Dave Kelly 5:48
well, you know, it’s crazy. All of the all of the big shows went virtual this year, I know, Microsoft did their, their ignite event, virtually they did the, the Enterprise Connect, I know that there were some others has, has EPOS participated in those.
Scott Houston 6:06
We did. It we did a lot through kind of the, from, I think maybe four or five shows we did in 2020, virtually, and that’s I think it around the world because, you know, some European events. But I know I participated in to, specifically as part of our Enterprise Connect team, and as part as our as part of our Ignite team as well.
Dave Kelly 6:31
So so how do you manage something like that? So we’ve all we’ve all managed trade booths, right? Stand in front of the booth, you got your logo, you got your product, people are coming over, you’re shaking, hands are smiling, you’re showing off your product? How do you do that in a virtual environment.
Scott Houston 6:48
And I wondered the same thing, when we kind of first started talking about it, like, Okay, here’s kind of the the group that’s involved, and we have a lot of our, like our inside sales representatives, so the guys who would typically be calling out to corporations and enterprises, you know, to help them out, you know, getting them our stuff. So it was, it was kind of a layered approach with them. And myself and my counterpart on the sales engineering side, couple of the other sales account managers, and it’s kind of the same thing you’re you are, you know, like standing at your desk here. And you are waiting for an interaction of some point. So they’re kind of having a live chat
Dave Kelly 7:28
Heavy on video?
Scott Houston 7:32
You do when you’re engaging with someone, so you can do a virtual kind of a demo right there. Or you can schedule it for another time. Like, you know, John Smith, you know, stops by says, Okay, I want to meet at two o’clock with somebody, and they’re in this territory, and you’d say, Okay, we you know, that our sales guy or, or myself, we can meet with them, and they would have questions, and, you know, just kind of go from that way. So, I think, and again, that was one of the early ones, and it was August. So, but I think as we go into this year, and probably a little bit in next year, you know, you’ll have different ways of doing it, where it might be a little more interactive, there were all the companies are figuring out how to attract people to it. You know, definitely having when a company can do a keynote, or do something as an event, part of it, where you might have the CEO of someplace or the, you know, VP of Marketing, somebody just talking about something new, and having that attraction and just, you know, making it explode on social media and gaining, you know, just getting eyes on it, that’s the struggle is just to get people to want to click on your brand, or that technology, stuff like that. And that’s, I think everyone is learning how to do that the right way in that scenario.
Dave Kelly 8:56
So in a traditional world, we would give away pens, we’d raffle off a headset. Yeah. You know, so are you doing anything like that? Are there still kind of takeaways, you know, because people, every trade show I’ve ever participated in, you’d have to walk over to every booth shake every hand, get a name, get a signature on a card, Excuse me, ma’am, they can be entered in a raffle or they were they still doing things like that.
Scott Houston 9:25
Other they’re still good raffles and in certain ways to interact with with the audience to do that. And again, it’s not what we would expect from a face to face type of event right where you’d have, you know, so many pens and you, you kind of go home with way more than you showed up with. So, you know, and that’s one of the things I think I missed the most like, I need more notebooks in my life for some reason. We need to do that more and more pens. You know, I don’t think I’ve bought a box of pens. In 10 years in the industry, it’s not always always having fun. So yeah, it’s just how to do again, using that as a tool to engage more and bring more traffic. Yeah,
Rolando Rosas 10:10
right. All right. Well, wonderful. Well, I mean, just like everybody else, we’re, we’re also trying to navigate this virtual environment. And I, it says a whole new world, really, I’ve ever heard a lot of people describe it in different ways. But bottom line is, we’re in a whole new world that I saw Mark Cuban’s talk about, I think he said, web 3.0. So that’s like a reboot. And brands can, can basically have a new life, because some of the bigger brands are actually really struggling in this new environment. And smaller brands have been able to be more nimble, be more agile, and adjust more quickly to the situation. And I don’t think even if tomorrow, everything clears up here in the US, and we can just go back into the office like before, I don’t think everybody’s going back, I don’t know, what are your What are you hearing from clients and people that you’re talking to Scott,
Scott Houston 11:09
it’ll vary, and now is kind of that time where people are trying to figure out when they need to decide what the return to office looks like. So I think the conversations that are happening, you know, at the beginning of this year, where we say, okay, by July 4, we need to have that plan in place. And it may be by the end of this year, they want to have 20 to 30%, back in office, and then the goal for 22 is going to be 50 to 70%. You know, that’s that’s been a lot of the, the trend that I’ve been hearing, when when talking to people, and then a lot of companies still just just don’t know, we, as an organization, at least in the US, we don’t know are our headquarters over in Denmark, during about just about the end of summer, last year, they were able to do it 50% return, they were managing things much better over there, then, obviously, what was happening here. So, so we see that as that that does work. But again, every company is going to be different. We also hear about a lot of companies in a name brands that people are familiar with, where they’ve decided to just end their lease and everyone can be worked from home.
Rolando Rosas 12:29
Yeah, no, I was just gonna say that. Big companies like Microsoft have seen that employees could go work anywhere now. Just with manager approval, you can you know, if you worked in LA, now you live in Austin, Texas, or you can, you know, overseas, you can live overseas, you know, because everything is so connected, so that you don’t have to report into the office anymore. I know that they may be the exception to the rule. But it sounds like from what Microsoft is doing is just like you said, no need to have all these offices everywhere. work from anywhere right now is kind of the important thing. And actually having a dispersed and distributed workforce is probably from from continuity of work is probably more important. So that you don’t have people, you know, all congregated in one place.
Scott Houston 13:17
Yeah. And for companies like that, and Microsoft, and a lot of the other social media companies are also doing the same, where where we don’t really see that so much, though, is going to be more like financial, medical insurance institutions are looking more to that return to office and that a lot of that has to do with security and privacy and a lot of those things that where they need to have that kind of closed network, so to speak.
Dave Kelly 13:44
Right? Hey, you know, in staying on the Microsoft topic, so Microsoft Teams is certainly a mainstream UC solution for folks at home. I know that EPOS has a relationship with Microsoft, can you tell us a little bit about that relationship? And what that means to your products and to the users of your products?
Scott Houston 14:04
Absolutely. Yeah. And it’s, it’s funny, you know, the word teams now means something different today than it did this time last year. You know, it’s now a household name, same as a few others mean zoom, and, you know, Cisco and all those guys. So it’s it’s funny how, you know, because it’s been the tool of communication now, where we can’t see each other in person. But now we can see each other on our computers, sometimes all day, sometimes peppered in through throughout the week. We’ve been working with Microsoft now for maybe a year to over 10 years, 15 years, possibly as far as being a direct partner with them. So it’s coming to you know, the licensing agreements, being able to use logos and say this is compatible with Microsoft and going through certification processes. And all those. So you know, they’ve been a wonderful partner, especially now that we talk about teams rooms. So how video gets involved in larger pieces inside the office and at home. And also, I mean, primarily with headsets. And now like with having dedicated teams buttons, and we’re going to have different functionalities with that, and making it you know, more user friendly, have that tactile approach to, you know, pushing this button does this and call control and so on.
Rolando Rosas 15:36
I was just going to ask you, if you could just expand a little bit on this on the team’s button aspect, because for a lot of folks, if this is your first time using either a headset or, or a speaker phone, or something that does have a teams button, and some people have no idea what this does, what’s the benefit of having a teams button on a product versus another product that may not have the teams button on it?
Scott Houston 16:01
Well, we have to kind of separate it a little bit. So you would have a compatible products, which with that we mean call control functionality, you know, is it going to answer an end your call when it when you’re in a teams call for an example. So all headsets that have call control on it, whether it be older, if it doesn’t say team certification, a lot of that comes from the Skype functionality, all those controls and everything kind of stay the same. The teams button itself can do a couple of things. It’s a notifier. So there’s a little LED light on there, that’ll say, Okay, it’s purple, I’m connected with teams, we push it, it’ll bring teams to front. So if it’s behind outlook, as an example, it’ll bring it to the front on your monitor, or that light that LED light on it might go white, indicating you have a missed call and a voicemail. So it’s more of that that notification quick access feature, which, you know, we know will eventually grow into other things over time.
Rolando Rosas 17:08
Oh, wait a minute. Are you saying there’s a roadmap for some new cool tricks or features that may be coming down the road?
Scott Houston 17:15
Oh, I don’t know. I don’t work for Microsoft.
Rolando Rosas 17:19
Oh, or or? You guys have I think that would be there. Guess you could do other functionality besides just a notification? And
Scott Houston 17:28
I would think it would, it’s it would be a good assumption to say and this is Scott talking. I’m not going to speak directly. But I would, I would say it would be safe to assume that it should do other things. Okay, what those other things are, I couldn’t define for you right now. I can, you know, think of a few when it comes to actually, you know, launching a meeting voice activation control some something else to go along with with that other than just kind of the Bring to Front or as a notification feature.
Dave Kelly 18:10
So all in an effort to increase the user experience, right. I mean, I think about a lot of the folks that are that got sent home. These weren’t necessarily early adopters to the technology, these are the folks that maybe they’ve never used a hands free device that they’re used to you and I were joking earlier about having a brick on their desk. So making things more intuitive so that users can feel more comfortable to use using the technology. No, it makes a lot of sense. You know, with that said, what’s what’s kind of surprised you from a technology standpoint, from the user’s stamp, point of view, any anything surprising anything like I’m saying where folks are warming up to it or kind of pushing it away? Any surprises since March 2020? Everyone gets, um,
Scott Houston 19:04
a couple of surprises. I think, the the first one, which, you know, I hope everyone who has children experience when they’re doing their remote learning is how fast kids have taken to the technology, you know, and how they interact with it. It’s almost like they know, they know better how to use it than we ever will. And that, you know, it’s surprising to me, watching watching my my nine year old daughter operate different operating systems, whether it’s, you know, Chrome or Apple or windows and going into her schoolwork, being able to quickly you know, find something and she just knows how to do it. So you kind of see that the way that you know, these things were built. It’s almost like you know They’ve had kids testing it. And that’s what gives them the okay. You know, it’s so nice.
Dave Kelly 20:06
Kid tested mother approved.
Scott Houston 20:08
Yeah, it’s kind of like that, because because they know that they’re the ones that are going to support us, you know, we become the the grandparents asking the kids for tech support, you know, hopefully me, and that’s, yeah, not not too soon. But I just found that that’s surprising. And, you know, watching her and hearing, you know, how she interacts with her, her group of friends in her classroom and their teachers. And you could see the delta between the children using the technology, and the teachers and the adults using technology, and they have a much easier time, it’s fun for them. And for us, it’s work and it becomes pressure and stressful, to try to get something to work very fast, and you’re late to something. And so, and that kind of brings me to the second point, the surprising is, how fast all of those technologies were able to adapt and make changes, to make those things easier to get to. Or to make them easier to interact with, whether it be putting more windows in there to see more people. So you’re kind of you’re seeing familiar faces are even new faces when we do you know, calls with end users. And all of us are on video, and they’re all on video, and you could see people and see facial expressions and hand movements like I’m doing right now. And it just creates more of that, you know, that intimate conversation, as opposed to when it was just on the phone and no video and, you know, so people are getting okay with, you know, using video being comfortable on it, which I thought was very surprising. I was never a huge video guy. Until you know, now because I’ve had to, and I’ve had to teach myself, you know, don’t do certain things, because you’re on video all the time. Right? You can’t make sure you’re fully dressed. Those, but those have been my two big surprises. Yeah.
Dave Kelly 22:05
Oh, sorry, Rolando. You go,
Rolando Rosas 22:07
I was going to ask you something, because you’re saying how the software has evolved, the technology has evolved. Obviously, a lot of the devices that EPOS made are in that have been introduced, whether they were in 2020, or prior to 2020. All of these were pre COVID. Devices, I would say there’s a pre COVID era, and then post COVID. Because user you’re saying user experience, the experience and expectation is going to be very different. Does EPOS forsee are from folks that you are talking to at the company see that there may be retooling of products and new design of products? Because the user experience is different than the primary types of users are different than just office centric users. What are you hearing in the way of what may be to come from that standpoint?
Scott Houston 23:01
Yeah, it’s certainly created a new category of user, you know, if you think about work from home, or the, the, the constant telecommuter, right, or, you know, those like me, that can be in the office, or it can be home, or I’m on the road all the time there kind of adds of that third element. So what can you put in a product to make a, you know, a one, a one piece to work with everything, you know, whether you are at home, on the subway, or in the airport, and at the office, you know, what’s that one piece that fits, that checks all the boxes that’s comfortable, you can listen to music with it, the microphones off the for, you know, call wise is at that premium level that we want to be. And I think a lot of that design and thinking about that was all kind of pre COVID We were all everyone was already thinking about those things. And we see that in a lot of products today that were announced last year, you know, over over the summertime, like, Hey, here’s new products, because there was this work, it kind of fit, you know, it all timed out. rather well. In that in that regard. I think now we’re gonna see a lot of those things because they had, you know, larger ear cups for active noise will probably something we’ll see it go smaller for longer wearing times, you know, just more comfort level. So again, adding a little more flavor there. But also, I think more on the speakerphone sides. That was a huge adoption in 2020 for speakerphone, but now it’s it’s the it’s the planning on the going back and what tools can people use, you know, whether you are desk centric, or at home, what’s going to go back and forth and what’s going to stay at either place. So people may may own two or three He devices, depending on where they are throughout throughout their week. So yes, it’s more, it’s more planning, but it’s really what, you know, what it’s going to look like in five years from now is where we’re trying to think of what what that scenario for is, you know, the person who works at the bank, the person who works at a software company, you know, or the person who works, you know, for, you know, some kind of manufacturing facility, what that looks like, for their new day to day,
Dave Kelly 25:30
right. You know, I’m interested to know what, what users will do when they go back to the office. So everyone got sent home, and they had to adopt new technology, and one of those big pieces was moving from a desk phone to a soft phone. Now, the soft phone technology has been available for a long time, people were reluctant to adopt it for different reasons, when they were in their office, you know, people just like to have that physical interface. They get sent home, they get that taken away. Scott, what do you think happens when those people go back to they are to the to the office? Do they revert back to their old ways? What do you think they’ll continue to use what they were forced to adopt?
Scott Houston 26:15
I think there will be, you know, a few places that will kind of keep it the same, they’ll go back to what they knew before, I think that number will be significant smaller than what it was, you know, a year or two ago, I think be because of this, the the that infrastructure of the deskphone. They, they see that it doesn’t need to be as expansive, as it as it probably is, and a lot of enterprises and a lot of organizations, or at least they can scale it back different departments, you know, different groups within that that company will not need the things like that anymore, because now they’re used to it. And they’ve rolled out, you know, teams voice or Zoom phone, you know, and that’s where those companies are saying, Hey, you already have this solution. And now over adding as a Dialpad to it makes it pretty easy. You know, or you already have the app on your phone for it, you know, you’re already calling and talking and you have the tools to communicate with it. You know, and there are still a lot of traditionalists, they like the feeling of the handset and the phone itself. And, you know, they’re either going to be able to keep it or you know, the company is going to make the decision, I don’t think it’s going to be user based where the because the infrastructure is there, you have the choice anymore. It’ll be it’s in this way now. You know, that’s, that’s what they’re gonna have to do.
Rolando Rosas 27:41
Well, that’s, that’s an excellent, because I wanted to ask you about that. I wanted to see what your thoughts were on that hard phone, I think. I mean, not that there’s a nail in the coffin, and they’re, they’re all dead. But it seems like the first footstep in the grave has already happened with everybody working from home. And I know you guys work a lot with the phone manufacturers. GALEN probably come off all the guys, if what are you hearing from them? Are they which some of them don’t have soft, wear based platforms to use as a dial pad? Or a soft phone? What are you hearing about that? As it relates to the desk phone today?
Scott Houston 28:21
You know, surprisingly, there’s not. Or at least I haven’t seen a lot of chatter in that regard. I think from from seeing advertisements and posts and those on what they’re adding to their product lineup, where, where they’re also advertising, you know, works with teams works with Zoom. You know, they’re, they’re adding that soft phone functionality into the hardware side of it. So now you can kind of easily upgrade your phone, on the existing infrastructure that you have to say, Okay, now I have a quick one button to put that meeting on my phone. Should I want to do that? I think more of those phones will instead of having the RJ connector for you know, those headsets will go USB or Bluetooth built in. So I think we’re we’ll see more of those additions of saying how can you use other pieces that you already have, rather than having to buy all the bottom cables and, and those things for it. But eventually, I think it’s it’ll be kind of the software technology kind of overtaking it somehow. In some cases, other cases that will be this needs to be the way because of security and privacy and protocol. And, and and all those things where some organizations and industries can’t not have that, you know, and that’s you know, and that’s fine too, and that and there will still be needs for that, of course. But I think for a lot of companies just as you said, with the work from home, that’s easy here. All you need is this headset that saves me We have a lot of money. So
Rolando Rosas 30:02
Well, thank Well, that’s saving money is where companies are going to be looking at some of them, they’ve been hard hit hard from the, from the COVID. And I think from the standpoint of profitability, if they can take the phone off, just like desk size has gotten smaller and smaller and smaller, and eventually, you didn’t have an office, you didn’t even have the the walls, the cubicles, the cubicle walls came in, kept coming in, then the cubicles went away into Open Office. And the reason for Open Office is not so much that it looks great. You could fit more people, if you just start, especially if you’re in a large office, you can just start putting people next to each other. So there’s less of walls, there’s less money there. I think the trend is that as companies look at profitability, they will see if well, these desk phones are just things taking up space, and they’re in the way anyways, we have some people already on soft ware based solutions. Let’s just go there. So I think we’re the restrictions aren’t there maybe like the non financials and the Medicare places in the Medicare medical environment. So the world hospitals where they actually need to maybe pick something up to talk. Those other industries may just go software based, but I guess it’s to be seen? And we’ll we’ll have to see how it plays out.
Scott Houston 31:18
Yeah, absolutely. And it’s and it’s been, it’s been wild with, you know, the the places that are now okay, we can go work from home as an entire organization, how much real estate that opens up all the, you know, the leases that aren’t carried over. So so now you say, okay, as a company that doesn’t need to maintain an office, now the floor above and below them may have opened up, and they can go into that. And, you know, again, all that infrastructure and everything is already going to exist from whatever was there, New York is going to be a great example of that, of where they’re going to replace floors and buildings with either growing what’s already there, because of all the people that left it?
Rolando Rosas 31:56
Well, I’ve heard that on the New York topic is that a lot of people are asking for housing developments to be built or more housing, because if and who knows what’s gonna happen are people going to stay away from the big cities, people are migrating out of the big cities, but but the people that are there, they want better housing, or more affordable housing. And so it gets into a whole nother area. But yeah, I think it’s gonna be very interesting, because they have the most real estate to use that’s empty right now, I know several companies that are there that are not anywhere in those offices anymore. Nobody stepped in to those offices in over nine months. So it’s gonna be interesting to see how it plays out. But what and you know, we could we can I have, like 50 Other questions I want to ask you, and we could probably keep you here forever, but I don’t want to do that. So what I want to do, Scott is before, before we wrap here, ask you some four bonus questions. Just the folks know a little bit more about you to get a flavor for who you are. So we’re gonna go to sort of rapid fire four questions here. Who is your favorite musician or musical group?
Scott Houston 33:03
Bruce Springsteen,
Rolando Rosas 33:04
The Boss. Okay, all right. That’s cool. He’s, he’s the voice. What’s your favorite app right now? That’s on your phone.
Scott Houston 33:19
Teams. Okay, funnily enough. Teams,
Rolando Rosas 33:23
a team, a team’s guy. Okay. What’s your favorite type of food?
Scott Houston 33:30
Spaghetti, or Italian
Rolando Rosas 33:32
Oh, yeah. There is a good place in New York that I love going to make sure that you know, unfortunately, with all the craziness going on, I haven’t been able to get back up there and, and go eat there. But I’m dying to at the first possibility that I can get out there. Lastly, in terms of communication, there’s so many different ways to communicate. I wanted to see which of these is your preferred method of communication, email, text, phone call, or instant message slash DM. Phone call. Okay. Yeah. Wow. That’s that’s
Scott Houston 34:11
there’s only only only because of context and voice and tone, do my jokes then work.
Rolando Rosas 34:19
And that’s what that would be without text or
Scott Houston 34:21
even in texting, they don’t land as well as I want them to. So
Rolando Rosas 34:28
you need you need that you need to hear the nuances and inflection of your voice to get across when you’re joking. Well, I got I want to thank you for joining us today. I know the audience certainly enjoyed it. And if you liked this content, I want to encourage you to subscribe and hit all the buttons and the bells and the notifications and you’re gonna get updates on content. You’ll get upcoming information that we’re will be launching. And so there’s a lot to do If you can hit all the buttons, click lick, lick, lick, lick, lick, lick, lick, lick lick. And the more you like the better. We also have an Amazon store where Oh, where we have a ton of the EPOS products that are there. If you have questions about them, and you’re not sure where to start, send us call us. You are, you can chat with us, you can email us, you can communicate to us through all the different platforms. And we’ll get one of one of our folks we’ll get to you and and respond to your question. So we can help you on your journey on discovering the best advice that you need for your situation. So before we wrap it up. Let’s go through the trivia question. Who got that? There we go. So how many people attended CES and 2021, which was a virtual event. So we reached out to CES and their media people, and they told us the following. Go ahead already. Do we have the answer for that? Do we have a slide for that? 80,000 people that were qualified, I guess through I guess it registered and attended some of their sessions, just to almost 81,000 from over 167 countries. A net roughly translates to 54% coming from the US or visitor watching from the US and another 46% International. Oh, there’s a whole bunch of other stats that we got from them gets into lead generation and all the rest but what I see Yeah, and and from what I see, looking at that is that the CES attendance was way down this year, even if it was virtual. I remember last year, I mean, you couldn’t you couldn’t drive from a one block it took you like 40 minutes to go to blocks in Vegas during CES. I don’t know if that’s been your experience, Scott, but that was my experience last year.
Scott Houston 36:57
We learned the backroads pretty quickly. We used to take a we used to get a kind of like a shuttle bus or like a shuttle van as the team so you know we’d have Okay, here’s the you know, call time at 8am. Front of the front of the lobby is the whole team better be there and then pack them all in the van and I would drive because I’d be the first one to get there. The the week they get up and have card everyone around. So you want in the back roads to get to the convention center pretty quickly.
Rolando Rosas 37:27
Oh well. Well, I’ll have to remember that for next time. Because Uber boy, I couldn’t get to it. Oh, yeah. No, it was no, it was like a parking lot trying to get around CES. From those numbers that that that we just saw. And this was so we are in Jan is January 26. When we take this those numbers were probably from just about a week ago. And they told us that they extended the the open window of when they’d be counting those beyond all the way to February 3. So 80,000 people attended the dates that they had the event the main event, which it seems like it’s an interesting thing people want probably wanted it to be in Vegas, you know what, there have been other major events that have been virtual and attendance was up this is one of the big ones where attendance was way down from the the normal attendance that they have one on a regular year, so well. Fascinating. So I want to thank everybody. Thanks for joining us today. And we’ll see you the next time. Bye bye, everybody. Bye, everyone.
Outro 38:32
Thank you. Thanks for listening to What The Teck?, be sure to check out our other episodes featuring awesome tech and amazing guests. Find them on circuitloops.com or wherever you consume your favorite podcasts.
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