The ActivateCX Podcast

Nextiva's Race to Democratize CX Technology

• Frank Rogers • Season 2 • Episode 24

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Select the Right Contact Center with Arroyo360 https://activateCX.arroyo360.com/activateCXtoday

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As a leader in the customer experience industry, Nextiva and Thrio are coming together to revolutionize the contact center space. With a focus on culture and innovation, they're driven by a vision to democratize CX technology and disrupt the business world. See what's in store for the future of customer experience with this powerful merger.

#cx #contactcenter #ex #ai #merger #nextiva #digital transformation 

Edwin, big news, Thrio, Nextiva , they just merged. What does this mean for the contact center buyer? That's a really big question. And, and I guess the one word that you're probably not anticipating is the word hope. Today's enterprise CX practitioners are, beleaguered. Right. I mean, we had a lot of social and economic upheaval with COVID and dealing with telecommuting and retooling for that. And most companies have not really figured out how to step up to all the challenges in communications and customer experience across the board. So the huge majority of our customers are in fervid anticipation of a whole new Nextiva. One that embraces the idea of overall customer experience management, not just one sliver of the entire CX pie, such as just UCAAS, social management. So their expectation owing to the fact that we have the best overall CX platform in the world, I say, is that we can step up and do this thing and, and help bring customers and teams, together, closer together by connecting conversations. More of a unified platform. Is it AI powered? Of course, but it's this unification that has been really tough. I mean, across the board I think hope is the answer. And incidentally our chief customer success officer, Ken McMahon, a lovely guy, and he's got like 400 support and customer success people reporting to him. It's just massive organization. We're doing a, call down and, introducing him and others to all of the legacy, Thrio customers and so far so good. Everyone's like really psyched and I've not sensed any cynicism. In terms of you guys really going to be able to pull this off. Is this really a good thing? They all, like I said, are in fervent anticipation and very positive. And luckily they also have very nice things to say about Thrio, so with a fellow executive, such as Ken, who is a very well established and very important person it's nice that and no, I didn't pay them ahead of time to say nice things about us. I do believe that hope is not a strategy, but conversely, at the very same time, a strategy without hope is pretty empty. So, I like the, context of hope, If you're communicating to the buyer community out there, what are those compelling reasons that they should be lining up and leaning into the news that comes out and says, hey, here's this merger. What does that mean to them? Well, I'm trying to look at it from the lens of the buyer of the customer. So that's how I'm going to answer. But good question. I mean, well, I think, I'm an enterprise practitioner, right? I'm thinking about can these guys scale? You know, do they have the ability to execute? Right. I mean, you're, like Gartner who kind of looks at things through the lens of the intersection between ability to execute and vision , customers naturally don't need Gartner to tell them that they're thinking it already. Are these guys innovative? Are they the technical horse I want to ride? Are they always innovating? And it's one thing to innovate, but can you actually execute? Can you actually pull it off? Right? So, yeah. So I think it's about scale and the ability to execute. Now in Thrio, we developed that absolute most modern cutting edge CX platform and it outstrips. Anything that I've done or seen for decades. So we kind of have that already. We had to be really careful about who we did business with, what sectors we went into, we specialized on BPOs. We specialized on high transaction complex environments, but we couldn't to everybody. Because we just didn't have enough people to scale, right? Enter Nextiva, so a company with a hundred thousand customers and over a million users and literally hundreds upon hundreds of people in the customer success department alone. Anyway. So, it kind of occurs to me that it's really people that bring that comfort to the platform. I mean, yeah, yeah. You got to have a killer platform, but if you don't, if you're able to service and implement. Train and certify, guide client services. If you, don't have that element, then you're going to leave that customer cold, right? If you think about ultimately, bringing a software application to life, fundamentally there's that early stage of, building a prototype trying to ascertain market fit, get customer feedback, move it into something that's production. Get reliable and then scale it. It sounds to me that what Nextiva offers to you is just a tremendous amount of horsepower to something that you've already proven. Oh yeah. I mean, in fact Thomas Gorney, my boss and CEO of the company, he kind of says it like that. I mean, it's kind of like a P a peanut butter and chocolate thing. You know, he goes, look, Ed, He goes, we're just in love with you guys. You got this great tech platform. You've got great vision. We're aligned. And we can talk a little bit more about that later. But the one thing that he then said that really hit home with me, that made me realize the merger was a really good idea. They bring access to market. You know, they've got the credibility, they've got the staff, hundreds of people in sales, hundreds of people in service, just top notch crew, very creative, vibrant. And it's like, wow. Edwin, you've been in this industry a minute and no doubt you've developed a crystal ball. What do you see are the mega trends? What's driving the industry and your business in particular? Well, there's been somewhat of a, I call it a seismic shift in the way customers interact with brands. In your, the past 20 years, let's say there's been kind of an evolution in terms of the sophistication of the consumer. They now self publish they crowdsource their buying decisions. They are also kind of evolved in terms of the way they communicate modality wise, there's, the separations from a cohort, a generational cohort standpoint in terms of what mode of communication they use, for example, whether it's chat or whether it's email. Or, whether it's phone or WhatsApp. So, this shift has been, , palpable right. So you got that, and then, you got like the confluence of different technologies UCAAS slash PBX collaboration and contact center CX and even platform as a service kind of all kind of getting sucked into this , unified CX black hole. Now, most companies are not up to the task of actually facilitating that, but you can see it coming, right? You can, you can see the train coming. So that's another really important trend having to do a convergence technology and then I reckon, AI and the societal viewpoints and stumbling blocks around AI the ability to execute it well, you take those 3 things that, that seismic shift. In the, attitudes and capabilities of this more savvy consumer, the confluence of all these different technologies, this constellation of collapsing stars, and then, the use of AI, the practical use of AI. Wow. That's kind of like the perfect storm of things going on. Right. Do you think the industry is getting more complex or is it moving towards simplicity? That's an ironic question because in order to make things simple, You have to solve really complex problems,? You've got to unify databases. You have to establish a data lake. You have to have replication of data. You have to be able to contextually link different segments of a journey so that they seem like one journey, so that there's historical context. When you go and search for touch points with customers from a UI standpoint, or even a telephone user empathy standpoint, making everything easy and frictionless. Simplicity is a provocative word, right? Because everyone wants it, but it's very difficult. It's very not simple. To make simple. It's an easy word to say. So I think what will happen is to answer your question with regard simplicity, there's going to be a lot of vendors left behind because you can't do simple in a modern context. If you're using a 25 year old legacy platform that doesn't have the ability to Integrate easily with other components that doesn't have a common database or data dictionary that doesn't have the ability to do full board journey orchestration. I mean, you can't achieve simple with a turn of the century spaghetti code CPE black box. You're not going to get simple. You're going to get a Frankenstein of different systems that are cobbled together that frankly were not made for simple, but rather made for integration, made for feeding that beast of integration. So the idea that all these different technologies. Are points of light that have to collapse into a black hole. That's kind of what we're all about. I mean, we're all about extreme vendor reduction. So if you want to do simple, then it's a big responsibility because you as a vendor, you're stepping up to solving more than one problem. You're not just solving the problem of quality management. And coaching. You're not just solving the problem of a good chat platform. Like, like a live person, you're not just solving the problem, at least in the beginning with sprinkler of mashing up different social accounts into one view, you have to solve for like 18 problems in order to make the results. And that ain't easy. It's not easy and I couldn't agree with you more. I mean, I think it's almost a simpletons mindset to think it's simple because it obfuscates the true problem, which is real complexity. And all this real complexity has come about from radical levels of decentralization. The leveraging of APIs. It's all these remote services. It's these integrations. It is complex. And so I think that that is why, fundamentally, the advent of user stories and really trying to understand at its most basic sense, what is the customer journey that needs to be enacted starting there first? Because fundamentally people go about this all wrong. They, try to boil the ocean. They, they look at features and functionality. So they would look at Thrio. They would look at Nextiva and say, well, what do they offer? Let's have a look at the checklist here. Means nothing because how you do it is how you do it. You just may be a line item that compares to someone else that says there's. inclusion you fit in, but it gives no insight as to how you do it. And even then, even if you knew that, what is the problem you're trying to solve? How are you trying to differentiate your business? And I think that fundamentally, that's where there's this This tension in the marketplace between, who's leading the environment, what fits into the magic quadrant. It's very confusing for the consumer, which is why this conversation is really important because you lead your organization and so it's important to know your understanding. Maybe if we look at this from the standpoint of you've got Existing clients out there that are the Thrio clients and then there are these Nextiva clients and every time, people hear of a merger, there's a little bit of a well done and and then a little bit of a concern because we all know that there are classic issues that come to head let's say, for example, the leadership doesn't agree. The cultures are out of whack. Their service heart. And when I say service heart, it's not just policy and procedure. It's how they think about their customer, their customer centricity, and how they delve into helping their customer when they have a problem because they will. What is it something that you could say to like everybody out there that's part and parcel of this employees, customers that gives them some sense that like there is somebody stearing the ship and that you guys are on the page? Yeah, you're asking all the tough questions. Well, first of all, it's really about, in my view anyway, the intersection of people and machinery. So with an emphasis on people. Now, one of the most endearing things that, that I've discovered about Nextiva. And I know this is going to sound a little bit corny, but it's just a plain fact is that they're absolute immersion into the customer experience. In fact, and this is kind of fun I thought it was crazy at first when I first came on board that Nextiva has a VOC or a voice of the customer function in development, in customer success, in strategic accounts and in support. I mean, everyone is aligned around these. Great possibilities that exist in starting and maintaining a rich discussion with customers. I've never seen anything like it. I mean, the only thing that you could possibly be akin to it would be, Accenture, but then they're in the business of being consultants, right? So, so it's almost like you've got these mini. Consulting agencies inside of each department with an aching desire to get to know the customer better and to understand their problems. So this this shocked me in the beginning, and I'm just I'm just still reeling from it that everyone is aligned around that. So the people aspect is is key. And providing comfort to new customers, existing customers. Now there's further comfort in the fact that, we have this overarching platform that addresses unity across the enterprise. I mean, without a unified solution, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. He froze your back. You're back going there. I'll just let you go back into your flow. Oh, okay. Well, let me, let me, yeah, let me roll back that thought. Okay. So I was, I think I was just saying that, that there's like further comfort beyond the people part where the, The machinery, the platforms, a unified kind of solution the customer experience suffers. If you, if you don't have visibility into all the interactions, you don't have a unified way of reporting on that stuff. You don't have a unified way of, looking at where a customer has been in their journey. And, customers then have to repeat themselves and they don't feel like they're known. They don't feel like they're heard. They don't feel like they're cared for. So employees have to spend extra time looking into various systems. If you don't have a unified platform then it's, really tough to fix that., it kind of damages the relationship, with the conversation. So I reckon that's why, I don't want to be too philosophical, but why our mission Has been at Thrio and also at Nextiva to democratize, customer experience technology so that every kind of company can afford it and we're able to orchestrate the technology based on the use case of that company, whether they're small or whether they're big not just for the knowledge worker with PBX or UCAAS, not just for the agents for a contact center, but sending those tendrils out into field service into retail outlets we're kind of embracing the entire enterprise, not just the knowledge worker. When your companies came together, what did you see from a shared philosophy or vision that gave you pause and gave you, you use the word hope to start off the conversation, gave you hope that this could be something that is very sustainable and palpable to the market? Well me and Rana Zerzer and Rose Sinekroop and Pierre Sancerre Jerry, Holly, the founders Lance Freed, we all kind of came together and met with the business leaders at Nextiva a couple of times. And the first time we got together was in Montreal. And I remembered the Thomas, Thomas Gourney, he brought in like 10 people from all different departments and they laid out for us what their philosophy was, what their approach to the market was. How they define themselves in terms of mission. And it took about five hours to articulate that, to get right down to the finest points of it. And we were all just looking at each other going, wow, this is kind of spooky because a lot of the things that they're saying are, what we believe in. And in fact, I'll share an anecdote with you. Thomas asked me to get up and, and give a pitch on what was Typical investor deck. If I was pitching a VC or, putting money into Thrio, what did I roll out? What did I talk about? What did I evangelize? And so I started with the vision and I said, our vision is to democratize, this heretofore too expensive, too complicated technology, make it simple, make it consumable by anyone, by a small company, by a big company. It's democratization is kind of like the battle cry. That's then he turned over to one of his slides and showed me his slides that we're talking about strategy and that it was the same vision. Even down to the use of the word democratization and big and small. Okay. It was like super spooky. Then he said, well, if you could give me the Harvard business review, success story, strategic alignment pitch, what is your core strategy? And I said, well, our core strategy is to change the ground rules of how to incorporate, customer experience management into the enterprise. It's, the how to do it. And, the approach is meant to be changing the rules, just like Southwest did. By changing the rules of throwing out the seat assignment software, by changing the rules of making sure that the flight attendants provisioned the plane for drinks and, snacks instead of a different crew coming in and then cleaning up the plane instead of a different crew coming in the whole idea being keep the metal in the air so that you can be more efficient and so on and so forth. And Thomas was this is just great. And I love telling this story of it. He goes, wait a minute, wait a minute. He ran over and got his PC came over to where I was sitting because the HDMI cable plugged into the monitor and he plugged his PC in and he went over to his strategy presentation that he shared with Goldman Sachs two years ago, when we raised 200 million and he flipped over to a slide that was essentially the same slide talking about the juxtaposition between Nextiva strategy and that of Southwest airlines. Exactly the way I articulated it and was like, Whoa, talk about synergy. And look at, I've been doing this for over 40 years, like 45 years. Okay. I've been involved in numerous. Mergers and acquisitions and never, ever, ever before. Have I ever been in a situation where the synergy, the philosophy, the mission, the zeitgeist of, of both companies coming together. We're almost exactly the same. Do you think. Maybe this is going to be something that's felt by the consumer, felt by your existing customers in terms of the, for lack of a better word, the assimilation, between the companies that, it's going to be a softer experience. It's going to be more frictionless experience because of that synergy? Yeah, I, I mean, let me put it this way if you interviewed Thomas, which I think would be a great opportunity for you and your listeners here's what he'll say, he'll say this was not a tuck in acquisition. No, we did not acquire this company called Thrio, just to tuck them in, put them on the shelf , as a piece of technology checklist item so that we could, inorganically grow our company. No, no, no, it's not that at all. He even said this in, in all hands to 1400 people. Okay. He said, no, it's a merger. He goes, what Thrio, is bringing to the table is extreme domain expertise in the area, of CX, extreme expertise, decades of expertise, and a really strong platform. And he goes, what we're bringing to the table is just a business machine. We know how to market, we know how to sell, and we know how to care for customers. We know how to onboard them and keep them. Our customers love us. We get the top scores. He goes, we're kind of merging those two things together. We're going to ride the technology horse of Thrio, and migrate some of our other capabilities over to the Thrio platform, because it's more modern and it's, a fuller stack and the customers are going to be able to take advantage of the fact that it's really not an acquisition as much as it is a merger. Now, it's easy to say that, but that's what I'm witnessing, in fact, we have an initiative internally where we're going and interviewing different departments. We're putting cross departmental teams together. It's kind of a culture thing. We're putting cross department teams together to go into certain parts of the company to do full discovery process to figure out where we can inject some of this cool CX technology. So we're drinking our own champagne. So I think that the comfort that the customers get from this is that look at this is not a cynical tuck in just to build revenue or to to build market presence. This is a sincere effort to put two companies together that are really going to move the needle. And I fully believe that.

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Frank Rogers

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