The Future of Human-AI Interactions in SaaS with Russell Witham, Vivun

Is AI about to blur the lines between human and machine interactions?

In this episode, Jarod Greene chats with Russell Witham from Vivun, to unpack how AI is reshaping your interactions with vendors and customers. From near-human digital assistants to AI systems that can tackle the unexpected, Russell shares his take on why the next few years could redefine the way we work and communicate.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

1. The future of AI-driven customer interactions: Why AI-powered tools are poised to blur the line between human and machine in customer support and beyond, transforming how businesses engage with clients, partners, and vendors.
2. Breaking free from rigid decision trees: Advanced AI agents can handle edge cases and complex scenarios. This will help customer service systems be more agile and will eliminate the frustrations of traditional, structured support systems.
3. AI's growing role in B2B SaaS: We all know the evolution of AI technology is accelerating. This means we have to create solutions that adapt and respond just as fast. Businesses have the opportunity to harness AI tools to improve workflows and customer experiences, and maintain a competitive edge.

Things to listen for: 

(00:00) Introduction

(00:21) The rise of AI in B2B SaaS

(01:29) The Turing Test and its relevance to modern AI

(02:28) How AI is expanding beyond structured decision trees

(03:03) Why today’s AI tools are better equipped to handle edge cases

(03:25) The evolution of AI capabilities and what’s coming next

(04:39) Why now is the time to embrace AI-driven solutions

What is The Unexpected Lever?

The secret sauce to your sales success? It's what happens before the sale. It's the pre-sales. And it's more than demo automation. It's the work that goes on to connect technology and people in a really thoughtful way. If you want strong revenue, high retention, and shorter sales cycles, pre-work centered around the human that makes the dream work, but you already know that.

The Unexpected Lever is your partner in growing revenue by doing what you already do best—combining your technical skills with your strategic insights. Brought to you by Vivun, this show highlights the people and peers behind the brands who understand what it takes to grow revenue. You're not just preparing for the sale—you're unlocking potential.

Join us as we share stories of sales engineers who make a difference, their challenges, their successes, and the human connections that drive us all, one solution at a time.

Jarod Greene [00:00:00]:
Hey Everybody. Welcome to V5 where we spend exactly five minutes getting on our soapbox about the hottest topics in all the B2B SaaS. This is a fun one. I am joined today by none other than Russell Witham, who is the general manager of Vivun's Ava Solution, which is exciting times for all of us. Russell, how you feeling today?

Russell Witham [00:00:21]:
I'm feeling great, Jarod. We're hanging out on a Friday. We're talking about probably going to talk some AI if I take a guess here. So, you know, no better time than the present, my man. So it's great to see.

Jarod Greene [00:00:31]:
Hey man, let's get it. So, Russell, you know how it goes. We want to hear your hot and spicy take. So take it away.

Russell Witham [00:00:38]:
Absolutely. I was thinking about this actually this past month because I had an interaction that was really interesting with a support team at one of our vendors here at Vivun. And in this back and forth, you know, it was really fast response on the other side and I sitting there thinking to myself, am I actually talking to an AI right now or am I talking to a human on the other end of the line? And so if we want call it a hot take, Jarod, I don't think it's particularly hot. Ours might. I think just about every single one of us in the next year, definitely in the commercial tooling space, but I think actually in B2B SaaS as well, we're all going to have interactions. We're actually not going to know if it's a human or it's a digital assistant, it's an agent on the other side of the line. This is often described in, like, literature as like the Turing Test. Named after the famous mathematician computer scientist.

Russell Witham [00:01:29]:
It's this effective, you know, test where you're unaware you sort of, you know, have a human on one side, you have a computer on the other side. And can the evaluator actually tell the difference between the responses? And I think we're all going to have that experience here within the next year or we're actually not going to know. This can be this really fascinating from my perspective, paradigm shift where it's going to start to change. And you know, in very famously, you know, a month or so ago, Sam Altman released a blog post where he talked about how AGI is thousands of days away. Of course, thousands covers a pretty broad spectrum of time, right? That could mean three years. That could also mean, you know, a couple decades almost. We can debate whether or not it's more likely to be on the long end of that or the short end of that, but still we're going to start to experience these steps along the path where you're actually not going to know. It's not full AGI yet, not a full, you know, general intelligence, but you're going to have an interaction in targeted realms you're actually not going to know.

Russell Witham [00:02:28]:
And of course, things like customer support, of course, other areas like that, but also ones that we typically wouldn't have thought of. And that's what's so exciting in this agent realm where we start to see, you know, large language model-based solutions actually able to take on work that previously we have only associated with other people. And I think that's, you know, just, it's this incredible paradigm shift we're all about to go through. And I'm pretty excited to see it if I'm being asked.

Jarod Greene [00:02:54]:
Yeah, no, that's all. I think we all are. And then like Russell, for the folks like me, it's gonna take a while to get around to it. Like, I can't help but to think about like the IVR solutions of yesterday, right?

Jarod Greene [00:03:03]:
So I'm calling in for customer support and I'm clearly talking to, you know, interactive voice response and I'm pounding out to get to a person, like I want to talk to a person and figured out that hack. How's this different? Because it is. But explain to the folks how this is a paradigm shift that is not talking to some interactive voice response contacts in our agent when I'm trying to book a flight to a different city.

Russell Witham [00:03:25]:
You mentioned those sort of examples that we're all familiar with because we've seen especially over phone lines for a long time now, those are all these very, very structured decision trees. And of course that's this thing that causes us to run to such frustration like you were describing, because it's often the case that while they're trying to press us into one of a known set of like, decisions or known set of actions that that system can take, we might have one that's outside and we know that. And so we're trying to force our way off the decision tree, talk to a person on the other end of the phone who can help us with whatever we're perceiving. But the incredible thing about the systems they're being built now is they can actually cover a really broad range of behaviors. And so that edge-case that I thought of that like, you know, that decision tree was never going to be able to handle before. Now the systems we're building today, they're going to be able to go out and learn and be able to go out and actually take actions that do happen one time out of a hundred, one time out of a thousand, because they're going to be able to not fully reason, but have aspects of reasoning to what they do. That's this huge, huge shift in just the technology that we see. And that's where I'm thinking and where we're seeing in terms of just the evolution and growth, of, that's continuing to accelerate.

Russell Witham [00:04:39]:
We're not at some plateau, right? The way that the tooling ecosystems are evolving, the way the models themselves are evolving, they're gonna power a lot of this revolution. We're only, you know, scratching the surface right now for the sorts of capabilities that are gonna come online here over the next year, two years, three years.

Jarod Greene [00:04:57]:
Yeah. Exciting times. See, Russ? This is how V5 works, man. Once we get going, we're done. So what I would ask the audience to do is if this is a topic you want to hear more about, you know what to do, comment, upvote. We're going to bring the best of V5s back together, extend our V5s to V15s, maybe even V50s. We've had a lot of fun this season. So if you want to hear more from Russell on the V5 platform, let us know.

Jarod Greene [00:05:20]:
If you want to hear from Russell in general, let us know. He's easy to find on LinkedIn, super accessible out here in the world. So, Russell, thanks a lot for joining us today, man. We really appreciate it.

Russell Witham [00:05:29]:
Thank you, Jarod.

Jarod Greene [00:05:30]:
All right, got it.