From Video to CX: Shana Hafterson and Sean Fair on Zoom’s Next Evolution

[00:00:01] Sean Fair:  I look at AI as, you know, that’s table stakes, but it’s actually what are we doing to solve business outcomes. And at Zoom, we view, uh, customer experience a little bit different. We feel everybody in the organization is responsible for a good experience for our customers, And we focus on delivering happiness in a culture around care, caring for the customers and hearing the feedback from them.

[00:00:22] Intro/Outro:  Tech has reshaped our reality, redefining how we live, work, and connect, and driving this revolution? Real people with bold ideas. Welcome to the Bridgecast, where host Scott Kinkah has in-depth discussions brightest minds in tech. Together, they tackle the future of work, innovation, entrepreneurship, and navigating the new realities of AI and hybrid work. These conversations will give you the insights and strategies to stay ahead both in business and life. The Bridgecast is a service of Bridgepointe Technologies. As the nation’s leading tech advisory and consulting firm, Bridgepointe is disrupting the way businesses make and manage their technology and customer experience investments. We invite you to experience the better way, the Bridgepointe way. Now here’s your host, Scott Kinka.

[00:01:28] Scott Kinka:  Well, hello, everybody out there, and welcome to another episode of the Bridgecast. We’re thrilled to have you join us here in, um, muggy Las Vegas.

[00:01:36] David McAbee:  Is it muggy? I haven’t been out there.

[00:01:37] Scott Kinka:  I don’t know. It’s a lot warmer than it is at home. We’re here at March at Channel Partners. Um, we try to get an episode in here every year, and I’m thrilled to be joined with the team from Zoom here, Zoom CX. Shannon and Sean, thank you for joining us here today.

[00:01:52] Sean Fair:  Thank you for hosting.

[00:01:53] Scott Kinka:  Absolutely. Dave McAbee is a regular on the show from the Bridgepointe CX side, so welcome back.

[00:01:58] David McAbee:  Second time. Also a channel partner.

[00:02:00] Scott Kinka:  Also a channel partner. Yeah. I feel like it’s the only time we see each other.

[00:02:03] David McAbee: No.

[00:02:04] Scott Kinka:  I’m kidding. So the purpose for today’s discussion, quite simply, is to make sure that we maybe put a new lens on Zoom a little bit. I think many of our listeners who are IT leaders and, you know, executives may think, like, every one of them has Zoom somewhere in their business, I’m sure. But, ultimately, we’re sort of migrating over. We’re here to talk about CX today, but, Sean, you actually led Zoom the Zoom voice team for a while there as well. Right?

[00:02:29] Sean Fair:  Yeah. I started Zoom right at the beginning of the pandemic, and, uh, it was the evolution of bringing Zoom Phone to market. And so five years ago, we delivered Zoom Phone out in the market, um, in a short period of time at about 7,000,000 subscribers. And part of that was then the evolution in the contact center space. Naturally, our customers were asking, you know, uh, how do you how do you round out portfolio? How do you expand a little bit more? And and so I took over head of contact center for sales and go to market, uh, now two years ago.

[00:02:59] Scott Kinka:  Fantastic. And you were Mitel and ShoreTel?

[00:03:01] Sean Fair:  It goes almost twenty five years. Actually, acquired twice by Mitel.

[00:03:06] Scott Kinka:  Okay.

[00:03:07] Sean Fair:  So Intel acquired in ’07 with the ShoreTel after being acquired by Mitel. 2017 comes around, acquired by Mitel, uh, second time.

[00:03:17] Scott Kinka:  Yeah.

[00:03:18] Sean Fair:  And, uh, stayed on as a regional vice president for their cloud division in the West and then joined Zoom to to help incubate and bring phone to market. Got it. Lovely. It you know, it’s it’s exciting. You know? 10% of our global revenue of phone of Zoom comes from phone. Got it. And and that’s pretty fascinating stat when you look at multiple companies in the Fortune 100 deployed our communication stack from phone with over a hundred thousand users. So it’s been a big, uh, expansion for us.

[00:03:45] Scott Kinka:  And we’ll get into that progression from, you know, kind of video to meetings to voice in a minute. But, Shannon, I’m gonna come to you. So you are also involved in the CX go to market at Zoom?

[00:03:55] Shana Hafterson:  I am. I lead our America’s CX channel here at Zoom. I joined from Five nine about two years ago, and it’s been an evolution. We’ve quickly picked up a lot of steam, a lot of headway, and, uh, you know, in this AI revolution, I couldn’t be more excited to be here today with all of you and also, you know, here at Zoom leading our CX channel.

[00:04:12] Scott Kinka:  Awesome. We’re thrilled to have you on the show. You were Five nine in Dialpad.

[00:04:16] Shana Hafterson:  Yes.

[00:04:17] Scott Kinka:  Okay. And Zoom, you said roughly two years.

[00:04:19] Shana Hafterson:  Roughly two years. Okay. Yeah.

[00:04:21] Scott Kinka:  And, um, Dave, you get to introduce yourself again. Alright. Tell us a little bit about

[00:04:25] David McAbee:  Uh, well, today my role is I I’m one of I’m part of the SIX leadership team inside of Bridgepointe. So, uh, my role is to be a resource for anybody and everybody who thinks they have a need customer experience, uh, related. Um, and that’s how I see myself. I’m basically here to serve prior to that. I’ve I’ve done a lot in this space. I started in cloud self-service applications way back in the day when you had to explain to people what cloud meant. I spent a lot of time in CCAS. I worked, uh, for Genesis. I worked for NICE, both as a bag carrying sales rep as well as a sales leader. And then I spent some time in, uh, outsourcing BPO as well as AI and analytics. Yeah. All in the CX pay. So I I didn’t plan it that way, but it worked out to be a useful pedigree for what I do now.

[00:05:09] Scott Kinka:  And there’s a reason we have you in here with the Zoom team, obviously, right, is that we’re you know, you’re spending a lot of time in the field in front of executives trying to rationalize the various expenditures that they’ve made and voice and comms and meetings and CX solutions, in particular since the pandemic. Right? I mean, Gardner Friedman Gardner’s stat that said, like, the average expenditure on comms technologies during the pandemic went up by 30%.

[00:05:32] David McAbee:  I’m surprised it was that low.

[00:05:34] Sean Fair:  We could’ve contributed to some of that as well to the pandemic.

[00:05:37] Scott Kinka:  Oh, definitely. Definitely. We’ll definitely get there. Well, for those of you following along at home, let me just get this. NICE Genesis five nine dial pad, Mitel, and ShoreTel. So we’re fairly well represented here in the room, um, even though we’re talking about Zoom today. So we’re gonna just one more, like, personnel style of question personal style of question before we get into the company. Just I ask this question a lot. You guys are all business leaders, uh, within your respective organizations. Everybody has a superpower. Shannon, I’m coming to you first. What’s your executive superpower?

[00:06:07] Shana Hafterson:  My executive superpower is is that I can see patterns and I can match patterns and block and tackle to execute processes to grow the business.

[00:06:14] Scott Kinka:  Okay. I like that. Scale.

[00:06:16] Shana Hafterson:  Scale. Okay. Exactly.

[00:06:17] Scott Kinka:  Love it. John?

[00:06:18] Sean Fair:  You know, I’ve been fortunate to build out a couple businesses now for Zoom, and it’s really around talent acquisition. You build the right team. I’ve been fortunate to build a leadership team in both phone and contact center and infuse the business with great talent externally from the competitors, and they’ve been there, done that, and and bring them into the organization. But I’ve also promoted a number of people in the first time leadership roles and and ability to mentor them to success. So finding

[00:06:42] Scott Kinka:  and surrounding yourself with the right talent Correct.

[00:06:44] Sean Fair:  Is your superpower. Absolutely.

[00:06:45] Scott Kinka:  By DISH, did you hire Shanna?

[00:06:47] Sean Fair:  Uh, I’d well, I did not quite hire Shanna, but she does report to me. And and it’s actually interesting enough. It was probably, like, a year and a half ago. I was sitting in the Phoenix Airport with my Zoom backpack, and she comes up and taps me on the back, and she says, hey. I’m Shana with Five nine. Yeah. And this is, uh, you know, after the marriage of Five nine and Zoom didn’t work out. Yeah. And so I had an opportunity to meet Shana. And then as we were building out the channel program, uh, she was a natural fit. Okay.

[00:07:15] Scott Kinka:  Shana, I’m not shocked you did that at an airport, by the way. Just random.

[00:07:18] Shana Hafterson:  I saw the Zoom logo and I just had to go up and say hi. I was, like, enamored with the Zoom logo.

[00:07:23] Sean Fair:  And now she represents the logo for CX new channel. I love it. I love it.

[00:07:27] Scott Kinka:  Dave, what’s your superpower?

[00:07:28] David McAbee:  Mine’s always changing, which I think is a good thing. I think my superpower is just being a good listener. I meet with a lot of customers. I have to do a lot of diagnostic work and I, I sort of become very good at kind of one shotting those conversations and leaving really understanding what their goals are and how we’re going to get there.

[00:07:46] Scott Kinka:  Yeah. Well, it’s an interesting segue as we get into kind of thinking about purchasing c x technologies. Right? I mean, one, I think walking around this convention center listening is clearly a lost art. So I appreciate that, by the way. By the way, one second, I mean, you mentioned business outcomes, like understanding what their goals are. And so often, we go into technology conversations, like, as a tech for tech’s sake. You know what I mean? You’re like especially now around AI. You know? It’s like, go get me some of that. I don’t know for what. Like, what are we doing? So just keep that in context as we kinda go through some of these questions. And if you wanted to draw on that as we go, we’re gonna we’ll we’ll roll through that. But let’s jump into Zoom for a minute. So you’re all CX leaders, customer experience. You know, you’re focused on effectively the communication, not between employees. You’re between employees and or, you know, internal folks and external folks on an ad hoc basis, but generally in support organizations. Right? And that might not be what our listeners think about potentially when they think about Zoom. So I’m gonna come to you actually first, Sean, on this because you’ve led that journey from meetings, licensing picked up during the pandemic largely probably to businesses leaning on on you across the board now all the way into CX as you go. So just, you know, tell us a little bit about kinda transitioning from the COVID video darling to a CX company.

[00:09:03] Sean Fair:  Yeah. You know? And I think it’s important. Most recently, we dropped the name video out of Zoom Video Communications. So it’s we’re known as Zoom Communications now because it’s not just video. It’s a holistic expansion of our platform and what we do from not only a CX perspective, but ultimately solving business outcomes. And when you look at AI, you know, I look at AI as, you know, that’s table stakes, but it’s actually what are we doing to solve business outcomes. And at Zoom, we view, uh, customer experience a little bit different. We we feel everybody in the organization is responsible for a good experience for our customers, and we focus on delivering happiness in a culture around care, caring for the customers and hearing the feedback from them. About 40% of our innovation, and we, uh, speed of innovation is real at Zoom. Twenty five years in this business, I’ve not competed or worked for a company prior to Zoom that innovate so fast. Yeah. And so I think we pride ourselves from that, and AI is not new to us. But as we look at the shift around agentic capabilities and what we’re doing there and I think it will be interesting at Enterprise Connect last week. Somebody said, uh, agent. And in the contact center context, we think about the agent who takes an engagement. But agent is shifting now because agentic capabilities of AI is referenced as an agent. Yeah. And so as you look to solve business challenges, it’s how do we embed at the core of our platform the AI, extensible to integrate different applications as well. So it’s not just a end all be all with with Zoom, whether you’re in Microsoft, a Google shop, whether you’re using Salesforce, whether you’re a point solution like a number of our partners that we integrate with, you know, we have an open architecture, open ecosystem to make sure that we’re, you know, accomplishing the needs of our clients.

[00:10:43] Scott Kinka:  I’m going off script already. We’re about five minutes in. Dave, I’m throwing it at you. Can you just we’re toss we toss words around in this industry all the time. So, you know, I think we’re already on Agentic, and most people don’t understand generative. So let’s just stop for one second. Just Agentic AI quickly for me if you want.

[00:10:59] David McAbee:  So the key is the word agent in agentic.

[00:11:02] Scott Kinka:  Okay.

[00:11:02] David McAbee:  It is an AI application that is being built to go complete tasks of some kind. We’re gonna get to the point where they can go and complete tasks and overcome barriers while they’re attempting to complete tasks. We’re not quite there yet. We used to refer to something like this, like a robotic process automation. It’s now smart robotic process automation, because those were applications that required a lot of building, a lot of design, a lot of, a lot of tuning. AgenTic AI has the promise of being able to sort of turn it on and it figures it out in a way, but it will complete after call work. It’ll it’ll go and complete transactions inside of various applications. Um, it’s all about just making the agent more efficient, making them more available, getting the customer’s transactions and paths completed more quickly and more accurately.

[00:11:47] Scott Kinka:  I’m gonna come back to that. I wanna finish off that earlier topic around just kinda Zoom bridging from Zoom as we know as kinda we we knew it to Zoom in voice to Zoom in CX, and I appreciate your comment around kind of the pace of innovation over there. Shannon, like, you’re you’re with customers every day. You have the good fortune, let’s say, like I said, enamored by the logo, right, when you accosted this guy in the airport. Um, you have the good fortune of not meeting with a customer who at least doesn’t know who Zoom is. Right? But you’re asking them, in some cases, maybe to suspend their disbelief or to, you know, to move over to the next side from a voice perspective and to move into CX. Like, can you walk us through that progression when you’re in front of a client? How do you get them from maybe what they know to where you really believe you’re bringing the value around CX?

[00:12:33] Shana Hafterson:  So a lot of times, listening, right, and sitting down and listening to the needs of our clients and then looking at their employee experience, and so maybe they already are standardized on our workplace and phone applications, and then looking at their agent supervisor and admin experience and talking about things like AI expert assist. So how do we give that autonomous decision making or those playbooks or those next best actions, and then the integrations into the CRM and listening to the business outcomes that that client might need. And then we also can look into maybe Zoom virtual agent and self-service online. And so now we have an EX, CX experience that’s giving our clients a total experience. And so we also do have a lot of net new clients that we speak to that are not a Zoom customer at all.

[00:13:18] Sean Fair:  Can you believe that?

[00:13:19] Scott Kinka:  Not really. Okay. Or well, at least Well, but

[00:13:22] David McAbee:  it There’s gotta be a new person sitting around it. Yeah.

[00:13:24] Sean Fair:  It it is very important, like, the comment that she made when we released our contact center and where we are now with the evolution of it. We’re winning customers that maybe are on different platforms and maybe not on Zoom meetings. And we’ve had the fortunate opportunity. I think that speaks highly to that investment that we’ve made Yeah. In the CX space. So even if they’re on some sort of Microsoft platform using Microsoft Teams, we released, uh, last week the ability to integrate with Microsoft Teams as well from our contact center. So taking that vision of the marketplace and the opportunity is, I think, extremely valuable there.

[00:13:58] Scott Kinka:  Yeah. Your CIO, Gary Sorrentino, who you all know has been a a great friend of the show and a great friend of Bridgepointe, he always says we’re very focused on meeting customers where they are. Is that a good way to describe that, Zach?

[00:14:09] Shana Hafterson:  Yeah. I yeah. Absolutely. And then also, I mean, if we do wanna think about our native video channel as well, we have a lot of customers leveraging our video channel in their customer experience environment and they’re not only improving CSAT scores but they’re also lowering handle time. We also just announced this month as well that we have AIXtra Assist for our video channel. So now the agent, while they’re on the video with their consumer or their customer, they can now not only meet their customers how they would like to do business, but then the agent also has that same experience that we had from the voice channel now on the video channel, so they’re going to have that next best action and then all the supervisors and the data will still be within that call as well no matter if you’re on voice or video or chat.

[00:14:51] Scott Kinka:  Do I think about that like as like an embed, like, in the customer’s website from a support perspective? They’re not on the client.

[00:14:57] Sean Fair:  Right? Yeah. It’s not even for yeah. It could be embedded on the mobile or or Okay. Through the website. For the foreign consumer, there’s no client download required on Zoom, so they don’t have to have the Zoom client ordered interface.

[00:15:07] Scott Kinka:  Got it.

[00:15:08] Sean Fair:  We have a consumer client of ours right now that routes in and can promote from a chat or a voice call into a video engagement. And then they could go in that video engagement, and the consumer can show physically the device they’re having issues with. And the time to resolution is almost 50% less because I’m not trying to troubleshoot over the phone. Have you clicked this button three times? Have you done this or that?

[00:15:29] Scott Kinka:  Right? So down to the bottom. Is there a red button? Yeah. I get totally So on a

[00:15:33] Sean Fair:  a lot of it is first call resolution, reduction of average channeling time. Let’s face it as consumers right now, we’ve got a lot on our plate. Last thing we wanna do is talk to somebody for an extended period of time and be transferred to multiple people and have a poor experience.

[00:15:47] David McAbee:  And also you’re reducing customer effort when you do that. I mean, that, to me, that’s one of the biggest metrics people don’t talk enough about, which is when you’re trying to troubleshoot any technical sort of issue over the telephone, how painful it is for the consumer, because all the burden shifted to them to try to describe their problem. And this just drags on. And we all dread that call, right?

[00:16:06] Scott Kinka:  Totally.

[00:16:07] David McAbee:  To be able to do that over videos. Yeah.

[00:16:09] Scott Kinka:  I mean, it does beg an interesting question, though, right? I mean, you know, we we go through we talked about agentic and generative and whatever the word of the week is, and it was omnichannel and CX forever. Six, eight years ago, if you believed what all your competitors in CX were telling you, we were all gonna be doing a % of our support on video. And it kinda didn’t really go anywhere. So I’m gonna ask Dave this. Like, why now then? Like, why why do you think it’s working now? Is it the technology got there to make it easier to be not have to have a client to your point, Sean? Or are we more acceptable of that post COVID because we sort of, you know, grew and changed? Like, why now?

[00:16:45] David McAbee:  Yeah, I think. Yeah, I think that’s a big part of it. I think that people just finally got comfortable with video. I mean, think about pre pandemic. You still had the folks that wouldn’t turn their cameras on or

[00:16:55] Scott Kinka:  still have the folks who.

[00:16:56] David McAbee:  Yeah, yeah. But but they’re feeling they’re they’re feeling far between. We just sort of accepted. This is here to stay, and that’s how we do business now, and we’re all pretty comfortable with that. I think for a lot of reasons, you know, one, if you go back five or six years, people weren’t rushing to video because even then, we’re all pretty mobile. It’s I’d rather get this done over voice or in my time over an SMS interaction back and forth. But I’m not sitting still where I can do this in a video interaction. But now video is available all the time. It’s right there. It’s on our devices. And the other thing I think has helped us a lot is across the industry, hold times have come way down for most organizations. And so the expectation of the consumer is I’m not going to be sitting there waiting for fifteen minutes till someone finally comes on this video interaction. Yeah. And they’re usually rewarded with less than a two minute hold time before they’re in an interaction and in solving their problems. So there’s I think there’s one thing, but there’s a few things that have combined to make video more accept.

[00:17:55] Scott Kinka:  I have to follow down that one statement that you made, though, and then I’ll ask you all to jump in on it, which is universally hold times are going down. And I’ll give you some thoughts on it, but is this because we’re less apt to hang on the phone and we just hang up, so our abandonment rate’s higher? Is it because all of a sudden everybody just magically got better at managing their queues? Like, why is this a cumulative thing across the industry in your mind?

[00:18:19] David McAbee:  I’d like to believe it’s because we’ve spent the last fifteen years pounding it into companies’ heads that they’ve got to take customer experience seriously. And I think that that’s a big part of it. Yeah. It used to be that that was a call center, the contact center where the call center now TX has a seat in the Executive Suite. And so they have a they have an equal mindshare with the rest of the organization.

[00:18:42] Scott Kinka:  Not a necessary evil in the business, but a driver

[00:18:45] David McAbee:  for most organizations is the last competitive advantage or differentiator that they have, you know, we can buy our widgets anywhere. Why do I do business with this company? Because I liked the experience of doing business with them, whether that’s brick and mortar or online. And so people figure that out. I used to say this five years ago, six years ago, I’d be giving presentations and you’d still have people kind of shake their heads and say, well, not for us. We’re special. We’re different. And now universally, it’s just an accepted axiom.

[00:19:12] Scott Kinka:  Got it. Anything to add?

[00:19:14] Sean Fair:  Yeah. You know, I’m gonna, um, no surprise, bring it back to AI also, you know, and the impact of that of digital self-service and flexibility channel of choice, whether it’s Yeah. Voice bot automation. I’ll use Zoom for an example. Over 90% of our support cases are self-service through digital channels. And so no no longer do we need human in the loop from that perspective. The consumer can get what they need without speaking to an agent. But when they then speak to the agent, then we embed our AI capabilities to humanize the agent experience. Right? So we’re not trying to replace agents, but we’re trying to feed relevant information to the agents to make them more productive. Yeah. So instead of saying, can you please maintain hold for three minutes while I look up that support article? We’ve extracted the article. We’ve said, hey. Here’s step one through four that their user has to to go through in order to resolve the issue that they’re facing. And so when we look at, you know, humanizing the agent as an important element not to replace the agent, But when you get the mix between the, um, digital self-service and then on top of the the tools available to make the agent more efficient, ultimately, let’s face it. You need to you know, you you could do more with less. Yeah. And organizations, even today’s world, right, are looking to either cut costs, drive productivity,

[00:20:29] David McAbee:  and

[00:20:29] Sean Fair:  I think that’s a delicate balance that we’re facing in the market with our clients today.

[00:20:32] David McAbee:  By the way, to peel that onion back just a little bit more, by offering all of these agent assist types of technology, next best action, all those kinds of things, agent training time has come way down.

[00:20:43] Scott Kinka:  I got it. Yeah.

[00:20:44] Sean Fair:  In I’ll ask a client today, how much time do you have post call work, post call wrap up? What might have taken five minutes for them to capture notes that’s at the fingertips with the AI summary to write it? And so five minutes of post call wrap up before the agent goes back to available could be two minutes now.

[00:21:01] Scott Kinka:  So you’re making it more efficient, but I wanted to explore one thing on the user side, Shannon. I’m gonna come to you, which is, is it also generational that we’re not, like, getting to the end of the call and going, like, I tried all the other things. I’m zeroing out because I really wanna talk to somebody. I mean, is that Sure. Is that maybe the aspect of our callers coming in or have a different expectation of landing with a human as well?

[00:21:22] Shana Hafterson:  Well, yes. I think also demographics and Yeah. You know, geo, where you are in the world and who you are and what that consumer type looks like. And so I think you do need to take that into consideration, especially when we’re talking about blending AI and agents and, you know, blending it to be more of a human experience, but also how do you still self-service AI for those I read stats all the time. I think like 70% of people will, depending on the demographic, will try to self live agent. I think it depends also what type of industry you’re in. So, if I’m going through bereavement and I have an insurance policy, I may not want to speak to somebody at that point in time. Yeah. I may just want to get my policy taken care of via self-service. Or if I’m in, maybe I had my identity stolen, I might want to speak to somebody from my LifeLock. You know, I do subscribe to LifeLock. Right. I do. I for, like, years, I pay $40 a month. I’m so afraid of it. Hopefully, nobody’s gonna look at this and come come for me. Yeah.

[00:22:19] Scott Kinka:  Everybody’s just throwing a target on yourself.

[00:22:21] Shana Hafterson:  But, I mean, you do have to it’s not just yes. I think we always wanna say that maybe the younger generation wants only self-service because we’re so used to this digital era. But at the same time, I think you have to think of what’s happening in that person’s life or what type of industry are we talking about. And also, where are you in the world? I think also languages can come into play too. We’re not just talking about, you know, English. Right? We could be in other areas of the world. And so I don’t think it’s just as cut and dry as, oh, you’re young, so you’re gonna wanna be self serve.

[00:22:52] Scott Kinka:  Totally get it. Dave, I just I wanna one quick question for you, and then we’re we’re kinda start to start to move towards some wrap up fun. But and I’ve been on appointments with you, so I know how you work. Like, we’re like, we don’t you don’t do not subscribe technology until we’re, like you’re completely aligned with the client on where that is, but there comes a moment where you’re like, oh, yeah. We’re gonna look at Zoom for this. Do you find that that’s a little bit of a surprise from the client sometimes that they don’t see Zoom attached to the CX? Or is there, like, a pre inclination to do that because maybe they’re already in the rest of the business? Like, walk me through that conversation because to be fair, it’s been the top four or five leaders in that top right quadrant and in Seek has at least traditional Seek has for some time. So, like, what’s their reaction when you’re like, oh, I think Zoom’s a fit here?

[00:23:34] David McAbee:  You know, it’s interesting. It’s it is can be a surprise to them because, you know, customers are still unaware that Zoom is expanding their portfolio so much, but it’s never a negative reaction. Zoom has a good reputation, which makes things easy.

[00:23:47] Scott Kinka:  Well, Shana is a noun with a logo.

[00:23:50] Shana Hafterson:  So and that’s been brand.

[00:23:51] David McAbee:  We understand. There’s been a convergence between CCaaS and UCaaS as well. Right?

[00:23:57] Scott Kinka:  So a

[00:23:58] David McAbee:  lot of times when companies are looking to replace their contact center, they’re also replacing the entire voice architecture. And so more and more customers are looking for that. And so they’re not always looking for Zoom by name, but they’re looking for Zoom and those kinds of capabilities.

[00:24:12] Sean Fair:  And I think, you know, what they think about when we talk with them is, uh, it just works, the simplicity of it and highly available. You know, in the pandemic, there’s no company that scaled to 300,000,000 participants per day on a global platform like Zoom did. Yeah. And we did that elegantly on a highly reliable global architecture, and that same architecture is what Zoom contact center is built on.

[00:24:36] David McAbee:  Well, it’s something you said at the very beginning of this conversation about your speed of innovation that has been really helpful in my conversations, just knowing that and not just knowing it, but I’ve seen you guys not only hit your deliverable dates, but be early. You did that with workforce management, which was really exciting because that’s a hard application to stand up. So when I have these conversations with customers that say zoom, but how long have they been doing it? I said, well, you know, they’ve been in the contact center space for a few years now, but they’re innovating faster than anybody, and they’re bringing more things to market more quickly. That has helped also a lot.

[00:25:10] Sean Fair:  And it’s helped us in the market. I mean, our last earnings call, we announced a Fortune 100 tech company with 15,000 agents. The same capabilities if you have 25 agents or 15,000 agents. And so that flexibility of the architecture to scale with our clients is important at the same time.

[00:25:26] Scott Kinka:  I was just gonna say too that the the I think the IT leader and certainly IT support appreciates the fact that, you know, Zoom got delivered at scale during the pandemic without a whole lot of work and extra mess. Like, for years and years I mean, I have a career in the UC, you know, in video side, and it was codecs and how much bandwidth you had at home and quality of service and all the stuff around getting quality to the end Yep. You know, user. And it was kinda turn it on in the middle of madness, you know, there. So I do think there’s an appreciation that, hey. The CX technology is coming along, but the work to get it in front of an agent is gonna be probably not that complicated. I’m sorry, Shannon. I I was would you have something to add there?

[00:26:07] Shana Hafterson:  Well, I was just gonna say, you’ll appreciate this, Dave, on the innovation side. So before I came to Zoom, I would never innovation road map, I think you sometimes will shy away from talking to a customer or somebody that is looking to transform their critical application of their customer experience since their front door of their business. Our customers trust our innovation. If we say that this will be here by this date and we promise it, they trust that we will deliver. So David, I’m sure you appreciate that. I do. You’re talking to your customers. And I mean, we have real life examples, countless times where we say by this date, you need this and it’s there and our customers trust us.

[00:26:43] David McAbee:  You know, for us, our credibility at Bridgepointe, our credibility is on the line, we’ll recommend. And so we’re very careful to recommend or not recommend. Um, but you guys have continued to hit your innovation cycles. And so, so far, you’ve made me look good to the That’s good.

[00:26:57] Scott Kinka:  So Bridgepointe was Zoom services partner of the year in 24 word way. So, uh, excellent. Amen. Tell me either of you could take this, but, like, why in CX in particular are services, like, deployed at the customer so important?

[00:27:10] Sean Fair:  Yeah. You know, I mean, I think given the experience in the tenure that Bridgepointe brings to the table with the CX organization Mhmm. A lot of talent that’s been around in the industry for a long time, and you’ve seen what works and what doesn’t work. And then you take the proactive consulting approach to, uh, to making sure that when you get to service delivery, um, there’s a white glove element, a feeling of expertise, and project management that you bring to the table. Recently, you, um, brought Paula on to expand even on the services side, and that’s exciting because, you know, when we talk about delivering happiness, I mentioned earlier, we wanna make sure we’re a % confident

[00:27:46] Scott Kinka:  Yeah.

[00:27:47] Sean Fair:  That our partners we go to market with can deliver happiness on our behalf as well. And that’s inclusive of of things like managed services and making sure post implementation support is there. And and we’re, uh, we’re we’re extremely thankful for the partnership with Bridgepointe.

[00:28:01] Scott Kinka:  Well, thrilling. I appreciate it, guys, and thank you for your time. We as we end every one of these shows, we end it with a little bit of fun. Now normally, I hit our guests with, like, three questions, but in the interest of time, I’m gonna be a little bit more selective here, and we’re gonna have some fun. So, Shanna, I’m coming to you first.

[00:28:17] Shana Hafterson:  Oh, boy.

[00:28:18] David McAbee:  Um, she’s most prepared.

[00:28:19] Sean Fair:  We are loyal as she is.

[00:28:21] Scott Kinka:  We wanna know what you’re reading right now. What’s on your end table?

[00:28:24] Shana Hafterson:  What I’m reading right now is The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins.

[00:28:27] Scott Kinka:  Okay.

[00:28:27] Shana Hafterson:  God. I think My

[00:28:28] Scott Kinka:  wife’s a big Mel Robbins fan.

[00:28:30] Shana Hafterson:  Yeah. She’s great. She’s, like, top of the charts also on podcasts. So maybe she wasn’t What

[00:28:35] Scott Kinka:  do you mean in Mel

[00:28:35] David McAbee:  Robbins category? What’s your business phone?

[00:28:38] Scott Kinka:  What are you reading on the business side right now?

[00:28:39] Shana Hafterson:  Um, well, I brought one of my favorite books with names.

[00:28:42] Sean Fair:  Oh, make

[00:28:43] Shana Hafterson:  sure you have

[00:28:43] Scott Kinka:  the homework assignment down. Get them

[00:28:44] Shana Hafterson:  on camera there. Show us. The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. So I really enjoyed this book because it says break through the blocks and win your inner creative battles. And so, no, it doesn’t mean just being an artist. Yeah. It’s what’s your own personal superpower and how do you unlock that? And so this book to me was a really, it was a game changer. And I also like to ask people when I meet them, what is your favorite book? And so somebody that I, that I know in where I live, I asked this person, what is your favorite book? And this was it. And it was it was a great book to read.

[00:29:13] Scott Kinka:  Is The War of Art also play on words on Sun Tzu’s Art of War? Is that ever referenced in there at all or no?

[00:29:19] Shana Hafterson:  No. It’s not. Yeah.

[00:29:20] Scott Kinka:  We’ve mentioned that book on this show multiple times. It comes up a bunch. I love it, but it’s all good. Alright. I’m good to go, Sean. I’m coming to you. What’s the most recent leadership lesson that you learned that you should’ve you feel like you should’ve known already?

[00:29:34] Sean Fair:  Oh, boy. That sounds you know, I mean, twenty years of leadership, man. There’s a lot. You know? You said you were gonna write a book. Encouraged me to write a book. And, you know, I think back to a lot of good lessons. Right? And, you know, I’ve been fortunate as I talked about building my career with bringing on great people, and I’ve got seven direct leaders that run our America’s organization in good there. I’ll just take the you know, when you work cross functionally, you know, the directness of operationally, internally to get the most out of the business is is vitally important. And it was even as of last week, the direct and candid conversations with individuals is, like, super important. Right? And I think not only do they learn from it, but I learned from it as well. Right? So if you think about fear of failure or fear of conversation, if I go back to last week, you know, there’s conversations that have to be had, but you can’t have fear or else, you know, you won’t be able to overcome adversity. And so that’s recent, but, I mean, I’ve got a a list of them.

[00:30:31] Scott Kinka:  Well, they’re gonna be in your book. We’ll we’ll talk

[00:30:33] Sean Fair:  about that real quick. When it comes out will be chapter one.

[00:30:37] Scott Kinka:  Practice we say practice uncomfortable transparency. Yes.

[00:30:40] Sean Fair:  Get your honest. Transparency is key. My my leadership team knows I’m gonna be transparent.

[00:30:45] Scott Kinka:  Yeah.

[00:30:46] Sean Fair:  But but what I expect in return is the same.

[00:30:48] Scott Kinka:  Yeah. Of course. Transparent back. Right? Alright. I love it, David. I’m coming to you. I’m just trying to remember if what I asked you when we did our last, uh, episode together. I think I know what it was. I think I asked you what your biggest the biggest mistake you’ve ever made as a technology leader was. Do you remember? Is that without the question I asked? No. Good. That’s your question now. What’s the biggest mistake you what’s the biggest mistake you ever made as a technology leader?

[00:31:08] David McAbee:  Wow. It’s really more of a mistake I’ve made as a sales leader, but it’s in the technology space. It was not removing somebody from an opportunity until it was too late. I was too forgiving and I was and I think at the time I chalked up the loyalty, but I had a person working for me that just didn’t jive with the client and I stuck with them till the bitter end.

[00:31:30] Sean Fair:  What was the result?

[00:31:31] David McAbee:  We lost.

[00:31:32] Scott Kinka:  That’s a good tie into your question too. Right? Because that was you probably did it because you were avoiding that uncomfortable conversation that Sean just didn’t wanna have a minute ago.

[00:31:39] Sean Fair:  My team goes fell fast. Yeah. Like, qualify, and then if if it’s not a right fit.

[00:31:44] Scott Kinka:  I usually ask our guests whatever, you know, type of sci fi or whatever you subscribe to, we get to the end of the world, whatever dystopian future you imagine. And there’s only one app left on your phone that’s working. You don’t get to say Zoom, by the way. Woah. Um, only one app is still working on your phone. You get to choose which one it is. Rapid fire. Dave’s prepared. You go first.

[00:32:06] David McAbee:  Uh, it it’s Instagram. And I hate

[00:32:07] Scott Kinka:  to admit that, but it is. Okay. Instagram, Shanna?

[00:32:10] Shana Hafterson:  Mine’s TikTok so I can stay connected to the world.

[00:32:13] Scott Kinka:  Okay. There you go.

[00:32:14] Sean Fair:  I’ll say, um, FaceTime so I could keep connected to my family.

[00:32:17] David McAbee:  And on that note, pretty long, it’s actually

[00:32:19] Scott Kinka:  a good

[00:32:19] David McAbee:  way out, man. Yeah.

[00:32:20] Scott Kinka:  That’s cool. We love it. No. I love this has been a great time, guys. Thank you so much. It’s a crazy couple of days. It’s awesome to be able to just sit down and chat it out away from the show floor and talk tech with with friends and business partners and really learn something. So it’s been a great, uh, good use of our time, and we’re thrilled to have Hadji here on the Bridge Camp.

[00:32:37] David McAbee:  Appreciate it.

[00:32:37] Sean Fair:  Thank you. Yeah.

[00:32:38] Shana Hafterson:  Thank you.

[00:32:38] Scott Kinka:  Absolutely. Thank you, guys. We’ll see you soon, and we will catch all of you on another episode of The Bridgecast. Thanks for joining us. Listen. If you made it this far, there must have been some good content, or you’re just a fan or a relative of mine. In either case, we appreciate you spending your most valuable asset with us, your time. We don’t take that lightly. We’d also like to say one more time that we’re appreciative of Bridgepointe Technologies and their belief and sponsorship of this show. We hope that if you or someone you know is thinking about your company’s digital transformation or simply the next IT project that you may not have the resources, budget, or time to get to, I’m sure that Bridgepointe, one of the country’s fastest growing technology advisory and procurement firms can help. Check out bridgepointetechnologies.com. Don’t forget the e on BridgePointe, or simply reach out to me at skinka, skinka@bpt3.net. Also, take a minute, please, if you would, to give us a five-star review on your favorite platform. It helps give us the visibility to reach other people like you. Thanks for listening to this episode of The Bridgecast. I’m Scott Kinka. And until next time, there’s a lot of noise out there in business and in life. Do what you can to be the