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Episode 4: Speed of Change – Featuring Katie Stein, CEO of IGT Solutions
134 Plays6 days ago
In this intrepid conversation, Phil Fersht and Kathryn Stein discuss the evolving landscape of customer experience, the impact of AI on service delivery, and the cultural challenges faced in the workplace. Kathryn shares her insights from her career journey, emphasizing the importance of driving change within enterprises and the need for a strategic shift towards a more integrated approach to operations. They explore the future of work, the role of technology, and the necessity of adapting education to meet the demands of a changing job market.
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Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Overview
00:00:12
Speaker
You're listening to From the Horse's Mouth, intrepid conversations with Phil First. Ready to meet the disruptors who are guiding us to the new great utopia by reshaping our world and pushing past corporate spin for honest conversations about the future impact of current and emerging technologies?
00:00:30
Speaker
Tune in now.
00:00:35
Speaker
Great to get another edition of the
Guest Introduction: Katie Stein
00:00:38
Speaker
Horse's Mouth Moving. And today I'm very happy to have an old friend in the industry who I've known for several years now, um who has come a long way during the time I've met her.
00:00:52
Speaker
But maybe I'll ask her to introduce herself and a little bit about her upbringing, where she came from, and how she got to where she is today. So Katie Stein, welcome. Over to you.
00:01:04
Speaker
Thanks, Phil. it It has been a long time since maybe the one office, you know more recently the generative enterprise, and now I'm sure we'll touch on your new frame. um But I'm Katie Stein. I've known you, Phil, for almost a decade now, I think.
00:01:17
Speaker
And a year ago, I took over as the CEO of IGT Solutions, which as a company, we're lesser known, but really we were born in the travel transportation industry um in the experience sector.
00:01:29
Speaker
And so we serve most of the global brands. And now that extends from you know what we think of as traditional airlines and hotels through to all of the platform companies you know who are also travel brands, whether we think of Uber or Airbnb um and those sorts of of providers. So very excited to talk about the space because there's a lot of discussion around what's happening with AI in
AI's Role in Travel and Experience
00:01:47
Speaker
the space of experience. so I think it's very relevant and timely. Thanks for having me.
00:01:50
Speaker
Right. Yeah. and um And a little bit about your... background. Obviously, we met while you were at the BKO company, Genpact.
00:02:03
Speaker
Oh, they probably want to call them something else today. The GE spin out and you you did very well there, didn't you? yeah and i think By the end, ah you were pretty much the right hand of the CEO, Tiger.
00:02:15
Speaker
And so can you talk a bit more about that experience and how it led to what you're doing today? Yeah, i think that that was a great experience. um you know I spent nearly 10 years at GenPAC. I had previously to GenPAC worked at Mercer.
00:02:30
Speaker
You recently had a guest from Mercer um yeah on youa on your podcast. ah And there I'd actually worked on setting up some of our captives. So BPO wasn't new to me or offshoring wasn't new to me, but GenPAC was ah a tremendous experience of seeing a firm that went from primarily back office focused services through to thinking more one office.
00:02:49
Speaker
as we extended into the middle office and front offices and tried to connect those workflows. um And then obviously we made a significant push on thinking of how we would reimagine those services using at the time automation, then analytics and data.
00:03:01
Speaker
And now I think there's a rebranding around agentic led solutions. So, yeah. Yeah. yeah and um Can you share a little bit candidly about, um you know, GenPack had a very distinct culture coming from ah GE heritage, a very Indian male
Cultural Challenges at Genpact
00:03:22
Speaker
dominated culture.
00:03:23
Speaker
What was it like for a smart, ambitious white woman working in that environment? Can you share few tips on what was successful and what was challenging for you?
00:03:36
Speaker
Yeah, you know, one of the things I've been thinking about, someone asked me the other day, like, what what motivates you at IGT Solutions every day? Because work is hard. We wouldn't do work and we wouldn't call it work if it wasn't hard.
00:03:49
Speaker
um And I was saying one of my biggest learning lessons at GenPAC, because of its scale, you know, being over $4 billion, dollars being the size over 100,000 people, was how do you drive change in um And change has a lot to do with culture and mindset in an organization of that scale. and And I think that's something that I had a lot of you know challenge at GenPAC, seeing how we would drive through a traditional BPO mindset into what is now required as a new headset to drive into the future of where the industry is going.
00:04:22
Speaker
And what I love about my experience now at IGT Solutions is it's a smaller scale. We're sub $500 million, dollars but we have the same challenges.
Driving Transformation at IGT Solutions
00:04:28
Speaker
We're a Delhi-based, largely organization. Most of our headcount exists in you know the Philippines and India and other emerging sort of services areas. And so thinking now about how we reimagine and take all those lessons from GenPAC and apply them in a smaller scale to accelerate.
00:04:44
Speaker
um And I think that for this industry is one of the biggest challenges is that there's sort of that like dead middle um where change really gets stuck because what's made us successful historically is still limping along, um but won't get us to where we need to go.
00:05:00
Speaker
So, yeah.
00:05:03
Speaker
Yeah, that's a great point. like Why won't it get us where we need to go? Because um I just came back from a very long tour around India, which I enjoy very much, by the way. and um ah huge feverish excitement around Global Cake Authority centers and they feel that's the new frontier. And I was cautiously poking questions in around, um it's one thing embracing Indian talent, but are you truly going to be at the decision-making table for your
00:05:35
Speaker
corporate motherships in the States and UK, these other places. um So what needs to change from the existing mindset you feel to propel these companies to the future?
00:05:50
Speaker
Yeah, I think, um,
00:05:53
Speaker
One of the things we wrestle with is that strategically, I think we all understand the power of what we could develop and deliver. um But the one thing we have no control over, you know, I i heard someone recently on one of your podcasts say change is a constant. Sure, change is a constant.
00:06:06
Speaker
Speed of change is the unknown, right? And the speed of change in my mind is very much locked in the fact that at least at our large enterprise customers, This you know one office, cross-functional, cross-silo concept is very immature.
00:06:21
Speaker
And so we have a, you know I'll call it a ah commercial buyer who's interested in strategically the outcomes we can deliver. You have a functional buyer you know who's really buying at the vendor level, who's focused on I'll call it, you know renegotiating squeezing vendors.
00:06:36
Speaker
And then you have sort of, you know, other players around this. And so the fact is, we're talking about these big outcomes we can drive. But most of that then filters down to, okay, an FT account, a min account.
00:06:49
Speaker
And that's been pervasive for a long time. So my question is really like, when does the tipping point shift over? And I think maybe 10% of customers are getting there, but that leaves 90% who are still at the executive levels, at the board level talking about this, but when it dilutes down in the organization, still see the vendor enterprise relationship as one which is not a partnership. It's about squeezing cost out of the equation.
00:07:12
Speaker
Yeah.
Changing BPO Industry Mindset
00:07:14
Speaker
And I've also heard from many enterprise customers that there's always another BPO coming along who can do it cheaper, who's smaller, more focused and cost driven and that sort of thing. um And I guess, you know, you're you're hitting on the point of what's the tipping point.
00:07:34
Speaker
But what what is the tipping point really, Katie? I mean, what what is truly going to change the mindset of how services are delivered, how they're bought, how they ah these partnerships are arise?
Agility in Workforce Management
00:07:48
Speaker
Yeah, so I think for for our perspective at IGT Solutions, um the first thing that we came in and started to look at was before you get to even agentic workflows, which we are doing work around and we're designing systems there, but at the core of experience is what is the role of the agent and what is the role of AI, right?
00:08:07
Speaker
And why? Why does this matter? So the first thing that struck me is that in the space of experience, there's a lot of friction trapped between the enterprise and the vendors with respect to volumes are not static, right?
00:08:22
Speaker
um In a given day, how you as an end consumer want to interact with a brand, which channel you want to use, what complaint or question or query you have varies. You know, when a flight has a challenge versus when you just want to rebook your ticket.
00:08:35
Speaker
Those are very different for each individual in terms of how they want to interact. And so this workforce management, workforce forecasting is very static compared to that. And so to me, the first ti the first changing point is how can we become agile together where we change the equation to be agents plus agentic or plus a AI so that we can flex up and down with each other?
00:08:54
Speaker
And that to me is the first place to commercially renegotiate, but Because what you're doing is taking costs that's locked on both sides of the equation and you're actually creating a win-win for both. um And if you do that successfully and commercially renegotiate, then you're doing it a way that you're not penalizing either side. And there are higher margins available to the vendor because you can manage workforce and technology.
00:09:15
Speaker
And there's lower costs to the recipient, the enterprise, because you're able to do that. And so I think picking the spot, rather than talking about... outcomes that are being discussed at the board level, to me, it's picking the spot where we can actually demonstrate that value and unlock it at the buyer level that we're working.
00:09:32
Speaker
um Otherwise, you're just caught in sort of a hyperbole loop, which the management consultants and everyone else are talking about, which I think is the rare enterprise that's driving at that level. Right, right. So picking the spot feels to me like cutting through all the bullshit and getting to...
00:09:54
Speaker
What are we delivering and how can we, one, develop technology that's scalable, that advances your own team's ability to take advantage of AI tools? I think ah but i think that's that's right. and And Phil, not to cut you off there, but to say like right now we have this blunt force object. We have a lot of technology coming into the market. And I'm repeating what you and I have said for ages, which is technology for the sake of technology is just more technical debt into the equation, more, you know, more misfunction.
00:10:27
Speaker
But if you think about in the space of experience, it's allowing us now to do what we can do, which is to separate centers of skill from centers of scale. Right. but So things that are rules-based, things that can be automated, should be automated and we should be leading the way on that. We should be leading the way on self-healing, self-help.
00:10:43
Speaker
Centres of skill become now where we create agentic plus human centres that now can deliver more value on time in the channel that's required. Yeah.
00:10:54
Speaker
Centres of skill. That's a new word I just led today. Thank you very much. um You know, i think you're really hitting on a point. I mean, I've sat through probably more client roundtables, conferences, discussions, debates, ah paid engagements ah than anyone in the last couple of years on this. And I'm sensing...
00:11:18
Speaker
ah an increased awareness from enterprise clients, but also an increased level of paranoia. Because I think there's a definite sense that they're just struggling to get beyond ah the talk.
00:11:33
Speaker
And this sounds like a great idea. Our board wants to do this. And just get to the... brass tacks of um what is that one thing we can really agree on and start making moves
From Discussion to Action
00:11:43
Speaker
with?
00:11:43
Speaker
It really feels like um we're moving into almost a period of frustration um where there's just this inertia happening. And it's not just at the client level, it's also at the and ah provider level where providers still only know how to sell one way.
00:12:00
Speaker
know how to deliver one way and they don't really want to change either. so it feels like there's this, you need both sides to be coming to the table with that. We're both under tremendous pressure to deliver differently. We probably saw, saw one of your competitors launch there on the BPO offering the other day.
00:12:17
Speaker
i shu it Clearly, clearly to me, it just spelt of, we got to change guys, uh, coming out there. So yeah, Is anyone listening? yeah I think one of things, though, like I was wrestling with a team the other day and and with a client is, again, change at this stage of uncertainty, I think, happens at the micro level. So if I step back into the space of experience, forget the un-BPO or all these things, and I say, OK, what creates the failure point?
00:12:48
Speaker
We know that a lot of end users, consumers, who there's been surveys done, aren't yet comfortable because of past experience, because of fear themselves to interact with autonomous agents.
00:12:59
Speaker
And we know that a lot of the people who own the process at the client level are very afraid of that, right? Because when something goes wrong, it's very public. I mean, we have the Air Canada example that we can all point back to. So let's talk about what we're solving for. Like one of the things I heard recently that I think is really remarkably different now in the dialogue around is the ability for it to understand intent.
00:13:21
Speaker
And this is something that humans struggle with in a call center environment, right? Like when we have most clients want to move from expensive voice to, let's say, chat. But for agents to understand the intent in a chat, you know, now you've got sort of disparate. Think of how we all chat.
00:13:36
Speaker
You know, it's short sentences. It's coming at you. It's not really a two way dialogue. How does the agent understand that? So if we can use AI to make sure that the agent understands the intent and is responding first time right, that's a game changer.
00:13:51
Speaker
Just starting there, it allows a brand to move in a trusted fashion, in a higher CSAT fashion, a lot of voice calls to a channel like chat, which is more productive, lower cost, and can have higher quality if we train the agents right and if we use AI right.
00:14:07
Speaker
And so again, like it may sound very small, but if we start doing these things, these are game changers in a space where sitting in a queue waiting on a phone to talk to an agent is frustrating to all of us. you know I would rather chat.
00:14:18
Speaker
I just don't get the response I want from chat today. yep Yeah, yeah. And you know it it seems like...
00:14:30
Speaker
There has been, what's happened in the last 10 years plus has been ah ah continued rush to move services to the Philippines. This is what I've seen in like in the call center space.
00:14:41
Speaker
And it's got to the point where the quality of services in the Philippines has got worse and worse. I don't know about you, but every time I call my mobile provider or my bank, whatever, you know it's going to the Philippines and you're getting somebody even barely hold a conversation at this point. And it's kind of frustrating. You're actually at the point of, ah I might as well just be talking to a robot. but I'm just trying to get something done, or I'm trying to get my international data plan switched back on or something like that right.
00:15:10
Speaker
um Is that a tipping point you think we're hitting as well, or as we're just exhausted resources for driving these services? You know, my my observation, my learning from being in this industry now for a year is that there was a period of, let's say, COVID.
00:15:28
Speaker
And then there was a post-COVID boom where volumes surged. And you saw it in the valuations of all these CX firms. just It was a buoyant growth period. And I would say that period should probably renamme be renamed cheekily as, like, just get bodies on the phone.
00:15:40
Speaker
Right? And it's stepped away from what I'm saying, which is, look... If this can be automated, if what you're trying to do is reset a password and we can automate a response to you, we should.
00:15:51
Speaker
Right. why Why do you need to talk to someone for that? But centers of skill then become what speed to proficiencies. Like was talking about earlier, like let's say yourre your mobile company has to the volume surge around Christmas time because everyone buys a new phone for Christmas or whatever it is. Right.
00:16:07
Speaker
Today, the way that it works is everyone rushes to hire people for that period. Right. Because The vendor doesn't want to, the the partner doesn't want to carry the cost of those people year round. The provider doesn't want to pay for the cost of those people year round.
00:16:18
Speaker
Well, that sort of steps away from skill. Like, so if that's the way that has to work, we have to use AI and that's what we're focused on for speed to proficiency. How do we take people and in a matter of weeks, make them as skilled with as high quality scores as an agent who's been sitting and doing those responses for a year?
00:16:36
Speaker
And that to me is the challenge that we as providers can tackle. And we are ah working with one of our partners, OXO.ai, to do that. Yeah. Interesting. So...
00:16:48
Speaker
So moving forward, um how do you see the current letter of service firms um evolving and and and light of what we've just been talking about? um you know with with they still Some of them are still bumbling along with 3%, 4% growth. They're still trying to eke out and some sort of existence on the old model.
00:17:16
Speaker
um I personally think we're in a calm before the storm. ah Because the more clients figure out why do we need to spend 20 million a year on this or 50 million year on that when we can just get things so much cheaper, um this is going to start to have a knock-on effect. and And especially in areas like the more back office-y stuff, like just moving data from one screen to another or processing invoices, these types of
Shift from Human to Technology Services
00:17:41
Speaker
elements.
00:17:41
Speaker
ah Is there going to be just an acceleration suddenly of services making this shift from people to technology?
00:17:52
Speaker
See, this is like if you ask me what's the thing we haven't solved yet is what is candidly the people work and what's the technology work. I came back to a very simple frame of, you know, what's rules based, what's not. But AI complicates that right now because AI is obviously evolving.
00:18:06
Speaker
And one could argue that human errors may be greater than AI errors in specific cases. Right. So therein lies a challenge and there's adoption. you know both from within the walls of the company and the consumer. So to me, i i fully agree we're in the calm before the storm. I said earlier, you know i think that timescales are unpredictable.
00:18:27
Speaker
you know We will always be and I will always be more provocative that it'll be sooner. And history has shown that it has taken longer, but had maybe greater impact than we could have ever imagined in each of these iterations of technological innovation.
00:18:39
Speaker
um But I think that for all of us, and this is what we're pushing on and seeing, is that if we stay just focused on cost, like if a contact center, if the operating center within an enterprise's only function is to deliver cost, it's...
00:18:54
Speaker
an oxymoron to the fact that they are an experience center. Right. Ultimately, if organizations if we want to come out of this recessionary mindset, organizations have to get back to a headset of growth. And that gets back to things we used to talk about, like customer lifetime value.
00:19:09
Speaker
Right. And there you can see the distinction or the the distance between what a manager is managing for, which is cost, operational efficiency, which is really a question around automation versus maybe a higher order set of objectives.
00:19:22
Speaker
And it's to the enterprise to give that to that function to drive. Right. Because if the chief customer officer and marketing are focused on growth and operations is focused on cost and productivity, I actually think those organizations, those enterprises will fall behind very quickly.
00:19:36
Speaker
That's interesting. And do you think there's going to be a drive towards more um work being run out of the US, for example?
00:19:47
Speaker
so using Agentec, if I can deliver, what, 150 people are currently delivering for me in the Philippines with 15 people in the States using smart Agentec tools, is that going to bring that work back? I mean, I just saw Apple announce something like 500 billion reinvestment in, make they're they're trying to move their whole business back to the States.
00:20:11
Speaker
They're almost becoming like the end, the change company at the moment. But, um, Is this going to really change this global talent game? I think is where I'm going here because um I was around in 2012 when we introduced RPA to the world and we were having this exact conversation back then which is, hey, we've got this great software that can scrape screens and automate process and do this stuff that people... um The problem was the technology couldn't scale. It was too brittle.
00:20:40
Speaker
It was very one-dimensional and most... companies who bought ah RPA licenses tended to dump it two or three layers down the organization where it got lost somewhere and the onus fell away.
00:20:54
Speaker
Now we actually have technology, which is incredible. Like I can talk to you for 20 seconds and come up with a perfect agentic image of Katie and your accent and blah, blah, blah, blah. It's been done to me.
00:21:05
Speaker
Right. You know, it's there. And this is about taking work, that humans are doing. And rather than moving it to another human on the other side of the world, we're now saying we're going to move that to a piece of software.
00:21:19
Speaker
So that's a change paradigm that companies have never gone through before. This is what I think is that the real issue here is we're we're going through change that no one's actually experienced. We're we're seeing only 12% of enterprises doing anything at this level.
00:21:36
Speaker
um How companies going to cope with that,
Embracing Agentic Solutions
00:21:40
Speaker
do you feel? Because this is this is coming. I think it's coming in the over the next 12 to 18 months quite aggressively at us. ah How do you think companies are going to cope with this? How do you think we're going to create a positive mindset within organizations to embrace agentic and embrace working with IT t like we've never worked before?
00:22:00
Speaker
Yeah. And I think it's you mentioned the Apple thing. I mean, I also, though, um maybe the last few months have made me a little bit more skeptical of everything that I read at face value in the media as to what that really means. So... I'll park that there.
00:22:14
Speaker
But um you know i think in terms of how companies, first let's talk about like how companies think of their strategy. um ah you know I think that the first thing is that within the enterprise, i mean, going back to everything you've been saying, Phil, for years, companies have still not become one office. right They're still not a generative enterprise. like They're still not thinking end to end. right So that's an issue they have to tackle.
00:22:41
Speaker
As a provider, I'll go back to this concept of skill and scale. So will all these jobs move back onshore? My personal belief at this stage is no, because here's what we're going to do. We're going to create a tech and ops platform. And if you look at the best place for that to be created, and start to think of markets like India, where we have so much of the technology development and resources and skills existing.
00:23:02
Speaker
And what we're going to think about is how do we really run really digital operating centers, right? So we will be training people who will be able to prompt and run this technology with very little human overlay in the centers of scale.
00:23:14
Speaker
And to me, this opens up actually as an organization that has a big footprint in India, a tremendous opportunity because work that historically would have gone to the Philippines or to other locations may actually end up in lower cost location like India, but at a higher performance level because of translation, neutralization, agentics.
00:23:32
Speaker
Centers of skill then, depending on the product and the service, will end up nearer shore um in smaller footprints, addressing whether it's service to sales, addressing core metrics, superior metrics that can be driven. And that for us as partners and providers, if all we do is walk into tenders and give rate cards, we've missed the boat with the client in terms of educating them as to how to think about their operating model. It goes all the way back to think of all the target operating model work that was done years ago.
00:24:02
Speaker
I don't even hear that in discussions anymore. What I hear about is technology. This is all about how we separate work and skills effectively and efficiently to drive better performance. i Right.
00:24:15
Speaker
Right. Right. So what are we going to be talking about, do you think, can three years' time? Three years is enough time that we can kind of see what's happening before it becomes science fiction, Katie. What's the conversation going to be and be based on then?
00:24:33
Speaker
I mean, i know I know you have a son. I have two kids. um I really, and when was listening to your conversation with Jason, you know, To me, I could say quantum computing, I could say blockchain, crypto, all these things. Those are just technologies. To me, I'm coming back to the labor force, right?
Future Readiness in Education and Jobs
00:24:49
Speaker
And really thinking about how are we going to change education? How are we going to change what job requirements are? um And I think for any of us, especially in this BPO industry, if we don't get a handle on that and start to think about it right now, what I hear a lot of, candidly, Phil, is let's train the workforce on digital.
00:25:05
Speaker
Okay, great. But does that have a forward lean in terms of what are the skills that we're training them to have? I mean, just learning digital isn't a skill set. We have to go back to now understanding the taxonomy of what are skills, what is career progression, how do we create a career for people?
00:25:20
Speaker
And I don't hear enough conversation around that today. So I'm assuming that that's the laggard that comes into context as we see another form of the great resignation or, know, you know but you know, people being disillusioned with their workforce. And I think we're not
Workforce Disillusionment
00:25:34
Speaker
through that wave yet. We saw it settle down for a year or so.
00:25:37
Speaker
you know, we saw high attrition. It's come down across the industry. It's going to happen again. And I think that it'll be disillusionment with understanding, you know, what is good performance? How do people get paid? And especially as we look at what what does this look like? What is the future of work for all of these workers coming along?
00:25:55
Speaker
What is it? um Because if it feels like it's just replacement, we've we've really missed the fact that, yes, it will be fewer workers in any work queue, fewer colleagues in any work queue.
00:26:05
Speaker
But what is the high order work that they're doing and how do we get them there? I mean, to me, there's a big gap between what they're doing today and what we think we'll be doing in two years. Yeah, I'm with you. I mean, one of the things I took away from my recent India trip is there's so much more engagement ah across the ecosystem.
00:26:25
Speaker
Like you've got local government. I was talking to students, academics, enterprise customers, vendors, all sorts of people, ah diplomats from the foreign services helping to drive business, that sort of thing.
00:26:40
Speaker
There's a real ecosystem there. They're working together to figure out how do we all grow. And that is completely missing outside of in Western countries. I'll tell you the UK, I'll say the US in particular.
00:26:53
Speaker
ah There's just an increasing disconnect between kids coming out of college. and corporate mindsets and what they want to do. And you just saw, I think, it's been the the worst unemployment amongst Harvard MBAs in the last year. like they're not They're not walking into jobs like they used to.
00:27:09
Speaker
They just don't want to do. Yeah. A lot of these programs like Harvard, Queens College, all of these are now actually setting up programs in locations like India, right? Because the value proposition, I think, is being questioned and challenged here.
00:27:22
Speaker
And still in emerging markets or in markets like India, you know, students are understanding that there's a value to learn how to learn, but they're being supported by the ecosystem. And look, markets with...
00:27:34
Speaker
hundreds of millions of you know people that are focused on how do they capture scale and bring that scale together for future prosperity, I think have a leg up on markets that are focused on protectionism and unionism.
00:27:45
Speaker
you know Yeah. so yeah yeah It's also the the mindset of when we were starting out, you had a mortgage, you bought your first property, you you were on a ladder to somewhere and you grew with your age your companies. Now, yeah i get I interview kids who want 150 grand, starting salary.
00:28:07
Speaker
And I'm like, I can't do that. I run a business. yeah It's just not feasible. I can hire really good kids in India for 50 grand. right you know um who And that's a super salary out there. So there's a real desperation coming between cost of living, salaries, what businesses want, this disconnect between education and so and society.
00:28:31
Speaker
And um on top of that, we have we have a lot of chaos out there. and Yeah, I also think it comes back to this like fuzzy middle, right? like um Culture you know it goes back to that old, what was it, culture eats strategy for breakfast concept from you know back in the day.
00:28:46
Speaker
um At the top, you can talk about, and saw that you were talking about like fear of becoming obsolete. like You can talk about the purpose, you can talk about the vision, but it's really the middle layer right who drive the day-to-day actions that show someone, okay, if you are ambitious, if you're a learning person, if you keep raising your hand, you know, you can go further.
00:29:08
Speaker
And so I think we have to step back and ask ourselves, like, which ecosystems are promoting and driving that middle layer to behave as sort of the lighthouse for the bot, you know, the pyramid coming along, and which ones have maybe waned and lost that, that edge, you know, and I think that's something as leaders of companies, we have to be vigilant about.
00:29:27
Speaker
And you have to replace talent and send a very strong message around that. Otherwise, that's how these behemoths, and we've seen them with brands, I won't name, but in the ITO BPO space, who've lost their edge for periods of time.
00:29:39
Speaker
It's because I think they've lost that connectivity between where the organization is going directionally and how it's driven at the micro decisions of that middle layer every day.
00:29:49
Speaker
I completely agree with you. And yeah if you listen to that last podcast, I think Jason mentioned something around, we're in a humanist recession. i love that. is so Yeah. Yeah. Where she talked about, um you know, it's not just the economy, it's fear of AI and it's fear of the political landscape. It's scary. It's like, what is going on in the world right now where we have government employees getting fired, left, right, right, right,
00:30:19
Speaker
the media is just going haywire and a lot of stuff. So hopefully this all settles down a bit, but um I do hope we're not in this humanist recession. Well, I think it's also interesting, especially being the space of customer experiences, how do you think about, um for all of these brands, serving the end consumer when the end consumer also has all of these social influences going on around them? right If you think about what Jason kind of was alluding to, which is some of the rage, the dissatisfaction,
00:30:46
Speaker
Ultimately, you know that is all feeding into a day-to-day how they're interacting with brands, you know what they're hearing. Just think about the recent issues with um some of the travel brands that have happened that are disastrous and terrible. And all of a sudden, I know I found myself being chased around on the internet with prolific amounts of stories of accidents that have happened.
00:31:06
Speaker
i mean that's that's You have to stop and remind yourself that actually we're safer traveling in an airplane than we oftentimes are traveling on the road. But the internet and digital has changed what we perceive as reality. And this to me is something that's you know terrifying in terms of how we think about um the relationship between brands and their own consumer and what's the disintermediation between that that's happening in these eco chambers.
00:31:33
Speaker
Yeah, I'm with you on that. Well, ah centers of skill. Huh. comes away from this conversation, but changing of mindsets definitely is something that's top of mind looking away from it.
IGT's SMART Approach
00:31:48
Speaker
change of mindsets. And I think if I were to leave one thing, Phil, it would be to say like, so we're we're not branding ourselves the un-BPO BPO, bpo um but we are we are coming to market around something called SMART, which is superior metrics, AI-led, agents redefine transformation. And notice transformation is at the end, right?
00:32:06
Speaker
Because the first thing, as I said, is like getting to the real, the real metrics. at the level we're talking to, you know, is it CSAT and first call resolution, are we actually now talking about customer lifetime value and moving up that chain?
00:32:20
Speaker
If everything we do isn't anchored in the outcome, this whole discussion of how do we transcend and move towards, and in the near term, outcome-based commercials, and the long-term then the trust that gets us to, you know, sort of subscription and those sorts of models can't happen.
00:32:37
Speaker
And then AI led, you know, everything we're doing around redefining agentic workflows, which automate, basically they simplify, they take friction out and agents being reimagined. You can't do one without the other.
00:32:48
Speaker
You have to do both. And so I think listened very carefully to a lot of firms talking about the former, not the latter. And they both have to happen in tandem, right? Because it is the skilling. Agents reimagined how we do that at the speed and scale we have to.
00:33:02
Speaker
And only then you get to transformation. Unfortunately, you know, the big consulting brands have put transformation first. And I think that's a misnomer, right? Because transformation has no destination. Completely with it.
00:33:14
Speaker
Wonderful. Well, Katie, it's always great catching up with you. Yeah, we'll see you in New York. im waiting photo Yeah, we'll see in New York and look forward to sharing this i'll coat there with the world pretty soon because this has been a mind expanding conversation. I've enjoyed it very, very much.
00:33:30
Speaker
Thanks, Phil. Always a pleasure. Thank you.
00:33:37
Speaker
Thanks for tuning in to From the Horse's Mouth, intrepid conversations with Phil First. Remember to follow Phil on LinkedIn and subscribe and like on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite platform for no-nonsense takes on the intricate dance between technology, business, and ideological systems.
00:33:56
Speaker
Got something to add to the discussion? Let's have it. Drop us a line at fromthehorsesmouth at hfsresearch.com or connect with Phil on LinkedIn.