Conversations2 – Justin Randall

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Kane Simms

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About this episode

It’s common for teams to have both programmers and conversation designers. You need both to get a solid result. They’re both aiming to create the same thing (a robust conversation with a machine) but they approach that from different angles.

While the programmer ensures that the software is solid, and has all the right connections, the conversation designer needs to make sure that it is purpose designed for the people who will use it. Both of those roles are vital.

I wanted to get a better understanding of what a programmer thinks about! What do they need to know, and why, and how do they see the collaboration with conversation designers?

There was nobody better to ask than Justin Randall. He’s got 20 years of experience in telecoms, he’s knowledgeable, and he’s the programmer I work with every day!

We discussed collaboration for an hour. This is the part of the job that gets too little attention – how can we work together to get the best result?

Listen up to see what Justin has to say.

In this episode

Contents:
0:00:00 Start
0:00:57 Justin’s work so far
0:03:07 30 seconds, go
0:08:57 What Canadian lingo should bots know?
0:11:19 Pick 3 words to describe your career so far?
0:17:14 What are a bot’s connection in layman’s terms?
0:21:33 Can a poor API spoil a conversation?
0:27:58 Ideally, how should teams work with data?
0:35:24 Is there specific data that all bots should collect?
0:47:09 What are the side effects of collecting various data points?
0:48:39 What happens when business is prioritised over customer
0:52:38 What went wrong when Justin phoned customer support for his monitor
0:53:45 What does good collaboration look like?
1:02:36 What would you love to have to improve conversational AI exponentially?
1:08:45 Outro

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Kane Simms

A strategic AI advisor who, for the past decade, has helped business leaders and product owners transform customer experience using conversational and generative AI.

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