WiCX Talks Trends: Preparing Our Organisations to be an AI-Enabled Workforce with Jennifer Buffaloe
Episode #004 Show Notes:
Clare
Welcome back to WiCX Talks Trends — the podcast where we explore what’s shaping the future of customer experience, leadership, and the world of work for women in CX.
Today, we’re talking about one of the biggest transformations happening across our industry right now: AI. Not just the technology itself… but what it actually means for people. Because while everyone is talking about AI capabilities, tools, copilots and models — very few organisations are genuinely preparing their workforce to succeed in an AI-enabled future.
And that’s exactly what we’re diving into today.
I’m joined by Jennifer Buffaloe, Senior Director of Customer Success at CallMiner — and together we’ll be unpacking what it really looks like to build teams, skills, culture and confidence so that humans and AI can thrive together.
So whether you’re excited about what AI can unlock, or you’re feeling overwhelmed by the pace of change, this episode will help you understand where to focus, how to prepare your people, and what to prioritise as we shift into this new era of work.
Let’s get into it.
Clare
Hi Jen, how are you today?
Jennifer
I'm good. How are you, Clare?
Clare
I'm wonderful, so happy to have you with us.
Jennifer
I'm so glad to be here. Thanks for having me. I am really excited to fall in with all the amazing women and the legacy that CallMiner has created on this podcast, and other people who have told their stories. I'm super happy to be here!
Clare
We are, too! We absolutely love the CallMiner ladies. So first of all, Jennifer, our listeners who maybe aren't so familiar with you, could you give us a little introduction to yourself and your work at CallMiner?
Jennifer
Yeah, I've been in customer experience for most of my career, starting on the front lines at Sears. I learned to really take care of the customer at Sears. They provided a lot of training there. So that's really guided me through my career. I have worked in the private sector and the public sector. I landed here at CallMiner about 10 years ago, and I'm so happy to be here. I run a team of really talented customer success owners who take care of our customers on a daily basis. And so my career has been shaped by one constant: when you care about people, customers, and employees, the best results actually happen.
Clare
Totally agree. And that really resonates with me as well. I started my career on the shop floor as well and worked my way into this world of customer experience. And I think it definitely gives you a great grounding, doesn't it? So here today, we're talking about AI-enabled workforces, but what does that actually mean in practice?
Jennifer
Yes, I think of AI as my partner. He, he?
Clare
He or she or they!
Jennifer
They, she helps me at every turn. And so I think of it as this: imagine you're on the phone with somebody, you're trying to listen, you're trying to take notes, and that partner that's behind you is actually taking those notes for you. Not only are they taking those notes for you, but they're sharing those insights across other partners and other areas of the business and compiling all that information. So I think of it as being human-centred, and really, the best AI takes the grind out of our daily work and gives us more time to show the things we're really good at, which is empathy and creativity.
Clare
Obviously, the future state, I guess, is going to be this at-scale version of that, so everybody, no matter what their role is, is somehow enabled with that assistance to be able to take the grind out of their day-to-day work to be able to focus on bigger, more strategic things. Interesting.
Jennifer
Absolutely. It's just a time saver. I've seen it already in my own experiences.
Clare
Nice. So, thinking about the real opportunity here for CX teams when it comes to AI, what do you think AI can unlock for CX and customer success teams when it's done well? So we've mentioned lifting the grind, taking some of the more tedious activities or being that supportive coach or assistant working in the background to help you deliver what you need to do. Do you have anything to share as a view or perspective about what that could look like in a bigger sense?
Jennifer
Yeah, I think I have a really great example, a recent example. So I was in an Uber last week, travelling back from a customer site, and I got my ‘Year in Review’ from Uber, and I would assume that AI and human creativity played a huge role in that, but it really had an impact on me. The heading was "You can't spell Uber without you." And I thought that was so very touching for me, in a kind of cheesy way. Really liked it. Me and my coworker connected and laughed about the types of food that I've ordered all year long and how many rides we'd actually been on in Uber.
So they got two things from that. They got a connection for me, but they got some really good word of mouth. This is also being proved with some cultural stickiness because I've heard that the late-night shows are doing some comedy skits on this particular one. So AI can pull all the patterns together, and then it's us, as humans, that put our personal touch on things to make those moments worth sharing. AI can't do that.
Clare
That's such an interesting example. I saw the SNL skit myself, actually, on social media. And I totally get why Spotify would do your Spotify Wrapped, and mine was actually really embarrassing this year. I didn't enjoy seeing it. I thought, what's happened to this edgy millennial? She seems to have gone very mainstream and pop. But the Uber Eats one, I would be mortified if I saw how much money I'd spent at restaurants. In the skit, it was the most frequented restaurants, like Wendy's, McDonald's, and how ashamed I would be to see what I've been putting into my body. So I think for me that example begs the question, just because we can, should we do that? Because I get it, they've used a tactic that's worked really well with music, with Spotify, they thought, we can replicate that because we can take customer data, use AI to create this kind of really intending to be meaningful one-to-one conversation with them about their behaviour with us. But I think the human intelligence might have been a little bit missing there because of the negative response that came to that. Just because you can do something with AI, should you? But I think that's a fun example. But I think, more specifically, for CX and customer success teams, what kinds of things can AI really unlock for us, or is it more about removing the grind than the creative side?
Jennifer
I think it's really about removing the grind and giving those insights. So all that data shared in that year-in-review can be compiled and put together so you have a very good body of work to work from. You know what the executive sponsor engagement is based on the patterns, and you know what their usage is based on, whatever product you might be supporting.
I was thinking about your example of not wanting to…identify with all the junk food that you ate for the last year, but it really is a moment if you think about it. It's a good moment because it makes you question the next time you go, I really don't want that coming up on my year in review. You know, I'm going to question my choices here.
Clare
Well, just watching the SNL skit, I actually deleted both Deliveroo and Uber Eats. So it's actually made me remove myself from that category entirely because I am that scared of having that kind of data about myself. I do really agree with the insight side of this, being able to surface data patterns without having necessarily had to spend the time in the analysis of that. And yeah, for me, for CX teams, it's definitely about getting to put our attention in the right place. So rather than these big kinds of survey-driven, very heavy investments in CX programs, being able to utilise data to do the really important stuff, which is about action. And I suppose for the kind of B2B side, I'm yet to see how it can work in practice in the same way as in the consumer space because of how different the relationships are.
So, I'm quite excited to see how that transpires. But there's a lot of conjecture out there, isn't there? There was a lot of hype. And that, in some way, is leading to a lot of misunderstandings or the hype, actually, what's being delivered, not being able to live up to what was going to be promised. And I think if we looked at our previous years, crystal ball predictions from all of the main vendors in the space, the things that we thought would be happening by now aren't yet actually happening, or the features have been deployed, but it hasn't been able to be utilised in the way to leverage the gains that were promised. So what are you seeing organisations misunderstanding or overhyping?
Jennifer
Yeah, I think that, you know, it is an easy button, but somebody still has to push the button, right? So the other thing I think we need to be aware of is that we need to ask some critical questions. There's a lot of AI washing out there going on, and we need to demand clarity around what type of AI are you using? How are you catching errors? And then that's something that CallMiner does really good at because it allows you to have control over that and have a purview into some of that. And so we can take those human-to-bot or bot-to-bot interactions and analyse them at scale so that you actually know. So, you know, buy the hype, but shop around and know the questions to ask. I think that's so critically important about how your data is going to be used, and then you can truly trust the tool.
Clare
Yeah, I think for me, it's kind of not appreciating the criticality of the guardrails and being able to provide trust and transparency to your customers. I think I particularly saw that with rushed integrations, and I suppose thinking from a shopping list point of view, asking the right questions to make sure what you're buying is actually going to be able to deliver what you desire for it to do and being able to demand proof of that pre-procurement rather than post.
Jennifer
Yes.
Clare
I think you can quite often see the salesmanship that goes around some of this hype being the reason that people buy, but then the reality, when they've actually bought, not being the same. So I think that procurement conversation is super important. And obviously, with the hype comes a lot of myths and fears. Obviously, I'm terrified of the fact that AI or AGI specifically has been marked as the greatest threat to human existence in the future. But thinking about it in the sense of customer experience, are there any particular myths or fears you'd like to dismantle once and for all?
Jennifer
Yeah, I think it's the massive job loss. I think that it's going to change our roles, but I don't know that it's necessarily going to... some jobs are going to go away. They're not going to be needed. But that gives us an opportunity as leaders to kind of reframe and look at our roles across the board and trust that AI is going to do a good job of creating more strategic, more thoughtful, creative, and human-centric roles. The harder calls are going to obviously end up in a contact centre environment. The harder calls are probably going to end up in the hands of somebody who's truly empathetic and can understand the customer's journey. That's where, going back to our previous question, AI can pull that journey altogether so that the human can make the best judgment call in that moment. These aren't the easy things; these are the hard things that you haven't really understood up to that point.
And then looking at the outlook, IT jobs are scheduled to grow about three times faster in the next, I think it was three years, on average, than others. But they're different IT jobs than we've seen before in the past. So some of the things, IT support probably could be done with AI in some cases, but the bigger, more complex things will need to be handled by a human. And then the bigger risk is really standing still, Clare. I mean, my example of working at Sears, I saw firsthand that they didn't embrace the internet, and Amazon came in and took a quick follow. And have really taken that market, and Sears lost their footing and eventually…we lost that great brand. So the bigger risk is not that AI is going to replace people, but really that we'll miss the chance to create better jobs.
Clare
Yeah, that's interesting. So I think for me, I totally get, you know, how AI will be amazing in terms of journey orchestration, being able to get people to the right place when they do actually need to talk to a human. But I can't imagine having talked to people on the front lines of customer service, anything worse, actually, than your job is just to deal with like those really big, complex, very emotional, potentially stressful scenarios. They often talk about parts of their day, the kind of calmer moments, if they weren't to have those, would they be able to sustain working on those really super complex things constantly?
But what I really would like to see is these new roles maybe appearing sooner, that is, people's roles in the contact centre, moving into becoming an AI trainer. For me, one of the biggest problems is deployment. So, building these things off bad knowledge bases and then not teaching, training, and testing sufficiently before it goes live and therefore the unintended consequences happen. But like, could we create new roles in the contact centre where people are actively co-designing the technology in a human way? Training it, testing it, ensuring it's based on the right information. Because I'm not really seeing that, that tends to be more somebody will come in from the business analysis side, like a BA-type person, rather than a contact centre-based person to do that. But gosh, I could wax lyrical about this all day long.
Jennifer
Yeah, I've seen that too, Clare. I've seen that that's a mistake and something that we probably need to think about as leaders, as just leaving it all to IT.
Clare
Yeah, like maybe that could be the future of some more human-oriented CX roles specifically. And for me, it's all about the design discovery stage. What are the human needs that we need to actually deliver against? And what does human-centred experience design look like? And therefore, you know, we have done a lot in the traditional sense of employee training for customer experience. What's the next generation of that from an artificial intelligence customer service point of view as well? And then how can companies create their own really clear brand tone of voice and guidelines, but have people being the human in the loop on this constantly, where that iteration happens, like you were developing a future leader of your CX team, how will we be able to have that kind of mindset around AI in the future too?
Jennifer
Yeah. I was going to react to that a little bit, if you don't mind. I really… as you were talking and you're talking about the grind, right? So one of my morals, one of the things that I really feel strongly about, is that AI is less grind and more grounding. Right? So part of the frustration when you get one of those calls, when you get a call from a really aggravated customer, is that you don't have all the information to be able to answer the question, right? And so the hope is, and what I envision is that being able to have those answers and being able to make a judgment call based on the facts instead of emotion, right? That's going to empower people to be able to take that really tough job that they have to solve these complex issues and make that simpler and more rewarding, to be quite honest, to be able to solve a problem for a customer instead of just being yelled at all the time.
Clare
Yeah, but I kind of feel like this still isn't addressing the barriers that exist for those employees today, because quite often they still can't solve that problem for that customer because their policy may not enable them to do that. So, back to your point about the push button, easy button. I think it's also like the silver bullet aspect of this, isn't it? That it's a one-and-done kind of ‘we deploy this, we get all of the instantaneous cost reduction benefits’. But there's so much more to being able to harness this and leverage this really well. And I think that we're kind of stepping into the mindset aspect of this now, aren't we? What do you think is really going to differentiate the people who thrive from those who struggle? Will it be like a different mindset, a way of thinking, a way of behaving? You said like the biggest challenge is missing the boat entirely and having a Sears moment, and I don't think any companies are pulling back, are they? The bigger problem seems to be rushing ahead.
Jennifer
Yeah. I think it really requires even, I mean, this is the same as it's been for me throughout my career, looking for people who have great critical thinking skills, emotional intelligence and clear communication, because clear communication is a really big…I think that's one of the things AI brings, is clarity, as long as it's being trained the right way, to your earlier point, right? I was looking at something, Forbes adds creativity and leadership, right? This actually takes a little bit; you have to think creatively. And I want to talk to you about some of the ways that we talk about being creative and how we at CallMiner get our folks thinking about the benefits of this and how it all ties together. Because that's what you have to do: paint the picture for the customer or paint the picture for the colleague, or paint the picture for the company that you're working with.
One of the things we are doing right now is actively updating our job descriptions and our SOPs to include things like adaptability, discernment, empathy, to make sure that we're capturing those things because it's not the, you know, go to the spreadsheet, do this and do that X, Y, Z. It's think on your feet. Use the information that's in front of you to make the best possible judgment call. So it really changes the work. And if we're not updating, as leaders, if we're not getting ahead of that, our teams, not just our companies, but our teams will fall behind.
Clare
I really like that. As you were talking, I was just thinking about another mindset that might actually be a bit more patient in this, rather than what I've seen a lot of, which is great ambition and great drive, but going too quickly at this as a gold rush kind of moment, where everyone else is doing it and if we don't deploy, we're going to lose something like their leading edge. But actually, if it took a few more months, but it was done right, how much quicker it could scale up successfully without having to go backwards, and how much more comfortable people within the organisation, whose lives and jobs are being changed by technology, would be able to adapt or adopt the technology in a more positive sense, because it has become quite a big disruptor, hasn't it? Where it's been approached from a speed-at-all-costs kind of perspective and point of view. Is there anything else that might differentiate not just the people who thrive from those who struggle from a leadership and organisational point of view?
Jennifer
Yeah, I think one of the things that I think about when I'm looking at that is that we as women have always been really good at being those bridge builders, connecting the silos and collaborating. So I think it really takes the ability for everyone to come together in the service of the customer and the employee to make sure we understand why we're doing things, right? The other thing I think we need is not that everybody has to be a prompt engineer, but that everybody needs to be an explorer. So those skills, when we're looking for how to…we have to explore, we have to be willing to explore with our people, beside our people. We have to be willing to explore outside of what we're comfortable with because this changes everything, Clare. It literally changes the way that we've done things. So we have to be creative, and we have to see the silver lining in all of this and pull those silos together in service of the customer and the employee for our best possible outcome.
Clare
Nice. So moving into preparing people and building organisational readiness, then, how should we as leaders assess where our teams are today in terms of being ready to take on tools like AI?
Jennifer
I think that is capacity. Do we have the capacity to…are we giving people the capacity to make the experiments, right? And then are they capable of actually doing that? Assessing our readiness, basically, to make sure that we can achieve those two things. You can use tools like conversational intelligence to see what is hard, what things are happening in your calls that could be easily removed with AI. And then focus on what things are hanging up the employee or the customer. And then also just asking them, having real conversations about how do you feel about using AI? How are you using it in your daily work? I think talking about the use of AI and that it's okay to use it. Giving people access to the tools and safety in the guardrails that don't expose your customer data to outside models. But readiness is knowing how AI can help most and proving it with human insight and hard data. So that's…for me, that's what we need to focus on.
Clare
I suppose from the people's perspective, the hardest thing about the adoption of any AI-based tools is people's preparedness for change, isn't it as well? So, what do you think good human-centred change management would look like to ensure better adoption in the future?
Jennifer
Yeah, I think always go back to the why. Why are we doing this? Why is it important to us? And most importantly, for people to change, why is it important to you? What is it going to give you? And less grind, more grounding means that we have more time with our communities and with our families. At CallMiner, we tell AI stories. So we not only…convey them to our customers, but we also do it internally. We practice showing what the AI can do because that way it's easier for people to conceptualise the points, in that it's going to make it easier, or it's going to expose potentially areas where it needs improvement. so being able to centre around that why and show the stories, being able to explain it to your staff, being able to show what it's going to do for a customer. I think that makes it very tangible. That way, people can see it and start to understand how it's going to work, which demystifies some of the concerns around AI.
Clare
Yeah, that makes sense. So, looking ahead to the future, then, Jen, what would you say the biggest risk of not preparing now is? And I know we've already talked about the fact that you're going to get left behind, but what does that actually mean in practice?
Jennifer
Yeah, it means that our customers are going to see the difference between the companies that are using AI effectively and making their experiences better through that tool. And then our people are going to see that there are companies out there that are ready and investing in the staff in ways that forward their careers in this intelligence world. And so I think that it's very important to review that and start to think about how you are going to prepare your workforce and your company for this by deploying programs to help attract the types of folks who…and help attract and grow employees who may not have had that exposure to these types of rewards and compensation that go around actually working in this environment.
Clare
And if anyone listening wanted to take one step tomorrow to start building an AI-enabled workforce, what would you say that step should be?
Jennifer
Pilot AI in a way where you have a friction-heavy process. So start to pilot that and include, to your point earlier, Clare, think it's really important that we include folks in it so they can go through the journey of deploying AI so that they can kind of see that. So I would pilot that, but also while you're piloting the tech, also pilot what you'll need to do with the staff to help them become comfortable using that and help gather feedback early on. So start by just starting, get something going, get something up and running and then learn, iterate, build, evaluate, adjust, is a good way to look at that. And piloting AI today is not just process improvement, it's actually career insurance for your team.
Clare
Yeah, I think I'd just add perhaps just having a real clear judicial review of what As-Is looks like today from a customer experience and employee experience point of view, with the opportunity to design the target future state that we actually want to aim towards. Because I really agree with you, picking a really high friction currently disjointed or difficult or something that could be automated really easily, that improves the experience and reduces the grind. That's a really good idea. But for me, a lot of people aren't really thinking like, where do we want to be in a few years' time? Assuming that all this tech can do all of the things that we want it to do. What is the service experience we actually want to deliver for our customers, and for me, that's the part that doesn't get enough thinking from a CX design point of view.
But you know you've been so optimistic, and I've been like the harbinger of dread, talking about the existential threats to the universe and human humanity generally. But you know you're super optimistic about this. Thinking about the future state that you'd like to see in the world, what are you most excited and optimistic about that having an AI-enabled workforce could bring in the future?
Jennifer
Yeah, I am very optimistic about what AI brings to us. And my hope, taking all the looming things about all the data that it has access to, my hope is that what it actually does is it changes our existence in a way that impacts the community, our lives, our personal lives. Being able to get back to Sunday dinners or, you know, being at that concert or being at that sporting event, because you don't have to work eight hours on a spreadsheet. Instead, you can have AI help you, be your little companion, your little helper, help you get those things done so that you can spend more time…and I think that once we start to spend more time with our families and in our community, that's got to have a trickle down effect Clare, all the way through, all the way through to everything, all the way through to, emotional to financial stability. I think it all kind of rolls in together when we can give back a little bit more time to ourselves, our community, and just in general.
Clare
Yeah, I love that. That's a great way to be thinking about it, and sure, I would be feeling optimistic too if there was more talk about that aspect of it, rather than just the pure kind of technological hype. So thank you so much for joining us on WiCX Talks Trends. It's been super insightful to hear your perspective and your point of view, and I've really enjoyed our discussion today. So that's it for now. How can people get in touch with you if they want to find out more?
Jennifer
Thank you. Yeah, so I'm on LinkedIn. I'm Jennifer Buffalo, B-U-F-F-A-L-O-E. So just give me a search and connect. And I love to connect with anybody who's thinking about an enabled workforce. I have a lot more ideas that you can't share in such a short period of time, around how to help enable folks. So willing and able to take on any questions anybody has.
Clare
Perfect. Thank you so much, Jen. And yeah, best of luck with the next steps. We'll see you all soon. Take care.
Jennifer
Bye!
Clare:
Thank you so much to CallMiner for sponsoring this episode of WiCX Talk Trends. CallMiner offers an AI-powered platform that allows organisations to analyse their customer conversations from both a CX & EX perspective in order to pull out actionable insights for a better customer AND employee experience!
Thanks for listening to the WiCX Talk Trends podcast with me, Clare Muscutt. If you enjoyed the episode and you don’t already, please, please, please do drop us a like and subscribe to our channel – the bigger the following, the bigger the impact we can create on our mission to amplify the voices of women working in CX and technology! Well, that’s all for now! I’ll see you again next time!
