Customer Experience Superheroes - Series 14 - Episode 1 - Eric Vermillion - How technology can enable better customer outcomes

Speaker A: M. Foreign.

Speaker B: Hello, and welcome to the latest episode of the Customer Experience Superheroes podcast series. My name is Christopher Brooks and I am your host and your guide throughout this series, a series in which we, uh, meet up with some of the more incredible individuals in this broadening category of customer experience. Today's guest is someone who has really been there from the start. Um, him and I were talking about the fact that we probably were doing this before we even realized it had been coined as customer experience. And that is the CEO of HelpShift, Eric Vermillion. Now, Eric will be familiar to many of you through whose work he's done in many organizations that have progressed and become the staple diet of the CX industry. Working with HelpShift, Eric is really on the forefront of technology. Uh, I wanted to find out just how well that technology is serving customers and just how much more we've got to go. So, without further ado, let's go and meet, um, up with Eric. So here we are. Hello, Eric. How are you?

Speaker A: I'm very well, thank you.

Speaker B: Now, we shouldn't have a time delay on the call today because as we found out, you're actually in England at the moment. So you're not home stateside. You're over here. So this works well.

Speaker A: It works great. Yeah. I'm, um, helping my daughter with move. She's a university student here in London. So it worked out perfectly.

Speaker B: And how are you finding? I mean, you can give us first hand, uh, approval. US customer experience versus UK customer experience. Is there a difference? Do we, do we treat things differently here to how we do in the us?

Speaker A: I would say I probably prefer the UK customer experience. As a tourist, you go out to a lot of restaurants and coffee shops and pubs, and it's very nice to not have, uh, machines shoved in your face. Being asked for a 30% gratuity on every single project.

Speaker B: I was in Canary Wharf actually last weekend for my son's 18th, and we went to a restaurant and the waitress actually said there has been a 12 and a half percent service charge added, but can I just let you know, you don't have to pay that. And she made a really clear point of telling me you didn't need to pay it, so that you'd have probably fallen off your chair if somebody had said that to you.

Speaker A: I guess, don't get me wrong, I'm happy to provide a tip. I just don't want it to be shoved in my face as sort of a mandate at the end of the, you know, end of the meal. But yeah, so it's, uh, but no, it's a, it's a lovely city and

Speaker B: you can give us a comparison. Understand you're off to Germany next. I'm part of something called the European Customer Experience Organization. It was set up because, you know, different parts of Europe, Scandinavia, Iberia, um, Eastern Europe, there are different approaches to customer experience. And I think probably the misconception is that Europe, it's just one experience, but I know you're well traveled. Have you found different parts of the world in different parts of Europe? The experience changes where you go?

Speaker A: Yeah, I think there's, there's some places. I think we've all seen and heard about some of the changing dynamics in some of the Mediterranean locations that have all these Airbnbs and short term rentals that have taken over. And I think there's been a little bit of pushback from some of the locals there, uh, to all the tourists. I think it's starting to normalize a little bit. There was, I guess it's often been referred to as revenge travel that happened after Covid, uh, started to wane and the world has kind of started to equalize a little bit. So I think you're seeing more interesting customers. I traveled through Germany, France, uh, Belgium and the Netherlands right as Europe was opening up. And I've never experienced such spectacular customer service upgrades in every hotel. You know, impeccable service at every restaurant because they were just starting to come back. Yeah, yeah. Then it shifted to this just mass of people that showed up and hard to find the right staffing and balance the staffing needs with the demands of all those people that were doing the COVID revenge travel.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think you're right. That's. We not. We've missed you. We really have missed you. Honestly, we've really, really missed you. So I take what you say there. I mean, we are finding certainly. Um, I was talking to my son who's just come back from a trip to Croatia and Czech Republic, and his expectation of the holiday experience is very different to, you know, my generation. Very, very different experience expectation that he had. And I'm thinking to myself, wow, is that a consequence of the change following Covid or is this actually just, uh, an improvement to provide a good attraction and to get customers to come there? The expectation and standards you have to provide are much higher. Let's talk about your world helpshift and within customer service. Have you found over the years the expectation and the needs of customers has changed, or are we principally. Is it still the same questions and the same queries.

Speaker A: I think a lot of the questions are the same, but the expectations of the consumer are very different in that it used to be very transactional. If you think if I asked somebody to describe their experience calling their cable company or their bank in 1985 or in 2020, that would not be a terribly different experience than the one you have today. But, I mean, I had to have a messaging exchange with a credit card company in the last week or two, and I literally asked if this was a real person that I was talking to, because I couldn't tell the difference. And the credit card company's responses and their refusal to answer the question left me wondering if it really was a real person. I don't know. I mean, at the end of the day, my problem was solved. And so I think that's. I would say there's been a big shift to resolution and the focus on resolution. I mean, that's what a consumer wants, is resolution. And then a much more relational approach to customer service versus the transactional one that I would say I grew up with.

Speaker B: Would you subscribe to this kind of shift from customer service to customer care? Has it become like that, where you're kind of resolving and focusing on the relationship or. Yeah, that. Not kind of the right language?

Speaker A: No, I think it. I think it is. If you. If you think about what, um, you know, what a relationship looks like, mine are all on this thing, right? Somewhere, you know, somewhere or another, you know, kind of that messaging, your mobile device is right at the center of it, and you have, um, you've got a lot of relationships. And sometimes I go two or three months without engaging someone that I have a relationship with. Usually I do it through this thing, and, you know, you pick right up where you left off. I think that's one of the things that's really changing in customer service, is that customers are kind of expecting that sort of relationship or relational kind of engagement, uh, with the brands that they do business with. And the smart brands are figuring out how to leverage that to create more opportunity for themselves, uh, as well, because that's. It's harder to leave a relationship than it is, you know, uh, a vendor, you know, somebody that you just have a transactional with.

Speaker B: It's a very interesting point you made there, because I know I've definitely got friends like that that will just pick up the conversation as if one of us just popped out the room. You know, just be a case of, oh, uh, my dad's still doing this. It's like, you know, we haven't spoken for five years and that's the open. My dad's still doing this and all of a sudden I've got this. Yeah, I know exactly what they're talking about. But actually with a, with a, a business, when you're dealing with them, if you've got to go back and say, I, uh, bought this from you, and that was on Tuesday, and then this happened before that, it's very difficult. And I think if you did that in a human relationship where you had to kind of go, oh, I've forgotten, who's your dad? What did he do? You know, it breaks the relationship, doesn't it? So we expect the organization to pick up with the. Okay, you've called about the delivery that didn't arrive on Tuesday already. So is this what this is? Oh, yeah. You know, there's an expectation that you can just click in and go forward.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, no, it absolutely is the case. Well, I think the good customer experience leaders and organizations are figuring that out and they're leveraging all this technology that's coming to make that experience more of a reality for their customers.

Speaker B: And let's just go back there because obviously, I mean, technology has been a part of your life and customer experience has been part of your life. Not just now, but for many years. And probably like me, it was before it was even coined as customer experience. So give us an appreciation of Erica, kind of where you got into customer experience and the journey you've taken to where you are now. Uh, with helpshift.

Speaker A: Yeah, I spent about eight years at nice. That was really my first experience in customer experience. And when I started at Nice, it was really a call recording vendor. And uh, a lot of the calls were recorded for compliance reasons. They were banks, financial institutions that were recording stock trades and things like that that today we would even think about having, you know, floors and floors of buildings dedicated to these machines that recorded stuff. But as it became more possible to use technology to really accelerate your understanding of what your customers are asking for, I think it was called Interaction analytics that NICE released into the marketing in the late 2000s. And that really changed, started to change companies views of the contact center as a necessary expense, um, to something that could actually provide some organizational value. And a lot of those, uh, technology investments were funded on the basis that it could help do that, it could help make you grow, it could help you retain customers in a way that you couldn't before because you gained some sort of insight into what they actually wanted. And so I see a lot of parallels in the world today with AI. But I spent eight years at Nice and that kind of transformation helped propel nice from 200 million to over a billion and held a bunch of different leadership roles there. I've spent really my entire career in software and technology, moved to a little different space for a few years, and then joined HelpShift in 2019. And I was really enamored with, I spoke to, uh, Avinash Tripathi, the founder of the company, and he shared this vision of how the mobile device really can be at the center of all of the engagement that brands have with their customers. And that was really one of the principles that HelpShift was founded on around the time that smartphones became so prevalent. And just love, absolutely love that idea and the things that, that unlocked not only for consumers to really be, be able to have access to customer service quickly, anytime, anywhere in the world, but also for brands to be able to provide it in a way that they really couldn't before. So that was, you know, the attraction to Help Shift. And I still, the way that I'm seeing our customers help to drive that again, kind of that shift from a transactional to more of a relationship or relational kind of engagement model with their customers.

Speaker B: And is the purpose, when you joined in 2019, the purpose of Help Shift, has it remained the same? It's just the technology that's evolved? Or have you had to look at the business and think, well, actually, what market are we in?

Speaker A: Yeah, we've certainly made some changes. I mean we didn't, when the business started, we didn't intentionally set out to be focused on the gaming industry.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: But the gaming industry, because of its nature of not having these brick and mortar contact centers and this legacy approach to customer service or to cx, really love the idea of leveraging mobile and being able to kind of use that as the platform to engage with their customers. And so a lot, lot of our, um, you know, a large percentage of our customers just became concentrated in gaming. We still, we have others in, you know, financial services and retail and other industries as well that um, you know, get tremendous value out of our product. But that is what attracted keyword, uh, Studios to acquire HelpShift, um, at the end of 2022. So we've been, you know, a, uh, little over a year and a half, uh, under the keywords, flag and keywords, is very much, uh, kind of the leader in providing services to the gaming industry. And so um, while we have still continued to develop products for other industries, our messaging has certainly pivoted to be more focused on gaming. And we've kind of had to think through how do we combine the story of how our technology fits with kind of the human element as well. Because we provide the human element as well as the technology now. And I think it's been kind of a perfect, um, it's been a perfect opportunity to marry some of the trends that are going on in the industry as well with AI to say, hey, not only can we provide this technology that is, you know, that is fueled by AI, but also the people that know how to use it and manage it, because that's a big part of it, uh, as well. So it has evolved, but fundamentally leveraging the mobile device to create that, um, you know, kind of real time, any, any, anywhere, any place. Engagement with consumers is absolutely still kind of, you know, the central core of what we do.

Speaker B: And I mean you mentioned gaming and obviously, um, uh, the thing that's interesting I think about gaming and there are other sectors that you put in parallel, but they haven't got that kind of supply chain to worry about so much when it comes between them and the consumer. And also you said to yourself they haven't got that kind of bricks and mortar retail infrastructure so they've not needed to migrate to digital. And actually that whole space is what their consumers consume already. So there's a few advantages. I mean, I know we had a quick discussion beforehand, but I agree with you. Gaming is one of those sectors where there's a lot of lessons that other sectors can learn from. I mean they just go so fast. I mean, how have you found, are you keeping, do you find you have to keep up or do they come to you for inspiration or is it more of a kind of a collaborative approach?

Speaker A: No, it's, it's absolutely collabor collaborative. They're very open though to technology. And you know, a lot of the things that I think the rest of the CX world is starting to see as novel and unique and interesting many of our customers have been doing for many years and you know, and leveraging automation, uh, in, you know, in kind of that, that whole CX process. If you think about, you know, like a legacy industry, like a financial services industry, uh, they may have no problem with a cost per contact of, you know, 12, $15 a contact because their customers spend a lot of money with them. In the gaming industry we have a lot of customers that um, have a huge amount of players that don't pay them anything, but when there's a problem they still need help. And so, you know, you might have a uh, large bank that's trying to figure out how do we, you know, how do we shrink our cost per contact from $20 to $15. We're talking about pennies. You know, they've got to be able to serve these customers because if they don't, then they'll go play a different game and they'll never spend any money with them or, you know, the game won't become popular and generate, you know, the revenue in that way. So they have to take customer service very seriously. They have to answer even the players who aren't spending money with them. So they're, you know, oftentimes trying to figure out how to do that for pennies instead of dollars and deliver it in a very, you know, in an, still in an exceptional way. And so many of them have found that, you know, doing that through the app, I mean they, they were, I would say, some of the earliest adopters of providing support from directly within the app, leveraging messaging, you know, to provide that support so that it is um, either real time with a live person on the other side or just um, it just happens in a serial, um, way where the answer is delivered and whenever the customer responds and you respond back. Very similar to the relationship we talked about that you might have with friends that you message with regularly. Uh, and we've seen um, some of our, I'd say most well actually we recently published a case study with Sibo. It's on our website. Um, Sibo is the maker of Subway Surfers which is one of the most popular games out there. One of those downloaded games of all time. About 4 billion downloads I think, and an active player base of 150 million. You know, like when you think about the businesses in the world that have two and a half times, you know, it's, it's huge. But, and historically they approach CX in I would say a more traditional way with you know, more email focused support. And they only got, they were only able to achieve about a 10% deflection when they, you know, started to leverage, you know, tools like automated translations that you can do this, you know, on a global basis in game, you know, FAQs built in messaging, you know, within the, within the platform and bots for automated, you know, workflows. They were able to get a 95% deflection rate in a matter of three months. And here's the really important part. They did it while improving csat. So CSAT actually went up. So customers weren't frustrated. They Were actually excited that they could get a resolution in a much faster way. And I think this is, and I love the beauty of their story as well because this was not a cost savings effort. This was an opportunity to grow their business. They were launching a new game and so they were able to create some more automation, create some more uh, efficiency in how they were doing things and, and they were able to leverage that to grow their business. And that's another thing that I think gaming does a really good job of that of kind of shifting and pivoting as those improvements are seen in terms of their ability to scale or automate resolution, uh, of tickets.

Speaker B: I think there's an attitude. There isn't as a mindset because we've worked with organizations where they're making a transition, but then there'll be a new product launch, be the height of the season and everything goes on hold because that's the thing that's got to be done. And what you're saying is actually, you know, they just work through it. It's just in the mind. The M mindset is let's just get this, get this done. It makes sense. And to go from 10% to 95% as you say. So the, the case that is on the website. We'll put a link into your description.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Uh, it's a great. But it's also not. This is not an abnormal thing.

Speaker B: I was going to say they probably in their stride. Why are we capturing this? Just crack on to the next thing, you know.

Speaker A: Yeah, sorry. Yeah, I would say, you know, for the traditional CX operators, my advice, if you want to learn a little bit more about what the future looks like, go check out a gaming company's support organization because they really are, uh, I think sort of ahead of the curve on what the future of support looks like. And it's much more relational. Um, it's not so tethered to brick and mortar. It's not restricted by hours, it's not restricted by languages. It's very global in nature and it's always on.

Speaker B: Yeah. Which is kind of the wish list the customer, uh, service director, uh, has, isn't it? When they list down what do you really want from your service function? That's the list that kind of comes with it. So give me an appreciation then Eric. I mean of the stuff that, you know, you've done most recently with help shift, what are the things that really stand out to you as kind of, you know, this is, I'm really proud of this that we've produced or um, endeavors that you've been focusing on. What stands out for you?

Speaker A: Um, yeah, I think, you know, I mean I could give you more examples but we have, we have ah, ah a large percentage of our customers have been able to automate in excess of 50 or 60% of their support. Uh, and they've done that for years. And so I see a lot of these case studies that are launched by the latest AI vendor who's talking about how they can help reduce this and deflect that and save you all this money. I think our customers have been doing that for years. And this is not so it's not a uh, I'd say it's a more pragmatic approach. It's not there's this magic um, wand called AI that you can sprinkle on your ah, cx operations and magically save 30% or 50% of your costs. It is how do we take or how do we create the greatest outcomes for our players in the gaming industry, their customers or players. How do we create the ability for them to achieve the outcome that they're trying to get back to playing the game, never leave the game if they need support while they're in the game. And so leveraging not only the ability to really provide that support experience in any language, anywhere in the world 24 7, but using the, you know, using the insights that you're gaining um, from AI to deliver, you know, to have your humans deliver a much better experience for that consumer that makes them never want to leave uh, the game. And so when I say automate, you know, 95% um, of the tickets, those are really kind of low value things that um, many in many instances would cause the player to just say, you know what, I'm just going to move on to the next game.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: So it's not, you know, it's not that we've taken anyone's job or you know, anything like that by, by automating it we've actually unlocked a much more powerful experience and in turn made it a whole lot more fun for the agents themselves because they're not frantically just trying to do, you know, those, those tasks that they, they don't enjoy having to do any more than the players, you know, enjoy.

Speaker B: When I've said, I mean I've sat and listened to calls from, from players before and um, they're never, because they're typically playing you, you at best get kind of 75% of what's going on, don't you? It's really difficult for an agent to Actually interpret. And you almost have to work within the rhythm of their playing because, you know, if it's a. They'd rather wait 30 seconds. If they just need to get through this stage, then have it immediately and affect that stage. And that's, you know, you can't. And you can't see that. So it's very difficult. That's why the automation is just so much more advantageous to them. And then if it's something that I guess the 5% is, look, I've got a real problem here. I need to sit down and talk to someone. Then they can dedicate time and the agent can get into proper resolution mode.

Speaker A: Yeah, and I think that's where, you know, some of the technology that, that we've developed really makes that experience for the agent a lot easier as well, because we're also providing the tools to them that give them the indicator of. We're detecting that this person is getting upset, we're detecting that this person is getting anxious. Um, we're detecting this person is very satisfied with the experience right now. Um, but also allows you to see the summaries of some of the past transactions as well. We talked about that relational thing. I do remember what we talked about two to three months ago. I mean, I don't as an agent because I've had, you know, 4,000 additional conversations since then. But all that information is there to make me, you know, to refresh my memory and allow me to have kind of that relationship, uh, type of engagement with you. That leaves me feeling like this is a company that really cares about me.

Speaker B: It's not just the content, is it? It's also the um, uh, the, the tonality and the personality of, of the player. Because I remember seeing before, like on a call log and you know, this particular plant never said thank you at the end of, you know, the transaction. They never said thank you. So when it was resolved, they just went off and played. And without seeing that, the agent would have felt like that's rude actually. It's just who they are. You know, it's nothing personal. They just want to get back on with their game. And maybe they say that thank you when they put the phone down. I don't know. But you know, understanding what's gone on before helps really appreciate just kind of a player. Players are not necessarily the same people they are when they walk down the street. They. You go into, into your zone and become a player. So I think, um, of all the sectors, automation lends itself really well to that, doesn't it? I remember talking to, as a really good chap, David Wells, who works in crisis management and he said, um, it's a bit like playing, you know, it's kind of that, that kind of senses are heightened and actually everything is really, really, really important. And he said you can put parallels between crisis management and gaming. I was really interesting observation at the time.

Speaker A: Yeah, probably within the games as well. I mean, maybe that's just an inherent trait to people who like to like the game.

Speaker B: Maybe, maybe. And, and you know, I mean we, as you say, you, if you're working and collaborating with your, your gaming organizations, um, what do you collectively see as the future? Because I think we've started to realize, uh, at different paces of adoption just how technology can help the customer experience. I think we've spoken about it for a long time, but a lot of the stars are aligning now. Better integrations of systems and um, more case studies of how you can do it. So what do you see coming next? What's going to be the next paradigm for automation in customer experience?

Speaker A: Well, I think that having the ability to tie all those systems together in a way that we've never had before is incredibly powerful. And there are, you know, there are tools out there that I think others are developing, that we're developing as well that um, really, you know, I think of 10 years ago what it might have taken to find out that there was a serious, you know, bug in your game or your product, whatever. This isn't just for gaming. And you know, maybe you'd have call center agents, you know, manually creating tick sheets about something that they noticed. Or you, you'd ask them, or, you know, maybe somebody from the product team would ask them about what they're hearing. And you know, maybe at some point after it got loud enough, somebody would react and respond and make a change to where I think the future. And really it's kind of the now. I think people are trying to figure out how to operationally use it more than the technology limitations. You can identify that very quickly because that constant listening, uh, is there right now and create JIRA tickets for your development team or create JIRA tickets for automation sequences that are going on in your QA group to verify and test it and then kick something off to the development team. So resolution to operational issues like that for companies now are, I mean just the speed at which that can happen and companies can capitalize that on that opportunity is huge. And I think that's true for some of the marketing aspects of it as well, because you can Learn things very, very fast, and you're able to react and respond, you know, in virtually in real time to things in a way that you just couldn't before. And I think that's very exciting for the brands themselves, but also exciting, you know, for consumers, because, you know, how, how, you know, how many times do, you know, do support tickets come in for problems that haven't been fixed for weeks or months and you've got support agents that are, or, uh, they're saying, I don't understand why they don't fix this problem. Well, they don't know now. They know in five minutes and know how to fix it.

Speaker B: I was talking to one of my colleagues, Rodrigo, who's our kind of, uh, customer experience technology officer, and he made a good point that whereas before, it took a while to identify these things, your project manager could then jump in and identify the impact, the productivity gains you'll get from it, the amount you can invest in it. And what he was observing is the speed at which resolution happens, that, uh, this governance isn't happening so much more. So therefore, you're not able to realize how much of a gain you're getting. And therefore when the FD looks at the end of the year and kind of says, how much have we spent? How much have we gained? They're not to get through picture. And I just wonder if that, uh, desire to get things resolved in is not allowing the scale of the improvement to be appreciated by those who are going to make a decision on it, uh, in the future. You know, they'll just go, well, we don't need anyone to do this stuff anymore because I can't see any gain for, you know, I don't see any value coming in. But it's just, we're not capturing it as we go. Do you see where I'm going with that? Just kind of, you know, it's moving so fast, we can't realize just how much we're saving the organization or gaining the organization.

Speaker A: It's, I mean, what I've seen is it's easier to measure. You know, it's easier to measure now the kind of financial gains of it. The thing that I worry about is, um, you know, sort of the finance people saying we're going to just take that gain and turn it into kind of shareholder stakeholder profit. Whereas the opportunity that it creates to leverage, um, you know, to leverage those humans that are driving those real, the real meaningful engagements with consumers, to build brand loyalty and to become brand ambassadors for you higher than it's ever been before and you know, as a consumer where you have that kind of engagement with a brand, you love them, you want to give them all your business, you want to spend money with them, you're loyal, you talk about it, you share it, you promote what they're doing. And if you don't see past kind of that last mile of the journey. I'm not talking specifically about AI, but I think this is a core argument for why CX uses AI is to generate those kind of cost savings. You're missing the point. If you let it be about that you have an opportunity to really make uh, to make your contact center a uh, revenue generator for you. And I think the smart brands are figuring out that, my goodness, this is not a cost center for us, this is an opportunity center for us. And this is unlocking an opportunity. You think about the number of brands that have physical storefronts anymore. It used to be 30, 40 years ago, a lot of those face to face relationships happen there. Now they don't, they happen in your CX operations. And you've got an opportunity to really leverage the uh, gains that technology allows you to make to really amp up the type of engagement that you have, you know, with your consumers. And I think that's what's really going to separate a lot of, I mean even in kind of legacy industries that have been around for a long time, I think the ones that recognize that and do a better job of that are they're going to be the winners, uh, you know, in the next 10 years and, and CX is going to help, you know, help drive some of that. And so that's, I think something that we should all be excited about. You know, in the, in the CX

Speaker B: industry I think that probably plays the needing. There's a certain skill set needed. We talk about super powers and superheroes and you know, that, that ability to demonstrate to the, the board of the senior leaders that actually this, this gain is worth so much more if we put it back into the business than if you take it out of the business. And in the same respect, having that finance director that says tell me more, I'm curious which is one about rather than actually my conventional, you know, finance degree from Harvard or King's or LSD or wherever I got it tells me, you know, I give shareholder value at the cost of customer, the environment and the employee, that mindset shift needs to be there to say, show me how I can do more with it. If I give it back to you then isn't it? And that's about the relationship. Because I think if you position the CX as transactional, that's where it goes. But as you were saying, like the gaming industry are really looking at, uh, how you build relationships. And uh, you do need your FD and your finance team on board to say, here you go, go and deepen that relationship for me and you know, make the revenues more sustainable, more reliable over the long term. So as much as the automation is there, it does require the human to play their part in presenting it in the right way. Because I think there's a danger sometimes it can be presented as efficiency, cost saving, reduction, as opposed to better opportunity, relationship development and growth. You must have seen that. I'm sure you can see the wheat from the chaff, the good from the bad, who do that as well.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. I see a parallel in the software industry where I've spent my career. When I started my career, we didn't have this thing called customer success, we had support. But the software industry developed this entire role called customer success that's focused on continuous engagement with your best customers and making sure that they're utilizing as many of your capabilities as they possibly can and that they're doing it well and they're getting value from that. And we typically pay these customer success operations very well to do that role. And so I, I don't know, maybe we should rebrand CX customer success because that's really what you're unlocking here now with the technology. And that's, I mean that's a dream for brands, right? Is that uh, we've got the biggest possible share of your wallet and you're, you know, very happy and, and want to, want to promote what we do and, and tell all your friends about what we do. And, and you know, that's, I think that is something that cx, we talked about it earlier that it's, it's always been historically viewed as transactional and the better brands get at, uh, viewing it as relational and leveraging these tools to unlock those, you know, that kind of relationship, uh, with consumers. It's, it's a bright future for those brands.

Speaker B: And talking of bright futures, I mean it seems as if, you know, it's been a, I'm sure there's been a lot of experimenting, I'm sure there's been a lot of learning through failures and a lot of success successes, but it seems like it's been quite an exhilarating ride for you so far and the future will continue to be that way. I mean, you're very happy being connected to the automation, um, uh, torpedoes it fires off and don't see any need to go anywhere else. It feels like this is your space. Would that be true?

Speaker A: I think that's true. I think I'm probably the most, uh, difficult consumer that I know, or most demanding consumer. So it's easy for me to translate it. You know, when we think about technology and the way technology can help, it's easy to translate it to the experiences that I have.

Speaker B: A nightmare. She must just constantly be going, no, uh, it doesn't have to work that way. I know it can work differently. You can't tell me that. You can't tell me that. Well, look, you're here in England. I know you're heading off to Germany, so I won't keep you much longer. But just to say, Eric, thank you so much for giving us an insight into how you think. Um, and also in terms of the world of helpshift and uh, I think people like you in the world of CX automation is going to continue to have a healthy relationship with the customer as opposed to the transactional approach, as we said. And hopefully there'll be fewer of those and more who are investing relational type approach, which I appreciate is where you come from. So thank you very much for your time. I enjoyed having having you a guest on the CX podcast service.

Speaker A: My pleasure.