Stephanie Postles
Appearances
Experts of Experience
AI Agents Explained: Build a Digital Workforce That Works 24/7
Did you tell anyone that you were doing this or did you like run on the down low where you're like, I'm just going to see what I can make. Surprise. Surprise, we're live.
Experts of Experience
AI Agents Explained: Build a Digital Workforce That Works 24/7
Yeah, I mean, now I feel like I'm gonna be looking at everything in my life, wondering how can I put agent force in it? What can I automate here? I mean, it was very inspiring, especially thinking about like how I can use these functionalities within my own company, which I think I had a story that maybe this could only be for enterprises.
Experts of Experience
AI Agents Explained: Build a Digital Workforce That Works 24/7
So I'm thinking about a lot of these big companies who probably listen in to this show, marketing trends.
Experts of Experience
AI Agents Explained: Build a Digital Workforce That Works 24/7
I'm wondering how, like, did you have people pushing back on you being like, do not launch this. Here's why is the terrible idea. Like where they're seeing the risk being like so large that they're like, Bernard, this is a terrible idea. Cause I'm sure in other companies, this would be happening and like how to push back against that risk adverse mentality. Yeah.
Experts of Experience
AI Agents Explained: Build a Digital Workforce That Works 24/7
So yeah, also impressed that they got this up for Salesforce in four weeks. It's crazy. I have not heard of that happening so quickly. So that was amazing.
Experts of Experience
AI Agents Explained: Build a Digital Workforce That Works 24/7
What was the most exciting parts for you?
Experts of Experience
AI Agents Explained: Build a Digital Workforce That Works 24/7
This is like such a new space we're in where people are still just trying to like figure out prompt engineering for a chat GPT. And they're like, oh, maybe instead of just like, give me the answer to this. It's like, I should say, pretend you're this and think about it this way, like the more context. And so- It's no surprise that of course you're like, oh yeah, maybe we should do that here too.
Experts of Experience
AI Agents Explained: Build a Digital Workforce That Works 24/7
But it's such a fast paced world right now to keep up with. Are there any other funny moments like that that came up or just like things that happened while you were rolling this out that probably are relatable to other people who would be going through this process?
Experts of Experience
AI Agents Explained: Build a Digital Workforce That Works 24/7
One thing we haven't talked about yet is like the success that you saw once you implemented AgentForce. I mean, one, I'd love it if you, like if you had a before and after, because I'm trying to visualize like what it was like before when customers would go on there and ask a question, what it's like now to like really understand what it looks like, and then what happened after.
Experts of Experience
AI Agents Explained: Build a Digital Workforce That Works 24/7
How many cases are getting solved with Agent 4? Tell me about the stats.
Experts of Experience
AI Agents Explained: Build a Digital Workforce That Works 24/7
And that's this is awesome. I love the ticker numbers on the homepage. I just feel like it's kind of gamified. I'm like, I just want to sit here and watch it go up and see how many humans are involved. And yeah, that's fun. And can we also talk about the sales, the sales strategy here?
Experts of Experience
AI Agents Explained: Build a Digital Workforce That Works 24/7
Yep. The authenticity was real. He definitely talked about some stories that we won't share now. Got to get into the episode, but very fun just hearing some of the little mess ups and the feedback they got and LinkedIn posts that got a little crazy and comments.
Experts of Experience
AI Agents Explained: Build a Digital Workforce That Works 24/7
Mm hmm. I love that you guys are like, you're like the original case study and companies can just come in and like copy paste your strategy. And by you doing all this legwork, I mean, I think about back when I worked at Google, we were always trying to figure out metrics of like which ones mattered. And we used to get excited about ones.
Experts of Experience
AI Agents Explained: Build a Digital Workforce That Works 24/7
And then people would come in and be like, actually, you don't want that metric to be high. That's bad. That means you're having a problem. And like, there was always so much debate. And so the fact that you guys did this first and you already have like a whole entire, like basically you can copy this entire strategy and just do it with another company. But I'd love to hear about,
Experts of Experience
AI Agents Explained: Build a Digital Workforce That Works 24/7
Who else has done this? Like who else has copied this?
Experts of Experience
AI Agents Explained: Build a Digital Workforce That Works 24/7
And so if you want to hear about that, you want to see how to dive into the world of agentic agents and see how it can transform your life. This episode was lit.
Experts of Experience
AI Agents Explained: Build a Digital Workforce That Works 24/7
I think it'd be fun to hear maybe some lessons that you've gotten from either Microsoft or any previous companies that have influenced what you're doing with AgentForce and how you're thinking about, you know, like we were talking about with metrics or building out a team or really anything you're working on. I'd love to hear a bit about that.
Experts of Experience
AI Agents Explained: Build a Digital Workforce That Works 24/7
So I'm naive. Is this not normal to have this kind of role? Like is this role not? Oh, okay. I'm like, this sounds like perfectly like, yes, it makes sense. We should have it.
Experts of Experience
AI Agents Explained: Build a Digital Workforce That Works 24/7
I just heard a quote in my interview the other day where someone's like, the things that look contrarian and crazy today will be commonplace in the future. And so this will probably be very common, I would assume, in the next year.
Experts of Experience
AI Agents Explained: Build a Digital Workforce That Works 24/7
Are there any key questions that you keep getting asked, especially among these like larger companies coming in? Are there themes where people are like asking similar questions?
Experts of Experience
AI Agents Explained: Build a Digital Workforce That Works 24/7
do you have to go through like expectations with them? I know when we talked previously, you were kind of talking about how a lot of people come in and they just expect AI to work right away. This better be perfect. I better fix all my problems. And you had a good analogy around like, would you treat your employee that way in week one? Be like, what did you do? Why did you mess that up?
Experts of Experience
AI Agents Explained: Build a Digital Workforce That Works 24/7
You got that thing wrong.
Experts of Experience
AI Agents Explained: Build a Digital Workforce That Works 24/7
I feel like this is a perfect segue, knowing the timing that we have left into more of that, like the closing the loop between sales, marketing, CX, because right now it feels like we're entering into a different world when it comes to businesses. And it used to just be, you know, you've got your awareness top of funnel, your customer comes in, you sell to them, hopefully retain them.
Experts of Experience
AI Agents Explained: Build a Digital Workforce That Works 24/7
Customer support is sometimes, you know, either in the middle of that or at the end, depending. Now it feels like everything's kind of merging together and like more conversations have to be happening between these teams. Like you just mentioned, Bernard, like When people have an issue, you might want to come back and change the model.
Experts of Experience
AI Agents Explained: Build a Digital Workforce That Works 24/7
Okay, this happened over here when someone was coming into the flow. This now needs to be adjusted. How do you see the world going forward with this cross-functional collaboration space that we're in?
Experts of Experience
AI Agents Explained: Build a Digital Workforce That Works 24/7
It seems like, too, this is an amazing time for like CX leaders and marketing leaders all to also be at the product leader table to be able to influence products that are being developed because they have a lot more intel and everyone's going to know more about the customer and more about what sold them and why they're excited about that than ever.
Experts of Experience
AI Agents Explained: Build a Digital Workforce That Works 24/7
And so it seems like it's just there's going to be a lot of collaboration opportunities that bring marketers and CX and other leaders to a table that maybe they were not really at previously.
Experts of Experience
AI Agents Explained: Build a Digital Workforce That Works 24/7
So I'm wondering how, like how Lauren, do you train these agents and people to think differently about building this structure when you're like, okay, don't learn, don't think about anything I've ever learned before. Now think different, do different. Like how do you do that?
Experts of Experience
AI Agents Explained: Build a Digital Workforce That Works 24/7
Okay. That, yeah, that feels a little easier. So instead of me being like, oh, I have a, this feels like it's a customer support question. I don't need to know that as the customer. I just need to be like, help SOS. This is what I need. Blah, blah, blah. Like I'll just voice it into the system. And then behind the scenes, they'll know like, oh, actually that's a finance thing.
Experts of Experience
AI Agents Explained: Build a Digital Workforce That Works 24/7
She's having problems.
Experts of Experience
AI Agents Explained: Build a Digital Workforce That Works 24/7
I'm very excited by this. I was just on a chat line with Adobe trying to cancel my like crazy enterprise account that I accidentally signed up for two years ago. And I still don't even know if it's canceled. I was on with like four different chat bots and they kept being like, but actually, do you want to buy this thing? I'm like, no.
Experts of Experience
AI Agents Explained: Build a Digital Workforce That Works 24/7
And then I'd come back to it and be like, oh, that never got canceled four times. And I think it's still a problem. And they didn't know enough information about me. And they kept asking me stuff. I'm like, I don't know. I think you should know this. I think I'm your customer. You should know this about me. Yeah.
Experts of Experience
AI Agents Explained: Build a Digital Workforce That Works 24/7
They just don't have agent force yet.
Experts of Experience
AI Agents Explained: Build a Digital Workforce That Works 24/7
So one of my favorite questions that I ask of all my marketing trends guests who are all normally CMOs of the Fortune 500, Fortune 1000 is what's something that you believe that very few agree with you on?
Experts of Experience
AI Agents Explained: Build a Digital Workforce That Works 24/7
Have you done this recently? I'd love to hear a story if there is something that comes up around this.
Experts of Experience
AI Agents Explained: Build a Digital Workforce That Works 24/7
Yeah, AI probably a lot of times has all the risks that have ever happened in however many years it's been tracking data. And I think what's amazing about humans is being like, I'm going to do it anyways. And that's actually where most of the breakthroughs have happened.
Experts of Experience
AI Agents Explained: Build a Digital Workforce That Works 24/7
The biggest companies, the most life-changing things is like, yes, it's showing me this might be a terrible idea to do based off these things. And I'm going to send a rocket to space anyways.
Experts of Experience
AI Agents Explained: Build a Digital Workforce That Works 24/7
It's kind of similar to that quote where it's like, if you have a hammer, everything you see is a nail. And that's kind of what I see with everything right now. I'm like, I do think AI will be in many of these things and they will be completely different. And so I'm kind of like seeing everything as a nail, like everything can be disrupted and it's amazing.
Experts of Experience
AI Agents Explained: Build a Digital Workforce That Works 24/7
And what a great future we get to live in with like all the things we don't have to do anymore when this comes to be.
Experts of Experience
AI Agents Explained: Build a Digital Workforce That Works 24/7
Oh, that one's way more fun because I'm like, I think about the stuff that I'm in now and I'm still it's still so work related. But I love having it just like poke holes in anything I'm doing. So if I'm, for example, coming up with, you know, some questions for an interview with Bernard.
Experts of Experience
AI Agents Explained: Build a Digital Workforce That Works 24/7
and uploading the whole document and being like, pretend you're like a top podcast host and tell me which questions are going to result in a lame answer and which ones are going to go nowhere and which ones are more thought provoking and contrarian. And like, and I keep making it poke and then I get a new one. And I'm like, now look at this one and tear it apart and pretend you're a CMO.
Experts of Experience
AI Agents Explained: Build a Digital Workforce That Works 24/7
Like what won't resonate with you? What parts don't you care about? Like basically be really aggressive with everything I'm giving you. And it just, I feel like gives me such good output by saying, pretend to be this like cutthroat killer in the podcast industry. I'm like, ah, okay, this is great.
Experts of Experience
AI Agents Explained: Build a Digital Workforce That Works 24/7
Oh, I love that. Especially if I could say like, here's the things that I have. I've got this random tree you can climb. I have, you know. Oh, that's a good one. I love that. I'm stealing that for all four of my kids.
Experts of Experience
AI Agents Explained: Build a Digital Workforce That Works 24/7
This was awesome. Thank you all for letting me jump in and be in this conversation. Super fun and excited to run it on Marketing Trends as well. Thanks, Bernard.
Experts of Experience
AI Agents Explained: Build a Digital Workforce That Works 24/7
You're like the original case study and companies can just copy paste your strategy.
Experts of Experience
AI Agents Explained: Build a Digital Workforce That Works 24/7
When it comes to AI agents, I hear the pieces around adding in the custom data and you've got your own LLMs that you can work with. But to me, how I understand them is they're more goal oriented. Like they have somewhere like a problem they can solve. And they can head that way without building out chatbots and adding in information.
Experts of Experience
AI Agents Explained: Build a Digital Workforce That Works 24/7
Like it's really built off, like you said, if this and that, only the scenarios that you built out. But is it correct to understand that AI agents is more just like goal-oriented?
Experts of Experience
AI Agents Explained: Build a Digital Workforce That Works 24/7
Things that look contrarian and crazy today will be commonplace in the future. And so this will probably be very common, I would assume, in the next year or two.
Experts of Experience
AI Agents Explained: Build a Digital Workforce That Works 24/7
What kind of company is this for? I'm thinking at least as like a small business owner. Is this something that a small business owner can use or is it right now really for enterprise companies who do have a lot of data and a lot of things that they're trying to automate?
Experts of Experience
AI Agents Explained: Build a Digital Workforce That Works 24/7
I'm excited to be here. So excited for this conversation today and especially excited to poach this content and put it on Marketing Trends. So thanks for letting me be here.
Experts of Experience
AI Agents Explained: Build a Digital Workforce That Works 24/7
It seems like companies will be built off of this model, like of agent force and having a bunch of agents. It's like a whole different way of building a company. But even when thinking about these different marketing leaders that I talk to and the teams that they have, like they're thinking about team structures different.
Experts of Experience
AI Agents Explained: Build a Digital Workforce That Works 24/7
And I think actually startups might have a really great advantage of like, I have no employees currently, but I can have some digital ones. And now I have five or 10 departments that are all, you know, these digital employees. Totally.