Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] Speaker A: Welcome to the Table Service podcast where we'll dish on all things support, success and beyond with the people and companies building the future of customer experience.
Table Service is presented by Tavalo Consulting and I'm your host, Jordan Hooker. Kevin Zeiskowski is the CEO of Certainly CX and founder of Raven cx, whose unique vision has redefined how brands connect authentically with their customers. With a strategic career spanning senior roles at JPMorgan Chase, Fistserv and E Retailing associates, Kevin brings both seasoned expertise and fresh thinking to every challenge. He's also the creative force behind launching two BPOs from the ground up, sharing invaluable lessons in team building, operational strategy and brand driven customer service. Kevin, welcome to the table.
[00:00:47] Speaker B: Thank you, Jordan. Yeah, very nice to be here.
[00:00:50] Speaker A: So glad to have you. For our listeners who may not be familiar with you or want to hear a little bit more about you, I'd love for you to share a little bit more about yourself and experience. Let's, let's hear the story.
[00:01:00] Speaker B: Sure. So a little bit more about myself. I'm a dad of four, four kids. So I've been, you know, I think as all of us do, balancing life and work and trying to figure out what that means. And sometimes it, sometimes it is balanced and sometimes it's not so balanced, but that's a big part of who I am. I'm a husband to a great wife, dad to for four great kids who are now starting to become adults themselves, which is exciting. So, and once that actually happens, I think that'll be a little bit of a relief. But yeah, they're, they're, they're doing well. So. Yeah, I mean, other, other than that. Hobbies. I, I enjoy tennis, running, love to read, love to read both. Lately I've been getting into a lot of like history type books, but I like anything where, you know, you're kind of being taken to a different place and a different, and a different time.
[00:01:59] Speaker C: Sure.
[00:02:00] Speaker B: And then hearing how that story progresses is super interesting. Sometimes fictional, sometimes non fictional, but sure, I think that's where I've landed as far as what, what my reading interests.
[00:02:13] Speaker A: Sure, yeah, absolutely. I am also primarily a history reader. I, at some point in my life I did finally force myself to start picking up fiction because I realized there's a, there's a level of well rounded that comes from reading both nonfiction and fiction. And that's been a really good thing to find. But my, my bread and butter is definitely history, particularly biography. That's where I typically land. Great to hear, hear Others as well in our space are definitely interested in, in the history angle.
[00:02:39] Speaker B: You can, you can learn a ton from listening to how someone else progressed.
[00:02:45] Speaker A: Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. I'm currently reading a biography of Ulysses S. Grant and thinking about just this man's life. He was ruined and then rebuilt and ruined and then rebuilt and then ruined again. And just so much you can learn, especially working in the startup space, just from historical figures and, you know, high mountains and low valleys and, and what you take from that. And I'm sure we'll hit on some of that as we go through our conversation today.
[00:03:10] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure.
[00:03:11] Speaker A: Awesome. Well, one of the things we talked about as we were prepping for this episode is, you know, what does it look like as someone who is, is a, you know, an executive with the bpo. You've built two now, you are leading the organization now with certainly cx. And so we wanted to zero in a little bit from your perspective on what does it look like as somebody on the BPO side and what are the, you know, what are the aspects of learning to choose a BPO and work with a BPO and partner with a bpo? In our previous season, we had a guest that focused specifically in on the, the customer side of, you know, I'm, I'm a business looking to bring a BPO in and so I was really excited to have the opportunity to have you on to, to talk about that other angle. Let' start with what does it look like for a company to start even considering the possibility of working with a bpo? What are the things you see are triggers that get a company to think that that's something that they should be considering and then maybe next step from that is what should companies start thinking about and looking for as they begin to look for a partner in this space.
[00:04:16] Speaker B: So when is the timing right to look for a bpo? I think at certainly in particular we are frame ourselves as a boutique bpo, which means we're really aiming our target profile for customer profile is a company that is maybe even as small as 2 to 5 million in revenue, but starting to really scale and then anywhere from that to a couple hundred in million. But the real I think rigor that whether it's a founder or executive leadership should, should think about when it comes to a BPO is are there obviously from a customer service perspective and being the front line like that's, that's still the biggest part of what we do and, and what most BPOs do. But there's the whole routine task aspect too that we can do, I would say at least speaking for, for us, we do it typically better, but also at half the cost.
So if there are routine spreadsheet work or if there are routines that should be doing that you just can't put the capacity on, or you put people on it, but it's not their priority. So it doesn't get done consistently, it doesn't get done regularly. If you have things like that that are going on, that's when you should consider how else can I do this?
And I think that's the best trigger is when.
And on the customer service side, it's really when you start getting to the point where, okay, you know, I can't be up.
Maybe I'm a founder, I can't be up till three in the morning answering emails and customer requests. Or potentially you've put your first person in place. Maybe you have like a director of customer service or a manager of customer service or customer support.
And now it's like, okay, do I, it's similar to software. Do I build versus buy?
And it's also similar to software in the sense that what you get when you go to a BPO like ours is you get the fact that we do it 20, 30 times a year. So we onboard new teams, we implement new Software, we write SOPs.
All of that stuff is tried and true and we have the methodologies to make sure that it goes well.
And we've learned from many, many mistakes. But the value to the buyer is they get to benefit from those mistakes without, without having the harm that those mistakes can cause.
[00:06:54] Speaker C: Sure.
[00:06:55] Speaker B: So I think it's that. And then in today's world, more than ever, although it's been this way for a while, but I think today's is even, even acute is the fact that everything is changing so quickly. If you don't have a group like a BPO who is researching, constantly researching and testing and implementing those, those new technologies, new processes, then you're leaving a lot on the, you're leaving a lot on the table as far as opportunity.
And to try and do it yourself is expensive because you either have to bring those people in and find the people with the right level of curiosity and technical skills and it can be expensive. Sometimes that's the best way to go. But a lot of times, hey, leave it to a group who's getting to experiment not only across multiple clients, but across multiple industries, because there's a lot of learning there too.
Maybe E Commerce is doing something that telehealth could benefit from and vice versa. And that happens all the time. And a good BPO will help you to see those things and help you to implement those advantages for you.
[00:08:13] Speaker A: If I am looking for a company, I'm thinking, if I've laid out what you just did, I'm looking for a company that accomplishes those things. What are some other things I should be looking for? If I'm trying to select a BPO to bring in to work with, what are, what are some other aspects that are critical for me to be thinking about?
[00:08:29] Speaker B: So I think, you know, one is, do they, do they have experience similar to, to, to your industry or experience that will, will allow them to, to be successful and to understand your world?
Do they have, where are they sourcing their folks from?
Are they, do they have a brick and mortar facility where people work out of, or are they remote folks? There's advantages to both, but I think you as the buyer should explore those and understand why they've decided to be the way they are.
I think the geographies are super important.
We are very specific about where we have grown our teams and then also talk to them about how they assemble a team, the leadership ratios that they apply, what is included? This is a big one, but up front, discuss what's included in the invoice you'll be receiving and what, if anything, is not included in the invoice. Like, for example, we invoice for actual hours worked, production hours worked. But we have a lot of shared services, services that support those, the programs that don't get directly invoiced. And that's something you should definitely find out about too. Is, is QA involved? Okay, how do you, how do you do qa? What's, what's your quality program look like? What can I expect from a coaching perspective and an audit perspective? How about scheduling? Is that all on your side? Do you have workforce management? Can I expect real time workforce management?
Can I expect a forecast each week? And then I think the other big one is to talk to them about reporting. What type of reporting will they be delivering? What's the cadence of that reporting? Those are good. Those are really good places to start. And then I also think, yeah, going back to pricing, what's their pricing model?
I'd say the three most common pricing models are actual hours worked. An FTE model is still very popular.
And then the third, third model is. Let me, I just had it now. I had lost it for a sec.
So actual hours worked. Oh, like tickets. Tickets worked.
[00:10:56] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:10:57] Speaker B: And they all have pros and cons.
They really and the reason we go with actual hours worked is because I feel like it's the most transparent, the most straightforward, you know what you're getting. And I think the key there is to make sure are our objectives aligned? So this outside group that I'm bringing on, are their objectives aligned with my objectives? And really, when it comes to customer support, there is an ironic situation where again, a good BPO should be helping you to streamline that customer experience journey and in doing so, taking a lot of the effort out and either fixing it or automating it or whatever. But if you're hooked on with a BPO who's charging you by ticket, I've seen it firsthand, they're not going to be very motivated to help you reduce those tickets.
[00:11:50] Speaker C: Sure.
[00:11:50] Speaker A: Right.
[00:11:52] Speaker B: So knowing how the pricing works is super important because you'll get an inside look into how well you're aligned with your objectives versus their objectives.
[00:12:03] Speaker A: Sure, Absolutely. Now, if I am somebody that, that is, say, I've done this research, I've worked through a number of BPOs, I've figured out which one is the best one. We've signed a contract, and now we want to start the process of onboarding. What are some things I should know as I go through that process? What does it look like to start to build that foundation for a successful implementation of a bpo?
[00:12:27] Speaker B: Sure. I mean, the biggest thing, Jordan, is what is your, what does your documentation look like that's going to tell you? And look, a BPO can help build that, but you both should know that up front. Like, if the documentation doesn't exist, then like, okay, we're going to need to take some time to get this stuff documented, and we should do that in a way where you're not burning associate or agent hours. Right.
So get, make sure either you have it or you get it to a place where it's very usable and can be quickly.
At least if you have the content, you don't necessarily need the train it in a training format, that's an easier conversion. But building the initial content drafts takes time.
[00:13:16] Speaker C: Sure.
[00:13:17] Speaker B: So that's, I think, a key thing you need to realize when onboarding. The other thing is have signals in there or ask the BPO what are the red flags you're looking for. Like, even before onboarding, you can talk to your BPO about how you want to build the team. So what's the interview process look like? Do I get to be part I meaning the customer? Do I get to be part of that interview process? So at a minimum you know, depending on how involved you can or want to be, sometimes there's just not time. That's why you're bringing on a bpo. But if you want to be involved, you certainly, they should not hesitate.
And if they do that, that's a bad sign. But at a minimum, you should provide a profile of your customer, your customer profiling and a typical profile that works in your organization because a lot of times you're working very closely with directly with associates that are BPO associates. So they need to be able to successfully function in your culture.
And you know, for example, we have clients who are 100% asynchronous.
They really, I mean, really don't want to have a meeting unless it's absolutely imperative. So not everyone can function in an asynchronous environment.
Specific especially can't function well.
So making sure that you're, you know, looking at those things ahead of time before they come in. But then the other thing in regards to onboarding is you should have, I call them like red flags. Right. So what are, what are the red flags? That this person is not going to be a great fit long term.
[00:15:08] Speaker C: Sure.
[00:15:09] Speaker B: Because I think it's important in that initial team building to do as much filtering up front as possible because the damage will be way less than if you find out two weeks, two months, six months down the road that, you know what, we've been dragging this person along. We saw these red flags day two. We should have taken action, but we didn't have a process that we talked about. So just talk about what that is. Right. Like, so if they're, if they're late to day one of training and then they're late to day two of training, what happens? That's a really bad sign. That's a red flag. So just having that stuff, talking about it with your BPO provider ahead of time, it'll benefit both of you.
[00:15:52] Speaker A: So if, let's, let's say I've gone through that. We built a good foundation, we've got a team that's starting up. We've taken care of the documentation. It's interesting as I have these conversations and we're thinking about these things, documentation comes up so much with both BPOs and AI.
As you're getting ready to implement these tools, how's your documentation? And you probably want to hit pause a little bit and make sure you're clear on that. But let's say we've gone through all those steps. BPO has gotten started. They are taking customer tickets. What does it look like to start to expand that relationship and to ensure accountability from the BPO and ensure that the, the work that's being done is not only just good quality work, but is also just driving more, More value, driving more growth for your organization.
[00:16:38] Speaker B: There's, there's multiple ways to, to do that. And again, it depends on how involved you want to be. I mean, one of the, or can be one of the, the setups I love the best is where you do have a manager or a senior manager or a director who is the, I would call them the liaison between the BPO and your home team.
[00:17:02] Speaker C: Sure.
[00:17:04] Speaker B: Because then they can be more deeply involved. But at a minimum, you should be expecting reporting out of the gate. So week, week one. And it, it should be both at the overall level and at the agent level, because lots of ugliness can hide in the averages sometimes. And you, you want to understand both the high outliers and the low outliers, and then really start asking your BPO to make sure that they understand or at least that they're looking into. Why do we have some people who are performing at this level, some people at this level, they all went through the same training two weeks ago.
What's the difference? And are we comfortable with that? The other thing you can do is have calibration meetings or just calibration processes. So, you know, again with our, that asynchronous client I was talking to you about, we do a completely asynchronous calibration process. So we pull 100 customer conversations each week from, from Intercom, and then they just give them an ABCD or F rating.
And they're not, they're not diving into the SOPs to understand the technical nature of it. They're grading it based on kind of the same perspective that a customer would, which is extremely valuable because in essence, I mean, we're there to protect their brand. Right. To build their brand, like you said, to build loyalty, to build increased. To drive retention and increased word of mouth that could, that could potentially grow the business.
So getting that feedback both at the overall team level and at the agent level is a great, great move. And we, we started off weekly, and we'll probably move to monthly and then maybe even eventually quarterly.
[00:19:00] Speaker C: Sure.
[00:19:00] Speaker B: But in the beginning, more frequent is better because you're going to have a lot of learning going on, and you're going to want to basically dial it in to make sure that this sounds right.
The other thing that does is it helps shine a light on the processes that the organization you Know, they thought these processes make a ton of sense when they, when we did the documentation. But then when they see them in action in the real world, it gives them an opportunity to kind of analyze those processes too and say, like, is this how we want to work with our customers long term? So it benefits both parties. But that's a great, that's a great way to really dial in quickly the experience that your BPO is delivering.
[00:19:45] Speaker A: From your perspective as a leader of a bpo, is there ever a time where perhaps you've used a bpo, what are, what are the things companies should be looking for when maybe it is time to bring everything back in house? Is there, is there ever a time for that? And if so, what do you think the triggers are for? Something along those lines.
[00:20:05] Speaker B: So I think definitely times when you should question, do I have the right bpo? I think one of the biggest, if it's the biggest thing that people don't report on or ask for it, it's usually when teams get a little bigger that it starts being hidden. But attrition is incredibly expensive.
So you should know what your, the attrition of your team is at all times and why they left, if possible, as much information as possible there. Because it costs you on the production side, your SLA metrics, all those metrics, but it also cost you just dollars and cents wise too. So definitely, if your BPO has, you know, high attrition and it's continuing to move higher, you should, you should question that.
I will tell you there are also BPOs that do not run financially well either.
[00:21:01] Speaker C: Sure.
[00:21:02] Speaker B: So if, if you're hearing rumors of people's pay being delayed or maybe a bonus that was promised that's delayed, those are big red flags and stuff that I would say like, okay, we need to get a backup, A backup in here. Because the last thing you want is for a BPO to tell you, like, hey, everyone quit, or, you know, we're no longer around, and then you're, you're in trouble.
As far as bringing it in house, I think, you know, if you get to a size where you can afford all and you can benefit from all the answers, ancillary functions, the technology, the reporting functions, the training, the quality. If you can have all that or figure out a way to effectively do it, then that might be when you would want to consider bringing it in house. Got it. But I would still recommend even then, even then, keeping a small team with the bpo just to have an AB and then to constantly have that, that rabbit for your in house team to chase or to, to hopefully beat. And that, that's something I would recommend even in the, in the other way too. Like maybe you don't, you don't want a bpo, but you could still benefit from having a small like you know, maybe 10%, 5% of your team run by a BPO just to see like okay, is there anything different?
What, what can we learn from them? What can we leverage from them? It's a cost effective way to, to really learn a lot.
[00:22:44] Speaker A: Yeah, that's, that's helpful and curious to your thoughts just on.
Obviously we're, we're in the age of AI. We talk about this all the time. Like what are some things someone should consider? Maybe if they're considering a BPO or maybe they are already have a bpo. But what should your considerations be of? Like what should you go use AI for versus what should you use BPO for?
[00:23:06] Speaker B: Well I think, I think first of all I think you're your BPOs.
The great BPOs are going to be bringing that, solving that for you.
[00:23:16] Speaker C: Sure.
[00:23:16] Speaker B: And bringing the AI when it comes to support operations, bringing that AI into the mix.
You know, I feel like a few five, six, seven, eight years ago the mix was domestic and offshore and that was the way you built strong cost effective support team that could be 24, 7 and have all kinds of benefits like that.
Now it is.
Okay. The next plug in to that equation is how do we use AI and to be even more cost effective but also to just do things better than we've ever been able to do before. And I think, I think that's the thing that the best BPOs are going to be talking about is all the things that we wanted to do but we just couldn't affect, afford to do either. From a time perspective and a cost perspective. And I think about like quality is the easy and easy one to think about is you know, we do two audits a week per agent and we Coach like okay, two audits. Well they're doing, you know, they're doing 2,000, 15,000 tickets a week. Like it's, it's just going to be a crapshoot if we, if we see anything worth coaching them on.
[00:24:36] Speaker C: Sure.
[00:24:37] Speaker B: But now with these AI tools you can have you know, the same amount of AI leaders or quality leadership managing that AI auditing tool and you can audit 50 plus percent of the tickets with the same, that same team resource. So it's, it's super advantageous. And I think those are, that's an example of Something that your BPO should be talking about as far as like how to use AI. I think going back to your directly to your question, Jordan.
Yeah, I think it's going to depend on the customer base. Right. I think the wrong approach is just to say like, okay, I have this tool called AI.
I know it can do xyz, so I want it to do xyz.
And that's the approach I think a lot of people are learning the hard way right now. The right approach is like, okay, where do we want humans interacting with our customers? Where do our customers want to be interacting with humans? And then where is it just more beneficial to have self service that's driven by AI or AI responding to directly to a customer? But I think it's, it really does depend on the customer base. Like if, for example, if your customer base is all 55 and older, you're going to be, you're going to need to be really careful with the use of AI because you're going to be frustrating a lot of people unnecessarily.
But that doesn't mean you can't use it in your qa. It doesn't mean you can't use it in your workforce management to have the best, most effectively scheduled team possible.
So there are still options even if it's not customer facing. But I think with the customer facing stuff, that's where you need to be the most careful. And then I think also just really be smart about the metrics you're using to measure the effectiveness of your AI. Like the big, the biggest one you hear is deflection. And just because someone doesn't ask another question doesn't mean they're happy. It might mean that they're just giving up.
So you need to know the difference, be able to measure the difference.
[00:26:53] Speaker A: No, definitely. I appreciate tools. Now that Intercom's a great example which we use in our business of even if somebody doesn't respond and they, they don't say, oh, that answered my question. Yes. Because you know, I'd ask them that after each step of the way. You know, I've got it set up eventually to just process it over to my team to, to check on. But it also tells us like this customer got their answer, but they didn't seem happy about it. You know, we have the ability to see that kind of thing. So I think that sentiment analysis that you're talking about about is also really critical in making sure that our AI tools are doing what we want them to do. Not just deflect, but give our customers a quality experience, even if they don't talk to our actual team.
How do we make sure it does that?
[00:27:36] Speaker B: Yeah, and I think the other thing that some of the best AI tools are beginning to do is, and your BPO should be helping you with this, is setting up like a KCS methodology so that if going again, back to content. Right. So if there isn't an article that's, or content that satisfies that question today, does it get flagged? Then does it get written, does it get validated, published? And now the system is better because of that.
And those are starting to be built as well where AI, and in some cases AI can do the initial draft where it, where it understands that there's content missing. And that's where it's getting really, really powerful.
[00:28:22] Speaker A: Yes, absolutely. I've seen a few tools like that and excited to see more, more of that come down the, down the pipe. Well, as we wrap up our conversation, I'd love to just take a few more moments for any closing thoughts you may have, topics maybe we didn't hit on or things that you think would be really valuable for our, our listeners to hear.
[00:28:38] Speaker B: Sure. I think, Yeah. I think the other thing when it comes to selecting a BPO and thinking about partnering with a BPO is making sure that the partner you're select got into it, is in it for the right reasons. Right. So I think you can learn a lot about how they're going to treat you and how they're going to treat your customers by talking to their employees.
[00:29:02] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:29:03] Speaker B: And understanding how those folks are being, how they, how they perceive the relationship with, with their bpo. Right. That's why that attrition number's so, so powerful. But also what's the environment they're setting up for their associates?
Are they giving them training, regular training? Are they offering them opportunities to grow and to learn? If the answers to those are yes, and the attrition is low, then you've probably selected a good partner. I think the last thing I would say is the leadership.
And this might depend on your personal choice. I prefer to go with leadership that's actually been in operations, been in customer support, versus a lot of what you see now, which is folks that are smart and realize there's potentially a lot of money to be made here. But they really don't understand operations.
And the reason I think that is because going back to the engagement piece, typically they don't understand how hard that work is day in and day out. And then they're burning their associates or in today's world, they also could be throwing AI on it faster and in a way that might not be effective for you and for your customer base so that they don't have to deal with the people.
So those are, those are just, that's, I guess, the closing thing, I would say, as far as when you, when you're looking at selecting a bpo, what to think about.
[00:30:27] Speaker A: Yeah, and I think those things are critical. I, I've definitely encountered as a support leader. I hear from BPOs with some regularity. You know, it's, it's two kinds. I hear from somebody with a BPO, I hear from somebody with an AI tool. I hear a lot of those, and most that I find have not been great. But when you find those few that are, that really have the right perspective, have the experience to know what it actually takes to build a support tool, it makes a, makes a world of difference now. Oh, I'm sorry.
[00:30:53] Speaker C: Go ahead.
[00:30:53] Speaker B: No, I'm just agreeing.
[00:30:55] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. Now, if somebody wanted to hear more about you, learn more about the work you're doing or hear more about, certainly what would be the best place for them to do that?
[00:31:05] Speaker B: They can DM me on LinkedIn. That's the best way to get a hold of me for sure.
[00:31:09] Speaker A: Awesome.
[00:31:09] Speaker B: And then they can, they can check out our website, but if they want to talk to me, they can DM me on LinkedIn. I'm also real active on Support driven.
[00:31:17] Speaker A: Awesome.
[00:31:18] Speaker B: They can slack me there, too.
[00:31:20] Speaker A: Wonderful. Awesome. Well, we'll include those links in the, in the show notes below, so it'll be easy for folks to get to you. But Kevin, thanks for joining us here at the Table.
[00:31:27] Speaker B: Thank you, Jordan.
[00:31:29] Speaker A: You've been listening to the Table Service podcast. You can find out more about today's guest in the show notes below.
The Table Service podcast is presented by Tableau Consulting, hosted by Jordan Hooker, music by Epidemic Sound.
