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The Rise of AI Assistants: Pinpoint Business Impacts, Upside, and Risk Management
Artificial intelligence assistants and agentic AI are already changing operational norms for customer journeys, support strategies, and everyday business processes. Insights discussed in a recent Everyday AI podcast episode map out specific applications, emerging risks, and actionable strategies relevant for any business owner or leader planning for the realities of 2026 and beyond.
AI Assistants in 24/7 Customer Experience: Expanded Touchpoints and Transaction Volumes
AI assistants are extending customer touchpoints to a non-stop, multi-channel presence. The technology is now handling billions of transactions across global industries, automating tasks like calls, emails, chats, and even sophisticated research and paperwork aggregation. This allows organizations to address tech deficits—where information used to be siloed across different systems—and create seamless customer experiences. For example, agentic AI can now interact with disparate systems to quickly assemble data and resolve complex customer needs, without human intervention.
One potent use case highlighted is mortgage application: AI can let a single consumer apply to hundreds of banks instantaneously, providing automatic, competitive bidding and customized feedback at a scale that would have been operationally impossible for both the customer and the institution in the past.
AI-Driven Consumer Empowerment: Negotiation Power and Volume Spike
Agentic AI bots are not only empowering brands—they are giving consumers unprecedented leverage. Routine tasks, customer complaints, and service requests can be multiplied by digital agents, driving up support volumes. Where traditionally a customer might forego a minor complaint due to effort, now personal digital assistants can pursue issues relentlessly—calling, emailing executives, or referencing case law in ongoing negotiations without manual effort.
This surge in AI-driven engagement means brands are seeing new patterns: spikes in personalized outreach, cross-channel complaints, and increasingly sophisticated back-and-forth initiated by digital agents. Some sectors, like banking and health care, are already experiencing far more informed and persistent advocacy from customers using research bots to bolster their cases.
Security and Identity Risks: Managing Deepfakes and Unauthorized Access
Business risk now includes AI-fueled deepfakes and voice cloning that threaten security protocols and identity verification. AI bots can mimic voices, credentials, and even take over digital assistants, making old methods of verification vulnerable. Financial services and enterprises must adopt “low-tech” countermeasures—such as secure dial-back processes, complex identity codes, and continuous employee education to recognize legitimate communication and avoid manipulation.
These risks aren’t hypothetical; cyber incidents related to deepfakes and unauthorized bot access are on the rise. Businesses should expect digital identification systems to become mainstream within the next 12 to 24 months, but current best practice is to combine robust AI defenses with prudent manual checks.
Preparing for Volume and Complexity: Scaling AI Customer Service Strategies
Volume remains contained for now, as advanced personal digital assistants still have relatively low adoption. However, industry analysts predict that by mid-2026 or early 2027, the influx of AI-driven customer interactions will spike dramatically. Businesses of every scale—from global enterprises to local barbershops—must prepare for increased requests, appointments, and complaints conducted via AI-powered agents.
Handling this volume requires a strategic shift: implementing agentic AI on the business side, training large language models for accuracy, and tuning systems to handle unpredictable customer requests. Businesses need to manage not just scaling, but ensuring their AI provides accurate, brand-appropriate responses—otherwise, they risk reputational damage from erroneous or “AI slop” customer communications.
Agent-to-Agent Communication: The Next Evolution and the Human Touch
The future of business may feature customer agents directly negotiating with brand agents—a microservice ecosystem solving queries via AI alone. While businesses will automate many transactions this way, the unique value of human empathy and brand-specific service remains essential for select interactions. Forward-looking brands are intentionally designing dual channels: frictionless digital solutions powered by AI, alongside human interaction options for high-value or emotionally sensitive engagements.
This hybrid strategy should reflect the brand’s promise to its customers and align with core values, ensuring that technology supports—not supplants—meaningful customer relationships.
Actionable Strategy: Use, Experiment, Understand, and Educate
Executives and business owners must move beyond theorizing about AI. Direct use—testing, experimenting with multiple subscriptions, and dedicating time to explore agentic AI workflows—is vital for understanding real value and pitfalls. Internal education is critical, particularly for large organizations where staff must discern legitimate requests from impersonations. Personalized exploration of AI’s capabilities enables leaders to spot operational wow-moments and translate those for wider business value.
Conclusion: AI Assistant Upside and Downside—Translating Insight into Preparedness
AI assistants are not a distant prospect—they are already expanding transaction possibilities, empowering consumers, raising operational volumes, and redefining risk exposure for businesses of all sizes. Leaders who directly engage with these tools, fortify security protocols, and craft hybrid customer experience strategies will be best positioned to benefit, while mitigating the inevitable downside and complexity these technologies introduce.
For business leaders, translating these specific insights into operational plans is the clearest path to thriving as agentic AI moves from edge case to everyday tool.
Topics Covered in This Episode:
- The Rise of AI Assistants: Upside & Downside
- Agentic AI Impact on Customer Experience
- AI Assistants Automating Complex Consumer Tasks
- Agentic AI Empowering Customer Complaint Strategies
- Deepfakes & Voice Cloning Risks in AI
- Cybersecurity Challenges: AI-Powered Attacks
- Consumer Personal Digital Assistants Adoption Curve
- Preparing Business Strategy for AI Assistant Era
- Human vs. AI Agents: Customer Service Balance
- Low-Tech Solutions to High-Tech AI Abuse
- Agent-to-Agent Communication in Enterprise AI
Episode Transcript
Jordan Wilson [00:00:16]:
I'm not gonna lie. At this very minute on one of my other computers, I have a couple AI assistants doing work for me. And at some point, I'm gonna go in and check back in on them and maybe give them some new directives. And you can understand the benefit of that. I'm one person. I can't do these things twenty four seven, but there's also a downside because as these AI assistants and agentic AI become, more available, more powerful, and more robust, there's also maybe an ugly downside on what people can be using these AI assistants for. And not only that, but what about your company? What if now all of a sudden, maybe you were limited in your, customer experience journey, customer support, you know, providing that support at a certain time. But now it might be twenty four seven, and happy customers maybe aren't gonna reach out to you as much as maybe disgruntled ones, and now they have new means with AI assistant.
Jordan Wilson [00:01:16]:
So today, we're gonna be talking about a fun topic, I think, to prepare for 2026 and beyond, just the rise of AI assistance and the undeniable upside and the sometimes ugly downside. I'm excited for today's conversation. I hope you are too. Welcome to Everyday AI. My name is Jordan Wilson. If you're new here, this is your daily livestream podcast and free daily newsletter helping everyday business leaders like you and me make sense of the AI noise because it's changing every day. This show helps you make sense of it to grow your company and your career. So if that's what you're trying to do, it starts here with the unedited, unscripted livestream podcast.
Jordan Wilson [00:01:51]:
But to take it to the next level, make sure you go to our website at youreverydayai.com. We're gonna be recapping the highlights from today's show as well as keeping you up to date with all of the other AI news that you need to know. Alright. You don't gotta listen to me anymore. We have a great guest for you today. I'm excited for today's conversation. It's gonna be a fun one. So livestream audience, if you could please help me welcome to the show, Chris Caldwell, the president and CEO of Concentrics.
Jordan Wilson [00:02:18]:
Chris, thank you so much for joining the show.
Chris Caldwell [00:02:19]:
Thank Thank you very much, Jordan. I'm excited to be here.
Jordan Wilson [00:02:22]:
Alright. This is gonna be a fun one talking about, kind of this duality of of AI agents and AI assistants. But before we get started, I'm sure many people in our audience have heard of Concentrix, but maybe for those that haven't, Chris, tell tell everyone, what it is that you all do and maybe even specifically on the AI side because you have a lot going on, there as well.
Chris Caldwell [00:02:40]:
Absolutely, Jordan. I I'd actually be surprised if too many people know, of us, but most people have interacted with us. We're sort of the brand behind the brand. We support customer experiences for around 2,000 clients around the world. We handle literally billions of transactions, whether it be calls, emails, chats for some of the world's best brands, across multiple different verticals. And so customer experience is what we think about each and every day. And as you can imagine, AI is changing this world dramatically for us. More people want things automated in a fashion.
Chris Caldwell [00:03:09]:
More people want everything being digital. People think that it'll drive down volumes. People think it'll drive better customer engagement. And so we're in the middle of all that and investing heavily in everything from fully automated, AI multimodal bots to sort of AI that helps a human be much better prepared and and much more efficient when they're interacting with another human. So it's a very exciting time for us.
Jordan Wilson [00:03:32]:
So, you know, smarter bots. Right? Like, if if if someone has, you know, customer service on their website, that's not new. Right? That's that was pre gen AI. But, you know, I'm curious, you know, not just asking you, how the customer journey experience has changed with large language models, but maybe specifically, agentic AI. How has that changed not just what's possible for maybe, brands to provide on the customer journey, customer experience side, but also the flip side. Right? The ugly. Talk to us a little bit about how Agentic AI has really impacted the, customer journey. What's interesting on the, client side, if you think about it, agentic AI has
Chris Caldwell [00:04:13]:
been used to really target, tech deficit where, you know, if you think about RPA or you think about some of the things like that, it's like, hey. I need to go to this system, this system, this system to pull all the information together to deliver a better customer experience. You can now do that with the Gentec AI. So it's solving a lot of more complex problems and is driving better resolutions for customers a lot faster. Very, very cool. Now what's exciting is that on the consumer side, it's really empowering consumers to have a lot more power than ever before. Just like you mentioned, you've got some bot you know, Agenca AI bots running on your on your system and and doing work that you're not even interacting with. Now think about that of how you wanna interact with brands, how you wanna do your shopping, how you wanna complain.
Chris Caldwell [00:04:55]:
All of a sudden, instead of there being one Jordan, there can be a 100 Jordans all having that interaction. And brands need to think about this and think about how to interact with consumers differently because they're gonna have so much more power because of the Gentek AI.
Jordan Wilson [00:05:09]:
Mhmm. What are maybe some of the, kind of use cases that pop out? Right? Like, I'm I'm thinking of them. Right? And, and maybe our audience is as well. But what would you say and maybe, let's let's start on the positive side, and and you kind of alluded to it there. But with, AI assistance in general, right, what are the the new use cases or the new benefits that companies need to be focusing on?
Chris Caldwell [00:05:36]:
I'll give you a great use case that has has positives for both sides. So think of your bank. Think about your marketing mortgages. Traditionally, you have to market very heavily to get people to to to kinda apply for a mortgage with you. And, generally, they're consumers with your bank. Now with consumers who have AgenTek AI, they also have historically maybe only applied for one or two companies, or banks for a mortgage because it takes a long time. There's a lot of paperwork to fill out and everything like that. Can you imagine, Jordan, if now with your Agenca AI bot, you can say, I wanna apply to a 100 banks, and I want them to bid against each other, and I'm gonna give them all the information.
Chris Caldwell [00:06:13]:
I'm gonna answer all their questions about me, and then I'm just gonna have an answer about which bank I can do it. First of all, there's a lot more volume of transactions for banks to now bid on. That's great for them. But for the consumer, it now gives them the power that they could never possibly do to kind of see all the different rates that are out there and heck the mortgage that they wanna deal with. Quite a different type of buying demographic. Oh, sorry. Not buying, buying environment than what you've ever seen, really being driven by people who can use these Adjutec AI bots.
Jordan Wilson [00:06:43]:
And and, you know, Chris, I can't, like, help but to think of the downside as well. Right? Not just, you you know, hey. A a company now might, you know, if if they have a disgruntled customer employee, you know, that person may be using agentic AI to, you know, hit them up for support on more channels. But, I mean, even thinking about things like deep fakes. Right? Voice cloning, which anyone can do for anyone, right, in in five seconds. Anyone can go out there and clone my voice, clone your voice, and now all of a sudden have us calling anyone. Right? Can you talk a little bit about maybe some of the downsides, of this technology and also the capabilities?
Chris Caldwell [00:07:22]:
Yeah. You're you're absolutely seeing that. So what we're seeing in specifically cybersecurity is where some of these bots, up to your point, deep fake can call in and say, hey. I've lost my password. I'm Jordan. Yeah. Here's my credentials, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. And someone who might know you might go, okay.
Chris Caldwell [00:07:37]:
That's great. Thank you very much. You I recognize your voice. You know, here here's your new credentials. And so we're starting to see a rise at sort of some of those unsavory areas around using these bots and using Agenexx to kind of drive that. Also, if you think about just kind of logging into your websites, of of people who haven't secured their personal digital assistance and someone taking over it, and that's you. And so it's almost like a puppet now. Someone has taken over you and can now get to anywhere that you could have gotten to with your credentials and your security to to to do that.
Chris Caldwell [00:08:06]:
So we're seeing some of that that's happening. We're also seeing to your point where a consumer who, you know, might have bought something. It might be worth $8, something relatively diminimous, and it didn't work. And they kinda go, I don't have time to call. The the company's hours are nine to five. They wanna wait for an hour online. I'm just gonna give up. Now with your personal digital assistant, can you imagine you can say, call this company every fifteen minutes until I get through to someone.
Chris Caldwell [00:08:33]:
And by the way, I'm not only gonna call up once. I'm gonna have 10 of my bots calling them. And if I can't get through, I'm gonna go on the web, and I'm gonna find out all the executives of this company, and then I'm gonna email them asking for my $8. That's challenging to say the least. Right? So you suddenly get all these new kind of volumes that going through and more power on the consumer. And then lastly, what we're starting to see already in the health care field is that if someone was working with their HMO and saying, hey. I think I should get the surgery or this procedure. Oftentimes, they might get a a a no.
Chris Caldwell [00:09:04]:
And you'd send the complaint letter saying, I I believe I should get this. Now what we're seeing is consumers who can use some of the the the research bots, can use, some of the agentic bots, sending in these complaint letters or citing, you know, multiple different cases of where surgery has been done, where it's been working, you know, what the procedure should be, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Far more educated because they can get access to all of this, and deliver it. And companies have to respond to this. They simply can't respond, and the higher level of of question requires a higher level of answer.
Jordan Wilson [00:09:40]:
You know, I I know from personal experience. Right? I'm getting way more just, you know, AI slop. Right? I slop of all kinds, you know, hitting hitting my inbox, my text messages, everything. Has this become, you know, a a big enough problem for companies yet, where they have to, like, oh, okay. We can't do our same customer service strategy, our same customer, you you you know, experience that we've been doing for years because now we're getting personalized, you know, complaints from all these different channels. Is it that big of a problem yet?
Chris Caldwell [00:10:20]:
It's not that big of a problem yet, but it's starting. We're starting to see it in a lot of the areas where it's starting to grow. And if you think about how many consumers are really using personal digital assistants as well as they possibly can, it's still relatively small. Right? It's not driving a lot of volume. But as we see with most things with AI, once the adoption curve, like, really starts to ramp up, we expect it to go, you know, huge volumes very, very dramatically increase. And and the analysts are sort of saying, you know, mid twenty twenty six, early twenty twenty seven, this is really where, you know, the power of these these digital personal assistants are gonna kick in. And if you look at the new models that are coming out, you can see them just getting better and better and easier and easier to to to use to to drive it. And so we do expect it to to cut.
Chris Caldwell [00:11:03]:
What it is starting to get, these these kind of clients thinking about is, okay. How do we deal with this? And by the way, this is not a big company problem. This can also be a small SMB problem. The reality is if you've got a barbershop and you're used to kind of, you know, having one or two calls a day, while you're cutting hair, all of a sudden, you're now dealing with a lot more because more people have an ability to contact you and interact with you than you've ever had before. And how how are you gonna manage that? And how are you gonna do that? And how are you gonna check your appointments, etcetera? So it really has quite a profound impact no matter where you are or size of business.
Jordan Wilson [00:11:40]:
Is there an answer for, you know, what what happens when? Right? So, yeah, what what does happen when, you you know, whether that's mid twenty twenty six or early twenty twenty seven or, Chris, if if we're having the same conversation at this time next year, what should companies be looking at maybe to handle on the the ugly side of, yeah, maybe a disgruntled, you you know, someone's in health care and, yeah, their surgery gets denied, but now all of a sudden, their their entire board is is getting phone calls, you know, AI powered, you know, messages and and DMs on LinkedIn. What should companies be doing now to prepare for when this does happen?
Chris Caldwell [00:12:17]:
It's about having the right strategy, Jordan. It's about really understanding, okay, how are you gonna engage the customers? It's about understanding where they can support the channels and the volume and putting the technology in place. So it's kind of like this arms race. They have to equip themselves with the AI. They have to equip themselves with the agentics, make sure that they've got the right LLM model training and tuning so that they can handle this volume that is is is coming in and that it is accurate. We've already seen companies go out there producing some pretty wild answers that get picked up on the news, and that's the last thing that you want. Right? And so by making sure that you're getting the right information, right tuning, you're gonna get rid of that. The second thing is turning it into really a a way of selling more services.
Chris Caldwell [00:12:57]:
If you're doing a better job, if you can connect with these personal digital assistants and push information that's relevant back to you. So, Jordan, you're complaining about something. It's it's it's it's calling, you know, the company. It realizes the company realizes you've got a personal digital assistant. Says, that's great, Jordan. I'll take care of that. But by the way, I also noticed that these three things you're also interested in, maybe you'd like to exchange for that. Maybe you'd like to buy something like that.
Chris Caldwell [00:13:21]:
And so really kind of driving these digital relationships, I think, are gonna be very, very key. Companies who master it will be incredibly successful.
Jordan Wilson [00:13:30]:
One thing that I'm always kind of thinking about is this intersection of of human agency transfer with, transformational AI technology that we don't even understand. Right? I think that people are just now getting comfortable with giving agents true agency, right, and and true decision making ability. Right? But whereas before, it was all about, oh, I'm talking to a chatbot. It comes back. It gives me the answer, and then I make a decision. Well, now these front end LLMs can go and make decisions. They can go complete tasks. They have access to our data.
Jordan Wilson [00:14:04]:
Right? You can connect them to, you know, marketing platforms like Zapier, and then they can go do anything. What is is is it a problem? Right? Like, is it almost maybe too much power too quickly for us humans? And, yeah, maybe I think it's it might be a bad thing if I go have a 100 Jordans, like like you said earlier, Chris. If I give a 100 Jordans access to go do anything, it might turn out poorly. Are are are we ready for it?
Chris Caldwell [00:14:31]:
Well, you know, that that's a great question. And and there's a couple of, research papers out about this around companion AI or delegated AI. And what's super interesting is that in Asia where we spend a a a lot of time, a lot of businesses, actually in China not that long ago, They love companion AI. They love that where it just goes off and makes decisions and drives it, and and it's telling you, hey. I've done this. Versus what we see in North America and Europe is people want delegated AI. It's to say, go and do this task, come back to me, and then I'll make the decision about do I want you to complete that task. And that is a very, very big difference, probably more culturally than anything else, that we're seeing, out there in that in that space.
Chris Caldwell [00:15:09]:
And depending on how companies react to that, we'll change it. I do think to your point, having a 100 Jordans, no offense, probably not the best thing. Right? I agree. You you're gonna spend more time trying to manage your 100 Jordans than actually getting the productivity benefit. But we do think people are gonna have two or three. You might have one that deals with your ecommerce shopping because it knows what you like. It knows your style. It knows your your your your, places you like to go, and it looks and it and it's looking for sales that you have set up to say, hey.
Chris Caldwell [00:15:39]:
I really wanna get these new shoes, but I don't wanna pay anything over over this price. Those we see as kind of being much more useful. Maybe something that interacts with your your your banking accounts. Maybe something interacts with your social media accounts that brings all that information together, curates it, and says, okay. Now, Jordan, what would you like to do? Those we think are gonna be very, very powerful and and and going. We also see the exact same thing that you're talking about where consumers are getting more comfortable using these tools and giving more informations, these tools to be more powerful. That we see speeding up. If you think about age demographics, it's it's very clear.
Chris Caldwell [00:16:14]:
You know, 18, 19, 20 up to sort of 25, 28, much more comfortable giving much more delegated authority, much more information. If you're 50, much like myself, maybe a little more cautious. And so as the population's coming into this, you know, AI boom, you're gonna see these changes change pretty pretty dramatically. And and and, again, very, very quickly.
Jordan Wilson [00:16:37]:
Yeah. And when I think about the the maybe ugly downside of AI assistants and how they can be used, you know, not just, yeah, chasing down that that $8, but for, bad reasons and for bad purposes, right, I think in the position of a of a small business owner or, you know, CEO of a of a large company like yourself. Right? I think we always sometimes think about, high-tech. Right? Fighting AI with AI. Are there also maybe low tech solutions? Like, I don't know. Should you know, so many companies put up, oh, here's our executive team and their LinkedIn and their Twitter and their email. Right? Like, should we also be, like, saying, okay. Maybe we disconnect in some areas? Like, what's what's the solve?
Chris Caldwell [00:17:22]:
What no. You're you're you're you're a 100% on the money. The reality is there's sometimes low tech solutions to high-tech problems. And and, like, for instance, you know, scams. There's a lot of companies now who have gone to voice validation of dial backs where they have, you know, phone numbers that they know that are secure phone numbers, secure cell phones. And if you call and ask him for anything, they hang up, and they dial the secure number and then talk to you, and and say, okay. Are you really the person that you you have? You've got much more, code words that that that we're seeing more and more in banking and and treasury circles where it's not, you know, mother maiden name. It's not where you met your partner or whatever the case might be.
Chris Caldwell [00:18:01]:
It's something much more, complex. And so we're seeing more and more of this kind of identity, management solved by some of the low tech problems, sorry, low tech solutions for some of these high-tech problems that are coming out there. And, hopefully, that goes away. We expect at some point there will be a digital identification. I know that, Sam Altman has has, kind of started that thought concept about how do I know who you are on the web. I think that will start to come more and more, but that technology is in its infancy, and and I suspect you'll see more of that over the next twelve to twenty four months.
Jordan Wilson [00:18:34]:
Yeah. And I'm I'm curious. Even for yourself. Right? You're you're you're the CEO of a very large multibillion dollar, revenue company, you you know, one of the biggest in the world in your space. Are you out there, right, using AI assistance? And and if so, how are you using them? And if and what maybe guardrails, go through your mind maybe when you're having them go do tasks for you?
Chris Caldwell [00:19:01]:
Well, that's a great question. First of all, there's probably a thousand of me, pinning staff around the world all the time saying, can I get this? Can I get this? Can I get this? And the staff go, okay. This isn't this isn't Chris. For various reasons, they know because we've educated people so heavily on really understanding who's reaching out, why they're reaching out, and how to how to validate that. On the on the, AI bot side, I use it fairly heavily. Like, I use a significant amount for research, and I've learned that, you know, better prompting skills, better understanding of what you're getting at, and and really having, sort of some some thought put into how you use it, you get significantly better results. So I'm using that significantly. I use it for time management.
Chris Caldwell [00:19:44]:
I'm using it for, you know, making sure that things are getting booked and timed and and done. I'm using it for callouts for things that I don't have time for versus using an assistant for that I can have a call of business and say, hey. Set up this reservation, etcetera, etcetera, if they're not on one of the platforms for for booking. And I'm finding some really good uses. What I'm actually not finding good uses for is things that I think a lot of people think about, like summarizing emails, like, writing emails. You know? Two years ago maybe, not even then because it was just annoying, but, but now not not at all. It's really about driving actions, that that I get the most value, and I'm I'm pretty excited about seeing more and more stuff. Now if I could find one or program one that would actually go to all the inboxes that every application has, bring it all together, that's a gold mine.
Chris Caldwell [00:20:34]:
So if any of your listeners have that or or have a golden idea for that, totally in the market.
Jordan Wilson [00:20:41]:
No. Yeah. Yeah. I'll have I'll I'll have to talk to you after this one, Chris. Yeah. That's that's that's that's kinda what I do. But, you you know, one other thing that I I think about when it comes to this duality of of AI agents. Right? And I think we're already seeing this.
Jordan Wilson [00:20:53]:
And and when I talk about this, you know, sometimes people look at me funny, and I'm like, no. It's it's already happening. I know it's happening. Right? But kind of like, hey. I'll have my assistant talk to your assistant. Right? Is is that a thing? Are you seeing it? And, you know, is is that maybe a good thing or a bad thing for companies? Right? Yeah. If if they have now all of a sudden, you know, a a company let's just say Nike. Right? I used to do a lot of work with Nike.
Jordan Wilson [00:21:19]:
They have they have hundreds of millions of customers. Right? And now if someone's upset about their shoes and they send all these AI agents to, you know, go find these people online and say, hey. You know, my this this shoe was a rip off. Right? Like, should there just be agents talking to agents? Is that a bad idea for for brands to look at?
Chris Caldwell [00:21:39]:
That's the reality of what's gonna happen. It's not completely baked there yet, but from strategic, you know, sessions that we have with clients, they really think about when there's an agent to agent conversation. At some point, it needs to almost become like a microservice where these two things aren't even speaking a language. They're they're sending bits and bytes back and forth and and and solving the problem. And then it's about making sure that on the the the client side, on the company side, brand side, that what it's doing and how it's transacting is getting the results it needs. And similarly, on the on the consumer side, it's doing the same thing. We expect absolutely that will happen for a lot of the transactions, you know, in in in coming years. That all being said, we still see a massive amount of work that a human is gonna have to do.
Chris Caldwell [00:22:26]:
And that's around empathy. That's around you know, there's some conversations that you just wanna have with a human, believe it or not. And and that's not only an age demographic issue. It's just a humanity a humanitarian, humanitarian issue. And, the reality is that AI will be in the background supporting those conversations or supporting those interactions, but but, absolutely, substantial stuff will be kind
Jordan Wilson [00:22:52]:
of these agents talking to agents. Yeah. And, you know, one of my thoughts for the future is, you know, and this will probably be on my my 2026 AI prediction, show coming up here is companies marketing as as, you know, human only. Right? Because I think that there's gonna be a certain point whether that's in, you know, six months or six years, that we as humans get annoyed talking to AI, or we don't wanna have, you know, my AI assistant go talk to Chris's assistant. I was actually blown away the other day. I called up, I I think it was, like, JetBlue vacations and, like, a human answered instantly. And I was like, this is crazy. Right? So how can big enterprises balance, right, the need to well, now we're getting, you know, you know, all these requests thrown at us.
Jordan Wilson [00:23:39]:
So we need to use a lot of AI because we can't keep up, but still have that human touch that really makes the customer experience the customer journey special and memorable?
Chris Caldwell [00:23:49]:
You know, that that, that's a great question. What we think it comes down to is your brand promise. So there are some brands based on how they interact, how they work with the market that, that brand promise will need to be delivered by a human. But this notion that people will pay more for humans or want to work with humans, we don't think is really the case. What we think is that, you know, if something can be done frictionless with technology, people want to do that. If they wanna interact with a human, they wanna do that. There are some conversations that they wanna interact with a human, and we absolutely believe that companies that understand this and appreciate this will do very, very well. But it's not one size fits all.
Chris Caldwell [00:24:28]:
We we expect almost every brand to have this kind of digital channel of communication plus a human channel of communication, and the right conversation is going to the right place. And the and the brands that really get that kind of thought out and and done well will will will frankly do well and take share. People can't go to the lowest common denominator. Your brand has to stand for something. How it works, how it engages, how it thinks about its customers, how it markets to those customers. And and, again, the ones that really understand that get that well, what we'll do well. If you're just trying to put an AI to, you know, be lowest cost, everything done at digital channel, we just don't think you're gonna be that successful instead of it from the crowd, at all when when we look at customer sets.
Jordan Wilson [00:25:13]:
Alright. So, Chris, it's been a fun conversation today, kind of talking about this duality of the AI assistant. But, you know, as we wrap up, what's your one most important takeaway? Right? Because I know that this technology is coming faster than many business owners or decision makers may want it to, and it's here. It's not going anywhere. And there are huge upsides and kind of dark, ugly, downsides. What's your one most important takeaway, for people to be prepared to do this the right way for their customers?
Chris Caldwell [00:25:45]:
You know, the one takeaway we continue to tell the executives is use the technology. We're surprised still at how many people making decisions around this don't actually use the technology and don't understand the power of what it can do. And that's what we encourage all the time for for people to do. Play around with it, use it, get subscriptions to it, get multiple subscriptions to different platforms, see what's what's good, what's bad. Get those wow moments for yourself. And then when you get the wow moments for yourself, it's much easier to translate that for your customers.
Jordan Wilson [00:26:17]:
Alright. Great piece of advice, Chris. Thank you so much for taking time out of your day to join the Everyday AI Show. We really appreciate it.
Chris Caldwell [00:26:24]:
Thank you so very much. Appreciate it.
Jordan Wilson [00:26:25]:
Alright. And if you miss anything, it's gonna be in our newsletter. So if you haven't already, please go to youreverydayai.com. We're gonna be recapping all of the great insights that Chris just shared. So thank you for tuning in. Hope to see you back tomorrow and every day for more everyday AI. Thanks, y'all.