1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:04,840 Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Noob Show, a podcast about humanizing technology. I'm 2 00:00:04,840 --> 00:00:09,520 your host, Matt Gardner. In this episode, we chat with Steve O'Hara, the VP of Engineering 3 00:00:09,520 --> 00:00:15,360 at 8x8. We talk about everything from uptime and software to helicopters and the world's 4 00:00:15,360 --> 00:00:22,440 most important algorithm. Stay tuned to find out what that is. 5 00:00:22,440 --> 00:00:33,440 It's not like rated PG or anything. Anyway, you're nervous. Always nervous. Cheers. Cheers. 6 00:00:33,440 --> 00:00:40,560 The viewers at home. These are... It's the fuel we run on. 7 00:00:40,560 --> 00:00:46,840 All right, so I'm here. I'm joined here with Steve O'Hara. Steve is phone all the way in 8 00:00:46,840 --> 00:00:51,440 from London just for this podcast. Thank you for coming here, Steve. We're here at the 9 00:00:51,440 --> 00:00:57,400 8x8 offices. As you can see the logo back there. Thanks for coming. Yeah, no problem 10 00:00:57,400 --> 00:01:04,760 at all. In fact, I managed to fit in a load of other meetings. Oh, that's good. Just as 11 00:01:04,760 --> 00:01:09,160 a sign. Yeah. I'm leaving the podcast, but... Yeah, yeah. I managed to fit in with speaking 12 00:01:09,160 --> 00:01:15,040 to my boss, board. Okay, that's good. Yeah, multiple birds one stone here. That's good. 13 00:01:15,040 --> 00:01:19,320 Okay, we've got good levels. Everything seems to be good. All right, Steve, I'm going to 14 00:01:19,320 --> 00:01:24,880 dive right into it. So for people who don't know, Steve is VP of engineering at 8x8. 15 00:01:24,880 --> 00:01:30,080 Safe to say your focus is primarily contact center. It is. Okay. Forget contact center 16 00:01:30,080 --> 00:01:38,600 for a second. What was your first job? Well, first professional job. People will be surprised 17 00:01:38,600 --> 00:01:41,840 really when they look at me and they think, well, he's a young looking guy. Hey, it can't 18 00:01:41,840 --> 00:01:48,920 possibly be that old. But I graduated in 1986 with a degree in electrical and electronic 19 00:01:49,000 --> 00:01:53,560 engineering. Right. So not software at all. In fact, actually, I had a knowledge, great 20 00:01:53,560 --> 00:01:59,400 love affair of software. I worked for a company in the graduate training scheme called Hawkes 21 00:01:59,400 --> 00:02:02,960 Sidley Dynamics Engineering, which is part of the whole Hawkes Sidley Group, about 35,000 22 00:02:02,960 --> 00:02:12,400 people. They made everything from, well, in the previous life, aeroplanes, warships, mining 23 00:02:12,400 --> 00:02:15,280 equipment, all kinds of interesting, right across the whole group. And the bit that I 24 00:02:15,320 --> 00:02:23,040 worked in is basically London. And we specialized in critical control systems, things like mining 25 00:02:23,040 --> 00:02:28,760 control systems by, you know, controls of cold washers and cold, cold crushes and conveyors 26 00:02:28,760 --> 00:02:35,760 and that kind of underground helicopter engine control systems. So it's important. Yeah, the 27 00:02:35,760 --> 00:02:41,200 black box is that basically control the engines on a helicopter. Right. That's why when people 28 00:02:41,200 --> 00:02:47,080 talk to me about uptime, I have a very clear vision of what uptime looks like. Yeah, no pun intended 29 00:02:47,080 --> 00:02:51,400 with the helicopter. Well, you know, if you, we took, we took a lot about five nines, you know, 30 00:02:51,440 --> 00:02:58,960 99.999% uptime. If a helicopter pilot were to sort of shout out to you when you're in a 31 00:02:58,960 --> 00:03:03,440 helicopter and say, don't worry, we've got five nines on this, you know, you're unlikely to get 32 00:03:03,440 --> 00:03:09,040 into the most dangerous form of transport ever invented. Yeah. But the bit I worked on was 33 00:03:09,080 --> 00:03:15,720 marine side. And they were controls for everything on a ship to do with anything like engines, 34 00:03:15,760 --> 00:03:21,680 clutches, control systems, okay, the compressors that anything, right, I mean, literally 35 00:03:21,680 --> 00:03:26,720 anything, you know, one of the stories I tell people is one of the first bits of software I got 36 00:03:26,720 --> 00:03:33,200 to write after I'd moved through electronics in the place was an algorithm to help control the 37 00:03:33,200 --> 00:03:37,320 compressors that blow air and draw water through the toilets. 38 00:03:37,600 --> 00:03:39,600 Okay. So also very important. 39 00:03:39,800 --> 00:03:43,920 Well, yeah. And the funny thing is, because I was a thrust in young Turk, and I thought, you 40 00:03:43,920 --> 00:03:48,920 know, this is beneath my skills. And I had been told, you know, my skills were particularly 41 00:03:50,000 --> 00:03:59,120 mediocre. In fact, obviously, very old fashioned in many respects, and very harshly treat the new 42 00:03:59,160 --> 00:04:04,160 engineers. And I was told in no uncertain terms that, you know, the best thing to do for my first 43 00:04:04,160 --> 00:04:10,640 year or first year is try not to kill anybody, but then I wrote or made. But the, I remember 44 00:04:10,640 --> 00:04:16,640 complaining or sort of gently sort of saying to one of the senior engineers, all I've got is this 45 00:04:16,640 --> 00:04:23,120 algorithm to work out how to control the toilets. And he took me aside, and he said, you don't 46 00:04:23,120 --> 00:04:27,800 understand. And the funny thing is, I'll be doing it right now. He said, you are working on the most 47 00:04:27,840 --> 00:04:34,520 fabulous thing. It's tiny. It's, you know, thing. He said, no, but if it goes wrong, the shit really 48 00:04:34,520 --> 00:04:38,800 will hit the fan. And you'll be telling the story in 30 years on. And here I am. 49 00:04:38,800 --> 00:04:45,880 Yeah, on a podcast. No, no doubt. Check that out. I just, I'm kind of curious. How do you test 50 00:04:45,880 --> 00:04:52,040 that sort of system? Oh, wow. When you took, when you are a supplier to the DoD or in our case, 51 00:04:52,040 --> 00:05:00,360 CMOD testing is, well, let me give you an example. If you're working on a flight control system or 52 00:05:00,360 --> 00:05:04,680 an engine control system for flight, right? So my colleagues who worked on that side of the aisle, 53 00:05:06,200 --> 00:05:11,320 most of that code was written in assembler stroke C. Now C wasn't a recognized safe language 54 00:05:11,320 --> 00:05:16,600 in those days, because you can subvert it, you can cast the, you know, muck around with memory. 55 00:05:16,840 --> 00:05:25,880 So it meant that the 32 kilobytes of code, right, took six years of testing. They attempted to test 56 00:05:25,880 --> 00:05:32,040 every single branch that you that the control system could take through the code. Six years of 57 00:05:32,040 --> 00:05:39,080 flight flight trials. So you are testing statically, you're testing dynamically, you're testing on 58 00:05:40,040 --> 00:05:46,360 rigs. And the same for marine. Now we didn't have quite the same scrutiny, but similar. 59 00:05:47,080 --> 00:05:52,920 You know, if you're on a ship, and you're going through a nuclear cloud, you need to wash the 60 00:05:52,920 --> 00:05:57,400 ship down. Right. You can't be mucking around with that stuff, you know, it's life and death. 61 00:05:57,400 --> 00:06:05,160 Right. So the testing involved in that is extensive, every single possible scenario. 62 00:06:06,120 --> 00:06:10,920 And this is pre, this predates, you know, auto testing and inline testing inside the 63 00:06:10,920 --> 00:06:16,520 code itself. Right. This is manual testing, right, massive, great test rigs of just buttons and lights 64 00:06:16,520 --> 00:06:22,760 and dials to turn things up and down. And page off the page on the page, you know, the test 65 00:06:22,760 --> 00:06:29,160 procedures for a ship control system would be this high from the ground, from the ground, 66 00:06:29,240 --> 00:06:34,280 that's about four feet of a page. Yeah. And signatures, you know, many, many 67 00:06:34,280 --> 00:06:38,360 signatures, manual signatures on everything to make sure that it was covered. Wow. So yeah, 68 00:06:38,360 --> 00:06:47,560 I mean, it's, I mean, that system was controlled was a fiber connected controls of machinery in 69 00:06:47,560 --> 00:06:57,160 place, scarter system, supervisory control and data acquisition systems. 120 kilobytes of code 70 00:06:58,120 --> 00:07:03,000 120 kilobytes code. And the most important job was obviously making sure the shit didn't hit the 71 00:07:03,000 --> 00:07:08,680 fan. Right. Make sure the bogs flushed. Yeah. And don't make a seal with your, with your bum 72 00:07:08,680 --> 00:07:14,600 around the bog. Because this is the reason why it's like, well, toilets and aircraft and toilets 73 00:07:14,600 --> 00:07:19,000 on on ships have a similar, they're scary, but they have a similar sort of thing. They work on 74 00:07:19,000 --> 00:07:22,440 the Venturi effect. They're passing in water underneath and it's sucking this stuff out. 75 00:07:22,440 --> 00:07:26,280 Yeah. It's not flushing it. Yeah. The water that is to cleanse the bowl really is not to 76 00:07:26,280 --> 00:07:33,480 flush it away. It's it sucked. Yeah. Now we used to joke. It's quiet and it's quite a 77 00:07:34,520 --> 00:07:40,200 big sucking force. Okay. Never be, not that it would be, never be tempted to lift the lid up 78 00:07:40,200 --> 00:07:46,040 and sit on the actual, and if you make a perfect seal with that, yeah, you might live to regret 79 00:07:46,040 --> 00:07:53,400 that. I don't even want to know. Okay. All right, changing subjects. So using what you've known then, 80 00:07:53,400 --> 00:07:57,560 I guess, applying that to where you are now, what does the VP of engineering actually do? 81 00:07:58,440 --> 00:08:05,400 What do you do? Well, I'm really where the buck stops for R&D for contact center, 82 00:08:05,400 --> 00:08:12,200 eight by eight. I'm a developer. I still develop code. There's about 160 people, 83 00:08:12,760 --> 00:08:19,560 engineers on contact center, developers front end and back end, but also support engineers, 84 00:08:20,520 --> 00:08:27,400 QE especially. They're the people in my orbit, not so much support, but the, the manufacturing 85 00:08:27,400 --> 00:08:32,040 of the actual code itself, the application. And my job is really to feed and water everybody, 86 00:08:32,040 --> 00:08:36,840 make sure everyone's happy, make sure we're making the right strategic decisions. You know, 87 00:08:36,840 --> 00:08:40,360 every day we're making tactical decisions about how to solve this problem or that problem, 88 00:08:40,920 --> 00:08:46,200 how we feed products with the features and functionality they want. But how do we write 89 00:08:46,200 --> 00:08:51,720 the code? Right. First thing I did when I got away by eight, five years ago, was to write the 90 00:08:51,720 --> 00:08:58,200 coding standards for the Java applications. You know, we have a mishmash of lots of different 91 00:08:58,200 --> 00:09:04,200 languages and paradigms and processes and policies. And it's not a matter of consolidating that so 92 00:09:04,200 --> 00:09:08,040 that everyone has the warm comfort blanket of knowing that they're writing the stuff in the 93 00:09:08,040 --> 00:09:13,640 right way that's going to end up with a good result. Right. And the VP's role is to current and 94 00:09:13,640 --> 00:09:19,000 stick is make sure we're all pulling on the same bit of rope and we're all going in the same 95 00:09:19,000 --> 00:09:26,840 direction and we all feel like we're being vital to the output. Right. Right. So what is the, 96 00:09:27,720 --> 00:09:31,800 I don't know, the trickiest part about building a context center on the software side of things? 97 00:09:32,680 --> 00:09:38,760 Well, a contact center for everybody else's benefit, you know, traditionally people used to call 98 00:09:38,760 --> 00:09:44,760 call centers because it implied that with voice, it's a phone call. And there's two types of 99 00:09:45,640 --> 00:09:52,280 traditional call centers, they're outbound and inbound. Okay. And, you know, and we generally 100 00:09:52,280 --> 00:09:59,000 deal with inbound, but a blend of those. And outbound is your traditional cold calling, 101 00:09:59,000 --> 00:10:06,360 robo caller, based in some horrendous place. Yeah, very, very high turnover of staff because 102 00:10:06,360 --> 00:10:12,360 nobody can take the attrition. Right. I mean, it's really tough in this place. It's your 103 00:10:13,240 --> 00:10:20,360 judged on the amount of time it takes for you to make a call, create a lead, do something. Right. 104 00:10:20,360 --> 00:10:29,960 Those outbound places are horrendous. Inbound is generally much higher value types of contact 105 00:10:29,960 --> 00:10:33,800 centers whereby people are phoning you out of their own volition, they want help, 106 00:10:33,800 --> 00:10:37,480 and they want to buy something they want, they've made the conscious effort to contact you. 107 00:10:37,480 --> 00:10:43,240 And generally, the requirement there is that the person that's answering that interaction 108 00:10:44,280 --> 00:10:49,080 knows a lot more about the product is there to help them, right, help sell something, 109 00:10:49,080 --> 00:10:53,560 help fix something, right, take a complaint, it's going to think much higher value. 110 00:10:53,560 --> 00:11:00,040 When it's outbound, it's bash, bash, bash, almost like spam. It is. And in the Western world, 111 00:11:00,760 --> 00:11:07,640 robo calling is almost outlawed. Okay. It's very hard now. I mean, the compliance and everything 112 00:11:07,640 --> 00:11:14,680 else associated with calling people is so tough in UK, US, Western World, Canada, Australia, 113 00:11:14,680 --> 00:11:19,480 New Zealand, these places, that it's becoming a really tough business. Right. You can't really 114 00:11:19,480 --> 00:11:23,640 call somebody if you haven't been invited to call them in the first place. That's like the rule of 115 00:11:23,640 --> 00:11:28,920 thumb. Yeah. Yeah. And even when you're doing that, even when you're robo calling, you know, 116 00:11:29,000 --> 00:11:36,360 very efficient, outbound call center, contact center is over dialing. So 117 00:11:37,240 --> 00:11:43,640 you get a list of numbers that you're calling. You don't dial them sequentially. You dial four 118 00:11:43,640 --> 00:11:49,240 at a time for one agent. On the basis there, three people are going to knock them down. 119 00:11:49,880 --> 00:11:55,320 So is that why when you get one of those like spam calls, it takes a second for them to realize, 120 00:11:55,320 --> 00:12:00,040 oh, pick up on that one they've picked up, try to get them. Yeah. And that's when you know that 121 00:12:00,040 --> 00:12:04,120 you're being, it's the start of a robo call because there's a bit of a delay. Right. Now, 122 00:12:04,120 --> 00:12:07,640 that delay, interestingly, is one of the most irritating things. And that is one of the things 123 00:12:07,640 --> 00:12:13,720 that legislated for. So compliance in the US and UK dictates that there cannot be more than two 124 00:12:13,720 --> 00:12:19,880 seconds before that call is connected to the person and an agent. Okay. And when you think about 125 00:12:19,880 --> 00:12:22,840 that, when you're overdone it at four times a rate, and it's the other thing, and some people 126 00:12:22,920 --> 00:12:27,640 are on some others on, right, creates for a very dynamic algorithm that's going to manage that. 127 00:12:27,640 --> 00:12:33,240 Interesting. Because you've got to be quite fast. Very fast. Or maybe you have some sort of, I don't 128 00:12:33,240 --> 00:12:38,120 know, audio clip that plays and then you catch up. You can't do that. You can't do that. No, 129 00:12:38,120 --> 00:12:41,640 you're not allowed to do that. Okay. You're not allowed to do any of that. Okay. So this has all 130 00:12:41,640 --> 00:12:45,480 been done before clearly. Oh, yeah, yeah. And the fines for this kind of stuff are horrendous. 131 00:12:45,960 --> 00:12:51,720 You know, you get if you contravene any of these regulations associated with that. Yeah. 132 00:12:52,840 --> 00:12:56,280 It's a proportion of you, the value of the company, that kind of thing. Oh, like, 133 00:12:56,280 --> 00:13:01,240 like the GDPR fines or percentage, right? Yeah, it's similar. It's written really seriously. Oh, 134 00:13:01,240 --> 00:13:05,880 wow. Yeah. Okay. And that's the reason why, you know, in context senses, we invent things like 135 00:13:05,880 --> 00:13:11,720 persistent connection. So an agent will come in in the morning. If they're in these kinds of 136 00:13:11,720 --> 00:13:15,960 environments, even if they're not, there's some advantages to doing it this way. Because context 137 00:13:15,960 --> 00:13:20,360 sense is all about driving efficiency, right? How many calls you've made, right? You know, 138 00:13:20,360 --> 00:13:26,520 there's some rules of thumb that say, you know, in a million calls, one second per call is a million 139 00:13:26,520 --> 00:13:31,800 dollars wasted. It's kind of thing. I see. Persistent connection. We used to call it off hook. 140 00:13:32,600 --> 00:13:39,160 An agent comes in the morning, connects, dials up, the system calls them, they're connected, 141 00:13:39,160 --> 00:13:43,560 they never disconnect. Their phone is now live. So they they're never just they never disconnect, 142 00:13:43,560 --> 00:13:47,000 but they talk to a whole bunch of people. Yeah. Because that would waste time if you had a disconnect. 143 00:13:47,000 --> 00:13:50,680 Exactly. So, you know, when a call comes in, it's got to be connected to an agent. And so that 144 00:13:50,680 --> 00:13:54,920 means phoning their phone. Right. Don't want to waste that time, even when, you know, we're on 145 00:13:54,920 --> 00:14:00,920 VoIP, obviously, our whole system is VoIP. Right. That's still a delay. So cut that delay out, 146 00:14:00,920 --> 00:14:04,520 permanently connected. Okay. And what they hear is a beep to tell them, right, you're on the next 147 00:14:04,520 --> 00:14:11,640 call. You're on. Interesting. Okay, so for, for, for the people who don't know, I want to sort of 148 00:14:11,640 --> 00:14:17,480 go through some of the nomenclature. You mentioned agent, call, outbound inbound, which I think 149 00:14:17,480 --> 00:14:22,360 you've explained, eight byte focuses mostly on outbound inbound, sorry, got that backwards. 150 00:14:22,360 --> 00:14:27,640 Checking to make sure your pay attention. Mostly on inbound, so not the spam stuff, which is good. 151 00:14:27,640 --> 00:14:32,280 We do have customers that do outbound, but they're probably not spammers, right? 152 00:14:32,280 --> 00:14:37,000 Of course not. Absolutely not. We couldn't. Okay. What are some of the other terms? So 153 00:14:37,000 --> 00:14:41,400 what is an agent agents, the person that answers the calls? Yeah. So the agent is the person sitting 154 00:14:41,480 --> 00:14:45,400 in the contact center or sitting at home. Because one of the great things about A by A is it's 155 00:14:45,400 --> 00:14:50,760 cloud based. Okay. There's nothing to install on your laptop. Okay. It is all coming through the 156 00:14:50,760 --> 00:14:56,120 browser. Absolutely everything, including the voice. Our software is embedded actually in the 157 00:14:56,120 --> 00:15:00,040 browser itself. Okay. So you don't need anything. You can have a headset. You don't have to have a 158 00:15:00,040 --> 00:15:05,560 headset. You could use the mic and the speakers on your laptop if you want. Right. So everything is 159 00:15:05,560 --> 00:15:10,920 delivered by the browser to wherever the agent is. Generally, they're in, they used to be in 160 00:15:10,920 --> 00:15:17,880 offices, but now they're in, they're in homes. But fundamentally, it's really about connecting 161 00:15:19,400 --> 00:15:25,960 a customer with somebody who can handle the customer's inquiry. Right. And the person that 162 00:15:25,960 --> 00:15:30,200 does that is an agent. And obviously the customer is the person that's phoning in. Right. Now, 163 00:15:30,200 --> 00:15:36,120 increasingly, they're not phoning in. They're texting or they're using the web chat on, you 164 00:15:36,120 --> 00:15:39,320 see it everywhere now. Right. The little thing in the bottom right corner of the website. Yeah. 165 00:15:39,320 --> 00:15:43,720 Do you want to chat with an agent? Of course, the first thing you find is you're not chatting with 166 00:15:43,720 --> 00:15:49,560 an agent. You're chatting with a bot. So you've got to get past the bot. And they're deflecting. 167 00:15:49,560 --> 00:15:54,120 They're trying to find ways in which they can answer your call. Right. Much cheaper than sending it 168 00:15:54,200 --> 00:16:01,560 to an agent to speak to you. Right. So they're there to try and deflect those calls. But eventually, 169 00:16:01,560 --> 00:16:07,080 you get to a point where you either type in some trigger words that alert the system to say, 170 00:16:07,080 --> 00:16:12,680 oh, hang on a minute, no more of this. Let's push it through to a person. Right. Or you get to the 171 00:16:12,680 --> 00:16:18,520 point where the bot can't help and they need to talk to an agent. Right. And what happens there is 172 00:16:18,520 --> 00:16:23,480 you don't get directly connected to an agent straight away. You get put in a queue. Okay. 173 00:16:23,480 --> 00:16:28,360 And then you might get some in queue treatment, which is some feedback about what, you know, 174 00:16:28,360 --> 00:16:33,880 where you are in the queue, how I got away and this kind of thing. And the queue is emptied by 175 00:16:33,880 --> 00:16:40,680 agents that become available to feed the queue. Okay. So that happens, whether that's a voice 176 00:16:40,680 --> 00:16:47,160 interaction. So you phone in here on hold music, whether you're sending in a web chat, 177 00:16:47,240 --> 00:16:53,240 so you're chatting, you send in an SMS text, you're on WhatsApp, send in or Twitter, 178 00:16:54,360 --> 00:16:59,720 or via email, all of these channels are cope with. And that's called an omni channel experience. 179 00:16:59,720 --> 00:17:04,200 Right. Meet them where they are. Yeah, exactly. Right. And sometimes it's the same interaction 180 00:17:04,200 --> 00:17:09,160 on different media types. So you start with the chat and you transfer to voice, this kind of thing. 181 00:17:09,160 --> 00:17:15,240 I see. So that's what a, you know, first class contact center does. Right. It's truly omni 182 00:17:15,240 --> 00:17:19,080 channel covers multiple different channels. Right. Okay. So obviously that's the difference 183 00:17:19,080 --> 00:17:25,560 between call center and contact center. And I imagine all that information about, you know, 184 00:17:25,560 --> 00:17:29,640 the history of your, you know, maybe support requests is sort of tracked no matter which 185 00:17:29,640 --> 00:17:35,080 well that's where it crosses over into being a CRM. So that's why contact centers generally, 186 00:17:35,080 --> 00:17:43,560 unless it's a low cost contact center or a pop up contact center, where you don't have your own CRM, 187 00:17:43,560 --> 00:17:50,040 customer relationship management system, we integrate and all contact centers with your 188 00:17:50,040 --> 00:17:56,440 incumbent CRM. Right. So it might be, you know, that it's Microsoft Dynamics or Salesforce. Right. 189 00:17:57,160 --> 00:18:01,080 So the call comes in, it's in our queuing system and everything else. And the moment the agent 190 00:18:01,080 --> 00:18:05,400 actually decides they're going to take the call, there's a screen pop. Right. And that's come from 191 00:18:05,400 --> 00:18:10,120 the CRM. Right. It's come from Salesforce. Okay. And it tells you everything about the customer, 192 00:18:10,200 --> 00:18:14,440 the history of the customer, everything else. Right. But the contact center software itself 193 00:18:14,440 --> 00:18:19,320 has handled how that interaction actually got to the agent in the first place. Okay. So I imagine 194 00:18:19,320 --> 00:18:23,320 it's trying to figure out who's the right person to answer this. This person's an expert on X, Y, 195 00:18:23,320 --> 00:18:28,840 and Z. And that's schools based routing. Okay. We're covering all the things here. We are. I mean, 196 00:18:30,040 --> 00:18:35,080 this is the difference between just having, you know, a receptionist, right, and a contact center. 197 00:18:35,080 --> 00:18:39,240 Right. Because you could say, well, a lot of this stuff is covered by just having a VoIP 198 00:18:39,720 --> 00:18:44,200 to avoid phone system. You know, you phone in and it says press two to speak to 199 00:18:45,000 --> 00:18:51,560 Matt, press three to speak to Steve, this kind of thing. Yeah, that's great. But what separates a 200 00:18:51,560 --> 00:18:58,760 contact center from a simple calling system like that is the, you don't know who you want to talk 201 00:18:58,760 --> 00:19:02,760 to. Yeah. You know what your problem is that you want to speak about. Right. And that will inform 202 00:19:03,640 --> 00:19:08,440 the system and the contact center takes a view as to who's the right person for you to talk to. 203 00:19:08,440 --> 00:19:13,320 Right. And that's what used to be called skills based routines now called attribute based 204 00:19:13,320 --> 00:19:20,040 routing. Right. And it's well, the call is coming on a Spanish line. Okay. Spanish. Yes. 205 00:19:20,040 --> 00:19:27,800 And it's somebody who speaks Spanish, right. Somehow we figured out, hopefully by pressing 206 00:19:27,800 --> 00:19:35,080 a few sort of buttons, but prior to the interaction, forming that it's about car servicing. Right. So 207 00:19:35,160 --> 00:19:40,920 we want to send us that person. And then you want to say, okay, take some measurement of 208 00:19:40,920 --> 00:19:45,560 agent performance. Uh huh. You know, who's really good at handling those and who's not so good. 209 00:19:46,120 --> 00:19:51,560 Who's not doing it today. Right. Really up for it today. Right. And start feeding those. 210 00:19:52,200 --> 00:19:57,320 So it's very dynamic, very sophisticated. Yeah. And that's really the differentiator between a 211 00:19:57,320 --> 00:20:04,520 simple unified communications phone system and the contact center. Right. Okay. Wow. So there's a 212 00:20:04,520 --> 00:20:10,760 lot there. Well, there's probably more goes in there's more work goes into that routing aspect 213 00:20:11,400 --> 00:20:14,840 than any other part of the contact to itself, you know, recordings, 214 00:20:16,520 --> 00:20:23,400 quality feedback. Right. You get a call and it says we're recording this. Yeah. This, 215 00:20:23,400 --> 00:20:27,480 this call because for training purposes, they always say it may be recorded, but it's always 216 00:20:27,480 --> 00:20:33,720 recorded. Yeah. Pretty much. Yeah. It depends really actually because you paid. So if they 217 00:20:33,720 --> 00:20:37,720 run out of money, maybe not so much, maybe they turn off the recordings, but mostly what they're 218 00:20:37,720 --> 00:20:42,840 really talking about is that what you're saying and what the customer is saying is being fed into 219 00:20:42,840 --> 00:20:48,120 an AI engine to determine what the sentiment is. Okay. So then maybe feedback to the agent 220 00:20:48,120 --> 00:20:55,240 whilst he's speaking, whispering, we call it. Maybe talk to them about this. Hang on, 221 00:20:55,240 --> 00:20:59,640 the customer's getting angry. Yeah. Maybe, you know, let's try to steer them to this or 222 00:20:59,640 --> 00:21:04,840 give some advice. Right. So the system starts whispering and they're based on the feedback 223 00:21:04,840 --> 00:21:10,280 that it's analyzing from the content, whether it be text or voice. Right. So with voice, 224 00:21:10,280 --> 00:21:14,840 it speaks to text real time and then feeding it back while you're on the interaction. I see. And 225 00:21:14,840 --> 00:21:22,200 that's where the really high value contact centers are. Okay. Yeah. That's where that QML 226 00:21:22,760 --> 00:21:27,320 policy manager product comes in. So you can train them, help them during the calls. 227 00:21:28,040 --> 00:21:35,080 Yeah. Post call, a bit of training on the customer to say, look, you know, looking down 228 00:21:35,080 --> 00:21:39,720 a history or feedback that you're getting here and what we're seeing with the way you're handing 229 00:21:39,720 --> 00:21:42,280 some improvements. And that's what they mean by training. Yeah. 230 00:21:45,160 --> 00:21:47,240 I feel like that would be a lot of fun just to know about 231 00:21:47,320 --> 00:21:54,360 my, my calls with customer support agents, you know, flip the script at least for me, you know, 232 00:21:54,360 --> 00:21:57,720 like when I'm trying to cancel, you know, something and they won't let me cancel, right? 233 00:21:57,720 --> 00:22:05,960 Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, some, sometimes calls are directed to agents that are very good 234 00:22:05,960 --> 00:22:14,040 at handling difficult customers. Or, you know, we've got, we've got mission critical contact 235 00:22:14,040 --> 00:22:19,640 centers. And what we mean by that is we've got people that run suicide lines. Oh, yeah. 236 00:22:21,080 --> 00:22:25,800 And so it's super important that, you know, the reliability of that line, you know, somebody 237 00:22:25,800 --> 00:22:30,600 calls up, they're calling for a really specific reason that is they want some advice, they want 238 00:22:30,600 --> 00:22:38,280 some help, they want some reassurance. Right. So you need trained people that can cancel, 239 00:22:38,280 --> 00:22:42,200 you know, can, you know, have high empathy and all those sorts of things to be able to handle that. 240 00:22:42,760 --> 00:22:47,960 So routing is really important in those circumstances. Yeah. For various reasons. 241 00:22:49,240 --> 00:22:53,640 So when you're building all this stuff, you mentioned earlier there, when someone calls in 242 00:22:53,640 --> 00:22:58,200 or messages in a screen pop comes up and it maybe pulls in information about maybe the customer, 243 00:22:58,200 --> 00:23:01,400 or maybe you don't know anything and it says we don't know much about this person, etc. 244 00:23:01,400 --> 00:23:07,800 New contact. New contact. What other sorts of integrations are there today besides pulling 245 00:23:07,880 --> 00:23:14,440 in existing data just about the customer? Well, it's really interesting, actually, because 246 00:23:15,560 --> 00:23:21,320 what it can be is that before the agent actually gets the call, it's been through what we call our 247 00:23:21,320 --> 00:23:27,080 interactive voice response system. And that is, comes through, it says press one to talk to 248 00:23:27,080 --> 00:23:36,360 somebody in service, press two. But it also might be, is your inquiry about parts? Is your inquiry 249 00:23:36,360 --> 00:23:43,640 about a particular service? Could you type in your postcode using the telephone keyboard? 250 00:23:43,640 --> 00:23:48,440 Or, you know, this kind of thing, maybe a part number, right? And of course, the part number, 251 00:23:48,440 --> 00:23:53,000 that's a lookup. That's a dynamic lookup into the parts catalog for the company. Right. So that 252 00:23:53,000 --> 00:23:57,080 by the time the agent does get to it, says, okay, now I can offer you this price or that price, 253 00:23:57,080 --> 00:24:02,760 or how many do you want? I see. It's all about really trying to automate as much of that as 254 00:24:02,760 --> 00:24:07,720 possible and get as much information before it becomes to comes to a human interaction. 255 00:24:08,520 --> 00:24:16,120 So integrations with existing parts catalogs, not just CRMs, but also other systems that customers 256 00:24:16,120 --> 00:24:19,720 have. And that's the reason why it's really important to have an open platform in this area. 257 00:24:19,720 --> 00:24:24,440 Right. API is no very close to your heart. Because we don't actually really know what 258 00:24:24,440 --> 00:24:27,480 customers are going to use it for. Right, right. Actually, some of the other 259 00:24:27,720 --> 00:24:34,200 podcast episodes are entitled, or the subject is APIs and IPAs. So there you go. 260 00:24:34,200 --> 00:24:43,800 Okay, very good. Very relevant. So I have so many questions. What are the 261 00:24:45,880 --> 00:24:49,160 biggest engineering challenges you face when you're building a contact center? 262 00:24:51,800 --> 00:24:55,480 Performance and reliability. Biggest ones? Yeah. I mean, at the end of the day, 263 00:24:56,440 --> 00:25:01,480 the customer, he wants features, customer spawn features, they want this to pop up, 264 00:25:04,600 --> 00:25:10,040 we're a global organization, making this one product as a sales product for everybody. 265 00:25:10,760 --> 00:25:16,200 So to cover everybody's requirements for the features without that thing growing like an 266 00:25:16,200 --> 00:25:22,680 octopus, and then not also being able to perform, these things sit on top of a microservices 267 00:25:22,760 --> 00:25:26,040 architecture. And crucially, you know, we've still got quite a lot of the legacy code which 268 00:25:26,040 --> 00:25:32,200 runs in data centers. Right. And the challenge there is getting at a scale up. Right. You know, 269 00:25:33,080 --> 00:25:38,600 A by A contact center is 23 years old. Wow. It's based on a microservices architecture 270 00:25:38,600 --> 00:25:45,720 from 2000. Yeah, written in 32 bit C code. Okay. I was way ahead of its time. Yeah. Fantastic thing. 271 00:25:46,280 --> 00:25:51,160 But everything was proprietary. Right. The message bus, the event bus it was on, 272 00:25:52,120 --> 00:25:56,360 it's pinned to certain versions of Linux, you know, this kind of thing. They take years to 273 00:25:56,360 --> 00:26:02,760 overcome. Right. I don't really so much wrong with the architecture, just the implementations of 274 00:26:02,760 --> 00:26:09,800 its sign. Right. And so bringing that all that forwards and make it still perform. Right. You 275 00:26:09,800 --> 00:26:15,480 know, modernize the language, modernize the technology, modernize the scalability. That's 276 00:26:15,480 --> 00:26:19,400 a challenge. Sort of moving this giant mountain that's been around for a long time. 277 00:26:20,120 --> 00:26:24,040 Yeah. I mean, people call it, you know, breaking down the monolith, right, you know, 278 00:26:24,040 --> 00:26:28,520 into microservices. But the thing was microservices before, it's just the wrong time 279 00:26:28,520 --> 00:26:34,840 microservices and too tightly coupled and all this kind of thing. Yeah, that's pretty tough, 280 00:26:34,840 --> 00:26:42,440 you know, you know, in IT. Yeah, this is not going to be your last job. It might not be my last job. 281 00:26:43,400 --> 00:26:50,200 You know, when I started at Hawker Sidley in 1986, people got carriage clocks when they 282 00:26:50,200 --> 00:26:55,880 retired after 40 years. I mean, loads of people doing that. You know, the business was so large, 283 00:26:55,880 --> 00:27:00,360 you could move around it, work on different aspects of it and have a whole career just 284 00:27:00,360 --> 00:27:05,240 inside that one business. Right. And it wasn't that unusual. That's I've heard of these days. 285 00:27:05,240 --> 00:27:09,880 Yeah. Yeah. And especially in tech. Yes. Yeah. If you've been anywhere for five years, people 286 00:27:09,960 --> 00:27:13,640 are saying, why are you staying there for five years? Why not? I love it. It's interesting. 287 00:27:13,640 --> 00:27:19,480 It's paying well. It's, you know, it's kind of become the thing. It used to be that if you saw 288 00:27:19,480 --> 00:27:26,200 CV and somebody jumped between jobs two or three times in the last five years, it was bad. Yeah. 289 00:27:26,200 --> 00:27:33,400 Yeah. That guy, you know, yeah, he can't keep a job. Yeah. Nowadays, it's well, you can't get a new job. 290 00:27:34,360 --> 00:27:41,480 Yeah. Yeah. You know, so, yeah. And you know, and hiring is you can make as many mistakes. 291 00:27:41,480 --> 00:27:45,080 I've made as many mistakes hiring the wrong person as I do the right person. 292 00:27:45,080 --> 00:27:47,560 Yeah. And I've been doing it for years and I'm still not getting it right. 293 00:27:47,560 --> 00:27:52,600 How do you hire the right person? If you find that, if you find the solutions to that problem, 294 00:27:52,600 --> 00:27:57,880 then, I mean, I was talking to somebody recently and they said, to get the right person, we put 295 00:27:57,880 --> 00:28:02,920 them through nine interviews. Wow. Nine interviews. Can you find someone really good at interviewing? 296 00:28:02,920 --> 00:28:09,320 Well, that's the other challenge is, you know, we ask our engineers and our peers to do the 297 00:28:09,320 --> 00:28:13,640 interviewing. Yeah. Well, why are they experts in interviewing? They don't do it all day long. 298 00:28:13,640 --> 00:28:18,680 We put them through a hacker rank and some other stuff. I mean, there's lots of different ways 299 00:28:18,680 --> 00:28:24,920 and trying, but in the end, it comes down to, do you think they've got the right chops for this? 300 00:28:24,920 --> 00:28:29,160 Right. You know, do you think they, they've demonstrated that they can communicate? 301 00:28:30,120 --> 00:28:35,880 You know, sort of going counter-psychies world, are they, are they lonely boys, 64s who are going 302 00:28:35,880 --> 00:28:39,880 to spend most of their time in their back bedroom cracking out code without speaking to anybody? 303 00:28:39,880 --> 00:28:42,440 Right. You know, or are they going to be a proper team player? 304 00:28:42,440 --> 00:28:42,680 Right. 305 00:28:44,600 --> 00:28:48,360 You know, and also having the confidence that when you hire leaders as well, you want to hire 306 00:28:48,360 --> 00:28:53,160 somebody into a management position in our game, in our world, you know, we're always promoting 307 00:28:53,160 --> 00:28:58,920 people into positions of incompetence, you know, either because that's the only way 308 00:28:58,920 --> 00:29:02,280 you can figure out how to pay them more money. We're going to make them a manager. 309 00:29:02,280 --> 00:29:05,960 So we took this first-class lead developer and turned them into a crap manager. 310 00:29:05,960 --> 00:29:09,000 Yeah. You see that everywhere in the software industry, everywhere. 311 00:29:09,000 --> 00:29:13,000 And it's sometimes just simply the way to get around the pay structure. 312 00:29:13,000 --> 00:29:13,560 Yeah. 313 00:29:13,560 --> 00:29:16,440 You want to pay them more money because you want to keep them because they're brilliant. 314 00:29:17,160 --> 00:29:21,160 Well, the pay structure means we've got to send them into a manager. They don't want it. You don't want it. 315 00:29:22,920 --> 00:29:23,240 Right. 316 00:29:23,240 --> 00:29:24,040 But we do it. 317 00:29:24,040 --> 00:29:24,360 Right. 318 00:29:25,080 --> 00:29:31,000 And then, you know, being, you know, I do a thing about leadership. Engineers are creatives. 319 00:29:31,720 --> 00:29:35,240 They are not what people imagine. You know, boil a room, 320 00:29:37,400 --> 00:29:42,280 overruled monkeys, you know, feeding coal into the furnace. They are creatives. 321 00:29:42,280 --> 00:29:42,440 Yeah. 322 00:29:42,440 --> 00:29:47,640 If you give them the right structure and guard rails, they invent stuff. 323 00:29:47,640 --> 00:29:47,720 Yes. 324 00:29:47,720 --> 00:29:51,160 They make stuff. We make stuff. You know, you're a developer. I'm a developer. 325 00:29:51,160 --> 00:29:51,640 Yeah. 326 00:29:51,640 --> 00:29:54,200 That's the biggest thrill we get is writing code. 327 00:29:54,200 --> 00:29:55,000 Yes. 328 00:29:55,000 --> 00:29:57,560 And the further up you, the food chain you go, the less code you write. 329 00:29:58,760 --> 00:30:02,840 But I think it always feels that it's important that, you know, even at VP level, 330 00:30:02,840 --> 00:30:05,480 I write code, not for production, maybe. 331 00:30:07,160 --> 00:30:08,440 I'm allowed to do that. 332 00:30:08,440 --> 00:30:09,880 But I won't tell anyone. 333 00:30:09,880 --> 00:30:11,640 No, I'd stick a few lines in there. 334 00:30:13,320 --> 00:30:15,960 Generally, I work on the stuff that other people don't want to work on. 335 00:30:16,840 --> 00:30:20,200 So Steve, you know that legacy PHP app, you know, and I think, 336 00:30:20,440 --> 00:30:27,880 ah, I hate PHP, you know, the first page of the how to do PHP is choose something else, 337 00:30:28,600 --> 00:30:32,760 you know, hate it. But I know everybody else hates it. 338 00:30:32,760 --> 00:30:37,080 And they, you know, and if I want to just kind of, a little bit of respite from being a VP, 339 00:30:38,040 --> 00:30:41,240 I'll look at this stuff, because at least it is debuggable and it's, you know, 340 00:30:41,240 --> 00:30:42,760 it's pretty straightforward to work out. 341 00:30:42,760 --> 00:30:43,000 Yeah. 342 00:30:43,640 --> 00:30:48,360 So it keeps you handed, you know, it keeps you, keeps you in touch with what, 343 00:30:48,360 --> 00:30:50,200 you know, people in the org are doing. 344 00:30:51,000 --> 00:30:55,800 Yeah, it's funny that you mentioned PHP because my next podcast guest is Mr. PHP, 345 00:30:55,800 --> 00:30:57,080 the founder of PHP. 346 00:30:58,920 --> 00:31:00,600 I'm kidding. I'm totally kidding. 347 00:31:00,600 --> 00:31:03,720 I don't, it was my first language, if you will. 348 00:31:06,440 --> 00:31:08,360 Well, I always thought hiring. 349 00:31:08,360 --> 00:31:10,200 No, it's actually, do you know what the thing is? 350 00:31:10,200 --> 00:31:10,360 Yeah. 351 00:31:10,360 --> 00:31:12,440 Modern PHP development looks just like Java. 352 00:31:13,320 --> 00:31:14,680 You know, it's not what it used to be. 353 00:31:14,680 --> 00:31:16,360 You know, what's PHP used to stand for? 354 00:31:17,080 --> 00:31:19,560 Pre-hypertex, preprocessor, something like that. 355 00:31:20,600 --> 00:31:23,400 That was naughty when it first came out, but that was its joy. 356 00:31:26,280 --> 00:31:28,840 Play it again, play it again, play it again, play it again. 357 00:31:28,840 --> 00:31:29,400 Oh, I've got it right. 358 00:31:29,400 --> 00:31:29,800 Excellent. 359 00:31:29,800 --> 00:31:30,040 Yeah. 360 00:31:31,160 --> 00:31:33,320 It's, it was so immediate. 361 00:31:33,320 --> 00:31:33,560 Yeah. 362 00:31:35,320 --> 00:31:40,040 And now you see PHP development and it's all object oriented. 363 00:31:40,040 --> 00:31:40,920 It's, you know, it's more, 364 00:31:41,640 --> 00:31:41,880 Yeah. 365 00:31:42,840 --> 00:31:44,280 They've even got an injection framework. 366 00:31:44,280 --> 00:31:45,160 They've got all the sort of stuff. 367 00:31:45,160 --> 00:31:45,960 It's all caught up. 368 00:31:46,440 --> 00:31:48,520 There's frameworks like Laravel, they're taking off. 369 00:31:48,520 --> 00:31:50,120 The WordPress is all PHP. 370 00:31:50,120 --> 00:31:50,520 Yeah. 371 00:31:50,520 --> 00:31:51,320 And that's huge. 372 00:31:53,000 --> 00:31:55,000 They had, they did some things really well though, 373 00:31:55,000 --> 00:31:56,120 not to go on a huge tangent. 374 00:31:56,120 --> 00:32:00,600 Their documentation had so many code samples from people just contributing. 375 00:32:00,600 --> 00:32:05,640 That was, that's how I learned on the code samples before I ever, you know, bought a book. 376 00:32:05,640 --> 00:32:10,280 And do you know what, that's one of the things that separates industrial programming from hacking. 377 00:32:10,280 --> 00:32:10,760 Yeah. 378 00:32:10,760 --> 00:32:14,760 You know, Hawkes and Sidley, I'm still using the same things that they taught me there, 379 00:32:14,760 --> 00:32:20,760 the same mantras, the same, you know, there's no shortcuts to high qualities software development. 380 00:32:21,720 --> 00:32:22,040 Yeah. 381 00:32:22,040 --> 00:32:26,200 You know, evidence massively more aggregated, it's much more effective now, 382 00:32:26,200 --> 00:32:28,920 you know, a few lines of code and you've created a website, you know, 383 00:32:29,800 --> 00:32:32,360 but the pattern still remains, you know, 384 00:32:33,080 --> 00:32:35,800 undocumented code is unmaintainable code. 385 00:32:36,520 --> 00:32:41,240 And I'm not a subscriber to this, you know, I'm thinking code. 386 00:32:41,960 --> 00:32:42,200 Yeah. 387 00:32:42,200 --> 00:32:44,600 Well, if you think code, you're not thinking in my team, that's for sure. 388 00:32:45,400 --> 00:32:52,040 Where you think is you draw stuff on your pad, you know, you draw it out, you think it out, 389 00:32:52,040 --> 00:32:55,800 you know, and then you start typing up and you document it. 390 00:32:57,080 --> 00:32:58,680 You know, you put comments in your code. 391 00:32:59,400 --> 00:33:02,760 I know comments are regarded by some as overhead. 392 00:33:03,400 --> 00:33:04,440 Yeah, they are. 393 00:33:04,440 --> 00:33:06,200 They're a necessary overhead. 394 00:33:06,200 --> 00:33:10,120 It's like saying, you know, I don't, I haven't got any tests in my, because they're an overhead. 395 00:33:10,920 --> 00:33:11,960 I've got to maintain the tests. 396 00:33:12,680 --> 00:33:14,040 Yeah, yeah, that's the job. 397 00:33:14,760 --> 00:33:18,600 Anytime someone tells me that they don't write a test, I just look at them and I think like, 398 00:33:18,600 --> 00:33:19,960 you don't want to be lazy. 399 00:33:20,520 --> 00:33:21,720 Tests let you be lazy. 400 00:33:21,720 --> 00:33:22,680 You know it's going to work. 401 00:33:22,680 --> 00:33:25,880 You know that if you make another change later, your thing's probably not going to break. 402 00:33:26,440 --> 00:33:27,880 It's a mystery otherwise. 403 00:33:27,880 --> 00:33:28,600 And I think you do. 404 00:33:29,480 --> 00:33:34,040 It's a fine line really, you know, like TDD, I'm not a great fan of, you know, 405 00:33:34,680 --> 00:33:43,080 Paired Programming has its place, but there's no get around the good people doing good work 406 00:33:43,160 --> 00:33:49,960 that are well led, motivated, curious, you know, these sorts of things. 407 00:33:49,960 --> 00:33:55,480 But they're working from a standard that's been set by the team, you know. 408 00:33:56,120 --> 00:33:58,920 This is the thing that we really suffer from in this industry now. 409 00:33:58,920 --> 00:34:00,040 People come into it. 410 00:34:00,040 --> 00:34:01,000 Where do you learn from? 411 00:34:01,960 --> 00:34:05,240 The guy sitting next year has only got three years in the job, you know, for years. 412 00:34:05,880 --> 00:34:10,200 Where do you find the guys with 40 years of experience and just retiring and tell you 413 00:34:10,200 --> 00:34:12,920 all the shitty stuff that, you know, they've done? 414 00:34:12,920 --> 00:34:14,360 So you don't do it, you know? 415 00:34:15,480 --> 00:34:20,280 Because, you know, for the most part, functional program is new, you know, different styles 416 00:34:20,280 --> 00:34:23,960 of programming come and go, but the fundamentals are still the same. 417 00:34:23,960 --> 00:34:26,680 You write the coach, you document it, you test it. 418 00:34:26,680 --> 00:34:27,160 Yeah. 419 00:34:27,160 --> 00:34:31,320 And you make that process as simple and as easy and straightforward as possible. 420 00:34:31,320 --> 00:34:31,560 Yeah. 421 00:34:32,360 --> 00:34:36,680 Not to keep talking about PHP, but I have one more thing that I miss about the PHP days. 422 00:34:36,680 --> 00:34:40,760 And that one thing is, one of the early podcasts on this. 423 00:34:41,000 --> 00:34:41,400 Vendump. 424 00:34:42,120 --> 00:34:43,560 No, no, no. 425 00:34:43,560 --> 00:34:44,120 No, but that, you know what? 426 00:34:44,120 --> 00:34:45,240 The best debugging tool in the world. 427 00:34:45,240 --> 00:34:46,120 That's not terrible. 428 00:34:46,120 --> 00:34:47,160 That's not terrible, right? 429 00:34:47,160 --> 00:34:49,560 Like, you know, like print debugging. 430 00:34:49,560 --> 00:34:54,440 No, was, there is, I mean, I think it's still what people do today. 431 00:34:55,480 --> 00:34:59,160 It was, in my opinion, the easiest, if you want to build a website 432 00:34:59,160 --> 00:35:02,040 and you need a programming language behind it, it's the easiest thing to deploy in the world. 433 00:35:02,040 --> 00:35:05,960 Because every host, the $1.99 web host to the whatever, 434 00:35:05,960 --> 00:35:09,080 they all have PHP, you just drag and drop and it's deployed. 435 00:35:09,160 --> 00:35:11,240 You can't do that with 90% all. 436 00:35:11,240 --> 00:35:12,040 No, that's true. 437 00:35:12,040 --> 00:35:12,600 Yeah. 438 00:35:12,600 --> 00:35:14,920 And, you know, and that's in some respects that, you know, 439 00:35:15,720 --> 00:35:19,080 you see the sort of advances in things like, I mean, I'm a Java guy. 440 00:35:19,080 --> 00:35:21,240 Used to be a C guy and before that was an assembly guy. 441 00:35:21,240 --> 00:35:21,800 Right. 442 00:35:21,800 --> 00:35:23,960 You know, Pascal. 443 00:35:23,960 --> 00:35:24,520 And before that you just got. 444 00:35:24,520 --> 00:35:31,240 So when I was talking about the algorithm that controlled the bugs, that was Pascal. 445 00:35:31,800 --> 00:35:32,280 Interesting. 446 00:35:32,600 --> 00:35:39,800 But I'm, you know, I fell in love with Java 20 years ago and I've never seen really 447 00:35:39,800 --> 00:35:41,000 any reason to change that. 448 00:35:41,720 --> 00:35:47,720 Partly because what the Java community does and the owners of Java, Oracle and others, 449 00:35:48,600 --> 00:35:52,600 is they see the trends that are happening in others and they mimic them. 450 00:35:53,160 --> 00:35:53,480 Right. 451 00:35:53,480 --> 00:36:01,400 You know, Scala, languages are based on the JVM to catch up, I suppose, 452 00:36:01,480 --> 00:36:02,680 with some of the trends. 453 00:36:03,240 --> 00:36:07,480 You know, nowadays, you know, we're doing a lot of work with Java fibers, 454 00:36:07,480 --> 00:36:09,080 which is virtual threads. 455 00:36:09,800 --> 00:36:12,760 You know, it takes it right away back to Joe, Joe to keep one, 456 00:36:12,760 --> 00:36:14,040 when everything was a virtual thread. 457 00:36:15,160 --> 00:36:19,000 And then it took, it could take advantage of physical cause, 458 00:36:20,280 --> 00:36:21,640 but threads are expensive. 459 00:36:21,640 --> 00:36:21,880 Right. 460 00:36:21,880 --> 00:36:24,840 So you put them in a pool and execute a pool and all this sort of thing. 461 00:36:26,600 --> 00:36:30,680 The version 19 and version 21, when it's a full first class citizen, 462 00:36:31,400 --> 00:36:35,720 he's going to turn that paradigm on its head because a standard JVM running on a 463 00:36:35,720 --> 00:36:39,400 four core eight gig laptop can have a million threads. 464 00:36:39,960 --> 00:36:40,760 Yeah. Wow. 465 00:36:41,480 --> 00:36:42,360 Now you think about that. 466 00:36:43,640 --> 00:36:44,520 That's a functional program. 467 00:36:44,520 --> 00:36:48,120 That's, I don't need asynchronous programming. 468 00:36:48,120 --> 00:36:48,360 Right. 469 00:36:48,920 --> 00:36:54,760 I just have now, I'll run my application through, you know, this is the execution path. 470 00:36:55,560 --> 00:36:59,720 I don't need to push an event and wait for a response, push another and wait for another 471 00:36:59,720 --> 00:37:00,280 response. 472 00:37:00,280 --> 00:37:02,840 That async model that makes debugging so bloody hard. 473 00:37:02,840 --> 00:37:03,160 Right. 474 00:37:04,120 --> 00:37:04,920 Don't need that anymore. 475 00:37:04,920 --> 00:37:05,160 Yeah. 476 00:37:05,160 --> 00:37:08,760 I literally will go back to, I call this, I call that, I call that, I call that, 477 00:37:08,760 --> 00:37:13,160 I call that and the operating system will, and I will run that on its own thread. 478 00:37:13,800 --> 00:37:15,000 I've got a million of those. 479 00:37:15,000 --> 00:37:15,720 Yeah. 480 00:37:15,720 --> 00:37:16,040 Wow. 481 00:37:17,720 --> 00:37:21,640 So, speaking in the lesser bit about the future of all this stuff, 482 00:37:21,640 --> 00:37:23,880 where do you see the future of contact centers going? 483 00:37:24,680 --> 00:37:33,320 So, what we're seeing is that AI and chat GPT and these kinds of things, these tools, 484 00:37:33,320 --> 00:37:35,640 are going to have a significant impact. 485 00:37:35,640 --> 00:37:36,520 They already are. 486 00:37:36,520 --> 00:37:37,000 Right. 487 00:37:37,000 --> 00:37:38,600 But it's going to grow and grow and grow. 488 00:37:39,880 --> 00:37:45,320 You know, when you phone a contact center, generally now, you will go through an IVR, 489 00:37:45,320 --> 00:37:49,240 you go through this process of press this, do that, and it can say this, can do that. 490 00:37:49,240 --> 00:37:49,720 Right. 491 00:37:49,720 --> 00:37:52,280 But eventually you end up with an agent. 492 00:37:52,520 --> 00:37:59,160 Increasingly, voice bots are going to have a much bigger role to play there, 493 00:37:59,160 --> 00:38:02,760 because they'll, in real time, transcribe what you're saying. 494 00:38:02,760 --> 00:38:03,240 Right. 495 00:38:05,080 --> 00:38:09,880 Run it through a chat GPT of all the responses that have been made before, 496 00:38:09,880 --> 00:38:14,040 or from everything else in the business, and give you actually a very good, 497 00:38:14,040 --> 00:38:16,920 qualified response about answering your query. 498 00:38:16,920 --> 00:38:17,480 Right. 499 00:38:17,480 --> 00:38:18,600 No human involved at all. 500 00:38:18,600 --> 00:38:19,080 Yeah. 501 00:38:20,040 --> 00:38:21,880 So, that sort of stuff. 502 00:38:23,960 --> 00:38:30,200 You'll see stuff like, which we're doing right now, is a call comes in. 503 00:38:30,200 --> 00:38:31,560 You're actually talking to an agent. 504 00:38:31,560 --> 00:38:32,120 Right. 505 00:38:32,120 --> 00:38:34,760 And this is probably a common experience. 506 00:38:34,760 --> 00:38:38,120 The agent will say, actually, I need to speak to somebody in another department. 507 00:38:38,120 --> 00:38:38,760 Yes. 508 00:38:38,760 --> 00:38:39,080 Yes. 509 00:38:39,960 --> 00:38:41,640 And what they're doing is they're putting you on hold. 510 00:38:41,640 --> 00:38:45,720 They're using another line, second line, to call that and say, right, I've just been 511 00:38:45,720 --> 00:38:47,320 talking to Matt. 512 00:38:47,320 --> 00:38:47,320 513 00:38:47,320 --> 00:38:50,760 He's got a problem with his router and this and that, you know, what do you think? 514 00:38:50,760 --> 00:38:51,640 Yeah. 515 00:38:51,640 --> 00:38:55,640 Well, increasingly, what it would already have done is there'll be a button to say, 516 00:38:55,640 --> 00:38:57,080 I want to talk to another expert. 517 00:38:57,960 --> 00:39:04,840 The chat GPT or other speaks to text and analysis will summarize the whole conversation you've had. 518 00:39:04,840 --> 00:39:05,320 Right. 519 00:39:05,320 --> 00:39:07,960 Passed it to that guy before you've even transferred the call to him, 520 00:39:07,960 --> 00:39:11,640 so he can read a summary and know exactly what you've been talking about. 521 00:39:12,040 --> 00:39:13,080 Ah. 522 00:39:13,080 --> 00:39:18,600 So the need to speak to him, it becomes then potentially unnecessary. 523 00:39:18,600 --> 00:39:19,400 Right. 524 00:39:19,400 --> 00:39:25,400 So all kinds of interesting ways in which this kind of technology is going to have an impact 525 00:39:25,400 --> 00:39:29,640 to make the, effectively, the contact center much more efficient. 526 00:39:29,640 --> 00:39:30,360 Right. 527 00:39:30,360 --> 00:39:32,840 And voice will play a diminishing role in that. 528 00:39:34,200 --> 00:39:38,200 Increasingly, people want to talk and, as you say, they want to talk to you in the way that's 529 00:39:38,200 --> 00:39:39,000 convenient for them. 530 00:39:39,000 --> 00:39:39,640 Right. 531 00:39:39,720 --> 00:39:44,920 And that might be a web chat, might be an SMS, WhatsApp, Telegram, could be anything. 532 00:39:47,080 --> 00:39:54,920 They want a first-class experience and phoning somebody is actually a bit annoying. 533 00:39:54,920 --> 00:39:55,320 Right. 534 00:39:55,320 --> 00:40:00,440 First, if it puts you through a whole load of IVR, whereas if you can be a bit more asynchronous 535 00:40:00,440 --> 00:40:04,200 and do it via text or, you know, WhatsApp or something. 536 00:40:04,200 --> 00:40:04,840 Right. 537 00:40:04,840 --> 00:40:11,400 That's, and so, you know, I think we see that slowly growing. 538 00:40:11,400 --> 00:40:12,040 Okay. 539 00:40:12,040 --> 00:40:12,600 Interesting. 540 00:40:13,480 --> 00:40:19,400 So the future is a lot more AI and a lot of, it seems like the whole goal of everything is 541 00:40:19,400 --> 00:40:26,600 to just shrink the amount of time that you have to, you know, speak to a person or researcher. 542 00:40:26,600 --> 00:40:27,000 Yeah. 543 00:40:27,000 --> 00:40:33,240 I mean, it's always about balancing the time it takes for an agent to launch it because 544 00:40:33,240 --> 00:40:34,200 that's expensive. 545 00:40:34,200 --> 00:40:34,600 Yes. 546 00:40:34,600 --> 00:40:38,200 Any human being involved in it means that it's expensive. 547 00:40:38,200 --> 00:40:41,640 It's balancing that with having a good authoritative response. 548 00:40:42,200 --> 00:40:42,600 Right. 549 00:40:42,600 --> 00:40:46,280 Because it's one thing, you know, you phone up and you get to talk to a robotic voice. 550 00:40:47,000 --> 00:40:48,920 Yeah, Matt, I'm great. 551 00:40:49,480 --> 00:40:50,200 You're pissed off. 552 00:40:50,200 --> 00:40:51,000 Everybody's pissed off. 553 00:40:51,000 --> 00:40:52,680 Nobody, you know, that's not great. 554 00:40:53,800 --> 00:40:55,720 Even if it was actually gave you a good answer. 555 00:40:55,720 --> 00:40:57,560 You know, so I don't want that. 556 00:40:58,280 --> 00:41:03,960 So it's balancing that kind of thing with the time that you spend talking to an agent. 557 00:41:03,960 --> 00:41:04,200 Right. 558 00:41:04,920 --> 00:41:05,720 Efficiency. 559 00:41:05,720 --> 00:41:07,240 Efficiency is key. 560 00:41:07,240 --> 00:41:07,560 Yeah. 561 00:41:07,560 --> 00:41:08,520 Time is money. 562 00:41:08,520 --> 00:41:12,760 Well, you go into a call center, a contact center, you'll see wallboards up, you know, 563 00:41:12,760 --> 00:41:17,400 big screens, like in a knock, you know, you're seeing all these alarms and all of these tables 564 00:41:17,400 --> 00:41:17,880 and everything else. 565 00:41:17,880 --> 00:41:18,120 Right. 566 00:41:18,120 --> 00:41:20,760 And what they're telling you is the efficiency of the data center. 567 00:41:20,760 --> 00:41:21,480 Right. 568 00:41:21,480 --> 00:41:23,480 What's the efficiency of the agents? 569 00:41:23,480 --> 00:41:24,840 Who's the most efficient agent? 570 00:41:24,840 --> 00:41:25,800 Who's got spare time? 571 00:41:27,000 --> 00:41:31,560 You know, an agent takes a call in a high volume contact center. 572 00:41:31,560 --> 00:41:33,320 They take the call, they talk to you. 573 00:41:34,280 --> 00:41:38,120 When the call is finished, they have what we call a wrap up time. 574 00:41:38,120 --> 00:41:41,720 So type up consequence of the call into the CRM system. 575 00:41:44,360 --> 00:41:46,840 You can control how much time they're allowed to do that. 576 00:41:48,200 --> 00:41:49,240 Are they all fast typers? 577 00:41:51,000 --> 00:41:52,680 Because that's lost time. 578 00:41:52,680 --> 00:41:52,920 Yeah. 579 00:41:53,720 --> 00:41:58,920 So we have contact center operators who set that to zero. 580 00:41:59,720 --> 00:42:01,080 You know, no summary. 581 00:42:01,080 --> 00:42:03,720 Well, you're typing it out while you're taking the next call. 582 00:42:06,520 --> 00:42:12,520 Now you can only do that in certain circumstances because the experience for the end caller. 583 00:42:12,520 --> 00:42:13,400 It can't be very good. 584 00:42:13,400 --> 00:42:14,600 Might not be very good. 585 00:42:14,600 --> 00:42:15,320 Yeah. 586 00:42:15,320 --> 00:42:18,680 But that's what people are driving for, you know, fast throughput. 587 00:42:19,320 --> 00:42:21,720 Get these things, you know, answered. 588 00:42:21,720 --> 00:42:22,600 Move on to the next one. 589 00:42:23,560 --> 00:42:29,240 Do you see, well, okay, so let me ask this. 590 00:42:29,240 --> 00:42:33,160 Do you see what size contact centers are you normally seeing? 591 00:42:33,160 --> 00:42:34,520 And what's the smallest you've seen? 592 00:42:35,560 --> 00:42:37,960 The smallest one we have on our books is one. 593 00:42:37,960 --> 00:42:38,680 One person. 594 00:42:38,680 --> 00:42:39,560 One person. 595 00:42:39,560 --> 00:42:43,080 And that's just the person that also pays the bills and does the whole thing. 596 00:42:43,080 --> 00:42:47,640 Well, it's so generally it's in that instance. 597 00:42:47,640 --> 00:42:49,800 I mean, we have I think we have a dozen of those. 598 00:42:49,800 --> 00:42:50,600 It's not very many. 599 00:42:50,600 --> 00:42:50,760 Yeah. 600 00:42:50,760 --> 00:42:53,720 But we do have a contact center that I've got five. 601 00:42:53,720 --> 00:42:54,280 Okay. 602 00:42:54,280 --> 00:43:00,520 Now that's a contact center whose primary purpose is not providing contact center facilities. 603 00:43:00,520 --> 00:43:05,480 It is to sell cars or to service boilers or to do something else. 604 00:43:05,480 --> 00:43:06,040 Right. 605 00:43:06,040 --> 00:43:10,520 And they've grown to a certain size that a standard phone system is not going to do it for them. 606 00:43:10,520 --> 00:43:10,760 Right. 607 00:43:10,760 --> 00:43:12,280 People down the road, they're going to go. 608 00:43:12,280 --> 00:43:16,200 So they need people that supply service locally. 609 00:43:17,000 --> 00:43:21,480 And one of the beauties of the 8x8 Consert Center is because it's completely 610 00:43:21,480 --> 00:43:23,160 browser based and you can switch it on and off, 611 00:43:23,800 --> 00:43:25,800 you can float those licenses around. 612 00:43:25,800 --> 00:43:27,640 So generally, you know, it's a custom way. 613 00:43:27,640 --> 00:43:32,600 We'd be the 100, 200 employees of which five run the contact center. 614 00:43:32,600 --> 00:43:33,320 Right. 615 00:43:33,320 --> 00:43:36,840 And feed those leads and those service requests never the nails. 616 00:43:36,840 --> 00:43:37,000 Yeah. 617 00:43:37,000 --> 00:43:38,200 The rest of the workforce. 618 00:43:38,200 --> 00:43:42,280 Do we have contact centers or is 8x8 have contact centers where there are no, 619 00:43:42,280 --> 00:43:43,320 there's no one using phone? 620 00:43:47,160 --> 00:43:52,040 We don't, but increasingly we are being requested to provide that. 621 00:43:52,040 --> 00:43:52,520 Interesting. 622 00:43:53,400 --> 00:43:58,840 A digital lonely and that is gaining some traction too in the industry. 623 00:43:58,840 --> 00:43:59,320 Right. 624 00:43:59,320 --> 00:44:02,840 Is just taking interactions via WhatsApp. 625 00:44:02,840 --> 00:44:03,720 Right. 626 00:44:03,720 --> 00:44:04,920 Web chat, this kind of thing. 627 00:44:06,760 --> 00:44:09,640 Yeah, you know, there's a growing trend towards that. 628 00:44:12,680 --> 00:44:18,040 Having phones and a phone system requires you to have a carrier connection, 629 00:44:18,040 --> 00:44:21,240 requires you to have a phone number. 630 00:44:21,240 --> 00:44:21,560 Right. 631 00:44:21,560 --> 00:44:23,480 So you've got provision of phone number and this kind of thing. 632 00:44:24,600 --> 00:44:29,240 So those kind of customers generally, plenty of exceptions, 633 00:44:29,240 --> 00:44:32,920 but that really encourages a kind of pop up contact center. 634 00:44:32,920 --> 00:44:33,320 Right. 635 00:44:33,320 --> 00:44:36,840 You know, we were talking earlier about, you know, a contact center for an event. 636 00:44:38,280 --> 00:44:38,840 And that's great. 637 00:44:38,840 --> 00:44:40,840 You know, it's not so easy to do with a phone number 638 00:44:41,800 --> 00:44:44,760 because the phone number you want to use for lots of channels and lots of things. 639 00:44:44,760 --> 00:44:45,000 Right. 640 00:44:45,000 --> 00:44:45,800 It's still possible. 641 00:44:46,360 --> 00:44:50,200 Calls come in and you divert them to different parts through the IVR. 642 00:44:50,840 --> 00:44:53,560 But yeah, digital only contact center that is. 643 00:44:53,560 --> 00:44:53,800 Yeah. 644 00:44:53,800 --> 00:44:56,760 There's plenty of motion in that. 645 00:44:56,760 --> 00:44:57,160 Yeah. 646 00:44:57,160 --> 00:44:59,800 I think this bird has something to say about that if this is being picked up. 647 00:45:03,080 --> 00:45:03,400 Okay. 648 00:45:03,400 --> 00:45:03,800 Interesting. 649 00:45:03,800 --> 00:45:04,200 Yeah. 650 00:45:04,200 --> 00:45:08,200 So yeah, I think it would be interesting because, you know, I used to be in the music 651 00:45:08,200 --> 00:45:12,360 space, the event space, live events, and we did, you know, we worked with artists, 652 00:45:12,360 --> 00:45:16,600 you know, like Beyonce and Selena Gomez and Adele and, you know, Guns N' Roses. 653 00:45:16,600 --> 00:45:19,560 And we did work with them on tour all across the world. 654 00:45:20,280 --> 00:45:22,920 And so there was always people, we mostly used email. 655 00:45:24,280 --> 00:45:29,480 We weren't super sophisticated in our, you know, support offerings or whatever. 656 00:45:29,480 --> 00:45:34,680 But we did have a phone number and it did have a very basic, you know, PBX and an IVR 657 00:45:34,680 --> 00:45:35,800 to say, who do I go to? 658 00:45:36,520 --> 00:45:40,440 And that was because that was a requirement to accept credit cards for that company. 659 00:45:40,440 --> 00:45:43,160 So we process credit cards on behalf of all these artists. 660 00:45:43,240 --> 00:45:46,840 And so we had to have a phone number in case there's a dispute or whatever. 661 00:45:46,840 --> 00:45:52,280 And it saved us a lot of time and money when people would issue a charge back because a 662 00:45:52,280 --> 00:45:56,520 lot of the times, this is just a sort of tangent, a lot of the times at smaller concerts, 663 00:45:56,520 --> 00:46:00,600 you would find that we'd get a phone call and say, what is this thing? 664 00:46:00,600 --> 00:46:03,400 Like a $30 charge on my credit card. 665 00:46:03,400 --> 00:46:04,360 He said, do you have a son or daughter? 666 00:46:04,360 --> 00:46:04,840 I said, yeah. 667 00:46:05,400 --> 00:46:06,840 And he said, did they go to a concert last night? 668 00:46:06,840 --> 00:46:07,240 Yeah. 669 00:46:07,240 --> 00:46:08,200 Did they come home with a t-shirt? 670 00:46:08,200 --> 00:46:08,600 Yeah. 671 00:46:08,600 --> 00:46:09,320 That was it. 672 00:46:09,320 --> 00:46:11,080 They used your credit card and bought a t-shirt. 673 00:46:11,880 --> 00:46:15,800 And when you were talking about integrations with other systems, there you go. 674 00:46:15,800 --> 00:46:20,120 You know, a point-of-sale system and an inventory system, a purchase history system, 675 00:46:20,760 --> 00:46:22,600 not CRM, yeah, all that kind of stuff. 676 00:46:24,040 --> 00:46:24,200 Yeah. 677 00:46:24,200 --> 00:46:27,560 I mean, when you were saying, what's the smallest, we get, we reach down to that. 678 00:46:27,560 --> 00:46:36,120 But also, generally, our customers much larger concurrency and they're geographically spread. 679 00:46:37,320 --> 00:46:40,920 And that's one of the other things about Contact Center and the phone interaction. 680 00:46:42,040 --> 00:46:47,160 You need a phone system that's geo-redundant, you know, that if you're calling from Australia, 681 00:46:47,720 --> 00:46:49,720 it's not costing you a fortune to phone the US. 682 00:46:49,720 --> 00:46:50,120 Right. 683 00:46:50,120 --> 00:46:56,360 You're phoning an Australian carrier that, and then via the phone system, you're getting to the Asian. 684 00:46:56,360 --> 00:47:03,480 So most, if not all, Contact Centers have to have a very close relationship with a phone vendor. 685 00:47:04,200 --> 00:47:04,600 I see. 686 00:47:04,600 --> 00:47:05,960 8x8, we are the phone vendor. 687 00:47:05,960 --> 00:47:06,520 Right. 688 00:47:06,520 --> 00:47:09,800 You know, that's probably what we're more famous for. 689 00:47:09,800 --> 00:47:10,600 Right. 690 00:47:10,680 --> 00:47:15,800 But in every other Contact Center, they will integrate with a phone system because it's 691 00:47:15,800 --> 00:47:17,000 absolutely key. 692 00:47:17,000 --> 00:47:17,240 Right. 693 00:47:17,960 --> 00:47:24,280 Low cost, high reliability, global comms. 694 00:47:25,160 --> 00:47:25,160 695 00:47:25,160 --> 00:47:28,520 Without that, your Contact Center looks very weak. 696 00:47:28,520 --> 00:47:28,840 Okay. 697 00:47:30,600 --> 00:47:35,480 So what would you say is, if someone wanted to get into this space, 698 00:47:36,440 --> 00:47:40,120 building the software that powers this stuff for the future of the integrations for Contact 699 00:47:40,120 --> 00:47:41,640 Centers, how do they get into it? 700 00:47:41,640 --> 00:47:42,440 What's your phone number? 701 00:47:43,560 --> 00:47:45,000 Oh, you mean if they want to come to work for us? 702 00:47:45,000 --> 00:47:46,120 Oh, for you or for anyone? 703 00:47:46,120 --> 00:47:47,240 Like, how do you get into this space? 704 00:47:47,240 --> 00:47:48,120 Who wouldn't want to work for me? 705 00:47:51,800 --> 00:47:53,800 What if people are genuinely interested in this area? 706 00:47:53,800 --> 00:47:57,240 They'll, you know, you look up the vendors and find out, you know, there's some 707 00:47:57,240 --> 00:48:01,240 based in Silicon Valley, others based, you know, around the world, but... 708 00:48:03,160 --> 00:48:04,520 Do you need a history in... 709 00:48:04,520 --> 00:48:04,840 No. 710 00:48:04,840 --> 00:48:06,680 Do you need to have been an agent, answering phones? 711 00:48:06,680 --> 00:48:07,240 No. 712 00:48:07,320 --> 00:48:10,440 So I, so I joined the company four and a half years ago. 713 00:48:10,440 --> 00:48:12,760 Before that, it was Industrial IoT. 714 00:48:13,640 --> 00:48:16,840 I did nothing about Contact Centers or phone systems for that matter. 715 00:48:16,840 --> 00:48:17,480 Right. 716 00:48:17,480 --> 00:48:19,320 No, I mean, it's a niche industry. 717 00:48:19,320 --> 00:48:19,720 Right. 718 00:48:19,720 --> 00:48:23,480 Yeah, there's thousands and thousands of people in it, and there's millions of people who use the 719 00:48:24,040 --> 00:48:26,520 software, but it's a niche industry. 720 00:48:27,080 --> 00:48:28,440 So they aren't walking the street. 721 00:48:29,000 --> 00:48:31,000 You know, there's, there aren't experts in 722 00:48:33,080 --> 00:48:36,200 Contact Centers for X or Y walking the street. 723 00:48:36,200 --> 00:48:36,600 Right. 724 00:48:36,600 --> 00:48:39,320 You know, so it's fairly specialized. 725 00:48:39,320 --> 00:48:39,960 Right. 726 00:48:39,960 --> 00:48:43,000 So we never expect anybody to have any knowledge. 727 00:48:43,000 --> 00:48:46,280 When they come in, we're looking for good first-class developers. 728 00:48:46,280 --> 00:48:46,520 Right. 729 00:48:46,520 --> 00:48:49,880 Good people, you know, don't have to be a genius. 730 00:48:51,400 --> 00:48:54,280 You know, the stuff that we do is, as you can tell, super interesting. 731 00:48:55,400 --> 00:48:56,280 Well, super interesting. 732 00:48:56,280 --> 00:48:58,920 Well, once you start peeling back, once you start peeling back the onion, 733 00:48:58,920 --> 00:49:00,280 it's actually quite fascinating. 734 00:49:00,280 --> 00:49:00,840 Yeah, it is. 735 00:49:00,840 --> 00:49:02,600 It's more to it than meets the eye. 736 00:49:02,600 --> 00:49:06,280 And as it is in most things, you know, 737 00:49:06,280 --> 00:49:09,880 when the advent of AI and our skills-based and attribute-based 738 00:49:09,880 --> 00:49:12,840 routing, decision-making, and this, it's actually pretty cool. 739 00:49:12,840 --> 00:49:12,840 740 00:49:12,840 --> 00:49:14,200 We're microservice-based. 741 00:49:14,200 --> 00:49:15,880 You know, we're based on the Cloud 8 system. 742 00:49:15,880 --> 00:49:17,800 So it's really cool. 743 00:49:17,800 --> 00:49:21,400 You know, we stand up services, they inject themselves into the process. 744 00:49:22,200 --> 00:49:25,480 You know, we do a delivery of our front-end, automated, 745 00:49:25,480 --> 00:49:27,480 no things on keyboards every single day. 746 00:49:28,440 --> 00:49:30,040 The process is behind that. 747 00:49:30,040 --> 00:49:34,040 You know, when we write code, it comes from a story 748 00:49:34,120 --> 00:49:38,360 or it comes from a JIRA ticket that says makes and changes. 749 00:49:38,360 --> 00:49:39,640 Developer makes the changes. 750 00:49:39,640 --> 00:49:41,880 It gets two guys to agree that they're the right changes. 751 00:49:41,880 --> 00:49:46,040 They go into the code, the QE, and the automation makes sure that it's right. 752 00:49:46,760 --> 00:49:50,120 That gets committed to the master, the branch. 753 00:49:50,120 --> 00:49:51,640 The master gets built every night. 754 00:49:51,640 --> 00:49:52,360 It's evergreen. 755 00:49:53,400 --> 00:49:57,160 And the next morning, it's deployed to production without anybody touching it. 756 00:49:58,040 --> 00:50:01,320 We used to have a big green button that started that process. 757 00:50:01,320 --> 00:50:03,560 Now we have a big red button that stops the process. 758 00:50:04,920 --> 00:50:10,600 So it's a bit like we introduced it on the basis of the newspaper industry. 759 00:50:10,600 --> 00:50:11,160 Right. 760 00:50:11,160 --> 00:50:14,680 Starting in the morning, there's an edited meeting with all the journalists. 761 00:50:14,680 --> 00:50:16,840 So what the hell are we going to put in the paper today? 762 00:50:16,840 --> 00:50:19,240 And then it's a headlong rush to try and fill the paper up. 763 00:50:20,440 --> 00:50:23,880 And it used to be, because it works in the newspaper industry as well, 764 00:50:24,680 --> 00:50:29,800 you get to four o'clock or whatever, the cutoff when the presses have to start running, 765 00:50:29,800 --> 00:50:31,720 when they finish filling up the type setting. 766 00:50:31,720 --> 00:50:37,000 It doesn't matter that there's gaps now, because the paper's got a, 767 00:50:37,000 --> 00:50:38,440 otherwise it can't get distributed. 768 00:50:38,440 --> 00:50:39,240 You don't get anything. 769 00:50:39,240 --> 00:50:40,200 Yeah. 770 00:50:40,200 --> 00:50:44,600 So we introduced that to our CD process. 771 00:50:45,560 --> 00:50:46,760 There's a cutoff. 772 00:50:46,760 --> 00:50:49,080 And what's in, is in, what isn't, isn't in. 773 00:50:49,080 --> 00:50:50,040 You have to wait till tomorrow. 774 00:50:50,040 --> 00:50:50,840 Huh. 775 00:50:50,840 --> 00:50:51,560 That's cool. 776 00:50:51,560 --> 00:50:53,960 And it's, I mean, we've been doing it for over a year. 777 00:50:54,600 --> 00:50:57,880 Now that's all part of making a contact center. 778 00:50:58,840 --> 00:51:03,160 So there's facets of it, which are really modern, really great, 779 00:51:03,160 --> 00:51:06,680 and got nothing really to do much with a, you know, connect an agent to a call. 780 00:51:07,640 --> 00:51:07,960 Yeah. 781 00:51:07,960 --> 00:51:08,280 You know. 782 00:51:09,960 --> 00:51:12,520 What's the most interesting use case of a contact center you've seen? 783 00:51:15,800 --> 00:51:16,600 That's interesting. 784 00:51:16,600 --> 00:51:20,120 Or most impressive, or most, something you never expected. 785 00:51:24,360 --> 00:51:26,280 Supports the obvious one, right? 786 00:51:26,280 --> 00:51:27,560 To me, it supports the obvious one. 787 00:51:27,560 --> 00:51:28,920 Yeah, I think actually. 788 00:51:29,880 --> 00:51:32,920 Oh, we've got contact centers, which use fax. 789 00:51:33,800 --> 00:51:34,680 What? 790 00:51:34,680 --> 00:51:35,000 Fax. 791 00:51:36,040 --> 00:51:37,560 Now we don't, it's not an interaction type. 792 00:51:37,560 --> 00:51:39,160 It's got to be the slow, okay. 793 00:51:39,160 --> 00:51:40,760 I was going to say that's got to be the slowest. 794 00:51:40,760 --> 00:51:43,560 Well, emails, yeah, fax and email, well, email is slower. 795 00:51:43,560 --> 00:51:44,040 Okay. 796 00:51:44,040 --> 00:51:47,080 We've got, we've got whole businesses that don't communicate with their customers, 797 00:51:47,080 --> 00:51:48,520 except for through email. 798 00:51:48,520 --> 00:51:48,920 Wow. 799 00:51:48,920 --> 00:51:49,400 Yeah. 800 00:51:49,400 --> 00:51:52,520 Not very large businesses, book publishers. 801 00:51:53,400 --> 00:51:53,880 Okay. 802 00:51:53,880 --> 00:51:57,160 So that all of their orders come through the system. 803 00:51:57,960 --> 00:51:58,760 Via email. 804 00:51:58,760 --> 00:51:59,080 Okay. 805 00:52:00,520 --> 00:52:02,920 They have no voice interactions at all. 806 00:52:02,920 --> 00:52:05,160 High techs, no, I think just email. 807 00:52:05,160 --> 00:52:05,720 Interesting. 808 00:52:05,720 --> 00:52:06,680 Thousands of them. 809 00:52:06,680 --> 00:52:07,640 Thousands a day. 810 00:52:09,960 --> 00:52:13,400 We have others that are calling out. 811 00:52:16,040 --> 00:52:19,640 So outbound, you know, really tough, really, you know, 812 00:52:19,640 --> 00:52:21,080 aggressive outbound calling. 813 00:52:22,680 --> 00:52:27,320 We have people who offer counseling services 814 00:52:27,320 --> 00:52:29,480 for people who are having mental health issues. 815 00:52:31,400 --> 00:52:32,200 Oh, myriad. 816 00:52:32,200 --> 00:52:33,880 I mean, I, you know, we have ticket sales. 817 00:52:33,880 --> 00:52:35,000 We have airlines. 818 00:52:35,000 --> 00:52:39,240 We have, oh, myriad of different use cases. 819 00:52:39,240 --> 00:52:39,960 Yeah. 820 00:52:39,960 --> 00:52:41,480 I mean, a bike contact center. 821 00:52:43,320 --> 00:52:47,000 It's not a 30,000 concurrent seat type contact center. 822 00:52:47,000 --> 00:52:48,280 It's cloud based. 823 00:52:49,000 --> 00:52:50,120 It's anywhere you like. 824 00:52:51,560 --> 00:52:55,240 Do your work from an airport lounge or from a cafe or whatever. 825 00:52:56,040 --> 00:52:56,680 A beach. 826 00:52:56,680 --> 00:52:57,720 A beach. 827 00:52:59,320 --> 00:52:59,880 From a beach. 828 00:53:03,480 --> 00:53:07,480 With a sweet spot of, you know, a couple of thousand concurrent seats. 829 00:53:10,280 --> 00:53:11,240 Very high value. 830 00:53:12,040 --> 00:53:17,800 Generally customers that are selling something or they're providing a service 831 00:53:17,800 --> 00:53:19,320 that's of high value. 832 00:53:19,320 --> 00:53:20,040 Right. 833 00:53:20,040 --> 00:53:21,000 That's good to know. 834 00:53:21,000 --> 00:53:22,360 Any final words or anything? 835 00:53:22,360 --> 00:53:23,560 Anything, any shout outs? 836 00:53:25,240 --> 00:53:28,040 Family, anyone that, you know, might listen to this podcast? 837 00:53:28,840 --> 00:53:29,320 God, hopefully. 838 00:53:29,320 --> 00:53:30,680 Four million people that subscribe. 839 00:53:30,680 --> 00:53:31,080 Yeah. 840 00:53:31,080 --> 00:53:32,920 I hope nobody, none of my family listens to this. 841 00:53:33,640 --> 00:53:34,200 Are you surprised? 842 00:53:35,880 --> 00:53:37,160 Do you know what the thing about it is? 843 00:53:37,160 --> 00:53:39,000 I've worked in so many different industries. 844 00:53:39,000 --> 00:53:40,280 You know, I started off in defense. 845 00:53:41,160 --> 00:53:45,080 I went to document management, industrial IOT. 846 00:53:45,080 --> 00:53:48,280 I was a consultant for another American company that 847 00:53:49,480 --> 00:53:53,960 sent me to go and work in the oil industry, the newspaper industry. 848 00:53:55,320 --> 00:53:56,600 Legal, you know, a lot. 849 00:53:56,600 --> 00:54:01,480 But what you find is that it's, it's, it's, it's good to say it's sort of the same, 850 00:54:01,480 --> 00:54:02,840 same shit, different that, you know. 851 00:54:04,120 --> 00:54:07,960 But there's sort of constant striving for good quality, good standards. 852 00:54:08,840 --> 00:54:10,600 You find good people at the bottom of it. 853 00:54:11,240 --> 00:54:13,880 And there's no substitute for working with good people. 854 00:54:13,880 --> 00:54:14,200 Yeah. 855 00:54:14,200 --> 00:54:16,680 And I don't mean, you know, wholesomely good, necessarily. 856 00:54:16,680 --> 00:54:17,160 That's nice. 857 00:54:17,160 --> 00:54:19,720 But, you know, I mean, they are, they know what they're doing. 858 00:54:19,720 --> 00:54:19,880 Right. 859 00:54:19,880 --> 00:54:23,080 And it doesn't matter with the green grass straight out of university 860 00:54:23,080 --> 00:54:25,640 or got 40 years of experience. 861 00:54:25,640 --> 00:54:27,400 It's a mindset this game. 862 00:54:27,400 --> 00:54:35,000 And, oh, actually, the one thing you must have is a sense of humor. 863 00:54:35,000 --> 00:54:35,880 A sense of humor. 864 00:54:35,880 --> 00:54:36,600 Jesus Christ. 865 00:54:36,600 --> 00:54:39,480 I mean, you know, you want to live long in IOT. 866 00:54:39,480 --> 00:54:39,720 Yeah. 867 00:54:41,320 --> 00:54:42,520 It can kill you, this stuff. 868 00:54:42,520 --> 00:54:42,920 Yeah. 869 00:54:42,920 --> 00:54:46,120 You know, the disappointment, the anxiety, the stress. 870 00:54:46,120 --> 00:54:46,760 Oh, absolutely. 871 00:54:47,320 --> 00:54:48,440 You never remember the wins. 872 00:54:48,440 --> 00:54:49,480 You always remember the losses. 873 00:54:50,040 --> 00:54:51,560 You've got to have a sense of humor. 874 00:54:51,560 --> 00:54:51,960 Right. 875 00:54:52,040 --> 00:54:54,200 You know, when things are going not very well. 876 00:54:54,200 --> 00:54:54,440 Right. 877 00:54:55,880 --> 00:54:56,440 Get a laugh. 878 00:54:57,480 --> 00:54:58,040 You've got it. 879 00:54:58,680 --> 00:55:01,720 You're going to maintain some sort of sense of perspective. 880 00:55:01,720 --> 00:55:02,280 Yeah. 881 00:55:02,280 --> 00:55:02,840 It's work. 882 00:55:02,840 --> 00:55:04,120 It's not real life. 883 00:55:04,120 --> 00:55:04,680 Right. 884 00:55:04,680 --> 00:55:05,400 Oh, on that note. 885 00:55:05,400 --> 00:55:06,840 Well, thanks for being here, Steve. 886 00:55:06,840 --> 00:55:07,320 I appreciate it. 887 00:55:07,320 --> 00:55:08,120 No worries, mate. 888 00:55:08,120 --> 00:55:08,440 All right. 889 00:55:08,440 --> 00:55:09,000 Nice talking to you. 890 00:55:09,960 --> 00:55:10,440 Hey, everyone. 891 00:55:10,440 --> 00:55:11,080 Thanks for listening. 892 00:55:11,080 --> 00:55:12,600 Hope you enjoyed the episode. 893 00:55:12,600 --> 00:55:14,840 Feel free to subscribe on noob.show. 894 00:55:14,840 --> 00:55:19,960 That's in w-o-b.sh-o-w or on anywhere you listen to your podcasts 895 00:55:19,960 --> 00:55:23,800 on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or anywhere else. 896 00:55:23,800 --> 00:55:24,680 Thanks for listening. 897 00:55:24,680 --> 00:55:25,640 See you next time.