Latest / My Favourite CX / My Favourite CX: Episode 14 - Max Ball

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My Favourite CX: Episode 14 - Max Ball · My Favourite CX

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Welcome to My Favorite CX, a podcast that celebrates
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exceptional customer experiences. To listen to
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today's, please choose from one of the following
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options. Welcome to My Favorite Customer Experience,
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the podcast that celebrates positivity in the
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world of customer experience. I'm Chris Holt,
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your host from Holt CX Consultancy over here
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in the UK, and I'm joined by Max Ball from Forrester.
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Max, welcome aboard. Thanks. Thanks for inviting
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me. This will be fun. So for those of you who
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don't know Max, Max has a background in product
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marketing working for the likes of Genesis, 8x8
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and Ring Central where we first met about two
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weeks before a global pandemic when we thought
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we were going to be meeting plenty of times and
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I've just managed to get my first guest to spit
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coffee over their desk. More recently, Max has
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been working for the last few years at Forrester
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where he is a principal industry analyst looking
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after the CX, CC and UC spaces and gets a great
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view of what's going on in that industry. And
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it's also a podcast co -host himself of CX Therapy,
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which has just recently launched its fifth season.
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Max, welcome. Why don't you tell us a little
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bit more about what it is you do for Forrester?
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Sure. So I have... In the Forrester world, your
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core is what are called waves, and that's a evaluative
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report where you compare different vendors in
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a space. So the two spaces I do waves for are
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CCAS, which is kind of the core contact center
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software, and conversational AI, which is chat
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bots and voice bots. So that is my core. And
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then I spend a lot of my time talking to customers
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and vendors. So I have, you know, multiple conversations
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a week with different people at different contact
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centers about whatever's on their mind at any
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given time. And I guess, I mean, Seacast has
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been, I want to say static, but Maybe that's
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the wrong word. It's been fairly conventional
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for a few years. We saw most people move to cloud,
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you know, eight to six years ago and then consolidation
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there. Also the vendors, not necessarily the
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customers. It's shocking and depressingly slow
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moving to the cloud. It's still way more than
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a majority is on -prem. But yes, people are slowly
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moving. to the cloud at this point the vendors
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are certainly in the cloud and they're like come
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this way yes join us yeah oh yeah on the vendor
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side absolutely yeah whereas i guess conversational
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ai is evolving at such a breakneck space speed
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that you must be um you know you must write a
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report and then look at it and go well that's
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out of date already yeah and i did the wave on
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conversational AI for customer service almost
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exactly a year ago. And I mean, it's a decade
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in generative AI years. It's just crazy how much
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has evolved in that time. And it was even writing
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it. I mean, it was, you know, it's like a four
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month process or so from, okay, I got all my
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answers to my questions, here it is out, huge
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changes, just even within that time. It's pretty
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exciting, our times, right? You know, generative
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and LLMs just mean some really cool things. What
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I'm curious about at the moment, and I hope it's
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just because I haven't been looking that much
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recently, I've seen a lot of really cool demos.
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I've not talked to a lot of really cool self
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-service apps. So I'm really... I just finished
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a CCAS wave. So I've been much more focused on
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that part of the world. Now I'm gonna start shifting
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my focus. And I'm really excited to see, yes,
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I'm excited to see what the vendors have, but
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more so what people are really doing in the real
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world with it at this point. And I think that's
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where we're maybe getting towards with conversational
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AI in that for a couple of years, it was quite
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nasient and it was a lot of demo. Um, there was
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some, some artistic interpretations I remember
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being involved with in the past. Yeah, maybe
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that, yeah, artistic interpretation is probably
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the best, uh, summary of, uh, of one of those
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demonstrations I put together. Um, and I think
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now we're getting to the point where we're seeing
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real world examples. We had, um, Craig Geronda
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from Vertical on the show recently, and he talked
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about some of the work they've done with the
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likes of Cognagy. um you're seeing real world
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examples now of adoption and constant evolution
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yeah yeah that's and you know they're with generative
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there's just such cool things we're going to
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be able to do and the piece in self -service
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that i think is really practical now is uh what
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i call infrequently asked questions So you got
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frequently asked questions. Here's the 10 questions.
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That's half my traffic. I can hard code those,
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if you will. And then after that, there's this
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infinite tale of other things people may ask.
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Take generative and RAG and point it, please
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God put it in a knowledge base, but point it
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at a bunch of PDFs. And you can start answering
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those in a way that we've never been able to
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before. And from everything I understand, The
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biggest hallucination risk with that now is conflicting
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documents under the covers. So that seems to
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be pretty real. But again, it's out there. I've
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seen a little bit of it, but not nearly as much
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as I would have thought at this point. That's
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certainly what I'm seeing as well with certain
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vendors where knowledge is now the foundation.
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If you don't look after your knowledge, then
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you certainly see quite a few vendors making
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acquisitions or strides in that area because
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they're realizing that's the foundational piece.
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And if they can get that right, then it makes
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everything else just flow quite nicely. Yeah.
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Yeah, I agree. So we've both spoken about things
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that are cool, which we're on a contact center
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or a customer experience podcast. So maybe people
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don't expect that world word, but I think For
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me as well like data within the contact center
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and customer experience realm has been in so
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many silos for so many years This is also now
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Giving us the brain power to be able to actually
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crunch it and get insights out of it more easily
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You know, I spent a couple of years ago This
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is the life of an analyst I make I say sentences
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like I was doing research for a presentation
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that I gave at a conference. I'm used to working
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at the vendor where it's like, yeah, I slapped
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some slides together and went and talked. And
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what we were looking at, and this was back, this
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was 22. What we were looking at is, I've got
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all these call recordings. And now with... This
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was pre -generative still with AI. I can go do
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that. I can do analytics. I can speech to text.
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Now I can do analytics. I can turn it into quantifiable
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data. It is the real voice of the customer. And
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that is super useful in the contact center. It
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makes quality management better on and on and
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on. But what we were interested in This was another
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analyst and I, and the other analyst was focused
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on voice of the customer stuff. So what we wanted
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to do was look at who's taking these recordings
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and using them for voice of the customer use
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cases. And one of the calls that we did in the
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research, we talked to the voice of the customer
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people and said, what if you could actually get
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data from the actual voice of the customer, the
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calls they made to the contact center. And the
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answer was, oh, we'd never do that. That would
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devalue our surveys. And there's such a structural
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challenge, even when the technology make, eventually
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technology is going to make it so easy that anybody
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can do it and it's just going to start happening.
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And we're closer and closer and closer to that.
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And I'm seeing it used more. You know and even
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then we had we did a panel of people who were
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doing interesting things and it was MX Capital
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one TIA. I mean people have been doing some of
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this for years, but the structural challenges
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of getting The contact center guys to talk to
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the marketing guys or the sales guy or whatever
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that Honestly at this point. That's a bigger
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barrier than the technological Oh yeah, work
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silos. I think when we talked earlier about how,
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you know, not everyone's moved to the cloud yet.
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And if you haven't, or if you're in that early
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hosted kind of scenario, you've got a telephony
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admin, you've got a reporting admin, you've got
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someone else, a whole team that does quality
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and they don't talk to each other. And when you
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first bring in CCAS and then, you know, some
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people try to go straight to conversational AI
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and don't realize you might want a foundation
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before that. And it's like, right, you guys,
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you're all in the same company. You're all in
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the same room now. Get along. And it doesn't
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always happen because you've got this structure
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of, well, this is my job. This is your job. And
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devaluing a survey where you've got all this
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rich data that tells you from every single call,
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not just the ones that answered yes or no on
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a survey, which is, you know, and generally you
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only get the biggest detractors of the biggest
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promoters of that point anyway. And anybody,
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imagine working in that field where every day
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you are reminded, oh, all I'm getting are people
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who really hate me. How do you not hear that
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and go, wow, that would be cool. It just, it
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just blew my mind that somebody would have that
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attitude. It's. So I guess with all of this change.
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It must be pretty exciting to try and keep a
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handle on what's moving within the especially
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conversational AI piece. It is. It's, it's fascinating.
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I, you know, one of the, one of the pieces that's
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really interesting to me is I did, you know,
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I started in earnest doing the wave in early
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24 and In early 23, all of the conversational
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AI vendors were looking at chat GPT and going,
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oh, I have a story that's every six weeks, I
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can get you one new intent with the answers and
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you can put together a very brittle workflow
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that puts those together. I ain't gonna cut it
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against this stuff. So that was, I always say
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March of 23, and that's just random. November
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is when it got announced, but it took everybody
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a little while to kind of get it absorbed. By
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the time I was getting demos in January of 24,
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the 14 leading vendors that were part of that
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survey all had generative in the middle of what
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they were doing. I mean, the tooling was funky
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in some cases, and there were pieces that were
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more this way than that way, but they literally
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all had to reinvent themselves, and they all
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did it in nine months. Most amazing thing I've
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ever seen. The CCAS guys are all making bank
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doing call summarization where it's internal
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facing, so you don't have to worry about hallucinations
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or anything like that. It's super valuable. So
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they do that, and then they start doing quality
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management, and they do analytics, and eventually
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they get to agent assist tools. They're way behind
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on self -service with this, because it wasn't
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existential for them, like the point solution
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guys. They're getting there. It's a way to do
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it. But if somebody wants to do a generative
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AI -driven self -service app today, you probably
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want to talk to the point solution guys. That
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won't, that moat isn't very high, very deep,
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I guess, moats aren't high. That moat isn't very
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deep, but it's there at the moment. I mean, that's
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certainly something I'm seeing as I get to know
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that market of like, do you want to go with the
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vendor solution when you could? you know all
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of the prime players in conversational ai bolt
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in to all the ccast vendors because they've already
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seen well this is something you're not doing
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as well so we can bolt in and make that happen
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quite easily and i think we're at a different
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point if we were 10 years ago getting that to
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all bolt together would be a long project but
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now it's a couple of clicks and it's really not
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at all as hard as it used to be and and you know
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um We were both at RingCentral. The whole story
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was the average contact center manages 20 vendor
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relationships. The bar to take on a point solution
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is significant. But to your point, it can be
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relatively easy to put it in there. You got to
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deal with reporting at that point. It's nice
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if that's all consolidated, but a lot of the
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CCAS guys, their consolidated reporting isn't
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all that consolidated anyway. Although they've
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gotten much better with that. Give them kudos
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for that. Certainly getting there, I would say.
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And it's interesting actually seeing some of
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the new solutions come in. You're right on the
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internal facing side of CCAS. Some of the co
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-pilot things where there are certain prompts
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that work really nicely. And there are also certain
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ones where it doesn't quite know what to do with
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it just yet. So I was playing with one of the
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supervisor apps and ask the guarded questions
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that it wants you to ask him. And I said, who
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should I fire today? And it's like, I'm not answering
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that. That's not something. Okay. Good. I don't
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think he quite said it like that. It was just
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like, I think we should rephrase that question.
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I'm like, okay, how, how close can I get to?
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Yeah. Um, Max, we'll take a break there. We'll
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place our listeners and viewers on hold, um,
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where they'll hear some delightful old music.
15:50
Maybe you've got some recommendations there.
15:53
And we'll come back and ask you about your favorite
15:56
customer experience. Okay, sounds great. Your
16:04
current wait time is 72 minutes. To hear options
16:10
to be connected to a favorite customer agent
16:13
sooner, please dial 9 on your keypad now. Welcome
16:23
back to my favorite customer experience. I'm
16:25
here this week with Max Ball from Forrester.
16:28
And Max, before we placed everyone on hold there
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and listened to our own conversational AI bot,
16:35
Holti, I said I was going to ask you about your
16:38
favorite customer experience. It can be a recent
16:41
one or a historical one, but why don't you tell
16:43
us a little bit about it? Okay. I'll do that.
16:46
I did a really good job of preparing, knowing
16:49
the name of this podcast and not thinking it
16:51
through until you asked me. when we started talking
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here. This is a couple years old, so not really
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historic. Definitely far afield from a contact
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center or anything like that. This is eating
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in Italy, specifically in Tuscany. We went there,
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we were in Florence, this was a year ago. last
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fall, so fall of 23. And we were, there were
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two couples and we were looking for a place to
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eat. And we found, you know, I went on to Yelp
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and found a place and I'm like, God, this is
17:39
great. This is, this place sounds wonderful.
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And, you know, I'd had an experience many, many
17:44
years ago in Paris. where I was close to the
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Eiffel Tower with one of my kids, and we went
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to a restaurant that was right there, and it
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was just god -awful. And then the next time I
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went, a friend of mine used Yelp, and we found
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a place, and it was sublime. I've been there
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a couple times since, and it's just one of my
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favorite restaurants in the universe, and it
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was three blocks away. So, yeah, I'm like, okay,
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Yelp says this one's good. We're gonna go there.
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And we walked down there, and it was closed.
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And I don't mean it was closed for the evening.
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It was out of business. It was closed. So, okay.
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So what do we do? We're just kind of like confused.
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I'm getting out my phone and we just walked down.
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There was another restaurant. We're like, oh,
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it's a seat here. You know, we're hungry. Let's
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just eat. So we went in and they, you know, we
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got greeted. Oh, come here, sit here. And we
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sat down and they, They came up and they gave
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us the menus. We were getting kind of chatty
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and wine appeared. I don't remember anybody ordering
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it. It just kind of magically appeared and they
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just let us do that for a while and came up and
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we ordered and they were coaching us, you know,
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no, no, no, no, don't get that, get this. And,
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you know, we got the, I forget what kind of steak
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it is. and we saw it over at another table and
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like the bone is sticking up this way and all
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the steak is cut and it's just beautiful artistic
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way around it and you know this is not a snooty
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anything restaurant it's just a very almost cafe
19:27
like feel to it and we're sitting there and we
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looked up and noticed next to the cash register
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there was a little painting and there were uh
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four faces in it And, you know, so we're just
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kind of noticed that, oh, that's nice. And then
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we're, so then we're, you know, the pasta's coming,
19:50
whatever, the salad, and all the food is just
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amazing. And as we're sitting there, we suddenly
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go, wait, the woman who's waiting on us, that's
20:02
the face on the left in the painting. And then
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a little later, somebody else came up and checked
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up on us, and that was the guy in the painting.
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And then a third person showed up, and it was
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the younger guy. And then eventually, a woman
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walked in. We looked. That's the third end. It
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was the parents and the kids, and this was their
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restaurant. And this was the night the daughter
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had out, so head off. So she came in to check
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in on things. But it was so personal to them
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that they had their picture right there. a painting,
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not a photograph, right there on the wall. And
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they just, they were, every ounce of it was just,
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how's it going? And it just, you know, I don't
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know restaurants in the US that work like restaurants
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in Italy where this person is running a restaurant
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because it is their passion to share an amazing
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eating experience with people who come in and
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that's what they're there for. It's not McDonald's,
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but it's not expensive in any way, shape, or
21:14
form. It wasn't just the food, it was the pacing.
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They just knew when we were writing. We never
21:23
said we wanted anything next or anything like
21:25
that. It just showed up right at the exact right
21:27
moment. It was just magical. Then they gave us
21:32
little lemon cellos at the end of the evening.
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I've got a picture of us all like just our hands
21:37
there toasting that. And it's just the attention
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to detail and most of all the passion. Just that,
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you know, we're here to provide an amazing dining
21:49
experience. That's what we're about. And I don't,
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you know, I picked that one. We didn't not have
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that, didn't not, we always had that experience
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when we were there. There was another place we
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went. and it was in the catacombs of an old,
22:09
old building outside of San Gignano, which is
22:12
a little hill town. And the owner came up to
22:18
us and said, hey, come with me. And he took us
22:20
down into the catacombs and gave us a tour and
22:23
started talking to us about, you know, this was
22:26
an orphanage and here's where the children slept.
22:29
And it just, it was, that does not happen. in
22:33
the United States at all when you're dining.
22:38
Somebody's making minimum wage and they're hoping
22:40
to get some tips and there's corporate rules
22:44
about what they can do and share and any of the
22:48
food or anything like that. It's a factory, it's
22:51
not a restaurant. And I mean, there are exceptions
22:55
obviously, but there's just way too much of that.
22:58
So there's my little story. And I guess that
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tells us a few things. And the first is that
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exceptional doesn't have to be expensive. Yes.
23:08
Yes. I mean, and that, you know, that's another
23:11
point I've thought of is where I have had similar
23:15
experiences of just a truly waiter being on it
23:20
and being right there. And it is when you're
23:23
paying a hundred bucks or more a person, you
23:26
know, it's so you can get that here, but you're
23:29
paying for it in a way that just, yeah. And it's
23:32
almost expected at that point, you know, if you're
23:35
paying... It better be, right? I mean, with inflation,
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maybe it's more 150 to 200 a person now, but...
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I think it's one of those sounds of it as well
23:48
of like, you're essentially welcomed into their
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home. Their restaurant is their home. You're
23:53
there experiencing their hospitality and everything.
23:56
And I think it sounds like, yeah, hopefully that's
24:00
still there in generations to come. because it's
24:02
that personal touch and if we go back to even
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how you found that and it was almost by accident
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because the Yelp choice had closed down but we
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now outsource our restaurant choices whenever
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I go to a new city I'm I use Google Maps instead
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and it's like right anything below a four I've
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got to really really want it and then I'll go
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through a justification loop of And I actually
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read, I'll then go, oh, this is a, you know,
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we, we, we were in, um, another part of the country.
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Um, but just this weekend and sadly Monday night,
24:42
everything was closed. I was like, oh, this is
24:43
Sri Lankan place and it's 4 .8. That means it's
24:47
exceptional. Amazing. Yeah. I know. I mean, at
24:51
that point, I know I can just walk in and it's
24:53
going to be excellent. Um, but I think that's
24:57
really interesting. Now we've got this. um, crowdification
25:01
almost of choice. We're not, we're not going
25:04
to just go to the Eiffel Tower and go to the
25:06
restaurant next door because we know it's, it's
25:09
a tourist trap. We'll go to the one three streets
25:12
down because it will be better. And that risk
25:16
is kind of taken away now. Whereas, yeah, when
25:18
my parents used to take me away to like Spain
25:21
at the start of the nineties, like every other
25:23
Brit did, um, it was, wow. Hopefully they, they
25:27
serve omelet and chips for the little ones and
25:29
we'll just take a risk. Right. Yeah. That's,
25:33
that's, it looks nice. That should be good. And
25:36
that, and you know, in this case, that was all
25:39
we did. Nice. Look friendly. Um, had a big piece
25:42
of meat in the front door. I'm kind of like,
25:44
well, I like meat. Um, it, you know, not scientific
25:48
or thought out at all. And yeah, it is interesting.
25:53
And I don't. I don't know how malleable something
25:58
like a Yelp or a Google, those scores are. But
26:04
you're right. If something has a really outstanding
26:08
score, top ahead, I don't have one where I walked
26:12
in expecting something wonderful and ended up
26:15
getting something awful. So in terms of influencing
26:21
your behaviors, did you pay it back with a Yelp
26:23
review? I had good intentions. I don't do yelled
26:32
reviews. That is not a part of my social media
26:41
world, any reviews. So no, I didn't. I think
26:46
the last one I did was a barber who just begged
26:51
so much and she was really nice and I could tell
26:54
she hurt. barbershop is really struggling i'm
26:56
like i have to give her a good review um i think
26:59
it takes us back to what we said in the first
27:01
half though about voice of the customer using
27:04
analytics versus surveys yeah adding that review
27:09
that's still effort on your part whereas if we
27:12
were if we juxtapose this across to cx they would
27:16
have the transcript of you and your your your
27:20
party waxing lyrical and enjoying themselves
27:22
and they'd have all of that positivity in the
27:25
analytics already, so they wouldn't need that
27:27
external validation via the survey, for example.
27:32
Right, right. Well, Max, other than making me
27:36
very hungry at half seven in the evening here,
27:41
where can people find you if they want to learn
27:43
more? LinkedIn is probably the best way. Also,
27:49
I do blogs and such on corester .com. So you
27:54
can catch me there. Um, those are probably the
27:58
best ways. And CX therapy is also available.
28:02
Oh my gosh. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
28:03
Yeah. I do a CX therapy podcast. Interestingly,
28:09
it very similar to what we did with the second
28:12
half here, where we have a guest and the guest
28:16
gives us a customer experience story, and then
28:20
we break down what was good or bad about it.
28:24
Now we're not, you have the joy angle, so you're
28:27
looking for happy stories, we're therapy. We
28:32
welcome happy stories, but ask somebody about
28:38
a customer service experience and the odds of
28:41
you're getting a happy one are pretty slim. I've
28:44
got about a dozen former guests that I can send
28:46
your way then for some. They all, everyone starts
28:49
with, oh, I've got to think of a good one, which
28:52
just tells you the state of customer experience
28:54
in general. Well, Max, thank you very, very much
28:56
for joining us. Listeners and watchers, thank
28:58
you very much as well for joining my favorite
29:01
customer experience. Hey Chris, this was a bunch
29:05
of fun and thanks everybody for listening. We'll
29:08
catch you again soon. Thank you very much for
29:10
tuning in. Thank you for listening to My Favorite
29:14
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