Rolando Rosas 3:25
All right, today, we’ve got somebody that special is not even the right word for this guest that’s coming on today. He’s beyond special. It’s Brandon Knight, currently Global Head channel customer experience over at Zoom Zoom is that company is just keeps growing. And I wanted to have him on today to talk about several things. But let me tell you a little bit more about Brandon. He’s responsible for ensuring a positive experience for resumes contact center customers, especially when it comes with using its channel partners. In addition to that Brandon is also co founder and board member of exposure inclusion and diversity council that’s a big deal onto itself. And Brandon has held several high level positions in organizations such as sernova in Telesis. And Telarus and I met him a couple years ago at a trade show very charismatic guy. He’s got a really good vision on the channel on the industry. And I want to tap him for his insights on where we’re going in terms of the next couple of years. So welcome to the show. Brandon Knight. Thank you. Hey Brandon. Good to see you. Where are you checking in from today?
Brandon Knight 4:43
I’m actually in southern Florida down in Miami right now.
Rolando Rosas 4:46
305305305
Brandon Knight 4:49
Exactly.
Dave Kelly 4:51
If there was one place I would rather be I would definitely be Miami right now.
Brandon Knight 4:57
So you guys a hill a little bit from a town I don’t know if you noticed Have the rest of the garden for a little bit.
Rolando Rosas 5:01
I did not know that. That’s exactly where our headquarters are. That is unrest. I know it’s a little growing area man breaston has been on the map mostly for defense stuff. But over the last couple of years, it has been really hot. cybersecurity. Obviously, the defense sector is never going away. But it’s been a little mini hotbed we used to have years ago a thing called AOL. Right. Not the same company, but it spawned a lot of other smaller companies around during its heyday. Yeah, rest and no big props arrested.
Dave Kelly 5:34
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Rolando Rosas 6:02
So let’s jump right into it Brandon, because I want to ask you today, of all the things that are going on, the first thing I want to know is what are you nerding out on are totally geeking out on from a tech standpoint.
Brandon Knight 6:16
Oh, wow. From a tech standpoint, for me right now, it has to be the fact that they’re gonna kill me, man, because everybody likes buzzwords. Right. And for a few years, we’ve been talking Oh, AI is an AI that right? And we saw on chat, all kinds of stuff. Yes. And everybody got excited about it. But nobody really knew what it was. And then when you did figure out what it was, it was too expensive to do. Right? What I liked now is that we’re seeing this shift in the industry, from front end AI of like chatbots, and stuff like that, to agent influenced ai ai being used on the back end, to help agents, specialists, reps, whatever you call them, deliver a better customer experience. So one that was really cool, because it could figure out what your best agents were doing on calls. It wasn’t a call to say okay, so Suzy is my best agent. Suzy does this. And then when Jane is on the phone, he could listen to the phone call and it would hear some things. And it would tell Jane, hey, you know what, Susie would ask this right now. Or Susie would have figured out that this person is talking about this claim that’s
Rolando Rosas 7:18
sending it to the ear or is it bringing it up on the screen and giving that to the agent,
Brandon Knight 7:23
it’s in the screen, it’s in scripting, so it’s awesome to the call, and then propping the agent to go to certain places within the CRM, even prompting them with questions to ask. And even doing some deductive reasoning like it was a listen to one call where the person was asking about tired. And it could tell that there was an auto claim place like a week earlier that we had to do to the person must be trying to figure out if tires are covered in the claim that they’re filing and presented that information for the agent to take that conversational track. Wow. Like that, like anything that makes it easier for agents to deliver better customer experience. My that is awesome. I think we’re seeing some real estate is a huge
Dave Kelly 8:00
time saver. huge time saver. I’ll tell you from a customer standpoint, what do we say around here? Well, I know minutes matter less than two seconds matter. If I can get off of that phone call. If the agent knows what I need, they can anticipate my needs, they can just take care of the situation at hand. And less time. That’s great. And I’ll tell you from a call center managers point of view, the old school way is saying, Hey, John, have you listened to Gail, I want you to spend 45 minutes, I want you to listen to what Gail says and sit with her and make her feel uncomfortable and be right up next door after lunch. Even though you’ve just had a tuna fish sandwich. And I want you to just be real uncomfortable and personal with this person, get to know her and listen to what she’s saying. This is like that peer to peer mentorship without having to be uncomfortably close to someone that’s new on your team. That’s pretty awesome. Hey, I right there. I like that I can see the applications.
Brandon Knight 9:00
I like to see stuff like that.
Rolando Rosas 9:02
And I would imagine that if we just use that as a jumping point, the companies that are going to deploy this, I can only imagine not just the savings, but the advantages that you can gain from that customer experience. Because if you have a happy customer, because a lot of folks that call in whatever 800 Number, either support or service or tech that they need. They’re maybe a little standoffish or angry. But if you can solve that on that first call, without having, Oh, I gotta take you to level two or level three or call you back. You have the first call response first interaction is able to solve the problem, you’re gonna be happier. And I would imagine customers will let others know Hey, I got this fix with using blah, blah, blah.
Brandon Knight 9:49
Yeah. And that’s what they’re looking for. Right? We figured out back in the old days. When I was coming up. They used to say you had to wow your customer, right. You have to exceed their expectations. And I think what we’ve learned was Through various studies over the years recently is that customer might not necessarily be looking to be wild and overwhelmed. What they want is they want easy, simple, fast, I want you to answer the phone, if I call you know who I am, resolve my issue, get me where I want to go to your website, or chat, however I want to do it, I just want it to be simple. I want it to be easy. And that’s what people are finding out. And to your point, man, you talking about not having to call somebody back or transfer them or looking for different systems to give because everything’s disparate. Those use those seconds turn into minutes. And we all know in this space, man minutes is money,
Rolando Rosas 10:37
minutes and even seconds, right? I know that there’s a lot of call centers and we worked with a when a large telcos I’ll say, and they’re measuring their agents by the seconds, anything that can improve the performance in the way they measure their agents, minutes on the call seconds, it all adds up because they know down to the second how much each interaction costs. So if an AI type of implementation, or other things will help those agents shave that conversation down and resolve it from the first moment, they know that multiplied times 1000 people, those seconds mean dollars and cents big time.
Dave Kelly 11:18
Yeah, and one of the things we would ask a call center manager say it’s an inbound sales call center, if each agent can take just one more phone call a day, what does that mean, and we’re Rolando was just saying they do have it down, they know every call equals X amount of revenue. So if, if your 500 reps, if they can all take one more call, you can let them do the math, and then that’s a perfect way to come in with your solution that’s going to free them up to allow them to do that.
Brandon Knight 11:46
Yeah, and let’s face it now, you know, a lot of a lot of people aren’t talking openly about this, right? Because they don’t like the term recession or downsizing or whatever. The fact that matter is, businesses are faced with having to do more with less. And we all know that in the context of our space, your greatest asset is also your most expensive asset. So things like that. And also, the technology that we see on the front end used to be IVR is where you know, push one for sales, push two. Right now we’re seeing real algorithms, real conversational AI, real routing. And the more you can get people to do self service, keep those mundane, repetitive things and an automated environment, then again, your agents are available to answer more quickly get on the phone, good luck, and hopefully have more information by the time the call gets done as well. So I think it all plays together. And unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, it’s being pushed a little bit by the economy that we have and the need to do more.
Rolando Rosas 12:41
I want to ask you about that with interactions. So the interaction that people are having today are in 2022, going into 2023. It’s not the same kind of interaction back in the early 2000s. In late 90s, where probably everything was phone heavy, right? It was no, not a lot of self serve, would you say even though the volume or maybe tell me I’m wrong, if the volume of calls to call centers are going down, the importance of the interaction has become even that much more? Is there a premium on that interaction versus 20 years ago, when you just knew everything was phone based?
Brandon Knight 13:16
100% 100%? Because before we had demographics, I had a group of people that were I’m gonna call, I may even expect to sit on hold for a little bit. As long as it’s not too much. I’m okay with it. And when they answered the phone, I’m going to explain why I call it because they have no idea. Right? you contrast that to now, where we are information heavy, man, we’ve gotten data everywhere, we’ve got access to data of where people research things, they go to your website, first, we have an entire group of consumers that are interacting that way. So yeah, I forgot what the number was. But it was something like 75 or 7% of the people try to resolve their issue nowadays without having to call you. So that means if I do have to call you, premium is the right word, man. Hearing was the right word, because now I’m like, hey, they wouldn’t have to do this, but I did it. So help me this is real.
Rolando Rosas 14:12
Let me ask you something, because I don’t spend as much time on the support side or even calling up places, but on the chances that I do have to call. We do a lot of stuff with Amazon and a lot of work with them. And sometimes that takes me into talking with folks on their side as well as some of the larger companies. And boy, I gotta tell you, when I get somebody on the phone, and they are not empowered to take action on the problem, it is so frustrating and wanted to ask you about that because at Zoom, you’re dealing with, obviously some of the largest enterprises around are they seeing the contact center space as a place to resolve that and to empower those agents to resolve that? Or are you still finding that it’s the case that companies say this is an offshore call center, we got some tools from them, but they don’t have the authority to really resolve some of these things. And we’ll let that happen back at the home office.
Brandon Knight 15:11
Yeah, I think you nailed it. I think what you’re finding is, and this is not to call anyone out, but I think the companies that are truly focused on a customer centric environment, have figured out that frontline agent, specialists rep is the face and voice of their company, and you need to give them access to all the tools. Unfortunately, we still have a large number of companies that are hierarchy driven, we still have companies that are afraid to give agents access to certain pieces of information, it’s mind boggling a little bit. But we do, we still have companies that the agent can only have access to this, and this error over here, whether might be financial, or it might be detailed, we still have this term, and a lot of contact centers where they’re talking about, we’re gonna escalate the call. And we’ll allow that person to then go to somebody who will then go to this tier, or they go to that tier. Now we do have some that are doing it for financial reasons, we have a client in the insurance space where agents need to be licensed, right? So licensed agent is expensive. So they do intake with a non licensed person, just to qualify, qualify the call, and then they’ll transfer it to so in some instances, I got it. But all too often, there are things that an agent should be able to resolve, when you call in. I’ll give you a perfect way to call up my credit card company. Because, you know, like a lot of people these days security, I’m traveling, they flagged something, they could be potential fraud. So call him right now. He texts me, hey, we didn’t approve this, because we’re not sure what you So we reached out to me perfect. I hit the link in the thing. But it goes back and allows me to call so now I call it they’ve had extended first answer the phone, I validate who I am, right, give my pin blah, blah, blah. And she said, Why are you calling? And I told her like, hey, there’s a potential fraud. Thanks. Okay, I need to get you over to that department. Now, there’s so many things wrong with that. Okay, the number I clicked was in the text that you sent me. Okay. Oh, oh.
Dave Kelly 17:11
And then when it does, when you get to that next level, sometimes you have to start all over. Why are you calling in? And then you’re like, did you guys, I mean, you’re a billion dollar organization. And I have to tell you, again, my name, my number, my account number and my pin. That is the most frustrating thing in my household that you can always tell when someone is like if my wife has to call the cable company. And then it gets escalated. She tells them how she feels she’s so I just told the first agent. And now I have to tell the second agent, my entire life story again, just to get this back, I find that some of the companies that I’m doing business with they haven’t implemented the right technology. And they’re just making us waste a lot of extra time that I think if they had the right things in place, that we wouldn’t have to be doing
Brandon Knight 18:03
that. Absolutely. Absolutely. They don’t have the right technology. Some of them don’t even have the right mindset. I was consulting a company earlier in the year. And we were talking about the technology so that the data would pass in this case, they didn’t need to transfer to a special department, we said do you want to send the data though, we’re not really ready to do that at a later date. And I said, okay, but at the very least, there should be a warm transfer, because what they did is they had the general agent dropping the call into a queue. Oh, another. So you and I had to tell him, I said, Guys, you are creating pissed office, creating it unnecessarily so that at least if you don’t have the technology, at least let the agent one transfer, told you the customers name and what they’re calling about. And stop and
Rolando Rosas 18:46
Brandon, what’s stopping an organization from making that leap? Is it that it’s comfortable to do it this way? Because that’s the way that you’ve been doing it for the last seven, maybe eight years? Versus I don’t know if the technology would actually work? Is it a technology question that’s being imposed and being the barrier? Or is it the people and the inertia behind that?
Brandon Knight 19:06
It’s actually a lack of you, sir. Companies that are trying to do this without a partner, I’m just gonna be straight. It was what I was running a contact center, and I ran compact size as small as 100 people, I ran contact centers where I had five of them under me and each of them had 50 100 agents in them. Okay, contact center leaders, then a freefall, pretty much all day. And everything we do is an adaptation of the existing tool, the existing processes, the existing company culture, and I’m doing everything I can to keep my head above water. And I don’t have someone else who’s an expert say to me, Hey, and when I remember when I was doing that, and I ran some successful businesses, we made money and we had good customers, but I didn’t know what I didn’t know. Never thought beyond Is there a different way to do this. That was the
Rolando Rosas 19:53
job Brandon that you’re in. Is it insulated? Are you like insulated from the outside world and that information never gets in. And so that’s the bubble you’re living in as a contact center manager or leader?
Brandon Knight 20:06
Absolutely, absolutely. You don’t have the time to do research, or to look and see what else might be out there. And so yeah, you’re living in a bubble. And it’s also context that our leaders and Catholics and our people, in a similar way, some people call us crazy, because it’s a niche, right, and you’re successful in a contact center, people think you’re crazy, because most of you
Rolando Rosas 20:25
know, what I had was at a really large contact center that one of their managers had, were like a jail around here. Susie, you bet it’s gonna get on the other side, and everybody else is gonna know about it over there really quickly, before lunchtime. Is and I wanted to confer to see if that was a mentality that you had seen as well, it’s frontline in the call center.
Brandon Knight 20:51
That’s the real deal, I can tell you from running a contact center, even where I would walk into one of our locations that have 1500 agents in it. There were three people in there. Then how those three people were going, is how the business was going. If you want to know what was happening. That’s happening. And there were many gangs too, because you were either inside, or Oh, yeah. Okay, cotton, a mushroom, would you cruise that? Oh, my
Rolando Rosas 21:19
goodness, oh, my goodness, it sounds like you sit, you have similar, I would call it hand to hand combat stories about working in a contact center. And we’re a lot of folks to wait to start their career. For some folks. They make a long career out of it. But what I want to ask you, because there’s gonna be folks listening to this that are in our industry, they’re trying to talk to that guy. That’s why he’s acting or that gal who’s in charge of the contact center, and they want to consult or bring a new solution. And you can’t ever get ahold of him. What would you say a tip give us our first pro tip of today? For a pro tip. Brandon, tell us, what is the right approach? The folks that are trying to bring that information to a contact center leader? How could you best receive that? Because you were on that side of the equation?
Brandon Knight 22:09
Yes. And I’ll do a real life example for you. Because I will tell you when I did respond, because before this, I was the person premises based contact center my equipments down the hall, I could walk down here to punch down. And if you talk to me about the cloud or something different, I’m not going to tell you would know what my response was. But our aim is, is when someone bought me benchmarking, or best practices, I actually received an email that had a data report in it that actually mattered not a frivolous, Hey, did you know this, but in my industry, it was what were customers saying about my company versus my competitors. Love that another time, I responded. Someone shared a report. And I was in the insurance industry, someone said a report of average handle time back then, you know that KPIs were different than what we do now. But someone shared a report of average handle time of the top 10 insurance carriers that matter to me, right, yeah. So if you want to, if you want to get the attention of the decision making in the context, innerspace, bring them data, bring them information, it is a commodity, when you’re operating it
Rolando Rosas 23:17
love that they love that. We talk to folks that are in the context space, we have folks buying our products that are in the context space, and sometimes trying to elevate that conversation. It’s very transactional, we’re gonna win. It’s really quick. But getting that like you said, you want to talk to them about the cloud. And I want to talk where did they go? And what’s the roadmap and I know you’re using old technology, just like you talked about Brandon. And I know because I called your 800 number. And they transferred me to another department three times and I was on hold 20 minutes. I know there’s a conversation about technology. But can I get that in there so that we can get that on the roadmap?
Brandon Knight 23:54
Yeah, yeah, go ahead. No, I was just saying folk FOMO works for those leaders, letting them be in, they do function in a bubble, and they function in a silo, if you give them a picture of the outside world that could impact them. It works.
Dave Kelly 24:08
I’ve worked with some sales professionals that are selling to the contact center. And I’ve heard this approach where they will call into the call center as a customer. And they’re taking notes on what the experience is, how much are they waiting? Do they have to repeat themselves? Is the audio quality bad? Is there a lot of noise in their environment, different things like that, and then they keep record of that. And then they re approach one of the decision makers? And they’ll say, I visited your call center today. And this was my experience of that call center. What do you think about an approach like that when they’re trying to get the attention of that call center decision maker? They want to have a conversation about the cloud or some AI or different applications. Would it turn you off if someone was to have posed as a customer so that they could get an idea of the experience and then bringing that up. I visited your call center today, and this is what I experienced. And then bad things. What’s your opinion on an approach like that?
Brandon Knight 25:11
Actually, Dave I think you probably could have done that as Pro Tip number two, because because I’ll be honest with you, I did that when I was a contact center person, and I learned about what the channel was, and I wanted to be an agent. And of course, when you start off, you don’t really have customers anything like that. So I’m trying to give this to you quick, because this is literally, truthfully how I built my agency how I built
Rolando Rosas 25:30
Alright, hold on a second, here comes a pro tip. Brandon lay on us pro tip numero dos for today.
Brandon Knight 25:41
Here it is, coupled with Dave talked about, call the business, I built a agency doing just this, I’d make one phone call. And I would pretend I had the product, whatever it was, I didn’t have it. But I printed it. I wanted to get it. How can I get it? How does it work? Take copious notes on who you talk to what the interaction interaction was like, wait about three days later, four days later, I call back now I have the product and it doesn’t work. I want to find out. What did they do in a crisis situation? Did they replace the product? What kind of troubleshooting they have? Do I have to get escalated? Can they resolve the issue is broke, I’m frustrated. I wait a few more days, I call in a third time. The third caller the phone calls, it doesn’t matter what you talk about. It’s not what you talk about. It’s the transition you’re going to make at the end of that phone call. 90% of kydex vendors have what they call pay for performance. So agents get rewarded for having good quality calls, along with attendance and other things. So after I finished this phone call at the end, I was like, hey, Jane, you were really great. I’m pretty sure you guys have some type of reward program, or somebody I could talk to about the amazing level of service you provided me today. What do you think Jane did? James can’t go to the manager, or the director or whoever a person of authority position to talk to when that person got on the phone is Hey, Mr. Knight, I understand you were talking about the great service you had. I said I was actually Mr. Smith, I only want to talk to you about the resources I had today. But I want to talk to you about the interaction I had with Jim on Monday. And Suzy on Thursday, and then Jane today. And because I’m actually a customer experience expert myself, I wanted to share some things with you that I think went well. And some things I think were a little challenging that probably could have gone better. Would you be patient?
Rolando Rosas 27:24
That is freaking amazing. Love that. Love that. Wow. Dave, are you taking notes? I’m taking copious notes as we speak. This is the man
Dave Kelly 27:36
Rolando, you were just looking for a reason to use that word copious again.
Rolando Rosas 27:39
I love it. I love it. This is some serious knowledge. Well, I’m taking that page out of that playbook, because I’m gonna try it. I know I’ve done that. But not to that extent you just raise that to like, another level. Hey, Susie was great. And Suzy, you know what? I’d love to let somebody know who’s keeping up keeping track of this for you. And let them know personally not like just an email. Let me talk to them. And if they can take you up to a manager level, then you know how you’re like you got a toe in the door?
Brandon Knight 28:05
Exactly. That’s it. You got a toe in the door, man. And the rest is up to us. We got to be able to pick it from there.
Rolando Rosas 28:10
That’s right. No, I love that. The other thing that I really want to ask you because you’re at a company right now that’s at the forefront of remote working, both from the with what they’re expanding with Zoom phone with, obviously the contact center space, but as a whole. What are you hearing? where’s this going that you hear about the resistance from some management, middle management, some upper management, some organizations like Yelp, where they’ve embraced it 100%? They’re completely remote. Where are we right now with this whole thing?
Brandon Knight 28:41
You you actually called where we are, we are seeing companies that realize it’s a great thing. And then we’re also seeing some companies that are having trouble letting go control, let’s call it what it is, right? We have a lot of companies that elicit you remember when we thought COVID was going to be over in the summertime, right? So we just are in a rush right? Since we got hot coals to go. Right. So we had companies that just sent people home, they didn’t really have good setups and stuff like that they would like just go home. And you’ll be back with wolves. Now over the last year, we’ve had companies making that more permanent because they figured out a couple of things. One is many of their agents went home, and were actually still successful. All those fears they had about not being able to stand over the agent were gone because the agents went home, they did their job, they were happier, there’s less attrition, because they’re not going anywhere. There’s less tardiness because they’re already home just became an amazing experience for people. And I think we’re seeing that. But then you’re also seeing those people that want control. And they’re not happy that they can’t get to that agent. They can’t interact that way. But for guys like us, that’s actually it’s actually a good thing because a lot of companies are turning to technology to replace what used to be collaboration, what used to be camaraderie and the Have a seat at the watercooler. Now. They look at technology to do that. So it has created another opportunity for us, quite frankly,
Dave Kelly 30:05
yeah, for sure. Now, is it still possible to maintain to still satisfy your customer base? When your employees are working remotely?
Brandon Knight 30:15
That’s really funny. You can, but you have to lead your employees differently. I’m just talking who would be right validate, where you have the same agents that were in the contact center that were responsible and accountable answer the phone when it was supposed to said when they’re supposed to came back from break when they were supposed to came back from lunch when they were supposed to, and worked until the last bell and then went home, that person is fine at home. But we all know, in the contact center space, you also have the agents that are perennially late, leaving early, taking 30 minute breaks at a 15 minute break going that person, you still have their home now. So now you can say hey, I’m not you can’t look down the aisle and see they’re not there. You know, I mean, that’s a little different. And if they disappear from their workstation, and they’re not on camera, what are you going to do? You’re not going to their house, you can ping them in the chat. But that’s about it. So you do have to manage it a little differently to make sure the customer has a good experience. I will tell you, I won’t tell you the company that I called. But I was joking my wife because I did I call it a company on Saturday. And no one can tell me that that woman I woke her up. My phone call was alarming to her. Okay. And she stumbled through the first minute and a half before she like got her bearings and figured out of what she was doing. So you’re gonna run into that a little bit, but not a
Dave Kelly 31:34
lot. Yeah, your telephone, your inbound call of the day should never be your alarm. When do you start tomorrow? Whenever someone calls, that shouldn’t be the way to go.
Rolando Rosas 31:45
What’s in the future? What’s in the headlights here over? I want to ask you that Zoom specifically for those folks that that follow Zoom and want to know, there’s a lot cooking there. What’s the near future that is going to surprise folks?
Brandon Knight 32:00
Wow, I’ll tell you one thing that’s in the near future. I don’t know if it’ll surprise, folks. But I’ll give you one that my surprise was the one that I don’t think is gonna surprise folks is that the commitments, we have to changing this space, Zoom was a meetings, an event company and we hung our hat on that we went into the phone. And now we’re adding contact center, we have IQ, we have zba, which is the virtual agent, right. And putting all that on one form one place will change how people do business. It’ll change business business interaction, it’ll change customer interactions. Those of us that have run contact centers, man, you’d know what it’s like to have to take an agent who’s used to seeing an Oxbow and give them new technology and tell them oh, now I know that you’ve lost time you lost. So that I think is one thing that we’re doing that’s major, every every new thing we have is still in the same UI. So if you know how to use the one Zoom platform, you know how to use everything, we have
Rolando Rosas 32:58
a huge advantage. You have less frustrated agents, you can have a more seamless experience, the operation can run smoother training is much. I would imagine that there are folks that are using this platform today that are who are like why or was this when I was up and coming agent are up and coming team leader.
Brandon Knight 33:21
Yeah, yeah, they are because it’s easy. And I’ll tell you something that and I’m gonna own this business even surprised me, I have been pleasantly surprised by the number of businesses that are catching on or advocates for video calls in the context of I will tell you as the person that ran a contact center, I was all for you talking to them, texting them emailing them, I didn’t want you to see, I’m not gonna lie. I didn’t want you to see, okay, you’re doing. And so I thought coming into the same space. Like, that’s not going to be a big deal. But what I’ve seen from the customers that are taking that aspect of our technology, because we allow the customer to escalate to a video call, as opposed to in addition to it and an audio call
Rolando Rosas 34:05
in how’s that worked out? I’d love to hear about that.
Brandon Knight 34:08
Yeah, because it was I’m seeing applications over that I did not think of ahead of time. For instance, one of the big applications of it is a I can’t say them but like a cable company. Okay. It was used to your you usually call and you say hey, I got this box, I got these wires, but something’s not working. Usually on a regular call that person is saying what’s on your screen. Tell me when it reboots. Did you plug painter that was a video call. They’re just looking at it themselves and explaining to you what to do. So that was different. And another customer who is a it’s a it’s an airline’s in they have field technicians out at airports, but they have a location in Miami where they have master technician and the field technician may call the master for something but they’re explaining to them what’s going on to the engineer or the panel. They don’t do that anymore. Now they call In, it’s a video call, they’re looking at the same panel together, and the master tech can talk the field tech through what they’re doing. So I think the thing that’s going to surprise a lot of people in this space is that there are applications there are opportunities. Of course, we know, we know telehealth, we know those key person would rather see person. But what surprised me and I think will surprise a lot of people is customers are demanding when given the choice. They’re choosing video more often than I think anybody thought. And then I explained it to a group last week, just they said, why is that? Or how’s that? I said, I can explain this to you real easy, because we do this every day. Okay, everybody that has one of these, you decide based on who you bout to interact with whether you’re going to text them, call them or FaceTime. Every human being does that. And as you’re deciding that based on what’s a quick interaction, I texted, I don’t even see them or talk to them, if I want to talk them just to hear their voice I want to. But if it’s something where I want the experience, I want the body language experience, or I want to show them something, I’m going to FaceTime them consumer visuals.
Rolando Rosas 36:05
Yeah, we have your visuals and especially if you’ve got anything that you said, if you’re doing troubleshooting, or a tech support, or anything where it requires more than a sentence. That’s actually something that I say in the an RS. If it requires more than two sentences, I read that you send me a video, we use video internally a lot. Let’s do a video or send a video or record a video. So it doesn’t get lost in translation. It doesn’t get misjudged. It’s exactly what you’re looking for and exactly what I need to do for you.
Brandon Knight 36:34
Yeah, that is really smart. And that’s genius, man, it’s good that you guys have that as a process. And I will tell you, from what we’re finding, there are a lot of consumers that feel the same way. What if I’m explaining to you how I feel I’m sick, I’m not doing well, or how to apply a certain medication or how to fix something that I purchased from you. Yeah, that face to face is important. And
Dave Kelly 36:57
Rolando probably says this 10 times a week, he says, show people don’t tell people, show them, don’t just tell them use use video. And I’ll tell you since the beginning of the pandemic, we’re excited just because video has just been adopted, and it’s just been sped up, people are now more comfortable with it. Our team, our sales and customer service team has actually been adopting video, we sell headsets and speaker phones and cameras. And sometimes people are looking for support. But they don’t necessarily speak the same language that we speak. I’m not saying English versus Spanish, I’m saying cool versus non technical. So we’re able to FaceTime or use video and say, just bring that camera over. Let me show you what ports you need to be connecting into. And even older demographics. They’ve been adopting video, I think the younger folks are, they’re more apt to turn on their camera. But what our folks are excited about is that regardless of the age demographic, people are happy to use video, it solves their problems faster. What my salespeople say is it also builds a rapport so much faster now that now they’re repeat customers. Now they’re coming back for more, because they see that we’re, what do they say we’re eating dog food that we sell something to them? Yeah. Right. So they’re more than happy to come back and do business with us. Because we’re not just selling a SKU that we don’t necessarily know how to set up. In fact, we don’t send a user manual and say fix it yourself. We say come on board, talk to Sheila, she was an expert, and she can walk you through everything, including with video. And it’s definitely made more positive customer experiences for the people that do business with us.
Brandon Knight 38:45
Yeah, I agree with that. It’s way that you said he’d speak a different language, one of the funniest clips I don’t remember who had as the years ago, I listened to a phone call, where a tech support agent is repeatedly telling the woman to plug in her HDMI cable and it to us. That’s okay. Sure. Let’s do that to her. You may as well been telling her to park her car on the moon. I could not grasp it. And then the tech this guy is trying to explain what an HDMI cable looks like. Once you do that, you just want to use the trapezoid because I kind of forgot the right geographical shape. But that was one of the funniest videos that I saw. But it’s right we speak a different language and sometimes we assume that But How much easier would it be if you could show if you could see it? Yeah, for sure. No, I
Rolando Rosas 39:36
like that. I I guess that I’ve been taking some copious notes, some things that we’re going to we’re going to improve here and I can’t imagine why I know what it’s like for organization when something comes up and like that’s not working. Okay, well, how do we make that better? Versus that’s not working. Let’s just keep doing what we’re doing. Yes. I don’t know. Sometimes I would imagine it’s, you’re limited because of your budget, your budget may not allow that. But I would imagine that, especially when we’re talking enterprises, if this thing we do is going to lead not only to one tangent, open, tangible benefit, but multiple, then I would ask protip, how does a leader that’s part of the contact center? And let us help out our contact center, team managers and leaders here for a moment? How can they best position that requisition to upgrade to improve so that the C level folks that are essentially going to just sign on the dotted line so that can get them? How can they best do that?
Brandon Knight 40:43
Okay, I gotcha, it’s the best way to do that. First is to be a little bit uncomfortable. Because you have to understand it from that C level person’s perspective, right? If you’re the cost center manager, you’re already focused on the importance of what it means for your agents, you want them to be happy and comfortable, have the tools they need to do their job, if you’re a, you already understand the impact of customer experience, and you so you get that. And the natural thing for you is you want to go tell somebody, hey, the customers will be happier, and or agents will be happier. And while those are good, moral things, that doesn’t always translate to a bottom line to someone in a sea level. So instead, there are things that you can do like retention, everyone knows that retaining customers is cheaper than acquiring new customers, right? You can prove those two Net Promoter Score, if you’re not doing it, you should be doing it a customer effort score, if you’re not doing it, you should be doing it. Because those are statistical numbers that can translate for dollar values. A customer stays with you, it’s easier to show a business a customer that stays with you the amount they spend month to month, year to year, and therefore show their dollar value, and then show the cost of what we call the cost of loss. Right. There are numerous studies that will show you I think the most common one say 86% of people state that they will leave a company after too bad experience. Okay, so I would say you show the C level something that matters to them, which is the bottom line impact. So them $1 impact. And I will tell you that works as long as it works. Even when you don’t have a CEO that is focused on the right experience. And I’m gonna bring you back to zero because I want to tell you a story real quick. As luminaries, why I wanted to be there. For those of you that don’t know, Eric, you on our CEO and founder. He founded Zoom simply because the customers he was working with at WebEx were unhappy
Rolando Rosas 42:41
that was unwieldy. I seen something about that where he was like, it was just horrible to use.
Brandon Knight 42:47
Yeah, it was horrible to use. And I’m not saying anything out of school, this is his story. It’s all public. It’s public information is public information. He went to them and said, hey, the customers aren’t happy, we do something different. And the response they got from the scratches he got at that time was we’re not as concerned with the customers being happy because they’re buying our products hand over fist because we’re the only ones that do what we do. So why are you trying to rock the boat, and he left, and he built an entire organization just based on happiness? I know it sounds corny. But you walk into our headquarters. It’s painted on the wall. The word happiness, it’s really it is it is a culture that we drive. And I think not just because it’s a good thing. It does impact the bottom line. Happy employees create happy customers, happy customers stay with you. And then they pay more. And then you get things like when Zoom, Zoom decides they want to do more than meetings. They’re going to use a phone product. No problem. The customers you know what I already got meetings already got events. I love Zoom, give me the phone. That’s it. That’s
Rolando Rosas 43:51
it comes in easier, not even a cell when even uses the right word adopt, right? Yes, you’ve got if you got a line extension, the phone product, like a call center product makes that transition much easier.
Brandon Knight 44:03
It does, it’s very easy. Right now we have I want to say the thing is 94 94% of our contacts and our customers, our Zoom phone customers or Zooming like they have Zoom already. They have something from us already. And they just they adopted it. Because what we said before is easy. If you’re already using the phone, you’re already using meetings, you already have the platform. I just add an icon that when you refresh, you’re not talking setting down training, saying refresh your internet connection right in the browser. And now that icon is right there for you.
Rolando Rosas 44:40
I love it. I love it. Brandon, you have shared so much that we got to have you on again because there’s a bunch of folks that I wanted to talk about that and we’re running out of time and I can’t because I know you your time is precious today. But is there anything else that you want to leave us with? that’s on your mind that you want to talk
Brandon Knight 44:59
about? Wow. We’ve talked about a lot. And the only thing I would say is to any context and our leaders that are out there who haven’t done this already, I encourage you to embrace the change. I unders as someone who has been in the context of space, I’ve been in this space almost a little bit more than 30 years now. And I will tell you, I was the premises based guy, I went through a transformation. I was the guy when we were your wedding agents with casual days. And now they’re home in their pajamas all the time, right? Embrace the change, allow your business to adapt, allow your agents to adapt, lead them differently. And the reward is tremendous. Progressive contracts, and our companies are doing extremely well in this environment. And you should be one.
Rolando Rosas 45:42
Well said, Brendan, that is food for thought. And hopefully more leaders are paying attention. Because I don’t think people want to stay home for no reason the lives are enriched. They don’t have to drive an hour in each direction. They can spend time with their loved ones or cared for somebody that’s not well, or their loved ones. Improve the quality of life and like you said, happy workers, happy employees means happy customers. So why not embrace the change of remote working, letting agents work from home, do their best so that they can provide the best for their employers?
Brandon Knight 46:19
Well said, Well,
Rolando Rosas 46:22
you Well, today, we’ve been talking to Brandon Knight, he is super guru when it comes to the call center space. And if you’ve enjoyed this episode of What The Teck? podcast, I invite you to go check out Tim Ash, author of Unleash Your Primal Brain. Talk about a guy that knows about the neuro psychology of selling Tim Ash is one of the super geniuses about that, you’ll find that episode on circuitloops.com as well as other past guests that come on show. So I want to thank Brandon Knight for coming on today. And we will see you in those other episodes.
Outro 47:01
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