The CX Leader Podcast: "Get Comfortable Saying 'Yes'": Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

The CX Leader Podcast: "Get Comfortable Saying 'Yes'": this wav audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Steve W.:
Frontline employees are an essential part of the customer experience, and contact centers have the potential for major impact.

Steve B.:
I will be honest and say every contact center is good or bad, and different companies today rely too much on automation to meet their CX goals. They rely too much on measurement. They rely too much on dynamics that are observations versus just how do I make sure my people give a damn.

Steve W.:
Exploring customer experience in the contact center? On this episode of The CX Leader Podcast.

Announcer:
The CX Leader Podcast with Steve Walker is produced by Walker, an experience management firm that helps our clients accelerate their XM success. You can find out more at walkerinfo.com.

Steve W.:
Hello, everyone, I'm Steve Walker, host of The CX Leader Podcast, and thank you for listening. We like to say that it's never been a better time to be a CX leader, and this podcast explores the topics and themes to help leaders like you leverage all the benefits of your customer experience and help your customers and prospects want to do more business with you. Even in an era where self-service options are becoming essential to many companies customer experience, the contact center is still a large part of many organization's front line efforts, and as we've said many times before on the show, frontline employees are essential when it comes to CX. But how is call center technology adapted to accommodate customer experience? Well, I'm very happy to have my guest on this episode, Steve Biederman, president of NobleBiz, a contact center technology company providing world class voice services, cloud contact center, and omnichannel solutions. And he's going to give us his view on how CX is integrated into the modern contact center. Steve, thanks so much for being a guest on The CX Leader Podcast.

Steve B.:
Steve, thanks for having me. I really look forward to this topic. I get the opportunity to speak about customer experience often, but your audience is pretty important, I think, out there and I'm especially looking forward to this.

Steve W.:
Well, I love just our prep here off the air and and getting to know you a little bit and talking about this, you know, it does get more complex all the time. And as much as we like to self-serve, you know, sometimes you just you really need that human piece. It's that human digital integration that I think we're all trying to work around. But maybe before we really get into the topic, if you wouldn't mind just in case our listeners aren't familiar with you and your company, just give us a little bit of background on your journey and how you got to where you're at in your career and a little bit about NobleBiz.

Steve B.:
I started, I'm 69, so I've been doing this business stuff for a long time. In the late seventies, I started my first real job was in a contact center. In those days, we had smoke-filled rooms and phones and lists that we cut out of yellow pages or or the phone book, and we just went down and called. And over the years, as I began to learn more about business and interaction, it always stuck with me. The the critical piece was how I communicated with who I was trying to either sell to service or support. And over the years, we began to examine it. I did. The businesses I was with really were great in terms of embracing it, and I'd like to say this that, you know, I know today we talk about CX and CX experience often and and we're very focused on it. But don't forget that as long as people have been buying things and servicing and supporting things, they've been doing customer service and support and and always have taken it seriously too. The value proposition over the years that I've learned is that today what we're finding is that we're beginning to bring in more tools. So in addition to the human experience, we're bringing in automation and the automation, especially in contact centers, can can assist with that. So to that, I worked myself up through the the hard work of running customer service departments and training and and learning it and consulting with businesses and over the years when I was consulting, the thing that I always would recognize in businesses and listen, they never called me in on a good day, so when I came in, it was there was a problem of one sort or another. It inevitably came down to something with the relationship with the customer. Either they couldn't, they couldn't get a relationship with a customer, or once they had the relationship, they were not able to sustain their relationship with the customer. And businesses always had a hard time self-examining and saying, But we're not good at this, you know, they were often saying, but it's the market isn't allowing us to to sell into it or there isn't a need for it for some reason. If they can only talk to us and and our customers are not leaving because of us, they're leaving because of money or they're leaving because of of of other dynamics. But ultimately, if you really examined it, it came down to this relationship and and how did you quantify it and and make it reliable and sustainable? And in that I built my own business beginning in the late 90's after consulting in contact center technology because to me, you're right, where people were communicating in large numbers seem to me to be the center of the universe. And how do you do it? How do you do it well and how do you do it often and right? And I built a very successful business in those days called Touch Star Software. We were became a world leader in building contact center calling technology. And we did it in spite of the fact that at the time our business was one of many in a very mature industry and we were two guys living on a park bench without a lot of financial support. And really the only interest we had was how do we get a customer and keep a customer? And we did just so much to get a customer and so much to keep a customer that one customer begat the next and the next. And we began to examine, how are we getting customers in this incredibly difficult and mature world when these big people out here are are still here and doing what we're doing? Why aren't people going with us? And we realized that it was really the core value that we kind of went into went into things with, which was all about the client. We had to look at our build tools and and culture and approach to how we we honored our customers gift of trust to us that we could we could advertise and that we could say, this is who we are. What you're buying is not technology, you're buying this relationship. And through that experience, what inevitably happened was we we ended up with over 5000 call centers using us. One of the world leaders with six global offices. And we did it without all of the resources that most businesses are used to having, such as the right funding, the right training, the right expertize. We just did it with our heart. So entrepreneurs, we've continued to do that and NobleBiz really built on that concept today, and it's why we're really having a lot of success, even in tough times.

Steve W.:
So how did you come up with the name NobleBiz?

Steve B.:
Well, that's an easy one. You know, the founder of the business was not Steve Bederman. The founder of the business was Thomas Nobel. So it was easy to be NobelBiz.

Steve W.:
So let's talk a little bit about your services and what you do for call centers. What? And actually, I loved your comment earlier about it all comes back to customer service. This is one of the things I've always thought, you know, back in the, you know, early, early days before a mass marketing, almost all business was local. And everybody knew who they did business with, right? And then because we got so much choice and so much volume and so much mass marketing, it became, you know, personalized. And really what we're trying to do today is to recapture some of that at scale. And that's why some of these things are timeless, you know, and it's important. But, you know, just talk a little bit about kind of the mission critical aspect of of, you know, leveraging technology in a in a modern call center today and how you guys do that?

Steve B.:
Well, you know, a call center can have anywhere from probably 25 agents to twenty five hundred or more agents.

Steve W.:
Yep.

Steve B.:
They're usually in the same area. Well before the pre-pandemic most of them were sitting in buildings and in large spaces together. Today, many of those same agents are sitting at home but doing the same work because technology like ours allows it. So when when I began in this industry, we called what we built dialers, and these were ways for these large groups to call millions of phone numbers quickly and to make sure that every time an agent hung up the phone, they had another call in their ear and they were ready to talk. So you were trying to to change the the formula, which was when you were hand dialing, as I said I did in the seventies in a contact center, you were doing 100 dials in your shift. Now, and with that, you were hoping to get about twenty five contacts. Now, when dialers came into existence, that was allowing a single agent to have 40. contacts in an hour, not in a shift, but in an hour or more, so 40 potential quality conversations in that time. So things became automated and we built dialers, and today the difference is not much. The difference is this everything was done for call centers in voice, and today it's done two different ways than it used to be done. And one is it's in the cloud. So it's just easier access, less cumbersome, much easier for a contact center to just not worry so much about the technology infrastructure and simply to worry about how do I do my communication and which is good because it gives them the ability to just think about their activities versus their back end. And then the other part is it allows for a wider range of communication tools. So instead of just voice today with our technology, we call ours, in fact, OmniPlus. It, it's Facebook, it's Telegram, it's video and email and and chat. And and so the difference is you have these agent groups that, by the way, in the old days with the dialers, you'd have five hundred out of five hundred people doing voice connections. And today you you'll have you can have five hundred doing voice connections. But choosing also to do chat, you can do these other things. And what the versatility of that allows is for the customer side to make the choice of how they want to communicate. You know, not everybody wants to do voice anymore. Not everybody likes an email. Some people just like doing it through Facebook. Some people do it through chat and other means, and a contact center said, essentially by the use of our technology, they're saying, Look, I'm more interested in communicating with who I want to or need to communicate with, not communicating in the only way I know how. So they're saying, let me do it the way the and the customer, the consumer knows how. So if they want to do it a different way, I'm able to do it for them. And it it's an early stage for contact centers in how they're figuring out how to use these robust media channels. But we're there to help them and teach them and talk about the strategies.

Steve W.:
Yeah, I'll never forget it was probably it was before the pandemic. I want to say it was maybe summer of nineteen. I was touring a modern call center of a large cable operation, and they showed me an area where they were monitoring Twitter and they were responding and it just blew me away. But that that's the kind of power that we're talking about today.

Steve B.:
It is, but it's even different today, Steve.

Steve W.:
Well, I'm sure it is in two and a half years now, the COVID and everything.

Steve B.:
Just in two and a half years, whereas what you were seeing in that organization was a group of people monitoring Twitter and other people on the phone. Today…

Steve W.:
They're doing it all.

Steve B.:
…that one person can do the Twitter, do Facebook, do Telegram and do voice all at the same time.

Steve W.:
Yeah. And you know, a lot of that's just come from some of the innovative companies. I mean, when we're used to using Uber and Amazon, you know, you pretty much want that kind of experience in everything you do.

Steve B.:
Yeah. By the way, I have my own experience. The other day I was with a large hotel chain. I was really frustrated because I had to cancel and it was just I was struggling with this whole conversation and we were doing this entire conversation through texting back and forth or chat. And it was just it was just very frustrating. And I said, I wish we could just talk. And they said, well, we can, here. And we immediately began to talk and the same person, I didn't have to replay the conversation and it was really seamless and it really was powerful for my experience.

Steve W.:
Hey, my guest on the podcast this week is Steve Bederman. He is the president of the contact center technology company NobleBiz. We've been having a really delightful dialog about all the technology and all the things that are happening technologically, but it really comes back down to just plain good old customer service. And so how do you not get lost in and hung up on the technology and really make sure that you're focused mostly on the customer? I know the cloud. You mentioned that it's it's allowed these call centers to not have as a capital investment or as big a concern with the technology, but just, you know, how do you make sure that you put customers first, make sure that you keep them first?

Steve B.:
Well, you just sort of defined what NobleBiz itself is set up as. So for us, we compete in a world where there are over two hundred companies that do at least advertise they do the same thing that we do. So there are over two hundred companies worldwide that are doing contact center technology that are offering different variations of the same for contact centers. So how do we separate ourselves from anyone else? Because the truth is, our feature sets are somebody else's give or take. And in the next six months, we'll have something they don't. They'll have something we don't. It just kind of goes on. So you can't really separate yourself in terms of just the value proposition of your product. So NobleBiz has had to say, how do we what is different about NobleBiz? The difference is this: we make a promise and we keep a promise. That's it. That's who we are. That's what we are. That's what we believe people want. You want, I want. Everybody wants all the time is once we come to an agreement, that's a promise that we make, and it's a promise kept. And then what we do within our organization is we build process systems, culture and approach to how to assure it. So when we say to a client, we make a promise that we keep it. You can trust in our hands because this is how we will do it or this is what we will do. We then say, Let us show you how we do that. Let me show you inside our company before you choose us. We want to make sure you have a picture of our dynamic in terms of how a promise is kept. It's my belief that our business has grown as rapidly as it has because what we are offering is compelling. It's compelling because it's straightforward, it's simple, and it's backed by an approach that is sustainable. Now, contact centers are built in in many ways in the same method. Contact centers have one issue, though, and that is that it isn't the technology that can assure customer service. It can assure a form of communication that everybody is comfortable with. But they still have to focus on how they communicate, how they make a promise and how they keep a promise. And I will be honest and say every contact center is is good or bad and different, just like every business. My belief is this is that companies today rely too much on automation to meet their CX goals. They rely too much on measurement. They rely too much on on dynamics that are observations of how they go to work each day or the results of their work, versus just how do I make sure my people give a damn? And frankly, that's about culture, that's about listening and that's about management. That's about how do I manage my organization individually to the individual communication or promise me to make sure they do it time and time again? How many times do people today contact a contact center or an office or a business? And they talk to somebody and and they get a certain distance and it goes nowhere because there's no way to audit, to follow up and to to hold a business accountable to what they're doing.

Steve W.:
So how do you go about that? How do you go about helping your clients and and your employees and and even your clients employees to make sure that they keep this spirit of service front and center?

Steve B.:
Yeah. Well, and honestly, when I say culture, it's a generic word and people all feel they have their great culture. But to me, it's stating to your people every day, constantly in every meeting and every thing that you do, what your single core value is. A business. You know, often businesses state their 12 to 15 to 18 points of what their mission is, and you can read it on a form and say their mission is all these things. In my opinion, your mission is your core value, and your core values should be simple and easy to understand, such as at NobleBiz, a promise is a promise and we keep it. It's as simple as that, so then what you do, in addition to talking about it constantly, you force within your organization on every decision made of any significance a matching of that decision against the core value. All right. A customer wants something from me that I'm not used to giving. I'm going to decide whether I do it or not. If I give it to them or let's say I say not in this case, I'm not going to give it to that customer. How does that meet – before I get to go to my customer and say, No, I'm not doing it with you, I have to match it against my core value. That says, is that keeping a promise is not doing something you say no equal to me, not keeping or keeping my promise? And you, I'm telling you, the hardest thing is not teaching people how to run their craft. It's how to run the art of community of relationship, which is how do I meet that? So you have to build it into every way you do your business, every decision made, and you have to build these these real tools in your business and designs that will that forces all of your employees to say, did we or did we not meet it?

Steve W.:
Steve, we've come to that point in the program where I ask every guest to give us their take home value and this is your best tip or any idea that you might have for our listeners that they could actually take back to their office and implement and make sure that they are being better stewards of their customer focus in their organization so. Steve Bederman, what is your take home value today?

Steve B.:
Steve, thanks for asking that because I think it's the most critical piece of every business, every relationship in your life. And it's this: get comfortable saying "yes." Stop getting comfortable saying no. Businesses are often built around the idea of living within their their structure, and that means that you either fit in their structure or you don't. And you know, in an applied way, you're saying your organization. No, when you can't say yes, and I'm saying to people building these businesses that that care about their client get used to saying yes, get used to the idea that there must be a way to do this well for the customer and to support them. So back to the original. Be uncomfortable saying no and get really comfortable saying yes.

Steve W.:
Hey, thanks for that. Take home value and for all the time you shared and expertize you shared with us today, Steve. Really appreciate you being on the show.

Steve B.:
Steve, thanks for having me and to all of your audience.

Steve W.:
And if anybody wanted to continue the dialog with you, can you just let us know how they might get a hold of you and NobleBiz?

Steve B.:
I absolutely love that and anybody can. Certainly, you can find me on LinkedIn or my email address. Steve Bederman, "B" as in "boy", E. D. E. R. M. A. N. So it's Steve.Biederman@NobleBiz.com and I'll leave this with with your audience. I always do this and I am not scared to because I do care about the audience: 720.301.4325, my direct line.

Steve W.:
Wow, now that is somebody that is customer service oriented, so really appreciate that. Hey, and if you want to talk about anything else you heard on this show or previous shows, or how Walker might be able to help your business, please feel free to contact me at podcast@walkerinfo.com. Be sure to check out our website cxleaderpodcast.com to subscribe to the show and find all our previous episodes, podcast series, contact information. You can drop us a note. Let us know how we're doing. Suggest an idea for a new podcast, or just peruse the site and see all of the tremendous content that we have there. The CX Leader Podcast is a production of Walker. We're an experience management firm that helps companies accelerate their experience management success. You can read more about us at walkerinfo.com. Thank you for listening. And remember, it's a great time to be a CX leader, so go out there and lead well. We will see you again next time.

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