In this edition of the UpTech Report, we meet with Rebecca Clyde, Co-Founder & CEO of Botco.ai. Botco to discuss how adding an AI chat bot to your site can help your company to increase revenue and win over new clients. Sometimes, AI conversations can feel just as authentic as real ones.
Clyde talks about her journey growing her own tech company and some of the challenges that she has faced along the way. Plus, how was she able to differentiate her company from other AI chat tools on the market?
One of the major selling points of Botco.ai is that it is HIPAA Compliant, so healthcare organizations and doctors’ offices can use their chatbot as well. If visitors to a healthcare site have questions about the organization’s services, they can get them answered immediately with Botco.ai’s artificial intelligence web chat. Then, when the patient is ready, the AI will direct them to the proper appointment scheduling system.
Rebecca Clyde is the co-founder and CEO of Botco.ai, a startup offering intelligent chat nurturing solutions for enterprise customers.. With more than 20 years in digital marketing in the technology industry, she is passionate about advancing women in tech and currently serves as the co-managing director for Girls in Tech Phoenix.
Prior to Botco.ai, Rebecca founded a digital marketing agency, Ideas Collide, now in its 15th year serving global enterprise clients. She was previously a marketing manager at Intel and holds an MBA from Arizona State University.
TRANSCRIPT
DISCLAIMER: Below is an AI generated transcript. There could be a few typos but it should be at least 90% accurate. Watch video or listen to the podcast for the full experience!
Rebecca Clyde 0:00
If we just dream up an idea in our office and then try to go sell it without that real world kind of test initially, then I think that ideas are bound to fail.
Alexander Ferguson 0:17
Welcome to UpTech Report. This is our applied tech series. UpTech Report is sponsored by Tara Lee learn how to leverage the power of video at teraleap.io. Today, I’m excited to be joined by my guest, Rebecca Clyde, based in Phoenix, Arizona. She’s the co founder and CEO at botco.ai. Welcome, Rebecca. Good to have you on.
Rebecca Clyde 0:35
Thank you, Alexander. Thanks for having me today.
Alexander Ferguson 0:38
Now, Botco is an AI powered marketing chat solution, how to understand record, just lay up the the problem that you see in your space.
Rebecca Clyde 0:48
Lately, you know, I’ve been watching consumer trends over the last few years and notice that consumers have really oriented around and on demand expectation from all of the businesses that they engage with. And that is applied to anything, right, whether it’s in health care, and their wellness or education. And, you know, with COVID, that need for kind of on demand has really been exacerbated. Um, you know, the, the problem that we see is that, you know, this expectation has gotten really high. And yet, from a business standpoint, it’s actually quite difficult to deliver on that. And so what we have done at Parkway is figured out, you know, how can we harness the power of AI to really bridge that gap?
Alexander Ferguson 1:35
So before we get into more about the solution, how that works, let’s, let’s go back in time and hear more of your journey. Rebecca, I think you, you started one of your other careers, actually at Intel, and then you start your own agency, can you what was that journey? Like? were you always interested in technology?
Rebecca Clyde 1:50
Yes, I was, I graduated from college, right in the late late 90s, during the dot, right, you know, in the midst of the.com bubble. So it was almost inevitable that I would end up in technology, I was fascinated by it, I wanted to work in technology, when Intel came on campus to recruit me to the front of the line to get an interview and was really excited when they offered me a job. And so I ended up coming to Arizona to take that role. And was really part of what I would call kind of the glory years of Intel during that time, where I really learned the business of technology, and how to use in our case, you know, we implemented a lot of the early marketing technology platforms at Intel, to help you know, grow the company, it was just, you know, during a very explosive growth period for Intel, that I got to be a part of. So that was kind of the beginning of my career.
Alexander Ferguson 2:42
That was actually a no in 2006 timeframe. And that is it right out of that that you you launched your own agency marketing agency.
Rebecca Clyde 2:49
Yeah, that’s right. It was right around, there’s a big transition happened in my life, I had become a mother, I had young children. And, you know, I had been an Intel for almost eight years, plus almost 10 years. And, you know, I’m starting to think about, you know, what I wanted to do next. And the, you know, by that point, I had developed enough professional expertise, especially around marketing technology. And I realized there was an opportunity where I could lend my expertise to many other businesses. And so that was really the beginning of my agency trajectory and building a business around helping other technology companies, including Intel, implement mark, marketing, technology and software.
Alexander Ferguson 3:34
So did you actually like was Intel, you work with Intel as well? Is it at the agency?
Rebecca Clyde 3:39
Yeah, yeah. And many other companies too, not just interested? Yeah. And the great thing was, I was able to also expand into other industries, right. So of course, my, my background had been in tech, and so I was servicing that industry. But, you know, a lot of other industries wanted to use both products, too. And that’s where I became exposed to, for example, the healthcare industry, you know, some some of the largest employers in Arizona are healthcare companies. And, you know, they also make a lot of marketing investments and wanted to modernize. And so they were turning to us as well, to to help them get there.
Alexander Ferguson 4:15
So you actually, if I understood correctly, you you grew that agency actually 60 person team up to that point. So it’s no small team you’re not you’re not a foreign to to growing and developing a team to accomplish a lot of great things. But then to launch go into actual tech in your own SAS platform. That’s that’s another leap. And I feel like a lot of people run a service business. Think about all what would be like to have a product instead of a service. It was actually in your like, Were you already thinking about that to get out of the service business? Or was that not?
Rebecca Clyde 4:48
No, it’s actually kind of funny. I was thinking about it more from the standpoint of his The world needs this thing and why aren’t the big software providers creating it? So one of the things we noticed was, you know, marketing techniques or marketing automation platforms had really kind of become a little bit stale. They utilize what I consider to be a kind of a delayed and asynchronous model. It’s like, you know, you send an email, you wait for people to come to the landing page to fill out a form, and then you contact them. And then it’s like this very slow and arduous process. And that might have been great 10 or 15 years ago. But today, that’s, as I said, this on demand expectation has totally shifted what people want. And so that model wasn’t really suited for this new modern type of on demand expectation. And so I was wondering, like, Why aren’t the big marketing automation platforms really addressing it? Why aren’t they doing it? And it was, when I met a new Shukla, my co founder that I learned why and she’s like, Oh, because they’re, they’re not really startups anymore. They’ve sold to these big companies, Adobe, and Oracle. So they’re not thinking about this anymore. They’re not really innovating. So they’re just going to iterate very, like small bits to the product, they’re not going to revolutionize their product. And so the people that will change this are going to be the startups. And she was really the person who painted the picture of what the startup could look like for me, because she came from the Bay Area, she you know, she had a serial entrepreneurship factory that she had already been on. And so that’s kind of what created the kernel for the creation of CO AI.
Alexander Ferguson 6:26
So the two of you are the two co founders of a backhoe.
Rebecca Clyde 6:31
We actually have a third founder, Christina, who’s our CTO.
Alexander Ferguson 6:34
Gotcha, gotcha. So were you all just chatting one day and said, Alright, let’s just make it happen. What did that look like? Cuz it was 2018 that you officially started. Right, bucko.
Rebecca Clyde 6:45
Yeah, you know, a new and I actually met at a conference, it was the girls in tech conference. And yeah, we were just chatting. And then we decided to meet again, I flew to San Jose to meet with her. We had a couple of those kinds of meetings, and she flew in print, you know, Chris got a LinkedIn because they had done a company together before. And pretty soon, yes, it was the three of us around the table, figuring out what would be the future of
Alexander Ferguson 7:12
where you were you ready for something new? Are you ready to say goodbye to your agency and move on to the next thing?
Rebecca Clyde 7:19
Yeah, one thing I’ve discovered about myself is like, like starting new things. And so what’s the business gets to like a very, what I would say just operational mode, instead of like a gross and, you know, innovation vote, and then it becomes, it’s, you know, there’s other people who are better at that. I’m not saying that I’m not good at it. I’m just saying, I’m not the best at that. And it’s not where I can work in my zone of genius. Like they say, you know, I am much more energized by starting things. And I guess that is suitable to be an entrepreneur.
Alexander Ferguson 7:50
You’re there’s no concern of fear that it won’t work or or you’ll mess up or anything. You’re like, let’s let’s make it happen.
Rebecca Clyde 8:00
Always there, obviously. That’s part of the fun, though. It’s the fact that it could totally fail and bomb is what makes it interesting.
Alexander Ferguson 8:11
I love that mentality. Like, that’s part of the fun. That’s the fear is
Rebecca Clyde 8:15
exactly. It’s like a roller coaster. Right? It’s not fun if there’s not a big drop.
Alexander Ferguson 8:20
Did you close down? Your agent, I think was called Ideas collide. Is that right?
Rebecca Clyde 8:25
No, no, no, the agency is alive and well growing. It’s i being I just brought in a management team to cover for me, I handed off my role, my responsibilities, my other business partners that were there, and yet still going. Great.
Alexander Ferguson 8:42
So you’re launching bought Co? Did you get traditional investment for that? Did you bootstrap it? What was that process to get it off the graph?
Rebecca Clyde 8:51
Not the beginning. It was just as the founders doing all the work, Chris, of course, as the CTO could do a lot of the technical legwork, we got a couple of customers to prepay before we even like fully baked, you know, we filled them on the idea of what we were trying to build and they set you up
Alexander Ferguson 9:11
like that say like, Alright, we’re gonna have it just give us the money and then it’ll appear and
Rebecca Clyde 9:16
then it’ll show up. Exactly. Yeah. Before so it’s fun it you know, and of course, we delivered on it as promised. And then, you know, that was kind of the first money in where these prepayments and then of course, we funded it a little bit ourselves with some bootstrap dollars, obviously, you know, most found founders have to put in some of their own money first. And then eventually, we went out to raise money from the angel Community First, we raised money from Angel, a couple of different angel groups and some individual angels, and then we raise money for VCs and the seed round. We kind of went that, you know, there’s definitely
Alexander Ferguson 9:56
customers they owe money, angels and then traditional Yeah, It sounds so well staged and planned.
Rebecca Clyde 10:04
It just worked out that way. I don’t know if I planned it that way but it turned out
Alexander Ferguson 10:10
you have a such a humbleness around you, you’re like, Oh no, that’s just that’s just what we did this is yeah made sales it sell it you make it sound so simple and easy was it was it truly just there was no problems and it was just off to the races
Rebecca Clyde 10:25
kind of work. I mean everything you even coming up with like the slides that we use to sell the idea they didn’t happen overnight. I mean, we spent months agonizing over whether it needed to be we interviewed hundreds of marketing executives in multiple industries to get feedback, we showed them prototypes, you know, we spent a good like six months just turning through lots of bad ideas, before we got to a couple of good ones that we felt like we were starting to get good feedback on. And that’s at the point where we started to be able to pre like, freestyle a prepayment of the product. But it didn’t just happen after one meeting, it was like, easily six months of just grinding at it and iterating and iterating and trying to make it better and better every time.
Alexander Ferguson 11:14
Gotcha for you. In that in that marketing process of first creating a slide deck, sharing it, would it be something you’d like and then iterating it over and over? And then to start scaling? Is there any key takeaways that a tactic that you found has worked well, when trying to bring a new technology to market and get people to say yes, I want this.
Rebecca Clyde 11:37
I think it’s really about listening. And perhaps that’s what I was, it’s I don’t know if it’s a marketing strategy, but it’s like listening. So for example, you know, we would set up these 30 minute feedback sessions we would share, but it wasn’t so much about us sharing, but it was like, what are they? How are they reacting to it? Where did their eyes light up? And where did they kind of get bored? And just really tuning into that a little bit and trying to like dig in to understand like, why was this interesting to you? Or why was this not interesting to you? What would you be willing to pay for this? Would you be willing to pay for that, and just making it so that people felt comfortable giving us honest feedback, and also like watching their purse their shoes. That’s hard, I think is really important. Because if we just dream up an idea in our office, and then try to go sell it without that real world kind of initially, then I think that ideas are bound to fail. But the fact that we engage people in kind of, in a sense, almost co created it with all of these people. And marketing executives actually gave us a lot of strength when we came out of the gate because we had like some solid ground. Um, you know, part of it too, is working our networks, you know, both the new and I had really beat rolodexes. And so we were able to pull in feedback from really fantastic executives at great companies was important. And then ultimately, what it led us to was, you know, having something that was well received.
Alexander Ferguson 13:09
That’s a quote from 2020 every year. It’s that constant listening and iterating and constantly, not not imagining what they want, but hearing from it. And I feel like one of the specific taglines you have in your website. Now Everywhere I look, is this HIPAA compliant? And I feel like that’s is that that’s a key piece that was missing in the industry of having this this a solution AI solution that that was perfect for healthcare.
Rebecca Clyde 13:36
Oh, absolutely. And this actually came about from some of our conversations with healthcare executives, you know, we would ask them, you know, how are your what is your marketing technology stack look like? What are some of the challenges you’re facing with your technology stack? What do you wish you had that you don’t have? And in those conversations, what emerged was the idea of like, hey, you know, we have a lot of HIPAA compliant constraints of what we can do. So, yeah, we use Salesforce, but we can’t do all these things because of HIPAA. And that was constantly coming up. And so I felt like the, the healthcare industry was kind of like wishing they had something but nobody had really delivered it to them. And so they would always say like, oh, well, I can’t do that because of HIPAA. You know, we can’t collect somebody’s personal information on a website because of HIPAA. And I’m like, Well, why don’t what if we actually provided you a solution? That was and then all of a sudden, it was like, Wait, that’s possible, and then it became something that we could furnish. And the HIPAA compliance piece really came about last year. During COVID, of course, lots of things have changed in the world. We were actually trying to sell to health and wellness like more wellness industry. So Massage Envy was one of our customers and we were selling to, you know, fitness centers and large wellness franchises. is an of course was COVID, they all had to shut down. And so they were not making at the beginning technology, consumer engagement investments because there were no consumers to engage with. And so what we found is that we started getting calls from urgent care providers, for example, that saw what we had done with Massage Envy and said, Hey, we’re kind of similar. We have hundreds of locations, we get a lot of questions about availability, we get a lot of questions about insurance, we get a lot of questions with, can you do this? Or can you do that? We would love to have a chat service and automated AI chat that could just handle all of that, because it’s overwhelming our phones, you know, we were getting complaints that we’re not getting back to people, we’re losing revenue opportunities. And so that’s when we really started to notice that what we had built for like a Massage Envy can also translate really well, if we added that HIPAA compliant components.
Alexander Ferguson 15:56
And and that just that makes it the world of difference. Your target market, those who are best suited for your product is it is it mid market enterprise level companies,
Rebecca Clyde 16:07
we, you know, we find that it’s companies that have a lot of volume of consumers. So we look at multi locations, we find that if they have, usually 10 is kind of on the lower end, but you know, 2050 locations, they’re starting to really feel the pain of having to like, hey, we have to provide personalized content for all these people. Because our hours of operation are different in this city versus back city, we might have even different pricing, we might have different policies, we might have different even during COVID. Like in some locations, they were closed and some locations, they were open. Right. And so the the, the need to scale those conversations becomes more apparent when the company starts, you know, bigger and bigger and has many locations. So you know, we have customers that have 200 300 500,000 locations that are using our product, because we can help them solve that challenge.
Alexander Ferguson 17:02
Briefly looking at the technical technologist for a moment, the overall space of natural language processing and understanding has as is definitely progressing, making this more capable and accessible. Are you guys building on top of some of the big three that are out there the solutions and then combating your own components? How did you approach this problem?
Rebecca Clyde 17:25
Right, right. Yeah, we definitely are used it, you know, we’re on it on Google. You know, we use some of Google’s infrastructure for our product. So yes, certainly, we’re building everybody’s building on the shoulders of giants to some degree. And so we’re not trying to reinvent the wheel, we use technology that already exist if it’s already out there. But what we’re providing is the kind of unique capability around a specific segment, domain. specific content workflows, you know, that’s all going to be unique to an industry that doesn’t already exist off the shelf. So being able to understand Hi, how are you that’s universal, but being able to understand, you know, something along the lines of, you know, hey, I need to book an appointment tomorrow with a female therapist that in the afternoon, right, that’s going to be a little bit more specialized. What would you do with that question, but you don’t just answer the question, but you have to know what prompt know what workflow to kick off as a result of that question.
Alexander Ferguson 18:27
Mm hmm. One of the powerful things around technology is not just that it’s cool tech, but it actually solves a problem for unique use case. And what you’ve really narrowed in on is healthcare and HIPAA compliant and finding our it’s let’s use it to solve this multilocation challenge of answering those common ask questions when you have so much of a volume coming in 20 2018, you got started? When did you actually have the product out? And for those who are still customers, and then and iterated on that? What was that timeline look like? Last couple years?
Rebecca Clyde 18:59
Yeah, it was really in 2020. When we launched, going into 2020, we had two customers that were using our products, fairly large customers, they were providing us with a lot of data, a lot of great feedback. And then going into 2020 was when we were able to raise money. And then at that point, hire people to do sales and marketing and all the things you need to actually build a demand generation program.
Alexander Ferguson 19:21
Stacia, do a lot of your customers let let them share who they are. Or is that still often because they’re large ones and they keep avec
Rebecca Clyde 19:31
are okay with it? I mean, there’s a few that can’t, but most of them are pretty alright. Within, you know, we’ve had case studies published with few of them even in industry publication. So, yeah, they actually like to showcase what they’re doing. Sometimes they even win awards in their industry, from working with us. Certainly, we’ve had a couple of customers that have gone out and won industry awards. Though they like to kind of brag a little bit about the fact that they’re working with us.
Alexander Ferguson 19:59
That’s not what everyone wants to feel like feel like they’re leading leading the way for their customers and making their customers lives easier. And that’s the idea of technology. LG should do that. For for you and your team, you started three people, right? How big is the team today? That would be honest, your co founders?
Rebecca Clyde 20:17
Yeah, we 25. So we’re roughly around 25 team members.
Alexander Ferguson 20:22
Growing a team, you guys, you’re not, you’re not new to growing a team from your from your agency? What? What are some, like key lessons learned? Is there any difference between hiring people for a service business agency versus building a SAS tech company and the people in there?
Rebecca Clyde 20:38
Well, certainly, we have probably more engineering in a software company, right? It’s going to be heavily engineer driven. So we obviously have, you know, more than our team is inside. So I would say that’s probably the biggest difference. And then it’s also just the mindset is different, right? It’s we’re trying to create products that are more self sufficient, right, it’s about left hand holding and not more hand holding, right, whereas the surfaces didn’t actually get to handhold. So that’s the biggest difference. It’s just how do you approach everything is kind of driven out of the approaches? Like how do we make the technology do more of the work? And that’s really where the innovation has.
Alexander Ferguson 21:21
When you’re when you’re hanging? Because a lot of leaders listen to to our series, is there any questions that you use in your interview process that help you determine, oh, this is a good candidate, aside from the actual role that they’re playing, just that they’re a good person, that that fit your culture, and you know, you want to work on any questions that you found valuable for you.
Rebecca Clyde 21:47
You know, in an early stage startup, like ours, what’s really valuable is people that are just kind of resourceful, scrappy, resilient, and can kind of like, do more than just the one thing, I hate it because it really requires a lot of like, team effort, problem solving, everything everyday is going to be different. And so I’m looking for people that have that kind of willingness to to step in, do what needs to be done, maybe put in the extra hours if necessary, right, because in a startup, it’s not like a nine to five job, and it’s not like this is your job description and just follow it, right. So the type of person that has to work in a start up has to thrive in an environment that is a little bit more fluid, it’s more dynamic, right? And that is going to require just kind of all hands on deck at times. And so there’s just certain people that are who like that, who really, really enjoy being part of creating something from the ground up. So those are the things I look for, you know, if if people are, you know, too, too needy, like me, a lot of I would say corporate type of support system to be successful, then we’re not going to be the right place for them complete, certainly doesn’t really stick or not carries. So yeah, you know, usually I asked them to just share an experience, like, tell me a time where in your role, you had to really step outside of the maybe job description, or you had to go above and beyond to support it a deadline, you know, I’m really trying to hear them tell a really rich story about how they do this on a regular basis. So that’s what I might probe for.
Alexander Ferguson 23:28
Is there anything major that’s different? Okay. There’s the obvious ones of coming from a service business to a product business, because I feel like there’s a lot of other leaders that are running their business. And they thought about, oh, would it be like to build a product and build a soft SAS company? And there’s the obvious difference, you’re running an engineering team, you’re building a product, but were there any other realizations or a haws? Through this through this time that you didn’t expect? And you wish you’d go back and tell yourself to let you know, hey, you know, what’s happening?
Rebecca Clyde 24:00
Well, the biggest difference is how much capital you need to do both. So you know, a service business, you don’t really need a lot of capital, you kind of build it organically, the it’s just a way that you grow and capitalize the business is super different. In a product business, of course, it’s going to require a lot more capital to build the technology that will then sustain itself over time. And it will be competitive and differentiated if there’s a big enough market to address. So, you know, I think that’s the biggest thing, it’s like, first of all, you have to solve a problem that’s big enough, right? Identify a market that’s meaningful enough so that you can go raise capital because nobody will give it to you on market. And then of course, have the, you know, build a product that investments so that you can truly execute on the business, right. So I would say that’s what makes it very different. It’s just an entirely different business from the ground. To begin with, how it’s capitalized, how it’s staffed, what the goals are, right? In a, in a services business, I always ran my business in the black like always, you know, profitable locally, the first three months. Whereas the hardware, you kind of have to get used to the fact that, like, you’re gonna burn a lot of cash every month for a while, before you become profitable. So it’s just, it’s a different mind.
Alexander Ferguson 25:26
Did it surprise you? How much capital you needed to? As you once you got into this?
Rebecca Clyde 25:33
Yeah. I mean, everybody tells tells you that, but until you’re actually doing it, it’s hard to realize.
Alexander Ferguson 25:40
It’s like, after spending so many years of running a business that debt well is in great always in the black. And then like, Hall, it’s like, Wait, how much money is this gonna take?
Rebecca Clyde 25:49
Yeah, definitely, you know, they always did cost twice as much as you think it’s even more. You know, that’s, that’s the fun of it, too. It’s like, you know, we have to be dreaming big enough, right? So that it’s worthwhile. But that’s the goal, right is knowing that we’re building something big, we’re getting customers requiring market penetration, like, all these things are gonna cost money and initial investment is the beginning. But, you know, that’s what the venture ecosystem is set up to support.
Alexander Ferguson 26:26
Are you? Are you pleased with your route? Like, would you’ve done it again? Or would you do anything different as far as you got some customers to pay you up front? And then you did the angels? And then you did the venture capital round? Would you follow that same process? Or would you’ve done anything different?
Rebecca Clyde 26:42
Well, yeah, I mean, I would do a lot of things differently now that I know so much more. But, you know, it learned these lessons without making the mistakes. So I don’t know how to rewind the tape. You know, certainly I would have moved faster. You know, I didn’t know at the beginning what, you know, who I didn’t have a good sense of discernment at the beginning of like, who might be a good investor and who might not, you know, I learned that over time. You know, certainly a lot of people coached me, I had wonderful, I’ve had wonderful mentors and coaches that have helped point the win. And hopefully, my mistakes have been a little bit smaller than they could have been. But you know, it’s a learning process. And so I don’t know, if I could have changed anything, I would have certainly liked things to move more quickly, on all friends, right? I think I can never, I’m never happy enough with see that, you know, can always be happy after a better right. But it is what it is.
Alexander Ferguson 27:39
You mentioned there finding the right investors, is there. Is there any takeaways for yourself that you’re that you learned that you could share with another entrepreneur? That that’s looking at raising? Like, how do you? How do you make sure you’re finding the right one?
Rebecca Clyde 27:54
You know, at the beginning, I was a little bit naive in the sense that I thought that anybody who saw what I was doing would, you know, they didn’t necessarily have to invest, but they would at least be able to see what I was trying to build what we were creating apoco AI, and they would see like, look, I have this amazing co founder team, like, look at them. They’re so great. They’ve done this before they have hundreds of millions offices, I mean, a new RD has like a billion dollars and exit, like why wouldn’t they invest in this company. And I was like, thinking it would be obvious to the world. But it wasn’t I had to do a better job at the big you know, the beginning, I didn’t do a great job telling the story, perhaps I could have done a better job. And then as far as the investors go, I think what I learned quickly was that my job wasn’t to convince everyone, which was kind of what I thought I had to do at the beginning was like, Oh, I just need to be really convincing. And I need to, you know, get everybody to believe my story and to believe in us. And then slowly that switch to realizing no, that’s actually not my job is not to, to convince anyone, my job is just to find the investor that already resonate with my story, who already can see what I see. And so I became, you know, my energy change from like, trying to convince people and exerting all this energy to just like relaxing a little bit more and just being able to quickly identify people who maybe had an appreciation for this face, for the industry for what we were trying to accomplish. And if, if it wasn’t a good fit, because they just had a different lens on the world or had a different set of experiences that were not going to be suited for us like that was okay, like, Okay, you’re not gonna invest in our company because you have you’re looking for something else, right? You’re just looking for something different. That’s not so that’s okay. So, just making it making those conversations quicker to get there was really important so that now I can almost work you know, more easily identify where that alignment is. Chris is, you’re just spending all this energy trying to convince somebody that was never gonna want to be in our industry or in our space anyway.
Alexander Ferguson 30:09
That bots, selling the idea of chatbots is the future, in some ways is becoming ubiquitous, but it’s finding the right person that understands your particular vision of that execution. But speaking of the future of chatbots, and AI, what, where, where do you think we’re going, if you had to make a prediction? Three, five years from now, what what are we going to see?
Rebecca Clyde 30:36
I am seeing first of all, this whole idea of self serve of you know, people being able to quickly just inquire and get what they want is, you know, this on demand kind of trend is not going away, right, it’s only going to get more and more intense. And so what I see in the future, especially watching kind of the next generation, if you watch how Gen Z interacts with technology, they don’t go to websites and navigate a website and fill out forms, like they just don’t do that. So and they don’t wait on hold, they’re not gonna call and wait on hold for 45 minutes. Like all these things that we’ve expected, like, in my generation is just kind of how you have to do business, they are not accepting. So I kind of see them as the future I say, like, how do they want to interact with the world, they’re using messaging very intensely, all the time, they use video messaging, they use voice messaging, they, you know, they’re, they’re just wanting that kind of instant engagement all the time through these channels. So as they’re entering adulthood and entering the professional world, which they are, they’re already graduating for college and the is they are bringing with them that kind of expectation, right. And so pretty soon as, as businesses, organizations, we’re going to have to start to bend to that will. And so that’s, that’s really what I watch, I see them, you know, wanting to text, the video text or as our video chat with. Cool, purple. And that’s how we’re going to have to learn to interact with them. And so as businesses, we have to be thinking about, okay, how do I set up my business? And how I engage with my consumers? To be more in that direction? So can I accept? can I handle text messaging? Can I respond in real time to chat without a 20 minute or two hour wait in a queue? can I handle video? can I handle, you know, boys interactions in real time without burdening a call center? You know, using an AI to really provide those responses. So all of these are different things that I see of businesses, we’re needing to set up the infrastructure and really create a competency around that because that wave is coming. Like we’re not stopping it. We may deny that it’s coming. We may try to pretend that it’s not coming but it’s coming these these genders are growing up faster than we realize and they’re going to be, you know, ending the show soon.
Alexander Ferguson 33:10
Well, for those out there that are needing to look for a chatbot solution, especially in the healthcare space, you may want to check out botco that’s botco.ai. botco.ai. Thank you so much, Rebecca, for spending some time with us and sharing your journey and also the prediction of the future where we will be this has been awesome.
Rebecca Clyde 33:30
Yeah, Alexander, it’s been great being with you here today.
Alexander Ferguson 33:32
We’ll see you all on the next episode of UpTech Report. Have you seen a company using AI machine learning or other technology to transform the way we live, work and do business? Go to UpTech report.com and let us know
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