>> Live from Orlando, Florida It's the Cube covering Enterprise Connect twenty nineteen brought to you by five nine. >> Hi. Welcome back to the Q. We are live at Enterprise Connect. Twenty nineteen. Can you hear the buzz behind Stew, Minutemen and me? It's party time. It's five o'Clock kicking things off, welcoming a couple of guests to our program this afternoon. We've got Blair Pleasant, president and principal analyst at Confusion and co founder of BC Strategies, and Michael Rose, the director brand and corporate communications from five nine. Welcome to the Q. Thank you. >> Good afternoon. >> Welcome to the party. >> I know. With the beer and the wine for us, >> we think it's momentarily momentary. So you have been coming to Enterprise Connect about the last ten years or so. A little bit of an overview about what you're doing at this year's easy. >> Sure, So I'm going to be doing for different sessions here. Esso. On Wednesday, I'm going to be giving a presentation. Well, one is going to be to the Channel partners who are selling, you see, telling them about why they should be selling Contact Center and all the wonders about contact center and customer experience. And I'Ll also be doing a session on unified communications end user adoption, and I'm gonna have a panel of and users who were going to tell about their talk about their adoption programs on Thursday. I'm doing a session on collaboration about team collaboration and how to migrate and things to do there. And then I'm participating in the last note where a bunch of analysts consultants, they're gonna basically wrap up the show and talk about, you know, key findings and key messages, and it's going to really good discussion. >> You have a very busy week ahead. I'm curious as to when I were chatting earlier today about the evolution of this event over the last twenty eight twenty nine years, but also paralleling the massive evolution of communications and collaborations, the rise of the empowered consumers who wants to be able to have a conversation on any channel at any time and have our issues resolved right away. Give us your perspective cause you have a very full week here about some of the turns that you you've seen in the last year that you're looking forward to helping customers understand. You talked about selling, you see, so contact centers of service. Yes. >> So when it comes to unified communications, as I mentioned one thing that I've been really focused on is user adoption because companies will buy technology and they'LL deploy technology. But they don't necessarily. That doesn't mean that uses air actually going to be using it. So that's one thing that they really have to focus on. And then when we turn to the contact center side, it's all about customer experience. And in fact, Michael and I have been doing a lot of work in this area. And so we've been hearing the term customer experience. You know, c X. But what's also important is employees or agent experience and a X, as we're calling it. So getting the agent involved also and making sure that they've got the tools that they need to help them do a really good job. >> Alright, so Michael, you have brand and you did a very nice job bringing us the five nine mugs. Yes, there's water in them, but this customer service index can you bring us inside what you're working on, what we're Blair's been involved and let's get into that. >> It's basically an annual study that we've been doing now for two years, and we plan to continue in the first part of it looks at what the consumers are saying about why they raid a customer experience the way they do want that, what's important to them and, more importantly, what turns them off. And as we found in when we did the analytics with Blair is a bad customer engagement. They're likely to leave you and not to business anymore. We were talking earlier about consumers now have voice and choice. You know, they they've got voice through social media to complain, and they will leave and find another brand to partner with. And so that's sort of a key finding around. What is it the people want? And it's basically a quick response. Know who I am and engage me the way I want to be engaged. >> But what was interesting is they want a quick response. But they're also willing to spend more time on the phone or whatever in an interaction talking to an agent if it means that they're going to get the response that they need and get the information that they need to get their problem solved. So speed is important when it comes to getting an agent on the phone or getting that agent, but then they're willing to take the time if it means I'm going to get my problems solved. Do >> you think that one of the things we chatted about with Ryan can? The CMO of five nine earlier today is is the fact that five nine has five billion recorded customer conversations and we were chatting, I think, also with Jonathan Rosenberg. It's an expectation, right? We call contact Center for whatever product or service or whatnot that we're having an issue with her were enquiring about. And you hear that? So there's an expectation that is going to be reported. How did cos actually glean insight from that data? Because I'm there, I'LL tell you, I never think when I'm on the phone call, I have a problem to resolve. And I don't think that they're recording my conversation to help me and all the customers that probably have the same problem. So I thought that was an interesting sort of way of of looking at it. But it's also interesting that that you found that people are willing to spend more time if the value to them is greater. >> Yep, absolutely. And we're finding that companies are using that data. You know, we hear about Big Data Analytics. So analytics is really the big thing, you know, looking at the the whole picture, getting that holistic view of what's working, what isn't working. And then turning that also into I talked before about the agent experience using this to improve what the agent is doing and how the agent is interacting with the customer. >> And that's that's probably a good build to the next part of the study, which is a business decision maker. And so we survey them to see other, any parallels and what they're thinking compared to the consumer on one of the probably most disappointing findings issue and we're doing a webinar on this next week is the lowest thing they write is employeessatisfaction. So they look ATT, you know, is that the right product we're selling? Do we have the right tools but actually looking after the agent, all the employees that ranks the least on their list of priorities, which is quite distressing and sad. But >> the good news is that they did great customer satisfaction very highly, So when it came when we were looking at what's really important to your business and to growing your revenues. Customer satisfaction was very important. So we're happy about that. >> Which it has to be directly tied to the agent experience like, for example, making sure that an agent has is empowered to make a decision. But they had to have the information. They have to have the content to be delivered through the right channels. So that's interesting finding that you are you expecting to hear on DH talk Claremore this week with companies to say, This is why Employeessatisfaction has got to move up the rights because it is directly tied to customer satisfaction. >> So I've been talking about that for a long time, and it's so important, and I think cos they're starting to get it. And we're also seeing more tools like a I. You know, that's really going to be used to help provide the information to the agents and help them do that. Better job. >> One of things. It's always interesting when you have these annual studies to see what is actually changing over time. You know, I've got background on telecommunications, you know, we talk about Omni Channel today. We talked about, you know, unified messaging twenty years ago, we talked about a today. We talked about intelligence and data decades ago. So what's changing? What? Staying the same. Any insight that you're getting, As as we've been moving with the survey Overtime >> voices still K as in, people want to make a phone call if they need help and believe it or not, that's across all age groups that even tops out number one for Millennials, which surprised you. And I know Blake. You did a little test group at home with that? >> Yeah, I had my twenty somethings. They had some friends over. And I asked him, You know, when you have a problem and you need to call contact customer service, what do you do? It? And the first thing they do is try to do self service, you know, try to figure it out on their own. You know, Google it go to YouTube or whatever, but then, if they can't find the problem, they will pick up the phone and called a contacts and, you know, call customer service and you would think that twentysomethings wouldn't do that. But they know that if it's something important and they need to get that information right away or solve that problem right away. They pick up the phone, and they also do chat and email. But the study found that chat actually went down this year, which were kind of surprised about so the use of email went up. But these of chat went down >> Any thoughts as to why that might be going down? >> I think it's because companies haven't been providing that good experience. So even though they're offering chat, it's it's not optimized. So sometimes you know when you're doing shots, you know you're on a website. You doing chat, you can tell when the agent is talking to like ten other people at the same time. So it's it's really frustrating. So I think companies have the technology, but they're not doing it the right way. >> I mean, I know I've had Sometimes you get a chat and I'm like, I'm not talking to a person. It's a chat, Bott. Oh, is this some outsourced chat that maybe doesn't have the skill level that I need as opposed to? If I pick up the phone, I know most of the time that agent I'm going to get either can answer my question or can escalate to the person that, >> interestingly to the one that's right down near the bottom is social media and it hasn't moved for two years. So we're not saying now that could be a chicken and the egg. Is it because companies are not offering it? So therefore, I don't know. I can use it or don't people want to use it on? We had a theory cause. Social Media's had a bit of a rocky ride in the last year with data and privacy and everything else. So maybe consumers just don't trust it yet. And there are other channels, like email as you said, that we've seen increasing. >> But if customers are unhappy about something, they're going to go on. Social media >> is the first thing I do. When you were saying that it was surprising it was low, because if I at a recent experience with an S B and wasn't getting five minutes with a robot on the phone, couldn't get all I wanted was a tech to come out to my house to fix something, Then I had to have somebody call me back and verify. Have you do the exact same thing I've been through this, so I went to Twitter to escalate that. So that's how I think about that. I appreciate that, they responded, But it's I guess it's a couple of a number of interesting things that you guys have brought up today that surprised you. The X factor being lower millennials actually wanting to talk to human. That's good. But also this the fact that people aren't using social as much as maybe you would've thought, or they may be. They don't release. I can't. Or maybe it's to customers not have appropriate affected social listening programs to respond to the volume. >> So that's the chicken and egg thing Michael was talking about. A lot of companies don't offer social as a channel because they think that customers don't want to use it. The customers aren't using it because they don't realize that companies are offering it. >> So, Claire, while we have you, you've got a good perspective on this space. What's differentiating the leaders in the space from some of the laggards in this space? >> Oh, that's a good question. I think a lot of it has to do with again the Focus on the customer experience, you know? So if you're talking about the vendors, the vendors that are succeeding are the ones that really do. Look at the customer, not just the technology. So so many companies could do technology. The technology is the easy part, its doing it right. It's really making that difference and making things simple, making things unified, making it not complex for customers. Because right now things are just so complex. You have to go no to so many different places. Teo, to make things work. So the more you can make things seamless and simple. I think that's what's really separating. The winners from the losers >> will make Michael Maybe you can elaborate on, you know, delivering a integrated connected on the channel experience. But I think there's still some of maturation curve that it's on, whereby I might have an expectation as a consumer than I'm goingto go through chat or email or another channel. And then if I go through Twitter or social, I'm hoping that this conversation is connected. Where can five nine help customers across industries to really integrate and deliver Omni Channel? >> I think the first thing is the cloud because moving to the cloud enables you to move quickly is a business. And as we were saying today, the software updates all the time and it's easy. It's like your phone, you just downloading away you go. So it's It's the cloud first to get to the data, and we talked about that before, too, and growing. Our CEO calls it the dark data because no one's using it. And you need to mind that data to get the inside, because then the system will start directing the consumer based on what the intelligence is telling them, irrespective of which channel they come through on. Do you really want an experience where I've done tweeting away with a company? And they said, Well, privately email you now because we want to take it off line and then they'LL say, Well, no, now we need to call, but it's it's fluid. All the data and all the information is passed through that communication, So it's seamless for me, the consumer, and it's more rewarding for the agent because they can actually get to the core issue for the customer and resolve it. >> That's a customer there. Maybe Blair, This is a question for you. How does a customer take what's probably traditional silos of customer experiences and culturally evolved as a business to be able to deliver what Michael was talking about? I mentioned that those Silas and that kind of cultural disparity might be kind of a challenge for an organisation to pivot as quickly as they need to when customer lifetime value was on the line. >> Yeah, and it's definitely been a challenge for a lot of companies, but they know that they have to get there. So I think even though some of them might be resistant, they realised that to get the results that they need, they really do have to do that. But it's a cultural change, and you asked before about what's separating some of the winners from losers. I think that's a big part of it is being able to make that change >> player, you know, as I was getting ready for the show, there's general belief that customers are embracing of the cloud. It's no longer we're no longer in the evangelization phases. I've heard five nine, but we're in adoption. I'm curious player. When it comes to a I, though our users ready. Everybody we talk about these technologies are going to be infused with aot. There's some, you know, fear. Sometimes out there is like the robots, or they're going to take my personal data or anything like that. What do you see out there and what should we be aware of and where do we need to go? As an industry, I want to come stay. I So >> as far as consumers, they do need to be worried. You know, they're definitely issues about privacy, and you know what's going to happen with the information. But I think user shouldn't really know that there's a I involved on, and that's also debate we have, like, if you're interacting with the pot, you know, if you're doing a chat, do you know if it's a body or an agent? So some companies, you know, make it clear, you know? Hi. This is, you know, Joe the Bob, But other companies don't. So then you have to say I and I've had these experiences are youa, but no, I am a real person. Okay, prove to me your real person. So it's so it's really interesting. So some companies feel that customers are more open if they're talking to a bomb. And in certain industries, like if it's healthcare or finance, people are going to be more open if it's about because they don't want to share their personal information with a live person. But if it's a computer is like okay, I can share the information. So it were very much in early days, so we don't really I have the experience to drawn yet. So let's talk about this again next year. >> Well, Blair, Michael, thank you so much for joining student. Be on the Cube this afternoon and sharing spending some time since you have such a busy week where we appreciate your insights on the event on enterprise, collaboration and communication. And we appreciate your time. Thank you for soon. Minutemen. I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching the Cube