C-Suite Perspectives On AI: Titus Jumper CEO Of Sales-Hub On Where to Use AI and Where to Rely Only on Humans
An Interview With Kieran Powell
Excellent Voice Quality/Lack of Latency: We need to make sure the virtual assistant has excellent voice quality, and I believe we have achieved that — and Jovee AI is currently leading in this respect. The second is latency or lack thereof. You want the virtual assistant to sound natural and not pause or have latency.
As artificial intelligence (AI) continues to advance and integrate into various aspects of business, decision-makers at the highest levels face the complex task of determining where AI can be most effectively utilized and where the human touch remains irreplaceable. This series seeks to explore the nuanced decisions made by C-Suite executives regarding the implementation of AI in their operations. As part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Titus Jumper.
Titus first began his career in sales with 2020 Companies and during that time, became one of the youngest VPs at the age of twenty-two. Titus then went on to found We-Propel, Sales-Hub, and Jumper Capital. Titus also co-launched Excess Telecom.
In 2024, Titus and his team at Sales-Hub announced Jovee AI, an intelligent, multi-functional AI system designed to revolutionize the telecom industry and engage customers across various platforms and stages, improving efficiency, and boosting both sales and customer satisfaction. Together, Sales-Hub and Jovee deliver a comprehensive, integrated solution that’s built for the future of sales.
In addition to his many business ventures, Titus also founded a nonprofit called Homes of Promise, a faith-based recovery home for men.
Titus resides in Chino, California with his wife and six children.
Thank you so much for your time! I know that you are a very busy person. Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?
Sometimes you have the luxury of planning and sometimes you just learn from the school of hard knocks — with a lot of grit, and effort. I’d describe my twenties as that — not really understanding what I’m doing, but just going for it and just putting in a lot of hard work.
The telecom industry came to me. I saw a good opportunity and actually started as an agent. At 19 years old I was working inside retail stores and then I kind of just started taking opportunities as they came with always the focus on climbing to the next level.
At a young age, I moved up into management with the company that I first started with called 2020 Companies. I became a district manager and then became one of the youngest regional directors at 22. That was my start in the sales world. I enjoyed it as it was high energy and discovered that it was a part of me.
I also tried something a little bit different with my stepdad and together we founded a nonprofit called Homes of Promise. I always had the desire to be a pastor and to give back. So, we started Homes a Promise — a faith-based recovery home for men.
Then in 2016 I started my own business and devoted myself to creating my a sales and marketing agency. Back then, I was driven by the thrill of connecting with people and solving their problems — one conversation at a time. Little did I know that those early experiences — those countless hours in living rooms and around kitchen tables — would eventually shape my approach to reimagining customer service for an entire industry.
Up until that point I was in events door-to-door and big box retail. But when COVID happened all of that went away overnight, I needed to figure out something. So when a bill called the Emergency Broadband Benefit came about during the height of the pandemic, I wanted to be a part of that. As you know, remote Zoom schooling was happening and low-income students were highly ostracized in their education. There was this massive learning gap that took place for two years because they couldn’t go to school. So, the administration allocated $3.8 billion to help these families with broadband access and I wanted to be a part of those efforts. That is when I helped launch Excess Telecom, which became the fastest telecom business two years in a row.
When my active role in Excess Telecom was no longer needed, I started Sales-Hub, a company specializing in delivering comprehensive sales solutions for telecom firms. In 2024, we announced Jovee AI, an AI-powered sales and customer service representative designed to supercharge a telecom organization’s productivity.
It has been said that our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
One big mistake I made was that four years ago I started a trucking company for OTR or “over-the-road.” We do a lot of mail routes and such. I founded the company for my buddy as he wanted to be in the trucking industry, so I got it going for him. But I didn’t look at the business side of it and wasn’t aware of how crazy trucking was. I just proceeded. To be honest, starting a business for a friend may not be the best idea financially because it costs a lot of money.
The good news is that I turned it around.
What I learned from this mistake is that you can always turn it around with grit and persistence. That is what I did and now the business has flipped and is doing quite well. It just took four years and quite a lot of money to get there!
Now I have a better understanding of the product, but to be honest with you, the real reason it is doing well is that I don’t give up. When I get my heart and mind on something, whether it’s in my family or work, I will continue for however long it takes to get the result that I desire. That can take days, weeks, years — even decades.
Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?
Shortly after creating Sales-Hub in 2020 and working with telecom companies, I noticed a big problem in the industry as it relates to customer service contact centers: it’s just too expensive to create a high-value customer service experience. There are so many different gaps that happen in a customer service contact center as it pertains to culture and language–it’s hard to create that high-value experience for a customer calling or messaging in with a problem. And this just proliferated with chatbots…we saw a lot of chatbots coming out that weren’t working, so we wanted to create something more to help telecom companies.
Responding to this need, we created Jovee AI to bridge AI technology with voice chatbots. Jovee is an AI-powered sales and customer service representative design. As a brand-new product that has never before been created, Jovee is revolutionizing the contact industry center industry by increasing the efficiency of telecom organizations, scaling their customer service operations, and ultimately driving more sales. Together, Sales-Hub and Jovee deliver a comprehensive, integrated solution that’s built for the future of sales.
Why is Jovee more than a chatbot? Jovee is an intelligent, multi-functional AI system designed to engage customers across various platforms and stages of the customer journey. It’s not just about automating tasks — it’s about delivering real value, improving efficiency, and boosting both sales and customer satisfaction, handling 85% of customer conversations.
We’ve built Jovee with the specific needs of telecom companies in mind, ensuring it can seamlessly integrate with their systems and enhance both sales and customer service efforts. We know what it takes to optimize the customer journey in a telecom setting because we’ve been refining these processes for years.
Jovee is on the bleeding edge of natural language; and sounds human, with little or no latency. The virtual assistant is currently bilingual, and we are infusing more languages so that it is international.
Jovee operates across multiple interfaces: as a web avatar, in live chat, and through inbound and outbound voice calls.
We also have built-in a human-in-the-loop aspect. This means there is an agent behind Jovee watching all the interactions happening in real-time via a sentiment analysis dashboard. The agent can then ascertain if the customer/Jovee interaction is going well and is meeting expectations. If not, if the tone is not very amicable, we can also create alerts for the human agents — allowing them to proactively handle a call.
Thank you for that. Let’s now shift to the central focus of our discussion. In your experience, what have been the most challenging aspects of integrating AI into your business operations, and how have you balanced these with the need to preserve human-centric roles?
My whole base philosophy is that technology is dynamic, and we can change with it for the better. I believe AI has the potential to be good for humanity, but obviously, there are downsides as well, and that is why we use the human in the loop aspect to patch its shortcomings. The goal of our AI is to be as human-like as possible, but it’s not human, and it never will be. But it is smarter than us — and has the ability to know all the information in the entire world.
Having the Human in the Loop aspect is critical because customer service is still about serving the customer and that will never change. The customer will always be a person and there are times they will require that human interaction. Look, humans are the ones buying, so we want to make sure that the AI solution is as human-like as possible and offers that ultimate customer service experience. However, we also want AI to maximize the human potential in customer service and reduce costs, so that premium service is affordable is affordable for businesses.
The current issues relating to customer service and AI were the following that we addressed:
- Natural language/reducing latency — We wanted to make sure Jovee sounds human — with little or no latency so that the virtual assistant can connect with customers and meet their expectations.
- Handles 85% of Customer Calls, Freeing up Human Agents for High Valued Tasks: We designed Jovee to be a powerful enough AI that can handle 85% of all the customer calls that come into a telecom contact center. For telecom companies with massive customer bases, this means faster response times, reduced operational costs, and a more scalable approach to customer engagement. It also means that Jovee can address multiple subjects with each customer — handling everything from basic queries to complex sales discussions, freeing up human agents to focus on high-value tasks.
- Changing the subject: Not many chatbots can address more than one subject. But often when customers call into a contact center, they may have multiple questions, and we wanted to ensure that Jovee could handle that complexity. For example, if a person is calling in about a billing issue but also wants to address a technical challenge, Jovee can handle both conversations.
Can you share a specific instance where AI initially seemed like the optimal solution but ultimately proved less effective than human intervention? What did this experience teach you about the limitations of AI in your field?
AI is fairly capable, but we have added a human-in-the-loop capability when needed.
Similar to everything we are building, Jovee is modular and can change, very quickly depending on the need. We’re building an AI product, not an AI itself.
So, we’re actually having to dumb the AI down because it’s more about the human experience and want to make sure the speed of response is similar to what a customer might experience with a human agent. But AI is never human, and we know that — so using human agents has been paramount.
How do you navigate the ethical implications of implementing AI in your company, especially concerning potential job displacement and ensuring ethical AI usage?
Technology has never fully eliminated a job. It evolves the economy for the greater good and allows humans a better life with better choices. When the Pacific Railroad was completed all the horse and buggy carrier jobs were eliminated overnight but those people then had the opportunity to evolve with the economy or choose to be left behind. Every meaningful advancement in human history has caused a shift in tasks that had to be done for society to exist. Jobs are people paying other people to complete those tasks. AI is no different although the impact and speed of the shift is like no other in human history.
I believe AI will be one of the biggest opportunities that humanity has to elevate ourselves. The individual has the choice like we always have to either rise with the change or be left behind.
Could you describe a successful instance in your company where AI and human skills were synergistically combined to achieve a result that neither could have accomplished alone?
AI is good at a lot of things but in some areas, it is not. We implemented a Human in the Loop feature that optimizes the utilization of both AI and humans. Humans are limited by time and can only handle very limited interactions per day without experiencing burnout. AI is not limited by either of these things, but it struggles with understanding human emotion.
From my years of going door-to-door, I realized that sales success hinges on genuine relationships. I wasn’t just pitching products — I was listening, adapting, and empathizing. I took that same philosophy when designing Jovee with my AI team. Our virtual assistant doesn’t just respond; it engages in a way that makes customers feel heard, ensuring seamless transitions between “human” agents and AI, while addressing customer concerns.
All conversations that Jovee handles are monitored by a human to ensure that emotional context. One person can monitor hundreds of ongoing conversations all at the same time with our Human in the loop feature and can flag a conversation that is going off context to immediately transfer to a human that is waiting on standby. When the person receives the call, notes are passed to the person to “catch them up” so they understand what has happened so far and the possible desired results the customer was looking for.
Based on your experience and success, what are the “5 Things To Keep in Mind When Deciding Where to Use AI and Where to Rely Only on Humans, and Why?” How have these 5 things impacted your work or your career? Please share a story or an example for each.
- Make sure the AI is properly data-driven and can make good decisions, but offer a human “in the loop” when needed: Having “real world” sales and customer service experience allowed our team to train and design Jovee AI to respond in a way that is natural and seamless — almost human-like — and make good decisions when interacting with humans. I think humans have that emotional intuitive side that AI probably never will. I don’t think AI is ready to take on leadership roles — it will struggle because it’s all based on data and people aren’t data-driven. So, you want to utilize AI to solve purely data-driven problems, which a lot of AI can do especially in business. But you also need humans as well — a combination of both culture and performance if you will. We implemented a Human in the Loop feature that optimizes the utilization of both. Implementing both — a well-designed AI-powered virtual assistant who can respond well to customers, but humans who can interact with customers if necessary, was a challenge we were up to but were able to implement.
- The ability to tackle complex conversations: You need to ensure that the AI understands not just what customers are saying, but why they’re saying it, making interactions more natural, efficient, and satisfying. This is critical, especially in telecom contact centers where customers’ needs are paramount and emotions can run high if a customer does not feel heard. You can do this by making sure your AI is always evolving and that it understands general slang and phrases. An example would be that in the United States, younger people use the phrase, “My bad.” We wanted to make sure that Jovee could recognize and understand those statements. With other AIs, if you say, “My bad” the AI may respond, “What is bad?” That could possibly irritate the customer. However, Jovee can recognize what the colloquial phrase such as “my bad” actually means.
- Multi-Lingual: In the customer service industry, we are dealing with people of all cultures and nationalities so making sure the AI understands more than just one language is important. Right now, Jovee speaks English and Spanish, and we hope to add more languages in the future — and that is important to resonate with the customers who call in. We find that when a person whose native language is Spanish calls in, and finds that Jovee can also converse in Spanish — there is much more satisfaction derived from that call.
- Excellent Voice Quality/Lack of Latency: We need to make sure the virtual assistant has excellent voice quality, and I believe we have achieved that — and Jovee AI is currently leading in this respect. The second is latency or lack thereof. You want the virtual assistant to sound natural and not pause or have latency.
- Omni-Channel — We have more points of conversation like points of communication with Jovee AI than any other virtual assistant. People can converse in multiple ways — through an avatar. We also enable people to interact with Jovee through a web chat feature, through social features, and through online calling or SMS.
Looking towards the future, in which areas of your business do you foresee AI making the most significant impact, and conversely, in which areas do you believe a human touch will remain indispensable?
Right now, we have launched in the telecom sector, but we’ll be going into the financial services fairly quickly as well as the healthcare industry. These industry verticals are high value, and have a high demand for customer service, and as such, they’re right for a revolution.
You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
If I could start a movement, it would be to show how important a healthy marriage and family is to have true joy in life. My life has gone through many ups and downs. I am not an expert in this area by any means. But what I have learned is that if my core relationship with my partner is good and we are aligned in our values, life just seems to hum along in a much more joyous and peaceful way. I explain this more in a recent podcast. My first mentor would always say that the most intense pain we can face is first a health challenge, second is a relational challenge and third is a financial one. I believe in family but with my failures in the past has shown me that marriage and family is worth your greatest effort and deserves your focus for your entire life.
A secondary one would be teaching youth about entrepreneurship. I believe that with the internet and AI and the newly adapted gig economy that people have a much easier time starting their own business. Today you don’t need money to start a business “although it helps A LOT” you can start a business with just commitment and passion. Owning a business has been very fulfilling for me personally as it has opened doors that would have never opened if I chose to work a traditional job. Additionally, it provided a certain amount of freedom for me and my family — not just with going on great adventures and living a nice lifestyle but most importantly, ir has given me the opportunity to be with my family in a more flexible way.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
https://www.linkedin.com/company/saleshuberp/
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100091089199369
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!
About The Interviewer: Kieran Powell is the EVP of Channel V Media a New York City Public Relations agency with a global network of agency partners in over 30 countries. Kieran has advised more than 150 companies in the Technology, B2B, Retail and Financial sectors. Prior to taking over business operations at Channel V Media, Kieran held roles at Merrill Lynch, PwC and Ernst & Young. Get in touch with Kieran to discuss how marketing and public relations can be leveraged to achieve concrete business goals.
C-Suite Perspectives On AI: Titus Jumper CEO Of Sales-Hub On Where to Use AI and Where to Rely Only… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.