Brian Nichols  0:07  
Is it time to have death to KPIs? That's a conversation we're going to have on today's episode of CX without the BS joining me from Sonic CX is Justin Jones to discuss all things KPIs. Are we using KPIs effectively? Are we just chasing numbers and have no real context behind them? We're going to discuss that. But first. Justin Jones, welcome to today's episode of CX without the BS. First, do us a favor, introduce yourself here to the the audience, and then also tell us a little bit more about Sonic

Speaker 1  0:37  
CX. Well, I appreciate that. That's one hell of an opening. So So my background, I mean, I've been in contact centers. I started out 20 years ago, I guess. So, been in contact centers for for quite some time, and even got into selling contact center software. Obviously, how, how you and I met back back when I was selling the software, and still do today, but kind of through that process, decided it was time to fix the broken shit that I saw inside, inside the system, and that's what brought Sonic cx to life. So we're a BPO that's focused on turning cost centers into revenue centers. Yeah, I mean, I'm, like I said earlier, I'm a little weird on camera, so we'll just kind of go with it, but, but our focus is to really help people understand that their revenue actually does live in the customer service side of the business, and it's not just something that should be labeled as OPEX, and throwing in your P and L is a cost. So,

Brian Nichols  1:40  
yeah, well, KPIs are always what we use kind of as the benchmarks right to you're aiming. You're using it as it's supposed to be a compass, right? It's pointing you towards a certain direction. But what ends up happening is people are just chasing wherever the compass points, with no real idea of what that endpoint would look like, or what good looks like. They just end up having this arbitrary idea of, okay, well, this is an industry standard. So therefore I'm going to, I'm going to try to hit this KPI too, whether it's your average handle time or, you know, your net promoter score, whatever it may be, right? So I guess you know, when we talk about KPIs, one of the things I've talked about a few times here in CX, without the BS. And something that I'm hearing that you're really leading with over at Sonic CX, is this idea of almost contextualizing your KPIs, right? Like, yes, have a KPI, but understand the why behind that KPI like and what's, what does good look like? Like beyond just a number. What's the what's the outcome that's tied to that KPI? Tell us a little bit more about your kind of philosophy there.

Speaker 1  2:48  
Yeah, so death to KPIs, I think the really the premise behind the death to KPIs is all about the fact that contact centers run with a scarcity mindset. And if you really think about this, it's almost like it's efficient, efficiency that chases poverty. You know you're when you're measuring KPIs, it's like, how quickly can we get off, get the customer off the phone and onto the next call, and then we have the metric of satisfaction scores, which we know these, these KPIs can be manipulated. I mean, the Employee of the Month could be, you know, honestly, losing you more money than you realize, because it's what's happening after the conversation. And I don't try not to jump around too much, but you know, like when you look at this, we spend millions and millions and millions of dollars going out to acquire new customers and try to service them as cheaply as possible. And it's just this, it's this never ending funnel, right? And you're trying to plug holes with efficiency, or what we call efficiency by like, how quickly can we get them off the phone with a smile on their face and not try to create meaningful interactions? Now, average handle time, because that's one I probably get the most pushback on average handle time does make sense, just from it, from an extent that, hey, we've got to be able to measure kind of overall costs. We have a better understanding of what I get that a lot of pushback. And I'm not saying take three minute calls and turn them into 10 Minute Calls. But when you start to measure average handle time and penalize your team members, just purely based on average handle time, you drive behaviors that turn them into robots like you literally. You feel like, hey, my job, you know, is to be quick and efficient. And I think if you reshape your thinking around what a call center agent does, and you start to track what happens after the call, not just during the call, like, you know, it'd be an interesting project. A lot of contact centers should try is take a cohort of your customers, like, like, let's say hey, and. November, I'm going to go ahead and change nothing, and we're going to track lifetime value after these interactions happen. Yeah, how does that go? And then, and then focus over to, like, the Kri framework, which is, like, the key revenue indicators of what we operate on, and that's and we can touch more on that, maybe in the month of December, and you track the cohorts of those customers that move through those months and had interactions and see how that impacted lifetime value.

Brian Nichols  5:29  
Interesting, yeah, because that will and really quick. Justin, because, like, that's something that I think does really get forgotten, right? Like, you almost have this old school mentality that the call center or or the customer service line that's there as this reactive, almost, ER room, right? Like something happened, customers reaching out with some issue, the agent's job is to more likely than not, diffuse the situation, trying to lead with with empathy, try to resolve the situation, and do so in the fastest timeframe possible with a positive outcome, right? Like that's that's kind of the mentality that people have just around what a call center is, versus what you're articulating here is that your your call center, beyond trying to triage, should be making that person feel in such a way that they feel not just having their issue resolved, but being heard, being understood, being valued, being cared for, all those, those those warm and fuzzies, right? And that's something that you really, you can't, you can't contextualize that into a KPI, right? There is no warm and fuzzy meter, right? There's nothing like that that exists. So like you're what you're outlining here is okay, well, what happens after the fact? Right? How did that customer's warm and fuzzies translate into long term business? How did that turn into them now, going forward, and not just, you know, coming back and being a recurring customer, but spending more monthly, right? Are they ordering more? Are they telling friends? Is there a coupon code that they're they're sharing with people, because now they're a promoter of your your business, not just saying they'd be a net promoter, right? Actively bringing you new referrals. That stuff, I think, to your point, really does have a lot more value beyond just this emergency room mentality.

Speaker 1  7:19  
100% 100% and I think you know, even to take it a step, kind of the next layer, right? Let's think about the mindset of your team and the way that it shapes. Because if you change the way your language is internally, you change the outcome, like call center agents. I started out in contact centers as an agent on the phone, and what my day looked like was, thank you for calling. Have a great day. Goodbye. Thank you for calling. Have a great day. Goodbye. Over and over and over and over and

Brian Nichols  7:50  
over again. Did you ever watch that movie Office Space? Oh, of course, yeah. It's the lady who's answering the phone call. Just a moment, like over and over and over, just a moment.

Speaker 1  8:00  
Yeah, the psychology, it's, it's insane. You churn agents out. Now, let's just, let's just look at this, right? Because KPIs are, are, again, I understand how we ended up here. I totally get it. But if you start to show your contact center agents and your team that, hey, you act, here's how you help shape the business. And we're not just talking about a satisfaction score or, Hey, great job. Justin, you took 100 calls more than everybody last month, and you closed X number of tickets. That doesn't, yes, I may be the efficiency king, but that's not going to that doesn't get me pumped up, right? Like, right, as you start to it takes kind of coming up in the ranks to understand the implications of all these roles, the further you go up in your career. But I'm saying shape, even shape the language, and change your scoreboard at the agent level and say, Hey, we're going to, we're going to tie value to these interactions, right? Like an upsell, yeah, let your customer service team know how much additional revenue they generated. Track quarterly reports on lifetime value impacts, you know, change the score. What

Brian Nichols  9:11  
about Justin, really quick. What about, I have an idea. What about like, actually compensating your customer service teams based on that, right? Like, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1  9:21  
Oh, yeah. 100% so you would, you same way you would a sales team, right? Like, I, I can't stress this enough, and, you know, we like for our business, we we have this line, like, hey, revenue lives here. It's kind of our tagline. And it's not just like, Hey, that sounds cool to actually, we mean that shit. You know, it's revenue lives in every interaction and the way that and you should pay accordingly for those interactions. You're paying hundreds and hundreds or 1000s of dollars to acquire customers and then rewarding how quickly you can get them to go away. And we're in, and then your label employee of the month, and then you have a retention problem. Them on the back end, and you get this, everybody's pointing the finger, yep, let me talk about retention. You know, I can, I can get into that that, but yes, I would absolutely incentivize customer service agents based on revenue metrics,

Brian Nichols  10:14  
and not just like those stupid Lowe's gift cards or Amazon gift cards, like actual like, a bonus structure where, if I'm a customer service agent, I have something I can plan around. It's almost like, you know, a commission system for a sales guy, right? Like you want them to be able to feel that okay, if I go to work every single day and I'm the best version of myself and I I'm always putting the customer first, and I have the tools I need to do my job effectively that I have. I mean, really an earning potential based on how well I do relative to making that customer feel heard, understood, and, oh, by the way, after we're done with the call, they thought so highly of me that there is now a tied revenue to them coming back, you know, for this six month period that now I actually had, I'm gonna see value from like, that's huge, that there, that's that's carrot, and stick right there,

Speaker 1  11:06  
yep. And you change, and you change the stigma. Now, I want to be clear, because I think, like anybody that's watched my stuff on LinkedIn, and some of the conversations I have, and I say, Everything's a revenue event, to be very clear, in the fact that that doesn't mean every call is a I'm pitching something call, right, but, but you are either increasing lifetime value or decreasing it, then your customer service team should know where an upgrade opportunity is sitting in front of them. Or, hey, these people are triggered, triggered. They're following a behavior leading to cancelation, and it's taking the time to figure those out and then treating them accordingly. You know, imagine

Brian Nichols  11:45  
having a having a terrible experience right up front, like, with a company, and you're like, Okay, you know what? I know, I'm an afterthought to that company. I'm not going to ever do business with that company. Versus, you have a phenomenal customer experience with a company, they apologize profusely, and then, you know, a couple hours later, in your email is an email follow up, saying, Hey, we're sorry. You know, we're going to do better. Here's a $50 gift card to, you know, go buy whatever you want from our store on us. Like, you know, we'll in, you know, all you know, you will pay for shipping. I don't care, like, something like that, all of a sudden you think that when they see a marketing email from Company A versus Company B, they're not going to lean towards Company B every single time, because, like, that was a positive experience, and knowing that as a customer service agent that I was able to make that happen, right? Like, that's that's so empowering.

Speaker 1  12:40  
Yep, and KPI KPIs won't track that. They'll just track efficiency. And it's going to be funny. And I know everybody can guess what will happen with AI, like you could totally make, we could all make our guesses. I will guarantee you that you are going to see people optimize themselves out of business, the bad behaviors that they think are efficient as soon as AI gets its hands on it, what that that whole PNL, that predictable? And you're going to be scaling back, you're going to you're going to see the the great AI experiment of 2026 where customers come in and it's not to say AI won't work. I don't I'm not saying that it's not going to work. I think it's inevitable that AI is going to have its place in contact centers, but we're going to optimize for KPIs, and that is going to become where people go, Oh, shit. Maybe there's something to this, and that's where we talk about, like, key revenue indicators. And, you know, like the here perfect first contact wins is a is something that we talk about with our customers. First Contact wins. And I well, I mean, you could make a guess. I won't put you on the spot, but like, let's assume I run a subscription business, and a customer signs up and I solve a problem for them, and now they're monthly recurring revenue. And I most call centers, most businesses will just let it be and they wait for the next touch point. But statistically, you can significantly, I mean, significantly, improve lifetime value if you get something done for them in the first 90 days. So either if they're if they don't need to call you surprise and delight them in the first 90 days, give them something more than they expected in that first 90 days. It will make a significant difference. But instead, we treat customer service like, Hey, you're here, and it's a Containment Zone, you know, come in, and then we're trying to block the back door. When they're like, hey, this party sucks. Yeah. Then now, now we've got promos like, Hey, wait, don't leave. Let's come over here. I'll get you a steak dinner. When it's like, Dude, you could have been doing that the whole time. I hope my audio is not going in and out. By the way, I've got no no, you're okay. You sound great. Something's popping up saying, USB device issue, but, yeah, I mean, you really think of it? Customer service is treated as a containment. It's like, come in and we try to keep you from all. Walking out the back door, but we only want to talk to you when you get to that place. And if you do want to talk to us, it's like, it's like a going to a restaurant and having a server be as fast as that, like, fly by your table, drop your plate on and cruise away, and then they're like, Hey, I don't want to eat here anymore. Yeah? Like, well, well, wait a minute. No. Like, take a minute. That's not how this works. We'll be better. Here's a promotion, and that's, that's the point, you know, like, look at Chick fil A. Freaking love Chick fil A. First of all, they have great food, but one thing they do consistently, and I gotta, I gotta credit Billy, who I used to work with for this, he pointed out that every time you say thank you, they say, it's my pleasure. Yep, something so silly, but it becomes a brand. And you create consistency, you get a brand identity, you use customer service to drive loyalty. And now I like to go to Chick fil A and say, Thank you a bunch just to mess with their employees, but it's my pleasure. Yeah, yeah. Billy's like, I sometimes. I'm like, hey, you know. And then he's like, I stopped, because you could see him queued up, ready to go, but yeah, it's, uh, it drives me crazy, because, you know, even in selling, like, contact center software, and I'm sure you've seen this, companies come in and they say, Hey, we have, we have x number of chats, We have X number of calls. We want efficiency and and no point during that discovery cycle. And when you do try to dive in, they don't do they understand why. What's your I was just gonna say

Brian Nichols  16:31  
this is Socratic Method. 101, just ask the Ask the open ended questions, the, who, what, where, when, why, how, like, those are the questions that so many sales guys, just, I don't know if they're allergic to it, because they might go down a path that they just, they haven't scripted out, they're not prepared for or what. But like, I mean, on the flip side for customer service, you're spot on, dude. Like, you need to ask those, those follow up questions, like, the how, the what, the where, the why, the when, the like, do it. Just do it. And that's, again, Socratic method, 101,

Speaker 1  17:00  
you have a revenue engine in your contact center, and nobody, too it is, it is this poverty mindset, like nobody would do that. Nobody would do that in any other industry other than call centers, where they're just it's a cost. It goes under OPEX and every company that has a revenue issue. Rather than taking a hard look at their call center, they go, how do we automate drop jobs and put more into marketing? Because we, because we need more customers. And you've got, you've got chief technology officers that have committed. I mean, we were making making fun of this last night, like, there's, there's chief technologies out there. And I know one of you might see this that committed to I'm going to automate this XYZ project, got a million dollar budget, and they're going to make that shit work come hell or high water, because if they don't, they're going to lose their job, and if it doesn't work, they're going to lose their job. So might as well pull the trigger. See how this goes and best case I'm good. I mean, it's just the truth, and people are going to automate themselves into nightmares, and customers are going to get stuck in AI hell. We'll scale back. We'll go more human, and people will start to realize that, hey, revenue actually does live in my contact center. We just need to know how to leverage these conversations and then automate the low to no value stuff.

Brian Nichols  18:24  
Yeah, and by the way, I just want to highlight, like you're mentioning, the AI coming in and really messing some stuff up. I mean, I think of a horror story. I worked with this one organization, and they'd had a sales force for five years, right? Five years of customer data, of of sales data, of closed, lost data, right? And they ended up, they just thought it was, quote, unquote, too messy. So what they do, Justin they just got rid of it. They just got rid of it, and they started fresh with a brand new sales force, and and my heart broke when I'm sitting I'm sitting down with them, I'm like, that is five years worth of data that is just gone, right? And we could have learned stuff from that, like we could have learned, okay, here are your top five reasons that your close loss happened and and now we can understand how to avoid those in the future. How do we block that objection in the future that's gone right now, we have to kind of start from square one. I learn and go through the sales process and now see where you enclose lost all you know and then contextualize there, versus having that already built up. But to your point, think of if you have aI go in and it misunderstands one thing. It's like a butterfly effect, right? It's gonna transcend that one thing throughout all the data, and it's gonna be gobbly, Gook, and you're going to end up, in a year or two with just data and data and data. That's all, it's all incorrect. It's all, you know, it's you got it, maybe it's got inconsistencies. It hallucinated, and then that hallucination turned into whatever real life was. So like, if you're not taking care of the data, and you're not, like, actually having true A. AI data hygiene, right? Like, actually people going in, checking the data, making sure that the outcomes are proper. Like, you're gonna just set yourself up for a disaster. But, I mean, how many times in tech do we see it Justin people will set it and forget it, right? Like, they will set their technology and they will just be like, Yep, it's working, right? And they'll only fiddle with it more often than not, when something happens, right? There's some trigger event, whether it's a contract coming you know out of expiration, you know that they're merging with a company, whatever it may be, but like otherwise, your AI is still doing this thing in the background, and it might be making your a mess of data, and you're just none the wiser because you're not paying attention. And if you're a small business owner or a mid market business owner, you might not be paying attention. Maybe you haven't outsourced MSP, right? And they're just like, you're one of 150 customers, I don't know, like you think they're paying close attention to all your AI data? Probably not,

Speaker 1  20:53  
no, not at all. And, yeah, it's just, I mean, people, the AI is just going to be funny because it'll do exactly what it's supposed to do, and people are going to find out their service. But in this kind of looping back like just to KPIs, right? Think about what KPI Are you measuring today? It'd be my challenge. What KPI Are you measuring today that's impacting your growth? Not, not, not, yeah, what's impacting your bottom line? What KPI in customer service? It's very easy to do in sales, every sales leader knows how to measure this. But in customer service, what KPI do you report on is a measurement of growth. And I bet you the only bullshit answer I'm going to get, if somebody were is CSAT. So it's number one, and I don't I say it's bullshit, because it's easy, easily manipulated, and that's why I say, grab it and measure your customers and cohorts and watch how they follow through. And as you pull these triggers that focus on outcomes, not activity, you can start to measure that. Hey, this shit actually works. Oh my gosh. We don't have to acquire so many customers, let's pour some money into our contact center, because the bottom of the funnel is less leaky. We're not losing customers at the rate. You know, I don't know. Call me crazy.

Brian Nichols  22:11  
No, no, no, no. What you're doing is you're applying almost like what I used to leave with my SDR teams, right? Like you're applying this BDR, SDR mentality to the contact center, which I think is a phenomenal idea. And I mean this in terms of my SDRs and BDRs, they were compensated not based on the number of calls they did, or the number of emails they sent or LinkedIn requests they did. They were compensated based on how many appointments did you book, right? And then we also had how many appointments showed up to their first meeting. And then the the ultimate icing on the cake was, if they went close one, we had the SDRs get compensated with an extra bonus on top of whatever the closed MRR was. So like, right? There were three areas that the SDRs had, like, a value actually tied to the quality of their work, not just the quantity, and going back to what you just said, instead of just the activity and focusing on the almost the repetitions the at bats, is to change it into a qualitative notion and start to pay more attention to not just how you did, but then the actual tangible outcomes thereafter, which That just seems like common sense, man. And like, I know that you're, you're like, you're helping shake up the the whole, know, the whole KPI industry for the contact center world. But like, I mean, it just sounds like common sense. I don't even know this is super controversial. I know they're gonna be people who push back. But like, this is, I think, just a natural kind of progression with making better experiences, not just like shortening bad shortening bad experiences,

Speaker 1  23:49  
dude, you get it. Yeah, I think you, I think you put it better than I did. But that's my point. Like, when I'm on LinkedIn and I'm like, going on my rants, it's simply just because once you see it, you can't unsee it. You can't see it. It's not it's not profound. It's not like whole mad genius idea over here. But you know, you know what triggered this in my head? And like, this is not a bullshit story. I was running a sales team. I was like, Vice President of Sales for this company, and I was looking at the head of customer service, and I shit you not. I had a I had a day where I was like, sitting there, and I'm like, How in the hell did I end up in sales? Like, he's got it so easy over there, right? Like, it's a good buddy of mine. We'd go to lunch together. And I'm like, he's got it like, I should have done service. Like, totally needless to say, he ends up leaving. And I get tapped by the owner of the group to like, hey, let's just have sales and service run through you. I quickly understood, I know why I ended up in sales. There's a different there was a different profile in customer service when I come over to that team. But then I quick, and then I started to see revenue inside of customer service. My sales brain couldn't shut off. But everything, every. Thing that it ran and optimized for was activity, and then I started to throw dollar signs behind that activity and start to communicate that to the team. Started spiffing the agents at that company, and lifetime value went up. Agent retention went up. They were making more money. We were keeping more customers. We did well enough to land a big enterprise account that still lives with that company today. And it's nice. It's not science, man, it's not it's just when you talk, it's like you're speaking a foreign language sometimes, and people see death to KPIs, and they go, Oh, that's cute. Like attention grab, sure, sure. Yes, I wrote the book because I for attention. You absolutely right. I wanted to get the message out there. But the message is right, it's, it's, it's right. And you once you embrace it, and you take a look at your contact center, and you go, yep, hey, where are we measuring revenue impact? 98% of you are not you are out there running efficiency centers, but spending a shit ton of money to bring customers in to your Containment Zone and then trying to block the door when they leave. And it's absolutely freaking insane.

Brian Nichols  26:17  
It's not science, it's art, and this actually goes to my OG co host here, Tom Milligan. Now, Tom is no longer in the CX industry. He is doing his new thing out in the customer strategy world, which he's crushing it with Cascade. Hope to have him back on soon. By the way, I know he is like, literally, he's working all over the globe. He was just down, like Jamaica and Australia. And he's like, he's just a world traveler now, but, um, so, so Tom though he usually, or I say he would often talk about the art and science of sales, and, you know, in our world, it was in the channel, right? And he'd always talk about how you have the the numbers piece, right? Where it's the data. It's the looking at the numbers, making sure that things make sense, right? Like, what activity do I need to do in order to get this type of outcome? How many events do you need to have in order to yield this kind of outcome? How many meetings do you have to have in order to yield this kind of outcome? So on and so forth. But then there is the art side of things, and it is that part I mentioned earlier that you can't there's no, there's no banner saying the warm and fuzzy meter, right? And it is the part that just it is that, and I've done this in an episode before. I called it the the H, E, right? The human element. How you just, you can't put your, your, your finger on it, but you know, it's there, like when you're talking to an AI in the contact center, you inherently feel there is a disconnect with me and the AI, because it's AI, right? It's never going to truly empathize with me, because it literally can't do that. It has no ability to actually empathize. It is all llms and data and logic trees is not looking at me as a human being with human emotions and sentiment, whereas when I'm on the phone with somebody you're talking about like, Oh, I just, I overdrew my bank account and I have an overdraft fee. Oh my gosh. I just, my car just broke down. I'm struggling. I can't pay the bill. Like, if you're talking to a real, live human being, they're gonna empathize, right? They're gonna be like, Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry. Like, I had a similar experience. I had a family member who had XYZ happen. I had a co worker, like it was me, like, you can, you can actually tell a story and relate to that person on a human to human basis. And that's something going back to that human experience, right? You just, you can't, you can't quantify it. It's not, there is no science number to it. It is just that feeling, that that vibe. And I don't know, you know, I've gone to all these conferences before, and I've gone to all these events, and I hear it constantly Justin where it's like, you know, AI is coming into the CX space. It's replacing people. We're having AI voice agents and all these, you know, it's just, it's the PFM stuff, right? The pure F and magic. And I hear it, I think it's cool, right? I think there's a lot of, a lot of interesting applications and use cases here, but I am still firmly routed in the idea that, I guess, rooted in the idea that you just you will not be able to replace humans, because inherently, when we are going through issues of crisis or or, you know, stress or whatever anxiety, we want to be heard by an actual human being, and that's just something that no AI can ever genuinely replicate.

Speaker 1  29:47  
No, no, it can't. And you know that, like the the elites will get live humans. I mean, you'll have tiered systems as AI comes out, and it'll be like the the free, the freemium AI all the way. And like, the higher up you go, like, you're a Delta diamond member, or whatever, that high up, yeah, American Express black card, you're getting human. They're not throwing you on with AI, but I want to go back.

Brian Nichols  30:11  
Oh man, what dystopian world that would be. Jeez. Aloo, yeah,

Speaker 1  30:15  
AIA, AI, hell is what it's gonna be called, the story you said, let's go back to Tom. First of all, shout out. Tom, freaking. Love the guy. Love him the you said, Hey, we're measuring like number of events, you know, like traveling city to city, number of events, like meetings, right? KPIs, KPIs, KPIs, if. Now imagine you go to these events and your job is to talk to customers and under X number of minutes and move on. And at the end of the day, you get to celebrate who talked to the most people. Because that's what we're doing in call centers. When really sell perfect announcements about relationships, like, hey, if Brian, let's say I go around and I say hello to 200 freaking people, and you, you talk to 100 and come out with four relationships, right? Who? Who did better? 200 people heard about Sonic CX because I ran around and said, Hi, Sonic CX. Have a great day. But down the line, and again, it is a balancing act for any of the haters out there that are like, well, now I'm just gonna have calls on hold because everybody's gonna be talking and creating this thing that you've experienced. No, it's a look. KPIs are a guide, not a god, and that's I've said that a bajillion times on on Discovery calls since launching this thing. And it's not to say that they don't carry value, right? It's how you use them. It's the language that you you engage in with your with your team. It's a

Brian Nichols  31:44  
it's a tool in the tool belt. That's what it is, yep,

Speaker 1  31:48  
but yeah, go to a conference everybody, and act like a call center agent and tell me that shit makes sense. And then look at the way you run your contact center. Take that same mentality to any aspect of life, and then you wonder why you're bleeding revenue. Open your eyes.

Brian Nichols  32:04  
It's not, it's not about the number of business cards you get, right? It's in the follow up. My good buddy there, Justin Zachary, he works over at talaris, he always says the fortune is in the follow up, right? And how accurate is that when you see, and I know we've all seen, I was literally at an event couple weeks ago out in your neck of the woods, and there was this one guy walking around, and he was just literally going through, you could see it like he had, like, a little checklist. Like, is this person worth my time first? When they say, No, okay, nope. Nice to meet you. I'm to the next I'm just like, my brother in Christ, what are we doing here? Like, this is, this is silly, and and yet, right? Like, I know that that type of mentality that is very much alive and well, not just on the sales side, but it also also in the customer experience side, which is ironic, because it's also a customer experience event like that. Is it? Is it is something like when you see, when we have the conversations, like the podcast and stuff like, you and I can have a conversation about it, and we're just like, talking through like, yeah, this just makes sense, right? God, like, we're, this is a no brainer, almost. And yet, then you will go to conferences, and you will still hear people who will regurgitate these very old school mentalities of of just like, Okay, you gotta lower X, Y and Z. You got to increase this, this KPI. And it's just like, you know, I don't know. I don't know if that's really the the best, the best course of action is this. Are we just going after this number? Because this is how we've always done things, right? Which, as a sales guy, I love asking that question, like, Are we, are we doing this just because we've always done things this way? Like, is that why we're doing this old solution? And if so, okay, I understand that. How did you get to this solution, right? But, like, if I hear that with the call center folks and then the customer experience folks, I'm like, Okay, well, if this is just how you guys have done things this way, is it there a chance there might be a better way? And I just see your approach, Justin being just the no brainer, better way, you know, like, I just, I think you got a really, a really good approach here to not just change how we're looking at KPIs. But then again, to your point, like, and how do you measure the value of those interactions long term? And the long term piece is so crucial, like, you can get those short term wins that look good on a spreadsheet. But when you can go and you can look at a six month, nine month, 12 month, like you just continue extrapolating that out over a 36 month kind of ordeal, and you see a customer value just over and over and over, that means a lot more to me as a business leader than Oh, great. We lowered our average handle time from, you know, six minutes and 42 seconds to six minutes and 37 seconds. Great. Did those customers ever come back? Like did they come did they become recurring customers in the future? No, okay, well, yay. We hit the number. What does that mean?

Speaker 1  35:00  
You, dude, I love it. You're, yep, you're saying exactly you're it means I'm doing a decent enough job. Nothing's groundbreaking, but you're getting it like and that's, that's the point. And I love what you said there about, you know, sure, it looks good on a spreadsheet in the moment, and that's where we live. We're celebrating. Let's, let's use BPO as an example. BPO owner, we created our website, and I said everything I thought they wanted to hear before we ever even created the company. The website was stood up. It said everything. And then I and then when we started, I started to talk this shit. Realized, though we've got to rip our website down. But the reason what I'm trying to get at is saying, even when you meet with BPOS or your call center leaders, they'll tell you about how quickly they got them off the phone. They'll talk about KPIs. You will not understand a single damn thing about what happened to those customers. No, that comes on the back end when the CFO reports nine months later, and that's there's a big disconnect. Talk about disconnect. Yeah, hire people because our our margins suck or not, that all CFOs are mean like that, but you know what I'm saying, and so yes, it is like BPOS in particular. We want you to survive, not succeed. We want you to survive not succeed. It is in our best interest to have your customers continue to call, because more calls equals more staff equals more money, and that's why you got to start to reframe this shit and say, Hey, no, no, no, we want you to have less calls, but more meaningful ones. What's broken in your process? And that's where we need to be better as IP OS and coming back to businesses and saying, Hey, these are low to no value calls helping map this journey, and then extracting as much value as possible out of the interactions when they do come in, because one of two things are happening, lifetime value is decreasing, or it's increasing, and there's no in between, Yep, yeah.

Brian Nichols  36:53  
Well, and by the way, like to the customers, don't be afraid to fire BPOS that are just focusing on the activity, right? And I I actually had one of my old companies I was consulting with back in the day, they were trying to do an outsourced SDR motion. I was like, why? Like, oh, well, you know, they're doing XYZ number of calls. I'm like, and so what? Like, I don't care how many calls they did, how many appointments that they book three I'm like, Okay, over a month, what like they did over you know, it was like some insane, insane number, like, 6000 calls, or whatever, they booked like, three appointments. And I'm like, That's trash. That's horrible outcome. That might

Speaker 1  37:35  
have been me and you dude, I don't think it was you and me. Okay, I did outsource some SDR work one time, and they were like, they guaranteed a number of bookings I got. Maybe it was us, they got their bookings, but the calls were totally irrelevant. And I Yeah, because I talked to you, that's how I met you. Tom introduced, yeah, yeah, I love it. Call it. Call it. What it is. Like, I went straight off KPIs, you know what? I got a bunch of garbage, just like, throwing garbage in and expect,

Brian Nichols  38:07  
I think we talked about that, though we because you had mentioned that, like you were like, I'm not really getting much from these.

Speaker 1  38:12  
Yeah, yeah, that's exactly how we met. So when you were telling that story, I'm like, because I was, I didn't want to build the SDR team out where I was at. That's right, yeah, yeah.

Brian Nichols  38:23  
Oh, man. That's hilarious, because I was like, I remember this story very vividly. And the reason I must remember vividly is because, like, something in the synapse is, like, was triggered by us having the conversation. It's like, oh yeah, it was Justin dude. Like, what? That's really funny.

Speaker 1  38:38  
I'll own this shit out of that week, because we talked and you Tom's like, Hey, Brian ran these teams. He can give you some good insight. And then we got on a call with one of my counterparts, and you kind of were like, Hey, I wouldn't do that. And we're like, Yeah, let's try it anyway. And I think it lasted all of two months. And we're like, Okay, we got to bring this internal Yeah, yeah, no. Their bookings, they just weren't meaningful bookings. Yeah, yeah.

Brian Nichols  39:06  
Well, and I know that there's, you know, a big push back on folks, because, like, there is, there is a cost of overhead. Obviously, when you have to hire in house, I get that right. So there is a role for the outsource, but if you do have to go the role for the outsource, you really have to know your stuff, right. Like I would genuinely suggest to folks, if you are looking to use an outsource, SDR, type of team, like someone like me, like consult with me. Let us kind of steer the ship in the hiring process, because not all those businesses are created, created the same, like, I dabbled in that world for a little bit and like, just to watch how some companies would lead on the activity. And I'm like, You're just leading this to business owners to because it's a bigger number on a marketing slide deck, like we did, you know, 10x number of calls, or 50. Next number of emails, and I'm like, okay, and how many of those went to spam? How many of those turned into not just appointments, but, like, well qualified appointments that turned into active pipeline? How many of those active pipeline deals were converted to close one like, help me understand those numbers? Oh, no, you can't. Well, that's probably because it's not a great quality solution. And like on the flip side, this is where you come in so handy, Justin, because on the customer experience side, if this is the way that things go, and I think they will end up going inevitably, as more and more people catch on board, and they watch our episode right, like they're going to see that there's going to be a demand to almost better qualify BPOS. Like, help me better understand which BPO is going to be the best based on not just their KPIs, but help me better understand based on the actual outcomes that we're yielding here. Like, are we just chasing a number, or is there a reason behind the number, and then, if that reason is there help me understand the qualitative outcome that I'm going to see that I can then report back. So I'm, you know, I'm covering my butt. So I think there's a lot of a lot of opportunity here in this world to help kind of grow, just across the board, both in the BPO space, to get better and more refinement, but also kind of almost consulting for BPOS, for small businesses like that. I'm very curious to see how this will go. I wonder if it's gonna be more of a channel thing or or what. But, uh, yeah, it's coming.

Speaker 1  41:30  
I know it's coming. And I mean, maybe I'm not like the best at articulating it at times, but once you, once you understand it, you just can't unsee it. It's one of those things that, yeah, you when I talk to other call centers you want, like, I think you mentioned earlier, like, when to outsource, you know? Like, I I'd be honest with somebody, like, if you were a prospect outsource, like, when to outsource, like, when, when your call center is not, when it's something that you just stuck with, right? Like, I have a prospect that I'm working with, that we're working to onboard, I hope that they had a very efficient business, and the call center was a result of their success, you know? And it's like, Hey, I'm not a call center. Scale too big. Yeah, it was just a result of success their service. There's a service provider, company that ended up with a bunch of customers. And the call center was a was a consequence of that, albeit a good one. You know, outsource that. If you don't have your passions, not there, outsource it. If you, if you're going to do it internally, just focus on revenue. Don't focus on activities, because DPOs, we need to do better. We have to do better. I mean, we've got a bad, bad jam, right? We compete each other to the bottom. It's like, hey, I'll price it here. You price it here. And we and we all get to where we barely have any margin, because all we bring to the table is activities, and it's whoever can do it for the cheapest. And that's why you see all this growth of oversee contact centers, things that have happened, because it's efficiency at an and if, if you're just want efficiency, it really just becomes price, like you'll see, RFPs. And don't get me freaking started on RFPs. RFPs,

Speaker 2  43:15  
everybody's favorite in the technology space. Everybody loves a little RFP, especially

Speaker 1  43:20  
if you helped write it, it's a 47 page document that screams, hey, I have no idea what I'm doing. That's literally what I like, Hey, I it's, it's almost like, hilarious when RFPs, I almost wrote about this on LinkedIn, I thought it was too cruel, but screw it. They show how they show how incompetent people are and it's like, hey, what give me your business continuity plan in case World War Three happens? Like, Yo, bro, pretty sure nobody's going to be calling your center if shit hits the fan this hard. But no like, nothing about hey, what do you do to help increase customer value? What is the touch points? What's the what's the brand experience that you'll help unify? How do you report back to our teams on value creation? No, no. What is continuity? How safe is your your systems? And we stop there, and it's this big dog and pony show of, hey, who kissed my ass the best. Yep, it. It's hilarious. Anyway, I like to shit on people, but RFPs are a joke, and I refuse to fill them out. I just won't

Brian Nichols  44:26  
do it. Technology Advisor, I hope he doesn't listen to this show. He might. If he does, I'm sorry, some good ones out there. I'm not if somebody was, he was just, he would chase RFPs, and I would be like, my brother, I do not want any more RFPs. And he'd be like, but this is a really good one. And I'm like, is it though? Are you sure about that? And it was always like, pulling teeth, but no, I hear you, dude, RFPs, just drive me up a wall. I

Speaker 1  44:55  
don't have time like it maybe, maybe one day when Sonic CX, you know, we've got. To some some people that that's their specialty, sure, but as a startup like, I'm not wasting my time. I'm not going to compete like I will tell you the value we will bring to the relationship. I will, I will present that to you in a meaningful way. But I'm not, I'm not spending a week filling out a 47 page document that's going to go into email land, and then I'm going to hope that you want to date me. Yeah,

Brian Nichols  45:21  
and then four months later, you get the response, and it's like, Thank you for your application. After a very thoughtful consideration, we've decided to go with a different vendor. We appreciate your time and consideration and putting all these answers on 47 pages that we're never going to consider you in the first place.

Speaker 1  45:38  
Yeah, they need, they need some CX without the BS. Like, it's, it's, it for real, man. And that's, that's another brand. I mean, I don't want to get too far off, but we, the other thing that drives me nuts, and I think I'm a little bit brash, but it like, when did we learn not? When did we become like everything we hated like, and what, I mean, you know, when you're like a kid, and you watch adults talk, and you're like, talk funny, yep. And then next thing you know, I'm spewing that shit out of my mouth getting promoted because I sound so good. But really, I could have said in three words what I said in 16. But damn, it sounded fancy. Anyway. Anyway, I digress on that one.

Brian Nichols  46:23  
Justin Jones, we're already getting close to time, so this is the part of the show we like to start to wrap the episode up in a nice, neat bow. And I guess you know my kind of final thoughts, like before I turn things over to you like, this is an area where I am so thankful that we are starting to see more and more folks, at least, starting to have a conversation around, how do we look at KPIs like again? Are we, are we chasing the the metric? Are we chasing the activity, or are we actually chasing it based on an outcome and and I don't know what it was, where we had like for 30 years. It feels like everything was metric based. And if it's like, we all sudden realize that we had these CRMs that could capture all this data, and then that data was presented in metrics, and then we just became metrics focused. But metrics don't actually have like, the contextualized, like meat and potatoes that we need to look at behind the scenes like that. Again, going back to the warm and fuzzies, right? Like it can't capture that. So if we're able to start to kind of look beyond the number and more into the application of the number, and kind of, to your point, what those outcomes look like, right? That's going to be the option. I think we're going to have much more success like from, from, I think the main, the main selling point to your point earlier, is that stop spending so much time upfront trying to invest in sales teams, right? Like hire less of the SDR consultants, and take your existing customer base and really make sure you're you're making them just wild, crazy, happy customers that are gonna be loyal. They're gonna spend more, they're gonna they're gonna promote your brand. They're gonna bring you referrals. Like, that's, that's the way to, like, true, long term success. And I don't know, man, like, I think it's, it's common sense, but I think you've also, like, you've really found what's it called, a gray space here, right, where there's not many folks who are addressing a very real need, and candidly, like, I think you're the first ones actually built something that's a true, like, solution to the problem. So I'm excited to see where this all kind of goes. And I'm excited to see Justin Jones, you know, speaking at what conference like is gonna be channel futures, or channel vision or something in 2029 as the lead visionary in in changing KPI prioritization, or what's

Speaker 1  48:58  
gonna look like? I don't, I don't know. I honestly like. What I do know is this is gonna this is gonna grab hold. We've been fortunate as a startup. I mean, we've hit some tremendous growth, and there's people that get it. We definitely our conversations, I think, sound different than other BPOS. I'm even starting to see other BPOS kind of spin our message out there. I'm all for it. Whoever does it. It's just nice to know that, like, what we do and what we stand for, I have the utmost, like, belief that it's right, you know, because I'm not out there on call selling activity, I'm selling change for a business that really, we can make a difference, and we can both benefit from that. So, you know? And and then the other thing that's really cool that I would I'm, you know, it's the end of the podcast. Most people probably won't see this anyway, but we're launching, like, in the next week or two, Sonic AI, which I do want to show you. So that'll be we, we also own Sonic cx.ai and sonic.ai and that is a AI platform. Form. That's agent assist, that's revenue outcome focused that we're going to be utilizing, but also make available to other BPO. So built by a BPO for bpls and contact center leaders that will drive five Kris and eliminate KPIs.

Brian Nichols  50:16  
Love that dude. Justin Jones, it's been great chatting with you. You're one of those people I'd love to talk with on air as much as I do off air. So thank you for hopping on and you know, I know this is a conversation that we're going to start to hear more and more of. So as that conversation starts to happen, I'm looking forward to having you back in the show. Maybe we can even have like a panel conversation, maybe a friendly debate with someone who vehemently disagrees with you. They're gonna say no, Justin, we need to focus on those metrics. We need to focus on those KPIs. How dare you try to look at long term outcomes and value you heretic, moderate for you, I'll make sure.

Speaker 1  50:56  
I don't think anybody's gonna say that. Like, yeah, that'd be

Brian Nichols  51:00  
if they did, I would I would laugh, because that is probably the most dramatic thing that's ever happened in the world of like of contact center customer experience debates. But I digress. Now, brother, this has been a lot of fun. Folks, if you got some value from today's conversation, go ahead and give it a share. You can follow yours truly and Justin Jones both over on LinkedIn, as for CX without the BS. We are a podcast as well as a YouTube show. So head to CX without the BS. Over on YouTube. We also air short clips from the show over on our YouTube shorts page, there for CX without the BS, so nice, little digestible bites, and then otherwise, hit subscribe over on your favorite podcast, catcher, Apple podcast, spot off, Spotify. YouTube music. Wherever it is you consume your podcast content, you can find CX without the BS. But that being said, Brian Nichols, signing off, you're on CX without the BS. For Justin Jones, we'll see you next time you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai