From Zoom Boom to AI Boom: What’s Next for Customer Experience

[00:00:00] Scott Kinka:  Welcome to another episode of the Bridgecast. Uh, we’re here live at Channel Partners in not as sunny as it should be, Las Vegas. I don’t know if you can make it out in the audio, but the music’s thumping by the pool. Uh, we are joined here again at from with the Zoom team, Sean Fair and Shanna Hafterson. See, I’m not gonna screw that up this time. I can’t believe I did that. Two leaders who were at the forefront of customer experience, AI, and go to market strategy. We did this last year, so I’m super excited to just check-in and see how things are going. How are you guys?

[00:00:32] Shana Hafterson:  Doing good. I can hear the music a little bit.

[00:00:35] Scott Kinka:  Yeah. It’s a little vibey. Little vibey. Action going. Sean, you just got off the airplane.

[00:00:38] Sean Fair:  Just got off the airplane and fresh here at channel partners and ready for a heck

[00:00:42] Scott Kinka:  of a week. Uh, our listeners are are super happy that you chose to join them right off the airplane. Indeed. Amazing work. Alright. Well so for those of you who maybe don’t remember from last year, I’m gonna reorient you to to our team here. Sean’s the head of CX sales and go to market for The Americas at Zoom. Um, you were instrumental in getting the phone product off in the market as well. Yep. And you’re over here. Sean is is the head of America’s America’s CX channel. Is that the way I should say it? You guys have a lot of words in your titles.

[00:01:14] Shana Hafterson:  We do.

[00:01:14] Scott Kinka:  Good. So you run you run the actual channel motion for CX here in this region. Um, and these guys have been really essential towards getting the Zoom products really from the meetings that we know to the voice and phone part that became and now moving over to the customer experience side. We talked a lot about that last time, and we’re gonna get into a little bit more today. So welcome to the Bridge Academy.

[00:01:39] Unknown:  Thank

[00:01:40] Scott Kinka:  you. Thank you.

[00:01:41] Sean Fair:  Um, celebrated six years at Zoom last week.

[00:01:44] Scott Kinka:  You did.

[00:01:45] Sean Fair:  Man, talk about time going fast. Wild.

[00:01:49] Scott Kinka:  Six years, uh, six years duty. I I Two

[00:01:53] Sean Fair:  two, yeah, two two weeks into the pandemic, I landed at Zoom. Six years later, here we are.

[00:01:58] Scott Kinka:  That’s a heck of a time to land at Zoom Man. Two weeks into the pandemic.

[00:02:02] Sean Fair:  I’ll tell you, it’s a life changing experience, not only for for us as employees, but also for what we did for our customers and Yeah. People that relied on our platform.

[00:02:12] Scott Kinka:  And you guys called that the Zoom boom.

[00:02:15] Sean Fair:  Zoom boom. The Zoom boom.

[00:02:16] Scott Kinka:  I love it.

[00:02:17] Shana Hafterson:  We’re repeating it again, though.

[00:02:18] Scott Kinka:  We’re repeating it again.

[00:02:19] Unknown:  Yeah. Alright. How long has it been for you? About three years. Okay.

[00:02:23] Shana Hafterson:  Yeah. It’s been that long. It has. Are you aging me already? No. I’m aging. Alright.

[00:02:29] Scott Kinka:  Let’s reorient. So, Sean, you you were through you were with Zoom then, obviously, through a massive period of growth and transformation. So before we dive into CX and AI and everything that goes on about that, get just give me a story. Give me a story from the journey that’s kinda shaped how you think about product growth, about leadership, about fast moving teams. Just give me a Zoom story. People love that kind of stuff.

[00:02:51] Sean Fair:  Yeah. You know, I mean, when the pandemic hit, Zoom was a few $100,000,000 annual revenue, um, really targeted business users around video, getting into the room side of it, keeping those connected. And if we look now six years later, the transformation of the organization has been wild. Um, not only from, uh, almost, I think, $4,800,000,000 in annual revenue, um, the amount of r and d spend that we put in the platform, year over year increases. Um, this past year, we had reported over $800,000,000 in r and d spend. Yeah. And being a debt free organization, it really has gone around the innovation of the platform. Yeah. And threaded in really two core pillars, no surprise, AI being pillar one

[00:03:33] Scott Kinka:  Yeah.

[00:03:33] Sean Fair:  And CX being another pillar of the platform. And how we’ve evolved, innovated around that has been just absolutely fascinating. I’m excited to talk about that here a little bit.

[00:03:42] Scott Kinka:  Yeah. And we’re gonna do that. Before I jump to Shannon for a second, though, give me a personal story from being there through that level of growth. Like Wow. Maybe something that that, uh, you know, there’s IT directors listening to this and going, wow. That must have been a ride, and they love this. Whatever that may be. Something funny, interesting, maybe a learning lesson.

[00:04:05] Sean Fair:  Boy, a personal story. Um, you know, I’ve had an opportunity to to work across a myriad of all different vertical markets and solving challenges, and I’ve worked from the confines of being in my home office, uh, working remote has has, uh, has its time sometimes. But from a personal perspective, it’s gotta be, you know, um, October, I think it was. I was at CCW in Nashville. And, um, it was one of the first times that at an event like that, we had consistently people coming up to the booth saying, we love Zoom CX. You’ve transformed our business. And I’ve got a large health care provider with well over a 100 hospitals, thousands of clinics, and hearing them come up and really just advocate on the workforce management, the quality management, the continued pace of innovation. Yeah. And they’ve had the opportunity to spend, um, some time up at our executive briefing center in San Jose. Yeah. You’ve been there as well. And Cool spot. It is it is a spot that when you come and you see innovation at the core of what we’re up to at Zoom, it really opens up your eyes. And so story after story, we hear from customers not only when they’re in the evaluation process

[00:05:18] Scott Kinka:  Yeah.

[00:05:18] Sean Fair:  But when they’ve actually physically deployed our technology and the meaningful outcomes of it. And, you know, the health care business for us has been growing like crazy

[00:05:26] Scott Kinka:  Mhmm.

[00:05:27] Sean Fair:  For CX, in in our telephony Zoom phone as well. And so I think it’s the rewarding aspects when you have somebody come up and share their personal stories or how it’s, you know, shaped their business driving the outcomes from that perspective. Got it. So it gets back to the customer side of it. You know, from a personal, you know, aspect of it, uh, you know, I’ve had the opportunity to spend time with Eric Yuan in meetings, and you’re in there. And you really think from a thought leadership perspective of how we were founded and what’s in our core DNA around care. And then how that translates to our customers is super important as well. That’s amazing.

[00:06:00] Scott Kinka:  Yeah. So, Shannon, you got you’ve been there for three years, and you came in to work specifically on the CX product.

[00:06:07] Shana Hafterson:  Mhmm.

[00:06:07] Scott Kinka:  Alright. So, a, why CX? Not just at Zoom. Like, give us your history about getting into CX, and then what really drew you to the opportunity at Zoom?

[00:06:17] Shana Hafterson:  Yeah. So first and foremost, I started my career in 2008 inside sales, uh, at CDW, inside account manager. Um, and I was selling into higher education, and then I went into security at RSA. And I did some UCaaS, and I and I really wanted to challenge myself and get into customer experience or CX, so I I joined Five nine and was there for about four years. And then I decided that, you know, Zoom, that’s the next big potential brand there

[00:06:46] Scott Kinka:  Yeah.

[00:06:47] Shana Hafterson:  About over three years ago when I decided to join. So the opportunity at the time was to take all of my experience from starting inside sales and then into channel and then into the UCaaS and CCaaS and really harness my leadership skills at Zoom and come work for Sean and the leadership team, um, and scale out a channel team that was specializing customer experience.

[00:07:08] Scott Kinka:  And why why do you need a a specialty in customer experience? I mean, Zoom’s a big organization. You get a lot of salespeople on and around over there, a lot of technical people. What makes that sales motion so different?

[00:07:19] Shana Hafterson:  Yeah. I would say it’s having like minded individuals that have the subject matter expertise to be able to sit down and talk about transformation from the outcomes that Sean just mentioned before and not necessarily look the entire total experience is great in the employee experience, but we’re talking about customer experience in the front door of an organization and the industries that Sean mentioned as well from health care to finance to all the retail, transportation. You really need to have people that can sit down and have those conversations. And so really having the specialized organization at Zoom not only, uh, takes the our product to our customers and our partners faster, but it also scales our business.

[00:08:01] Scott Kinka:  Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. And for the IT leaders, you know, our audience is made up of a lot of people, but largely IT leaders. I think, you know, some of them are in the position where they are making platform decisions around CX, and some of them have a partner who’s running the CX business. Uh, how do you find that dynamic as you guys engage? Because, you know, you were selling take the traditional Zoom, you know, path. Right? Executive signed up because they wanted to be able to take a meeting from home. Maybe somebody did it at home, ultimately became a collab platform, and you’re firmly in IT play replacing phone systems. Is this a different audience now for the CX product?

[00:08:42] Sean Fair:  I think it is a little bit. Um, and I talked about last year, simplicity is at the core of a product. And when you can drive the level of simplicity into the product, then you don’t necessarily need to rely on IT to be the administrator.

[00:08:56] Scott Kinka:  In the

[00:08:56] Sean Fair:  past, when we talked to a CX transformation, you’re talking to the supervisors, VP of operations, those within the centers, and they’re saying, hey. Listen. You know, we’ve got an open up a ticket. It may take a few days to be able to get changes done within the flows. And now with the simplicity, we’re able to empower the supervisors to be able to make those changes on the fly, driving that level of result back. So I think some of the simplicity, also a lot, you know, last year talked a little bit about workflow automation, but and I talked about Adjentic. Yeah. But a year later, that transformation within just a year alone of that is really driving meaningful outcome. And we’re talking a lot about, like, at Zoom, conversation to completion. Let’s take in the context of the conversation, how that goes through the journey, that orchestration of it, and how after the work is done, all of that workflow automation takes over the remaining processes that are required, you know, um, that may have taken a lot of human interaction in minutes after that. And so I think through IT, they’re curious, and a lot of it is around AI governance, security, um, making sure that they’re, you know, uh, able to address their needs from a security perspective with AI first. But beyond that, then in the CX side of it, it’s really, um, more driving those outcomes, uh, through the AI conversation to completion.

[00:10:19] Scott Kinka:  Got it. I like that conversation to completion. You know, I think for people who maybe haven’t gone down the Edgentic journey, you know, where they hear AI, and it’s like, the the robots are taking over the world. Right? I mean, we have a tendency to think about that conversation to completion being that the bot is managing it. But I think in practice, maybe that’s not so much because you talked about, like, post call work and you talked about pre call prep and, like, all of those how much of that journey like, we’re we are a year later. I appreciate you bringing that up. How much of that journey is really fully AI driven, and what does that ultimately mean for the humans in the contact center?

[00:10:57] Sean Fair:  Um, you know, I think, you know, Zoom released custom AI companion, a web based AI interface Yeah. With a number of connectors to connect into various systems. And once you could connect into the knowledge bases into that, the provides a lot of flexibility and options to do a little bit of workflow completion. And this past week, I was messing around with some of our technology where, you know, I was able to put in and crawl a website, and it did all the data. And it it leveraged the memory within AI to be able to help generate content for me by just asking it it did what would have taken hours of work down to literally minutes of time. Yeah. And I think as you start to see and our customers start to see and our partners start to continue to leverage that, you’re gonna see that ability is just gonna execute that much faster. Um, and and once you can see it once or twice and really see the workflow happen, you’re like, hey. I’m all in on this. How do I get more?

[00:11:55] Scott Kinka:  Right? So so speaking of more, um, Shana, we talked a lot last year about Zoom’s pace, about the road map, about our editorial team pulled a quote out from you, and they said that you referred to your Zoom’s road map as a promise that the customers count on. So we’re a year removed, recognizing you’re a publicly traded company. We can’t talk about coming features. Right? So tell me about the promise of the last year. Like, what are the main things that were delivered? How do customers feel about them? How are they being adopted? I mean, you know, you guys move so fast. And in a lot of ways, maybe sometimes faster than your clients are ready to consume everything. So just talk about the last year of the growth of Blackhawk.

[00:12:40] Shana Hafterson:  Yeah. I would say last year at CCW, we launched, um, I think it was June 11, our voice Zoom virtual agent. And so, um, now even coming six months after that or even more than that, um, advanced quality management as well. So not only are we looking at advanced quality management and QA for human agents, but also for your virtual agents as well for voice and chat. Um, we also delivered on a a six pillar called CX insights. So being able to make every conversation actionable and being able to take in the customer experience, that data layer, and give it to anybody in the organization that has a CX Insight license. So not only is it just looking at supervisors and agents and virtual agents, but how do you infuse, uh, the platform and the data to maybe a head of product and being able to ask in real time where is my drop and where is my biggest, uh, customer issue coming from and why today. Right? And so, um, not just looking at how you leverage the data and and increase your revenue and how you’re going to market from a customer experience perspective, but then also tying it back to real outcomes that maybe certain stakeholders have not envisioned or thought about before? Or maybe they haven’t really seen a platform deliver on a data set or a data layer across the entire platform that Zoom offers.

[00:13:59] Scott Kinka:  You know what? It’s I wanna key on something that you said there because I almost asked the follow on question a minute ago, Sean, so I’m gonna come back to it. I’m not letting you off the hook. You mentioned you mentioned quality management, um, and you mentioned quality management not just for your live agents, but for your AI agents. And, Sean, a couple of minutes ago, you were like and it did this thing that could’ve taken hours. I think some of our embedded fear is that AI will make poor decisions, you know, when trained. Talk a little bit about the idea of QAM QMing AI and kinda what that means to keep sort of that agentic push on track.

[00:14:39] Shana Hafterson:  Well, I mean, just from my perspective so being able to make sure that the bot is doing what it’s intended to do, and so being able to, in real time, assess what’s happening on those calls or those chats with your consumer. And then if it is does make a mistake or maybe it cannot answer, it’s being escalated in real time to a live human agent. Got it. So, I mean, with Zoom, it’s truly looking at a a platform, not just a virtual agent, which maybe some of your audiences are on different solutions for different things, and maybe they haven’t considered Zoom. And how can we actually revolutionize their, maybe today and five years now, their AI strategy.

[00:15:17] Sean Fair:  So I think too, um, when you look at from guardrails of AgenTek AI bot technologies and then being able to do agent tracing, you’ve got the ability to go back and determine how is the flow, how is the engagement of the bot. From the quality management side of it, what it does is it takes a transcript of that engagement, and it can then get to that contextual awareness I talked about getting to a human agent. And from the human agent, if you’ve got a really good human agent that’s solving an issue, how do you inject human in a loop to be able to feed that experience back to the knowledge base? So the next time a consumer engages into it, then that workflow’s automatically completed that, uh, agentic experience is contained within the bot versus getting the agent. So it’s actually learning from human agents

[00:16:05] Scott Kinka:  Yeah.

[00:16:05] Sean Fair:  To be able to help educate the virtual agents.

[00:16:08] Scott Kinka:  Yeah. It makes me think about something we’re talking about in the preshow. Um, we were going through our little feature discussion. I was

[00:16:13] Shana Hafterson:  like, the preshow?

[00:16:14] Unknown:  Yeah. The preshow.

[00:16:15] Scott Kinka:  Right here. Come on. See the preshow.

[00:16:17] Sean Fair:  Uh, we were talking about features.

[00:16:19] Scott Kinka:  Yes. You know, I wonder I would imagine that businesses are probably tempted to leverage, you know, AI agents in situations that are harder to staff for, perhaps other languages. Yep. Things like that. Um, you know, I generally obviously would advise against that, you know, at least at the front end because you don’t wanna just because somebody speaks a different language doesn’t mean you wanna give a term level of care. Yep. But you guys have released some other features that sort of account for that, um, around language translation. Can we is is this a are we allowed? First, I’m

[00:16:54] Unknown:  sure we’re allowed. I even though. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:16:56] Scott Kinka:  Is it don’t let it so far? Connect. Alright.

[00:16:59] Sean Fair:  A few weeks ago, we had debuted real time language translation. And if you think about Zoom meetings, from the ability to do closed caption, I can speak in English, and my specialist out of Brazil can read it in Portuguese. Right? Taking taking that real time language translation of voice to do audio to audio translation really breaks down global barriers of communication. In addition, we talked about quality management and some of those capabilities, whether it’s through a bot engagement or quality management. I could be reviewing a call in Portuguese, but I don’t speak Portuguese. And so I can get the awareness of that. Right?

[00:17:35] Scott Kinka:  Portuguese. Right? Yeah.

[00:17:36] Unknown:  Right?

[00:17:36] Sean Fair:  So being able really being able to take that from a language, uh, perspective and breaking down global barriers of communication. So real time language translation, exciting. In the coming months, you’re gonna see even more coming out across the platform for that that we’ve announced at Enterprise Connect.

[00:17:54] Scott Kinka:  So So it still, um, occurs to me that a lot of the these modalities we’re talking about are either voice or chat. And last year, our crack editorial team, thank you for the notes, guys, uh, reminded me that we talked a

[00:18:11] Sean Fair:  little bit about

[00:18:11] Scott Kinka:  video in in the customer experience interaction. Like, we’re we’re so accustomed, you know, to to now having a meeting, or I don’t even know that I dial people’s phone numbers anymore. I would just hit you on Zoom if we needed to talk. Are we at a point now where video is being deployed first person in contact centers at this point, or is it just not an expectation of the I mean, I know you have the features. So this isn’t about whether your feature works. This is more about, like, where are we from an adoption perspective, and what do consumers expect?

[00:18:42] Shana Hafterson:  I was gonna I mean, I think it depends on what industry and what is the scenario that we’re talking about. I think in tech support, absolutely, it’s very much video. I mean, it’s so much easier to if you have a product or something that you’re manufacturing, you need to showcase to an agent, absolutely, because it’s gonna lower handle time, and the customer the consumer is gonna be happier. Right? So Yeah. I think so. And then also with multimodal agentic AI, being able to infuse things like pictures and other things that are not just voice or, um, written word, that also is a game changer. I know you’re not you’re talking about video, but if we start to think about taking a step further, um, I agree yes. Absolutely. But I also think it depends on what industry and what use case we’re talking about. If you had something on that.

[00:19:28] Sean Fair:  I think I mean, we’re seeing it predominantly driven the consumer side, and a little bit on the health care is really where and you talk about image recognition. It’s not just OCR to know that it reads the image and populates a form with a serial number and things like that, but, you know, a consumer brand that it knows exactly what model type of a vacuum cleaner or something it is. Yeah. And so, therefore, it makes the agent even that much more intelligent, the human agent, once they get to it, and they’re trying to troubleshoot it. So we’ve seen some great use cases over video. Talked about it being a web SDK as well, mobile SDK. There’s no download required on the far end. So going back to the root of the simplification, the more we make it easier to engage the quality of the experience, but we’re absolutely seeing more uptake in video.

[00:20:13] Scott Kinka:  I’m I’m gonna we’ve been circling around this AI topic. And last year, um, Sean, you you you were very firm on the idea that AI is meant to humanize the agent, not replace them. Correct. And this isn’t related really to the Zoom experience so much as this is just us talking about what’s going on in the industry right now. I mean, there’s pressure to cut budgets everywhere. You know? Are do you feel like CX leaders are feeling pressure to replace live agents with AI agents, or are they listening to us here from our seats saying, like, this is about making your agent better. This is about reducing handle time. This is about increasing throughput. Like, where are we on all of that?

[00:20:58] Sean Fair:  You know, I think the the conversations that are happening in the boardroom is how do we how do organizations leverage AI? How do they offset it from whether it’s human capital? We really like to try to take it on the focus of growth as well. When organizations are expanding in the past, maybe they threw the people at the problem versus how do they use the technology to address the needs. And so, um, certainly taking, like, tier one type tech support, um, in automating that enables them to focus more on the higher level of touch points that are required to improve CSAT, net promoter score, things like that. So do we see augmentation happening within it? Absolutely. Uh, but there’s also, I think, you know, a lot that’s coming out of it that that will, you know, not be purely just to replace human capital.

[00:21:48] Scott Kinka:  To add or, yes, I agree.

[00:21:52] Shana Hafterson:  I agree with what Sean said, um, and just, you know, more of, like, the industry and where is the market going. Um, I think just AI being able to also uplevel, you know, individuals. Maybe maybe the way you did work today isn’t the same way you’re gonna do work a year from now. I think we’ve all evolved in our careers and even just we’re in technology. Right? All three of us have been majority of our careers, at least I have my entire career. Um, and one thing that you learn when you get into technology is that it’s forever changing and forever evolving. So, um, I just think that you have to adapt and, uh, learn the tools that you have at your fingertips, not be afraid to use them, and, um, uplevel. Yeah.

[00:22:33] Scott Kinka:  What do you think?

[00:22:34] Shana Hafterson:  Yeah. What do you think?

[00:22:36] Scott Kinka:  Hey, Mississippi. I think I I I appreciate thank you for answering that. Yeah. Look at Sean on the interview seat. Scene. You know, it’s funny. We have this conversation a lot with people from all over the spectrum on the show. You know? I bring in people who are focused on regulations or working in Washington and think tank people. I mean, we’ve tried to vary our audience here, and this one comes up a lot. I I think the biggest challenge around AI right now, just in let’s just take AI in general, is it’s become a board level edict. Mhmm. But, like, in the same way that cloud was a board level edict six, eight years ago to your point. Like, the the c levels, I could say that I can bust on myself. Right? The c levels are at at the board table going like, you know, what’s the AI strategy here in the business? But then ultimately, it’s gotta drive down to some kind of ROI. I think the challenge that we all need to face right now, and this is the message for you IT leaders out there because, like, AI is going to cost us money for the next couple of years because you can’t you’re not fully supplanting the processes that you’re trying to replace at the same time that you’re investing in. I mean, 80% of businesses have a requirement to have a make more AI investment this year, and 80% of them are not getting new IT budget. So, like, these two things rationally don’t fit together. So, like, we’re in this period of, like, experiment, try, implement. But I think we need to have an idea, and I think IT leaders need to be able to look across the table and say, this is a two year. This is a three year experiment ROI before we start to really unlock productivity. But we’re also not gonna be able to attract employees or keep our customers happy if we don’t go here because our expectations, to your point, Jenna, are like the consumer expectation moves along with the pace of our development in some cases. We we we we create our own expectations when we move so fast. Does that make sense?

[00:24:29] Sean Fair:  It does.

[00:24:30] Scott Kinka:  Uh, so it’s interesting because that comes back to something that I wanted to ask. It’s almost like I read the questions beforehand. Um, I wanted to ask about about Zoom in general culturally, and this comes up a lot too. Talk to IT people. You know the old adage, like, you can get you can get good, fast, or cheap. You get you can pick two, but you don’t get all three ever. You know? Um, and one of the things that’s always impressed me about Zoom

[00:24:57] Sean Fair:  You do with Zoom, though. What’s well, you

[00:25:00] Scott Kinka:  know, look where it was going.

[00:25:01] Sean Fair:  Great. Fast and inexpensive.

[00:25:03] Scott Kinka:  Because you guys move so quickly. I mean, I was at the EBC whenever that because we were there three, four months ago. And we’re sitting there. And Thanks

[00:25:12] Shana Hafterson:  for plugging the EBC,

[00:25:13] Scott Kinka:  boss. Listen. Our people are on the platform all the time. Like, we know the features, and then we have a room with people. And you guys are just rattling off new stuff that’s coming, and everybody’s like, wow. Now, usually, the effect of that and it’s any tech organization. Like, tech organizations that use that move fast break glass. Right? And yet you guys have this super high customer centric, high, you know, love from your customers. That’s so hard to maintain, like, pace and satisfaction at the same time. So every what’s the secret?

[00:25:52] Sean Fair:  Well, you know, I brought up Eric. You know? Yeah. Eric Eric is our founder and CEO as an engineer. Right? Um, and in having an engineer mindset as a CEO and executive leadership team really, I think, pushes the boundary of limitless opportunity. Yeah. And, you know, we’ve got thousands of engineers globally that invest around the clock to to out innovate and rethink the way that we will operate in the future. And I think it’s important from that perspective. From a culture, it’s hard for us to embrace as employees. You think about thousands of new capabilities coming every 12 months into a platform. It is, uh, it is you you know as a partner too. It may be a release that we’ve got when agile development release. We’ll we’ll come out with dozens of new capabilities every 30 days just on CX alone. Yeah. And so it’s keeping that mindset of staying sharp. And a lot of us internally or all employees of Zoom are challenged by Eric to embrace AI.

[00:26:58] Scott Kinka:  Yeah.

[00:26:58] Sean Fair:  How do you use AI every day within the organization? How do you make your day more effective using AI within our technology and our platform? The things that we’re working that we’ll continue to bring to market over this year, uh, I think a lot of people are gonna realize capabilities. I talked about AI companion. Yeah. We look at as a system of action as the opportunity to take that across the platform. Shanna talked about our, um, CX analytics or insights. Yeah. It touches thousands of data points to surface relevant information via AI to you. Yeah. You could come in and say, hey. I’ve got 18 reservation centers globally. Uh, what is my top performing one? And it’s gonna tell you all the stats you wanna know, and it’s gonna make recommendations. You need to add more agents to this one to get your hyper channeling time down

[00:27:45] Scott Kinka:  Yeah.

[00:27:45] Sean Fair:  And proactively pushing that message out to the VP of operations Got it. Executive leadership team. So it’s constantly pushing the envelope at Zoom. And you talk about breaking glass. It doesn’t come without breaking glass. Yeah. It’s absolutely that. Right? When you innovate as fast as Zoom does. Okay.

[00:28:02] Scott Kinka:  So anything to add on?

[00:28:04] Unknown:  Well, I would just you asked about the culture. I think it’s getting a little bit of the look to being Zoomies. Right? Um, and absolutely everything Sean said, I would say just the value of care. So we care for one another. We care for our customers. Now, obviously, it starts from our leader writing down and and truly embracing the culture. And then from an innovation standpoint, leveraging our tools. So when when AIC web came out, we’re all using it. Right? We we use it. We ask it. We all have our workflows. We all have everything accessible within the tool. We’re all using Zoom’s application. Everything is. At least we are in the in the CX organization. Um, and then taking action, not only internally that maybe help another Zoom meeting out, but also how do we take action with our customers to get all of the releases that come out every single month to our partners, to our customers. Um, so really working collectively on care, but then also TD action.

[00:28:57] Sean Fair:  Got it. I think we, you know, we democratize it too with AI companion part of Workplace. You don’t have to pick and choose which employee you give it to.

[00:29:05] Scott Kinka:  Yeah. Every employee gets it. Gets it. Yeah. Right? So, I mean so, yes, they call each other zoomies, by the way, listeners. Just it’s not a cult. I promise.

[00:29:15] Sean Fair:  Uh, well, kinda.

[00:29:16] Scott Kinka:  Kinda. But, you know, you both answered the question. Um, they were super insightful long answers, but the actual answer that you both gave as I weeding through what you said, I said, how do you get, you know, quality and pace at the same time? And you both said AI actually is what’s helping you get there, kinda eating your own dog food to some We do. Okay. I like that. Alright. Last one, and then we’re gonna have a little bit of fun. Talk about the role of partner in your ecosystem because you guys have been super public. Um, you know, in the filings that you guys make, the things that you say publicly about the importance of the partner in your relationship between Zoom and the end customer?

[00:30:00] Unknown:  Yeah. I would say, um, just from my perspective, um, partners are extremely important to our go to market and our routes to market, um, not only in The US, but globally. And we really look to our partners to help us facilitate and consult on what the customer is looking for. And so a partner like, for example, Bridgepoint, Apple Pub, Bridgepoint, but

[00:30:20] Unknown:  I will for a second.

[00:30:22] Unknown:  Um, looking at how do we meet your customers or our customers together, maybe it’s yours or it’s Zoom, you’re we’re meeting somewhere in the middle, but we’re looking at how to solve those outcomes or maybe the challenges that they have around the AI strategies that you mentioned before. And I’m sure you guys are sitting at board tables or seats of the table, um, that your customers are coming to you and asking you where your strategist. Um, how how can you help me get to where I need to be over the next year or two? So partners are extremely important to our our strategy and our scale and where we are poised to company.

[00:30:54] Sean Fair:  Yeah. I think partners are right at the core of what we’re doing in the market. Right? Um, we’ve had a extremely good year with Bridgepoint and a partnership with Bridgepoint. Yeah. And we’ve had a number of CX wins, Oh, yeah. And large transformation projects, and a lot of it is the the expertise our partners bring to the table. When it comes towards, like, integrations, I think about a a nice insurance company win that we had with Bridgepoint. Yeah. When you think about integration to Pindrop and you think about integration to, uh, ServiceNow and you integrate into these various systems, how do you leverage the developers community, the APIs, the accessibility to our platform? Yeah. And Bridgepoint, you know, in the partnership, uh, has been extremely strong Yeah. In that area. And so it’s it’s right at the core of what we do at Zoom as a partner. We need to

[00:31:41] Unknown:  I forgot one, but

[00:31:42] Scott Kinka:  Yeah. Go. Just

[00:31:43] Sean Fair:  plug away. Tell me more about me.

[00:31:45] Unknown:  Well No.

[00:31:46] Scott Kinka:  No kidding.

[00:31:46] Unknown:  Uh, so talking care. Uh, so talking about integrations and services, but if there is a cloud migration, maybe it is a cloud to cloud or an on prem cloud migration. Having that, uh, partner that is working alongside all of us together to map out where that journey is, maybe it’s a three, six, nine month cycle of a migration, or we see them beyond an optimization services maybe for AI. Sure. Talking about AI Yeah. It’s not just a onetime event. It’s an ongoing solution. So how how do we look to our partners to also, um, bring our customers to veterans?

[00:32:19] Sean Fair:  And I think it’s also engaging with our partners earlier in the process. Yeah.

[00:32:23] Scott Kinka:  Well, that’s what I was gonna say. I think that the issue is I think so often when we’re doing technology transformations. We’re we’re looking at it like it’s a feature transition or and sometimes it is. I wanna go get this thing that’s in this other platform. But very often, you know, it’s driven from a dissatisfaction with a with what the incumbent platform is. And sometimes maybe that’s technical, but often too, it’s just bad users. And I mean that in the nicest way. Like, I think the partner in many cases can help bridge the gap. Like, what’s causing the dissatisfaction? Yes. It may be platform, but it’s also maybe a design issue. Yeah. Maybe it’s a structural issue in the contact center. Maybe they’re chasing the wrong KPIs. Maybe they’re so I think a lot of it is just ensuring not only that you’re making the decision for the right reasons, but also that really setting up for success at the end of the day. So I appreciate all of those comments, by the way. Um, those were great. Thank you. And then we were that wasn’t pre

[00:33:19] Unknown:  very well.

[00:33:19] Scott Kinka:  It wasn’t pre planned. So just a couple let’s have some fun at the end. You guys know the drill here. I’m gonna hit you with a couple questions. We wrap we did this rapid fire at the end of the last session. So, um, Sean, what are you reading right now? Anything interesting?

[00:33:32] Sean Fair:  Uh, I just started the NVIDIA way. Interesting. And I wrapped up, um, the coming wave, uh, which is about AI and the disruption of AI and what is happening in the market.

[00:33:44] Scott Kinka:  Okay. I like that. Both good options. Shanna, what’s your reading?

[00:33:48] Unknown:  Um, well, I just finished, uh, the obstacle is the way, February holiday.

[00:33:53] Scott Kinka:  Okay. Yes. Oh, I love give me, like, the one sentence snippet, the obstacle is the way. It sounds so interesting.

[00:33:59] Shana Hafterson:  Yeah. I mean,

[00:34:00] Scott Kinka:  yeah. The title is pretty self explanatory.

[00:34:03] Unknown:  Yeah. You want to embrace the obstacle. You have to go around or to semi drag. You have to go through the obstacle. And the faster you do it, you’ll get to the other side, and you’ll learn. And so I guess it’s very fitting for today when we’re talking about AI. So, again, embrace embrace it. Right? Embrace it. It’s not an obstacle. I don’t wanna make it sound like it’s an obstacle because it’s not, but embrace it if you’re feeling maybe a little bit.

[00:34:25] Scott Kinka:  Do you do you recall the book that you said you were reading last year?

[00:34:28] Unknown:  I do.

[00:34:29] Scott Kinka:  Oh, was it? It was the war

[00:34:30] Unknown:  of art.

[00:34:30] Scott Kinka:  The war of art?

[00:34:31] Unknown:  Or the art of nope.

[00:34:34] Scott Kinka:  The art of the war is one of my favorite books.

[00:34:36] Sean Fair:  It’s on so many episodes.

[00:34:38] Unknown:  The war of art. Art. Because I know what you’re gonna ask.

[00:34:41] Scott Kinka:  Yes. The war of art. And that was a play on art of war?

[00:34:45] Unknown:  No. It’s It’s not.

[00:34:46] Sean Fair:  Okay. Look it up.

[00:34:49] Scott Kinka:  I don’t know it. I didn’t read it even though you recommended it last year. Alright. So I didn’t read it. Um, alright. I need a hot take. I need a contrarian opinion about AICX collab that you hold that you think other people might like be like, I can’t believe Sean said that. I’m I’m, like, putting you on the spot here. Any contrarian opinion? Contrarian. Yeah. Let’s be, like, difficult. Something that would you know, we’d

[00:35:16] Sean Fair:  That I believe? Yeah. You believe. Oh, jeez, man. I’ll put you on the spot.

[00:35:23] Scott Kinka:  Um, like, what’s a big mistake that’s going on right now where, like, you don’t you know, when you hear the pundits chirping all the time in the media and you’re like, I don’t quite see it that way. Give me something that’s contrary. You know,

[00:35:31] Sean Fair:  I mean, you asked a question about AI replacing jobs. Yeah. And that is absolutely something that will we we see, but we also see, you know, open up new opportunities as well. Um, I think, you know, the it’s an area and I talked last year. You know, we we contain over 90% of our engagements at Zoom for support. Yeah. And so that is essentially automating that from an AI perspective. So at the end of the day, I mean, let’s face it. And it’s a difficult conversation to have Yeah. Because AI is front and center, but it’s also is it gonna take everybody’s job? Yeah. Right? And, I mean, it’s and it’s reality that we live in on a regular basis. So, um, I believe over the next few years, it’s absolutely gonna take more jobs away. Okay. I like it. We need to

[00:36:20] Scott Kinka:  jump out on the edge there. But it will create other opportunities. Yeah. We need to retool the jobs as they exist, mate.

[00:36:26] Sean Fair:  Exactly.

[00:36:27] Scott Kinka:  Right? Do you have a contrarian opinion you wanna share?

[00:36:29] Unknown:  I have maybe a right thing. Things will start to progressively new. Um, is it so I hear that, like, 90% of pilots are hawks that cuss that they failed.

[00:36:41] Scott Kinka:  Yep.

[00:36:42] Unknown:  Well, if we’re all if we’re in the vendor space and you’re in the partner space, I think that is going to continue to drop. I do think that more pilots or PACS are gonna start to go into production.

[00:36:55] Scott Kinka:  I I agree on that.

[00:36:57] Unknown:  That seems really I’m like, Eric, how is that possible?

[00:37:00] Scott Kinka:  Well, I think it’s because and now we’re gonna get really really contrarian. I think the first people that go are the do it yourselfers. It’s everything that we just talked about not doing. Right? It’s people and by the way, that experimentation is absolutely required to move the ball forward, but it’s exactly that. It’s experimentation.

[00:37:19] Unknown:  I take one use case. Maybe it’s you want to self-service your where where it’s my order into a virtual agent.

[00:37:27] Scott Kinka:  Where

[00:37:27] Unknown:  in one department, not the entire What? You know what I mean?

[00:37:31] Scott Kinka:  It’s so funny saying that we have a partner of ours who we just did an event. Um, I spoke at the AI Convergence, uh, event with the Dallas Chamber a couple weeks ago. We had this exact conversation. They said, why don’t you just focus on the most boring thing in the business? And people were like, that’s a pretty good idea. Like, Tom, go gigantic. The most boring thing you have to deal with, focus on that. Alright. One last thing. Last year, I asked you both, whatever dystopian future you choose, I’m a sci fi fan, so we come up with all kinds of them. What’s the one app that you wanna make sure is still working on your phone? You remember what you said, a. And then, b, would your answer change a year later?

[00:38:09] Unknown:  I don’t remember the app I said.

[00:38:11] Sean Fair:  You said TikTok.

[00:38:13] Unknown:  I did? You did.

[00:38:14] Sean Fair:  Look at There was Instagram oh, it was Instagram for a friend who’s not here for us this time.

[00:38:19] Unknown:  Okay. Did I say

[00:38:20] Sean Fair:  You did?

[00:38:21] Scott Kinka:  I don’t know. Yeah. You okay. Well, just let’s just go with it. You said TikTok. Is it still the app you need?

[00:38:26] Unknown:  No. Zoom is the app I

[00:38:27] Scott Kinka:  need. No.

[00:38:27] Unknown:  Of course.

[00:38:28] Sean Fair:  He said he said Zoom last week could

[00:38:30] Unknown:  not be

[00:38:31] Sean Fair:  I know.

[00:38:32] Scott Kinka:  I didn’t I don’t think I allowed you to say Zoom much.

[00:38:34] Sean Fair:  You said

[00:38:34] Scott Kinka:  That’ll be something. Was not permitted.

[00:38:36] Unknown:  There’s everything I need now. Yeah. So

[00:38:40] Sean Fair:  You know, I I said Besides Zoom. Without Zoom, FaceTime, right, to keep connected with family. Talking with Jean when I showed up today, uh, you know, we were talking about it, and Spotify was talked about. And, um, we watch a little bit of TV in the house, not a whole lot, um, some sports here and there. Okay. But we’ve got Sonos throughout the house, and we listen to music all the time. So if I could keep my Sonos app plugged into music sources,

[00:39:08] Scott Kinka:  uh, that brings joy. I guess it depends on which future you see. Right? Like, if it’s really quiet and there’s not a lot going on, yeah, I think I would need music Yeah. At some point.

[00:39:17] Sean Fair:  After a long day.

[00:39:19] Scott Kinka:  Speaking of music, they’re still thumping it out by the pool. I told you guys I’d have you out of here in thirty minutes, and he went way longer as we have a tendency to do when the three of us get together. Um, this was a super great chat. And you ready for a busy week, both of you? Absolutely. Alright. So if I guess I know the answer to this one, but I have to ask it because it’s part of the format and the team put it in the script that they wanna learn our listeners wanna learn a little bit more about either of you or a little bit more about Zoom, CX. What What would you recommend

[00:39:50] Unknown:  they do? I would say go to our website, number one, and go Yeah. Right? Customer experience

[00:39:55] Scott Kinka:  A 100%.

[00:39:56] Unknown:  Or LinkedIn page. But I guess to learn more about maybe me, my your talk just say, Shannon Patterson. I liked it.

[00:40:02] Sean Fair:  K. I think LinkedIn is a great way. You know, we’ve I talked about my superpower last year, um, was talent acquisition, bringing on new people. No surprise. And last year, we’ve brought on a lot more people, and we’ve got great leaders within the CX organization. We’ve got great specialists. Feel free to reach out to me, Shanna, um, and we’ll get you connected with our teams. Look at

[00:40:24] Scott Kinka:  that recruiting on the pod. I appreciate that. This is how they get they get pace and quality at the same time.

[00:40:30] Sean Fair:  Pretty talent.

[00:40:31] Scott Kinka:  Uh, I love that. Well, guys, thank you so much for your time, and I’m looking forward to hanging out at the bar later today. Awesome. Alright. Thank you. That is now a wrap for this episode of the Bridgecast. If our conversation gave you something to think about, please smash that subscribe button. Give us a like. Five stars. Comment on how great these guys were, our guests, and we will see you soon on another episode of the Bridge