Customerland
Customerland is a podcast about …. Customers. How to get more of them. How to keep them. What makes them tick. We talk to the experts, the technologies and occasionally, actual people – you know, customers – to find out what they’re all about.So if you’re a CX pro, a loyalty marketer, a brand owner, an agency planner … if you’re a CRM & personalization geek, if you’re a customer service / CSAT / NPS nerd – you finally have a home.
Customerland
Personalization First: The Secret to Customer Loyalty
The strategic balance between technology investment and human touchpoints has never been more critical in customer experience. In this eye-opening conversation with Mario Matulich, CEO of Customer Management Practice and CCW, we uncover why so many well-intentioned CX initiatives fail during uncertain economic times.
Mario reveals the three drivers that truly matter to customers: personalization, ease, and speed—in that exact order. This hierarchy, backed by extensive research, provides a clear framework for making technology decisions that actually enhance loyalty rather than damaging it. The conversation explores why brands that maintain their CX investments during challenging periods emerge stronger, while those focused purely on cost-cutting often lose market share.
"If you're making technology investment decisions purely for cost savings, you will fail," warns Mario, highlighting the most common pitfall he observes across industries. Companies frequently replace frontline staff with self-service technology simultaneously, creating a perfect storm when that technology inevitably has flaws. When customers encounter issues and revert to traditional channels, they discover drastically reduced staffing—resulting in frustration and permanent damage to brand loyalty.
The discussion examines success stories from travel, hospitality, healthcare, and financial services sectors, where leaders like Delta, Hilton, Marriott, and Chase recognized economic challenges as opportunities to differentiate through superior customer experiences. Mario also previews the upcoming CCW Las Vegas event, bringing together over 250 solution providers and offering unparalleled networking and benchmarking opportunities.
Perhaps most compelling is Mario's observation about the future of corporate leadership: many of tomorrow's executives are today's contact center agents, developing uniquely valuable skillsets at the intersection of human empathy and technological transformation. For anyone navigating CX decisions in uncertain times, this conversation provides both strategic clarity and practical guidance.
Subscribe to Customer Land for more insights on creating exceptional customer experiences that drive loyalty even during challenging economic conditions.
personalization, ease, speed in that order. If that technology partnership decision is focused and embedded around those three drivers first and foremost to elevate the overall customer experience you then will be able to over time gain efficiency and cost savings within your organization. But if it's pure play cost savings on day one and you're going to rip and replace, and that rip and replace is drastically understaffing. To assume that you're going to rip and replace and that rip and replace is drastically understaffing. To assume that you're going to flip a switch on your technology and all will be well, it sounds very logical that that would be a misguided decision when you say it out loud. But how often it happens and how often you and I feel it as customers.
Speaker 2:Today on Customer Land, mario Matalich, who is CEO of Customer Management Practice and CCW, and if you operate at all on any level in the CX space, you have to be familiar with at least one of those entities, probably deeply familiar with both of them. One of those entities probably deeply familiar with both of them, but Mario sits at the very top of, I guess, two pyramids there, with a pretty unique perspective on things in this space. So, mario, thanks for joining me. I really appreciate it, been looking forward to this for a while.
Speaker 1:Yeah, great to be here. Thanks for having me, Mike. I'm excited for the conversation.
Speaker 2:So you know, it seems a little silly, but maybe we just need to set some context here about what CMP is and what CCW is and does. And you know, I'd love to talk a little about your vision for the whole thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, happy to Customer management practice. Cmp is the overarching brand and we have a variety of business units. The most prominent, and the one that we're probably known for the best been around the longest, is our events arm, and so previously known as call center week. As it's evolved and the market has evolved, transformed to customer contact week and all of its various iterations Our Las Vegas flagship that takes place in June, but also our very large and successful Nashville iteration in October. We're in Orlando in January with the program as well, our various exchange-style events where we invite very senior-level customer contact and CX executives to meet with the solution-providing market to create really sort of high-value interactions between the two sides of that spectrum.
Speaker 1:That's one part. We have our digital editorial arm and that's really kind of that's 180,000 plus members globally that are from EVP of customer contact, coo level down to supervisors, managers, even agents and everyone in between. That part of our market is very much the editorial piece that keeps the industry connected. It's articles, white papers, it's webinars. It's a variety of digital content no different than how you might read the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times. Customer contact and CX leaders are zeroing in on the trends in the industry developments that are happening on a day-to-day basis. Our digital arm covers that the most prominent brand there, ccw Digital. Then finally, our research and advisory arm, which has been around now for over three years, and really that was created to provide a dedicated and focused lens for CX and customer contact leaders to gain the decision support that they need to navigate what is an obviously incredibly fast moving and evolving market.
Speaker 1:So a lot changed off the back of the pandemic and we felt there was a real gap here in the market to gain the sort of guidance that a customer contact or CX leader needed. Their work environment had changed dramatically. They moved from majority on-premise to hybrid or remote. While even return to office has been a trend, customer service and customer experience has remained largely hybrid and remote. But while even return to office has been a trend, customer service and customer experience has remained largely hybrid and remote.
Speaker 1:So that's really changed the competencies that were required to do the job at a high level. It changed how we trained at scale, the technology decisions that we had to make, the organizational structure, how we decided between self-service and our more traditional channels, how we decided which channels we should service and which we should not. So many things have changed, and so that division really focuses on supporting CX and customer contact leaders to make the best decisions possible for their organization. So that's really the scope of CMP. Obviously, we're talking about a variety of topics, I think, today, but we have our largest event coming up here in June. But yeah, mike, hopefully that gives you a little bit of a lay of the land, if you will from somebody who you know your perspective is the one that counts here, I think.
Speaker 2:So I had the fortune of meeting and talking with Nicole Kyle a while back, so she kind of introduced me to the research and advisory side of things, which was at the time. I got to tell you I think you know a lot of people do kind of what's the best way to put this so they don't demean anybody Everybody's got their kind of niche perspectives on on the cx world. I was impressed with, with nicole's perspective, which tended to be, at least at the time, kind of a holistic view of what's happening and how to kind of position people and help people navigate that whole thing. So really enjoyed that conversation yeah, nicole's brilliant.
Speaker 1:she leads the, she leads cmp research for us and uh has done an amazing job. Um has really kind of stayed out in front of the market in terms of where it's trending and listen. It's lonely at the top. It's not easy to make these calls, make these decisions. There's been a lot of shift in decision-making responsibility. So the head of customer contact traditionally you feel like you have a really strong idea of what they do and the scope of their role.
Speaker 1:But what's really unknown to a lot of the market is how dramatically it's shifted in the last several years. And a lot of tech responsibility, tech decision-making responsibility. Essentially you have the heads of customer contact that have to operate like a CTO and they've done 20 or 30 years in their current role and in the last four or five, five have had to take on what sounds and looks a lot more like a CTO role and that's a daunting task in a lot of instances. So we tried to really create the support and the sort of advisory partnership needed to help a lot of those leaders navigate what's obviously new territory in a lot of aspects, especially given some of the fast-moving components of the tech space and how it's impacting customer experience overall.
Speaker 2:Well, you look at macroeconomic factors, cultural factors, all the technological advancements, and I think you'd almost kind of have to like at one point I think it was okay to describe the shifts in CX as kind of the shifting sands of a big desert, like you don't know what the landscape is going to look like tomorrow, but you know, it's all there. It's just going to kind of feel different in contours. And yet, I think, just because of the pace of change right now tariffs you know we want to talk about that a little bit, but you know, et cetera, et cetera it almost feels like whiplash for a lot of leaders. And I talked to a lot of leaders in this space and they, you know, once you go a little bit off the record, there's a lot of anxiety and kind of exasperation of like okay, it just got real here. You know we're looking for help, we're looking for guidance, but it takes you a little while to get to that point.
Speaker 2:Nobody's going to admit that right off the bat, certainly not on a public podcast. But you get to talk to a lot of these folks yourself. I think it would be pretty amazing to hear your perspective say over the past, this isn't going too deep into weeds, say the past, say four or five years, call it, you know, mid or just just pre pandemic of of your view of the world and what CX look like, the kind of big shift changes that happened in the big and how people have evolved which brings us to right now. So is there such a thing as a short retrospective or is that getting too deep in the weeds?
Speaker 1:Well, I think this I mean you can go further than that. You had some pretty significant inflection points in that time frame you described. If you go back further, the financial crisis was also an area where we leaned heavily on the CX heroes, as I like to call them. They don't react probably the same way everybody does when you, when you interview them, because they're they're steady handed and it's it's something that comes with the territory. They you know a lot of the people that are leading the most effective and most resilient CX operations. They're they're people that came up through the ranks. They started as agents. They've been there. They've had the high frustrations, the high anxiety, the difficult conversations. They've been trained in different areas where they've had to work across multiple channels. They've had to work across evolving technology. They had to work where skill sets have been. New requirements have emerged. Skill sets have been, you know, new requirements have emerged.
Speaker 1:So, in any instance, when you saw that sort of macroeconomic event again whether it was something as sudden as the pandemic or that kind of came in a bit of a wave, as the financial crisis did, or something that you know, sort of you know, one day was announced in the form of tariffs. These are all events or instances where the CX leader will sit back and realize that it's time for them to rise to the occasion and steer the ship the way they have time and time again. And you know when the storm passes and this too shall pass you know when you get out of it, you realize and you look back and you say who really helped us get there? Who helped us go from where we were, those moments of concern and anxiety and maybe reactive decision-making, who took us to where we are now, where the ship is steadied and we're seeing that sort of clear path to prosperity again? And so many times it's the CX leader. They are really the unsung hero in so many instances. But the reason why they generally you know sort of are the person that helps lead the organizations out of sort of you know macroeconomic turmoil or you know macroeconomic events that perhaps are outside of that particular organization's control, is because they are long in their thinking where they are able to put the customer first and realize very quickly that customer experience will and should continue to be a core differentiator and a real competitive battleground for how they win market share, win business and keep their customers loyal.
Speaker 1:And so often, when those macroeconomic events take place, there's reactive decision-making that's so short-term and it's tempting right. It takes a set of. It takes a certain sort of fortitude to be able to hold the line and actually still stay the course on putting the customer first versus cutting resources, versus squeezing budgets, versus pulling back on certain tech investments that are going to enhance customer experience. The brands that stay that course and that decide that this is their opportunity to gain market share, when everyone might be pulling back, they're going in more aggressively to support the customer and to ensure that their customer experience is elevated.
Speaker 1:When you look back, those are the organizations that, in times of uncertainty, they're the ones winning market share, not losing market share. You can always put your head in the sand, you can always put on your tin hat and hope the storm passes, but those are the organizations and those are the ones that have appointed the right leaders and, quite frankly, empowered those leaders to make these types of decisions, versus perhaps the penny-wise, pound-foolish decisions that in the end, might feel right but end up costing them a lot in the long term. Because those customers have short memories. They know who was there for them and who supported them.
Speaker 2:Um, I could talk more about tariffs, but that's a more general sort of uh set of comments around the to your point, the last few kind of uh concerning times that have approached us in the last four or five, you know well, you know, you pointed out the, let's just say, the winners and the losers people who are going to pull it off and people who are going to excel and and you know um, and win through this, and I don't think it's fair to call out the losers. Um, they know who they are, they know who their struggles are, but I wonder, if um, can you think of anybody you would maybe not personalities or individuals, but brands that are actually doing this well, who've decided to, you know to, to stick it out, to weather the storm. Is there anybody you can think of who's doing this particularly well?
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's a lot of brands and, depending on the sort of scenario, what point in time we're talking about, there's companies within the travel and hospitality industry that saw the pandemic as a real opportunity to enhance the customer experience, do a lot with ensuring that travel remained and that people, at a time when lockdowns were going on and there's so much unknown with the pandemic and how it was going to impact that entire industry, leaned in and created better experiences and better customer touch points, created and invested in their technology infrastructure and made things more seamless and easier. You think of brands like Hilton and Marriott and what they've done with their self-service tools and making it so much easier to work with those brands and book their travel. You think about again, while we're on travel and hospitality you think of brands like Delta that really leaned in on their, on their customer service channel optimization and how they worked there. You think about a lot of the health systems. Um, off the back of that time frame too, and not all health systems have taken this approach, but there's been a lot of work to be done to create a more seamless experience and you think about it now and you, you know, you know when, you, when you think about the health systems that you work with and how you interact with those health systems, the experience you have now versus maybe as recent as five or six years ago.
Speaker 1:Banking and financial services off the back of the financial crisis. You saw some real movement there and a lot's changed from a technology, investment standpoint, how those groups were working with their target markets. So you think about Chase and Bank of America, a few of the key leaders there. You can go on and on. You can go industry by industry and there's going to be a few that come to mind, and it's no surprise at times when they're the household names, and it's no surprise when they're not. They've been able to identify opportunity areas, uncontested market space for their customers, and they've leaned into that uncontested market space to create an innovation, a sort of value innovation that's allowed customers to want to come back and spend their money with them, and that really goes back to tariffs.
Speaker 1:It's another instance where we think about OK, the cost structures might change and maybe our margins might be squeezed in certain instances, some more than others, depending on how things shake out there's a lot of unknowns. Will it get resolved quickly? Will it not get resolved? Will it escalate, will there be an ongoing trade war? Well, it's left a lot of uncertainty and anxieties increased across a lot of these brands.
Speaker 1:But when it comes back down to it, the one bit of research that we have and we continue to lean on is you know, a customer will continue to spend more if the experience is premium and if the experience is at the level that they are expecting it. And, quite frankly, if it goes beyond what they're expecting and they may spend with fewer brands, but they will spend more with certain brands. And that's where you have to begin to evaluate and that's why those CX leaders that really kind of help steer the ship out of the uncertain times. Those are the ones that usually are at the front of the room going. We have an opportunity here.
Speaker 1:We can look at all of our customers and they might be spending X number of dollars a month across a variety of different brands, some competitors, some non-competitors. They're going to probably pull back in these instances. I'm not going to sit there and say they're going to spend more and be irresponsible. They may say, okay, I have to spend 10% less, 20% less, maybe even 50% less, but what they are going to do and what we know for a fact is they're going to spend more with the brands that they are more confident in and are seen as more reliable as a result of the customer experience that they've been given. And, in the end, that's the guiding light for the CX leader, and it's very interesting to see how many brands follow that thought process and what they gain as a result, and, unfortunately, how many brands simply don't, and what the outcomes look like there.
Speaker 2:You're seeing a lot of that. That was one of the big findings. We participated in research and, of course, there was tons and tons of other research that came out of the pandemic. But I think the same thing you're talking about we called it a refocusing of brand affinity. Yeah, spending pulled back, but there was this shift from kind of I'm going to spend my money across a handful of brands because of whatever comfort, because of experimentation, because of availability, but when the chips are down, you focus on brands that you're comfortable with, that are doing a good job for you, and we saw it time and time again, and loads of data to support that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's pretty logical, right. When you say it out loud. It's not exactly rocket science. It's fairly straightforward. But time and time again, I think on the financial side it's seen as quick wins, quick savings, but there's long-term costs associated with those quick savings, um, and so, unfortunately, a lot of brands learn the hard way, um, and you know the ones that, that, that, uh, that take advantage of those opportunities. I think they have a lot to show for it in the end.
Speaker 2:So I think you know someone in your position. You, um, first of all, you have an advisory function within your company, so you're probably in a position, and I'm sure your team is to provide high-level guidance and maybe even kind of operational-level guidance on how to navigate times like this. You mentioned they are challenging. There's a lot of unknowns, more than usual, if there is a usual right now. But if you know, if you're, if we're, if you were advising companies to double down on on activities that produce loyalty, what's the, what's the framework for making those decisions? What do you keep, what do you cut? What do you double down on? I mean, do you have a, a kind of a I'm just calling it a framework that you advise on?
Speaker 1:kind of a I'm just calling it a framework that you advise on. Yeah, and you met Nicole Kyle. She has a you know a lot to talk about on this, on this topic around, from organizational structure to competency, mix of frontline um workforce like call center agents and supervisors, managers, um across, then self-service channels and so forth. But there's a number of drivers that play a role in what a CX leader needs to be thinking about and should consider at all times. And now all the things I'll mention will have an impact, from personalization, ease, speed, issue resolution, empathy, clarity, security. Every one of those are significant and substantial drivers in a customer experience that will cause an increased level of satisfaction and an increased level of loyalty. But the top three standouts are personalization, ease and speed.
Speaker 1:Again, it does not discount the others, but when it comes down to being able to personalize your experience, being able to provide a level of ease, frictionless experience, and to do it fast and efficiently, the brands that have focused in on those three drivers have been largely classed or categorized as best in class when it comes to their customer experience and, as a result, have been able to reap the rewards.
Speaker 1:And again, yeah, nicole has a framework that her entire analyst team can share that you can begin to not only assess your current operation but identify improvement areas across a variety of elements that come back to this thought process and topic area. But in a real summary format, those are the three drivers that I'd be advising any brand. And so, when you think about that from the perspective okay, times are tightening. Tariffs pandemic was a bit of an outlier, but still a macroeconomic inflection point and a macroeconomic event that obviously was impacting everyone at the time you look at it and go, okay, well, what do I do? Well, if you want to lean in and say, okay, what do we need to do to maintain a premium, high-level customer experience focusing on personalization, ease and speed, and if you do that more times than not, you're going to reap the rewards.
Speaker 2:Are you seeing anything? This isn't even a fair question. I realized it before I even asked it. But of those three items ease, speed and personalization they probably are weighted differently, optimally in different cases. But would you say there's one of those where you say, if listen, you got to pick one, this is where you got to go, where would you lean in?
Speaker 1:yeah, I mean across and this is a data point. There's one particular survey 4 4329 customers. Personalization is 3.1 times more likely to drive satisfaction and loyalty rates higher. Ease 2.7 times likely, 2.6 times likely for speed, those are your top three. So, as defined by CMP research. And so personalization, a lot of people will think okay, speed and ease A lot of people we'll talk about empathy, um, you know, issue resolutions, another, another role, uh, another driver um, security, clarity, understanding that you know what, what, what I'm getting and when I'm getting it and how I'm getting it, and so forth.
Speaker 1:That you can, you can talk about these, every one of these drivers, and they all have positive impact. Just to be really, really clear. But the clear winner and the number one um, that's 3.1 times likely to drive those rates higher, is personalization. And oftentimes if you line them up and you said, okay, you tell me what would be number one, personalization is not always the one that's chosen. It sort of goes against conventional wisdom in a lot of ways, but the data from the customer-facing side is right in that order of personalization, ease and speed in that rate. If you do it well, your customers come back time and time again. They'll spend more, they'll be more loyal and they'll be more satisfied. By the way, they're also going to tell their friends about the tremendous experience that they had.
Speaker 2:Which isn't so bad. Here's a question designed right for Mario Matalich. This is probably the highlight of the whole podcast right here, the biggest misconception you see in boardrooms as it relates to CX during tough times, like what are you hearing in the conversations you're a part of.
Speaker 1:Yeah, number one challenge that we run into and it's difficult because it's a complex one. And when you hear it, it's something that I think would make a lot of sense if you sat in a CFO or CEO role and said I think would make a lot of sense if you sat in a CFO or CEO role and said, okay, I completely understand where maybe this decision was made, but it's fool's gold in a lot of ways because of the nature of how organizations roll out. And that's to replace your frontline workforce, frontline agents and supervisors and such, with technology and self-service tools. And it's not because they aren't effective, they're incredibly effective but what happens is, on the same day you turn on your tools to drive more self-service is the same day as you reduce your frontline resourcing by 20 or 30%. And there's oftentimes a lot of decisions that are made.
Speaker 1:Like I said earlier in the in the in the conversation. Um, it's challenging. There are, there are there are false starts with technology, selection, partnership decisions. There's a lot of dead ends. Um, unfortunately, there's a lot of roadmap, um, you know, promises that are made. There are decisions that are made without a complete line of sight, and that's why CMP research launched the CMP Research Prism, which gives you ability to cut through this really noisy market and actually assess each technology provider in core categories on, you know, 10 different investment criteria to really customize what decisions are going to be right for you and your needs. But the point being here is that when you make those decisions and things aren't done perfectly when it comes to self-service it's a more unforgiving customer in the self-service channels, and so, therefore, when technology is used as a cost savings to replace human beings, you unfortunately end up with a perfect storm, because if your technology has flaws which very oftentimes it does because of all the reasons I've cited, and this part of the group exists what happens is, after one opportunity to deliver, that entire customer base then floods back to their traditional channel of choice, which is still voice. And when they get back to their voice channel, they find that that's not the voice channel. It's like Back to the Future. When Marty goes back to the alternative 1985, right, it's not the same voice channel that they remembered, it's a voice channel with 20 to 30% less staffing. And so that voice channel that they came to know and love over the years working with that brand is now very different, and I see it happen time and time again, this perfect storm.
Speaker 1:It's a real misguided step and one of our clients who works for a major e-commerce organization leads all their experience operations over there will tell us if you're making technology investment decisions purely for cost savings, you will fail. You have to first make those decisions to elevate your customer experience. Personalization, speed, ease, sorry, personalization, ease, speed, in that order. If that technology partnership decision is focused and embedded around those three drivers first and foremost to elevate the overall customer experience you then will be able to over time gain efficiency and cost savings within your organization. But if it's pure play cost savings on day one and you're going to rip and replace and that rip and replace is drastically understaffing.
Speaker 1:To assume that you're going to flip a switch on your technology and all will be well, it sounds very logical that that would be a misguided decision when you say it out loud. But how often it happens and how often you and I feel it as customers, I can't tell you. When you're on hold for the better part of 45 minutes and the callback technology doesn't work and you're sitting there and then your call drops and you have to start all over again after 45 minutes of wait time to find out that you've passed three different departments and still don't have resolution. You're probably never coming back, and more times than not, that's because of exactly the scenario I just outlined.
Speaker 2:Just cost-cutting. First. I want to talk a little bit, while I still have you, about CCW Las Vegas. It is the I mean this in a good way 900 pound gorilla of industry events. It's a must attend. Um, I know you probably feel the same way, but, uh, for this year's agenda, if you're going to pick one event, of course we're going to say it's CCW, but you know, uh, maybe give attendees a little heads up as to what they can expect there. That might be different from past years.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's um, well, we try to build the team. It's. It's a really incredible team. I'm blessed to have the group that we, that that works with us uh, you know, work with us on a day-to-day basis literally. You know the wheels touch down, uh, when they return, we return back to our respective. You know hometowns and so forth, and you know, when we get back from Las Vegas and we immediately get right back in the lab and start thinking about how to improve. So the team has done a really incredible job again this year. We have record-breaking attendance and record-breaking exhibit growth and so forth. So we're really pleased with the overall results, but I'm more pleased with how it's going to support this incredible community.
Speaker 1:As we've kind of talked about in this call, it's a very, very noisy market right now. There's an incredible amount of tech evolution and growth, but it's also really difficult to identify the partners of choice how to elevate your tech stack, where to start and how to go about tackling that. So you know what we put together in the form of that Expo Hall over 250 providers across all the various provider categories that support CX and contact center. Space are represented. Space are represented If you have any level of credibility in the market you're there, which is a really efficient sourcing opportunity for the buyers that are in the room, those that are leading these CX and customer contact operations across both large enterprise Fortune 500 organizations down to some of the up and coming sort of you know, inc 5000 into some mom and pop organizations. We really have a really strong cross section of practitioners in the room that are going to have an opportunity to really source the solutions that will work with their needs in a really efficient way. So that's number one. Number two you know we're more distributed than we've ever been, so to have that kind of group together and we see so many groups coming decision-making units, tech, those that are overseeing people in HR decisions, training, with the sort of leads of these CX groups and CX operations groups. They're all together.
Speaker 1:It's not always easy to get them together these days because of the way that they've become more distributed since the pandemic. So the opportunity to benchmark, to strategically plan, to compare and contrast your progress against your peers from other organizations, that sort of benchmarking learning opportunity is as strong as it's ever been. And then after that, like we talk about this is not easy stuff, um, and then then after that, you know, like, like we talk about, this is not easy stuff. Um, you know we, we know that the organizations that attend CCW, the organizations that are putting their customers first, um, it's a full-time job. It's a difficult job, so we try to make it um fun for them as well.
Speaker 1:So, from an experience factor you know you're going to hear from Guy Fieri, you're going to hear from Mike Arruzzione, uh, fred Edmond we have our CCW after party hosted by TransPerfect. We have one of my favorite nights of the year the awards gala, the CCW Excellence Awards Gala, where we recognize some of the best in class there across our great industry. Cc Women, where we've really elevated the women leaders across the customer contact industry and given them an incredible platform to come together and to learn, to benchmark, to build connections and community there. It's really been an incredible growth, an incredible story that I've got to watch from day one, when Sandy Co came and said I have an idea that I think can really support this industry. So all those factors combined make it for a really incredible experience, one that, quite frankly, by the end of it we're all pretty exhausted but we kind of pinch our bell and say, gosh, what an amazing experience to watch unfold.
Speaker 1:So I hope that's the feeling again this year. But that's what we're all excited for.
Speaker 2:Well, that's pretty universal. I think you talk to people who have attended that. They all come away feeling the same kind of thing. One last question You've got a front row seat to the future of customer management. What's the one thing you're watching right now that you think more people should be paying attention to?
Speaker 1:I think we have an incredible opportunity to elevate the customer experience, and that's not just what I think a lot of people would say. Well, emerging technology and what AI does is a very cliche answer to that. Certainly, AI and the various forms of AI as it continues to grow and evolve, is going to play a massive role, but we have some really smart. But we have some really smart, really good people, people that have developed into the leaders of massive organizations that start in a call center, that start, you know, talking to customers on the phone, talking to customers over chat now, and these are the people that go on to do incredible things, you know, across various enterprises. And it's an incredible. There's so many great stories we probably don't celebrate enough.
Speaker 1:And so when I look at where we are in this industry and we think about the inflection point that we're seeing in tech and we're seeing an evolving skill set enter into customer operations, some incredibly talented, smart people, you see people that maybe you know years ago you wouldn't look at and say, oh, that person could maybe go on and do some incredible things.
Speaker 1:The amount of talent right now that we're seeing enter this space, I believe they're the future leaders of many, many corporations. I think you can hear more stories 10, 20 years from now from people that say, hey, I started in the call center and I now lead all of insert Fortune 500 company here, because of the nature of this crossroads, of highly competent, highly intelligent people that have had to learn and move tech in a direction that can serve as the customer. I believe that's the future of what leadership looks like across our many organizations globally. So I think the people that are in the space are right at the foundation, right at step one for what could be, and they'll drive us forward. So that's probably what I'm most excited about that sort of cross-section.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think you know you hit it on the head. There's just so many people who started at the agent level who are doing incredible things that even right five years ago you would have said, yeah, great person. But now here they are leading and I've spoken to a handful of those people and kind of blown away myself. Well, mario, I really appreciate the time I know you've got, just based on this conversation, 10,000 things you got to attend to. But thank you one, two, looking forward to picking this back up again and seeing where things are. Maybe after CCW, maybe later in the year, get your perspective on things. But thank you, it's been a lot of fun.
Speaker 1:My pleasure, Mike. Thanks for having me.
