TrueLife - Transforming Customer Support into Revenue: Insights from the Everetics’ Journey

Episode Date: November 11, 2023

One on One Video Call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_US🚨🚨Curious about the future of psychedelics? Imagine if Alan Watts started a secret society with Ram Dass and Hunter S. Thompson… now open the door. Use Promocode TRUELIFE for Get 25% off monthly or 30% off the annual plan For the first yearhttps://www.district216.com/Ladies and gentlemen, it is a distinct honor to introduce our esteemed guest, Shane, the visionary leader and custodian of Everetics. With an illustrious career spanning over two decades, Shane has masterfully navigated the intricate landscape of both small ($4M) and large ($1.4B) enterprise software and SaaS businesses, with a profound focus on Customer Support.Everetics, the brainchild of Shane, stands as a testament to the indomitable spirit of “paying it forward.” It was founded as a solution to the challenges that often besiege Customer Support, Service, and Success. Shane’s journey has been one marked by the triumph over recessions, surging costs, declining retention rates, scaling, hyper-growth, and IPOs.Shane’s belief in the pivotal role of exceptional service as the backbone of any thriving business is not merely a philosophy; it’s a guiding principle. He understands that delivering practical and strategic Customer Experience (CX) solutions is the cornerstone of supercharging both customers and a business’s success.Shane’s unparalleled expertise has garnered recognition from industry leaders and accolades such as the TSIA Customer Success Gold Star Award, the Stevie Customer Success Award, and the Service Strategies Support Center Practices Certification.Today, we have the privilege of delving into Shane’s wealth of knowledge and the remarkable journey of Everetics, as we explore the transformation of Customer Support into a revenue-generating powerhouse. Please join me in extending a warm welcome to Shane as we unravel the insights and wisdom from his extraordinary career and mission with Everetics.https://www.everetics.com/https://www.everetics.com/ One on One Video call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_USCheck out our YouTube:https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPzfOaFtA1hF8UhnuvOQnTgKcIYPI9Ni9&si=Jgg9ATGwzhzdmjkg

Darkness struck, a gut-punched theft, Sun ripped away, her health bereft. I roar at the void. This ain't just fate, a cosmic scam I spit my hate. The games rigged tight, shadows deal, blood on their hands, I'll never kneel. Yet in the rage, a crack ignites, occulted sparks cut through the nights. The scars my key, hermetic and stark. To see, to rise, I hunt in the dark, fumbling, fear. Fearist through ruins maze lights my war cry born from the blaze.

The poem is Angels with Rifles. The track, I Am Sorrow, I Am Lust by Codex Seraphini. Check out the entire song at the end of the cast. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the True Life podcast. Everybody's having a beautiful day. It's Friday. It looks like we made it. Here we go, ladies and gentlemen.

great show for you today. And let me just say it is my pleasure to introduce our esteemed guest, Shane Smith, the principal and founder of Everettics. With over two decades of invaluable experience in navigating the complexities of small and large enterprise software, SaaS business, Shane has successfully addressed challenges ranging from recession to hypergrowth and IPOs. As the visionary leader behind Everettics, Shane has established a company committed to paying it forward and overcoming customer support, service, and success challenges. Everettics offers a spectrum of services, including CX financial modeling, fractional leadership, support work 360, and a support and service readiness assessment.

Sheen's dedication to exceptional services as the backbone of success is evident in his approach to delivering practical and strategic CX solutions. His expertise has been widely recognized by industry leaders and prestigious awards, including the TSI customer success gold star standard. and the Stevie Customer Success Award and the Service Strategy Support Center Practices certification. Shane Smith, thank you for being here today, my friend. How are you? I'm nervous after that intro. I'm doing awesome, George. How are you?

I'm well. Thank you very much. And it's nice to be here and I love conversations where I get to speak with people who get to teach me things. And you and I were just talking briefly before the show. what an amazing time we live in and how successful things can be if you're willing to take a different approach. You know, think about things more broadly, right? And be okay, be okay with learning something new or thinking different about, you know, a problem. And I personally feel like that's where the magic happens. You know, if you want the same result, do the same thing everybody else is doing.

you know and we saw how that worked out in 2023 so yeah it's been a SaaS tech world but yeah that's an interesting it's an interesting world the software as a service like how did you get into how did you find yourself in that and that ass oh my lord so so a little bit I guess about me george sure so I I was born a geek a nerd back before it was cool to be a geek and a nerd So we used to, you know, call propeller heads. My God-given gift was software programming. Programming. So I was first published back in the days for some of your viewership.

There used to be magazines that we would buy and you would have to type in the codes. And if you and you had a special program and it would tell you whether or not you typed in the line exactly right. And you'd go through pages and pages and pages of this. So I was first published in one of these magazines when I was in fifth grade. And I kind of stuck with that. And when I say it was my God-given talent, that's the only talent. It's not transferable to languages. I passed Spanish with a D-Minas, Spanish 2 in high school with a D-minus and a promise to my Spanish-2 teacher that I

wouldn't take Spanish three based on class participation. I never worked harder in my life in a class in Spanish too. So it's not transferable, but computer languages were really, really easy. So went to school, joined the Air Force, actually targeted ICBM missiles. Wow. But again, just all software. Got out of the Air Force after a great experience, by the way. So got out of the Air Force, did some consulting, and there was a company that called BEA Systems. Everybody wanted to work at VEA Systems. And I would have pushed a broom. I would have done the toilets at BEEA Systems, up to, and including taking a support job. So I went from a Java architect at the time, and we were in Omaha, Nebraska, and we moved to Boston, which was near where I grew up anyway, and I took a support job.

and at my dream company, right? And it was amazing. And it didn't take me very long after working there to realize that I was probably in the right place in the support job or in the hierarchy based on just the brilliance that this company had employed with them. And I did that job for a support job for six months. And at the end of that six months, I would have rather done the toilets or pushed to broom up to and including taking a management job so this is the kind of my big inflection point

for me i was dealing with a customer escalation and it was a kind of a gnarly one as a support engineer and on friday you know i was a support engineer and then over the weekend i became a manager because i went to the dark side and and took that opportunity on my One day I came back into the same exact customer escalation. And the customer treated me so nicely, unlike what they had done, you know, the week prior. And I didn't change that much over the weekend. Right. It was basically the same human.

And what really struck me, and I really genuinely mean it, is how much harder and more challenging the job of sitting in the chair of the support person or the customer service person is rather than the managers and the leaders. And this was, you know, somewhere in the neighborhood of the dot bomb days, so around 2000-ish. And before servant leadership was something that you see on LinkedIn posted, you know, every two or three times. And that kind of carried me forward. I also, and I went and I did multiple, multiple leadership roles and in support and service. Though I never forgot who had the harder job. It was my job to go get the coffee for the people doing the hard work, not the other way

around. And then something else happened to me. And I was reflecting on this with somebody else, I think last week, I essentially hit Powerball. So I have a story unlike most people do, where I can go through my career. including all the way back down to like the Air Force days, I have never, ever, ever had a bad boss. Okay, I had one briefly.

And we saw how that worked out. However, you know, I mean, I've probably worked for 40 people, you know, throughout my career. And every single one of them have just been fantastic mentors and coaches to me. And so when, when we, we talk about Everettics and paying it forward. I've had most of the support roles. I've led teams, you know, and I've also been so damn lucky in my career that in December, despite the, despite the maybe the economic circumstance, I was in a place where I could,

you know, go out and start paying it forward. And I have a lot of debt. to pay for a lot of debt. So that's a little bit about me. That's a lot of bit about me. I love it. You and I had talked previously, and I was, as I hear you talking again, now there was something you said in one of our last conversations

that was something along the lines of, the people at the top should treat the people that they lead the way they want those people to treat their customer. Do you remember? Maybe you could first say that. see that again and talk to that a little bit? I thought that was really awesome. Yeah, so I'm a big, based on that story and hopefully it makes a little bit of sense where that's coming from now.

The employee experience, you treat your employees the way you want them to treat your customer. Right. And it's just that simple. The employee, a happy employee, an empowered employee, an autonomous employee. Of course we're going to have processes and stuff like that. And I'll share a story. I'll share a story to kind of put a pin on this. The employees are going to take care of your customers if they're loyal and they're happy. Happy employee makes a happy customer.

That's the rocket science. So back in the 80s there was a movie called E.T. or the extraterrestrial. and and they nailed it. Despite all the bad things that we did in the 80s, ET, ET got it. Be kind. It's just that easy. It's just that easy.

Here's a real world example, and it's pretty tragic, but it's true. One of my earlier bosses, my mentors, had something terrible, terrible happen to him, and his son, who was about 30, past. and unexpectedly passed away.

And I mean, as a parent, that's our worst nightmare, right, to have to deal with that. So he's from another country, but living in the U.S., and he made phone calls, you know, back, international calls and so forth and so on. And then he got his bill, his mobile phone bill on it. was quite large. So he called the phone company just to kind of audit through it, didn't want anything, went through it, explained to him, explained to them, you know, what had happened. And the wireless agent put him on hold for about 10 minutes. And now he's a customer service guy too, so he's kind of getting bad, right? Right. And came back on the phone. I said, you know, Mr. So-and-so, this is an example of an empowered agent.

Right. Somebody can go outside a process. I just want you to know we've copped your entire month and next month. And then within the week, he told me he got flowers at his store from the company. Wow. Now, come on. That's it. And then when he was telling me this story, he was like, I will never leave this company. That's a loyal customer right there.

And that was an example of somebody being a human being to somebody else. being kind. I love it. Treat your employees right. Treat your employees right. And be kind. That's the rocket science. How do you think that that mobile company is going to be able to pay their shareholders,

though? They're doing very, very well. It is the, that, I mean, I don't, I can't name drop, I guess. I know. It's the biggest, it's the biggest wire. this company in the U.S. Yeah, I love that story. And I hope the people listening are affected by it.

It's amazing how an act of kindness like that could be contagious, not only for the people that the conversation is between, but for the workplace environment. When they start hearing about that and start understanding, wow, I feel great about this. I kind of like being here now, you know, and it just pays these empathy dividends that radiate outwards and make things a little better. Too often we hear the opposite side of that where I work for a large multinational corporation, a giant brown truck delivered packages. The level of dehumanization on something where you go in and you're, you know, you have to walk just bobwire

fence and then you have to go through this metal detector in case you're stealing something or bringing in a weapon and then you go into the office and your name has like an equal sign by all these numbers and then there's a minus by this number. And then you're pulled in. And then you're pulled in because, hey, we don't think that you're really getting measured by these variables the right way. And just the level of like, hey, you realize that my kid was sick yesterday? Like, that has never even entered into the equation. That's right. It's palpable in there sometimes.

Like, there's people may not know that, but in a lot of warehouse, there's fights. People commit suicide. There's accidents. There's injuries. And those two were contagious on another level. By the time, that emotion radiates to 8,000 miles away to a guy in a boardroom. It's like that number is easily replaced. You know, so sometimes it feels like it's being worked against us.

Do you see this landscape changing or maybe those are two different methods or, you know, how do we get to be more like the first example and less like the second example? Yeah, it's a really interesting question. And this is unscientific, but it's my opinion. What I've seen, especially in technology and SaaS this year, obviously, budget constraints, right? We're in the official, not recession, recession right now. And what I have experienced and what I've seen and what I've coached some clients on is very, the backside of a RIF or a reduction in force means there was less people at the company

to do the same amount of work, usually, right? And we've had, I have a, I have a, have a client. He was, was an individual contributor. He spent one year, one year as a manager, one. And now as a director. Within that's, that's his learn on the job training one year. And he reached out to me because he was like, you know, basically I don't I don't know what I'm doing or you know, something like like super smart guy. They made the right decision and but he's in a hypergrowth SaaS company. And, I think we have a lot of people now because of what's happened in this economy, right or wrong, good or bad, that are now being thrust into roles that maybe they don't, they didn't have the benefit of like what I had with the mentors and going through. Plus, everybody's too busy or too gamefully employed, you know, to spend the time. I think there is a, I think there's a knowledge gap on leaders. And it's not saying that people are bad. I think, again, not something.

scientific, I would gander that 99% of the people out there mean well. They want to be kind, you know, however, they haven't had the, they're learning on the job or they're being stressed by somebody as well. I think there's three sides of the equation. And like a benefit of the doubt goes a long way, I think, in that regard. So how do we get, how do we get closer to that? you know, let's give, let's get the leaders some support, too. It's not all about, you know, it's mostly about our employees, but it's a little bit about our leaders as well. Like, let's help them. Again, 99% of them want to probably be good. Yeah. Maybe it just don't know yet. How?

Yeah. I don't know. It's an interesting, you know, conundrum. I think, you know, that we're in. Yeah, I see it shifting. I see the idea of mental health is really beginning to find a foothold in corporations in places, whether it's retreats or whether it is having a mental health committee or a mentor committee there. And, you know, there really is becoming places where people that if they have a problem, and they can go to other employees or maybe they have a certain manager

that they like that they can turn to that's really wanting to help them solve the problem rather than be productive or maybe getting them to solve the problem equals much more productivity. You know, there's a novel idea. Look, if we can make our relationship better, everyone's going to be more productive.

Like, that's a pretty good way to look at it. And I see it kind of shifting. Do you kind of see the landscape shifting? It seems like a lot of the books that were written in 2000 around that time were like, you know, the opposite of good is great. And all these books that were kind of were like, you got to scare everybody, man.

People respond to intimidation, not love, but that seems to be shifting now. You know, it's funny. You bring up Jim Collins' book, Good to Great. That's one of my favorites, by the way. I had a mandatory book list when I brought in managers, and that was one of the three books on there. Leadership, self-deception, good to great,

because that's the way that the world kind of thinks about things still. Yep. So you know, don't bring a knife to a gunfight. Read the book. So when somebody says, you know, wrong seat on the bus, you know what that means, right? What's the other one? Leadership and self-deception, good to great. Oh, and now discover your strengths.

Those are, were the three requirements. We can't even go on until you've read those three books. But, you know, do, do, do, I see it shifting honestly? No. I don't. I think people, I think people want to be good. I think people innately want to be good. Nobody goes, there might be a couple, but most people don't go home and want to, you know, somebody else to die in a fire or something like that. Though in this constrained environment, it's a pressure cooker. It's a pressure cooker. And it is for the leaders, too, you know.

And then what happens is, I'll give you another real example. I was out with my better half. We are Universal Studio Hollywood Geeks. So we go there probably every other week, by the way, because of their customer experience. It's amazing. Can't promote them enough. So we were there. and this is kind of like a recharge time.

So we're there to she and I, and she gets an email on her phone. It's a Saturday, I don't know, like 10, 10 o'clock in the morning, 10.30 in the morning from her sea level executive, no description meeting Monday morning. Okay, so given this economy, and you get an email with no description on a Saturday for first thing Monday morning, where does your head go?

I know where mine goes. Like, uh-oh, right? Yeah. And she was terrified the entire weekend. Now, Monday morning came around and, you know, we're all braced and ready. It was just, it was just a check-in. You know, this thing over here or whatever, ruined our entire weekend. Like, that's terrible leadership.

And I don't think that, you know, it happened intentionally, but it probably is something that, you know, if they had been through like junior varsity management training class, then they would have known maybe to not send that email or put, you know, four, you know, four more seconds in and type a few words. And, you know, that happens all over the place. So I don't know. That's my thought, I guess. I don't think it's getting better.

I think it's going to be, I think it's going to be a little while before we can start addressing the leadership gap, at least in tech and SaaS. It makes sense when I think about it, a leadership gap in education. If we look at it from a demographic point of view, you know, there's a large percentage of the baby boomer generation that has been in power for a long time and that still hold the keys to the kingdom. You know, one of the biggest problems that I see in what I do and some of the executives that I talk to is that there is a tendency to not share information, if that makes sense.

A lot of people have gotten to places and they know a lot of things, but they're like, hey, I had to earn this the hard way. I'm not going to give it to them. And I think in some ways that really hinders the next, the next group of people because are they going to learn what you learn? Why don't you want to share? Are you, is it because you're afraid that you're losing an edge, you're losing your spot, or they're not going to learn things the right way?

But maybe we could speak to this idea of not withholding information. Like, that's a pretty big one, right? Yeah. Well, you know, I think it's kind of ironic. I'm going to call you out on this, George. Okay, please. You kind of made fun of good to grade a few minutes ago. And I think good to great, exactly.

talks about the levels of leadership, right? And to use another tragic example, you know, I'm pretty sure Apple is one of, if not the biggest successful type company in the world, right? And Steve Jobs died. And he passed and now Tim Cook runs Apple. And I don't think they missed a beat in the process. So sharing sharing and imparting knowledge, if you're, if you're being a great leader, you are setting yourself up to be replaceable. It's not about you anymore as a leader.

It's about your team. It's about your people, your humans, you know, that are relying on you. And you have, I have seen it. And, you know, as far as harboring that knowledge and locking onto it. And when I've had employees bring it up or say this, um, flippedly, it's you're fired. If, you know, if you're going to harbor that knowledge, you're not helping the tribe.

Yeah. Right. And, and at that point, you're better not just like, leave. We'll figure it out. And then the tribe will all know it. So, uh, when, when I was in college, I was taking a class and a true story, but it stuck with me too, a pastel class.

And the professor recounted a story. I don't know if it's true or not, but I know that he did recount the story. This part's true. Where in a corporate world, so this probably would have been in the 80s, there was a software engineer that was writing, doing this program. Program comes out great, looks good. The boss looks at it, and all of his variables are named after mythical gods.

Right? And the idea is like you should be able to show code and like humans that don't do it for a living should be able to look at it and at least make sense of it. But if you have Zeus, you know, Zeus plus plus, that makes no sense. So he said, why did you name all your variables after mythical gods? And the programmer or the software engineer supposedly told him job security. And the boss said you're fired. So you have to share knowledge. Don't hold on to it.

And the thing is now between AI, between Google. Yeah. I have a good friend in sales, and we debate on this pretty, pretty often. However, I'm in the camp where, like, knowledge is so widespread out there. It's free. You know, I can have my opinion. I can have my experience. That's valuable.

The knowledge itself is free. So why, you know, why try to harbor it? Why try to sell it? Now, my sales friend will fight me on this, but it's the way I see the world, at least. Yeah, it's, it's well done. And I think, especially when it comes to sales, it's interesting. In Steve Jobs' biography, he talks about you can see the trajectory of a company. and that when the founder leaves or when sales start to fall or when profits start to fall,

the engineers go to the wayside and the sales team comes up. And he says, that's a sure sign that your company is going to die. Like when you allow the people that move the needle to start using rhetoric or using these methods of enhancement in some way, because they are enhancing it in some way. And I'm not using that as a pejorative, But like, you know, in some ways, they're making things better. But it's kind of this illusion, like this, this idea that, you know, you can use the trivium in order to make it better.

And maybe you can. But yeah, like, I think that there's something to be said about the dissemination of information from that level. But it's interesting. You know, I don't. And I should clarify, like, I spent my limited knowledge of business and relationships with, employees to management comes from me being a union guy. So I'm totally biased on one side. And so that's why I tend to like, I find myself going down this path. I'm like, what about that? I try to be, I try to be more open and more empathetic to both sides as someone

who's led a mentor program or a safety committee and speak to younger drivers. And it's, it's just, it's just interesting. And I'm sure I've always fantasized about working for like a startup or a smaller company where the culture was really welcoming to everybody. You know, there's a great story about, you know, the NASA project when we were putting men on the moon. And I forgot who it was that walked into the NASA headquarters, like at three in the morning. There's a janitor pushing a broom and they're like, what are you doing here, sir? And he's like, I'm putting a man on the moon. You know, it's just this idea of like, wow.

Like, yeah, you're right. You are doing it. Of course you are. Like, that's the kind of foundation that I think takes a company, a program, an organization, or an idea of the next level. Is this idea that we're all in this thing? Me, you, everybody coming up on that. That's a powerful idea right there, wouldn't you say? Oh, I think it's tremendous.

Tremendous. It's funny. Having been in the United States Air Force, I realize mileage may vary, right? Everybody who got their own experiences, but going back to my story, I've never had a bad boss. Yeah. And one of the things I believe that the military, does exceedingly well is, at least based on my own personal experience, the cook to the stealth fighter pilot are all important. And they're all aligned to that one mission, just like you were saying in your NASA

story as well. And company, say what you will, there are certainly, you know, dark sides of the military and stuff like that. And again, mileage may vary. However, they nail that. It is fraternal. No doubt about it. And yes, they are bad bosses in the military, too. I just didn't get them. And companies have a harder time emulating that. And make no mistake, right? If any of your listeners out here are at work and you think it's a family, make no mistake, business is not family. You can have friends there. But business is business and hopefully it's a happy place.

However, you don't riff your son or your daughter from your family, right? I wrote a post the other day on LinkedIn where I said, you know, I've got to come clean. I lay it off my 10-year-old on Friday. He was on a PIP and he jumped over the soccer ball and the other team scored. So we had to let him go. Yep. You don't do that. That's the ridiculousness of kind of the corporate culture where we are at right now, in my opinion.

It's not family, yo. Yeah. It's not. So make it a good place. You know, build congruent relationships and understand. understand a business is a business. It doesn't have to be a bad thing, right? And relationships are important, you know, for crying out loud,

I met my wife, you know, at work. So those things happen, but business is business. And I think from my perspective, George, I have spent a lot of time, and perhaps this is something that I learned too late. Yeah. in the tech and the business world is financials. So there are a lot of,

there are a lot of impassioned customer service leaders out there, parts of gold. And when, and there's statistics here, like, I've got them all written down, or at least a lot of them all written down here. We all know, I think we know innately, like a happy customer is like that's a good thing right happy customers like they're probably going to buy more or stay longer or any of that kind of thing and the statistics go on and on and on that prove that

here's here's a problem though um CFO who I'm sure probably understands and because they're also a human understands these statistics they have a budget sheet okay so So what the question that leaders, including myself, have been asked, is, okay, if we give you $70,000 to go hire somebody, how does that affect this number? And we go, yeah, but customers will love us. No, that's not a number. That's not a number. And what has happened this year in particular is there are some financial. they're not all good, but there are some financial guidelines and rules that the people that

are funding companies with, they had to follow. And the result of that was cuts. And people weren't able to communicate back. Like, if I had that extra headcount, then actually my OPEX goes down and my GRR is going to go up by, you know, 1%. And by the way, I'll put that in numbers for you. You know, that's about a $50,000, you know, uplift. Now, is that a good thing? Heck, you know, that's $70,000 headcount now. Actually, it's only about $20,000. Maybe that's a good decision, right?

But support and service leaders typically will gloss over and shut down when you start talking about financials. So in my consulting business, Everettics, one of the things that, I did purely out of frustration, to be, to be honest, was there are some, it's a game modeling system. And somebody had showed it to me. And I was like, geez, I thought I could put financials in there. And so I had to go back because, you know, people were very strict and their statistical rules. So I had to go back. Didn't want to do it, but I had to relearn statistics from college. and took the industry statistics out there,

and we built a financial model that looks at customer satisfaction, that statistically sound, and really empowers a support leader without having to do the statistics class or whatnot to actually see dollars and cents in their decisions and be able to present that to a CFO or a CEO when they're making the hard decisions. If I put a dollar into this, what's going to happen? We have to be able to answer that.

We have to be able to answer that. And we're fairly terrible at answering that. So just sorry, I got on a little bit of a terror. You can't bring a knife to a gunfight. Or you can, but you know what's going to happen. So stop. Learn, learn the business. Read good to great.

So you know the foundation of at least a lot of, you know, the 50, 60-year-old CEOs out there. Because that's what they had to read when they were growing up. So you know the vernacular. You know the language. And then it's not about being right or wrong. It's about understanding your perspective and being able to communicate with others effectively. So learn there. language. It's not their job to do it. It's our job to do it. So if that means you've got to go,

like, look up your stats book or, or take a quick online class about finances so you know what the rule of 40 is, do it. I wish I had done that 20 years earlier. Better least than ever, though, I guess. Of course. It's well said. I love it. On some level, I think we're, we're coming at this, we're beginning to quantify behavior, which is a difficult thing to do because before we looked at, you know, we looked at it as sticks and carrots. Like we can use money to provide this carrot to someone,

or we can take this money away and provide a stick to them. But I think that that's kind of like pretty simplistic. It's like saying good or bad, like there's way more complexity to it. And you know, what does it mean when we look way down the line and we see a happy customer who will always be with the company? Like, what is that worth? Well, we don't have the research. We don't thoroughly know.

So it kind of gets thrown out of the lab as a subjective idea. Well, that's subjective. We can't measure that. We can't contain it. So we're not going to talk about it. But it seems like over the last few years, we're really beginning to see, you know, terms like, like customer behavior. You know, and it's interesting to put emotions into money and, see this kind of thing moving forward as not separate but together like wow yeah the the

end result of the customer's behavior will translate into X amount of revenue in four years like that's a pretty we have to we have to identify that yes and we don't customer experience people generally are not your mathematicians yeah um there are some exceptions out there, which is really awesome when you meet them. But they're not. And that part of the conversation, we just, we end up being the person that did bring the knife to the gunfight. You know, and I'm sorry to keep sharing stories, but let me share another.

This is, this is a, this is very true because it involves me. But my wife and I, we shop at Walmart neighborhood market. So in the U.S., Walmart, Walmart. you know, renowned for their great customer experience also has a grocery store that offers about the same level of experience. I'm being very sarcastic. And we're in the South Bay of Los Angeles. So we have the Albertsons and the Rouse and the Vaughans and the Haniford brothers and all like the really, really great stores probably within a mile of us as well. But we go to Walmart neighborhood market. And we were driving back and I had this moment of reflection. I was like,

oh my gosh, I am such a hypocrite. I am on LinkedIn too many hours every day talking and expounding about the customer experience. And I'm driving back from freaking Walmart neighborhood market. What a hypocrite. And like it hit me. And I'm, was thinking about it. Luckily, and you can tell me if I'm rationalizing my way out of this one or not, but then it occurred to me that maybe I wasn't a hypocrite, and maybe I was paying less money at Walmart because the customer experience was equally crappy at all of the course.

You know, so I had to wait, you know, behind eight people online, you know, to check out. I could have went to Albertson paid more for my food. and still waited eight people behind in line, right? There was no difference, so I'm not completely stupid. I'm going to go spend less money for the same experience. And a lot of companies now have come to this reckoning. Again, decisions had to be made right or wrong in the beginning of the year. And most SaaS companies, you have to sign a contract usually as an annual contract.

Right? So decisions were made, presumably, you know, some customer experience was cut. And now these contracts have been coming up for renewal. And now people are having that Walmart versus Albertsons kind of moment. Like, shit. Excuse my language. I'm, why am I going to pay George more when I can pay somebody else less and there's no difference? So customer experience really, really matters.

Now, if those grocery stores, any one of them, provided an elevated experience, that's where we're going. You know what I mean? But until that day comes, we're not. And a lot of companies right now are out there that had to make decisions, you know, and I'm tiptoeing around, you know, making cuts, riffs. and things like that. Support and service got impacted very hard. And now customers are having their Walmart moment.

Yeah. You know, it's interesting when we talk about grocery stores. There's a trend, and this could just be my idea of it. But when I see all these like self-checkout machines, like I get so infuriated. Like it seems to me like a big, you know, like a tech company came to all the groceries. Like, look, I got a. perfect way. You don't have to deal with employees. You have to pay them vacation to deal with their dumb. You don't have to deal with these knuckleheads anymore. And you get to keep all that

money for yourself, man. It's going to be so awesome. You can go right over here. People are going to train people to do your job. We're going to train these monkeys to do all the job of your employees do. Isn't that great? It's going to be so awesome for you. And like there's a, there's a store by my house that did it. And like they got rid of like almost all their checkers. They put out all these machines. And people would stand in line and be, I'm going to wait. And they get super pissed like why don't we have more checkers over here and like a lot of times i saw the owner he was like you just want to use the machines and i'd be like i think those machines are horrible why don't you why don't you drop your prices if you're going to use those machines what about all the

employees you laid off you know and like it just rubbed so many people the wrong way it doesn't have to like why don't you give back to the customer if you're going to cut all that why don't you give back to the customer like why don't you make the service better for everybody and that seems to be the methodology that harkens back to the budget it's like listen there's more than the race to the bottom. Now, that's very naive, and maybe that's easy for me to say because I don't run that store.

I don't have to deal with the budget. It's super easy for me to say that. And I'm trying to be empathetic there, but it seems like it could be a win-win. Like, couldn't you drop some prices or couldn't you have some sort of specials or couldn't you have one day a month where people use the machines

or you could set up something around it so people could feel like they're part of it instead of just, we're taking it all for us now. You know what I mean? Is that too crazy? No, it's not crazy at all. It's a pretty common viewpoint, too. The thing, at least from my expertise, my experience in SaaS companies,

when you start competing on price, you lose. Very few companies are Ryanair or similar kind of, you know, similar kind of things like that. Competing, competing on price is a, is a fool's errand. Don't do it. Then your story also reminds me a lot of kind of the debate, discussion discourse going on in this year, you know, around AI. Yeah. Around AI.

And I have very passionate mixed feelings. I think there is absolutely like a good place for AI, make humans better, humans, better, faster, quicker humans. Although, like maybe you can tell me if you feel differently. I have never had a non-allergic reaction to a chat bot when I need a support or service. I'm always like, oh, crap. You know, I've got to do this like, oh, I hope it works.

Okay. how do I get to a human? How do I get to a human? And a lot of companies, you know, it's the equivalent of, hey, you know, cut Sally Sue, cut, you know, Joe Snuffy. Here, put a chatbot in there. Customers are like me, I think. Check my consensus bias a little bit, but I think are like me and are like, oh, my God, I don't want to do this. Anything but this, please. Oh, you don't have a chat on? I'll go over this. there. I'll go over there and give you my money instead because you have checkers.

Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting. And on some level, I think that those signals can get mixed. It's like, look, we're saving money. Are you or is just no one want to deal with your stuff? Especially when it comes to health care. How many people hang up the phone? Because like, you know what? I can't even deal with this right now. And they're like, look, look at that. You're saving all kinds of money. But you're also destroying your service at the same time. Like, it's interesting. interesting to think about. I think we'll figure it out. I've got to think that you know, you had mentioned that the opinion that I gave about checkers seems to be pretty common. And so the feedback has to be there. How long can you sit in your store and see customers lined up

to wait for that one checker and be like, this is ridiculous. And how many of those people start going somewhere else? You know, it's, it must be a very interesting predicament for someone who seize the potential rewards of saving so much and the potential of what it could be versus what's actually happening. I get just back to human behavior. There's got to be a line in there somewhere like, okay, this is not working. But it works in Japan, man. It works there.

Why they work here? How do you think the checker with nine people in line feels? Horrible. Horrible. They're stressed out of their mind. It's ridiculous. I can do all this. Yeah.

So, I mean, are they going, if you go back to like our initial thing, taking care of your employees, right? They're going to take care of your customers. So what's going to happen? Yeah, they're going to lose them. You know, so it's, there are a lot of overlaps between, you know, the customer experience and finance and employee, employee experiences is ginormous in my mind.

But, you know, I would leave, you know, I would leave the audience with a few things. Like, one, please, please, please. don't bring a knife to a gunfight, learn about finances. Ask. I've never had a CFO say, no, I won't explain this to you. If you don't know something, learn about it and ask somebody, and it's okay. Employee experience is the enabler for amazing customer experience. So treat your customers, or excuse me, treat your employees.

employees the way you want them to treat your customers. And if you do that, your employees are going to treat your customers even better. And then lastly, customer experience matters. Think of the Walmart story. Put yourself, put yourself in those shoes or think about a time that you discontinued a service and you went somewhere else and ask yourself why. Those are all great points. And those are great stories for people to learn from it and see themselves in. Do you see another shift that I kind of see taking place is this idea of like the creator economy. Sometimes when it looks like

the walls are falling down, there's change from the ground up. And people go out on their own and they're able to find new ways to provide value to places. Do you see that landscape changing? Like maybe because there is someone who's being laid off, people are beginning to harness AI in a way

they may not have done before. They say people change to inspiration or desperation. Some of the changes you see on the forefront as far as Is the new economy emerging? So that's a fascinating question. AI in particular, we haven't figured out yet, right? So we have a lot of early adopters.

And we had a lot of riffs. And we're about to go through a lot of merger and acquisitions, which is the tail end of an, not recession. But that's already starting to happen. We haven't figured out AI yet. There is a place for it. I'll give you an example.

There is a tool called Semptiesum out there. It's used by tech companies. Typically B2C or business to customer, right? so consumers. And I'm sure that you've got, I'm sure that you've gotten a survey before, right? That either said, would you recommend us to a friend, family, colleague, or a follow-up, like, how would you rate Shane in the support interaction, right? You get those.

And those are important. They're feedback. They're feedback, for sure. They're not the end-all be-all. Now, imagine, imagine you could love. look at every support ticket for this entire year, what everybody has said, and aggregate that up into some common themes. Good or bad. That's called support operations, by the way, or a part of support operations. And it's tedious and it's hard and AI can do that now. This product can do

that can tell you almost in real time. Like, here are the themes. This is what's breaking. And that has the real customer sentiment in it. When I, you know, when I swear at Shane in my ticket or or whatnot, oh, I'm mad. You know, that's, that's real. And AI has a huge place to play in that regard. Probably, probably, probably in not every case, you know, the AI chat bot maybe in some cases, though it's not it doesn't replace a human. It doesn't replace a human connection. Right. Right.

Go check out through your Walmart at the, you know, the auto scan one. And it's no different probably than the other grocery store. There's no connection there. Good news is, you know, it's a consistent experience, but it's just a plain vanilla, probably a plain vanilla experience didn't have an opportunity to create a moment memory with you. Anyway, sorry, you got me,

you give me on all my soapboxes. Good, good, that's interesting. What I think about AI, I see it as like this tool that's similar to a mirror. I think AI is us. And when we look at it, we get scared sometimes.

That's horrible. Look at what's happening. But it's just a reflection of us. maybe AI in a support operation can help us understand our problem and then we in the human condition can fix it because the AI can tell us this is the problem look at these cuss words and look at the way these people are acting but then you can take that and be like okay

I can see the emotion from this external force now now I can begin to understand what I need to do to change it you know you ever hear your voice on a tape recording like oh my gosh I sound like that or someone plays plays back something that was a horrible instance of a fight. I cannot believe I express myself that way. I think that's what AI is doing on a grand scale. And we're looking at it like, oh, no, AI is a huge problem.

No, we're a huge problem. We don't thoroughly convey meaning when we need to. We find these extravagant ways to say things without actually doing them. We can use all kinds of findings. When we talk about statistics, numbers don't lie, but you can make them say whatever you want to. Oh, yeah. Right?

Oh, yeah. I have that game. But AI has a way of putting it in context. Like, look at this. How are you going to use your numbers to paper over this particular detrimental problem to your business? Let me see you do that. You know, and I think we're in the process of learning how to convey meaning. And that's another way the customer experiences is, is,

is getting better. Like, if a brand has a brand, what is the meaning of that brand? Is it service? Is it longevity? Is it the fact that they'll, like Costco will take back anything?

Like, what is your brand message and what does it mean to people? Because we got away from that for a while. It was this race to the bottom. And I'm not saying it's anybody's fault. It's probably the consumer's fault as much as the leadership's fault

is that we demand more for less. I mean, that's a problem from us, too. We get what you deserve in some ways, but I'm hopeful that AI is this mirror that can show us the problem and then we can re-inject the human condition in there and fix it. What do you think? I agree. I mean, I agree. The AI is built on a language learning model, right, or LLM, and guess who put the words in the language, you know, to be modeled on, you know, we did. So, you know, garbage in, garbage out,

or whatnot, until the machines start thinking for themselves, which will happen. It is a reflection on us. And your point around, you know, the race to the bottom, there's an interesting statistic. An interesting statistic that came out this year. It used to be an insult. We would say somebody doesn't have the attention span of a goldfish. and my number, I believe the attention span, they have figured out the attention span of a goldfish,

I believe is eight seconds, eight and a half seconds, nine seconds, some more in there. And as of this year, the average human's attention span is 7.5 seconds. We did it. Goldfish, goldfish have a higher attention span, if you were to believe, you know, these statistics. than a human.

And, you know, one real example of this is when back in the beginning, around the dot bomb days, our attention span was somewhere in the neighborhood of like 13 seconds. And why is that important in support? It's important because when somebody picks up the phone and calls, you need to pick up the phone in a certain amount of time, right? And if I pick up the phone in two seconds or I pick up the phone in eight seconds, hygienically, there's no difference, right? So you don't need to staff to pick up the phone in two seconds.

You can pick it up in eight seconds and that's okay. And what you can't do is pick it up in like 50 minutes, right? And that's when you frustrate customers. So answering the telephone in a short period of time, short enough period of time is considered a hygienic satisfaction criteria, right? And doesn't make a happy customer, but it doesn't torque them off either. right and what using this very specific example and the humans attention spans going down that compresses that timeline now it's more expensive to pick up the phone you know maybe i do need to pick it up in two seconds so so it's really it's really interesting how all this is impacting you know um i think

the customer experience the customer journeys in and in of themselves and Human attention spam is a big, big part of it. Because I'm, I'm my worst customer. If I can make me happy, if I can make me happy, 99 out of 100 people, I guarantee you, are going to be delighted. So, so I know how I feel, and I know I'm a really, really, really harsh critic. And I'm nice. I'm kind going back to the ET, but, but I definitely vote with my feet.

you know, and won't go back to a place. Yeah. Unless there was value in it for me. So it's a change in world, my friend. Change in world. AI, AI, it's going to be buckle your seatbelt for another year or two. Yeah. I'm really bullish on it.

I realize that with any sort of technology comes change, like the same way the internet change the way we model reality or the same way the books. gave us ideas like exact repeatability. I speak to a lot of teachers when my kid goes to school and I think there's a debate at their school as much as there is a debate in the world of education that speaks to the idea of,

wow, kids are just going to have all their papers written or something like that. But maybe for this initial phase, this courting phase, if you will, we're learning like the easy things about the machine, the same way we learn the easy things were attracted to people. But that relationship matures.

And, you know, maybe for education, and this is just an example of how we may use AI in the future, is that we get away from the linear idea of education is writing a paper and reciting it. Maybe the next generation of education is writing a paper and you get graded on that and then performing that material in a different way. Maybe you got to do a dance to do it or give us a poem or do them both, you know? Then you have to explain why the dance you did is equivalent to that. information. Now all of a sudden, you're getting to use and seeing from different modalities and different perspectives, like, oh, it's up there. Look up here. This is the way it is, you know, and

maybe you get a better understanding, but it's just this initial courtship that's really dangerous and scary and alien to us in some ways. Is that too far out there? Like, do you, do you see that on the horizon as a potential good for the AI? I, you know, I can say I concur with everything And, you know, you just said, I also feel like I, I don't know what AI is going, you know, what's going to come of it. I've seen some really, really terrible use cases. And I've seen some really amazing use cases as well in implementations. I use it, I use it for some things. Like I, if I run into a problem on my website or a plugin that needs to be something like that chat gpt is like hands down like holy cow way better than way better than

google but i would never ever ever ever write a post on LinkedIn and put it up there and i can smell them like two blocks down and one over you know the ones that do use it they're awful they don't connect and um so i i think we're going to figure it out as we go i think we're going to figure it out as we go. I hope it goes okay. Yeah. Yeah, really interesting question. Probably not the answer you wanted, but that's, of course it is. It's a beautiful answer. I love, I love learning and I, I'm hopeful that it teaches us more about, on some levels, I wonder, does AI have a culture? Like, you know, if you look at the Western culture where we seem to focus on, you know, our family structure is we tend to separate the family. Like the old folks go to an old folks home, the kids go to school, and then the parents go to work.

But we all go these different ways. And like in Eastern culture, the family unit is much more tighter. You know, now, I'm wondering if on some level does AI have its own culture, you know, is it the melding of two cultures together? I go way out in the woods, man, when I start thinking about it. What does that mean? How does it change? Maybe it's an agent of change for culture, you know? Yeah.

It's so fun to think about it. And it's such a powerful technology. And I feel like we have this incredible tool in our hand. But instead of using it, we're trying to figure out the best way to hold it. Like, I think you should put two fingers here. Nope, put one over here. But hey, how we start using this thing to see what happens, man? Yeah.

Yeah. Pretty cool. Pretty cool. It'd be interesting. Buckle, buckle your seatbelt. I think so. Shane, this is amazing. I really love our conversation.

I love the fact that you don't pull back any punches. You're very candid and you're happy to talk about whatever we got going on. And it seems to be a testament to the Everettics Foundation. And I'm real thankful. I hope people can go down into the show notes and dig into what you're doing and book a call with you. And what is the best way, maybe before I let you go, where can people find you? What do you have coming up and what are you excited about? Oh, well, so the easiest you can find me on LinkedIn. I'm there way too much. So Shane Smith. My website is Everettics. So Everettics.com. So EVE-E-E-R-I-T-I-C-S. And my email is really simple. It's Shane at Everettics.com. So feel free to reach out to be that way. On the website, you can book some time if you'd like to, you know, meet.

and have an introduction and we can talk through really whatever. I am a self-proclaimed, not salesman. So what I like to say is like book a time. And who knows, we might just have a good conversation. And that's okay. So I appreciate it. I appreciate it. But Everettics.com, Shane at Everettics.com,

or hit me up on LinkedIn anytime. Fantastic. So ladies and gentlemen, go down to the show notes, book a chat. He's a fascinating guy to talk to. And we've had multiple conversations. And I feel like I get to walk away with new insights. I really appreciate it. Hang on briefly afterwards.

I'd like to speak for a moment afterwards. But to the people that are watching and listening, I hope you have a beautiful weekend. I hope the rest of your day goes amazing. And thank you for tuning in and having some fun with us today. That's all we got. Aloha. Aloha.