Customer Experience Superheroes - S16 E2 - CX Tech Demo Day

This episode of the Customer Experience Superheroes podcast captures a frank panel discussion recorded at Lexden’s CX Tech Demo Day in October 2025. Believed to be the first event dedicated solely to CX technology, it brought together providers focused on real capability, not surface-level innovation.

The panel features Federico Cesconi (Sandsiv), David Heneghan (CX Index), Keith Fulford (Genesys), Trent Rossini (inCuba) and Agam Kohli (Odigo), hosted by Christopher Brooks from Lexden Group. The discussion is shaped deliberately from a buyer’s perspective, with questions that cut through typical vendor messaging.

Rather than product talk, the panel explores how CX technology should deliver value. How ROI is genuinely measured. Where time savings create the biggest commercial impact. And whether AI can finally drive both efficiency and customer loyalty without compromise.

The conversation also covers how vendors position themselves with clients, the role of cybersecurity as a non-negotiable part of customer care, and how leaders should think about AI as an intelligence layer across the entire customer journey.

If you’re responsible for CX strategy or technology investment, this episode offers clear, grounded perspectives from people working at the sharp end of CX tech decisions.

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:12

Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Customer Experience Superheroes podcast series. Now, this episode is slightly different to our normal format. Why is that? Well, it's going to be a panel discussion that was conducted at the CXTech demo day, hosted by Lexton earlier in October 2025. Why is this significant? Well, we believe this is probably the first CX Tech demo day, a dedicated day to organisations who are supporting their clients to improve their capabilities through enhanced technology solutions. We invited 15 vendors from across the globe, some very familiar household names, some more boutique and specialists. We invited them to come and showcase their capability by demonstrating how to use their systems. It was a great day. We had some wonderful feedback from those who were presenting on the day, as well as those who are there to view what was going on, to help inspire and educate them and their organizations to understand what tech is available and capable in supporting their requirements. Alongside the demonstrations, we also had a couple of panel discussions. And this podcast is going to feature what we heard in those panel discussions. So we had Federico Soni from Stancif, we had David Hennigan from CXIndex, we had Keith Fulford from Genesis, Trent Rossini from Incuba, and Agam Kohley from Odigo. I posed to them some challenging questions, intentionally trying to get sort of the buyer's perspective on what they bring to the table and really test them on sort of the standards that are expected these days and to get a real feel for where they believe Sick Tech is going in the future. I was blown away by their answers. Really interesting to hear what they say. And you could tell from each of them that they're clearly experts in their field. So I really hope you enjoy the discussion. And feel free to add any comments or questions on the back of this podcast because invariably we'll be running more panel discussions. And I'd be really interested in hearing the questions you'd like answered. So without further ado, let's go over to the event now. Trent, from your perspective, how how do you show? Because I guess you know you're actually shining a light on something as opposed to it's a solution. It's a great organizing tool, isn't it, that leads to solutions. So how are you asked to kind of demonstrate um the gains that you you capture?

SPEAKER_01 3:02

I think for anyone that attended the presentation, that's at the core of what we do. Um so the whole objective is actually to measure uh uh in in our terms uh goal achievement or drop-off, and goal achievement is associated with revenue. So we we put that at the core of our methodology and approach. Um we certainly have the view that it's all about the commercial outcome. Um now that's not to say that customer experience doesn't matter. It's to say that if you offer the right components of the customer experience, um, and obviously we all know that a great customer experience leads us to engage with brands more effectively, that ultimately you'll get a good result. The the challenge, and I think um some of the aspects that are somewhat missing in the space often, is that which components actually tangibly lead to an outcome and which one don't is not clear. So I I showed an example in the presentation, um, and it is from one of our actual clients, is product education uh turned out to be significant for one of our clients, um, more so than any other factor. Uh more so, quite frankly, than CSAT. And intuitively that's obvious. So from our point of view, um we both monitor the outcomes that's in our design, our approach, our reporting and our analytics, and then we orchestrate, um, not an aspect that I particularly covered in in detail, we actually orchestrate um on the customer journey, actually nudging people towards a goal point using many of the other technologies that we can interface uh to. So, you know, from our point of view, and and quite frankly, I think it's it's just slowly completely lacking in the CX space at the moment, there just isn't enough focus on outcomes and profitability. And that's why we see so much um in the narrative of the fact that you know people are questioning whether CX programs have have value or not. And I don't think that's because they don't. I think it's because the approach, methodologies, and tools aren't explicit about uh raising that and they land up in in very soft spaces. Um a term I like to use is uh POM-POM-centric uh CX programs where you know you're just not driving outcomes. Um and uh and that you know ultimately leads to the fact that we won't get investment, both as vendors and more importantly as clients, to actually drive these outcomes.

SPEAKER_03 5:18

Yeah, fair point, Trent. Fair point. Um again, but I'll come to you. Uh same question. I mean, how are you being asked to kind of show gains or how do you capture and show gains?

SPEAKER_05 5:27

So I think from our side, we look at it in terms of three pillars. Um, and the three pillars we look at is kind of like you know, the human story around it. So, how is the tech or the solution? Um, how is it helping the agent or the customer? So, you know, there's a story around that. Then we look at the operational story, you know. So, how does the solution then help, you know, the KPIs Keith just discussed in terms of you know your FCRs, your MPSs, etc., and there's a story around that. Um, the thing I do agree with Keith is obviously both of those combined together automatically bring in um that commercial um element and that commercial advantage because if you're doing the first two right, the third automatically sort of comes along with it, and that's where the focus is. So, in answer to the question, is it all just commercial? I think actually it's a balance between all three, uh, because you need to get the first two right to be able to get the third as well.

SPEAKER_03 6:18

Perfect, and I guess there's many stakeholders who have invested interest there as well. Some of the operations people will be looking through the lens of operational KPIs, as you kind of said. How do you capture the kind of the gains you're making for them? What is what is the currency that they're kind of going, yeah, this is the value you bring? And and is that currency just commercial or is it broader than that?

SPEAKER_00 6:36

Oh, you know, it's definitely broader than that. It's um like because it because it's very hard to gauge the ROI of CX. Now we've done a lot of work on it in terms of different projects and trying to calculate it, but then there's all things around culture, and when you add in things like employee retention and all these other factors that are it's it's just extremely hard to calculate. However, if you can uh show value by by you know looking at specific targets and specific elements, it's it's every use case is different and every customer is different, but you can definitely um dive into it in some instances and show that you know, for example, uh certain things like one of our customers, for example, this is this is just one example. We have a uh close the loop functionality whereby if someone has a negative experience, uh they will trigger a uh a case or closing the loop. And in that particular instance, the number of cases went down by 62% in one year. So, what did that mean for the customer? They were able to uh by using the data that we showed them, uh they were able to reduce the number of occurrences of those instances that were causing low feedback by 62%. So that's why, what does that mean? That means that they're removing friction from the customer experience, they're reducing customer effort, the cost to serve customers going down significantly, the number of interactions also goes down as well because these complaints, when they identify them through our platform, they don't recur. So if you actually look at the data that comes through from the customer, the the the insight on the on on the likes of a case management tool, and use that data actually to make improvements, uh, you can see very meaningful improvements. So they're there while when when their um number of cases went down by 62% and their cost to serve the customer went down very significantly, the actual uh net promoter score went up by 30%, and that was all within a 12-month period. So you can get really quantifiable, measurable improvements. Uh, that's just one example. So you just need to figure out what what your outcomes are and start with the outcome at the at the outset. But I'll I'll hand over to Frederico and see if he's got some.

SPEAKER_03 8:40

I just before we do, just you know, so if David, you're enabling that happen, they obviously book the gains that they make because everyone's got to do their piece in it, but you're kind of the catalyst to that, I guess, aren't you?

SPEAKER_00 8:51

Well, I I I wouldn't say I would say we're just in the we're just uh providing a very intuitive, easy to use piece of technology in the middle of the cut. The culture is the most important catalyst, I would say, and it's the company, right? Yeah, so if the company has the appetite to make a change, yeah, we'll make it easy for them, right? So we'll make it easy for them to understand what needs to be done. Uh, and it doesn't work for every company, but if the company has the appetite from the top down, it because it there's also a cultural element and a strategic element in the organization as well. But if if you get the perfect conditions where the company wants to read what the data is telling them, then the outcomes can be phenomenal. And that's uh, you know, and and they're our ideal type of customer. We've got like these guys are these guys is a really high high-end uh retailer in North America, and their NPS is consistently over 80. So like their uh customer experience is really important to them. But like the the actual um it runs the full gamut, though. So we've we've had some really disaster cases as well where their NPS is in the negatives and we and we've seen them jump up into the into the positives. So so it works across the full spectrum. It's just about what the lead what leadership is in pace and what the appetite is around customer experience within an organization at a time.

SPEAKER_06 10:01

Uh yeah, I mean it's actually kind of the purpose of the team I run. Well, it is the purpose of the team I run, is to help customers understand the values. And so how do you capture them? Well, I mean, normally it's kind of three steps or two steps for us at least. It's it's project that game because ever before you can go down that road, you need to project it, you need to build a business case, and then you evaluate that gain. And it all depends on what they're trying to achieve when you align that with business goals and objectives as well. So, how do you capture it? Um, base baseline data they've got today, and using other customers, and we build a large number of calculators and everything else that's consuming other customers, feedback from other customers in their game. And we overlay that on top of the customers' data to help them project or predict what the benefits would be of whatever capability they're rolling in. And then after the event, you obviously I monitor stuff that's basically gets rolled out, and after the event, we go back and we observe what the benefits have been and turn that into a typically a pound sign or a euro sign or that that's pretty much what we do on a day-to-day basis. Um is it only commercial? No, and yes. Uh so invariably some things to begin with are perceived as non-commercial and maybe slightly less tangible, but invariably they in they lead to some sort of tangible benefit. A commercial benefit, whether that's ultimately reduction agent uh churn or increased sales, policy sales, whatever that may be, they ultimately do tie back to a commercial benefit, albeit you can't necessarily recognize or see that too clearly begin with.

SPEAKER_03 11:34

Brilliant, Keith. Thank you for that. And thankfully, honesty at the end, they're like the no yes rather than the yes no. It's a good I get that. And and uh I'm doing it on some rotational basis. So, Trent, I'll come back to you now. So, um, what's what's your perspective? Where is the biggest lift coming at the moment? Where are you seeing the the huge impact that organizations are getting from CX technology?

SPEAKER_01 11:53

I guess that you know that there are broadly two approaches that you can um use to move customers along. Uh, the one is obviously offer a better experience, and and there's value in that. Um, as I said earlier, uh, I think there's a lot of value in understanding where the issues are and then bringing about systemic effects. One of the aspects that I think is is dramatically underplayed and underappreciated is the inertia that exists in customers. So uh for a customer, they're busy with their lives. Um, you know, they're fetching the kids and uh they're attending the soccer matches and they're going to the pub, they're doing all the things that they do in their lives. Um, interspersed within their lives are activities related to the services that you know many of the uh participants are are offering today. So if you're at a telco insurance company, a retail company, a travel company. So you've got to bring together uh the customer's life with the offering. And this sort of notion that the customer um will engage and bring that point uh that particular service to conclusion, you know, we just haven't seen that. So what happens is you're often engaging on many fronts and you're trying to keep your focus as a consumer in those fronts. So what you have to do in turn as a provider of service is you have to engage the customer. You have to understand the context and you have to nudge them along. You know, obviously we've got tremendous developments and a lot of exciting work happening uh in the context of uh agents and lots of personalization. And that is certainly valuable. But again, I think one of the things that's really missing is getting timing right, understanding how and when to engage, when it's appropriate, when there hasn't been action, and also understanding the degree and nature of engagement. So should I just send somebody additional uh little notes, or maybe this person is completely confused, they don't understand the product offering, they need an in-depth conversation, um, they need a two-hour conversation, they need some emotional hand holding. So understanding the customer context and knowing how to engage along the customer journey ultimately changes their behavior and drives those outcomes and allows the service providers that we work with to get a far better result, all centered on, again, to my previous comment, all centered on this notion that you are driving definitive outcomes that are good for the business. And the the convergence point is where you're solving uh the you know the job to be done for the consumer, uh, and at the same time you're aligning that to the goal of the organization providing that service. And when you bring those two together, that's where you get very successful companies.

SPEAKER_05 14:25

So I think there's obviously a lot out there, and I agree with what Trent says, right, that um sometimes it is about product education, right? Because you know, if you take AI as an example, and I'm not gonna go down that road just now, but there's a lot of FUD in that space. A lot of people think a lot of different things in terms of what it does and what it can do. I think ultimately what we're looking to do from a CX point of view and an efficiency point of view, um, it leads to kind of one thing, which is time efficiency. So whether you're saving time in terms of handling interactions from an operational and agent perspective, or whether you're saving the customer time to kind of get to what they need in terms of that, you know, first call resolution or first interaction resolution. Um ultimately they're all coming down to sort of what we see as time efficiency, and that in itself then leads to um saving in terms of money and its own ROI. So that's the way we kind of then uh approach it.

SPEAKER_03 15:19

And uh David, to you then in terms of where does tech deliver the biggest lift in CX at the moment, what's your perspective on this?

SPEAKER_00 15:25

Yeah, I I think I I agree very much with Federico in terms of it's it's it's not necessarily it's not about the tech, or to paraphrase Lance Armstrong, it's not about the bike. Obviously, the tech is important, right? But the culture is so critical. CX and VOC, it's one of those areas where you need to have a lot of things working together and to make a big difference in terms of making meaningful improvements. But one of the things I will say is that the the likes of Frederico and me and our companies are really well positioned to actually, you know, we're in the middle of this AI boom and there's all sorts of great things happening, but I know anecdotally that some of the larger incumbents are struggling to get their hands around it because they're so large and it's such a big job of heavy lifting. Whereas the smaller players like uh Sansiv and CX Inix have the capability to be a lot more agile and responsive in terms of meeting this new um wave of AI. So we're we're doing some really cool stuff, and I've seen Sansdover doing some cool stuff as well. It's just I just think there's a really good opportunity for smaller companies as opposed to to to to to sort of um you know flex their muscles a bit because we don't need as many people to do the work anymore, and uh it's it we're we're not we're we're we're not as inefficient in that sense, and there's a really good opportunity for companies in our space at the moment uh to grow. So I would say it's not just about the tech, it's about what about what are the circumstances around the tech. So it's the culture that's in the organization, but also what's the actual tech company, what what what are they like? Are they agile enough to be able to deliver it? And you know, are you going to be able to respond to your customers? So it's there's a number of things that that the the in terms of the environmental, the environment in which the tech has been created that will determine whether it's a success or not. I think there's a lot of you know, we we can all accept that there's a bit of commodification happening with a lot of this technology, so you know, it's about how you do it and the circumstances with what you how you leverage it. So uh a lot of the stuff that will be done with LLMs is a literally just a skin on top of it, and there'll be fees ultimately Nvidia are gonna make a lot of money from it. So so you know, it's just about who who's who's able to package it well enough and and deliver value from that.

SPEAKER_03 17:42

We've heard that Keith, kind of nudging nudging behavior and and time efficiencies being two areas you get the biggest lift. What's your take on things?

SPEAKER_06 17:49

Well, uh it it actually depends. That's never a clear answer on this. Uh it depends on the organization, the vertical room, what they're trying to achieve. But ultimately, if you look at what's driving customer experience, if you look at the two ends of that model or two ends of what that looks like, you've got for an organization focused on CX, you've got loyalty that they want to grow from CX, which is ultimately what they do, what they want to do, and why do they want to do that? That's about driving growth. And then the other side, operational efficiency. And if you look at balancing those well, um the the predominant of benefits are coming from, and I hate to use this, sorry, I gamp AI-driven capabilities that is helping to actually drive that and change that. But on both ends, you know, you're in a situation where now you don't have to sacrifice CX for operation efficiency, you can deliver both. So for me, I think that is probably the biggest differential benefit now because you can do the both whereas historically you kind of maybe have to sacrifice one to the other to want to drive it to the CX, that would have a potentially an operational cost or uh uh cost on you, and that isn't the case anymore. And I think that's the biggest change. So organizations historically would be driven up with efficiencies that can now really drive their way forward on improving CX, which drives loyalty ultimately and more sales at the end of the day.

SPEAKER_03 19:10

Thank you, Kevin. I mean, really, really clear. Thank you ever so much. Where do you think technology, custom experience technology, is getting the the biggest lift for clients now? Where where are they employing it most kind of you know, effectively or or even sort of um most overtly, where do you see the spend going and clients kind of saying this is where we need CX Tech to help us? I'll come to you first, Federico, on this one.

SPEAKER_02 19:34

Well, that is an easy question because if you address your technology with EI today, you are you are sure that you can get uh you know the budget, but uh in my opinion, is uh it's just it's just a buzzword, you know. Uh when uh when uh basically I I'm I mean I used to do machine learning uh at the end of the 90s, and we were considered just crazy guys that uh we know nowhere. You know, now to be in that field, uh you are really you know kind of uh you see the the billions that they are around in Silicon Valley about people that work in uh in this area. But uh to me, what is important is start always from the customer experience and then understand what kind of technology you have uh you know to use to support the the customer experience. And it's exactly the same uh uh for for the artificial intelligence projects that are around now. You know, there are people that just start a project because it's sexy to start this this project, and then they fail because they they never consider the human aspect, they never consider what kind of problems they want to solve uh to the people. So um in my opinion, uh of course, serving the customer, making uh uh you know, make life easier for uh for uh for the customers is is an important area, and and uh and uh you know uh companies are spending in that area, but uh uh for me what is important is not just the technology that can solve you know a problem. At the end of the day, is is a mix of technology, people, processes, and strategy you have uh you have in place, and and you have really uh uh to work to work on that. So at the moment we are really in a crazy bubble where uh you know they just spend money uh really focusing on uh on a technology, but um, I think it it it won't last for uh for a long time because uh you know they they need to prove at the end the return of investment, as we said before.

SPEAKER_03 21:52

But from your perspective, it's enduring, Federico. You need to still stick with that North Star, which is what is the experience that you want your Customers to have and what are the problems you're trying to solve for them, and then work out where you place the impact.

SPEAKER_02 22:06

Yeah, but uh Christopher, also, you know, when we say what kind of experience we want to offer to our customers, I always say it doesn't depend from you know, someone uh say uh the customer experience strategy. In my opinion, it doesn't exist in customer experience strategy. There is the strategy of the company that then influences the customer experience. So I always say you cannot be Singapore Airlines and EasyJet at the same time, it doesn't work, you know.

SPEAKER_03 22:34

Sure, absolutely. Fair point. Um, Trent, I'll come back to you next. So, you know, three perspectives there. Are you strategic advisors? Are you sort of you know de-risking their business or are you there driving cost efficiencies? How do you present yourself or how do clients perceive their relationship with you?

SPEAKER_01 22:51

I don't think we fit into any of those categories, and uh maybe I'll just choose uh an alternative one. Um I think our engagements with our our clients is is really around in the context of helping them drive customer behavior. So this whole idea of saying as an organization, you want to drive certain behavioral outcomes. Um now, those behavioral outcomes might actually fit back into those two buckets that you spoke about because you can drive behavioral outcomes that ultimately get people to use more efficient uh channels, we can get them to uh buy more, uh, you can get them to stay uh longer. Um, I think the the key point probably that I do want to home in on uh that is super important is as tech providers, no one's really interested in our features and functions of our technology. Um that's generally what we've seen. So, where you need to home in is you need to actually understand the context of the customer, the corporate customer that is, that I'm talking about. And based on that, you need to solution fit um your features and functions to that particular need. And I think, you know, uh, I don't want to be uh too dramatic about the strategic importance that we play with our customers. What we do do is we spend a lot of time understanding what the business outcomes are that they want to drive, and then we support that through, as I said earlier, uh through technologies, through methodology, through professional services to achieve that business outcome. And inherent in our methodology and our teams, we we're very focused on making sure that we actually realize those business outcomes. So the the objective of the project is not to go live, because quite frankly, that there's no value in that. The objective is to operate a service that gives an outcome that's defined at the start of the project, and hopefully that outcome is related to a bottom line, uh, bottom line impact. Sometimes it is uh it does have cost efficiency. Sometimes it's got to do with the fact that customers' behavior that I spoke about leads them to stay with that organization longer. Hopefully, uh it's also there are going to be occasions at which um it's gonna get them to buy more. In our context, our key focus is thinking about customer behavior and all of the elements that need to come together to drive that end customer behavior. And again, the the organizations we deal with, I mean, they're experts in insurance, they're experts in banking, they're experts in uh retail. We're not. Um we we have a good sense of those industries. But what we do do is we're very engaged in terms of how to do customer journey management. And we've seen it across different industries, and I think you know, hopefully we add some value in that context is bring that perspective domain expertise uh to the table and therefore assist uh some of our clients or or hopefully all of our clients in achieving their goals and helping them. Now, ultimately, the question that I think any vendor should ask is are you helping your clients achieve their bonus? Um and and understanding that's super important.

SPEAKER_03 25:42

Very good, very good. Okay, so uh what one more question. This one's um uh been bubbling away, and what's really interesting, I think it was engage customer. There's an event last week, and the conversations moved from how do you develop AI to the mess we're making, implementing AI? And of course, it was fine until us humans got involved again, wasn't it? If we just throw that away, it would have been fine. But just so so my take, my question is um, how are we framing AI in the role of CX Tech? I mean, is it an enabler for something we're gonna do anyway? Is it accelerating what we're trying to achieve? Is it the game changer? Is it a new paradigm we're working towards? Is it as I heard someone describe, it's just like welcoming a new colleague with new skills, or is it a better version than all of us put together? I mean, just how big, how important, how impactful, how do you frame it? So uh Keith, I'll I'll I'll leave you to last because then we can take that conversation into your uh your presentation if that's okay. So I'm gonna come to you first on it then.

SPEAKER_05 26:45

So Chris, I agree with everything you're gonna say. I was gonna say that, you know, this is my own opinion, by the way. Um actually, you've got to think of um AI as a friend with superpowers on steroids. Thinking of it, thinking of it as uh as a point solution to you know solve one bit of something or another bit of something else isn't the right way to look at things. Um the way I think of it is it's it's an intelligence layer um that kind of sits across every customer touch point. Um and it allows you to kind of sense and recognize patterns and allows you, you know, an organization to react and learn in real time um to then be able to obviously do what needs to be done to kind of um you know be predictive in terms of what needs to be done. Gone is the age of where you know you have to wait for things to happen before you act. I think it's all about um being able to do or take a decision in the now.

SPEAKER_03 27:39

Brilliant, brilliant, excellent. A really pragmatic approach there, and I guess that's born of you know, you're working with this on a day-to-day basis, so uh you can see the the fame and the fear that's kind of involved with it. So great, thanks ever so much there. How do you see your role with clients? You do you see yourself as uh strategic enablers of growth? Um, do you see yourselves as you know, we're talking about you know, it's a crazy world where it's time, there's a lot of uncertainty. Do you bring a bit of stability to that? Or or at the end of the day, you know, are we there, you know, as transactors driving cost efficiencies as that's always going to be a requirement by the organization? So so how how does CX Index try and position themselves with clients, David?

SPEAKER_00 28:21

Yeah, I suppose you know what? Like, I suppose we're relatively small compared to the like let's say a Qualtrics and Modalli, who are the largest, larger companies in the space. But like what we do is we we we go end-to-end with our customers. Like, so we take on a role of strategic consultant to an extent as well. And I know that's a lot of the work of you do, but it just so happens that we we we get really involved in what the customer wants in terms of their outcomes, in terms of how they're gonna set up their VOC program. And we we provide really, really strong advice. I think you know, we we kind of are really good at the advice piece when it in terms of getting them off the races, but then beyond that, they'll need hand holding. And that's what I think you know, the likes of Lexton can come in and really deliver superlative levels of value. Uh, it's it's kind of from from our perspective, um, we we really try to sort of deliver value in terms of um we we we we buy into the whole story, so not just providing the technology, it's also about providing um the consulting piece. Not that it's not a core part of our offer, but it just so happens that a lot of the customers we come across have never done a VOC program before and they need advice on how to get up and running, and we're very good at that piece, but I I I still see ourselves primarily as a purely a technology company, and we don't make revenue out of the consulting piece. It's more just we want to make sure people get set up properly and don't make city mistakes.

SPEAKER_03 29:41

I was at a I was at an event last week, and the CEO of NFU Mutual was saying that what they look for from third parties is to is to understand the journey they are on, and exactly as you're saying there, David, get invested in what we're about and our purpose, because then you can really help my organization. And I that's exactly what you're saying there, is you know, your you know, that agility, that call it boutique, whatever you have to describe it, affords you the opportunity to say, I can get invested with this client, I can understand their journey on. So I can appreciate what happens with that is you then get asked to use your utilize your skills and services beyond the core competency of the technology. There'll be other is you become a trusted agent.

SPEAKER_00 30:23

There is that. And one thing a good analogy I like to make is you know, um, if you were to look at the larger incumbents, you could say that they're like off the rack like Nike or Adidas, whereas we're more like hook couture, it's more like you know, it's really like we get into the nitty-gritty with the guys in terms of it's more and but for but for the largely around the same same cost and same price, it's like you get a really sort of uh tailored sort of feel. And look, even as a cloud-based product, but we really go to the end degree. I don't know what your experience of that is, Frederico, but that's mine in terms of I I try to differentiate not only with the technology, but with the the counselling and advice we do as we get customers on board it.

SPEAKER_03 31:01

Um, and and just a couple of times we mentioned there about you dealing with the robustness and the trust. A lot of this has still got to do with you know the human interaction, you you as teams dealing with the clients and the prospects. So, you know, when you present yourself, how how do you how do you see yourself with your your clients? Do you see yourself as a a strategic enabler of their growth? Uh, you know, we're talking about uncertain times. I mean, Agam earlier was talking about you know the geopolitical landscape impact in decision making. Do you see yourself providing stability in an uncertain era? Or as one of the things we said, you know, is clients are still looking for, are you there to drive cost efficiencies? What what is what is the role that the you know you and your organization have with your clients? Keith, I'll come to you first on this, if I may.

SPEAKER_06 31:48

It it depend I keep using this word, it depends. It depends on the client and what their goals and objectives. And we are a global organization, so it depends where they are, of course, and their personal or their their individual situation. And so when you're looking at an organization or looking at growth, you are assisting or enabling that growth or helping to enable that growth. Uh, equally, if you've got an organization that's really focused on um actually operational efficiency, play that role in terms of how you actually help them do that. And where we are now is actually doing both of what we possibly can. So it really depends on the customer, their location, of course, and where they are on the journey of the company's an organization themselves. And from a perspective of um an agent in reality, you are a colleague, you're using the capability and tools to help them do their day-to-day job. All of those things. So it it and the question as to whether that's a better solution or not, or ultimately it could be it again, it depends on the outcomes of the delivery. So I kind of trying to point out as well. It's sort of dependent heavily dependent on the outcomes you're delivering too. So not a clear answer because I don't think it is a clear answer.

SPEAKER_03 33:02

Thank you very much, Keith. How do you position yourself with clients?

SPEAKER_02 33:06

No, the the position of ourselves is more on a uh let's say technology companies, but really focus on uh uh you know the analytics parts, because that was always uh, let's say our uh um Unixelling proposition in the market, you know, with with the new product that really focused just on analytics, we are acquiring uh uh customer of our big competitors as David mentioned before, Qualtrics and Medallia, because we are really good in doing that piece of uh you know the the whole journey. Before uh we had really uh and we still have the end-to-end platform, but uh um you know competing, uh competing with the big giants uh uh is uh is difficult. So you you need you really need to find uh uh your space. And uh we think we we found our space uh in the analytics part. What what we provide uh in terms of value is uh for sure a kind of strategic support, because at the end, uh you know um the actionable insights that comes out give uh uh uh strategic uh you know indications. And on the other hand, uh we are really we are really focusing on uh uh generating prediction over you know the single customers in at in terms that we can we can also uh provide uh and show the value of uh of the solution and the return of investment.

SPEAKER_03 34:39

Brilliant, brilliant. So Trent, we hear about you know it's complex, but you've got to keep it simple for the customer. And as Keith said, it's kind of number one on the on the development list. So where does it fit in for you?

SPEAKER_01 34:50

So the dynamics are quite interesting between um people sharing information, trust, and the desire for personalization, but uh the desire for confidentiality. And often there's a sense that these things are pulling in often in opposite directions. So everybody wants a personalized experience. Um, you know, it kind of takes us back to uh the corner grocery store where the person understood you and understood your context. And in that world, um you engaged with a particular individual and they knew a lot about you. You know, in a similar way, I think consumers want personalized offers, they want personalized engagement, they want um the organizations that they're dealing with to recognize them as individuals in their context and their problem and their background and their engagement. And we all get very frustrated when organizations don't do that. The counter to that, obviously, is that implies that there's a tremendous amount of personalized information, and that information needs to be protected, and there has to be a sense of trust. Just in the same way that you engaged with the corner grocer many years ago, and you trust that the grocer would keep that information um confidential. You trust the hopefully the brands that you're dealing with to do the same. So uh customers share that personalized context as a function of the trust in the brand. Now, for many of us, you know, we reliant on big tech, um, uh Microsoft, Amazon, uh, Google. There's a lot of those security frameworks are uh developed by uh big tech. And I think you know, obviously, as vendors in the space, we have to be uh adopting the right uh approaches. We need to be building it into our technologies, um, and they have to be super secure. Um, you know, I mean we simply won't get business, none of us as vendors will get business without that level of security, and every one of us is subject to um any number of um cybersecurity reviews as we offer services, and and obviously there's a check and balance to see that we comply with things like uh GDPR. So I don't think we've got much choice in the space. I I do think that it is super important because it's not only you know a key requirement, a legislative um uh uh uh uh requirement uh and uh a entry uh into the game, but it's something that ultimately will make sure that your engagement with the customer is more effective because if they trust you, if they trust the brand, uh they're more likely to share information. And I think there's a virtuous circle inherent in that, and you can't be on the wrong side of it.

SPEAKER_03 37:23

Brilliant. Thank you, Chair. I think uh great response to that one. I mean, it's so critical, and I think you know uh you you've all demonstrated that the seriousness and the responsibility is embedded into the fabric of your organization. So it's really rewarding to hear. We've got a question, I've got to finish with, so I'll come back to that specifically. But uh just jumping back, um, I was at an event uh last week where the uh directors of procurement were saying the only thing on the agenda is uh cyber risk. So I want to know kind of you know, this is not so much about your solution capability, but this is just an understanding in terms of um where does this fit into the role of a CX vendor? How does this fit into how you present yourself in the way that you conduct yourself, how your your maybe it is how your systems are orchestrated? So uh as I'm changing the order each time and coming to you, Agam first on this one.

SPEAKER_05 38:13

Yeah, no problem at all. So I think at least from an Odigo perspective, strategically, we've looked at um you know cybersecurity not just as uh another part of CX, but more as a fundamental expression of how we look after our customers, so customer care. Um so what we try and do is obviously you know, we know our clients, our customers, and their clients um need to know that their data is safe, and security is kind of like a non-negotiable at the moment um with Odigo. Um so our jobs as a vendor is to effectively integrate um what we call security workflows within customer experience. Now, that can obviously take two forms. One is obviously, you know, everything that everyone does from a CX perspective, there's obviously two-factor authentication, resetting passwords, etc. So one element of it from a CX perspective is to kind of simplify those processes to make it easier for end customers, to make it easier to kind of deal with the security that is now required for all of that data protection and required to enable um what you need from a cybersecurity perspective. Um and the other bit is obviously you know, still make sure that from a platform from a back-end point of view, the security is robust. So, you know, things are nailed down to tight and shut. And obviously that then depends in terms of um what you then do for end customers in terms of you know whether you offer them sort of private data center solutions or in public cloud stuff like that, right? So um we try, I wouldn't say try fit, uh have a fit for everyone, but at least from a security perspective, make sure that you know all angles are are covered. So it kind of fits into the fundamental pillar of what we now do as part of our customer engagement.

SPEAKER_03 39:51

David, from from your perspective, how where does this fit into CX, the topic of cybersecurity?

SPEAKER_00 39:57

Yeah, like it's just a hugely important uh part of our business now, and it always has been. We were very fortunate when we started the business. Uh, we our office was next door to uh a global leading uh authority on information security. So he drilled it into us from a very early phase that it how the importance of information security, and we're going back over a decade now, but you know, um, you know, we obviously have the ISO certification going back uh since 2018, 2017, and you know, we maintain that, and but we we just see it everywhere, like and obviously uh just like Francesca, it's it's like it's the type, it's the part of the business that kind of like you know, I'm not gonna lie to you. I've no interest in it in terms of it's a it's really it's like a tax on doing business, but you have to take it very seriously, you have to be really um you know on on alert about it. Um, there's no such thing as best practice with information security because things are changing all the time. So we've got a full-time, like sorry, a CISO uh in our organization who's like from a turn on security company and he works with us just to make sure where our practices are maintained. And we we we we wouldn't have the enterprise the same. We work with the enterprise as well, and you just don't get enterprise customers without enterprise security. So it's a cost to doing business, and it's one of those things that you have to maintain. And obviously, you don't want to have a situation where anything happens on your watch, so you just have to be vigilant because the damage that could be done if you're not if you're not playing ball and doing stuff correctly with API pen tests, app pen tests, all this type of stuff, if you don't have your stuff locked in, the risks out there are tremendous, and it could be you know it could really damage your business. So we we take it incredibly seriously, but it's a total pain, but you have to deal with it.

SPEAKER_03 41:40

Yeah, I I I take that expression kind of you know, a tax, uh, a tax on the business that you know you've got to do, but it's a sort of thing, I guess, when you don't pay taxes and you get caught out. So it's yeah, it's a it's a permission, a permission to trade, isn't it? It's in the essential bucket, it's not optional, and the the levels of security and protection will will invariably increase um as uh as does the uh the the complexity of of of digital. Um so Keith, we've heard there from a customer facing perspective how you can help customers navigate through what needs to be high levels of security, but also internally making sure the infrastructure is robust and uh and tight. I mean, from your perspective, how does it fit into CX?

SPEAKER_06 42:22

Gosh, it's pivotal to CX, really. Um I'm with a again completely on that. Certainly when we develop anything that actually starts with security, it's our number one priority. Uh, because the implications and security is a bit of a weird one, right? Cybersecurity is a bit of a weird one. It only the value in it is only seen when it goes wrong, not when it goes right. And the implications of it going wrong are brand reputational damage, uh regulatory compliance failures, gosh, resilience and continuity as well. It actually kind of has a has an impact on all of the above. But I think the key point is from a CX perspective is to make it seem to the end customer. It's a hidden thing. And so making obviously making it ultra ultra secure, but then hiding the complexity and hiding all that horribleness, if you like, or the complexity behind that uh and taking away, keep it away from the customer.

SPEAKER_03 43:15

Thank you, thank you, Pete. Now, one of the the topics that's come up a couple of times today, and was again at this event last week, I was told it was the number one was uh cybersecurity and and and you know risk, um, the potential threat to to all companies in the UK we've been hit very hard, and you know, kind of what surfacing is it's you know, it's quite often it's third-party uh risk assessments that are identifying there was you know vulnerabilities. So uh how does that, how does this topic fit in with customer experience and and how how much does it impact the way in which you you operate, say Federal Rico? How does it affect you, uh Sansif?

SPEAKER_02 43:52

Well, uh that is an extremely important topic. It was always uh an important topic. So um in our case, uh uh you know we we we start from the beginning to serve just the enterprise uh uh segment and uh um you know we have to do all the ISO certification the SOCU certification etc we need to provide to our client every six months if I'm not wrong a pen uh pen test uh to show us uh you know that uh we we can assure uh that uh everything is in control i would I would add one more uh um you know not not really small uh element uh in the question because uh at the end of the day um the way generative I is used today in in the in the companies uh expose the company to big risks because what is happening is happening that uh you know the individual that you know take the solution by itself and and probably no one in the company knows that you are running chat gpt or cloud or whatever you want and no one understands uh understands the risks uh connected to that uh there is a big reason why you know on uh the the adaption uh in terms of individual uh is faster than the adaption uh in the company and and and the reason is really this this big risk so this is the other aspect uh uh where we have worked uh a lot in terms of you know providing guardrails to the models uh that we use uh be sure that we follow a certain governance uh in the data and uh in in the way other other things are for instance you know european customers or Swiss customers that doesn't want the data uh you know to leave the country or to leave Europe so you need also uh to pay attention to that thanks thanks god there are a lot of uh you know uh several options we we were uh laughing before with David uh uh uh you know saying okay uh you know every morning you wake up and there is something news uh in uh in artificial intelligence but uh sometimes it's positive because for instance now you have all these very nice local models that you can deploy local and you can avoid to have uh you know those uh those threats uh related to um hacking uh and and things like that but definitely is is a big uh uh big topic uh Christopher yeah thank you and really reassuring kind of you know the the importance you should say it's always been there and trem from from your perspective obviously you're working with AI in a very specific way but uh how how are you kind of framing AI in CX?

SPEAKER_01 46:48

The analogy I like to think about is is really one of saying what would you do if you had a thousand graduates um that had zero training um but lots of intelligence um and I think that's kind of really what we've got here so when you think about customer experience um and you think about a person going along the customer journey you know in the past we often got feedback of saying well we've got all this feedback and it's kind of interesting we understand where customers are at different points in the customer journey um but they need help. Now having thousands of uh people in a contact center to reach out and help those people is quite difficult. Maybe not difficult, it's certainly uh expensive. With um agentic and AI capabilities what you're able to do is you're actually able to use agents to engage with people, taking the very specific context of the customer and offering them very specific advice at that point. So it's all about understanding where they are in the customer journey and then using all of that context which you know ultimately these um uh very knowledgeable um to be trained agents um or the equivalent of a graduate is able to do so ultimately what you can do is you can actually assign an agent per customer. So think of it as having a personal helper that's sitting in the background helping you uh submit your claim into an organization, uh get your policy updated um help you with your banking. And the the beautiful thing about um the AI technology is it can digest this vast amount of data and then personalize a response that's very specific to the individual at a speed and an uh and a cost or certainly a speed much higher than um an individual can do and a cost much lower uh than a a human can do in the same situation. And we're appropriate obviously working in tandem with uh individuals because there are certain instances um if you think about healthcare for argument's sake um that just you can pretend to be empathetic uh through things like AI agents but you know everyone will see through that it's just nothing like the human voice to engage with someone uh when someone for argument's sake has the joy of having a new birth or has the um the desperation of discovering that they have a chronic condition that they have to deal with. So you know there what you want to do is you want to actually avoid uh overuse I think of um of technology but you know often um there's an expectation when you when you're dealing with somebody in a traumatic situation that the person at least understands your context and you can help inform people um uh the humans that are going to be engaging with people that need help you can help uh inform them of the context so that ultimately they can be more empathetic and spend uh less time on on administration that's a really good point you make there I mean will it be normalized at some point?

SPEAKER_03 49:37

I mean we used to have a CEO who was the chief electrical officer because people didn't know what to do with electricity. You know someone to say we can work late oh we never thought about doing that before so you know it seems crazy to us now but they were business decisions that had to be made. Okay so uh what one more question and this one's um uh been bubbling away what's really interesting I think it was engage customer there's an event last week and the conversations moved from how do you develop AI to the mess we're making implementing AI and of course it was fine until us humans got involved again wasn't it for just we just throw that away would have been fine but so so my take my question is um how are we framing AI in the role of a CX tech? I mean is it an an enabler for something we're going to do anyway is it accelerating what we're trying to achieve is it the game changer is is it a new paradigm we're working towards is it as I heard someone describe it's just like welcoming a a new colleague with new skills or is it a better version than all of us put together I mean just how big how important how impactful how do you frame it so uh Keith I'll I'll I'll leave you to last because then we can take that conversation into your uh your presentation if that's okay. So I can come to you first on it then.

SPEAKER_05 50:51

So Chris I agree with everything you're gonna say I was going to say that you know this is my own opinion by the way um actually you've got to think of um ai as a friend with superpowers on steroids thinking of it thinking of it as a as a point solution to you know solve one bit of something or another bit of something else isn't the right way to look at things. The way I think of it is it's it's an intelligence layer um that kind of sits across every customer touch point. And it allows you to kind of sense and recognize patterns and allows you you know an organization to react and learn in real time um to then be able to obviously do what needs to be done to kind of um you know be predictive in terms of what needs to be done. Gone is the age of where you know you have to wait for things to happen before you act.

SPEAKER_03 51:38

I think it's all about um being able to do or take a decision in the now brilliant brilliant excellent a really pragmatic approach there and I guess that's born of you know you're working with this on a day-to-day basis so uh you can see the the fame and the fear that's kind of involved with it. So great thanks ever so much there. Maybe what's your take on this?

SPEAKER_00 52:00

Yeah so each of the points you made about AI there I would say yes to them all like it's going to be a better enabler all the different things you said it's yes absolutely across the board but absolutely what as Frederico said I've got a I've got a great sort of um theory about it not a great theory but like a a position on it and it's just asking a question does AI know how you feel and if I was to ask you that honestly the answer is no like it's a binary question. AI can definitely make inferences around how you feel and you know make judgments based on the time of the call and the sentiment in your voice but it doesn't the only person who knows how you feel is you. And in order to extract that you need to have a human element when you're capturing feedback for sure with our platform it's always brilliant and it's disrespectful not to bring the customer into the conversation. So if as companies go headlong into investing into AI and they're putting all this capital into AI which is great and it's going to make life seamless and more easy for everyone brilliant uh and obviously there's gonna be challenges along the way but I expect AI is going to really be a massive game changer in many ways. But you should not you know invest in AI at the expense of customer experience. So you need to ask the customer just as you measure agent performance measure bot performance you know measure how the the bot is doing and and really understand you know the impact that AI is having on customer experience. And I I think it's a fascinating you know I heard some sort of analogy there recently or not analogy I heard some sort of statistic recently sorry where whereby it said that in contact centers for example in that in that domain 800 billion a year is spent so including people technology um and infrastructure like locations all that type of thing something like that. However they reckon in a couple of years that's like five or six years going to go down to 600 billion the money spent on people is going to shrink massively but the money spent on technology is going to increase so technology something like 80 billion of the 800 billion has been spent on tech that's going to increase to 120 140 billion the number of money spent on people is going to decrease uh but the overall amount of money that's going to be spent to to service customers is going to go down significantly so there's huge opportunities but just be careful that to be be responsible how you invest in AI and then understand that the only person who understands how we feel really is ourselves and that's never going to change.

SPEAKER_03 54:14

Yeah that's a really good perspective on it. Keith before I come on to you I'm gonna set you a high bar here we have had so far POM-centric from Trend and we've had FUD from Agam. I mean we've really you know the vocab's been amazing here today so uh I'm expecting you to leave me with something of equal quality if that's okay when I ask you how do you frame uh AI and CX?

SPEAKER_06 54:35

Uh wow whether it's equal quality I don't know but uh it as I see it it's evolutionary revolution that want to do what's it uh and the reason I see it that way is because today and we create the framework to help customers understand where they are levels of experience orchestration but also to understand where the industry is. There's five levels in that customers mark themselves in terms of where they are in their maturity on that all the way up to level five which the industry is not at yet in five to ten years time it will. So transitioning you know you want to speak to a human uh and you want to feel empathy in five to ten years time it will probable and probability the case that actually you won't even know the difference if AI is going the trajectory following the trajectory is in the following. But today we're kind of setting it up as an evolution in the sense of how you're evolving those services over time and you're using maybe more augmentation than anything else rather than complete replacement using it to gather information quickly and data the supplementary capability is assisting in many cases and the level of what you can automate is increasing all the time. So if you look longer term, you know the industry is we approach it as kind of a level four and I but level five is where 95% of your interactions could be handled by by a virtual agent source. So that's how we kind of see it and how it's evolving. So back to your question is it the game changer is evolving into one very very quickly and if it already isn't one now and in five to ten years time we'll look back and go, yeah, if we look back five to ten years ago this is completely different.

SPEAKER_03 56:12

So right so I've got one last question and kind of it's been bubbling away as a topic all throughout the the the course of today so it won't be surprised it's here how we're going to frame AI in CX tech. So I've got a number of different descriptions I've collected just from certain LinkedIn posts people describing AI in CX tech in a different way so just get your take on which of these feels the most appropriate description and then you know just a final point on how's it going to change the way we work. So is it an enabler for what we do? Is it an accelerant is it just speeding up what we're gonna do anyway is it genuinely a game changer and the future look very different um do we treat it as just like a new colleague joining the team who brings complementary skills to what we have or is it a better solution than all of us kind of put together so uh let's come uh come back to you Frederico on this one how how do we frame AI in CX Tech?

SPEAKER_02 57:07

Well an easy question to close the day uh Christopher first of all I mean that there are two aspects uh using artificial intelligence to serve uh uh customers in terms of uh you know clients uh and this is uh a very important aspect second is uh using uh uh artificial intelligence uh in our customer experience management process so in the customer experience management process of my clients and um it it you know it at the end of the day we need to be careful um to not uh overestimate what artificial intelligence can do uh you know in our fields because of course we have large language models uh but they are full of hallucinations uh they need to be set up uh in a certain way uh for instance uh now there is uh you know a big hype uh in the in the agentic and in the agents uh area but uh slowly they discover that also the agents can become stupid so it it's it's really you know something uh uh where we have to pay attention my my point of view is it's a very important tool is something that uh uh will change for sure what we will what we are doing and what we are uh we will do in the future but the human component is extremely important it's always extremely important and um we need um unless you know we apply artificial intelligence to extremely repetitive tasks that don't require uh you know uh a lot of attention and things like that they always need to be supervised by humans and and that control the quality so in in my opinion uh you know there was a um a false hope at the beginning that said okay now is artificial intelligence doing everything agents will do everything by themselves uh and and they work independently i think that uh you know if you if you see the figures now out of uh the you know the proof of concept that have been done uh and uh and and basically the projects that uh have been done for instance i can bring you an example an agents an artificial intelligence agents at mc mcdonald is public this information basically order uh uh 285 uh chicken meg nuggets for one person because he did uh he did an error so these these explain uh explain everything so the human component and the human uh supervision uh uh is extremely important of course is uh uh the tool is an enabler he is it helps us is a kind of junior uh let's say junior uh member of the team but uh please don't copy and paste because you need to read what is I think my uh my elder son would look at that as a loyalty bonus from McDonald's I think he'd manage his way through it and then come back down the gym he'd he'd like that I think but Riga that that's awesome thanks ever so much and uh you know I I know that this is a world in which you've inhibited for for many years so there's a there's a wide head there uh sharing a certain appreciation of it well guys um I appreciate the the time you've given here and you know we've squeezed as much out of you as we possibly can so really well done on taking those questions and uh and and got kind of really honest and and sincere answers and I think kind of you know at the end of the day when you're leading CX tech companies that's what people still buy into is that integrity and uh you two have demonstrated that in the way that you've shared your information.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:56

So I thank you very much. I thank you for both being a part of our inaugural CX tech demo day um we're hoping this is the first of of many. But uh and we hope that you know you we've shared a new audience uh for you and they can kind of hear about what you're doing because you know there are so many um brilliant CX tech providers in this this this space and sometimes there's uh um you'll be a bit a bit crowded by one or two who kind of take all the limelight so it's great to be able to uh provide an opportunity to more so David Federico uh thank you both very much and enjoy your your evening and uh we'll speak again soon no doubt thank you very much everyone and um yeah lovely please feel free to connect and uh please do yeah find David and Federico on uh LinkedIn as well as through their company websites the X index and uh tensive so do get in contact with them and if you want to hear what they said earlier on their demonstrations then the QR code will be flashed up again. You need to register and you'll get access to the uh the demonstrations they provided earlier as well.