What Sounds Strange Today is Just Early

Every new normal begins as the risk most people avoid today and the standard everyone copies tomorrow. If you are a hustler and a student of history, you know that scared money don't make none, and every large enterprise got to where it is by betting on something.

There was a time when sleeping in a stranger's house sounded insane. Then it was Airbnb. There was a time when getting into a stranger's car sounded crazy. Then it was Uber. Right now, you call a business, hammer the zero key, and beg a phone menu to put you through to a human. Soon, the first voice you hear solves the problem, warm transfers you to the right person, and books the appointment before you hang up, and you won't know when you were talking to a Digital Worker and when you were talking to a human. That sounds strange today, but it will be the standard tomorrow.

After speaking with 300+ enterprise leaders, the OutRival team is launching a new show called The New Normal, where you hear directly from the leaders of the biggest brands in the world that decided to reimagine their organizations with AI at the core.

There is a New Yorker cartoon of a boardroom where an executive finally says it out loud. “We need to rethink our strategy of hoping A.I. will just go away.” The joke is older than you think. The original caption said the Internet. That one didn't go away either. The leaders worth watching already stopped hoping and started betting. They are putting Digital Workers on the org chart, writing job descriptions for them with specific objectives, and reorganizing their teams so humans and Digital Workers actually work side by side. The New Normal is a show about the rooms where that is already happening.

If you live on Twitter/X and follow the headlines, you would think the future was already here and evenly distributed. What we found talking to the C-suite of your favorite companies is the opposite. We are still early. Most companies are not running AI in production at scale or getting real outcomes yet, and the few who are, have a lead the rest of the curve cannot see coming.

In The Arena

The New Normal is co-hosted by me, OutRival’s CEO and Timur Meyster. Timur is my co-founder and President. As OutRival's Head of Insurance, John Henry will be co-hosting for our insurance episodes and used to host Hustle on VICELAND, so he knows how to inspire and take people behind the scenes of the largest enterprises. Between all three of us, we have reached tens of millions of people on camera, built companies, raised hundreds of millions of dollars, deployed Digital Workers with humans on the same team, and spent years on the phones ourselves. We are not calling this in from the cheap seats. We are in the arena.

Upcoming Guests

We flew across the country to bring this show to life and we will have 30+ episodes recorded by the end of the year. Here is a sneak peek of who we have scheduled:

Episode 1 is Kermit Cook, CEO of Penn Foster Group:

Joined shortly after by leaders from:

• Miami Dade College
• Western Governors University
• Southern New Hampshire University
• University of Maryland Global Campus
• University of Oklahoma
• National University
• Cengage
• University of Phoenix
• DeVry University

Plus many more across education, insurance, and travel, being scheduled now.

Making the First Move

Most companies still treat AI as reactive support, a smarter way to answer the phone once a customer finally calls. The leaders we feature flipped it. They use it to reach out first.

That is the real promise of AI. Not deflecting tickets, but letting a brand build a personal relationship with millions of prospects and customers at once, showing up at every moment that matters. The first inquiry. The application, someone almost finished. The agent's calendar, that needed filling. The policy, up for renewal. The account, about to churn. The customer, worth turning into an advocate.

On the show, we will cover a wide range of use cases from inbound support and back-office use cases as well, because they count. But the questions we keep coming back to are about the outbound ones. Where did you stop waiting? Which conversation did you start first? Where did proactive beat reactive, and what did it do to drive the metric that is a strategic priority for the business?

The companies that win the next decade are not the ones with the best support queue. They are the ones who reach out to engage, retain, convert, and learn more about how to support their customers.

The new normal isn't coming. It's here.

Welcome to The New Normal

Rubén Harris
OutRival, CEO