>> Live from Orlando, Florida It's the Cube covering Enterprise Connect twenty nineteen brought to you by five nine. >> Hello from Orlando. We are at Enterprise Connect twenty nineteen, and we're being very graciously hosted by five nine, which is the intelligent Cloud Contact center. We had a great few days, two minute minute myself talking with customers, partners, vendors on this massive change and enterprise, communication and collaboration. We're excited to welcome back to the key one of our alumni, Zs Caravella, the founder and principal analyst at Zeke Research. These It's great to have you here, >> Dawson. To me. Here >> you are. You should have the i p status at Enterprise Connect because you have been to this event some twenty times. >> I believe it's my twentieth. >> Can't imagine. So they didn't They should have rolled out the red carpet. Maybe we'll put a note >> in next year, >> but Yeah. There you go. I >> want to get my own booth. >> There you go. But I can't imagine how much this event has changed. And just your perspectives on Day three here of e. C nineteen and some of the vendors that you're like, Wow. A few years ago, you would never have seen a so and so here. >> Yeah, the shows massive compared to what it used to be the Remember when I first started coming to the show floor was maybe if I was a quarter the size, I mean generous, and it was really dominated by just a handful of companies. But since then, it's gone through several transitions the i p to software to the cloud on. That's gotten a lot more companies interested. And I think also, finally, businesses starting understand that if you're going to transform digitally right, communications has to be part of that fact. If you look at any piece of research right that I know there's a walker study throwing around saying by twenty twenty customer experience to be the number one brand differentiator, that's that's already happening. It's already the number one brand differentiator. And so because of that, more and more companies are now interested in communications. So, you know, ten years ago, fifteen years ago, we didn't have Amazon here. We didn't have Microsoft here. We didn't have Oracle here, but it's been a great thing for the show to see all these other companies that really have really great presidents validate what we've been saying for a long time, and it's a much different show today than it was. >> Yeah, it's really interesting that the thing that opened my eye is some of the companies that air here. I wish I knew which brand used these technologies so that if and when I do have an issue, I'm not gonna have that horrible customer experience that you know we've had in the past. It's like, you know, if I wanted to make a call, it's like, Can I even make a call? And, you know, do I actually get through the I V R. Things like that? I like how you set it up there. Some of these pendulums swings some of these waves of technology. Um, let's talk a little bit about voice because this used to be called Voice Khan, and it went through a rebranding because, you know, voice was in a little bit of kind. But, you know, we know voices. It's still very important. How does that fit in the hall >> when I went through that rebound, Frankly, voice wasn't sexy anymore. Everyone is talking about unified communications. No one was going to call anybody ever again. We're just gonna message or social each other to death and what's happened is voice is kind of important, right? And I think one of the undersea and friends to look at is that voice is becoming simultaneously less important and more important. What I mean by that is that they sound like a little bit of an oxymoron. But if you look across all age demographics right there, everybody has a prefered mode of communications, and it's rarely voice to start a conversation with the company. You message them your social, um, send them an e mail. But somewhere in there, you you eventually want to talk to somebody, and a that moment s o to start the conversation voices less important. But at that moment, you now want to have a conversation with uneducated agent who knows what your problem is and can help you quickly. And so now voices Mohr important than it's ever been before where, but I think the buried entry wasn't all that high, but voices, you know, it's it's important, it's sexy, and especially when people are dealing with emotional issues, they're dealing with money problems right in front of get a refund. If I'm trying to check on the status of my health, I want to talk to somebody. But when I want to talk to somebody, I want to get that conversation with over. It's possible. I think the bar's been raised as you mentioned to. You used to think that the dreaded Ivy are. If you have a dread and ivy are experience, you just want to business that company anymore, right? And so the stakes are higher than the bar's been raised on. What voices >> are you saying that the customers that you were talking to are now starting to get much more prescriptive in terms of understanding their customer journeys and their preferences? You know, before they used to go, we assume we're talking to millennials. They only want they only want ASA Master. Our company's starting to get more focused on. Alright, let's actually do analysis and determine if a voice only one of the next channels that we need to enable, >> uh, well, I wish they were. I think we're really in the early early innings that I think the best companies in the world are doing that. If you look at companies with very high, uh, NPS scores and customer SAT scores there doing that thing already and I think it's a good lesson for the rest of the industry. If you're not doing that, you're gonna fall behind pretty quickly. And I think that is driving companies more to the Saami Channel experience Where, uh, from, uh, from an analytic standpoint, you really have to understand your customer, not at the demographic level, but almost at a custom level because everyone's different, right? I think that's, uh, that's never been possible before. But today, because we've got bigger data sets. Things were in the cloud rise of artificial intelligence. It's made all the stuff possible. So companies like I said, the best cos the world to taken advantage of and they're having a, you know, big differences. That's why there's been such a huge swings in the market leadership right there cos we never heard of before. Market leaders and brands we trusted loved before they're gone. >> Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up, because every company we talked to this week that that CX is at the center of what they're talking about. So, in your research, what is differentiating though those new leaders and, you know, causing some of those swings in the market place hot out of the customer. Look at these and help differentiate and and ever changing marketplace. >> Well, it's what's going on today. It's really about being more contextual, having a deeper understanding a wire. Customers calling, uh, how you could help him faster understanding maybe what products they own. You know what? What are some of the adjacent ones? Ah, no. I think that's going very quickly, become table stakes. And I think where we're moving to is we're going to shift customer service from being largely inbound, driven and reactive. And that's where they I can help react faster to being Mohr, outbound driven and pearl active. Right? So, for instance, let's say I buy a connected refrigerator and my water filter needs changing. Well, right now, I still have to recognize that. And maybe I call that refrigerator company and they can proactively help me because they understand what I have. And they've got a great arm, the Channel contact center. But ultimately that should be a reverse. They should contact me, maybe through a text message saying, Hey, you're we noticed your water filter needs changing. Can we send you one? Yes, it comes and then maybe I call the agent and say, Can you help me install it? Right? So I think within the next three, four years, we're going to see a lot of customer service, Uh, where contextual is the table stakes and then the ability to predict what your customer wants. That's going to be the differentiator. And frankly, that's really exciting. I mean, if you think we've seen change of this industry as you mentioned in the last five years, wait for the next five. >> When you're talking with customers or even doing research and and other venues, it's to mention CX. We talk. We've been talking about it all week, but I get curious when I hear the customer experience and the agent experience just think, How are they not how they separate because of the Asian isn't empowered to be able to, whether it's no the right channel. But I want to be communicated with or have the information where the context about why I'm calling, then the customer experience, right? >> Yeah, well, they're very tightly linked together. You can't have a good customer experience that a good agent experience and you may have the best trained agents in the world that are the most empathetic that are incredibly sensitive with what people want. But if they don't have the data, you're going frustrate your customer. And everybody's been through that situation where you get transferred to somebody else and you gotta start that whole conversation over again and eventually you just hang up and say, I don't want ever to business. So I think you're right. Agent experience Customer experience are very tightly interwoven, and they're they're really dependent on one another. You can't you can't do without the data. And again, that's where all these friends of a I come into play because they're able to send better information to the agents faster, really, through an assistive technology versus replacement. Right? >> So when we came into this show, we knew that the wave of cloud had made a big transformation. We're starting to hear a I is the next wave everybody's talking about. I believe I read something that that you had written that was talking about, you know, whether that is something just internal the company build in versus how it interacts with the customer. Where do you see I having the biggest impact kind of in the short term, and nowhere is that more long. >> It's a great question because I ask my customers all the time. Should we be using intelligence bots? Or if you saw the Google Duplex Nemo, where they have on a I call in order pizza I think it was or something like that. So is a I ready to talk to people? And I think if you think of the entire world of interactions on a two by two grid is an analyst would like to buy two grids, right? And you put complexity of conversation on one axis and frequency of interactions if it's hiking, or if it's low complexity, high frequency, that might be okay to try and automate through a But other than that, everything should flipped. Agent. And I think right now we're very early in the cycle, and so is a business. I'm not sure I trust today. I tow always have the right answer, but it makes a great assistant technology to recommend to the agent. This is what you should say, and the great thing about that is, if the agent says no, that's stupid and says that wasn't helpful. That becomes the input to the learning mechanism for the A I so overtime will get smarter and smarter. But if you if you want to think about just the role of it now, I always use the analogy is like a self driving car. I'm not sure if either one of you would want to jump in a car that has no driver, no steering wheel, no controls. But there's a lot of great aye aye technology in a car like lane change assist, parallel parking assist things like that that can make you a better driver. So let's make our agents better drivers by giving him those assistive technologies. And that's the the short term vision long term. Who knows? But I But I think oh, if company's heir to aggressively they II, they're actually gonna create a nod. The opposite effect, where they hurt customer experience. It's the people that make a difference, so let's make those people better. >> That's one of the things that we've heard consistently throughout this event is the empathy factor machines can't bring. That's really got to be the humans with the A I to deliver on idea, hopefully optimal experience, too. Whatever customer has whatever issue on the back end. >> Yeah, in fact, Roman always talks about that as well. The CEO of five nine and I think he's right from that. Regarded is about having the knowledge of the customer in the empathy to understand. Put yourself in the customer's position and this to your point. Lisa, about CX. In Asian experience, we tied a couple together. If the Asian distressed because they don't have the right information and they're trying a message, this person, or look something up in the database, that frustration is going to come through to the customer. And that further frustrates the customer, right? So of the agents, armed with the right information, they can spend more time focused on the customer and less time trying to find the data that, frankly, they should have at their fingertips all the time. >> So speaking of five nine, you recently attended their analyst event. >> I did >> on. We've had the executives on the team. You know, Jonathan on earlier this week, you know, rock star background. We're goingto throwing on a little bit later. We know him from his Cisco days without breaking any India's, you know, give us a little bit of the insight as to, you know, five nine. You know, what have they been doing? Well, what's what's the new team driving them forward towards? >> Well, I mean, if you look at their stock price from Roland joined, it's it's more than doubled. So obviously there's, um, some good growth there. I think. What? I've always believed that it's very difficult to compete on product alone, right? And if you believe this whole world of it is this customer experience, that's what they do really well, the customers, their customers have a great experience here with five nine, they have a great service organization that makes sure that when you buy five nine, you have a good on boarding experience that set up the way you want it, and that services business makes a big difference. Now they've always had that. Now, where I think the new executive team has made a difference is helping the company understand the scale, move upmarket, more enterprises because the needs their different than down market. And so I think you know, they're gonna have a big impact on the future of five nine. Frankly, I think a lot of what you've seen for growth in the last year has been stuff that was put in place. But I know they're working on a lot of the AI capabilities. We're not breaking in the NBA's. I can tell you that the demonstrations that Jonathan Rosenberg, who's in there incredibly smart guy, I mean he might be the smartest guy in this industry was giving around. How a I can impact customer experience was the best set of concrete examples that I've seen today because it's really easy to give me a pie in the sky hypothetical things. But he really boiled it down in a very grand your level of this possible. This is possible and I'm expecting over the next year, five nine customers will see those things. >> They've done really well in the enterprise market. I think last year in twenty eighteen, they closed very, very strongly. Also, a lot of growth in there. Custom enterprise customers with a Million and Ahrar plus What are you seeing, though, in terms of some of the smaller businesses that probably are facing a lot of the same challenges that enterprises are? Is this an area where they can also leverage five nine two really dial up and deliver Great CX, >> Yeah, but the line has moved up right of people interested in cloud services that used to be too small businesses, and now it's all kinds. But I think for a small business, you can look like a much larger business. I think there's a lot of companies people sometimes think that's a little risky deal the small company. But five nine is a very, very valuable tool because by having that information right away that agents fingertips, they're able to actually replicates, uh, large company experience and on almost validate that the customer made the right decision using them. So I think up and down the stack it for five nine. They provide value tow companies of all sizes. Today, one of them, you know, the interesting aspects of what I've seen two is everybody talks about this twenty four billion dollars tam for Contact Center. I know I've been in that eye, and may I say that because that twenty four billion dollars tam is based on giving contact, Senator people contact center tools, but what I've been noticing over the last years, when people buy five nine, often it's not contact center people using that using it. It's sales people in marketing people, field service. Anybody that needs customer info is using it. And I'll give an example. One of the customers that was at the five nine day I can't see you. They say who they are. They migrated all fifty contacts and regions five nine. And since then they've added one hundred mohr sales people using the tools. So now we've got one hundred fifty people using five nine when there was only fifty contacts. Generations you can see the value is starting to spread across the company, and I think that's a pretty exciting thing. >> It's been interesting we've seen at the show. And in some of the interviews, that line between kind of unified communications and contact center seems to be blurring. It seems to be that >> well, everybody needs that data on the customer info. I actually cameras closer to forty. Forty five billion. To be frank, really, every anybody who uses a serum tool should have five nine capabilities. >> Zia's Thank you so much for sharing your insights and your energy on Day three. If Enterprise connect nineteen, we appreciate your time Thank you. First two minute, man. I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching the Cube?