Latest / Technovation with Peter High (CIO, CTO, CDO, CXO Interviews) / Ascending to Co-CEO: Mike Clifton on Alorica’s Dual Leadership, Startup Investments, and AI-Driven Customer Experience

Transcript

Ascending to Co-CEO: Mike Clifton on Alorica’s Dual Leadership, Startup Investments, and AI-Driven Customer Experience · Technovation with Peter High (CIO, CTO, CDO, CXO Interviews)

• 0:00
  You're not doing something enables a business problem
• 0:02
  to be solved and the work to be
• 0:03
  grown as a company meaning residue.
• 0:06
  The the technology is not worth it, but
• 0:08
  don't you have a discussion.
• 0:10
  Welcome to
• 0:12
  I'm your host, Peter High. My guest today
• 0:14
  is Mike Clifton. Mike's the c chief Executive
• 0:17
  of,
• 0:18
  a global customer experience leader with more than
• 0:21
  90000 employees and nearly 2 and a half
• 0:23
  billion dollars in annual revenue.
• 0:25
  He became c Ceo along with Max Sc
• 0:28
  on May 2 of 20 24.
• 0:31
  Prior to that role, Mike Woo
• 0:33
  chief growth and transformation officer for nearly year
• 0:35
  and a half, and he joined Laura, in
• 0:37
  November of 20 21 as the company's chief
• 0:39
  information and digital officer.
• 0:41
  He's been a Cio or Cto, companies like
• 0:44
  Cognizant or he led technology
• 0:47
  transformation strategy and innovation as well. The Federal
• 0:49
  Home loan Bank of Boston where you at
• 0:51
  operations in addition to the Cio role and
• 0:54
  at the Hanover Insurance group. I look forward
• 0:56
  to hearing more about his past experiences and
• 0:58
  how they've culminated in his taking on the
• 1:00
  C Ceo role of Or, the world tech
• 1:02
  and digital are playing at the company, his
• 1:04
  view into innovation in the in the customer
• 1:07
  experience space and more. Mike, welcome back to.
• 1:10
  Great to speak with you today.
• 1:12
  Thank you, Peter.
• 1:13
  Really appreciate having me back again. So.
• 1:16
  It's a pleasure. It's ARA real pleasure, especially
• 1:18
  in light of this
• 1:20
  promotion of doors.
• 1:21
  Congratulations on on, achieving the the ceo.
• 1:24
  Had a great comment like, Laura.
• 1:26
  Oh, thanks so thanks so much. Yeah. Y.
• 1:28
  I'm sure you
• 1:29
  you might not get a lot of a
• 1:31
  a, techno
• 1:32
  Cios that jump into being c c Ceos
• 1:35
  of of business process or business company, So
• 1:38
  I'm sure we break a conversation.
• 1:40
  I'm looking forward to it for that among
• 1:42
  other reasons. Well, then let's kick in for
• 1:43
  those who may be less familiar with it
• 1:45
  with an overview from you on Caloric business.
• 1:48
  When when we start there. So work as
• 1:50
  a global company. We've got centers
• 1:53
  you know, a... Most of the mainland and
• 1:57
  regions of Philippines
• 1:59
  you know, a lot in Em, of significant
• 2:01
  amount of traction in Latin America Us is
• 2:03
  obviously, a genesis of the business 25 years
• 2:05
  ago. We were now at 20 fifth birthday.
• 2:07
  So it's a celebratory year for us.
• 2:10
  And in Canada. So we grown quite a
• 2:12
  bit. Our core focus as a company is
• 2:15
  obviously, you started with Cx, we are a
• 2:18
  customer experience company and all things customer experience,
• 2:21
  whether that's
• 2:22
  taking a transaction or discussion with a end
• 2:25
  client of our clients in Rev gen or
• 2:28
  things like sales, all the way from companies,
• 2:30
  the largest ones in the world selling great
• 2:32
  technical products to,
• 2:34
  financial instruments to or filling a,
• 2:37
  subscription order or
• 2:39
  food service delivery. So we've got a varying
• 2:42
  degree of number of customers that do that.
• 2:44
  We we bridge those 2 things from a
• 2:46
  customer experience in into technology quite a bit
• 2:48
  in terms of we deliver that service in
• 2:50
  the world class way that we do it,
• 2:52
  on that can span from just the experience
• 2:55
  and how to handle clients in multi channel
• 2:56
  ways all the way up to
• 2:58
  do we think about deflect those calls and
• 3:01
  interacting with sales water systems and fulfilling sales
• 3:04
  enable for clients? So we've got up a
• 3:06
  spectrum that we we move forward to. We
• 3:09
  are not a core back office Bp.
• 3:12
  We spend our time in the middle, and
• 3:14
  in the front. So we distinguish ourselves by
• 3:16
  I mean, world class with the people we've
• 3:18
  got being able to handle high complex transactions
• 3:21
  by having that interaction with those clients people
• 3:23
  technically assisted as well as
• 3:25
  let.
• 3:27
  There aren't a lot of companies that have
• 3:29
  the c Ceo model. There are some major
• 3:31
  ones that have, like Google and Netflix come
• 3:34
  to mind. But the vast majority of companies
• 3:36
  at your scale especially have a single chief
• 3:37
  executive officer.
• 3:39
  What's your role entail and and how is
• 3:41
  it different from the role with the same
• 3:43
  title that Max Sc
• 3:45
  has?
• 3:46
  I I think we get stuck in models
• 3:48
  quite a bit. And models tend to breathe
• 3:50
  consistency and I actually think now is the
• 3:53
  timing of industry where you break consistency. And
• 3:55
  so
• 3:56
  we we decided to break it and follow
• 3:58
  a couple of the early leaders, and I
• 3:59
  think you're gonna see more of this trail
• 4:01
  behind us.
• 4:02
  In our space it's highly complex. It's also
• 4:06
  going through a massive
• 4:08
  transformation,
• 4:09
  being able to attack that in multi dimensional
• 4:12
  ways, is hard for a single person. Usually,
• 4:15
  you're hiring a strategist,
• 4:17
  and that strategist is laying that vision and
• 4:19
  then underneath them are folks that enable that
• 4:22
  outcome.
• 4:23
  What we decided to do was put
• 4:26
  literally 2 big brains,
• 4:28
  minds a little bit larger than Max,
• 4:30
  but in reality, just from a size level
• 4:32
  of my head, but But 2 big brains
• 4:34
  in 1 box and say, look, we're gonna
• 4:36
  focus on speed and efficiency, decision making. We
• 4:39
  are both somewhat data driven individuals. So, we
• 4:43
  like to look at trends and in the
• 4:44
  themes and patents and then use that to
• 4:47
  kind form our hypothesis of things and then
• 4:49
  disprove it which everybody tries to do for
• 4:50
  us. But that helps us with that speed
• 4:53
  and efficiency. It also allows us to a
• 4:57
  pivot point of our industry today
• 4:59
  certainly, we're under the threat of Ai will
• 5:01
  take over the world as as most, either
• 5:04
  conversational or or or machine driven Ai.
• 5:08
  And that itself creates opportunities. So if done
• 5:11
  right with the right kind of thinking, you
• 5:13
  pivot out of this with a much more
• 5:15
  aggressive valued based company. And I think that's
• 5:18
  where we're we're putting our energies towards and
• 5:20
  2 of us doing that in either
• 5:23
  in an organic or inorganic way is really
• 5:26
  how.
• 5:27
  So I got that... That's the real genesis
• 5:29
  of of, I think the changes we've gone
• 5:30
  through in the last month. We're excited about
• 5:33
  it, but I would tell you,
• 5:35
  we have this joke that our wives,
• 5:38
  basically, when the phone rings, they realize that
• 5:40
  it's the other person my myself calling Max
• 5:42
  or Max on me. And they walk away
• 5:44
  quickly and sales to you tomorrow. So so
• 5:47
  we you have to be s bionic and
• 5:49
  the thought process and Make it work. And
• 5:52
  regardless of the choice of this model, You
• 5:54
  do have to find 2
• 5:56
  complimentary
• 5:57
  people.
• 5:58
  To your last point,
• 6:00
  you we don't divide,
• 6:02
  1 mistake would be to
• 6:04
  divide up the
• 6:05
  leadership team and have 2 up focuses is
• 6:07
  where we just have our own domain dominance
• 6:10
  speed the thing we focus on. I actually
• 6:12
  think our best idea idea comes from when
• 6:15
  I might be looking at a situation through
• 6:17
  a lens that I'd look at it in
• 6:18
  my way and max through another 1. Whether
• 6:21
  that's me in a financial instrument or operations
• 6:23
  view or Max and a technology or a
• 6:26
  digital pivot view,
• 6:27
  I think that
• 6:29
  together is what the velocity,
• 6:31
  of the speed of helps quite a bit
• 6:33
  and and we we do that. So it
• 6:35
  it's... I like to say, he likes to
• 6:37
  play devil's advocate on all my decisions and
• 6:39
  activate devil's advocate all his, but it it
• 6:41
  works in a much more way than that,
• 6:43
  but it's it's a great outcome. Fascinating. Really
• 6:45
  interesting, and I love the way you described,
• 6:47
  what you bring to the table based on
• 6:49
  your past.
• 6:50
  In fact, I'd love to delve further into
• 6:51
  it. As I mentioned in the intro, you've
• 6:53
  been a tech and digital leader multiple times
• 6:55
  over at large
• 6:56
  organizations. You've also run P ls.
• 6:59
  Got a lot of customer touch points.
• 7:01
  You've been a consultant to major companies. You've
• 7:03
  had strategy operations,
• 7:05
  transformation roles.
• 7:06
  I wonder how was this diversity of experience
• 7:09
  played into your... Being able to take on
• 7:11
  the role you have now. You have a,
• 7:13
  like, point of toolkit that you can leverage
• 7:15
  depending upon the issue of the day or
• 7:17
  the opportunity you're hoping to define? I get
• 7:19
  asked this a lot. I think I said
• 7:21
  it... When we talked last. I think 1
• 7:22
  of those guys is career Ad b because
• 7:24
  sort of bounce around between all these very
• 7:28
  skill different skilled you know, needed jobs that
• 7:30
  are very different. But I enjoy all of
• 7:32
  it, so it it's hard for me But,
• 7:34
  you know, through the
• 7:36
  the luck, and I'll call it that or
• 7:38
  or actually, just through true risk taking, I
• 7:40
  think, without even realize I was taking risk,
• 7:44
  I was jumping from
• 7:45
  certain paths of building skill into other paths.
• 7:48
  And I think what I got afforded through,
• 7:51
  you know, other great leaders I work for,
• 7:53
  quite frankly. I got... Afforded the opportunity to
• 7:55
  kinda of blend over the line that most
• 7:57
  people don't like to blend over, which is
• 8:00
  I was always technology it's core, but then
• 8:02
  how do I best place to sell it?
• 8:04
  Where's the business objective the technology can enable?
• 8:07
  Then there was the well, how how this
• 8:09
  market different in technical markets? How do I
• 8:11
  understand those and how how to shape a
• 8:14
  technology solution to solve what the market need
• 8:16
  was?
• 8:17
  Than in marketing or in business operations. So
• 8:19
  I've always had this sort of
• 8:21
  desire to take tech as an enabler not
• 8:23
  make tech my job, and that... That's helped
• 8:25
  with getting into markets and sales and
• 8:29
  operations where you're always, you know, enabling someone
• 8:31
  to achieve something. But
• 8:33
  you do have to be a little bit
• 8:35
  of
• 8:36
  little bit of a risk taker knowing that
• 8:38
  your skill set might not be as peak
• 8:40
  when you jump into a situation like you're
• 8:43
  now in sales and you've gotta make a
• 8:45
  quote and an engine work, or your sales
• 8:47
  management, you got lead a lot of people
• 8:49
  to the top of that hill and you
• 8:50
  need to figure the strategy out pretty quickly.
• 8:53
  Think I said to begin beginning, I think
• 8:54
  been afforded
• 8:55
  the luxury and
• 8:57
  maybe I earned the right what I got
• 8:59
  there. But on the way end, they probably,
• 9:00
  like, this is really interesting experiment, but it
• 9:02
  worked out and in both our favors
• 9:05
  but III think I think it... It's what
• 9:08
  makes a round well rounded,
• 9:10
  c Ceo.
• 9:11
  I think Max still does better things than
• 9:13
  I do, and I still do things better.
• 9:15
  In some cases if Max does, We know
• 9:17
  that, but we also are, like, that's interesting.
• 9:20
  Didn't think about it like that. Someone asked
• 9:22
  my another question here that was kind of
• 9:24
  akin to it is how can I follow
• 9:26
  that path, and I'm thinking well give play
• 9:28
  a pin ball, and they said, yeah? I
• 9:29
  said that that's me. Moving around the pin
• 9:32
  ball machine, and I said, I'm not sure
• 9:33
  it's that's the path I'd take. There's probably
• 9:35
  a straighter line somewhere to the success, but
• 9:37
  I'm sure, I wouldn't do that. But to
• 9:40
  me, it's be bold and take risks and
• 9:42
  and tries to move things. And if realize
• 9:44
  where your gaps are, I think realize where
• 9:46
  your blind spots are, and then don't try
• 9:48
  to fill them. Go focus in other places.
• 9:50
  And how where you have
• 9:52
  or on opposite sides of an issue
• 9:55
  how do you... What... What's the tie breaker?
• 9:56
  How do you determine which which
• 9:59
  which way to go? You know, it's funny.
• 10:01
  We were having this debate when
• 10:03
  we were we were asked to consider,
• 10:07
  the future in a very short amount of
• 10:09
  time,
• 10:10
  Max and I had this debate about. So
• 10:12
  if we were to do this as so
• 10:13
  duality,
• 10:15
  what's our sort of
• 10:16
  unpublished rules or the, you know,
• 10:19
  I I was liking it to push the
• 10:20
  mark marriage contract look like. You, Who's who's
• 10:23
  who's got the ultimate decision.
• 10:26
  And, you know, like, any good husband and
• 10:28
  wife,
• 10:29
  that's usually something that's not visible to the
• 10:31
  rest of organization or a family,
• 10:33
  but those debates happen
• 10:35
  I think we played each other's strengths when
• 10:37
  the tie needs to be brought. And it
• 10:39
  comes down to gut feel with with longer
• 10:42
  durations of a domain knowledge in that area
• 10:44
  where
• 10:45
  that's likely the answer in the tie breaker.
• 10:47
  We often, and I'll just tell you in
• 10:49
  the last 2 years working with Max.
• 10:52
  There hasn't been
• 10:54
  I think more than 1 time where we
• 10:55
  might have been at the opposite side
• 10:58
  of the answer, and it was really because
• 11:00
  we didn't never got data, and it was
• 11:01
  frustrating to us.
• 11:02
  But 99.9
• 11:04
  percent of the time, if what we get
• 11:06
  is the data, we probably arrive very closely
• 11:09
  to the same outcome pretty rapidly. So We've
• 11:12
  been fortunate in that area. Like I said
• 11:14
  it has to be a bit of s
• 11:16
  nature thinking the same,
• 11:17
  but pushing hard. So I think I love
• 11:20
  to say, I I make 51 percent most
• 11:22
  of decisions, but that's that's okay.
• 11:27
  You've already alluded to the fact that customer
• 11:29
  experience generally in Alaska specifically have been profoundly
• 11:32
  impacted by advances in Ai and generative artificial
• 11:35
  intelligence.
• 11:36
  I wonder what excites you about the app
• 11:38
  Ai you've already implemented and what excites you
• 11:40
  as you look to the near future as
• 11:42
  to what's ahead.
• 11:44
  Yeah. You hit the nail in the head
• 11:46
  as to why I think we have a
• 11:49
  change in in in Laura, but also what's
• 11:51
  made it. Really exciting for for Max and
• 11:53
  I and and pretty much the entire leadership
• 11:55
  team are calling now. You you can read
• 11:58
  or absorb all this material about Ai and
• 12:00
  the things that happening with really great technology.
• 12:04
  Machines are learning. Could have been for a
• 12:06
  while, or they're automating a rules processing or
• 12:09
  learning itself, but generative of Ai caused a
• 12:13
  conversation to happen that never happened and and
• 12:15
  now it's becoming smarter.
• 12:16
  A lot faster
• 12:18
  than people grew up, you know, it's leap
• 12:20
  with 07:10, 15 years
• 12:22
  in a year if not more, and and
• 12:24
  that's amazing. So
• 12:26
  to us, that's a
• 12:27
  massive opportunity for our industry, and we are
• 12:31
  uniquely kind of position to that industry because
• 12:33
  we're not too big. We're not a public
• 12:36
  entity. We're not small.
• 12:39
  So we have a bit of nimble and
• 12:40
  we've got great capacity and financial instruments to
• 12:43
  put the work.
• 12:44
  Where we can put our best brains around
• 12:46
  this accelerator strategy to kinda go after the
• 12:49
  market and make the market. We, like I
• 12:51
  said, we're not governed by and they're an
• 12:54
  overweight portfolio of sites. We're not governed by,
• 12:56
  you know, a massive amount of employees with
• 12:58
  idle capacity. We are we are an engine
• 13:00
  that's very tuned, and our clients that we
• 13:03
  work with have belongs and relationships. It's great.
• 13:06
  So it affords us an opportunity to be
• 13:08
  a bit of a skill builder with them,
• 13:09
  you know, we
• 13:11
  we look at technologies if you look at
• 13:12
  our core, it's Cx.
• 13:14
  And then after that core with, you know,
• 13:16
  next generation platforms whether they're in the next
• 13:19
  cloud, delivered Genesis platform or our Cci at
• 13:21
  Google's level, or Microsoft enabled platform with dynamics.
• 13:25
  Those are easy
• 13:27
  core level experience that we can get 1
• 13:29
  level of higher thinking. But then you wrap
• 13:32
  that with the next gen Ai around
• 13:34
  tools such as coaching tools,
• 13:36
  you know, them somatic analytics around the way,
• 13:39
  voice and dialect go to voice translation, which
• 13:43
  allows us to be a very big in
• 13:45
  industry. You know, you're speaking
• 13:47
  72 languages on 1 end of the phone.
• 13:50
  And on the other, you're hearing a single
• 13:52
  unify language in the same dialect tonal
• 13:54
  and and fluctuation that you expect to be
• 13:57
  on a real call. In real time,
• 13:59
  that's a game changer. Right? That that instrument
• 14:01
  there. Puts this world of Ai in kind
• 14:04
  of a very re way. I would say
• 14:05
  technology is an answer. The problem you're trying
• 14:08
  to solve is the business region. So
• 14:11
  Most people are still chasing a lot of
• 14:13
  areas where language portfolios and countries are the
• 14:16
  answer. We're looking at tech augmentation and a
• 14:18
  skill set
• 14:19
  issue, not skill set being the the main
• 14:21
  skill set needed for the vertical,
• 14:23
  business transactional, you know, B 5 banking or
• 14:26
  or retail. So
• 14:28
  I think that's gonna have a big
• 14:31
  bidding impact on our industry and where Max
• 14:33
  and are gonna go
• 14:35
  is to apply those principles of using that
• 14:38
  to tomorrow at.
• 14:40
  And doing it in a very aggressive way.
• 14:44
  In almost set the tone we're, you know,
• 14:46
  keeping up, is gonna be hard to do.
• 14:48
  And our expectation is giving our nimble ness
• 14:50
  and our ability with of with what we've
• 14:52
  got for for backing to get there faster
• 14:54
  than any other the company.
• 14:56
  And last piece I'd say, it's disruptive in
• 14:58
  the sense of... You know, I was looking
• 15:01
  because I've been a technology for a while
• 15:02
  as you alluded. It's for quite a month.
• 15:04
  You got these waves. Right? Whether you had
• 15:06
  a wave of,
• 15:07
  you know,
• 15:08
  digitization or way way back. You had Y
• 15:10
  and you just kinda kept following the same
• 15:12
  wave to digitization, then digital took over and
• 15:15
  the impacts to retail and now Ai taken
• 15:17
  over and whether it's generative or machine or
• 15:20
  you know, neural, all of its
• 15:23
  got the benefit of helping
• 15:25
  foster
• 15:26
  tighter relationships, you know, what was easier transactions
• 15:30
  sure they're gonna go away.
• 15:31
  But when I look at our portfolio business
• 15:34
  the depth of our k... Our transactions are
• 15:36
  very complex.
• 15:38
  They're not a single system or duality. It's
• 15:40
  it's a multi system transaction with a client.
• 15:43
  And usually it's because I need a human
• 15:45
  in the loop. The reality is how do
• 15:46
  we enable that to be assisted
• 15:49
  and make it that much smarter. And I
• 15:51
  believe that means we do that much more
• 15:53
  transactions to today. They wouldn't put on our
• 15:55
  portfolio.
• 15:56
  So the the, you know, the aperture widen,
• 15:58
  it doesn't narrow. I think that's the goal,
• 16:01
  and we're we're going after it pretty aggressively,
• 16:03
  which I think is your point about, you
• 16:05
  know, the skill we've got. That's that's where
• 16:08
  Max and I and a fine tuning 4
• 16:10
  can kinda be applied. Yeah. Really interesting. And
• 16:12
  you're kind of alluding to something I wanted
• 16:14
  to talk to you about as well. And
• 16:15
  that is there are a lot of people
• 16:16
  to fear a job loss as a result
• 16:19
  there's a result of advances in artificial intelligence
• 16:21
  know you've got some Nuance perspectives as you're
• 16:24
  beginning to allude to at the end of
• 16:25
  your response there on on,
• 16:28
  the... That that idea as it applies to
• 16:30
  in And the extent which you wish to
• 16:32
  po more broadly speaking about this being aperture
• 16:35
  expanding as opposed to narrowing and therefore, like,
• 16:38
  having the more profound,
• 16:40
  you know, profound in near term implications perhaps
• 16:42
  there's some fear. Can you can you delve
• 16:45
  in a little bit further to what you've
• 16:46
  already begun to allude to?
• 16:47
  Absolutely. And and we get this a lot
• 16:49
  from our... With... Max and I just finished
• 16:52
  1 half of the world tour.
• 16:55
  And we got to the Philippines and and
• 16:57
  and visited
• 16:59
  5 of our sites there across the Philippines
• 17:02
  in India we visited our sites there. Then
• 17:04
  out to Europe and visited sites care. We're
• 17:06
  back in the Us hitting Latin America and
• 17:08
  in the Us sites next.
• 17:10
  And what we were looking for is group
• 17:12
  we started this listening tour,
• 17:14
  It was really not for us. We we've
• 17:16
  been around for a couple of years so
• 17:17
  people know us. But in reality, it was
• 17:19
  a little bit tell us what's going on
• 17:20
  in your heads as as our employees and
• 17:22
  we we listen to calls. We, you know,
• 17:24
  we talked to our our agents quite a
• 17:26
  bit. Did town halls. And then the question
• 17:28
  number... Number 1 question it, I seem to
• 17:30
  get. There's never where they 1 Max gets,
• 17:33
  But I get it is, Ai is gonna
• 17:35
  hurt our industry where you think about it.
• 17:37
  And I and I was at a bankers
• 17:38
  conference this this past few days in New
• 17:41
  York, and a lot of our peer Ceos
• 17:44
  were there, and they got the same question
• 17:45
  from analysts.
• 17:47
  And it's an interesting answer. Right? Because it's
• 17:49
  all about where you come from in terms
• 17:51
  of
• 17:52
  how your company is organized and how your
• 17:54
  footprint looks to how you might answer that
• 17:56
  question and or their private public has another
• 17:59
  impact to that. But the reality is,
• 18:02
  yes,
• 18:03
  if you're today, a company that's taking
• 18:06
  order fulfillment questions or answers is, then the
• 18:09
  mobile phone took that away a while ago.
• 18:12
  So if you were calling for your bank
• 18:13
  balance, I'm pretty sure your mobile phone
• 18:16
  took it away or your texting and capability
• 18:18
  took it away. So that creating fear people
• 18:21
  never happened.
• 18:23
  It... What happened though was there was an
• 18:26
  expectation that those folks... Those people who are
• 18:28
  answering or doing those transactions. Now I to
• 18:30
  do a different set of transactions. So the
• 18:33
  reality of
• 18:34
  of what opens the aperture I refer it
• 18:36
  to it is, the humans are
• 18:38
  the most intelligent piece eating mouthpiece piece of
• 18:41
  that equation.
• 18:43
  When they are. They're the easiest answer to
• 18:45
  solving another human problem because that emotion is
• 18:48
  what people want and talking to a person.
• 18:50
  They want sympathy that that's happened.
• 18:53
  We always will have a human in the
• 18:55
  loop in our equation,
• 18:56
  assistive technologies,
• 18:58
  assistive the that may take a lot of
• 19:00
  what that question would be out of the
• 19:02
  way so that the last piece of that
• 19:04
  can be the shortest transaction. But I have
• 19:05
  this concept I talked about the last time
• 19:07
  a little bit was
• 19:08
  the Nordstrom concept, and I put them at
• 19:10
  the top of a pyramid of of the
• 19:12
  retail experiment and say,
• 19:14
  you are
• 19:16
  In always, you would love all of the
• 19:18
  capabilities is the best technical ecosystem you have.
• 19:22
  The most harmon business processes across the globe
• 19:26
  that as you got to the top of
• 19:27
  that pyramid and had to talk to an
• 19:29
  individual, it's the world class experience.
• 19:32
  And if all companies were so well organized
• 19:34
  and technology was so well implemented and nobody
• 19:37
  ever bought somebody and had to integrate them,
• 19:39
  then that would be utopia it would all
• 19:41
  load.
• 19:42
  That isn't the real world.
• 19:44
  What's the real world is we launch business
• 19:46
  lines with very short technical needs and try
• 19:49
  to see if it has stickiness in the
• 19:50
  markets and then we add to as we
• 19:51
  go, but we river really round on our
• 19:53
  add to it. We just sort of do
• 19:54
  what we need to do to keep the
• 19:56
  the engine running. So there's always complexity and
• 19:59
  everything.
• 20:00
  The humans in the loop are likely gonna
• 20:02
  be there, the more we continue to refine
• 20:05
  that
• 20:06
  and use the sister tech
• 20:08
  whether Ai or data or any other omni
• 20:11
  channel experience,
• 20:12
  group voice translation, dialect removal. It's still at
• 20:16
  the end of the day. I think
• 20:18
  an experience where if you have the best
• 20:20
  people doing Cx in a living,
• 20:23
  you're gonna get more of that business, and
• 20:24
  the only metric I'd leave that with is
• 20:27
  today, the market's about a hundred and 23000000000
• 20:31
  of which only 20 percent of its outsourced.
• 20:34
  If I just maybe Max and I would
• 20:37
  like, maybe... I don't know. 10 percent more
• 20:39
  in that market would be making a lot
• 20:41
  of us in this industry happy.
• 20:43
  Which I think is what will happen. Mike,
• 20:45
  more more of it will become are you
• 20:47
  better at doing this for me than I
• 20:50
  might be doing it for myself, or I
• 20:52
  would like more of my people inside the
• 20:54
  company to be the Nordstrom people, and I
• 20:56
  want more of you to be these. That's
• 20:58
  fine too. So I think that's the market
• 21:00
  to be chased.
• 21:01
  And I don't think it's a hand or.
• 21:03
  I think it's a plus plus in all
• 21:05
  cases.
• 21:07
  You you... In in the middle of your
• 21:08
  answer, you're you noted this this idea the
• 21:10
  best tech ecosystem and developing that. And I
• 21:13
  know as you think about the development of
• 21:15
  ecosystem, a portion of what you're doing is
• 21:16
  actually investing in a number of startups in
• 21:18
  this space as well.
• 21:19
  And I I wonder what do you look
• 21:21
  for in companies that you invest in? And
• 21:23
  to what extent is that are you thinking
• 21:25
  about those investments in the balance between
• 21:27
  potential great returns for the organization as those
• 21:30
  companies succeed,
• 21:32
  and or the possibility of actually becoming the
• 21:34
  acquire of those businesses eventually.
• 21:37
  Great question. And, I would love to say
• 21:39
  I have every answer here. We figured it
• 21:41
  all out. But if I did, I I
• 21:42
  probably would be retired and and you'd see
• 21:44
  a palm tree behind me. But way Max
• 21:47
  and I think about this and and and
• 21:49
  I have to include our our Chairman Andy
• 21:51
  Lee.
• 21:52
  So what we have is a fortunate model
• 21:54
  where Max and are are running this company,
• 21:57
  and and we've been humbled by the fact
• 21:59
  we've got, you know, a hundred thousand people
• 22:01
  globally that that look at us every data
• 22:03
  strategize and figure out where Shin go.
• 22:05
  At the same time,
• 22:07
  there's a little bit of worrisome morale where
• 22:09
  is this world going in terms of where
• 22:10
  it is. So how do we get ahead
• 22:11
  of that? Will we investment?
• 22:13
  So Andy has a firm in Cairo, which
• 22:16
  is a Vc firm. He's also got,
• 22:18
  relationships with 2 other major Vc firms. I
• 22:21
  have a relationship with some of the ex
• 22:23
  Cognizant folks that run 1 of the larger
• 22:25
  Bc firms as well. What we've created is
• 22:27
  an ecosystem
• 22:28
  where early stage investments can help fuel our
• 22:31
  our engine.
• 22:33
  And then how we think of that portfolio
• 22:35
  is how do we be complementary
• 22:37
  in our journey, given we're focused and tonight
• 22:40
  I I repeat all, we're a Cx company
• 22:42
  that digitally enables it.
• 22:44
  But how does that lens get applied to
• 22:47
  those layers of technology and then how do
• 22:49
  we help enable that ecosystem?
• 22:51
  For those early players to be, proving ground
• 22:53
  and test ground, but also bring that to
• 22:56
  clients
• 22:57
  and say here's some things that are quite
• 22:59
  frankly emerging.
• 23:00
  But we would like to show you the
• 23:02
  emergence of this as you think of these
• 23:03
  journeys,
• 23:05
  and see if they're helpful. And if they're
• 23:07
  proven I e. Tested and they're there, then
• 23:10
  we enabler of that ecosystem. So
• 23:13
  that is our philosophy. We have invested
• 23:17
  directly in a few that we feel are
• 23:19
  very complementary.
• 23:21
  The first is is really around the ability
• 23:24
  for noise cancellation to be free.
• 23:27
  In our industry,
• 23:29
  much like in this discussion, background should never
• 23:32
  be a problem.
• 23:33
  That technology in itself, we invested in,
• 23:37
  and it's being perfect protected as we get
• 23:39
  more and more off stack. The second is
• 23:41
  in dialect removal.
• 23:43
  How do we make sure that the client
• 23:45
  has the best experience should they choose to
• 23:47
  want to use this technology in certain areas
• 23:49
  and it also helps very remote
• 23:52
  locations in the world be a labor pool
• 23:54
  for us. We're very big on on investing
• 23:57
  in our people and funding
• 23:59
  our people in in our foundation. So we
• 24:01
  use those as a way to enable,
• 24:03
  geographic areas in the market labor pool that
• 24:05
  we could pull in that would be helpful
• 24:07
  or assist.
• 24:08
  And then the real next big of investment,
• 24:11
  I was in the ability to do translation.
• 24:13
  I'm a big,
• 24:14
  in my headset of strategy and basis of
• 24:17
  a voice
• 24:18
  I think technology 1 day
• 24:21
  will remove the barriers of having phone calls
• 24:24
  between nations.
• 24:25
  It it will be embedded in switches. It'll
• 24:28
  be embedded in applications. It'll be embedded in
• 24:30
  cell phones. If you if you see Samsung
• 24:32
  amazon, we've already done. Where you're having a
• 24:35
  conversation,
• 24:36
  like I said earlier on 1 end and
• 24:38
  and you might be in,
• 24:39
  slow back or Russian or
• 24:42
  you know,
• 24:43
  English on 1 side and this side of
• 24:45
  yours is is is receiving English or Italian.
• 24:49
  That is today's tech. I mean, it's perfect.
• 24:52
  It's real.
• 24:53
  And more of that is just about getting
• 24:55
  the nuances by vertical industry.
• 24:57
  So how do we put health things there
• 25:00
  about acronyms and intact or how do we
• 25:03
  look at if you're in, you know, some
• 25:05
  of our retail or our entertainment spaces, gaming
• 25:08
  and newer Nascar. How do we put those
• 25:10
  words in that people would understand when you're
• 25:11
  talking about times or, you know, anything that's
• 25:15
  kind of nuance, but pure language is there
• 25:17
  today. So that piece we've invested heavily in
• 25:21
  partly enabled our global strategy,
• 25:23
  but also, I think clients are starting to
• 25:25
  realize
• 25:25
  if this is really where the world will
• 25:27
  go, and I always say to clients, there's
• 25:29
  always being at the bleeding edge,
• 25:31
  and the leading edge, and then the edge.
• 25:33
  And I would love for them to listen
• 25:35
  to me right now at the bleeding edge
• 25:36
  and try some things. No production is fine.
• 25:39
  When we get to the next level of
• 25:41
  that edge, it's gonna start to become a
• 25:44
  realization. Don't miss the opportunity to make that
• 25:46
  pilot it something more invasive because eventually, it's
• 25:48
  gonna be embedded everywhere and we're gonna have
• 25:50
  to figure out how to use it. So
• 25:52
  that's a place we're very excited about
• 25:55
  and then the last piece is is really
• 25:56
  our analytics and them informatics we're data guys.
• 25:59
  If you think about what we do in
• 26:01
  the billions of transactions, we do a year
• 26:03
  for our clients,
• 26:04
  we have more insights than anyone else in
• 26:06
  the world about, what we could do differently
• 26:08
  and make that world better. We should turn
• 26:10
  those insights into, you know, in effect
• 26:13
  assets,
• 26:14
  and we started to do that for clients
• 26:16
  now. Where we can start to think about
• 26:17
  them mat,
• 26:19
  you know, patents around
• 26:20
  order tracking, order fulfillment reservation matching,
• 26:25
  sentiment back into reservation, matching and hit rates
• 26:27
  and
• 26:28
  how we start to drive a revenue engine,
• 26:30
  which is really what we care about is
• 26:32
  the business sign. Right? You're not doing something
• 26:34
  enables a business problem to be solved and
• 26:36
  the work to be grown a company meeting
• 26:38
  residue.
• 26:39
  The the technology is not worth it. Don't
• 26:41
  you have the discussion? Yeah. You you referenced
• 26:44
  clients numerous times in in your response and
• 26:47
  I know that your client set includes chief
• 26:50
  customer officers or chief revenue officers depending on
• 26:52
  how it's framed in an organization, chief operating
• 26:54
  officers, cheap digital officers,
• 26:57
  you've very specifically have held the first the
• 26:59
  the the second and third rule is You'd
• 27:00
  had many aspects of the of the first
• 27:02
  role as well. And I wonder how useful
• 27:04
  has it been to be able to speak
• 27:06
  as a former peer to clients and customers
• 27:09
  in many cases?
• 27:10
  I actually had this discussion with Max and
• 27:13
  copy yesterday exited it the way back to
• 27:14
  the airport. It's really... It's it's a compliment
• 27:17
  to me to be able to sit there
• 27:18
  and say, well, as a Cio who's listening
• 27:20
  to all Ai of the first thing I'm
• 27:22
  thinking about is, how do I get the
• 27:24
  skills to be competitive in this area so
• 27:26
  that all the consultants that are about to
• 27:27
  invade my company
• 27:29
  have someone to talk to that can keep
• 27:31
  up with them and know what we're being
• 27:33
  told, you know,
• 27:34
  part of it is the truth and 2
• 27:35
  it can be done.
• 27:37
  So I was always thinking as a Cio.
• 27:39
  You know, we've you always had to be
• 27:40
  leading the edge. And you you relied on
• 27:42
  consultants as partners,
• 27:43
  but you also a bit skeptical.
• 27:45
  As a chief digital Officer, you you you
• 27:47
  wanted all the ideas. So you're, like, tell
• 27:49
  me what's going on. I wanna sponge and
• 27:51
  I wanna get the best of them I'm
• 27:52
  gonna pick my spots where Invest.
• 27:54
  And in the business side on the P
• 27:56
  and L,
• 27:57
  you you really pitch the dynamic that Max
• 28:00
  and I were talking about yesterday,
• 28:02
  you really don't care how it happens. You
• 28:03
  just want it to happen. Right? So you
• 28:05
  you have all these people who care about
• 28:07
  the widgets and how they're orchestrated and how
• 28:08
  they glued together and know, and can they
• 28:11
  can be done can be done in the
• 28:12
  timeline? Is it enterprise and scale ready? And,
• 28:14
  yes, there are lots of people. And I
• 28:16
  was 1 of the or 2 of them
• 28:17
  who should worry about this. Then when it's
• 28:19
  funny when it gets to the business level.
• 28:21
  It's like, this is my problem. I don't
• 28:23
  care how you solve it just solve it.
• 28:25
  Right? So all the efforts they went in,
• 28:26
  it seems so
• 28:28
  monumental and at the end, please. Just solve
• 28:30
  this problem. It's an asset to me to
• 28:32
  have had those skills and tap, but also
• 28:35
  feels for the people on the other side
• 28:37
  of the table because I kinda know, like,
• 28:39
  oh, boy, You know, here here we go.
• 28:40
  This is another another consultant speak per s,
• 28:44
  around these things, and I'm like, we're we're
• 28:46
  gonna be real. We're gonna try do stuff
• 28:48
  to get... That matters.
• 28:50
  But I'm, I'm, it's a luxury for me
• 28:52
  for sure, but it's also quite fun.
• 28:55
  That's super interesting. We've already talked about a
• 28:57
  number of,
• 28:58
  salient trends to a business like yours. You
• 29:00
  talked about progression from Rpa to, that machine
• 29:03
  learning Ai generative Ai, talked about other aspects
• 29:06
  of customer experience,
• 29:08
  and the the trends
• 29:09
  associated with those as well. Anything else as
• 29:12
  you look to the future mike that has
• 29:13
  you particularly
• 29:15
  excited whether it's tech trend or a business
• 29:17
  trend or, of, the skills trend, whatever the
• 29:19
  case may be.
• 29:21
  I think there's there's a bit of a
• 29:22
  spectrum that this
• 29:24
  Ai world
• 29:26
  started
• 29:26
  6 or 8 years ago that I... I
• 29:28
  still don't hasn't gotten to
• 29:31
  the full maturity at the. I actually, I
• 29:33
  was lucky enough to
• 29:35
  spend a little time on,
• 29:37
  5 or 6 years ago that I still
• 29:38
  think when it gets there will be
• 29:41
  will be the thing that matters. The the
• 29:43
  trend I'm watching and the trend that I'm
• 29:45
  in most interested in it is
• 29:46
  the reason companies aren't adopting Ai at scale
• 29:49
  and production is you're still the level of
• 29:51
  compliance risk and security that has to be
• 29:54
  thought through. We're talking extensive models and testing
• 29:57
  and whether the validity to the answer is
• 29:59
  correct today, that's just data and fusion into
• 30:01
  Ai today. But that that's by I think
• 30:03
  sort step 1.
• 30:05
  There's sort of a secondary step of when
• 30:08
  the model becomes smart enough and the bounds
• 30:09
  and expense are tested, then I feel good
• 30:11
  enough production, so we can handle my chat
• 30:13
  or my Ai system or my virtual human
• 30:16
  meta a human.
• 30:17
  But then there's a sort of secondary piece
• 30:19
  of this
• 30:20
  where...
• 30:22
  And years ago, 5, 7 years ago, was
• 30:24
  called robots as a service. There's still an
• 30:26
  industry out there that lives there.
• 30:28
  There's a sort of brain that orchestrate a
• 30:30
  number of transactions and the Ai become a
• 30:33
  layer of these
• 30:34
  these
• 30:35
  us that go out and do their work
• 30:37
  and come back and report back things are
• 30:38
  done. It could be just automations of systems
• 30:40
  and integration.
• 30:42
  And then there's sort of another layer,
• 30:45
  where Rpa became the thing, which was a
• 30:47
  model and a process together. Right? So I
• 30:50
  think the conversions that happens to make this
• 30:52
  industry really what it would be and and
• 30:55
  and version 4 got us a little bit
• 30:57
  of integration on where, Gb went on version
• 31:00
  4. But really where Think it's gonna be
• 31:02
  quite interesting is when you start the orchestration
• 31:05
  at process,
• 31:06
  you can then handle the audit issues.
• 31:09
  You can know audit to task,
• 31:11
  and you know what a machine does, now
• 31:14
  I can start to look at that audit
• 31:15
  down to a process level. Now I now
• 31:18
  I start to pass the hurdles of internal
• 31:20
  adoption quite rapidly.
• 31:22
  And then when I get to the next
• 31:23
  level, which is sort of the neural network
• 31:25
  level.
• 31:26
  Where
• 31:27
  the brain isn't just a brain. It's it
• 31:29
  it's a level of nested processes to start
• 31:32
  to think about orchestrating many complex things.
• 31:35
  Now a company gets to a level of
• 31:37
  what would be today's compliance risk and audit
• 31:40
  practice around things to get things done, whether
• 31:43
  financial processes are x doesn't matter.
• 31:46
  I think that convergence
• 31:48
  is when the
• 31:50
  world explodes, and and this could be adopted
• 31:53
  in mass mass scale.
• 31:55
  And I still think we're early. We're still
• 31:57
  teaching models. We're still
• 31:59
  testing expense. We're still looking at validity. We're
• 32:01
  tagging images we're labeling things. We're early.
• 32:05
  But I think that
• 32:07
  convergence conversion of that process hierarchy
• 32:10
  network hierarchy
• 32:11
  orchestration layer,
• 32:12
  it then becomes what is tomorrow. And I
• 32:15
  think
• 32:16
  we have to think that way in our
• 32:18
  Cx journey.
• 32:20
  I think everyone has to think that way
• 32:22
  in their systems orchestration.
• 32:24
  And I think that will be where cloud
• 32:27
  process and sort of Ai become it. And
• 32:30
  I think the big players figured it out
• 32:33
  now they're trying to figure out how to
• 32:35
  put it all together and kind of a
• 32:36
  common system,
• 32:38
  or enable their system to do is for
• 32:40
  a step 1. I think that's where it
• 32:42
  will go. That that's stuff I love reading
• 32:44
  about, I love
• 32:45
  I love learning about and poking around
• 32:48
  to see where it could possibly go for
• 32:50
  us.
• 32:51
  Thinking of reading and and learning.
• 32:53
  I wonder if there's anything you've recently read
• 32:55
  or washed and or listen to that you
• 32:58
  particularly recommend to our audience.
• 33:00
  Yeah So
• 33:01
  so I'm a v gracious data in gist
• 33:04
  guy. Like, I love to read. III
• 33:06
  read, like, half of the book, and then
• 33:08
  I start reading another half of another book.
• 33:10
  So I probably have, like, 6 books in
• 33:12
  play at takes time and partly the Ad
• 33:14
  piece kicks in. But
• 33:16
  The 1 book I I finished with Ceo
• 33:18
  excellence, which is 3 Mckenzie Partners Wrote. And,
• 33:21
  you know, when I was told this is
• 33:23
  the job we we'd like you Max to
• 33:24
  do. The first thing I always do is
• 33:26
  turn to, you know, where can I ingest
• 33:28
  a month large amounts of data to put
• 33:30
  up to put a plan together, put my
• 33:32
  head around the right kinda of thinking? And
• 33:34
  I just have to reshape my head around
• 33:36
  this new task in there. So that's been
• 33:38
  something. 3 3 Mckenzie people cut, I I
• 33:40
  like that book. It was very short, break
• 33:41
  Chris, but it had a lot of great
• 33:44
  examples
• 33:45
  of,
• 33:46
  a just dimensional thinking, how how problems were
• 33:49
  broken down, you know, with really
• 33:51
  you need to do for your company to
• 33:53
  set the right path.
• 33:54
  But I'm also a history buff. So if
• 33:56
  you... If you... If there's a book by
• 33:58
  We're ron Cher, call titans,
• 34:00
  which I... You know, the Rockefeller World, though,
• 34:02
  or if it was in Churchill hills world
• 34:04
  I love the
• 34:05
  the the world around Churchill show in terms
• 34:07
  of what he fought in strategies, So those
• 34:10
  are the ones I I am just quite
• 34:12
  a bit. In addition to watching all of
• 34:14
  your podcasts.
• 34:16
  Checks in the mail, Mike.
• 34:20
  Well, Mike Clifton and thank you so much
• 34:21
  for taking a little time with me yet
• 34:23
  again, and congratulations
• 34:25
  again on your ascent to the c Ceo
• 34:28
  role of Laura. Thanks so much for sharing
• 34:29
  a bit about what's exciting you in this
• 34:32
  role
• 34:33
  the various aspects of your career that have
• 34:35
  led to it and and the variety of
• 34:37
  insights you shared through this conversation I'm so
• 34:39
  grateful for it. Yeah. Thank Great. I'm grateful
• 34:41
  for you having. I I... Thank you so
• 34:43
  much, peter.