Brian Nichols  0:05  
Hey. Well, hey there folks, welcome to today's episode of CX without the BS, I am your host. Brian Nichols, joined today by one of my cohorts for the day job, Steven Howard, today, we are digging into unified communication. What are some of the biggest pieces of BS, we see in that unified communication space. Also, how do mergers and acquisitions impact your customer experience as a company, but also your customers, customers. So with that being said, Steven Howard, welcome to CX without the BS, how you doing?

Stephen Howard  0:35  
I'm doing great. It's an honor to be here. You know, I've watched quite a bit of these. So love to get on here and talk about what's not BS.

Brian Nichols  0:46  
There we go. I know it's fun because we you and I talk about this stuff every day, like just for real, peek behind the curtain, folks. Steven and I work one on one pretty much on a daily basis for the day job. And we see this a lot because we just recently got our company into a technology service distributor portfolio, and that alone is a challenge. But then the next hard part is differentiating, because we are one of 90 different vendors in that unified communication space. And Steven, you and I, as we're talking through this on a day to day basis, we hear this day in and day out, it's we talk to technology advisors. We're talking to customers. And it seems to be like there's two different different languages being spoken. One language is the customer saying, here's where I'm having problems. Here are the challenges I'm facing, and here's what I specifically need. Versus the vendor side tends to be. Here's what you actually need. And, oh, by the way, here we're going to just start slapping these brand new bells and whistles on a marketing slide deck, and they're going to solve all your business problems that you didn't even consider. And it ends up being, especially today, it's whatever the next AI, you know, shiny bell or whistle is. You go back to 2020 it was whatever shiny bell or whistle was during kind of the covid hysteria, right? So that's seems to be the progression of where we are today. But you know, in kind of your introduction, what are some of those main pain points you're seeing because you're out there, boots on the ground, actually having these conversations with customers as well as, you know, calls with me, with technology advisors. But just again, first introduce yourself, and then, I guess, right into the the meat and potatoes, what we're seeing boots on the ground.

Stephen Howard  2:26  
Yeah. No, appreciate that. I mean, I've been in the industry. I like to say at the turn of the century, it makes me sound like I've got a lot of experience. So, you know, I got in here, still AT and T was still a long distance company, started working at SBC global, here in the Midwest, in Indiana, and that was right at the time when we were moving from dial up internet into DSL. And so it was a very fast paced world. One of the things that was very common at that period of time was everyone had, you know, Centrex lines, or POTS lines, and the key was just to put them on as long as term of contract as you could. So as a sales rep, you could make the most money. The longer the term of contract, the more money that you made. And so that's what you know, you saw people do it. And what was happening is, through that, you get into that 2005 2006 time frame. When Voice over IP comes out from a consumer base, we start hearing the name Vonage, right? And magic Jack, you know. But in the business world, there are some true, you know, hosted, you know, opportunities in the voice over IP world, but the bandwidth just isn't there? You're still dealing with one and a half Meg, T ones. And so through my career, I kind of went from this slow internet to faster internet, and then trying to loop on top of it, you know, Internet Protocol, you know, how do we actually have IP business phone conversations? And it was bleeding edge as it could be. And it was some brutal days. But, you know, in those days, we sold through the channel. We went out and build a channel. We sold direct. But the biggest thing we did was we acquired customer bases, because you had people who had a dial up customer base then and out needed to move that customer base into, you know, higher speed internet. So we made some key acquisitions. And so, you know, through my career, I've had exposure to, you know, selling, direct, selling through a channel, growing through acquisition, and all at the same time of wealth, seeing these major product changes, moving from dial up to DSL, moving from copper to fiber, moving from, you know, voice being over copper, to voice being over IP. And you know, that's all within a 20 year period of time. Those are huge changes in an industry that you know, when you've got to go out and explain that to people who are reselling NEW. Product, you've got to go out and explain that to customers, and you're asking them to do everything completely different, and the only way you can do that is by being transparent and open and really cutting out all of the noise.

Brian Nichols  5:12  
Yeah, and I want to talk about the technology advisor specifically, because right now, this is where you and I are focusing a lot of our time, energy and efforts, in the channel Steven is like, we're, we're actually connecting with these technology advisors. And in some cases, we're just another, you know, tool in the tool belt. They're very familiar with unified communications. They're familiar with the more telephony side of the house. But for a large portion of technology advisors who are out there, we're actually coming to the conversations where maybe they were circuit slingers, right? They were laying out those, those five Meg fiber pipes when that was paying the bills back, back in the turn the turn of the century, right? But like those types of advisors, or the folks who are focused more on cybersecurity, now starting to have these conversations around CX, around customer experience, around unified communications, around contact center, right, and all that stuff, and how it feeds into that overarching customer journey. And it's interesting, because when we're talking to folks, you will get those questions that they seem almost common sense. But it is, it is, it is interesting to see how the customer experience piece it gets ignored in pursuit more of the order taker mentality, especially for folks who are unfamiliar with the space. So for us, it ends up helping more of an education side, saying these are the questions we're asking that will help pull out some of the actual pain points and problems that we see customers facing, versus, hey, how many phones do you need? Hey, how many licenses do you need? Right? And that, unfortunately, was the approach that a lot of the telco folks took. I mean, you're going back to the local and long distance days, right, where you did want to have the longest term contract, and that was where you do that, and then you'd negotiate on price, right? So you get a good rate, you get locked in, and then you're getting that, that residual every single month. So that was the mentality then, and unfortunately, that has carried forward for a lot of folks to today. So Steve and I say all that, we're obviously talking more on the sales side of the house here to start out, what's some of the the BS that you've seen on the sales side? Because I think that's where, unfortunately, some some of these, I'm not going to say uninformed, but just customers who they haven't really been at the forefront of this stuff. I mean, we do this every day. Your average customers looking at phones every seven years, right? So, like, what are some of the things we're seeing where sales teams are just they're promoting BS versus the stuff that, you know, we try to focus on more in our day to day when we're talking to customers or technology advisors.

Stephen Howard  7:39  
I think the number one comes down to price. I mean, if somebody's giving you hundreds of 1000s of dollars in equipment for you to become a customer, I mean, really, it doesn't take an MBA to realize that that's not a sustainable model, right, right? So spidey senses should go up and you say, Well, why is this organization giving me all of this free hardware, all of this free service.

Brian Nichols  8:02  
They like me. They like me. They really like me.

Stephen Howard  8:07  
If you really look at that, it's the world that we've come to to where, you know, there are some large national players that are in this they have to play this earnings game where they have a board to report to, and they have shareholders to report to, and the metric that they're going off of is, you know, hey, how many active customers do I have? It's not really about a profitability number. And so as a customer, I think the first place you have to look is, why am I getting such a great deal, and is this going to be a supportable product? Is it going to be a usable product, and is it fitting my needs? Because if you're sitting on hold and a product isn't working for you, and you're sitting on hold for hours at a time, how is that really affecting your business? And so sometimes it's getting behind dollars and cents and getting into that soft dollars about productivity, and that's probably the biggest thing that I see, is everybody being financially motivated. You know, in a year like this, you know, where it's a slug fest and you're watching every dollar. I mean, we started out the year in the United States with an organization called Doge, right? And everybody, and so, you know, it's when you're in that kind of world, sometimes you have to look past the second and third derivatives of what that price decision does to your organization.

Brian Nichols  9:39  
I I'm thinking, you know, when we're talking to some of these advisors too, right? This is an area differentiation where you can help your customer see that. And this is where, for a lot of advisors, you can start to not just differentiate, but you can really start to add value. Because when you have and. And this happens more often than not. You'll have advisor versus versus advisor in some instances, and if you're trying to differentiate from the other, advisor is helping your customers see things or help elicit some of the questions that they should be asking that the other advisor is ignoring. I had this chat with it, with another advisor that I've been working with out in the Utah, Midwest, more mountain area, and he was, we were talking about this where he's really, like, going after a specific market. Kind of you remember the old the Ronco set it and forget it mentality, right? He's trying to almost sell against that, like, did your old technology advisor set it and forget it. Are you still paying out the nose for your POTS lines because they're copper infrastructure? Are you still relying on that old PRI and paying up the wazoo? Like, that's the stuff where he's almost trying to unsell saying, Hey, I'm asking these questions. Why isn't your advisor asking these questions, and I don't know Stephen, like, that's been some of the BS I've seen is we almost have to unsell, not just what the vendors are promoting, but sometimes the other things that the other advisors aren't doing, or I'm not saying, doing it maliciously, but like they're just not taking that next step to ask the next Question, or to say, divulge, because that it's like they knew. But like, some folks just don't take the extra effort to really understand the why behind things like, okay, to your point, why am I getting a quote that's so low, right? Ask your advisor that question. Oh, your advisor should be asking that question on your behalf, Mr. Customer, right? Like, if you're competing with another advisor and they're saying, well, listen, I got this other quote from another advisor, and it's like, five bucks lower per seat. I would say, Okay, why did you ask him how he did that? Like, what was the, what was the behind the scenes to get that? Is it a longer term contract? Did you know that? Like, are there, are there things that you're not aware of? And this is the stuff where, as an advisor, you can really, you can really shine, because now you're helping almost you're helping your customer avoid unintentional pitfalls that they can entirely avoid just by taking that next step and asking deeper questions. Yeah.

Stephen Howard  12:13  
I mean, I think we see it in other industries, right? This is not just a telco industry problem. If you step into the financial world, you have the whole idea of passive and active, you know, fund managers, right? You step into the insurance world, and you have your insurance agents who are going to collect that residual, and they're never going to call you and ask you if you need to update your term

Speaker 1  12:34  
policies, right? And so it's, that's, that's

Stephen Howard  12:38  
a people problem. So you really have to figure out is what kind of advisor you want to be working with. Do you want an advisor that is really thinking about you as they're traveling and going to their quarterly, you know, events and learning about new products and learning about new things in their look back, say, You know what I'm thinking about ABC company right now, and this would be a good fit for them, because I know how their industry I know how their business works. I know that call recording would be important. I know that call reporting would be important. I know that these analytics would be important. And they're not coming back to you saying, Hey, I got the best price, but they're coming back saying, Hey, I saw a solution that made me think about you. You know, if that, if you're maybe you are a passive customer, and you really don't need to make changes. But sometimes you aren't making changes because you don't know there's changes to be made, right? Or you're afraid of what those changes are going to do to your to your business, and that you should, that you should dive into that, you know, I look at we have a couple of government entities, we do a lot in that the government space, you know, county level and down, and you work with the organization, a couple of years ago that they would not change their auto attendance to notify their citizens. They would that the courthouse was going to be closed around holidays, because it would cost them about $700 to do that,

Brian Nichols  14:06  
to change an auto attendant,

Stephen Howard  14:08  
to change an auto attendant, because they were they had POTS lines, they had a premise based phone system that required a tech to be dispatched in that by the time you got through that trip call, you Know the minimums to have that on site tech come you know, it was about 350 bucks on, you know, the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, and 350 bucks on the Monday after. And so their choice was, we'll just let we'll just leave it. Hopefully our citizens know, and that's not acceptable, right? I mean that we're dealing with another, another organization who has, you know, a dedicated IT team, one of the people's IT teams dedicated to managing the phone system, and they're handling, you know, 10 to 12, you know, service tickets a day. You know, if you can take that all. Off of that individual's plate, and put that into an organization, the amount of productivity that you are freeing up, you know, inside of that, it team, it's really you can't put a price on that, and you know it, you have to make sure the organization you're going to can support that kind of, you know, level, and that they're going to be responsive. Because the reason that a lot of these individuals have been put into these teams is because they got used to phone companies not responding, and so they, and I'm telling you that there's organizations out there that can't support the heck out of you, you know. And so if you've got to find them, and then you got to figure out, Okay, I've went to at least dollar pricing. I've actually brought it in house, whatever it is. And maybe that's not the best solution today, and you should reevaluate, is it worth paying a little bit more money to get some time back from my employees? Yeah.

Brian Nichols  15:57  
And on the other side, too, thinking about the customer, thinking about the customer, of the customer, right? Whether it's the the you know, John Q citizen who's calling in, trying to reach out to the judicial system right that day, or it's Susie trying to return her her slippers right to the whatever retail store it may be like as a customer, I want to know that I'm able to engage and interact with you as a brand, as a company, as a an entity, as a government, whatever, whenever, really I need to right, and this is the the era of instant gratification coupled with instant communication. Is that if I see an issue, I want to be able to go on Facebook and message somebody, or I want to be able to go on to call the organization and even just like, get a voicemail transcription that can be sent to somebody or just something. I want to be able to reach out and know that somebody's on whatever issue it is that I have, or if I have a question, I can get it resolved. And to not be able to meet your customer where they're at as a as a consumer again, or whatever is it, not consumer rather, but as a provider or a supplier or whatever it may be, that right there, I think, is putting you competitively at a disadvantage compared to your competition. Because the reality is, like, if your customer can't get the help they need. They're going to go on to Google. They're going to find the next best customer. They're going to go right next whatever's next in line, and they're going to reach out to that person, and if that person answers great, or if they have a better solution in place that can help whatever requests they have get answered, they're going to go that route. That's just the natural flow of things. I tell the story here. You know, I had a plumbing issue. I reached out to this one organization. I called I got their their like voicemail bot thing. It didn't work. I got frustrated. I hung up. I literally went to Google. I looked at the next best company that's on the list. I called them. They answered, live answer. They were at my house, literally the next morning, like that, right there. That was the difference in me going with one vendor versus another for plumbing, and it was based on my ability to communicate, or, in this case, not get any feedback or communication from one company, versus getting a live answer from somebody else. And that's the customer experience. That's the customer journey. Yeah.

Stephen Howard  18:12  
I mean, that's an age old problem, right in the phone book. That's how we ended up with AAA exterminating, right? Because they like if I can be a, then I that I know that I'm going to be the next call if the first person doesn't answer. So I got that extra a so that I can, you know, make sure that I'm the first one in the phone, you know. So that is, you know, an issue we need to be thinking about it from the customer point of view. What is it like when the customer calls into an organization? How many prompts do we want them to experience? How much work do we want to have them put in before they actually are able to get what they called us for, you know, and there is a threshold that is okay and you know, but there's, there's a threshold that it's going to be detrimental to retaining customers, or, you know, getting new customers, and especially in a world where we're now into, you know, texting and people being able to very quickly go on and, you know, find an answer. It's a mix of, you know, making sure you have enough available information on your website so that customers can self serve, as well as quickly get a hold of somebody whenever they feel like, All right, I've got enough information now I want to talk to somebody and

Brian Nichols  19:41  
dig deeper. One thing I want to focus on, Steven, and this is an area of your expertise, right? Is the area of mergers and acquisitions, and this is both from a UCAS telco company perspective, but also the way it impacts their customers, and how companies can help focus on that to avoid any CX disruptions. So I know, just from our, you know, working together and, you know, chatting and stuff, you've done a lot in this merger, in acquisition space, first again, from the company standpoint. So let's kind of start there. If you're in the, you know, the UCAS space, or the ccaas space or whatever, you know the CX space. We know it. Everybody is always talking to everybody else. And, you know, you see organizations gobbled up under different organizations for boots on the ground, like, you know, sales folks or engineers or support folks, that can get daunting, because it's like, Oh, my God, my entire customer base that I have, I've been, I've been servicing for, you know, time period here. And you know, we've been providing X service, and at this quality service for, you know, this number of years now, I'm being forced into a brand new system, brand new, KPIs, brand new, you know, brand new, brand new, actual systems I have to learn on top of the behind the scenes stuff, the integrations, the thing, things being put together. So first, from the organizational standpoint, what are some of the the red flags that you like to identify first, so we can try to avoid them. And what does, I guess, a good merger and acquisition actually look like?

Stephen Howard  21:11  
Yeah, so it's a, it's a complicated question that really has some very, you know, bare, you know, if you break it down to just the bare bones of what it is, you know, it really comes down to, what are the tools that we need, what tools are in common between the organizations and then the but the biggest piece comes down to communication. How are we going to communicate to our internal stakeholders, and how are we going to communicate to our customers, the external stakeholders? And that is of both organizations, right? Because customers of let's say the acquiring company, also are like, hey, this company is growing. How is it going to affect what they're already doing? For me now they're focused on this new company that they just bought. They're just dealing with all of these new employees. They're dealing with all of, you know, like, are they now going to take focus off of me? So, you know, I think the first thing comes down to really clear communication. And you know, once you've once you've buttoned up, you know, what that plan is? You know, typically people aren't acquiring another organization. You know, that's that's unrelated, right? There's typically very similar, you know, synergies there that's causing that to happen. I've been a part of, you know, probably close to 25 mergers and acquisitions. In my call it 20. It's a little less than 25 year career. And so I can't think of a time where I haven't been a part, even if we're not in an active acquisition, that I haven't been a part of an active acquisition conversation, where there's some sort of due diligence or something happening, and, you know, there's all sorts of reasons that an organization will choose to be acquired. Sometimes it's not because they want to be right. Sometimes there's life situations that just make that happen. You have, you know, different partnership models that cause it to happen. There's life, you know, I had acquisitions where people got behind the taxes and they needed to bail because of the taxes and they didn't want to fight that fight anymore. I've had people do it because of a death that people need to sell because of divorce, you know, so sometimes it's really life, you know, those are small businesses, but the majority of what we deal with are typically small businesses that are owned by two or three people, even if you're up to 1000 2000 individuals. I mean, we still see this, you know, in the very large organization, if you get into fortune 5000 you know, down to Fortune 500 you still deal with, you know, CEOs being put out because of their life choices. You know, look at Coldplay. Coldplay ruined a small business this year because of a kiss camp, right, you know. And so those sorts of things can start to prompt, you know, an acquisition in a negative light. So there's all, all sorts of reasons that an acquisition may acquire, whether it's negative by that acquiring company or positive because of something that is made them, you know, say, Hey, I'm worth buying, right? So it really comes down to to those motivations. But I think the key ends up becoming, how are we communicating what our plan is and why we acquired this company to the to the amount that you can right? I mean, you don't want to bring people into an organization in area their dirty laundry, right? So there, there is a level of, you know. No respect that you give to those individuals in those circumstances, and that does stay private, but you know, you do have to, you know, sometimes admit, hey, look, this was a dirty situation, and we're coming in to clean it up. And I'm sorry, Mr. Customer, that the last 10 years or the last 18 months has been very difficult on you. We understand it further than you do, and here's why we're different, and what we're going to do about it, you know. And I'm sorry, mister, you know, employee, that you've been mistreated and underpaid and not given the tools that you need. There was some financial restraints. Those are now gone. Here's a 10% bump to your pay that you should have got three years ago, you know, I mean, it's like, it's those sorts of things that you know you have to, you know, take into effect. But it really comes down to really transparent communication and

Brian Nichols  25:55  
eliminates internal FUD, by the way, right? Because if you have fear, uncertainty and doubt from the organizations that are being acquired or merged together. Like, and I've seen, I've seen this before. I've worked with organizations who are going through mergers and acquisitions and such. And you know, from an employee standpoint, like, if you're the company who's acquiring another organization and you bring those folks in, the initial conversations you almost always will hear is like, Well, don't know how much longer I got left here from folks. And unfortunately, the reality is that you do see more often than not, some folks get get you get removed, whether that's just through, you know, they start reducing headcount, or they start consolidating departments, or what have you like, or buyouts like, things will happen. But I know, I've been with one org where they they brought in a couple of organizations together in like a six month period or so, and you just didn't dot all the right i's and cross the right T's, and found out that there were some issues where they ended up like, they fired, they laid off a bunch of folks that had been brought in, and really the only part of the merger acquisition that remained was the technology that was behind the scenes for that merger and acquisition. So like that kind of stuff too. I think there's a lot of folks who they from the employee side. They're, they're kind of nervous, and that will inevitably impact the way that they go to work, right? If you are, if you're scared, if you're nervous, if you have apprehensions about, you know, your your status at your organization because of things that are beyond your control, yeah, that leads to people like, you know, always kind of looking over their shoulder, and that's not conducive to a healthy environment. And that's something, I think, you know to your point, transparency, communication, being as as just authentic and upfront as you can be. I think that is, it's so crucial yet, Steven, it's so it's so unappreciated in our industry, or just in industry in general, right? Like, is it people just don't want to have uncomfortable conversations, or what?

Stephen Howard  27:49  
Yeah, and it comes to the the employee side, right? I mean, there is an employee responsibility that comes along with that as well. If you're I'm upset in these things where, you know, I've been on, you know, both sides. And when we grew one organization and sold it to a bell operating company, you know, in 2008 time frame, and, you know, I was, you know, that was the plan, let's grow and sell. And when they came in and bought, you know, there were people that were, you know, inside of our organization that was like, Well, I don't think they're doing this right. And it's like, you need to just, you know, sit back and shut up, because it's their business. Now, it's not our business, you know. And you know, there's times learning as an employee that sometimes there's a correct political way to say, Hey, I'm concerned about the way this is going and learning that, you know, in one on ones, in closed doors at lunch, articulating that versus, you know, raising your hand in the middle of a meeting and airing that dirty laundry as an employee, you know it. You know, it's like sometimes the people coming in, they don't have the history that you have with these individuals. So, yeah, you have a critical piece of information as an employee to where you can say, hey, let me give you some history of this situation, then they help you understand and that is very much appreciated. And so, you know, I think sometimes you know, individuals that you know have made an investment in an organization by acquiring them, they obviously saw something in that organization that they thought they could do differently to to get some sort of return on their investment right. So they're coming in with that sort of mindset, like, I need to get my return as fast as possible, and that means I gotta work as fast as I can to get that but they're also smart individuals, typically, right? So if you can give them a piece of information that they do not have, you can alter the plan that they've put in place, and. You just have to make yourself valuable to to, you know, to that managing person that's managing that that acquisition plan and strategy, and so as an employee, don't underestimate what you can bring and give, if you are on the acquiring end to that new or new operating company, because you have information that they do not have, and you are valuable to them, and they do appreciate you, but you've got to do it the right way.

Brian Nichols  30:27  
Yeah, value, value. I I would teach my sales dev teams back when I would lead outbound and go to market teams like the importance of the way you differentiate in your outbound was was not in in what you said, but what you help the customer see, or what you help them hear for the first time, really, right? Like we talked about, once you see something, you can't unsee it, or once you hear something, you can't unhear it. And it was positioning things in a way that would kind of elicit the hmm, tell me more. Like I want to, I want to hear a little bit more of what you've done here. And more often than not, it was, it was genuinely leading with some type of solution to a problem. You know, more often than not, your specific IP faces. And I just had Bob fibs on the show here a little bit ago, and we were talking about the importance of, like, finding your niche, right? And this is again going more towards, like, an outbound sales dev motion. He was more in a retail environment. But like, how do you figure out who your specific customer is? But then in that, how do you leave with value? How do you help them see something that they didn't see before that they are going to say, Oh, I heard this from Steven. And now I'm looking at Steven as a curator of value. And I will remember that even if today isn't a buying decision, tomorrow might be. And I'm going to remember that you were leading with value, not with Hey, take this meeting. Hey, buy this thing, hey, hop in this webinar like you were just saying, hey, is this worth a chat? Is this something that is in your world? And going back to the merger and acquisition world, you're right. Like, the same thing is true when you're going through those, those transitions. Because, and I mean, we just saw this, I joined you guys back in May, going from my old organization. Like, I didn't come in guns a blazing. I want to learn first. Like, you don't just go in start trying to, like, change the world. You want to first understand how the world was made. I think isn't this is a political thing. It's a Chesterton Chesterton's fence right where you're walking in a field and all sudden you come across the fence. Not mean we're not getting political here. This is just, this is what the Chesterton fence is. Somebody who's more politically on the conservative side, would say, oh, there's a fence here, probably here for a reason. And somebody who's more politically left leaning would say, well, that fence is in the way. Let's go past it. Let's go over it, right? So that, and there might be a cliff on the other side of the fence, right? So that's, that's the idea of jesterson's fence. But, um, anyway, Steven, I also want to quickly go to the the customer. Of the customers like their experience. Because when we're talking about CX, it's one thing when a merger and acquisition acquisition happens and how it impacts internal teams, but then when you go to their customers, right? There's a lot of there's a lot of confusion. I've seen this when I've had organizations that I've worked with in the past. You know, whether that's like a streaming service or whatever, where you'll see a merger happen and you're like, oh no, oh no. Why don't do this? No, abort, abort. Because you're like, I don't want to lose the positive experience I've had. So there's a lot of fear and uncertainty and doubt as a customer now, even though I've already bought right now, I might be reconsidering things. So when we're when we're going through these mergers and acquisitions. What's the best way in your experience to help make sure that the customers, customers continue to have, as I call it, the warm and fuzzies, right? We don't want them to start to say, Oh, maybe I should start looking at options. So what have you seen be successful in that, in that arena? Yeah.

Stephen Howard  33:59  
I mean, I think the key there is, you know, there, there's easy things that you can do specifically in our organization, right? And the products that we deal with, with unified communications, you know, Contact Center as a service, those sorts of things to where you can start to use your auto attendance, your music on hold, you can start to use those sorts of products to start that communication piece, right? Yes. Hey, thank you for joining. We appreciate your business. Hey, have you heard about what's going new? And really what you want to use that messaging for is now to drive them to the places where they can get the information that's going to give them. That woman fuzzy. Is that a website that actually shares it? Is it a press release? Is there a PowerPoint deck out there somewhere that actually lays out here's what our five year plan is for this acquisition. Or do you want to push them to. Account manager, you know what? What is, who? Where is the the truth sitting so that they don't have their own truth, right? And you can, very simply start to communicate that inside of the product. And I think you know either

Brian Nichols  35:16  
way, Steven, how may interrupt, but like what you just did there is, candidly, one of the main reasons I joined our organization back in May, because it's not the bell or whistle, right? Like you were talking about using the tools to help the customer experience. And I would see this so many times, like folks in the CCAs space would just kind of like, poo poo UCAS as like this race to the bottom, like, Here you go. Here's your pricing war. And it's like, no, no, no, no. There is so much value behind these things that we've just kind of poo pooed as toothpaste and soap, to quote my old sales mentor, Lou saruchi, right? Like they were all commoditized. But it was because we just, in our brains, commoditized them. They turned into the thing on the list. Just check, check, check, but no, you're you're showing this is how you use these tools for CX? I love that.

Stephen Howard  36:04  
Yeah, it's huge. It is, it is overlooked. I mean, you if you want to. I mean, just take brand image if you have a brand image that you want. I used to work with a guy who, every morning would get up and record, hey, it's Monday. I'm going to be out of the office between eight and 10. I've got a meeting at 11. I'm going to grab the lunch. I'll be back at noon. If you've reached this message, I'll call you when I return. You know, like every morning. Hey, it's Tuesday. Tuesday the 12th. You know, like, dude, what in the world are you doing? Right? But those are sorts of things that became part of his personal brand that you knew, hey, I'm up, I'm working, I'm doing something. This is what you when you can expect to hear back from me. But as an organization like there should not be a different message being sent out from all of your employees. Right? We're big about this at level 365 we we like our colors to all be the same. We like our you know, our hallways are painted the same colors as our office. You know, like we take it to the the extreme we just went through and we did all of our welcome messages, all of our comfort messages, and we wanted to make sure that the same voice was through throughout that entire piece. We don't take it to the level that we use the same voice on everybody's individual personal voicemails, but you can do that, and those are things that sometimes are overlooked. But whenever, if you're trying to put out a unified messaging, you know, a key thing is, if you have an organization that you're trying to fold in, one just getting a familiar voice in both of those messaging systems start to try to pull that together. It's like, okay, I'm calling a similar place. I'm calling a place that's going to be the same, you know, and not getting sentimental, sometimes it's very difficult. I worked with an organization one time who they didn't want to change their auto attendant recording because it was recorded by a person that passed away five years ago. And as sad as that is, as heartbreaking as it is, it was detrimental to their brand, because it was not the greatest, you know, it wasn't the greatest thing for their bit the business. And that's nobody wants to have those conversations and tell somebody you need to take your wife off of the auto attendant. But that was really what needed to happen in their business, you know. And so it's you can't overlook. You know, I'm reading a book right now called chop wood and carry water, and it's about the how to fall in love with the process of becoming great. And so often we overlook, you know, the football analogy, the blocking and tackling, right? But it's the simple things, and if you just walk through it typically starts that customer experience starts with, what are they going to hear? What's the first thing they hear? Is it going to be a ring in their ear? Is it going to be music on hold, or is it going to be a person greeting them? And that's the impression that they get. And then, you know, how you communicate all the way through that process builds the lasting impression. And, you know, I think that's what you have to look at. You have to work backwards and put yourself in the customer's shoes. Sometimes you have to pick up the phone and call and see how it feels on the other side, versus just looking at it as a diagram, you know, the flow chart, and say, Oh, this, this looks good. You know.

Brian Nichols  39:52  
Yeah, no, I, I used to have my old one of my old sales mentors, Victor, Antonio. He talks about finding the why. In why people buy, and the idea behind, really, I mean, you're right, putting yourself in their shoes, empathy, meeting them where they're at, like, really understanding, not just like what I'm going to buy, but the why, the context, the questions I might be asking, the objections I might have, right, and just to be able to proactively address those and to more or less make your sales process again, meet them where they're at, and kind of flow through a natural progression of here's your awareness. Now we're going to go through the discovery process. Let's go through the evaluation process. Now we're in the negotiation and hey, is this going to work? Yes, no, maybe. So let's figure that piece out. But I know as a salesperson that I'm effectively checking the right boxes as I'm going through these processes to make sure that it's not my process that I'm holding us to. It's how you as a customer are more often than not, like to buy. And the best way to figure that out is to look at how you've sold, or rather, how your old customers have bought in the past and to talk to them, right? This is the other part I always I'm just like, Come on, just, just do the simple part, have conversations with your customers. And I don't know if it's like, like, business owners are afraid to talk to their customers. I had one guy I used to work with. He had like, 300 customers, and I was like, Well, why don't you talk about adding he was adding a new penetration testing service to his stack. I was like, why don't you just, like, do like, a QBR outbound campaign, more or less, and be like, Hey, we're adding this new service. You are an organization that probably already does this, like, here, do it through us. And he was terrified. He didn't want to talk to his customer. And he outright told me, he goes, I'm afraid I'm gonna talk to them and they're gonna say no, and here's something that's wrong. I've been meaning to reach out to you and just like that fear of not talking to the person who's already paying you money, I was like, my man, like you gotta, you gotta bite that bullet and just have that conversation. Because number one, I mean, you, you can probably learn something and try to do something better, but number two, you might, you still might get the chance to have that extra little added value. Add that extra. Would you like fries with that moment? So Steven, I know we're getting hard pressed for time here, so let's do here, so let's do this. I'm gonna wrap this episode up in a nice, neat bow. We're looking at CX with unifying communications. We talked about mergers and acquisitions, but overarching, there is a still a lot of BS in the industry. We finish every single episode by always asking our guests, you know, Hey, what is the biggest thing that has been BS that you've seen in the industry. It could be the past calendar year. It could be the past quarter. I mean, you and I, we've been over a few trade shows over the past few months. So Stephen Howard, what is the biggest piece of BS that you've been seeing here in 2025 as we wrap

Speaker 1  42:38  
up the year it's been it's the biggest piece of

Stephen Howard  42:40  
BS that I have seen in our industry for the longest period of time, and that is that whenever customer gets a quote from provider, and then they get their first bill, they don't match, and it's total BS that you are, you know, charged 25 to 35% more than what you were quoted and expected to and now you're locked into a long term agreement and you have no repercussion. It angers me, even just saying that it's so Derby and it's inappropriate. I don't like it. I hate it. That's one of the things that made me come to level 365, right? Because we don't do month month contract, or we only do month to month contracts, and our our quotes are exactly what we bill. So we're trying to change the world here. You know, one customer at a time, one invoice at a time, but that's, to me, the biggest, the biggest thing out there drives me.

Brian Nichols  43:44  
I love that you brought that up, because almost every guest has been like, ai, ai, ai, replacing humans, AI. That's always been the biggest piece of BS. But you're, you're calling out. And I love this. It's not the buzzword. It's not the shiny bell or feature. In this specific case, it is something that is just how it's done. It's always been done this way, right? Like that is the exact answer that we always get. And I mean, Stephen, I'll just be behind the curtain for the audience. We just got off an engineering call with one of the largest TSD distributors in the country, and this was literally yesterday, and as we were going through that call, we brought up the fact that our quotes are within basically, like 1% accuracy, because the only variable that really we can't plan for is usage, right? But the way we built out our our quote, or our quotes and our tax model, was that we can be confident that the price we give in a quote is what the customer will actually be invoiced. And you can just see, like, the, wait, what, really? Huh, like, and I love that you say, we're trying to change the world one customer at a time, like, I'm you're talking about the book you're reading. I'm right now rereading the biography of Steve Jobs. And I just, I forget how, how much of the Steve Jobs story, like, it was more or less. That we're going to change the world by just doing things in a different way. That's not that's separate from Steve Jobs, the person which I am remembering now as I'm rereading the book that wasn't necessarily the nicest of guys, but different story for a different day. But yeah, it's changing the way that you you interact with a specific type of thought process, like, computers were just these basic zeros and ones, and Steve Jobs said, No, we can make this a personal computer for somebody at home. And then the advent of, like, Pixar and stuff, it's like the stories of how it was it was trying to change the way that the technology not just existed, but how it was being applied. And that's what we're doing, right? Like, I mean, here, this just turned into a commercial for level 365, but, like, that's why I'm so excited about what we're doing in the channel right now, because we are seeing such a like, oh my gosh, you guys are doing things differently, and we really value that, not from the shiny bell or whistle, but just because we're doing things the right way. All right, I'll get off my soapbox, Steven, bring us home. Where Can folks go ahead reach out to you? I know you're over on linkedins, but also folks want to learn more about level 365 where can they go ahead and do so?

Stephen Howard  46:10  
Yeah, our website, level 360 five.com we have our LinkedIn as well. And then you could always drop me an email. First initial, last name, best Howard at level 360, five.com.

Brian Nichols  46:25  
There you go. All right, folks, well, I hope you enjoyed today's episode of CX without the BS. I know I absolutely did, because I got to hang out with one of my co workers, and we had a good chat today. So folks, if you did enjoy today's conversation, please go ahead and give it a share. Both Steven and I are over on LinkedIn, so if you want to go ahead and tag us, you can find me, Brian Nichols. Just search Brian Nichols. And again, Stephen Howard will include the links there in the show notes. And if you want to learn more about level 365 if you're a technology advisor and you want to add level 365 to your portfolio, or hey, if you're a customer and you want to learn more about level 365 and how it can help impact your business and your business's customer experience. Go ahead and reach out to Steven at s Howard at level 360, five.com or yours truly. B Nichols at level 360, five.com, but I think we're gonna go ahead and say goodbye. So with that being said, Brian Nichols, signing off here on CX without the BS, we'll see you next time you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai