Shelli Ryan is the founder and CEO of Ad Hoc Communications Resources, the largest communications firm dedicated to the BPO and customer experience space.  While strategic communications and public relations are fields that are certainly facing disruption from generative AI such as ChatGPT, Shelli explains to Cognitive Business News Executive Editor Loren Moss that communications strategists such as herself are not at all threatened, but more needed than ever.

In fact, in a world where content output is easier than pulling the lever of a slot machine, a real expert is needed to both define the right message, and as importantly, define the strategy for resonant storytelling and messaging. The two sat down to speak during BPrO’s CX Summit in Cartagena, Colombia – the most important customer experience event in Latin America. Companies often misstep badly when trying to treat communications like plug-and-play, and artificial platforms, though useful tools when appropriate, can make a bad strategy even worse. A strategic communications expert like Ryan can provide real consultative guidance and support for outsourcing and other executives. Click above for the video conversation with key insights and takeaways.

Cognitive Business: I’m here with Shelli Ryan. It’s great to be back. We last talked three years ago here, at the same place. We’re just finishing up at the CX Summit in sunny Cartagena, even though I think it will rain today. But put on by BPrO, the event keeps getting bigger and better. And I’m super excited to catch up with you. And especially as somebody who is an expert in communications, who runs the leading communications firm in the BPO sector.

The theme this year, as it has kind of at all of these types of events in the past year or so, has been on artificial intelligence. But I think it brings up an interesting question, and I wanted to get your thoughts about how, first of all, how has the rise of generative AI in the communications sector has affected the industry, from your perspective?

Shelli Ryan: Yeah, generative AI is interesting, but let me go a little broader, just to overall AI. When you’re looking at, “Alright, how do I put together a strategy?” A lot of folks are going to ChatGPT and asking it to put together a strategy. How do you put together a plan? How do you do the tactics? How do you do the content?

A lot of them are leveraging AI, which might be good from a productivity standpoint. But I think it’s allowing us to rely on technology, and it doesn’t allow us to internalize some of the information. And therefore, I think, just as a society, we might be losing our competencies. But that’s good for some of the strategists in communication. Because the strategy part of it, you can’t say, “AI, do an interview,” like this. AI can’t do that.

Cognitive Business: Or it can make up one, perhaps, but no one will be real. [Laughs] Exactly.

Shelli Ryan: [Laughs] So what I find is a lot of the practitioners are relying on AI, generative AI, to do a lot of the tactical work. But the good news for us, when we represent some of the global brands and the global CX technology companies and the BPOs, some of our practice and our experience, and some of the face-to-face can never be replaced.

Cognitive Business: You know, it’s interesting. I agree. And I think about one of the only bad things about being here in May is that, aside from the CX Summit here, there are so many other great events. You know, Peter Ryan just had his event over in Munich. This year, IAOP just finished its event in Chicago, the Outsourcing World Summit.

Shelli Ryan: Horses for Sources in New York.

Cognitive Business: That’s right. Avasant also had its client-focused event. But the point is that people go to these because they want to get insight. And people go to these because they want to hear from experts. And no matter what AI can do, no matter if they want to go and get some kind of listicle about “The five top reasons you ought to, you know, change the batteries in your calculator” or something like that, that’s fine. But I think that there’s a differentiator between people who are doing content marketing and just putting out Pavlov, and half the time it’s not even really designed for human eyes. It’s just SEO content and things like that-

Then, things that are tailor-made for human consumption. And the discerning executive or decision-maker is going to be more particular in what he or she consumes. And that’s where I think a communications strategist becomes even more important than in the past.

Shelli Ryan: And to that point, I think a lot of the communications strategists are looking at the overall market of BPOs and saying, “I need to find a differentiator. I need to find my firm’s value proposition in the revolution and evolution of AI.” And that’s what we did last year as a firm. Ad Hoc‘s been in business for 29 years, serving 115 BPOs in 69 countries.

Cognitive Business: Amazing.

Shelli Ryan: So we’ve kind of been around that block a few times. So what we found, Loren, was that one of the things we can help differentiate from AI and some of the technologies, as you rightly pointed out, was some of the one-to-one consulting from a business strategy perspective, a go-to-market strategy, helping to understand who’s the ultimate buyer in a new territory, how to get more clients.

And in reality, what we found was some of those one-to-one meetings, like, for example, here at BPrO, some of those events, they cannot be replaced. And they are what some of the decision makers are hungry for, where they’re looking for peer-to-peer networking. They’re looking for genuine relationships, long-lasting, right?

Because I’ve been going to BPrO for the last three years, three or four years. And it’s just good to have relationships. You really can’t have relationships with… I mean, you can with AI, but it’s artificial.

Cognitive Business: That’s kind of creepy, yeah.

Shelli Ryan: [Laughs] Kind of creepy. But in reality, I think about it this way. AI is narrow intelligence. Give it something, and it spits it out. Good to go.

Humans have broad, broad intelligence, and we can put perspective in context. And so if you’re looking for broad in context, that’s where we play. So, how do you put that into a BPO to win more clients and more revenue? The strategist can help you determine what the market is doing, right? And then, how do we communicate with the market? And as you said, it’s not the “five tips” content, right?

It’s more like, how can I get you in front of four or five decision makers that’ll say, “Yeah, I want to do business in Colombia, Peru, or Argentina. I want to bring my business there”. It’s the one-to-one. I mean, after COVID, people are going, “I want to be in-person.”

Cognitive Business: Absolutely. Absolutely. And I talked to one of our friends, actually, Nicholas (Sutherland of JAMPRO), who you know.

Shelli Ryan: Right.

Cognitive Business: And I was telling him this morning, 90% of success is showing up. And as you know, one of the niches where I’ve worked and had a lot of experience is in helping investment promotion agencies and in helping governments attract BPOs. And you’re not going to attract an executive from a company with 50,000 employees by putting out a 10-tips article that’s designed for SEO ranking.

Because the only things that are going to read that are bots that are out there, and spiders looking at SEO rankings. Are you writing for bots and spiders? Or are you trying to reach the executives who can make the decision and say, “Let’s open up operations in your country or your state or province,” or whatever the case might be?

And I think that there’s even more of a need now for communicating with people. And there’s a difference. And I think that there’s almost going to be like a pendulum swing. And I think that what we have now is you’re going to have AI writing for AI. And you have, “Okay, write me an article that gets me an SEO ranking with Google.” But that’s going to make it even harder to reach executives and decision makers, and people who control budgets through traditional channels, because they’re not going to be there anymore.

So they’ve got to go to an expert like you to say, “How do I reach these people?” And one is, yes, you’re an expert in putting out content. But I also know that you’re experienced in this industry, and you know the people. One of the most valuable things that somebody like you can do is to say, “Let me connect you with this person.” Or I’ve had people, you know, I’ve had clients go, “What conferences should I attend?” And I’ll say, “For what you’re doing, this one isn’t the best, but you ought to consider that one.” And it’s not anything that’s my favorite, or this isn’t. But for what you’re doing, that one’s not the best. And maybe it is the best for this other client with this other objective. And that insight.

I think that the key is that you and Ad Hoc and people who do what you do, aside from, yes, you have a team of people, I know that can put out content and things like that. But at some point, that might be replaced. You know, when they raised the minimum wage in Seattle, McDonald’s put in a kiosk, and you press the button to place an order. Okay, so you can replace that at the low end, okay? But that makes the high end even more necessary, wouldn’t you think?

Shelli Ryan: More desirable. And going on that same analogy about McDonald’s. So we like to go inside the dining room, we like to sit down, have a meal, I don’t want to go to a kiosk and have a bag and then sit in my car and eat my whatever, Big Mac. They have commoditized and depersonalized the experience. And therefore, you probably saw their quarterly earnings; it’s in the complete toilet.

It’s terrible because the CX experience is negative. They have remodeled their McDonald’s to be gray, the colors of gray. Remember, it used to be orange, very bright, vibrant colors, like, “Oh, I’m excited! I want to go to McDonald’s and eat my Big Mac!” Now it’s a kiosk, you can barely get somebody to talk to you. And least where I’m from in Las Vegas, they took away the pop machines!

Cognitive Business: Oh, really?

Shelli Ryan: So you can’t even get a pop. So I guess what I’m trying to say is, at what point do you use these cost-cutting measures to help your business, when in reality, you’re making other high-dollar volume customers run away from your business, because they want to be in the environment? And they’re not there anymore, because they just say, “I’ll go somewhere else,” Because you’ve made it so unpleasant, so unpleasant to be there.

Cognitive Business: You need to use technology to help you understand your customer and to know your customer and things like that, but sometimes you can take it too far. There was a speaker who talked about the lifetime customer experience yesterday.

And if you don’t focus on that, if all you do is you send people automated messages generated by AI, then those companies that do a better job, that take the time to communicate with you properly, are going to win those customers over. And there’s always going to be the low market, bottom price-conscious Dollar Store kind of thing. But for everybody else, the most desirable customers… Those firms that put in the work and the attention can win the most profitable customers away.

Shelli Ryan: Yeah, I agree with that. And back to our premise of, “Okay, how do you use AI in a BPO world to win”? I think rightly pointed, rightly said, is that you use it selectively when it makes sense. So it’s not for everything. And I think people have to be cautious, to think through, “Would AI work here?” Like, strategy. “Would it work here?” For content. “Would it work here,” for whatever.

The second tip is that, not AI generated, but the second tip is you have to determine at what point you get involved with the tactics. Meaning some folks come to us and say, “We need digital marketing.” And of course, the next question is, “Why? Why do you think that?” Well, they don’t know why. “Well, because everybody else is doing it. Oh, I need SEO. I need this.” We step back and say, “What is your sales narrative? What is the story? What’s the value prop? What’s the elevator pitch? What’s the key message?” You know, that go-to-market.

That’s where I think people can win. If they stop a moment, pause, step back, and say, “Do we have the right message? Do we have the right message to go in the United States?” The answer is probably no. If something’s working in Colombia, Peru, or Argentina, and it’s working there, different buyers in the States. So you’ve got to determine, your story is resonating?

Also see: Shelli Ryan Of Ad Hoc Communications Unpacks The Nuances Of Cross-Border Marketing

And then the second question is, alright, now that you’ve got your story and your narrative, who are you going to go after? Who’s that target? ‘Cause it might be gas companies in Colombia to determine gas leaks. But if that’s not going to happen in the States, it might be something else, like green energy or development. I’m kind of making that up, but you kind of get the point, where you have to stop and determine if what you’re doing in your country makes sense to go to another country. And that’s the top thing that I see a lot of, which is, “It works in Mexico, why doesn’t it work in the States?” Well, it’s because it’s different. It’s just different.

Cognitive Business: On-the-ground insight. You mentioned something interesting. You said like Colombia, Peru, and Argentina; three countries, Colombia and Peru are neighbors; Argentina is further south… but not even what’s going to work in South America will work in North America, because it’s a whole different world in Argentina than in Colombia. It’s funny because living here in Colombia, I grow hot peppers in my garden.

The reason I do is that Colombians don’t like hot, spicy food. I’m generalizing, some Colombian somewhere does, but it’s not part of the cuisine here. You don’t see hot food like in Mexico or Thailand, or Peru. And so if you go, “Hey, this works in Mexico, let’s do it in Colombia,” or Peru is a great seafood country. Colombian people eat seafood here on the coast. But if you go to Medellín, where I live, it’s, yes, people eat seafood, but it’s not part of the traditional cuisine.

Shelli Ryan: Right.

Cognitive Business: Okay. And so you’re going to fail because you need people with insight who can say… You know, AI is not going to do this. AI is going to go and look at the heuristic analysis of the web and see how many times hot peppers are mentioned. And because they have a salsa that they call ‘aji’, which is not hot, it’s more like a salad dressing.

Shelli Ryan: It’s not like Dorothy Lynch!

Cognitive Business: And they put it on like arepas and whatever. But they call it aji. So artificial intelligence might go, “Oh look, aji. So this is going to work, and our analysis says you all can do this.”

Shelli Ryan: Yeah.

Cognitive Business: But somebody on the ground with sense and insight can say either that’s not going to work, or maybe it’ll work, but your market is much smaller than you think it is. You know, maybe you can support two of your hot, spicy, fast chicken wing restaurants in a city versus 20.

Shelli Ryan: Yeah. Right.

Cognitive Business: Okay? And that’s the kind of thing, that insight. And even when we look at marketing, the marketing messages, AI, you’re going to get five listicles of blah, blah, blah, whatever. That’s not going to give you the insight. That’s the kind of thing where you need an expert in communications to give you that kind of insight.

You’ve been generous with your time. And I want you to have some time to enjoy yourself while you’re still here in Cartagena, but let me ask you… Taking into account everything that we’ve just discussed, especially now in the light of all of this, you know, generative AI and things like this, first of all, who should contact Ad Hoc, who should contact you, and in what situation should they contact you?

Shelli Ryan: Yeah. I have one last tip before I get into the when and where. So, we talked about AI, and when it’s appropriate to use. Second, we talked about, hey, you’ve got to get your sales message figured out and your go-to-market. But then, third, we’ve already covered it, but it’s the third tip, which is one-to-one person-to-person. I’m not a big fan of exhibiting at conferences. I am a big fan of a smaller, intimate event where you invite five to six people, and we just break bread. So that’s the third tip I would say, is to keep things small so you can have the one-on-one talks.

Ad Hoc has been around for 29 years, as I mentioned, when to get us involved is at the very, very beginning. If you think your pipeline is anemic, that would be a good time to bring us in, right?

Cognitive Business: Top of funnel.

Shelli Ryan: Top of funnel, but also it’s like, we’re looking at an acquisition, a good time to bring us in, or a merger. Because then we can synthesize that story. Or you’re going into a new market, like, “I want to go to the States, I want to go to South Africa… I just, you know, acquired a team in South Africa.”

Cognitive Business: Yeah.

Shelli Ryan: We can do that. You know, who would be our likely candidate for a client? So we’re a global business services provider, which includes the ITO, the technology outsourcing, and from a technology side, technology companies, B2B, B2C… But then also some of our sweet spots are in the call center, BPO, and CX. So those two camps are generally where our red phone starts ringing.

Cognitive Business: Wonderful. You know, one of the cool things, and you mentioned the value of intimate gatherings, and I do believe that those work best, but one of the cool things about when you come to something like the CX Summit is the people that you want to meet with. You can pull them away from the summit, and either the day before, or the day after, like we’re meeting the day after.

Shelli Ryan: Like we are meeting today!

Cognitive Business: You know, or even like maybe an evening. And if you’re going to do something more formal with your clients or prospects, have dinner. And you know, it can be, but it doesn’t have to be associated officially with the conference, but you can get the people where they already have the travel budget allocated and say, look, “Let’s carve out some space at this and go across, you know… a beautiful scene like La Tartana, let’s go to one of these nice restaurants in the colonial zone.”

And I’m going to arrange a wine test. You know, I come for a technology conference later in the year called ANDICOM, and Hughes, the satellite company, has an off-site, beautiful gathering. I mean, it’s almost, my goodness, it’s mind blowing, but they do it every year because they know that the people that they want to reach are going to be there. And it’s become this ‘can’t miss’ thing now, you know?

Shelli Ryan: Cool, yeah.

Cognitive Business: And so there are ways to leverage that, and somebody, you know, your organization, of course, can help put the pieces together for that.

Shelli Ryan: They can reach us at adhoccr.com. That’s the website, or look us up on LinkedIn.

Cognitive Business: Wonderful. Great. It’s great seeing you again. I hope to see you later in Las Vegas, we always cross paths, but always have a great time here in Cartagena at the CX Summit.

Shelli Ryan: Thanks, Loren!