Aqeel Shahid: Driving 80%+ Growth Through AI-Powered CX

Chip Rodgers  0:01  
Hey, everyone. Chip Rodgers, coming to you from Las Vegas today. We're here at the channel partners event. Great, first half a day getting getting off the ground here at the Venetian how's it going? Aqeel,

Aqeel Shahid  0:16  
great. So far, amazing. Great, great conversations with partners that are here. You know, it's been a busy day. For our first day, it's been absolutely packed.

Chip Rodgers  0:25  
That's amazing. Yeah, that's great. So I'm excited. I'm here with Aqeel Shahid, and Aqeel is Senior VP and channel chief for IntelePeer, which is, oh, my god, you guys are on fire, just unbelievable. And many years at Vonage, like 17 years, all the time, a little while. So, so that's great, and you've been with IntelePeer for maybe six months,

Aqeel Shahid  0:59  
120 days. Yeah, okay, yeah, but it's been a great fun ride. These last 120 days have been great. We were super excited what we're building here in the channel, and excited to go and share that with the partner community. That's

Chip Rodgers  1:10  
great. That's fantastic. Like I said, You guys have been on fire. Some amazing statistics, growth, you know, 80% growth year on year for last year, and just incredible volumes of interactions that are happening on the AI. You guys have an AI agent platform. Yeah, correct.

Aqeel Shahid  1:30  
I mean, so, you know, a lot of people recognize IntelePeer from our legacy days when we were providing the SIP services, over the last four or five years, we've pivoted away from that. We're doing a lot on the AI automation. That's our focus right now as an organization's AI and automation, and we're seeing just exponential growth right now in this space. Everyone's talking about AI. No one really knows where to begin. We've, you know, been doing this for five plus years. So we've had our bruises, we've had our stumbles, we've recognized exactly what works, what doesn't work, and so we've, over the last few years, just had amazing growth, like you mentioned, 80 82% growth last year, year over year off that 90% of that growth came from just straight AI. So you can tell you, tells you the adoption that's happening in this space right now. Customers are looking for a solution. They're looking for someone to guide them, and that's where our team comes in and comes around them and provides them through that

Chip Rodgers  2:17  
journey. That's amazing. So, and you were talking, we were just talking earlier about the growth from last year, and here we are in March. What's the, what's, what's happening there? Yeah.

Aqeel Shahid  2:28  
So you know, when we look at the number of interactions that we were automating last year was when we ended the year, we're almost 300 million interactions. It's a lot of interactions going through our platform already in March, we have doubled that number, right? So it just gives you an idea on the number of interactions that are happening, right? Customers are starting off with the easy use cases we can come in and immediately automate. As soon as we automate that, then we're going to other use cases within the organizations. And so we're seeing a lot of repeat business from the same customer in different departments and different use cases. And so it really allows us to be sticky with a customer. It also because we're seeing a success. We're seeing an ROI within 90 days as well. So we're able to show ROI, so it's no longer a pie in the sky. Hey, AI may do something for us. It is actually doing something. It is actually generating the ROI that they're expecting, which is then allowing us to grow and grow within the organization.

Chip Rodgers  3:18  
That makes so much sense, because I could see that happening. You know, where the leaders in one team, you know, they make the bet, right, and they put it in, and then they start showing these incredible results, and all of a sudden, everybody in the organization is saying, wait a minute, I've got this same problem. I could solve it with intellipaat as well,

Aqeel Shahid  3:36  
exactly. And that's absolutely what's happening. I mean, you'll start with maybe the customer service team, then the finance team is like, Hey, I like that. Can we use can we automate how we do collections, how we do billing, right? And then you have somebody on the sales side that goes, Hey, maybe we can use it from outreach perspective, right? So there's different ways in how we're able to go in and basically help them. And the best part is, because we own the entire network, we can provide a much more comprehensive view for the customer, from the start of the conversation all the way to the end. So it's much more, more holistic view of what's happening. So allows them, for them to go and adopt it faster.

Chip Rodgers  4:09  
That's great. That's amazing. So we're here at channel partners. What's What are you? Why are you guys here? What are you hope to achieve? And how's that? How's that? How are you on that path,

Aqeel Shahid  4:20  
yeah, you know, look, we're super excited. You know, the channel community and I've been together for a very long time. This is my family. So definitely here to go meet with friends and partners. The big thing for us here, really, is to make sure that partners understand what we do, right? We want to meet with partners and make sure that they are educated on the fact that Intel appear now, provides automation solutions. We've been doing this for a long time. Come find us to help them through those automation conversations, because a lot of them are still struggling with starting the conversation. So come use us. Use our expertise, use our talent, our channel managers and our teams around the country are there to help you, help the partner community. So that's our goal, to really channel partners, to really meet with partners, educate them. To sit down with them, understand their business and how we can be a part of the part of their overall CX journeys. Yeah. So

Chip Rodgers  5:05  
that's terrific. Do you how do you view partners, or how are they help able to help enable and broaden your your reach? Is it, is it typically geographic, or is it like breaking into new industries, or what are some of the things that you're looking for?

Aqeel Shahid  5:25  
You know, I think it's a little bit all of it, right? So we definitely have partners that have this established relationship with these existing customers. They can go in there and start this conversation. That's the easiest one, right? But then there's also ways where we can have a partner go in there and maybe help, from a managed services perspective, help implement the solution, maybe help them augment what they're already doing today, whether they're doing a cc deployment or a UC deployment, and they want to add in this AI portion on top, we can now be that point solution for them to be able to go do that for them as well. And, oh, by the way, they get paid on this now as well. And so we made it simple. We made it predictable, so they don't have to go worry about usage fees or anything of that sort. And a virtual agent with IntelePeer it's just a flat cost that includes all the usage all the interactions in it. So it's very easy for a customer and a partner to consume and get paid on. That's

Chip Rodgers  6:15  
terrific. That's terrific. I imagine that partners are really looking for this, because, as you said, AI is so there's so much noise out there about AI, and it is powerful, but it's hard to figure out, sort of, where do you apply it? And you guys have a just a dead simple like this is really powerful and easy to understand. And so I would think that is really resonates.

Aqeel Shahid  6:36  
Yeah, absolutely. And because of these interactions and journeys that we've been on the last five years. We have templates, we have use cases of what we've actually solved, right? So that is an easy way for us to go. Here's what we did for something similar. We can come do the same thing for you. The other thing we're doing, which is really unique, is that we actually provide this intense study, which is an AI assessment study that we do for our customers at no cost. So we'll come in and we'll basically look at their current environment. We'll ingest the information that they already have and give them the one or two use cases they can immediately implement. And that's really where we could start off with and help them with an ROI perspective, because we know that to the one or two low hanging fruit that can be automated quickly. Yeah,

Chip Rodgers  7:13  
so that's fantastic. Aqeel, thank you for taking some time and and talking with us today, and we're off to the off to off to the races here in in Las Vegas, and wish you the you know to have a really productive event. Thank you so much pleasure meeting you. Thank you. Thank you all as well for joining and we'll see you. See you next time. Thanks everybody. You.

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