179: Fireside with Eric Kades

Charlotte Ward: 0:13

Hello and welcome to episode one hundred and seventy-nine of the Customer Support Leaders Podcast. I'm Charlotte Ward. Today I welcome Eric Cades for a fireside chat. I'd like to welcome to the podcast today. For the first time, Eric Cades. Eric, it's lovely to have you join me. And for the benefit of our listeners, would you like to introduce yourself?

Eric Kades: 0:43

Well, first of all, thanks for having me, Charlotte. Sure. I'm one of those people who has been in the customer support and contact industry for the better part of my career, 20 plus years now. And I've worked in all different capacities in the customer support world and different industries as well: cable, telecom, um, education, healthcare, credit cards, et cetera, et cetera. Um and now uh I actually I had a call contact center company that we grew to 2200 employees that we managed in five different locations. And then um now I have an at-home contact center where agents answer customer support questions for 50 plus colleges and universities. And then we just launched a live chat chat lab product called TechChat.com, which I am the CEO and founder of. And, you know, if you if we want to go on a journey today, I would say, you know, one of the things that I'm most passionate about in the customer support world, and really I've dedicated the rest of my life of getting up there in years now, is really to saving people time. I think it's a lens that everyone in the customer support world should be looking at as they look to improve customer support.

Charlotte Ward: 2:20

Wow. Um, I mean that's quite a history and quite a journey you've already taken me on through uh through the various stages of your career up to uh up to now, including developing your current product. Um uh and saving people time, you're absolutely right. I'm so glad you came for this fireside chat today because it's so important in customer support, as you said, saving people time. I mean, there's like there's the whole kind of you know, Wall Street philosophy, I think it's Wall Street, I don't know. Um, like time is money, all of that. But like it really applies to support, doesn't it? So much, uh either because we are um, you know, trying to just improve productivity or just operate on such minimal margins most of the time, right? Um, and yet give this great experience. So what a great topic. Let's talk about that. You take me on this journey today.

Eric Kades: 3:12

Well, yeah, you know, I really developed this appreciation for time. And you say time is money. No, actually, time is more important than money. Money, we can make more money. Time, once we lose it, we don't get it back. And that's why it's so important to me. And I had the unfortunate instance of losing a mother at a young age, but if there was one deniable um positive that came out of that horrible experience was my appreciation for life and the time that we do have. And so I've brought that to not only our live agent customer support, but also chatbots and using AI, always through the lens of saving time. Can I do this faster with a human or can I do this faster with a bot? And that's always kind of whenever we're setting up some type of um chatbot or customer support experience for one of our customers. I implore upon my team to look at it and say, okay, is this gonna save the end customer time? And then, second, is it gonna save our client time as well? Because, you know, I know that if I'm saving their customers' time, they're gonna be successful.

Charlotte Ward: 4:34

Yeah, that makes complete sense. That makes complete sense. Um, and and you know, I think I I talked a lot last year, good old 2020. Remember 2020?

Eric Kades: 4:45

Barely. Oh, yeah.

Charlotte Ward: 4:49

And time just took on one of the it was the thing everybody talked about, how time just behaved entirely differently to how we were used to it behaving. Parts of the day and parts of the week or month just seemed endless. And in other moments it was gone in a flash, wasn't it? And um, so I think like just thinking about how I viewed time last year and some of the things that I was talking around and about the podcast and various other conversations. Um, I was talking a lot about empathy and like frictionless experience and uh and like how you can make things easier for the customer and time, as you just said, time is something that we can by making things more efficient for the customer, it's a real gift to them, actually, isn't it?

Eric Kades: 5:36

It is, and you know, even like in buying experiences or waiting for shipping experiences, customers have anxiety when they're about to purchase something or when they're wondering when the shipment is gonna we've all experienced that, and so making resolving that anxiety a priority should be the basis of any solution that anyone designs. And unfortunately, it's not. I mean, I would say um more times than often it's not the case. I mean, we're doing an internal study at our company right now, going to websites that have live chat and chatbots. And you know, on those websites, uh I'd love I'll let you guess, but you'd be surprised that the numbers 80% of people or businesses that have live chat don't actually answer it. They capture your name and email, and then they say we'll get back to you in 24 hours by email, which you may never even get. And so it's just, I mean, that's brutal. And that's 80% of businesses do that way. I can say that number comfortably. We've gone through thousands, and we're still at that 80% plus number of people who do not actually answer the live chat. So that's just wasting people's time. And at the same time, you're also misrepresenting your brand, losing a customer for life, not keeping a promise. You you kind of baited this person with giving name and email and maybe even phone number with the hope that they're gonna get a quick response to save themselves time, and then you don't respond to them. It's it's awful. It actually is awful.

Charlotte Ward: 7:26

It really is. It's a broken trust, isn't it? Because for whatever reason I reached out to that organization, I want a response whether I genuinely am interested in being sucked into their sales funnel, or whether, or whether I've got a problem that I need solving, whatever it is, that it's a matter of respect and trust to have that response back and to have it promptly.

Eric Kades: 7:48

Yeah, and I mean I think it shows, you know, you brought up empathy, sheer lack of empathy for that person. You're really just worried about what's most efficient for you and not for your customer.

Charlotte Ward: 8:03

Yeah, yeah, indeed. And and I think, you know, we talked about this a couple of weeks ago, um, and we had a little interesting meander around. Was it speed at all costs? What was the thing actually about providing the fastest channel to all of your customers all of the time and funneling them into that time-saving mechanism? Is that the sole purpose here? Is is time the only thing we're aiming for? I can see the I can see, and I I completely, I completely agree with you, like how it's it's a gift to give them back that time. But it's not always it feels like it's also not always the only thing we should aim aim for, the fastest thing.

Eric Kades: 8:48

I I agree with that um to some sense. I mean, certainly resolution is you know a key satisfaction that you want to give to your customers. Well, you know, I can speak to an experience I had just yesterday where we're having a problem with a software platform, we're a third-party software platform we're using. I mean, it has wasted hours of our time. And not until, you know, the first level, the tier one support was frankly rude about a mistake we made. This is something we're paying a lot of money for and said we couldn't get a credit back. And then not until um I really spoke out and said, Hey, you know, sales rep, this is really upsetting. We're wasting a lot of time. Did I get four people on the issue and resolution to the issue? So if they were able to resolve it relatively quickly, why wasn't it resolved in the first place? So you're right, it's not only about time and quickness, it is also about getting the right answer to the person that they want. And you know, in some instances, that's that becomes interesting with AI and automation, because you know, using natural language processing, certainly the bot can misunderstand what the person's asking. So that's not helping get to resolution. And, you know, when we build bots, we look at um, you know, is this solution, is this task or this resolution that we're trying to get to, is this better served by natural language processing and machine learning and AI, or simply automation, just back-end programming into the system that can update a password or whatever that may be? Um, or does this need to go to a human being to get resolved? And I think that's another big issue for this, you know, time, this weird time that we've been in in 2020. You know, I think we all strive for a little more human connection than ever before. I mean, there was an article in Forbes magazine this uh month that, you know, the title was Customer Support is the new flagship store. And nice.

Charlotte Ward: 11:27

I like that. I must take that out.

Eric Kades: 11:29

And if you look at um, you know, the truly successful businesses of our times, the ones that have, you know, just been bragged about in article after article that they had the most amazing customer support, Zappos, you know, sadly, you know, Tony uh passed away. But if you think about the massive success that company had to become and acquired by Amazon, uh was all based on when you called them, someone picked up the phone, and they were able to talk about the shoes you were buying. And that was what had them win the game on shoes and the internet. And then if you look at Amazon, you know, I have to say, for a lot of customer support-related things, they're amazing. I mean, they understand their data and they are giving you relevant stuff all the time and all the time making it easier for you to shop.

Charlotte Ward: 12:34

And and I think, wow, I mean, you you touched on like four solid things there. I want to comment on, but I think there's a common theme through everything you've just said, which is there's a great, I think there's a a couple of threads which I'm gonna pick up on. But one thing that I am hearing as a thread through everything is being responsive to your customers in the way that they need, right? And I think that you're right that that is sometimes a human connection, and sometimes it's a chat, and sometimes it's like that big piece you said about like getting the resolution quickly to their problems or to their needs, it's a different sort of time. I mean, we're talking more about maybe if efficiency of access there to a resolution in some ways. It's it's accessibility, isn't it? And I think that that accessibility can carry through from accessing the service to accessing the resolution to your needs. And I think I think like everything you've just said, like I want to experience all of those things in the fastest way possible. And and sometimes that is talking to a human.

Eric Kades: 13:40

Yeah, and you you bring up a great um point, which is access. How do you access that support? We you know, today it really is all about omni-channel, and we provide that omni-channel experience to our education customers. If a prospective student or existing student wants to communicate via Facebook Messenger, we communicate with them via Facebook Messenger. If they want to communicate via Twitter, we communicate via Twitter. If they want to communicate via SMS, we communicate via SMS and voice and live chat on the website as well. And you know, there's a lot of software being developed today that enables you to do that. So it's not that it's as hard as everyone thinks, but I do think that it's important that everyone can now communicate the way they want to.

Charlotte Ward: 14:39

Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, I I again I know we touched on this a couple of weeks ago when we uh when we first spoke. One of the things that um we talked about then is about communicating the way you want to, right? And I I think I expressed my my own personal enthusiasm for the live chat experience, particularly for certain types of of conversation, for certain types of provider, right? There are things I know, like if I want to just get the answer to whether I've got uh you know access to a certain amount of data, how much data have I got left on my cell phone package, right? This month. Sure. There's gonna be a there's gonna be a bot somewhere that can give me that information really quickly if I don't have the app, you know. I mean, right. Whereas whereas my dad, who bless him, is a bit older than me, um is not gonna be interested in a live chat experience. He wants to access it still quickly, but in a different way.

Eric Kades: 15:38

Yeah, and then also there's kind of you know different scenarios where different channels make sense, not just depending on the demographic makeup of the customer, but you know, when you want to find out a quick question to a project you're or to a product that you might be thinking about buying, well, you might not want to go all the way in and give your phone number and think that these people are going to be texting you off the hook. You want to be as anonymous as possible to get the answer. Do you have large and blues still in stock? You don't want to get a thousand marketing text messages from that brand. At the same time, if it's a brand that you do a lot of business with that you're looking forward to their sales, you might want them texting you as opposed to emailing you and getting along. So there's also, you know, that part of it, if if you want to cast as wide a net as possible, you really need to have the different channels to be there when the customer has the question or the urge as well.

Charlotte Ward: 16:44

Yeah, that makes complete sense. So so then I think the final thing for me is like just to loop it back around to this whole concept of of saving time. What what do you think? Um, we talked about 2020. I'm gonna put you on the spot a little bit. Let I I'm I'm tempted to say 10 years from now or five years from now, but maybe that's a bit ambitious. I'll maybe maybe this year or the near future. What what do you think is the future of sort of the time and accessibility of support and customer service then in the near future?

Eric Kades: 17:21

Well, what I'm evangelizing and would like to see is um more people picking up their live chats, to be honest with you, because I think it's a big disservice to the company themselves and to the customers. So that's kind of the thorn on my side. But, you know, if I had to look at the future, I think we'll see more and more multi-channel communications out of brands. That's happening now, and you know, that will continue to happen. So that's a good thing. And then, you know, looking a little further out, I think we'll have you know much more bot that can be real useful bot in terms of getting me to a human if it needs to be a human situation, but also giving me how much data I have left on my cell phone, you know, without having to talk to a human. So I think that um, you know, it starts with multi-channel and then it, you know, bots become more and more prevalent over time.

Charlotte Ward: 18:25

And that and that I think that's a great call. And I don't think that that necessarily dehumanizes the experience in that a clever bot can still serve a customer empathically, right?

Eric Kades: 18:40

Absolutely. I mean, we have situations where our customers or our students tell us they would rather resolve that with a bot than speaking to a human, you know, to update their login to the school portal or whatever it may be. If we could do that, click, click, click and they're done. Well, they don't want to wait to talk to someone on the phone for that. So yeah, you know, bots will happen. They just really have to be customer-centric and have empathy. And think of the person on the other end. And, you know, if there's one parting note that unfortunately I think kind of sets all this stuff back, is, and I know this because not only have I bought this software and continue to buy this software, but we also develop this software, is you know, a lot of this stuff is designed, and this is a bit of a whole other topic, but a lot of this the software that we use is designed by people that are programmers and not really customer experience and customer support professionals like we are. So I think that kind of delays the advancement to some extent because the technical capability is here. It's the implementation of the technical capability that is really the answer.

Charlotte Ward: 20:03

Yeah, yeah. I I I think that's a super interesting call. And I I think that um I think it's a point of probably despondency for for an average customer when they're reaching out to organizations through these bots that kind of don't actually make things easier and more accessible for them. But I tell you what, as a customer support professional there is no greater delight than on knowing how to like work the system. Yeah. As a support professional approaching a chat bot or whatever if I really need to speak to a human I can get through. You know because I know how it works. So you know I mean it has its advantages doesn't it being in support sometimes. But I think that's a good call. I think it is uh um it's just um well I think it it's just the the bots have to develop in ways that actually humans want to interact with them and I think that that that's where we need to get to isn't it?

Eric Kades: 21:05

Yeah I couldn't say it better myself. Yeah great thank you so much for joining me Eric it was my pleasure love talking about this and you know want everyone to keep thinking about saving their customers time.

Charlotte Ward: 21:22

That's it for today go to customersupportleaders.com forward slash one seven nine for the show notes and I'll see you next time