Latest / The Tech Matchmaker / People-First BPO: How SupportU Builds High-Performing Contact Center Teams with Purpose
Transcript
- Gina Gibson: Welcome to the Tech Matchmaker, the show where contact center challenges meet their perfect tech match. I'm your host, Gina Gibson, and in just 15 minutes, we serve up the smartest, coolest innovation shaking up the contact center industry. Whether you're searching for your next solution or just love staying ahead of the curve, we've got the insights to keep you in the know. Let's dive in and discover what's next. I promise you it's going to be fun. Thanks for hanging out with us on the Tech Matchmaker. I hope today's spotlight sparked some fresh ideas and real solutions for your contact center. Want to dive deeper into the tech we featured? Hit up the show notes for all the links and extras and be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. And if there's a challenge you want us to tackle, don't be shy, reach out. I'll catch you soon with more innovation, more use cases and more ways to keep your business moving forward. Hello everybody. Today we are chatting with Dr. Wei Wu-Curtis, who is the CEO and founder of SupportU. And above that, she's an all around female empowerment champion. So Dr. Wei, welcome to the podcast. And I'm just thrilled that you're able to join us today. Absolutely. And you know, as I kind of said in our preamble, I really, before we get into anything, Dr. Hui Wu-Curtis: Yeah, I'm so happy that I got invited to this. So thank you for this opportunity. Gina Gibson: Stay curious, stay bold, and keep exploring what's next. I just want to say as a woman in the context and industry, I want to thank you all that you do to empower the women in our field and externally in our community. see you in mentorships and speaking engagement and with CC women's, you do so much. And it's just so appreciated from the community that ⁓ show up the way that you show up in the community for us. So thank you for that so much. Let's start with the basics. Dr. Hui Wu-Curtis: Yeah. Thank you for recognizing that. ⁓ Gina Gibson: Absolutely. How you do it all is beyond me. So tell us a little bit about yourself. So for those that didn't know all those great things that you do, tell us a little bit about yourself and your passions. Dr. Hui Wu-Curtis: Yeah, I would say, you know, like all of us, didn't purposely choose contact centers, right? I just kind of accidentally fell into it. I think my first call center job, I lasted four whole months and I'm like, this is not for me. And then I had a chance a couple of years later to go back as a leader. I thought, that's interesting. Like, how do we, how do we lead and develop people that are like tethered to the phones? And so, you know, it was a great environment. I love the volatility of it. I love the challenge of it. And so just over the years, several decades, Gina Gibson: You know. Dr. Hui Wu-Curtis: continually work myself up, learned as much as I could, continue still to this day, ⁓ there's so many things that continue to evolve. And that kind of spun into me and teams are doing some really cool things. And so we had opportunities to kind of share those stories, which ⁓ started kind my path down speaking at conferences and stuff to be really able to pay forward. And then that kind evolved into, ⁓ I had like a epiphany, I think with every age group, like in the, you in your 20s, is you just want to make enough money to survive. And 30s, you you're a little bit more comfortable. And so now, like in my 50s, it's more about purpose and things that are meaningful in my life. And I think that's where my advocacy for, especially for women, women minorities, and mentorship kind of came into play. Gina Gibson: Absolutely I remember I think it was the first time we had lunch together and you told me about your shift schedules and how you guys broke it up which is just something so unique in the in the market and let you talk first of all kind of explain what does support you do and then ⁓ and maybe we can talk about what inspired you and how some of those great ideas that you have done make it easier for people to be employed in the contact center space as Dr. Hui Wu-Curtis: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, support you. know, it's because there's there's like hundreds and thousands of outsourcing partners there, you know, of varying sizes and stuff. And I've had of the unique perspective of being on both ends. So as a client and the brand side, I've used plenty of outsourcers throughout the globe. And there are always opportunities, in terms of how they interacted, they manage the accounts, how they did operations. Gina Gibson: Come on. Thank So. Dr. Hui Wu-Curtis: so I just, you know, through a series of circumstances stuff, I thought, you know what, I think I can do this better. And so I decided kind of go off on my own, create a woman owned minority owned business. And it's kind nice because we have a very purpose. And so it's not just, not just outsourcing. It was an opportunity to really create a company from the inside out. And what I mean by that to have our employees at the center. all of our designs and all of our creations as we build out this company. And a tech stack that we don't offer externally, it was just more internal. How do we make onboarding? How do we make the experience, culture, and how do make our employees more successful in their jobs by the technology out there? Gina Gibson: which is just, it is so forward thinking too, right? As far as not thinking of the, know, putting the employee experience first, which I know has become a focus in more so in the last, you know, maybe a year, year and a half, but you guys have been around more than a year and a half and to actually build a company with that as your main focus, definitely one of your differentiators. And you mentioned it, you know, the BPO space is kind of, busy or clogged, what are some of the other things that you guys do to separate yourselves and yourself from others out in the market? Dr. Hui Wu-Curtis: Yeah, I think that's always kind of a unique question, right? Because when you, when you kind of put in all the marketing buzzwords, not a lot kind of differentiates us. I really do believe that it's the makeup of the people that us because they can't replicate the people and the talent. And so of it is having a very involved founder. And so ⁓ I inherently ⁓ all aspects operations. ⁓ And so don't take the responsibility of representing companies, lightly. so when give us the opportunity to support them, whether it's in customer service or tech support or sales, you know, take it very personally because I know that it takes a lot trust to allow an organization to that, right? Gina Gibson: Yeah. Share a success story of one of the customers that you have. You don't have to name names or anything, but just share a success story with us that you guys are proud of as a company. Dr. Hui Wu-Curtis: Yeah, I would say, you know, we have a center in Ethiopia, not many organizations are out in Ethiopia. It's a brand new market, right? for one of our kind of our... biggest kind of objectives is really impact sourcing. so we really believe in going into other countries where have like high unemployment for ⁓ like youths or certain kind of demographics of their population and stuff and identifying those that really great talent. They just don't have a lot of opportunities and being able to provide opportunities for them. ⁓ And we play higher than ⁓ And so it just fundamentally their entire life. to be able to be fully employed. And so as a success story, we worked with this healthcare group. And again, it was a huge leap of faith because nobody's been successful in that healthcare niche in terms of customer service and creating appointments and stuff. And so we told them we would do a free 30 day pilot for them so we can prove ourselves. And they were just, they were blown away. We didn't have attrition and pretty Gina Gibson: Thank Dr. Hui Wu-Curtis: soon the practice we were we were augmenting their staffing about would say 30 33 percent of their staff well team did so well that within would say 90 days ⁓ we took everything they just gave just gave us the you know kind of whole contact element Gina Gibson: That's fantastic. And you know, with our industry, you're right, like Ethiopia is not one that is very common. So you're hearing of, but with our industry, of course, everybody's talking about AI. I'd love to get your thoughts on with AI and automation. How do you see that impacting like not just BPO's, but how do you see like the human role evolving of alongside with the tools? ⁓ Dr. Hui Wu-Curtis: Yeah, I think that's always kind of an interesting balance, right? People think, you you implement AI in an operation and you kind of flip a switch and it works. Not quite easy. There's a lot of prep work, right? And of course, the threat of whenever it takes jobs. like AI can do very simple tasks, but it still takes a human being, you know, to validate it and to continue to train the AI. So I think what it does is really kind of shifts the skill sets and the demands Gina Gibson: Yeah. Dr. Hui Wu-Curtis: that employee ⁓ it upskills them. So it doesn't mean their job goes away, it just means that their job now evolves into something different. And so we're not of augmenting staffing with technology and so our is ⁓ as long as add ⁓ great insights and to the to where now we give them usable data ⁓ to be able to their business forward and to do things better. Gina Gibson: I always like to ask founders, ⁓ if you could go back, you know, and do anything differently, like what piece of what's one piece of advice you'd give yourself before you started this company? If you knew if you knew now or knew then what you know now. Dr. Hui Wu-Curtis: ⁓ gosh. Yeah, you know, it's really interesting. had an opportunity to work with a partner and, ⁓ know, for a variety of different reasons, it didn't work out. And now it's just me, ⁓ you really kind calling a lot of the kind of the operational and kind of the strategic pieces of it and stuff. And I realized like a little a year alone as a CEO. And course, I have counterparts stuff, too. I just I don't do well being Gina Gibson: Yeah. Dr. Hui Wu-Curtis: Like like having a partnership. And that kind of evolved into doing a joint venture with ⁓ my today. And so I think the one piece, is understand, identify and more about yourself and you love doing make sure that ⁓ things aligned with that. ⁓ could I teach myself like financial parts and do that? Yeah, I've done it for many years and decades, but I don't like it. Gina Gibson: Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's a great insight. Absolutely great insight. And, uh, there are rap things. I've always been a fan of James Lipton and his quick fire rapid fires. So to end the podcast, we do a few little rapid fires. So, uh, what is your favorite word? What's your least favorite word? Dr. Hui Wu-Curtis: Yeah. My favorite word? failure? ⁓ Gina Gibson: what excites you the most? Dr. Hui Wu-Curtis: the ability to work with people. that potential is remarkable ⁓ and given opportunities, people will surprise you. Gina Gibson: Yeah, absolutely. Dr. Wei, there anything else you'd like our to listen or our listeners to know about, support you before we sign off? Dr. Hui Wu-Curtis: Yeah, I would say, know what, we're in a unique position where a majority of our leadership team and our executives been on both sides, right? so are keenly aware of the kind of the unique differences. And what we did was we took all of our pain points and we just kind of flipped the script to make sure that we never cause those same pain points to our ⁓ clients. And I that's a very unique perspective because we're very vetted into the business. I don't use buzzwords know, your strategic partner and all that stuff, it's like, no, you'll just feel it. You'll feel it and you'll see it in the results. Gina Gibson: I love that. And if somebody wants more information on using SupportU, who should they call? Dr. Hui Wu-Curtis: Yeah, I would say come directly to me. Like I said, I'm more than happy to have conversations about it. Our website is supportusolutions.com. Or they can reach out to you, ⁓ and I have known each other for years. And yeah, we serve as great resources to one another. Gina Gibson: Absolutely. Dr. Wei, I just want to thank you so much for your time today and for sharing your insights, both personally and professionally. And it's always wonderful having industry titans like yourself join us. So thank you so much. ⁓ Dr. Hui Wu-Curtis: My pleasure. Thank you for having me.