Ep16: From Code to Customer: Humanising AI with Account Management

But what you actually your biggest opportunity in the short term is this process which is using 10 people to do something that one person could do. Here's the opportunities of where you could change and if you do this one thing, it will make an immediate difference and then get that entire business thinking around the opportunity of AI rather than it's coming for our jobs.

Yeah.

Or the Terminators are coming or whatever people are thinking on a given day. I like to say just if you see an opportunity, take it because you have no idea where that's going to go.

It's so daunting when you're younger, isn't it?

You can't really have a plan for the rest of your working life accepting that there is going to be change. That's the best advice I was given and I like to give to the younger folks that we work with just to try and help them seize it by the horns, people buying people. So it's all about making those genuine connections and relationships and then seeing where it goes.

And isn't it so ironic that we talk about automation and artificial intelligence, but ultimately one of the biggest places that we network and find success is face to face interaction with people. Hi, I'm Freya. Welcome to the Skynet Business in the AI Age, the podcast that dives deep into the world where artificial intelligence meets business. Join us as we explore the latest trends, challenges and opportunities in this ever evolving landscape. From innovative startups to established enterprises, we'll uncover the secrets behind the successful integration of AI technologies. So grab a cup of coffee, sit back and get ready to unlock the mysteries of business in the AI age.

Good morning, Megan. Welcome to the next episode of the Skynet Chronicles. So today is another one we're a bit different. Instead of talking to customers, we're going to quiz you on your role and how you help customers. So how long have you been with us now? About five months.

Yeah, about five months. Started in February, so a roller coaster. Five months it is, yeah. It's been good though. Steep learning curve at the start. I've always been in technology for a long time now. I've always done account management for a long time now.

Tell us about your previous role, what you came from.

So I used to work for an education technology company and we integrated data from schools MIS systems and transferred that data over to the various different applications that might be used by teachers to set homework or the school offices to send text messages to the parents and that kind of thing. So very data driven.

So you were previously a tech geek. Anyway, really?

That's what you're saying? Yeah, for about 10 years now I've been in tech and account management.

Yeah, fantastic. And what drew you to account management?

I think account managers have a certain nature to them. They're nurturing people, they build relationships and are quite attentive to people and I think that's just how I've fallen into this job really. I think that's, that's in my nature. So yeah, makes sense really. And I sort of stumbled upon the job really to begin with is it's funny how you know what you might sort of study at university and the path that you take after university and how you kind of end up in a role. But yeah, I enjoy it. So that's the main thing, isn't it?

It's funny when we're talking to people who are very early career, I like to say just if you see an opportunity, take it because you have no idea where that's going to go.

It's so daunting when you're younger, isn't it?

Tonight you can't really have a plan for the rest of your working life. Maybe with the exception of some of the medical sciences, but otherwise things change so fast. So just accepting that there is going to be change and going, yeah, I'm going to lean into that and see where it can take me. That's the best advice I was given and I like to give to the younger folks that we work with just to try and help them seize it by the horns.

Definitely. I don't think when I was picking my GCSE options and things like that I would have ever thought that I would be working for an artificial intelligence company now because I'd probably never even heard of it really back when I was 14. So Terminator true.

So what do you do in your day to day role? Helping our customers.

So there's a sales element and there's the account management element. So broken up into the two, the sales side of the role means I will seek out leads, seek out potential new customers to have an exploration type phone call with or a meeting in person and see if there's opportunity there for them, for them to simplify their working life I guess and make more time for the important things. I might chase those leads up and see how things are going, progress them forward and then the account management side will be once those potential leads have turned into customers and we're working on a project with them, then I, I do whatever's necessary. To be honest, I might be there to hold their Hand slightly. If it's quite a technical project and I can translate from technical to less technical, I guess, and speak normal English to people, because we have lots of technical guys, don't we, in the team? So it's daunting sometimes for those customers on the receiving end. So I do a lot of the translating.

That translating goes both ways, though, doesn't it? Because you're translating from dev to customer, but you're also translating from customer to dev. And that understanding of both worlds is an unusual skill set, being able to talk both languages and it is a different language.

It is, yeah. I've sort of. I've spent a long time in tech, so I think I sort of have a good understanding, I would say, of that tech language. But, yeah, being able to allow people to not be too. To know what the word is. Too concerned about what's going on behind the scenes with us, you know, so long as they know what they're getting and when and how the progress is going, I think that's really ultimately all the customers want to know. It's like the swan analogy, isn't it? Everything else is going on under the water and I'm that person that just goes, everything, you know, it's all going fine. Here's the progress that we've made, you know, we're on track, whatever. So that's. Yeah, that's my job in a. In a nutshell, really.

So two things from that I want to pick up on. First of all, you sort of mentioned generating opportunities and referrals and something that we lean in quite heavily. There is BNI Business Networking International. And you're a member of a chapter. I'm a member of chapter. One of our devs is in a chapter. We've just come back from the national conference. Can you explain a bit about how that works in terms of you generating potential leads and opportunities for Project Rising?

Yeah, of course. So ultimately it's all about relationship building in the beginning. As I'm new, I'm also new to BNI as well. So at the moment I'm kind of in this process of bedding myself into my chapter in bni, ensuring that people fully understand what it is that we do, so that either I can have a chat with people within my chapter who might be interested in an opportunity to work together or help one another out. BNI is all about being there for one another, really, in a business sense. So, yeah, it's been interesting. I'm really enjoying it. We essentially meet once a week and we will sit and have one to ones with people who we think might particularly kind of work well with us and understand each other's businesses so that we can either make use of them ourselves or know who to refer to them if we're having a conversation or something. So when we went to the conference that was a big thing. It was an exchange of understanding one another's businesses so that we can either use them ourselves or not or get to know one another really. Yeah, it's good. It's good fun. Definitely. Ultimately it's networking, isn't it?

That's structured networking with a goal but wrapped in people buying people. So it's all about making those genuine connections and relationships and then seeing where it goes.

And isn't it so ironic that we talk about automation and artificial intelligence but ultimately one of the biggest places that we network and find success is face to face interaction with people?

Yeah, I mean it's not lost on me. I think technology is an enabler to solve a problem, but to know the problems that need to be solved, you need to know the people. And so everything starts with a conversation.

Yeah, absolutely.

We might then cheat along the way to accelerate getting them a proposal quicker, which is going to be the second point I was going to raise. So you now write quite a lot of our proposals in combination with our proposal writing automation. I can't remember what we call it. Magic. It's something like that.

Proposal Magic.

Yeah, that sounds like a timism but it's just a process that you now follow to more quickly produce the proposals to the customers. So can you talk me through a bit about how that works for you?

Yeah. So obviously there's usually a couple of conversations before we we open Proposal Magic and get using it, but there's already in my mind a good understanding of what the customer needs and I guess what we've discussed as a potential solution. I then using Proposal Magic will put in the name of the company the web URL of their website and using GPT kind of come up with a solution statement that is then entered into the form that is the proposal builder. I hit go and a proposal is built for me using a template that's already been provided behind the scenes that Project Rising have built, which has got nice logos and all the formatting that we've chosen behind it, the tone of voice and all of that. And from that is produced a nice proposal. I often go in and tweak things once it's been built. Yeah, 90% of it is there and is produced. It provides a lovely background paragraph on who the business are, maybe how long they've been around and then there are other paragraphs to do with what the problem might be. Now all of this has been brought through from probably a meeting that I've done on teams with Fireflies, listening, listening in on the meeting as well and transcribing everything. So again I can use AI to be able to produce a statement about what we've discussed, what me and the potential client have discussed as, as what is your problem. Then again, on that same call we've probably talked about, you know, what's the solution that we're proposing and also, well, the major opportunity as well, that's that they're missing out on that return on investment.

So not just what are we going to do, why are we going to do it, but how they're going to benefit from it, how much it's going to cost, how long it's going to take in a consistent format. That takes very little thought to get it to that point of good quality draft ready for review. Yeah, yeah, it accelerates the process greatly, doesn't it?

It does, it does. Beyond that, we just enter the pricing, don't we? And that's definitely something that still needs to be thought about. I guess the human interaction comes in there as well. Um, but you never know, it might not be too long before we can actually put together some kind of automation for at least the minimum pricing.

Pricing.

Yeah.

But at the moment it's good to do it in combination of the customer situation, type of business they are, the duration for the return on the investment and so sometimes we'll play tunes with that in order to get it to a point where it makes immediate sense for a business. But a similar proposal from us, a different business, might be structured differently in terms of upfront versus ongoing cost. And I think that having that freedom at the moment is important. But ultimately will we automate it? Well, of course we will because we're automating everything else. As long as it works in that way of understanding what the person needs and making sure that it's an easy decision, it's almost a no brainer.

Absolutely, yeah. And I say that process probably takes me, including the phone call, including the conversation with the customer, an hour and a half in total, maybe a 45 minute chat or an hour's chat with a customer and then producing the proposal, making sure I've got everything I need, checking the proposal and then just airing out our thoughts on the pricing with you. An hour and a half, I'd say from start to finish.

I think for easy proposals that makes perfect sense, where it's a more detailed aspirations for an application, then we might push the conversation towards an exploration milestone where we'll spend a day diving deep into what are all of the things here and that then over the course of a few more days will become a fully funded, fully costed proposal. But it's choosing the right path for the right problem. If it's something that we've done before and we know it's just another one of these, then we don't need to go through the exploration milestone approach and we can just do those relatively quick proposals. And then the other end of the spectrum is a business that doesn't know what they want, but they know they think they should be thinking about AI. So can you talk a bit about the diagnostic process that we've recently deployed?

Yeah. So some businesses, they, they know they need to be keeping up with the times, especially if they've, you know, if they're kind of conscious that their competitors might also be thinking about AI already, it's now's the time. Right. So for those types of companies where they may not have too much of an idea, it might be quite bewildering to them, you know, what AI can do for them and maybe they've done a bit of googling and sometimes that can be good or bad, it might make them in a worse situation. That's when it's perfect for, for us to come in and spend a day in the business understanding, you know, what are their pain points, what shadowing almost, I guess to, to understand the, the lay of the land, you know, how the business operates, who does what as well, that's important. Sitting down and talking to those that do the admin tasks, but also sitting down and talking to the leadership team as well and seeing what their kind of goals are, I guess from that diagnosis and then at the end of the day being able to go away and have a really solid understanding of what's happening in the business so that you can diagnose what's best. I guess in terms of AI, you.

Can use these tools right now.

Yes.

Or this amount per month, you can implement them yourself.

You can make an immediate impact and not necessarily always. We need to build you a solution all the time.

You know, I mean, it's not solving a problem. It might be that we go into a business and we say, well, you can do this with these tools. But what you actually, your biggest opportunity in the short term is this process which is broken, which is using 10 people to do something that one person could do. Here's how it could be simplified and how these building blocks of capability can click together to give you something that will solve that problem and make it much more efficient, quicker and at a lower cost. And we might then be able to say the ROI on that particular change is this. So we've looked at your business, we've measured your readiness. We can say that you're currently in this position, you've got these blockers within the business. Here's the opportunities of where you could change. And if you do this one thing, it will make an immediate difference, which will help to unlock some of those blockers to convince people of the benefit of making this change by starting with this one thing where there's obvious evidence, and then get that entire business thinking around the opportunity of AI, rather than it's coming for our jobs or the Terminators are coming or whatever people are thinking on a given day. So it can help a lot with change management, I think, but it's identifying what that first opportunity for them as a business is, whether that involves us or not. It's just helping them with that change.

Definitely. It's like a light bulb moment, isn't it, where. And I've seen it, I've seen people's faces kind of start to. The cogs start turning and they're like, oh, so does that mean we could do this? And we could. We could do that? And it's like, yeah, you're getting it now that it's just that little nudge in the first place, isn't it? And then people's minds just start rolling with ideas. And I like that. That's quite a nice experience to be able to watch that, like, bulb moment and go, oh, yeah, okay, this could be good.

So you mentioned previously that wall, like, learning curve when you joined us around all of the potential and just having your mind blown by different particular bits of technology. Looking back over the past five months, what's the biggest single capability that you've seen with AI that excites you?

I think the ability to create moving images. So SORA was quite a poignant turning point, I think, where I was like, wow, that's quite big. I think it was the dog that's walking around the windowsill, the Dalmatian. And I must have watched it like 10 times. And you start to scrutinize it a little bit and go, oh, well, his foot's not. But that's me, that's what I do. But when you take a Step back and you look at it, you're like, yeah, that's insane. Like, that is amazing. What can be produced now. And then it led me to actually look on the Sora website where they'd released about 10 videos, hadn't they? And, yeah, that was mind blowing. I think I spent the last, the first week of the entire job just with my mouth on the floor. I think everything was like, play with.

This, play with that, play with this, play with that.

Yeah, but that's a really good way to get somebody engaged, isn't it? Straight away you already knew I was into tech and that kind of thing anyway, so for me it was. It. Yeah, it was just a week of just constantly having my eyes opened by AI. I thought I knew enough about AI already, but clearly not. Yeah, but now I think I am sort of bedding into this idea of, I don't know, you get used to it quite quickly, don't you, that the capabilities that are out there. So it was steep in the beginning and I'd say I'm sort of like mellowing out now. And I'm like, oh, ye, yeah. You know, I can just pop on and use this and do that and do this. But I speak to family and friends and they're still astonished by the things that I can do and how quickly I can do them.

But they're normal to us.

Yeah.

So quickly talk to large parts of the population like, no, no, you can't do that. That's nonsense.

Yeah. And I'm like, well, I did and.

I'll do another one now. Here you go. Yeah. So, I mean, Soar for me was a huge leap, seeing what you can do now with Runway gen 3. Amazing. And we know that SOAR is being held back because of deep fake election concerns.

Yes.

But there are other tools that have similar capabilities that haven't been held back. And so we are now starting to see a huge amount of population of videos that are produced by AI that could be used in marketing and promotion, could be used as part of motion pictures, could be used as part of basic advertising, but also there is the potential for the use in deep fakes.

Yeah.

And so how that is controlled, how we. How we educate the population, not to necessarily trust what they see, which if you've been around any kids who use TikTok on a regular basis, you're like, just because you've seen it on TikTok doesn't mean it's real. It's how we increase the understanding that you have to question everything.

Yeah, absolutely. It's alarming, isn't it, how quickly things are changing. I wonder where we'll be in five years time when it comes to policies and laws and things on AI and how it's used. This is something I talked about a few times actually at the BNI conference is when GDPR came in. I know it's totally different, but there were jobs created to ensure data security was there and DPOs and things like that. So I wonder if that's what the future holds for AI, to ensure that it's being used in the right ways and is used safely, especially on TikTok and things like that.

I guess I think we'll see high levels of legislation that will aim to control all sorts of different aspects of the use of these AIs and how they can create and manage their own subtasks and deliver those autonomously. But I don't think they'll be everywhere. I think there will be parts of the world which don't legislate.

No.

And that will naturally attract some organizations, some individuals to act outside of the norms of society. And we don't really know where that will go. But I think everything's moving very quickly. It feels in some ways like the AGI bits might be slowing down ever so slightly, but I think that's good as having a focus on safe and careful implementation, understanding what's possible, taking these regular baby steps forward, helping society to understand this is moving. Try this because the next one is going to be that bit better and if you miss four or five leaps it's going to seem like something that we can't as a society understand so little and often releases make sense to me. There is a big, big question around open source versus closed in terms of whether open source and areas of the world that don't legislate to the same level creates additional risk. But we don't really know.

No. I think when I've spoken to. I use my friends and family as an example, I guess because I'm probably the most knowledgeable on AI out of them. They're all like, oh yeah. But I'm, you know, if I use it, then I'm training, you know, up these large language models to. With my data and I kind of, I have the same answer every time and it's like, I don't think people are going to be interested in your poem about whatever it might be or your email to somebody that, you know, you just want to be a little bit more formal or something. It's not like, yeah, someone's going to hone in on your data and have a look at it because there's millions of millions of people in the world that are using it. And I think it, I think that's a stigma and I guess a bit of a misunderstanding maybe that somebody might have read in the media and as taken as gospel. And now people are wary, but they're.

Not wary of posting to Facebook, they're not wary of saving a file to SharePoint, they're not wary of creating something in Adobe. All of those platforms have terms and conditions that you are signing up to that gives the ability for your data to be used in some way, shape or form for training. There are exemptions and exclusions around that for business use. You can protect yourself in a better way. But a lot of people don't read any of the terms and conditions they're signing up to. And effectively everything we do in every aspect of life is going to be training AI, whether you really like it or not.

Yeah, it's happening.

It is daunting. I mean you can look at 1984 and Big Brother and think or will had it right. Hopefully we don't go down that path. But the big tech companies are using our data that we, our day to day lives becomes training data. And we've seen that with significant acquisitions in a number of different platforms where they were bought really for their data.

Yeah.

Because then that helps produce something more capable in the future.

Yeah. Which ultimately, you know, when it's so integrated in our lives, you know, whenever that might be, it's obviously moving at a massive rate at the moment, isn't it? But whenever that may be, people will be grateful for it then. And I think that's probably something to kind of remind people of maybe when I'm talking to my friends and my.

Family, I think people who have Alexa.

Yes.

People who have Siri, you get used to that capability very quickly and you'd.

Miss it if it was gone.

And you are trading off less so with Apple products. But you are trading off data for service.

Yep.

And if you're getting a benefit from it as an individual or as a business, then you probably don't mind.

Brilliant. Yeah. We were talking about robots, weren't we? How much would we pay like you do with a, maybe a car on, on lease or something. How much would you pay for a robot to come into your home and do all of the jobs that you don't want to do that everyone will be really happy when they've got someone doing the cleaning for them and and all of this is. Is progress towards that, right?

Yeah.

I would pay £500amonth for a robot. Because we spoke about this, didn't we? Because it does way more than a car would. And you think how much you would spend on. Yeah, a car on. On lease or something.

Never need to think about decorating again. You just choose the color. In fact, you don't even choose a color. It recommends the colors.

Recommends.

These are currently on trends. Your house would be more efficient if you did this. I've taken all of your dirty washing and washed it, folded it, ironed it, put it away. All the washing up's done. The garden's looking amazing. And it only cost you the same price as a car.

Exactly.

And Tesla, Elon Musk has said at the shareholder press conference the other day that they think they're going to hit $10,000 for the Optima spot. At scale, $10,000 is a lot less than 500 pound a month when you release it.

Yeah, perfect. Sign me up.

So I think we're talking about a lot less than that or mass market adoption. Every house will have one. Why wouldn't they? You spend £300 on a robot lawnmower, save you a few minutes here and there. But if you could save all of your domestic chores for the price of a car, you might not even need to be paying for a car anymore because it's probably going to be cheaper to ride share and have something on a hailing basis.

But I plan to piggyback my robot everywhere to get the most out of my money.

We should pass that on as a use case to Elon Musk and see whether he's up for that.

Yeah, I'll get in touch.

Well, thank you. It's been a great chat. We've loved having you as part of Project Rising and thank you for being part of the podcast. I know our customers love you and I look forward to many more conversations we have in the future.

Thank you very much.