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Eggs 452: The Evolution of Customer Service with Nathan Strum · EGGS! The Podcast

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1:43
Hey everybody, welcome back to Eggs the podcast.
1:45
Today's special guest is Nathan Strom from Abbey Connect.
1:47
How are you, Nathan? Welcome to the show.
1:50
Hey, Ryan, nice to see you. I'm happy to be here.
1:53
Awesome. Well, let's kick off this thing
1:54
from the very beginning. Let's talk a little about who
1:56
you are, what you do today, and and why we're talking.
2:00
Sure. So Nathan Strom, Abby Connect
2:03
started the business about 20 years ago.
2:06
I know you can't see all the Gray hair, but it's there.
2:08
I promise. And we started as a human
2:12
receptionist service, and we still do that today.
2:15
We answer phones for small businesses and we've since
2:19
launched a new AI receptionist, launched that in June and have
2:25
seen some really great adoption and we're just really excited
2:28
about this new world that we've entered.
2:32
Yeah, it's one of the things that I find particularly
2:34
interesting about you because there's so many people that are
2:36
like, the house is on fire, AI is going to kill us all, you
2:39
know, that kind of stuff, this attitude.
2:41
But we found a few leaders kind of recently that are more kind
2:43
of from your perspective, which is, you know, go with it instead
2:46
of against it, you know, and actually we've launched a whole
2:48
new company this year. And our whole thing too is kind
2:50
of like, let's ride this AI wave versus, you know, the, you know,
2:55
fight it tooth and nail until the end.
2:56
You know, the, the technology's here and it's not going
2:58
anywhere. So it's good to to embrace it.
3:01
But we'll get more into that in a little bit.
3:03
I wanted to talk to you first about kind of your journey, like
3:05
sort of how you got to where you are.
3:07
You mentioned you guys were starting on the phones.
3:09
So you know, presumably this is some time ago and you know, in
3:12
the last 20 years things have really developed for you.
3:14
But were you always entrepreneurial or did you come,
3:16
you know, come from that roots? How did you end up starting your
3:18
own business? Yeah, I've, I've come from those
3:22
roots, my family starting back from my great grandfather, who
3:26
is a Bells bondsman, and my parents, they've what I call
3:32
serial entrepreneurs. And so they kind of raised me in
3:36
the family business. We were baking bagels when I was
3:40
16 years old and, you know, that was my my first job.
3:45
But yeah, it's been a it's been a learning lesson.
3:48
I've I've have learned everything on the job as as most
3:54
entrepreneurs these days too. Well, it's so funny.
3:57
So if the family business is baking bagels, how do you get
3:59
from there to taking phone calls?
4:01
Like what's the transition like when you decide, hey, you know,
4:03
I'm going to start this business and here's what we're going to.
4:05
Do sure. Yeah.
4:07
So my family actually decided to move out to Las Vegas and
4:11
retire. And I thought that was kind of a
4:13
laughing joke because there's no way my father and, and mother
4:17
would retire. And so they started an office
4:21
building executive suite company, kind of like Regis or
4:25
we work. And we answered phones for the
4:29
clients in the building as part of the service and realized that
4:33
we were good at it. And so we decided to start
4:36
answering phones for companies outside of the building.
4:39
And that's how we started Abbey Connect.
4:43
How funny. Well, so you started to touch on
4:45
this a little bit, but let's talk about just sort of Abby
4:47
Connect's tenure, You know, I mean, so you started 20 years
4:50
ago, you're answering phones. I, I love the, the origin story
4:53
here. But as you start to move down
4:55
that path and you start to grow and you develop, there's some
4:58
like, sort of, I guess I would think of them as like being core
5:00
tenets or core philosophies with you that are really around human
5:05
connection and how you're trying to create sort of a
5:08
collaborative environment between people.
5:10
And, you know, now you're leveraging more technology maybe
5:12
than you were in in the past, but I imagine that ethos has
5:14
sort of carried you throughout your career.
5:16
Do you mind talking about that a little bit?
5:17
Yeah, absolutely. So you know as a small business
5:20
owner and and family business, the way that we always realize
5:26
back from cooking bagels and competing against Einstein and
5:30
Starbucks, the way that we can beat is by customer service.
5:35
And so that, you know, couldn't even holds true to every
5:38
business and it definitely carried through to the executive
5:42
suites and the phone answering. But that's easy as a family when
5:47
you're such tight knit to provide that customer service.
5:51
But as you grow and you start adding new employees, keeping
5:57
that great customer service is another challenge that you have
6:00
to learn. And So what we learned really
6:03
quickly was that it was all about culture.
6:07
And if you provide a great culture and, and if people feel
6:10
good about coming into work, then that's going to come across
6:13
over the phones and they're going to create that good
6:15
customer experience. Yeah, well, it's a great point
6:18
that you make this idea about, you know, I mean, obviously
6:22
things are much easier to small family level, but you're right,
6:24
you would treat your family a certain way.
6:26
And sometimes like as businesses scale, you start to lose that
6:29
sort of familial touch or whatever.
6:31
But our former business, our our creative agency and, and even
6:36
the work we're doing today is really relationship driven and
6:38
people driven. And and so this stuff is really
6:41
resonating with me as I'm hearing you say it, because it's
6:43
like, you know, I guess, you know, it's the happy chickens
6:47
make great eggs, you know, you know, happy people, you know,
6:50
serve customers well. And you know, I think you
6:53
mentioned something in there about just sort of trust, I
6:55
mean, or maybe implied trust, which is if I'm going to let you
6:58
answer phones on behalf of my company, I need to know that
7:01
you're going to represent us in the best possible light and in
7:03
the best possible way to the people who could be our
7:05
perspective business. And, and so I think that that's
7:08
a really critical point that you make there.
7:10
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So as you started to, I guess
7:14
move along the road, you know, and you start working with
7:16
culture, I think it's an interesting point because
7:18
company and culture in particular became one of these
7:20
buzzy words for a little while. Really got hot during COVID
7:24
where everybody was like, oh, well, culture is, you know, cool
7:26
swag and culture is, you know, meetings where we get a joke
7:29
around or have a cocktail or, you know, like, I mean, culture
7:32
got really weird for a little while.
7:33
And so, but I wonder if you could talk about sort of scaling
7:36
culture. And I imagine, I mean, I don't,
7:38
I don't know how you guys are set up, but I, I suspect that
7:40
there's probably some remote work involved and stuff like
7:44
that. Maybe not everybody's in the
7:45
same building. And so I wondered if you talk
7:47
about just sort of, you know, first of all, creating that
7:50
corporate culture, but then how do you communicate that to your
7:53
people and get everyone to actually come on board?
7:56
Yeah, sure. So we actually are mostly all in
7:59
the same office. We do have some employees
8:03
working remotely, but 85% of us work in the Las Vegas office.
8:10
You know, there there's the Foo Foo part of culture, which is
8:13
great, but then there's the difficult part of culture.
8:18
And so I think that that part gets overlooked a lot,
8:23
especially because it's just not as sexy to talk about.
8:26
But for example, some of the things that we've done that have
8:29
helped us be successful is we're really strict on certain things
8:35
like gossip. Gossip is like a cancer.
8:39
And anytime that there's gossip, it just can tear an organization
8:44
apart. And a lot of people don't even
8:47
know what gossip is. They don't understand the
8:50
difference between gossip and work talk.
8:54
So we have to spend a lot of time educating our staff on what
8:58
gossip is, and we have to make sure that we're very strict on
9:01
it. So we're very lenient on a lot
9:03
of things that this is one thing that we're not lenient on.
9:08
So that's that's one of the, the non, you know, sexy parts of
9:12
culture. Well, I think it makes sense to
9:14
to focus on something like that. And to your point about
9:16
definitions, I mean, even hearing you say it, I'm going.
9:18
Oh, OK. Well, he means water cooler
9:20
talk, you know, just sitting around and visiting with one
9:21
another and, you know, being comrades at the office or
9:24
whatever. But.
9:25
But yeah, I know what you're talking about is, is right.
9:27
You know, I mean those kinds of sort of internal monologues
9:30
where people are sharing, you know, this kind of, you know, I,
9:33
I don't know, it's the talking behind the back.
9:35
It's all that stuff. Even if it's not about the
9:37
company, but maybe it's somebody in the company or somebody who,
9:39
you know, is a coworker or whatever.
9:40
Like there's almost no good that can come from that.
9:44
There's a lot of nuance to it. Like like you're like you're
9:48
talking about, you know, if I'm talking to somebody and I and I
9:53
and about somebody else's performance and that person I'm
9:57
speaking to does not have a direct relationship with that
10:01
person, then, you know, number one is it's not helpful because
10:05
they can't help them and #2 I'm then poisoning that person's
10:10
thoughts about the other person without allowing that person to
10:14
maybe give their point of view. So there's a lot of little
10:16
nuances that you have to navigate.
10:18
And we've learned that over the years.
10:20
We've been pretty good with it. Yeah, well, and I think if
10:23
people really are looking for like a contemporary example of
10:26
this too, I mean, just, I mean, social media is gossip.
10:29
I mean, all you see all day is people talking about people they
10:32
don't know and you know, about the decisions those people make
10:36
or whatever it is, you know, from politics to celebrity to
10:39
whatever, you know, all these people have opinions on every
10:42
living thing, but you know, they're sitting and talking.
10:44
And then you and it gets to a point like at least in, in my
10:47
view, where now it's almost so muddy.
10:48
Like you don't, you don't know what's right, you don't know
10:50
what's accurate. And so for me, I've basically
10:52
tuned everything out on social. Like I don't even really do it
10:55
anymore. And but it because it's because
10:57
it became a very unreliable part.
10:59
So in a business that too, you know, if you've got people
11:02
saying, oh, well, CE OS doing this or you know, so and so
11:05
thought that or look, Jerry's gone this weekend and he's
11:07
probably doing this. You know, you know, it's like
11:10
that kind of talk, you know, basically gets to a point where
11:13
I think the you know, even if it isn't dangerous in the sense
11:16
that maybe they're not spreading bad things, but just they're
11:19
forming opinions on people that you don't even know.
11:21
And that's going to decide their decision making process.
11:23
And it could be totally based in something that's a fiction
11:26
entirely. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
11:28
No, I love, I love how you say it.
11:32
And it could be based on fiction, but it also, everybody
11:34
has their own point of view, you know.
11:37
So your point of view is correct, but the other person's
11:39
point of view is correct also. And they can both coexist.
11:43
Yeah. No, I love that.
11:45
Well, let's talk a little bit more about Abby Connect.
11:47
And I want to just talk about sort of the growth of the
11:48
company over the years and maybe we could talk maybe in some key
11:51
milestones. I have to imagine as you grew
11:53
this business outside of a family operation, there were
11:56
some sort of like, I guess the entrepreneurial hurdles that
11:58
people start running into, you know, headcount and who to hire
12:02
and these kinds of things. I wonder if you could share any,
12:04
you know, maybe really memorable experiences and they could be
12:08
good or for bad, but, you know, some challenge that you bumped
12:10
into that was a big deal for your company at the time.
12:13
And you know how you navigated that, either for the better or
12:15
for the worse? You know what was the thing you
12:17
learned? Sure.
12:18
Yeah, No, great question. I think for me, the biggest
12:23
thing is that all the ceilings that we hit and every ceiling
12:28
that we hit, we had to completely throw out the rule
12:30
book and completely remake the company.
12:34
And so going from just the family to hiring a couple
12:38
employees, you know, obviously the, the, the structure and the
12:42
communication had to change. And then once you get to 10
12:46
employees, all the communication functions that you've instilled
12:52
don't work anymore and you need something, you know that that
12:55
scales. And then you go from 10 to 50
12:58
and your HR system start to breakdown.
13:01
And so you have to throw out the HR rule book and remake
13:03
yourself. And then you get to 100 and you
13:07
start seeing other problems. You have to completely throw out
13:10
the rule book. So I think reaching those
13:13
phases, it's it's challenging because you built something and
13:19
you're proud of it and then you realize what you've built isn't
13:23
going to work anymore and you really have to be OK with
13:27
throwing things out and starting over.
13:29
Well, and would you consider that sort of, I guess you know,
13:32
if you were looking at CE OS or business leaders, I mean, you
13:35
know, I think people move kind of a different paces on
13:38
different things sometimes. But do you think that one real
13:40
hurdle that CE OS run into, you know, either from your own
13:43
experience or maybe from others that you've talked to, where
13:46
maybe they stick too long with things?
13:47
So maybe they got to employee number 5 and they should have
13:50
been switching up these systems, but they didn't until they got
13:53
to employee 10. So then the problem was much
13:55
bigger or more, you know, difficult to deal with because
13:58
they waited too long to get something done.
14:00
Absolutely, but on this flip side, you don't want to knee
14:04
jerk reaction to every challenge that you see.
14:07
As a business owner you you need to work through things
14:09
sometimes, so finding find out when those ceilings are
14:14
happening is a key element. You don't want to sit around too
14:18
long, but yet you don't want to break everything prematurely.
14:23
Sure. Yeah.
14:24
No, that makes sense. So let's talk just, I guess as
14:27
we continue working through sort of the Abby Connect story.
14:31
You've grown the team, you've got more people on that now just
14:34
by virtue of being around for the last 20 years.
14:37
Technology is moving and it's moving all the time and now it's
14:40
moving even faster than ever maybe.
14:42
And so you no doubt started integrating some new
14:44
technologies and new things along the way.
14:47
But what do you think? I mean, now that we're getting
14:49
into sort of this AI era and things like that, where do you
14:51
think the, I mean, what did the the integration look like for
14:56
you as you're starting to bring these things on?
14:58
And which technologies are you just going to, that one's not
15:00
going to stick, but you know, but this one is.
15:02
And so we need to ride this one. Like how are you picking and
15:04
choosing how to move forward? Well, I think overall AI is so
15:10
exciting and it's so powerful, but I do think that it's people
15:15
are overstating what it's going to do.
15:19
That doesn't mean that it's not going to revolutionize our
15:23
society, but it does mean that it's a little bit different than
15:26
some of the people talking heads are explaining it.
15:30
And I know that with our own service, there's some some
15:33
fascinating things that we're doing with AI over the phone,
15:37
but there's a lot of edge cases that just cannot be planned for
15:42
and AI cannot handle. And that's when you still need
15:45
that human, you need that human to be there to take that call
15:50
when it doesn't go well for the AI.
15:52
Anytime, for example, in our service, we listen for points of
15:57
friction. So anytime somebody has to
16:01
repeat themselves three times, or let's say somebody uses
16:06
certain keywords that make make it known that they're upset with
16:11
the way that the call is going, or let's say that they have a
16:16
heavy accent and the AI can understand it, or they just say,
16:20
I want to speak to a human because I just don't like you.
16:24
You have to be ready to take that call as a human and to be
16:28
able to provide that customer service seamlessly.
16:32
And so that's how we're building our technology to be able to use
16:36
the human and the AI with the same call path, if you will.
16:44
So as you started to to roll this out and you, you start
16:47
rolling out these AI receptionist and people are
16:49
starting to interact with these things.
16:51
What do you think's your biggest surprise or the biggest aha that
16:53
you've had so far in terms of, you know, people interacting
16:58
with it, you know, or are people liking it more than you thought
17:00
or hating it more than you thought?
17:01
You know, Hey, have you had any big insights come from that yet?
17:05
I absolutely that question is perfect for this situation we
17:10
had. We were shocked.
17:13
So we have an attorney that we've been answering for three
17:16
or four years, human side reception service.
17:20
And she came to us and she said, hey, listen, I need more
17:23
service. I need my calls answered after
17:26
hours, but I don't want to pay for it.
17:31
We've all, we've all heard it, right?
17:33
We're all prepared for that statement.
17:36
So we said, hey, listen, OK, we have an idea.
17:39
We have this new AI service and we'd love to turn it on to your
17:42
calls at night. What I haven't told you yet is
17:46
she's an attorney for Elderly Law.
17:50
And we knew if we could sell, if we could have her clientele
17:56
communicate with this technology in a human like way and not get
18:00
frustrated, we've got it down. Fast forward to today.
18:05
She's one of our biggest advocates.
18:08
I mean, she loves it and she pays for it.
18:10
The free, The free child. Yeah.
18:13
That's how you know she likes it.
18:14
She's. Paying for it now.
18:15
Yeah. And they'll, they communicate
18:18
with it. They're happy.
18:20
You know, there's, there's obviously a percentage of calls
18:23
that get routed to a human, but nothing more than their general
18:27
public. And it's just great to listen,
18:29
to hear them communicate with it on a human like level.
18:34
Yeah, no, I love that. Well, and I actually, I mean,
18:35
now that you say that, it seems like it might actually work
18:38
better for folks like that. You know, maybe they're using
18:40
simpler language or they're, you know, the problem they're trying
18:43
to solve is maybe a little more clearly defined.
18:45
And, and so it seems like maybe those guys would actually be a
18:48
decent audience for AI, but I certainly wouldn't have thought
18:50
of it, you know, and I also would have thought they would
18:52
have immediately been a little bit skittish to it.
18:54
So the fact that they're having these conversations, I think
18:57
are, are both great insights. So in general, as you, you know,
19:01
have been working in communications for a long time,
19:03
you know, you're trying to build these relationships and, and
19:05
leveraging technology, all this stuff.
19:07
You know what, generally speaking, if you're talking to
19:09
other CE OS startup founders, people like that, you know, what
19:12
customer communication trends are the small businesses under
19:15
estimating now? Like what are they doing or not
19:18
doing that could be costing them as as it pertains to
19:21
communication? Well, I think that the phone
19:25
still gets overlooked a lot. I think, you know, I've been
19:28
hearing it for the past 20 years that the phone is going to go
19:31
away at some point and it just keeps getting bigger and bigger
19:35
and bigger. And so I think not paying
19:39
attention to who's answering your phones.
19:41
I know that's a that you know, I know I'm plugging, plugging our
19:44
own product here, but I believe that that's a true a point for I
19:49
think that CE OS are overlooking.
19:52
Yeah, I think that's good. Well, and then to that extent,
19:55
are there are there things that you're seeing with other
19:56
business leaders that they're wasting money on today in terms
19:59
of automation that, you know, you would say, oh, well, people
20:02
are investing way too heavily in that and and that's really
20:04
actually not working that well. We should be doing something
20:06
else. Have you encountered that or do
20:08
you have any ideas? Yeah, I actually think the live
20:13
chat widget on the website, I think that people are
20:16
overestimating in that I, I, we, we, we actually sell a service
20:21
where we answer your live chat for you.
20:24
And we do have a lot of clients that love it.
20:27
But I think overall it's not, it hasn't really had the adoption
20:31
that I think people think it will.
20:33
Well, it's interesting because like, you know, I mean, just
20:36
thinking about communications and human relationships, I guess
20:39
my gut and maybe it's me projecting would have been that
20:42
I would love to have like the chat bots be more effective,
20:44
right? Like I don't want to get on the
20:45
phone with you. I just want to chat with you and
20:47
handle my problem and move on. You know, like one company that
20:49
does this really well is American Express.
20:51
Like whenever I need it, my little chat bots always in the
20:53
corner. I can jump on it.
20:54
It's actually most of the time I end up just going right to a
20:57
human. But you know, but nonetheless,
20:59
the chat is right there. It's really easy for me to use.
21:02
Then with some other companies like U.S. bank is another
21:05
company that we work with and their chat, for example, is
21:09
really good at finding like directory items and things that
21:11
are in their knowledge base, but terrible at helping you actually
21:14
solve problems. And so to your point, you know,
21:16
they probably put a ton of money into that thing, but what
21:19
they've got it doing isn't even the thing that I think most
21:22
customers would want from it. Like I would be able to talk to
21:24
want to get right to a representative and solve my
21:26
problem. Instead, it's like, well, Are
21:28
you sure you don't mean business banking or Are you sure you
21:30
don't, you know, and it's like, you know, eventually you can
21:32
jump through the hoops and get to who you need to talk to.
21:35
But it's, it's interesting and it's one of the things that I
21:37
think I've really observed with AI.
21:39
And maybe you can speak to this a little bit too, which is
21:41
there's kind of this thing and you mentioned earlier the
21:43
talking heads and how everybody's talking about AI in
21:46
a way that's kind of, I don't know, it's a little bit weird.
21:48
They're talking about it like it's adversarial or something
21:50
like this and that it's almost like it's actually thinking, not
21:54
that it's just algorithmic and stuff.
21:56
Yeah, you know, I think they, they say the words, you know,
21:59
artificial intelligence that I think people are buying the hype
22:01
and, and, you know, if you really understand it, you
22:03
understand it's, it's not really thinking.
22:05
It's just, you know, it's doing this thing.
22:07
And so, but what ended up happening for this while, as I
22:10
noticed, like with SAS companies in particular, everybody was
22:13
just bolting AI onto their thing.
22:15
So now I've got this AI thing and you can pay $10 more a
22:17
month. And now you have AI And, you
22:19
know, most of the time it seems like with only a couple
22:22
exceptions that I can think of, it's like, what are we even
22:25
doing here? You know, it takes me more time
22:28
to use your AI than just to read the quick help document on how
22:31
to do what I'm trying to do or, or whatever.
22:33
And, you know, and I've found a lot of people doing that.
22:36
So I wonder, you know, in your experience, you know, maybe
22:39
you're saying something similar, but what are your thoughts on
22:41
sort of early adoption of AI and who's doing it the right way?
22:45
Well, I'll admit that we're guilty of that in the very
22:48
beginning. You know, when the revolution
22:51
started in 2022, Chechi BT, we bolted on some, some AI
22:58
functionality and it was it, you know, it was useful if you, if
23:04
you did use it, but it, it didn't change the paradigm shift
23:09
of what our service is now with the AI receptionist, that's
23:13
completely changed. This is a whole product that's
23:15
driven by AI. But to your point, bolting on
23:19
the services, I think we all fell into that trap and we
23:22
thought that it was going to help our businesses and it just
23:25
didn't. I think that does that answer
23:29
your question. Yeah, yeah.
23:31
It was basically just trying to get to the the point.
23:33
You know, there are a lot of people using it maybe in the
23:35
wrong way. And I think part of it is how we
23:37
think about it and all that stuff, which is we're
23:39
integrating this into our product.
23:41
It's helping you may, I mean, maybe it's kind of useful, maybe
23:44
you can navigate around or you can ask in more of natural
23:46
language type questions and that kind of thing.
23:48
But I found that for the most part everybody was charging you
23:51
10 or 15 bucks. They're saying, hey, you have
23:53
access to all these models, you have all this stuff, but really
23:56
all you're doing is trying to locate like a project in a
23:58
project management platform where you're trying to find, you
24:01
know, some asset that you've used before or something like it
24:04
doesn't really require AI outside of this is a
24:06
sophisticated search approach, you know, so, so it seems like
24:09
there are a lot of people kind of bolting it on like it was
24:11
going to be this magic bullet that now our software is
24:14
amazing. It was bad before, but now with
24:15
AI it's amazing. And you know, and I think in a
24:17
lot of cases people are just using it wrong.
24:20
Yeah. Do you remember when the iPhone
24:22
came out? All the apps, they're, they're
24:24
useless. I mean, it would, it took years
24:28
until a company like Uber came along and really, you know,
24:33
created a, a game changing service.
24:36
But the apps were just wrappers to websites.
24:42
There was, there was no utility to them other than going to a
24:45
website and not having to log in.
24:47
And I think that's where we're at with AI.
24:49
I think that we will get to a point where we're getting some
24:52
really useful tools and we're seeing some companies like Abby
24:57
develop those tools, but we're still seeing a lot of the slums,
25:02
they say. Yeah, well, and I think you're
25:04
right. I mean, maybe this is just part
25:05
of tech evolution, right? I mean, you've got to have early
25:07
adopters and people jump in and they push that technology to its
25:10
bounds. And then, you know, version 2
25:13
comes out and now we can get even further and further and
25:15
further. You know, like I've even noticed
25:16
just on my own AI journey, you know, and working with numerous
25:19
different platforms for new, you know, numerous different things
25:22
from coding to design to writing to, you know, whatever it's, you
25:27
know, I've really seen the evolution, you know, or this arc
25:30
so far. And it's like every iteration is
25:32
just a little better and a little better and a little
25:34
better. And it does seem like we may be
25:36
starting to plateau a little bit.
25:37
Like it's not quite so hockey stick that it used to be, but
25:41
but nonetheless, it's getting better and stronger and, and
25:43
it's, you know, so I mean, if you put Fast forward five years,
25:46
you know, what does that look like then?
25:48
So, so that's pretty exciting. Something I think that's kind of
25:52
interesting about your sort of, I don't know if we call it your
25:54
business philosophy or your management style or what it is.
25:57
But one thing that you think specific value on is how entry
26:01
level employees transition into these roles.
26:04
And I wonder if you talk a little bit about just sort of,
26:06
you know, this focus on entry level people and what it is you
26:09
hope to achieve by, you know, I guess sort of thinking about
26:12
them specifically because I think often times those folks
26:15
are overlooked. Yeah, Thank you.
26:17
So number one is we've always known that our Moat is people.
26:22
Our Moat is people and culture. And that's what we're good at.
26:25
That's what we're always going to be good at, and that's our
26:27
North Star. So even as this AI revolution
26:31
hit, we knew it's all going to be about people.
26:36
And even if we do get into these tools, it's about people.
26:39
And so we know that we knew that we were going to have to bring
26:41
these people along with us. And we, we hire for personality
26:46
and not for skills. That's part of our culture. 99%
26:51
of the people at Abbey started as a receptionist and work their
26:54
way up from from that entry level position.
26:58
And so we started very early with getting people comfortable
27:04
with AI. We started talking about using
27:07
it in our personal lives and we started a teams group and just
27:11
kind of talked about different use cases and different fun
27:16
things we were doing with it and just starting getting people
27:19
comfortable with it. And then we started talking
27:22
about the jobs that we foresee, you know, coming in Abbey, at
27:28
Abbey in the future. And then we started building out
27:32
progression plans for those jobs.
27:34
And then we started building out in our learning management
27:38
system classes and courses for people to take to learn AI and
27:43
to be ready for that next part of their career.
27:47
So even if they take what they've learned and, and use it
27:50
at Abby or if they take what they've learned and use it
27:53
somewhere else, as long as they're learning and growing and
27:57
keeping up, that helps our culture.
28:00
And so that's what we're focused on.
28:02
Yeah, No, I really like that. And I think that, you know, I
28:06
think if anybody really looks back at themselves and thinks of
28:08
jobs they've had and things like that, I mean, a lot of times we
28:10
get in because we know somebody or we have a friend or somebody
28:13
vouchers for us or whatever it is.
28:15
And a lot of times you get hired for a role only to find out the
28:18
role of something else entirely. And you just grow and you learn
28:21
on the job and you get good at it.
28:23
And that's what you do. But if you were to try and hire
28:26
for that job specifically, even my own son has dealt with this
28:29
recently. He's 19 and he's trying to find
28:31
work. But it's like, but dad, I do all
28:32
these things. So I want to apply for this job
28:36
as a barista somewhere or something.
28:38
But I do all these things. So they're trying to hire for
28:40
this very specific thing. And I'm like, all you got to do
28:43
is talk to them about the things you do that are relevant to
28:45
being a barista, you know, and it's like what you were just
28:47
describing, you know, personality, things as you know,
28:49
Hey, you know, are you easy to work with?
28:50
Are you coachable? You know, are people going to
28:52
be, you know, are you friendly? You know, these kinds of things
28:54
like they'll teach you how to run the coffee machine.
28:55
You don't need to be an expert to run the coffee machine to get
28:57
the job as a barista. Instead, they'll teach you that
29:00
part, you know? And so I think it's really
29:02
interesting looking at, you know, or trying to understand
29:05
the other skills, right? And, and some of that, I think,
29:07
you know, it ends up being a hurdle for folks when they want
29:11
a job or something and they go, hell, I don't know how to do
29:14
XYZ, but I'd really like to work for this company and I don't
29:17
know how to do it. But the reality is if they're
29:20
hiring on other features, if it isn't something highly technical
29:23
where you have to be like an engineer or something with
29:26
specific training, you know, most of the time you'll learn on
29:29
the job. And so by looking for these
29:31
different characteristics, I think that's a really
29:33
interesting way or a smart way to hire, but it's also, I guess
29:35
really in tune with the kind of work you're doing.
29:37
Are there other characteristics besides just sort of personality
29:40
that you would look into, you know, maybe more than technical
29:43
ability in an augmented, like AI augmented workforce?
29:45
Like what? What other stuff are you looking
29:47
for in a an employee? When we look for somebody that
29:51
has an open mind and wants to learn, and if you have an open
29:55
mind and you want to learn, that can take you a long way.
29:58
We also look for critical thinking.
30:03
So that's a skill that's going to be very useful in the AI
30:07
world and and we also look for people that can think outside of
30:14
the box. So those that's a good mix of
30:17
other personality that we like to hire for.
30:20
Yeah, No, I think one of the things, and this is how we've
30:23
been positioning AI with everyone we're talking to is
30:25
like as a tool, right? This is a thing to augment you
30:27
and make you stronger. And so I think that, you know,
30:30
to your point, by training these people earlier, getting them
30:33
into these environments where they're almost like working hand
30:35
in glove with the AI versus it, you know, looking at it as an
30:39
adversary or being concerned that you're going to lose your
30:41
job or something, I think is actually a really smart play.
30:44
And and so the fact that you do that is I think a really smart
30:47
thing to do. And, you know, I just, I just
30:50
think that, you know, again, you know, it's just trying to put
30:53
the focus on people or the relationships between people.
30:56
It seems to me that AI, as weird as it sounds, may just be one
30:59
more relationship that we have, you know, we have a relationship
31:01
with this tool or this technology and that's actually
31:03
going to make us better people. What do you think about sort of
31:07
this, I guess, melding of, you know, humanity and technology?
31:12
Well, I like this. You look at it as a relationship
31:15
with the technology. Never heard anybody say it like
31:19
that in this context, but I, I do think that if you look at it
31:24
in that point of view, you, it will help you figure out how to
31:26
use it. But, you know, as far as meshing
31:30
AI with humans, I think one of the, and, and you touched on
31:34
this earlier, the, the talking heads, yeah, they're talking
31:38
about it in scary ways, but they're also talking about it
31:42
like it's a religion, you know, like it's God.
31:47
And, and I also love how you said it's just an algorithm.
31:51
It doesn't think for itself. It definitely doesn't have a
31:53
soul, but that doesn't mean that it's not extremely powerful.
31:59
And like any tool, if you learn how to use that tool, that's
32:03
your relationship with it. How do I use this tool to better
32:06
my life or better my job? And that's a great way to think
32:12
about it. Well, and it's no different, you
32:15
know, I mean, it's maybe a more techie version, but it's no
32:17
different than the contractor and his tools or the, you know,
32:20
accountant and his calculator or whatever, you know?
32:23
I mean, it's like, you know, we have these relationships, people
32:26
and their tools, right? And I think, you know, whether
32:28
it's in communications like you're talking about, or if
32:30
you're just trying to, I don't know, be a better marketer and
32:33
you're using AI as something to bounce ideas off of, for
32:35
example. You know, that's, I mean, it can
32:38
be a tool that really makes your writing stronger or makes your
32:40
ability stronger. I think that the danger is, you
32:43
know, becoming too reliant on it, for example.
32:45
And I don't know, maybe you could make a, a comparison, you
32:47
know, some, some contractor that, you know, focuses too
32:51
heavily on one aspect of their technology.
32:53
And then when that breaks, all of a sudden they're out of
32:55
business, you know, so it's, you don't want to go too far into
32:58
the, the waters, but I think as long as you're kind of, you
33:00
know, hanging in there together, I think it's not a bad place to
33:02
be. Oh, go ahead.
33:06
I like to use something until it breaks and then I then I figure
33:10
out, you know how to use it ongoing.
33:14
And I've, I've broken AI day after day and I've, I've, I've
33:21
felt the boundaries of it. And in real life, let me tell
33:24
you, do not ask Chachi PT for legal advice.
33:29
Do not ask it for creative advice and marketing, and also
33:34
do not let it scan every single resume and tell you who to hire.
33:39
These are some of the lessons I've already learned.
33:43
No, I well, and I think that comes to, you know, to your
33:46
point, I like the idea. I always think about Jurassic
33:48
Park, right? And the Raptors are checking
33:50
the, you know, the electric fence and seeing where they can
33:52
breakthrough. And I feel like with these tech,
33:54
you know, especially with emerging technologies and things
33:56
that are sort of on the, on the come up, you can really start to
33:59
kind of poke and prod and figure out where the weak spots are,
34:02
where the gaps are. Like I've managed to accomplish
34:04
some pretty incredible things with like, like coding and stuff
34:08
like that, Things I used to hire teams for.
34:10
Now I'm able to comp up on my own.
34:12
But if somebody came behind me and look at my code, it's
34:14
probably terrible and it's probably full of errors and all
34:17
this stuff. But the AI just patches and
34:19
works over and patches and works over, you know?
34:21
And so, I mean, I have no doubt that it's not perfect, but
34:24
that's OK because for what I'm trying to do, you know, if I'm
34:26
demoing websites or whatever, but I would never do one that
34:28
was production based that I built myself that somebody's got
34:31
to live on, you know, like it's just, I'm not there yet.
34:34
Now, maybe soon or, or maybe it is already, I know a lot of
34:37
people really like cloud code and some of these other
34:39
platforms. So maybe it's already there.
34:41
But I think for a novice or like for me, like I've run software
34:45
teams from like a managerial standpoint.
34:47
So I could talk to the software team or just talk to ChatGPT or
34:51
whatever. From the perspective of I
34:53
understand how software works. And that's given me the, I guess
34:57
the the little add on or the superpower of now being able to
34:59
code it too, where in the past I would have hired, had to hire
35:02
somebody for that. But if I didn't know what I was
35:04
doing at all and I wasn't asking the right questions or whatever,
35:06
you could end up with really, you know, murky output.
35:09
So I think it's a good point though.
35:12
I wanted to ask you a couple questions about just sort of
35:14
leadership in general. We talked earlier about sort of
35:16
how Abby was growing and you got to 10 to 50 employees, etcetera.
35:20
What do you think the biggest changes were for you and when?
35:23
So, you know, for a lot of young entrepreneurs, I mean, I've
35:26
heard the numbers, you know, around 5 employees, everything
35:28
changes around, you know, 50 employees, everything changes.
35:31
And I think you've kind of cited both of those as milestones.
35:34
But I think you guys are up around 100 people, maybe more
35:36
now. And like, So what, what are the
35:38
big things that have changed for you or that you've encountered
35:40
along the way? That would be, you know, I don't
35:43
know, flag, flag in the sand that says, oh, man, at that
35:46
point we really had to pivot. Well, I think a lot of it is
35:51
internal. The the for me that was a
35:55
challenge. So for example, you know, when I
35:58
started my career and very early on, I was very focused on
36:03
product and I still am, I still love product and I still love
36:08
looking at how the customer thinks and, and what problems we
36:12
can solve for the customer. I think that's the a good found
36:16
one of the foundations of the business.
36:18
But what I found out really quickly was somebody in my
36:23
position, I had to be worried about the people, right.
36:30
And so I had to really change how I view business, how I view
36:37
our business and how I interact with people.
36:40
And that was an internal change that I had to make and it was
36:43
very difficult for me. And so making that migration, I
36:47
would say was one of the biggest challenges that I personally
36:51
have come across. OK, well then maybe in that
36:55
vein, do you have one, you know, I don't know, thing that comes
36:59
to mind if you talk about maybe the decision that took you the
37:01
longest to make and why? Like, is there something, you
37:04
know, we talked earlier about people dragging their feet or
37:06
moving too fast? Is there something in your
37:08
career that you can point to that's like, oh man, I really
37:10
should have moved fist and more quickly on this, but I didn't
37:13
and you know, I should have and here's why.
37:15
Firing people. Yeah.
37:18
It's yeah, it's, it's tough. You know, it's, it's always
37:21
tough to part ways and sometimes it's easy, but sometimes it's,
37:25
it's very difficult because there's, there's a couple of
37:30
instances that I can think of and these are the real difficult
37:34
ones. So when you have an employee
37:36
that is extremely smart, extremely capable and extremely
37:42
experienced and has a very good success record, but they don't
37:46
work out in your company. And it's it's nine times out of
37:50
10 or 10 out of 10 is a culture fit.
37:53
And letting go to letting go of somebody like that.
37:58
It's really tough because it's hard as a business owner to
38:01
attract the right talent. And when you know you have
38:04
somebody that is truly that smart and that capable, it's
38:08
really hard to part ways with them.
38:10
But at the same time, if there's a culture mismatch, it just
38:16
tears up the entire company and you just cannot live with that.
38:20
Yeah, well, and it makes sense too.
38:21
This might dovetail into some of the stuff you talked about
38:23
earlier with gossip and things like that.
38:25
Like if you have a person like this but they're generally
38:26
unhappy, you know, unhappy people talk and they tell people
38:30
about it. And, you know, that could help
38:31
maybe poison the well or change the opinions of other people.
38:34
So that makes a lot of sense. So I wanted to talk to you too,
38:37
and we kind of touched on it before, but I wanted to see if
38:39
we could put a little bit of a wrapper on it.
38:41
Just this idea of how do you balance innovation speed with
38:43
operational stability? So you mentioned early, you
38:46
know, a couple, you know, ready fire aim moments where you were
38:49
bolting on AI and stuff like that.
38:51
But as you've started to grow with it, like how like at what
38:55
rate or how do you balance sort of, I guess that speed of
38:57
gathering innovation or working with new technologies yet
39:00
keeping your product stable? Well, that question I guarantee
39:08
you has changed. The answer to that is changing
39:10
on a daily basis. Now I so we've expanded to San
39:16
Francisco and we're hiring engineers here and we've decided
39:20
to come straight to the heart where all the, the great AI
39:23
engineers are. And I'm, I'm speaking to some of
39:27
these engineers and things are changing on a daily basis.
39:33
You know, you talked about Claude code and you talked about
39:36
some of the code that you're developing that that has a lot
39:40
of technical debt. You would be shocked.
39:45
You'd be shocked at what you could do setting up the right
39:50
the right environment. And I could talk to you offline
39:52
about this. It almost makes you think that
39:56
SAS is dead because you could think about anything and this is
40:01
the way the world is going. You could think about anything
40:05
and you could have it built for you with a couple of clicks.
40:09
And what does that do? What does that do to a software
40:13
company? What does that do to what they
40:16
used to consider their mode? That we could just think of
40:20
something. I'll give you an example.
40:22
I hope the guys at Atlassian aren't listening to this because
40:25
we're still heavily relying on you and we still love you.
40:29
But our engineer wants to completely replace Jira.
40:34
And I was thinking, you know what?
40:35
This could be a 2 month project. This could be a three month
40:38
project. He's talking about doing it
40:40
overnight. Oh wow.
40:43
He's talking about doing it overnight, about really creating
40:46
our own JIRA system, ticketing system for engineers with a
40:53
couple of clicks of a couple buttons.
40:56
And so you got to really think about that.
40:58
What does that do to our society?
41:01
What does it do to all the businesses out there?
41:03
Well, it's interesting too. And in my own experience, and
41:05
yeah, I'd love to visit with you a little bit when we get off the
41:07
call, but I've built a couple little apps and things like that
41:11
on my own using some of these vibe coding platforms and stuff
41:13
like that. And my gut was that they had to
41:18
be kind of fragile or these aren't going to be good because
41:20
they're AI just threw them together or whatever.
41:22
And then I've run these things and I've been using them now for
41:25
months. I think we're building
41:26
proprietary tools in house and stuff like that.
41:29
And it's one of the big focuses with this new company that we've
41:32
launched is building proprietary IP and things that we can own.
41:35
So maybe one day we sell this thing or maybe we can be
41:38
acquired because we have some process or something that's
41:40
unique. And so we're trying to build
41:42
these new tools, but I can kind of build it and try it now.
41:46
And like, I don't need a whole army of engineers to help me
41:49
out. And I think if you had like one
41:51
good competent engineer, now you're getting the throughput of
41:53
three to five engineers that are all pretty good, you know, And
41:56
it's like, you know, it's amazing what you can do.
41:58
Like AI has really supercharged that career.
42:00
And you know, for maybe junior or entry level devs, I feel a
42:04
little bad for them because there's some of this, although I
42:06
think there's still parts all over the world that just the
42:09
juniors junior devs will be made better through AI too.
42:12
And, you know, so I think there's still opportunity there,
42:15
but like, if any of the jobs are in danger, it might be that one.
42:18
So yeah, yeah, yeah. And you know, Anthropic says
42:21
they're, they're using AI for 100% of their coding now.
42:25
Oh wow. Yeah, see.
42:27
I. Think from what I've heard
42:28
anyway. I've heard the Claude code is
42:29
the best one out there right now.
42:31
And I've used various through different platforms.
42:34
And yeah, I mean, I've had really good experience with it.
42:37
And it seems to get, even for me being a little bit of a novice
42:41
in terms of development. I've, I've found that it
42:43
understands my requests and it builds the things that I'm
42:46
trying to build most quickly. And it does it with a lot of the
42:49
things that I'm not smart enough to mention in advance.
42:51
So like things that I forget and then later come back to and go,
42:54
oh crap, I should have said this first.
42:56
And now it, you know, like it builds with the intelligence to
42:58
put all that stuff back in place.
43:00
So I mean, it's, it's pretty incredible what it's doing.
43:03
So sort of we're starting to get to the end here.
43:06
I wonder if we talked just quickly about, you know, what do
43:08
you think customer experience looks like in five years if
43:10
companies are doing this the right way?
43:14
Sure. Well, I think that we're going
43:16
to be communicating more and more with AII think you're going
43:20
to start to see agents. You know, I'm sure that it
43:24
sounds like you you're deep into it.
43:25
So you you know about agents, but I think a lot of people
43:29
don't and they don't really they don't understand what the power
43:33
is. So I think that that's going to
43:36
be a big part of the future. I digressed.
43:40
I don't know if you read this in the news, but there is a Reddit
43:44
style social media company for agents.
43:50
And so these agents are going to this social media like Reddit
43:57
website and communicating and they're talking about humans.
44:03
They're talking about they're about what the humans are
44:06
telling them to do. And they're kind of like
44:10
exchanging notes. Yeah, see, they're gossiping.
44:13
We got to get these AI guys. They are gossiping.
44:17
Oh, how funny. No, I haven't heard about that.
44:19
I mean, it's kind of hilarious, but you know.
44:21
But see, that's just going to fuel the whole we're more
44:23
intelligent thing. We can't have these robots think
44:25
that they're actually thinking. That's where stuff goes.
44:29
So all right, cool. Well, let's where can people
44:33
start to track you down? Connect with Abby Connect if
44:36
they're interested in learning more about the product or the
44:38
service, or if they'd like to connect with you online.
44:40
We're the best places people can get in touch.
44:42
Yeah, I'd love them to come to abby.com, our website, and try a
44:46
free trial of our service and they can also find us on social
44:51
media. My handle is Nathan Strom and
44:54
our company's handle is Abby Connect.
44:57
Awesome. Yeah.
44:58
No, that's great. Well, and for people wondering,
45:00
it's Abby, by the way, Abby. So.
45:03
So yeah, be sure to check it out.
45:04
It's great. The the product looks really
45:06
cool and exciting. I wish I had a need for for
45:09
people answering my phones, but we don't have enough calls yet.
45:11
But hopefully that'll be a problem I have to solve before
45:13
too long. So.
45:14
Well, thank you so much, Nathan. I really appreciate you taking
45:16
the time to do this. Absolutely.
45:20
And thanks so much to everybody who tunes into the show this
45:22
week and every week. And we'll see you guys next
45:24
time.