Unlocking AI's Potential in Transportation Logistics with Jason Green

Today on the show I have Jason Green , who is president at Faye . How are you doing , jason ?

does and how it supports the industry . Yeah , totally .

We help mid-market organizations wrangle technology for their sales service and marketing departments and we have a deep expertise across CRM and CX technologies and software that allows us to do that , and we're one of the top systems integrator and reseller partners for a variety of different vendors in the space awesome .

And I think it's a huge part of the economy and there's a lot of unsung heroes working tirelessly day in and day out to ensure the economy moves .

. And one of the tech pieces that is such a hot topic right now is the topic of AI and implementation of AI , or really any type of tech , can feel really overwhelming . So how do you guys advise companies to identify and priorities and prioritize AI projects that offer quick wins to get things really moving ?

I mean , there's definitely AI tools , there's definitely technology that is underpinning and associated with AI , but we find it very useful to look at this more broadly and from there it's easy to start identifying low-hanging things that you can do to get some quick wins .

So just an example would be rewriting emails , having an AI agent for tone and voice of your brand that you can run content and marketing and sales content , but also replies for support through it , and even emails and communication from the finance department .

So these are like quick types of things you can do with AI that just kind of scratch the surface and then we'll get into it more . But just having like an AI posture around how you approach it strategically in the organization as well .

And how do you advise them to really embrace the power of it , create proper protocols , parameters for safety and security purposes , but still utilize the technology that's available for them ?

It's it's possibly part of a industrial revolution 4.0 , which is something that has come up and kind of similar to when you really had smartphones come into the picture and people are like , oh , you can't use your personal device . Well , people were using their personal devices .

They're bringing them in anyways , and so I think one of the best things you can do as an organization is make sure you deploy a tool that aggregates the various LLMs available so that , instead of individuals using their own individual subscriptions to ChatGPT or Clod or Gemini

, you're controlling it in one central portal . Gpt or Claude or Gemini , you're controlling it in one central portal , and there's multiple tools on the market for this that you can deploy , and that at least you have some modicum of control over where people are going to use AI . I think that's one part of it .

The second part is also developing a strategy for training your entire staff on how to use AI effectively , and then also how to use it in a safe way . And then your IT department has to develop a posture around security and compliance , just like they do for any other piece of software or database or any other piece of IT infrastructure .

And if you don't have the answer to that , that's really scary because you don't know what they're putting in , and especially if you aren't setting those security protocols .

I'm sure your team is probably using TreadGPT just a little bit , and if you're not paying for it , it means you're using the free version that is , putting in the information anywhere it wants to . So like having those proper parameters and accepting the reality of it , I think is really good advice .

Do they believe it's something similar to when on-premise computing went to the cloud and so you had all these SaaS applications and cloud computing and this type of infrastructure ? Do they believe it's more profound ? Do they think it's 1994 ? It's right before the internet and it's a massive , profound change that's coming .

You're going to start seeing new business models , similar to how we saw Uber , not taxi , so on , netflix , not blockbuster , right , and these things that just simply weren't possible without the internet . Or do you believe it's even more profound ? Do you believe this is 1882 and the first homes in the United States are being wired for electricity ?

And so , depending on what you believe and you need to have some alignment on what you believe is going to direct how you develop a strategy and approach AI . So step one is alignment at the leadership level about what you believe .

And , I think , implementing AI in an iterative way that can help analyze the historic win patterns , customer behavior signals , any type of current engagement data and score opportunities based on the likelihood of close things , like that you can see a lot of improvements in win rate increases , win rate reducing the length of the sales cycle , and so that's one example

in the sales arena . I think for customer service , an example could be like a freight

forwarding company experiencing a high call volume that's having a lot of repetitive like where's my package , what's the status of this , what's going on ?

And so having automation that routes these , you know , using augmenting the routing to be more intelligent with AI to route it across different channels , and then , even farther than that , taking the type of common things that are coming up and then just trying to improve the service process before you even get to that point . That's also .

You's also an example of specific for transportation , logistics , and then on the marketing side , if you're struggling with your messaging , you might have generic messaging . We've seen that where a company has generic messaging , their brand is kind of generic . It's not really resonating across their customer segments , which happen to be quite diverse .

Using AI as your thought assistant , as a thought helper , to develop more tuned content for your different segments , a more cohesive and resonating overall brand voice and tone and story , and then personalized content for , like , different accounts you might have in that are in different industries that you're servicing . So those are .

Those are three of you know many different examples .

They want to know that you are paying attention to their business and their needs . So if you need to do multiple campaigns , multiple initiatives across different segments , one easy way to kind of get at least the thought starting is to use those AI platforms and be able to diversify that a little bit , because you do want to personalize it .

You want them to know no , we can do it all , but we really can do this and we do this really well and this is how we can do it for you .

What are the boxes that you're going to have on your org chart that are agents ? Because that's the world I believe we're going into .

We're going to a place where your org chart is going to have humans filling roles and then it's going to have AI and an agentic layer filling different spots on the org chart , filling different spots on the org chart , and so starting to think about how you can augment different people in different roles is one thing .

Starting to think about how your business model could potentially change is another thing .

And the topic of the business model it's really interesting because a lot of transportation logistics companies have a lot of data , a lot of data that they don't necessarily know how to unlock and maybe they haven't unlocked it because it hasn't been useful to their particular business of products and services .

But with AI , there's interesting things they could be doing that may be cut across , other industries that they're not , they're not even thinking about .

So , exploring and thinking through things that are really kind of far out there today but about to be very possible tomorrow , which would be like kind of when you had the internet with blockbuster video and then all of a sudden you've got Netflix , and just trying to think through , you know , create , you know what that means in the future , thinking about also the

future , how you're going to have these different agents potentially talking to each other , communicating with each other . You could have entire functions in the business filled by nine out of 10 are agents speaking with each other and producing generative results . Nine out of 10 are agents speaking with each other and producing generative results .

And then I would say the other thing that's really important to be thinking about is to be prepared for massive model leaps , and what I mean by that is you have the LLMs , you have the GPT , you have Claude , you have Gemini , you have Llama , you have Moore , and every month , every few weeks , a new model seems to be coming out .

And every month , every few weeks , a new model seems to be coming out . And you have to be in a place where , across the organization across all the roles and all the functions . You're using AI and it

might not work right now . It might work okay , it might work less good or as good as a human , but you have to have these motions happening because July 15th , a new model might be released that suddenly is completely transformative for a particular function . That today is like , well , I can't really do it .

So , even if you can't physically in the ground or in the air and wires for any of it to be used and um , now with this is moving so quickly that the infrastructure is kind of there already to be able to start using it , and so as an organization you got to be prepared for fast , moving changes here .

On the service side , tickets , messages to and from clients , text messages , emails , routing data , load data All this type of stuff can be fed in and analyzed to produce insights that could be interesting , could be not , but they could be very interesting , which is why you should try to do that Tone and voice .

So , for example , having the customer success , having customer service group , make sure all the emails that they're emailing back they're really doing it in a way that's uniform for the company , analyzing the messages from clients to understand what , how they're feeling , and the tone and the words that they're using , and so I think I think that's just a couple of

the ways that you could use it to predict and address challenges . I like the idea of putting together some sort of a digital board of advisors in the context of customer service to help you with strategy and as a sounding board for things that you're thinking about trying .

So you might want to implement something new in customer service and if you have , like , an AI board set up , you could ask that question and see what they say , which in some ways , seems completely crazy that we're talking about this , but this is the world we live in .

he could help me and I almost lost my mind . I'm like I've literally sat with your representative for 30 minutes and you don't even know what is wrong with why I'm on this call , and he's like , well , we have to ask these questions . I'm like , okay , well then , be like hey , let me verify , this is you or something .

But like I feel like on those calls it's like if a load is missing or if there's some type of issue with a truck or things like that , I feel like our customer service reps being able to know exactly the sentiment of the person they're about to handle before that comes in would be incredibly valuable for our teams .

They're going to figure this out in a way that makes them competitive a hundredfold , and so you , as an organization , you have to be working in AI , you have to be figuring out how this makes you Uber competitive , because a your competitors will and , b your clients are

going to expect a level of service that is really really high going forward , because they're going to be getting it from everywhere else .

Um , you know , their misconception is around it being a tool or a technology versus an actual change in the nature of work that you can just do an AI project . But it's really about getting your staff AI certified , ai proficient and embracing it on a minute , an hour-to-hour basis in their day-to-day .

Another misconception is around AI being this massive cost cutting and headcount reduction thing . But it's actually really about augmenting your staff to make them superheroes . We're not seeing headcount reduction with clients .

We're seeing them make their existing staff do more and do it in such a way that each person on the staff who really embraces AI really knows how to use it becomes this almost superhero in the organization .

And so really kind of interesting what we're seeing in that regard and it's important you know that you're that the staff , that the workforce , really understands that you're embracing AI to help them and not eliminate their job , because they're not going to want to use AI if they think it's going to eliminate their job , and so this is part of really making sure ,

at a cultural and values level , that organizationally you're embracing it and being AI first and the company understands what's going on . Sometimes , I think companies think you need a lot of data scientists or massive investments to do this type of AI work and you don't .

The barriers to entry and do work in AI are much lower than that and the notion that AI is only for big companies .

In fact , I think AI offers real interesting value proposition for the smaller and mid-market organizations , allowing smaller organizations to do way more than they could normally do , which allows them to compete with larger companies , which is pretty cool .

It's been a few years since Faye has come spoken at a TMSA event . What can attendees expect from that session ?

I mean , our goal is to make it really useful to the audience so they walk away having learned something and not being sorry that they came . So that's what we're looking to do in these type of sessions .

So we're really excited to have you guys back doing that session . You guys

back doing that session . Elevate this year is June 8th through 10th in Austin , texas , and you can register , as you can see down here at eventstmsatodayorg . So really excited about that session and for our demo track and debuting it this year .

I did want to pivot a little bit , to have a different kind of conversation with you now and because I feel like as humans , as business professionals , we don't always get an opportunity to like publicly recognize people who have changed your professional life and the trajectory of your life , and so I feel like anyone who's listened to this podcast or who has met

me through TMSA over the past three and a half years have heard the very engaging , wonderful story of . I came to TMSA as a member and I then felt the call to lead when I knew that the previous leadership was leaving and I left my company that I was working for and it's this great story , super motivational for TMSA .

But I don't always talk about like how hard it was to leave that company and specifically , the boss behind that believed in me in a way that no one else had and gave me the space to learn and grow and tackle the world in a way that no one else had .

And that person was you and we met eight years ago when I had just had a baby and I wanted to work , but I didn't want to work full time . And you found me on Upwork and you were looking for a full time digital marketing specialist and I was like , yeah , no , I'm not going to do that .

I'm not going to work full time and I want to work from home , but I want to tackle this role . And I think we talk a lot about employee engagement and how to get the most from our employees and at the very base of that , I think believing in people and allowing them to meet you where they are in the moment is really important .

And I look back on my career over the past eight years and what I've been able to accomplish , and I don't think I would be able to lead in the way that I do , or lead at all , if it wasn't for you taking a chance on me back then . So I wanted to publicly thank you for that and acknowledge that here on the podcast today .

And uh , you know , I think a lot of it is about showing up and uh , I think too much people just kind of give up or don't show up and people don't necessarily take the agency they have and that , you know , is just really really important . So , yeah , glad I was able to help you early on .

I need to come downstairs and have my coffee and just work and not talk to people for a couple hours , and I thrive there , and so I always really appreciated that you yes , I mean , obviously I just had a baby too , so I didn't want to work full time and then eventually I got to full time but , like you met me where I was at the time and helped me

grow up , and I feel like that isn't talked about enough in our professional environments either .

Like , sometimes people can't do exactly what you're looking for in the moment , but they have the qualities or skillsets you could be looking for if you just open your eyes a little bit more , and so I think that's really important to discuss and talk through too , because , yes , people like look at me now as the leader of TMSA , but had I not had that

opportunity to grow up my pace at that time , I wouldn't have gotten here yeah , you know there's a lot of parts of society that are kind of outmoded .

But when you're running a company and when you need to have people in the right seats and the right roles , and you're running a company , and when you need to have people in the right seats and the right roles and you're putting a team together , if it makes sense you should consider trying to make it work , especially , especially for women who have just had

children or child and um it . That whole situation doesn't necessarily lend itself very easily to nine to five in an office Monday to Friday . And I think that to me made sense , because I had a small kid at the time and so I was seeing that in real time and at the time we were about to have our second kid and so I was just like you know .

It made sense to me .

And then I , when people ask me now , like what do you think is the superpower of a leader ? I think that listening is the biggest thing that we can do , because too often the leader is the one that's talking all the time .

And if we take a step back and listen to our team and I was thinking of that answer when I gave it I actually was in this conversation last week at an industry event and I think part of that goes to I had a boss a long time ago that would ask me how I was when he would like walk by every day and he would never actually listen to the answer .

And with you , I worked virtually for you for the four or five years where we worked together and you can always tell when I was mad , because when I talk a lot , but when I'm mad I go quieter and I think through my answers , but you could tell that over the phone and I thought that was really impressive and I think through that now as a leader myself like

how my employees respond to questions or like if I ask them how they are , is there a pause or a huff or whatever that was .

But I could out like and you would so , like we would talk very fast all the time , but like it would always be in those moments that you would pause and be like okay , no , like what's really going on , like and I always thought that was really cool because , yeah , I had managers that I saw every day and could never pick that up , but like you could tell

that when I'm mad , I am more thoughtful .

Are they at home about to have dinner and you're starting to have a debate about some work topic ? Is their spouse like saying , hey , get off the phone . Like you need to rethink what's going on if you want to have a conversation about whatever you're having at that moment .

So , um , yeah , look , I mean , when you lead , you have to really give your , your team space . They have to be able to grow you . You can't just you're not going to grow very much of just ordering everybody around . People have to think for themselves .

so now they can have a name and a face to you . Um , and so appreciative of of our time and excited that you guys have come back into TMSA and coming to talk things . I'm excited too because people have been asking me CRM CX questions for the past three years . They still think it's important and talk about so excited to have you guys back .

And that takes us to the last question of the show that I ask everybody who comes on , and if you could go back in time and advise a younger Jason anything , and that's personally or professionally when would you go back to and what would you tell them ?

You're like the richest person on earth when you're young , because you have so many minutes ahead of you and I think to just think through how you're spending your time and how you're moving the ball forward on various dreams that you have , and things take time and you should try not to expect everything to happen within a very short time .

You should try to plan out for longer periods of time for things to happen that you want to have happen . I think another thing that I really would have pushed my younger self is to find a , find and maintain a formal mentor relationship with someone who can mentor you .

I mean , I've had people that I consider have mentored me per se , but not in a formal way , and I think one of the greatest things you could do for yourself really at any age , but especially we're talking to my younger self find a mentor or multiple mentors to advise you and help you understand the different arenas of your life and then , in terms of business

, your career just in business . Then , in terms of business , your career just in business . Focus on providing value , whether that's to the client , to your boss , to your company , to your colleagues . Just provide value , really good value , and everything else will follow .

I even like when you talk about the mentorship and the different facets of life , because that's something that I've come to terms with is that you can have a mentor for like six different things that are going on and perspectives Like you don't have to just have one guide that gets you through everything , so I think that's really good advice .

So we are excited to have her come on the show and excited to have Faye back into TMSA . Thank you for joining us . Have a good one .