best practices changing every few months.

Connect with Tom:

LinkedIn: Tom Laird
TikTok: @callcenter_geek

For those who missed it:
This episode is a state-of-the-union for contact center technology, filled with practical insights on CX, digital transformation, and industry shifts—delivered in Tom’s energetic, accessible style.

Transcript

A (0:00)

Hi, guys. Tom Leonard here. You've heard me break down Contact Center Technology on the podcast time and time again. Now it's time for me to help you with your challenges. As your Contact Center Technology advisor through our new company, Xpiva Digital, I can help you with things like CCast selection, any type of AI implementation, and nice studio and integration services. It's the same honest advice you hear on the Geek, applied specifically to your operation. Visit Expedia digital.com to get started. That's Expedia digital.com. welcome back, everybody, to another episode of advice from a call center Geek. The Call Center Contact center podcast. We try to give you some actionable items, take back in your contact center, improve the overall quality, improve the agent experience, hopefully improve your customer experience. I'm fired up for today, guys. It's been too long since I've talked to you guys on the podcast. I know so many of you guys still have been downloading things. I've been super crazy live on Tick tock, crazy on LinkedIn, but been so busy trying to do some things that the podcast is kind of taking a back seat. So this is my goal here. As we wind down, I guess, I guess starting the fourth quarter right here in October, this will be back to its weekly place. I think it's a really important tool for everybody out there and I know that I've kind of been slacking here on, on what we've been doing with this. So having said that, I'm going to kind of do a soft announcement here. So Monday we're going to announce this. This is, I'm recording this, it's on a Friday. I have a bunch of videos doing a bunch of things for kind of our launch on Monday of kind of our third, I don't say third business, but something we've been doing for a really long time. Kind of under the, I don't know, kind of very quietly, I guess you could say is. So many of you guys on the podcast have come to me and said, tom, we need help. We're an on prem. We need to move to a CCAS platform. Tom, we need help with AI. Tom, do can you help us with some nice studio work? We need integration help, right? And again, I would help in any possible way that I can and realize once I went on Tick Tock as well, that there's a. There's a pretty big need out there and there's some really, really good, expensive companies doing this. But again, just like what we want to do with auto, we're going to rebrand Expedia Digital. So right now, if you go to Expedia digital.com it's a fully rebranded site for contact center technology consulting and also specifically helping NICE customers get the most out of their platform. Right? That's one of the biggest, I guess, downfalls, say downfalls of nice. But one of the struggles with NICE is it's a very complex platform. So people a lot of times don't understand how to integrate. They don't know how to use Studio to its full extent. To use professional. Professional services is extremely expensive. When you're using all these kind of managed service partners, it's crazy expensive. So we want to come in, help the, again, the smaller contact center again with nice. Maybe that's under a thousand seats, right? But those 40 seaters, those 20 seaters, those 10 seaters, we want to help you on a very low price point figure out how to get the most out of your platform. If you need a full managed service partner to kind of manage your whole nice suite, we'll do that. If you just say, hey Tom, I got a quick 15 second question on this. We want to be able to do that for you and do that at no cost. So we want to be a real partner with a lot of these smaller contact centers that are kind of, you know, kind of being left out or don't know where to turn or don't have the budget for, for the full meal deal, right. To use the platform. Secondly. Right. We want to be a very strong consulting technology partner for everybody out there. As you guys know, I talk about it all the time. You know, we've done our, even our own CCAS ratings, right? Top 19. That's. We ranked the top 19 CCAS platforms into different categories that I think actually help. Again, none of those, none of those platforms are bad, but they're all specific for certain use cases, right? Smaller contact centers need this. Enterprise need this. Outbound centers need this. Do you need workforce management? You need analytics? Do not. We want to be that partner to help you kind of go through this, this technology transition that we're seeing, you know, as it relates to AI and analytics and more force management. I don't know if there's anybody. Maybe there's other people out there. I'm sure there are, but there's not many more people who have seen as many demos as I have who's played with the technology. And again, I have a bpo. I'm actually using a lot of this technology, especially on the nice side, but not just on the nice side. In in our actual contact centers. So again, there's more on this, but I think, you know, I'd love to just have a conversation with anybody out there that is thinking about, you know, we need a new platform, we need new technology. We don't know where to go, we don't know where to start or we have this tool, we're not utilizing it. We want to try to help you and do it at a price point that is not like these enterprise giant managed services partners that you know, come in with, you know, very high minimums and hourly rates that are insane. Try to do it a little bit differently and we'll see if this works out for us. But you know, things I think are evolving this way. Let me tell you kind of my overall view of kind of the, the market right now, what I'm seeing. And first on the, in the BPO space, right, there's, there's a lot of movement I think people are starting to think through and they, they, they, they kept kind of dry powder right there. They kept their money in their pocket waiting to see what was going to happen with AI. And I think we're still looking to see what's going on with AI, but a couple or, or we've seen more and more of looking of contact center professionals that have internal centers or want to outsource looking more onshore. On prem, I've seen that like I haven't seen in probably the last five years since COVID right? So there's been a swing back from the work from home back to on prem, especially for healthcare financial services. But it's very high technology. Every single RFP that I'm seeing, again Agent assist, auto, qa, auto summarization, they're just, they're like the, the must haves, they're not like, hey, we have this. It's not even a differentiator anymore. You can't even play, you know, without these type of tools. You know, voice cancellation is, is absolutely huge now, right? Looking at real time translation, right. Looking at tools like crisp, right? What they can do with translation, what they can do with even the voice modulations that we've had multiple conversations on. All of that technology is, is alive. It is mature, right? Relatively mature for, for the market. And I think is, is something that starting to really see kind of evolve as it relates to AI. I'm still not seeing headcounts go down, right? We're starting to see more internal tools like we have been talking about and we've said that to everyone, right, like, you know, we, we need to start with, with the agent experience first, which then will make the customer experience better. We'll save money in the long run with shorter handle times and higher CSAT and nps, and then we'll move to kind of that first chatbot. I, I had my first experience with the Taco Bell AI yesterday, and I, I guess it's my buddies, my friends at Amelia that are doing that. Overall, it was a pretty good experience. Here's the problem. The problem wasn't with the technology. The problem was we are starting or we're, we're using the same IVR mindset that we're doing with, with AI. So we're trying to push all of this extra stuff in every single time and just hoping for like, percentage bounces and things. Like, for example, you know, I was asked, do I have a. My customer code for like, bonus points, whatever, which I don't go to Taco Bell. That my. Believe it or not. I mean, you can look at me think I go to Taco Bell a lot. But so I didn't have that. They repeated everything in the order. I hate that. Right. So again. And then repeated everything. Didn't hear, that's fine, because humans don't hear asked a couple times, I had to give a couple times of what we really wanted. Then at the end, was your order correct? Right? It was correct. But then we went into do you want a French fries? Or I forgot to talk about culture. French fries. But do you want the Mexican fries for an extra $3? And like, no. Oh, hey, would you like to round this up for this? And then some type of Halloween thing that they had. So again, this is what we did with the ivr, right? We would just use it and just be like, hey, can we throw that on the ivr? Can we throw that on? And again, you're probably seeing upticks of percentage of revenues, which I guess is good. But again, is it great for the customer experience? No. But again, where's that line? So I think we have to be careful with, with some of that as well, of, of making sure that we're treating AI in a new way. Again, we talked about this with qa. There's no reason to be asking the same questions that we asked humans to answer in quality assurance that we're going to ask AI. Right. But we still do that because we don't understand it yet. And no matter how much I push back on it, people are like, no, this is what we've been doing for 15 years. I'm comfortable with it. I know that an 82 is an 82 and I want that. So there's some, some change in thought that needs to happen in the, in the CX space. Just remember AI is not an IBR and let's not treat it like it, even though that's all we've been used to. So I think that's why we're kind of going back into those, those models again. From a technology space, things are evolving quickly and it's just cool tools. Our Auto QA is insane. So many of the other platforms, their Auto QA is really good, right? It's almost turning into full analytics with, with, with Auto qa, right? Kmss are getting better like this. This was the missing link, right? The knowledge management. And I'm seeing multiple platforms that are coming out that can help you get your knowledge sorted out so that you can move to AI, so that you can use these things like Agent Assist. Really, really cool. I think that's been, you know, again I've been kind of shouting from the rooftops, we need to have some type of digital transformation as it comes to infrastructure for AI. I'm starting to see it, right? So the platforms and the tools are coming out. People have been listening, seeing that there's a need for that. And again, talk to me, I'd love to talk to you about some of the platforms that I've seen. Really, really, really cool. And then again you have like, we've talked about the Auto qa. Auto summarization is like the easiest thing in the world to do. People still aren't doing it. And then Agent Assist. Agent Assist is getting better. Agent Assist isn't for everyone. But if you have longer handle times, you have very complex situations or you have multiple things to cross sell upsell, there needs to be multiple with Agent Assist in my opinion. So, so we'll, we'll see kind of with that. But the other thing is there's still a lot of you that are not in the cloud, right? So that's another thing I would love to be able to help if, if you have an on prem, you're moving to the cloud because some of these platforms, Cisco's coming, Zoom is coming. You know, you have the leaders, the, the, the CX one door now. It's just nice, nice and power. You have Genesis in 5, 9. You have all these guys that are starting to get really AI forward platforms and some of these kind of up and comers are really starting to come hard or aws, who I have not been a fan of is starting to come. Right? So again, there's, there's a lot that's changing. It's ever changing. It's changing every five to six months. And that's one of the things I'm going to try to either, you know, I'm going to be very honest on these podcasts and kind of give you my opinion on all this stuff so that you can use it. But then if you kind of want to get deeper, you know, I can, I can, you know, have a, have a little breakdown session with you as well. So, real short episode today, more of a soft announcement. Got a state of the union of where I think things are at. We'll get this back rolling next week. Have a couple conferences that I'll be heading to too, as well as in the, in the fourth quarter here that I'm excited to kind of talk to you guys about. Was just at a amazing outsourced consultants BPO summit, and it was basically a technology summit, right. I got to present on auto qa and then, you know, a lot of other technology partners presented about 70 to 80 BPOs. So, you know, learned a lot there. Hopefully that I can bring to everybody as well. So, again, thanks for bearing with me. I promise I will. I'll get back on the, the normal kind of rotation of once a week, but appreciate y'. All. And guys, please follow me on LinkedIn. And if you're on TikTok, my following on TikTok is blowing up and I'm going live all the time on TikTok. So again, at call center, underscore geek there. And then you guys know me on LinkedIn. Thanks, guys. Appreciate you.