Heroes in Business - Eric Mulvin, Customer Experience with Jason Junge Part 2, Contact Center Cactus Chat

Episode Date: February 8, 2023

WebToq CEO and founder Jason Junge gets in-depth on employee retention, client relations, customer service, and how his software services make transactions more meaningful and experiential. Pt2 of 2.

All right, welcome to the show. Welcome back. We had a little break for the holidays and so excited to be back for 2023. And today I've got a special guest with me today. Sitting across from me is Jason Young, who is the CEO of WebTalk. And you've got a really interesting background. So I'm excited to have you here because you're a graduate at MIT. You even like your professional background, you were at one point director of financial strategy at Microsoft. And you actually have a patent for the consultative e-meeting platform concept that you got in 2018. And you're also author of a book, which I didn't know until I saw your bio, Why Freedom, which you could actually find on bookstores online. But thank you for being here. It's a super pleasure to have you here today. Yeah, thanks, Eric. It's a pleasure to be here. I'm excited. They have to define what are the SLAs related to your product, your service, what are the service level agreements, level of services that you're going to provide in terms of returns, refunds, managing problems and issues.

All those things have to be defined up front. returns, refunds, managing problems and issues, all those things have to be defined up front. Then you've got to get HR involved because you have to define what kind of customer service reps you're looking for, what kind of skills. And so HR has to be involved in that, in hiring them and in helping them train and helping them, you know, fire and manage and all those things. Operations has to be involved because operations is the one that's manning, you know, the call centers or the stores and whatnot. And so they're involved in the day to day. Then you've got technology,

which also has to be involved because these service reps nowadays are equipped with just very complicated technologies. You're talking about unified communications, you're talking about omni-channel, you're talking about online tools, you're talking about unified communications. You're talking about omni-channel. You're talking about online tools. You're talking about very sophisticated technologies that have to have very high levels of availability, right? And so the IT folks have to be involved from the ground up because also what technology you use is going to influence what kind of people you're going to look for and how you're going to train them.

So they have to be involved from the beginning. And so all of these things then have to be involved from a strategic sense and from the marketing group. Why? Because these are, especially if you're a high-touch business, they're absolutely critical to branding. a high touch business, they're absolutely critical to branding. So, you know, if you're in real estate or if you're, you know, in car dealerships or something that's naturally a high touch industry, the customer service you provide is inherently part of your brand. That is your brand. It is your brand. And so, so the CEO and the marketing team then has to be involved. So you're talking about four or five different departments involved in this.

And do you think that they ever do it? Not very frequently, where you have a strategy system that comes together and defines your customer service and how it's going to work, and then from a top-down approach then makes sure that everyone's on the same ball when it comes to customer service. No. It's not very often that management, really an executive management, takes that kind of approach.

Usually it's just like, all right, it's an operational thing. Let them define it. Let them figure it out. Let them do it. And relying on outsourcing has been a way, has been a crutch for them because here you have people

that are singularly focused and experts on the technology on the people on hiring on the day-to-day stuff right on working with slas so they're experts in this stuff and so they think that that's enough they think that outsourcing into a call center is enough and so they never take a step back and look at it again from a branding point from a strategic point They never look at it from that point. Outsourcing has been both a boon and a problem for these companies because, on the one hand, it's great to have professionals and experts that do this right. So that it takes it off of your table so you can focus on what's important you know your products and and engineering and whatever it might be uh but on the other hand they've used it as a crutch and so they don't

they don't do the upfront work in terms of defining what your customer service is and how it fits within your brand and how it's going to help create your brand um and then working within within all the departments to do that so yeah, yeah, it's difficult to do. Not a lot of businesses do it right. But the ones that do, I mean, they just, you know, they just grow to the stars. You're talking about Starbucks.

You know, I mean, it's their growth has been phenomenal and it was on the back of their customer service. Southwest. I mean, they're a giant killer. And in the beginning it was because of their customer service, right? I mean, that's a humongous part of it. Just endless number of companies that just simply, you know, what they provided wasn't a lot different, right?

I mean, traveling from point A to point B on an airplane, there's not a lot of difference. And Southwest kicked butt because of their customer service, right? So it can make all the difference in the world if you do it right. Yeah. And, you know, you bring up a good point. If you are selling things online and you're doing these transactions online, you know, how is that experience with you different than any other person? Right.

You've got to email them something. You've got to send them something. They've got to look it over, sign it. Like the process is similar. It's just how do you make your experience better than everyone else's? And you got to think about it too. You mentioned how outsourcing, it could be great, it could be a bad thing. It depends on if you're actually looking at your processes, you're looking at what you're delivering to your customers. And I think back to our clients and we've got the whole spectrum of clients too. We've got the ones, they get us set up and then

they're like, all right, we're good. I'll move on to other stuff. And they don't, they don't really think about it too much. And it's really hard to even get them on the phone. And then you've got the other clients that they're, I think, you know, maybe almost on the extreme other end, they're like constantly checking with our team and always talking to them and uh but they're they have a really big impact on that customer experience and what's happening what those conversations are happening on the phone uh or email or whatever the the channel is so um it it really comes down to the business because you could outsource and you could do either uh i think somewhere in the middle is a good range you know where you're not checking

with them all the time but uh i know that it has like the clients that work with our team more closely where they're they're communicating with them regularly they know who the agents are they have quarterly meetings and strategy and these are the things we're going to work on, all related back to making that customer experience better. And those numbers improve. We see that, you know, and they put that effort. OK, we got that done this quarter. What can we tackle next quarter? So that's, you know, the good clients. And those are the ones where since we've been around eight years, maybe you guys get to see this, too. And those are the ones where, since we've been around eight years, maybe you guys get to see this too. They actually see their growth over time because they're doing the right thing.

The customers are happy. They're growing. And I guess in your case, they're probably buying more licenses for us. They're bringing on more agents because now they have more customers. Right. Yeah. right so yeah and you know referrals of course you know once they're once they're in and they they're utilizing the tools in a way that makes a difference to the company um they're just thrilled and you know they can't stop talking about it so yeah referrals is a big part of it for sure yep referrals are huge and uh yeah i mean if you're a good business then that's how you grow

i mean it goes back again to the customer service. Yeah. You give someone a great experience and then they're going to go tell other people. Yeah, it's amazing. Because business always begins and ends with the customer. Right. It's the reason you exist. And yet how many businesses forget about that?

It's like they wind up treating the customer as kind of a side thing and it's like it's a business it's all about the customers and then from there right from the customers then it becomes about the employees and then it becomes about the corporation and then it becomes about asset strategy and all those things but it must always start with a customer start in and with a customer um but it seems like a lot of businesses kind of forget that you know they get they get so large um and so complicated that's that they start losing sight of that fact yeah and it gives an opportunity for someone else to come in and come up with something better so absolutely cool well i think this was a great discussion

i super appreciate it i think it was long enough we'll probably split this into two episodes uh so we'll have a part one and a part two uh but it was great speaking with you today thanks for sharing your uh experience and uh and your unique perspective in the customer service space with uh with me and all the listeners so thank you for your time appreciate it thanks eric yeah and uh so if uh someone listening they are interested in the software like yours uh they wanted to learn more how can they where do they go to find out more about your software or to get in touch with you yeah the best way is go online go to our website webtalk.com w-e-b-t-o-q dot com of course we use webtalk to to service our visitors and our customers. And so when you're on there, you'll find someone online there to help you out. So yeah, I'd probably

recommend that. That's the easiest way to do it. All right, cool. And we'll get it up on the screen so you can make sure you don't miss it. And we'll put some links in the show notes there. So well, thank you guys all for listening to the Contact Center cactus chat. And, uh, we will be back with some more episodes, uh, just starting out the year 2023 and got a lot of exciting people that we're going to be interviewing this year. So stay tuned and keep listening and, uh, and yeah, catch you on the next episode.