The one with Sun Country Airlines customer service - Jeremy Hyde | Director Customer Support at Sun Country Airlines E141

🎤🎞️Buckle that seatbelt and get ready for departure… “The one with Sun Country Airlines customer service” with Jeremy Hyde Director Customer Support at Sun Country Airlines…episode 141🎧 What’s in the episode?...

CHAPTERS

0:00 Introduction

3:39 Customer service approach and preventing future issues

7:35 Using data and feedback to improve airline customer experience

12:34 Customer service challenges and employee engagement in the airline industry. 

19:10 Where would Jeremy go with a free weekend and flight benefits

20:40 1st Class Lounge

24:36 Starting as a call agent influencing current leadership approach

29:19 Balancing human and technology in customer service

33:09 Customer experience and technology adoption in the contact center

35:41 Contact info and closing

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I'm Rick Denton and I believe the best meals are served outside and require a passport

Episode resources:

Voice of the Agent Blueprint: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/intro-voice-agent-blueprint-jeremy-hyde

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hydej/

The Loud Quiet - Rick & Clancy's empty nest podcast:

youtube.com/@theloudquiet

theloudquietpod.com

Transcript

Jeremy Hyde: 0:00

Any contact center customer service team that can feel a bit like whack a mole, we do our our daily firefighting. But our team really tries to also use the data and the information that we collect the trends that we see happening via customer service via complaints that we're receiving, along with ideas that we're getting from our agents, and prioritize those things. And this went wrong for record. This went wrong for Jeremy. We got to take care of Rick, we got to take care of Jeremy. But how do we prevent the next Rick? How do we prevent the next Jeremy from having that sort of a problem?

Rick Denton: 0:43

You're listening to CX Passport, the show about creating great customer experiences with a dash of travel talk. Each episode we’ll talk with our guests about great CX, travel...and just like the best journeys, explore new directions we never anticipated. I'm your host Rick Denton. I believe the best meals are served outside and require a passport. Let's get going. I'd love it when we get to talk travel, especially air travel on CX passport. If you had to pick an industry to learn about customer experience, this would be the one that don't hear me wrong here. I didn't say this was the ideal customer experience industry. Many get it right and far more get it wrong. What I mean is that this is an industry that includes just about every possible challenge to the delivery of great customer experience. highly regulated industry limiting the freedom of service design. Yep. Viewed as responsible for an element of the journey, but limited control over the entire air travel journey. Yep. And experience with a dizzying array of operational complexity absolutely employee engagement influenced by a mixture of unionized and non unionized group. Yes, sir. An industry where customers express an appetite for elevated experience, and then purchase based on price. This is a product that by definition requires customer compliance in a confined space in order to be able to deliver any experience. This is it. Weather traffic both on the ground and in the air revenge travel alcohol fueled disruption. This is only scratching at the surface. And let's not forget about safety. Yeah, safety. That is the much more important brand promise than anything else in this industry. So why focus here? Because to learn how to deliver customer experience, why go where it's easy. Instead, let's work learn where it's hard, real hard. Today, we get not only opportunity to talk to the airline industry, we get the chance to talk with a leader who is right at the crucible of customer experience, especially when things go arrive as we talk with Jeremy Hyde, director of customer service for Sun country airlines. We're gonna get the inside scoop today as Jeremy has been in the context and your space for over 15 years. starting his career as an agent Jeremy has felt the highs and the lows of delivering customer service in the contact center. He knows what works, what doesn't, and probably has some great stories that no they may not make it on the air but we'll try. Today along with his role at Sun country. Jeremy also serves as the president of the Midwest Contact Center Association further enhancing his ability to share customer service wisdom with us today. This is an airline that is well known for some fun destinations, especially those with sun and sand. We'll get some of those Sandy's stories from Jeremy today for sure. Jeremy, welcome to CX passport.

Jeremy Hyde: 3:39

Hey, thanks so much for having me here. Rick.

Rick Denton: 3:42

It's gonna gonna be a good ride. Today we will have smooth and expedited travel today I can guarantee it. Let's talk about context center, right that's your your space. That's that's who you are, what you live and breathe, you get to hear those deep customer issues, the deep customer concerns, contact centers then have this amazing opportunity to restore a customer's relationship when that happens. I just like to know what's your approach to customer service at Sun country and maybe share one of those customer relationship restoration story from your time there?

Jeremy Hyde: 4:16

Yeah, absolutely. You know what, like any contact center customer service team, I think sometimes it can feel a bit like Whack a Mole. You know, you just you just got things popping up all over the place, you fix one and then all sudden here comes another one. So we deal with that. I mean, we do our our daily firefighting and all that sort of thing. But our team really tries to also use the data and the information that we collect the trends that we see happening via customer service via complaints that we're receiving, along with ideas that we're getting from our agents through our voice of the agent process, and prioritize those things and kind of think about Alright, this one I'm wrong for record, this went wrong for Jeremy, we got to take care of Rick, we got to take care of Jeremy. But how do we prevent the next wreck? How do we prevent the next Jeremy from having that sort of a problem? And I think that's where you can really find a lot of opportunity is, yes, do the firefighting, the world, the end of the day is always going to be there, but setup your processes, so that you can prioritize the long term solutions that your customers are looking for. We've been doing a lot of that in the last year or two, for travelers that experience a disruption. You know, there's a couple of things that are that are about the worst thing that can happen to you when you're flying, right? A delay, a cancel a lost bag, those are like the three worst things that can happen delay cancel loss bag. And so how do we improve that? How do we get you into a hotel? If you're on an overnight delay? Easier? How do we get you fed easier? How do we get your bag reunited and found more quickly. So that's a lot of what we do is trying to find those opportunities working with our partners across the organization to try and fix things, truly fix them and improve them long term.

Your CX Passport Captain: 6:12

This is your captain speaking. I want to thank you for listening to CX Passport today. We’ve now reached our cruising altitude so I’ll turn that seatbelt sign off. <ding> While you’re getting comfortable, hit that Follow or Subscribe button in your favorite podcast app so you never miss an episode. I’d love it if you’d tell a friend about CX Passport and leave a review so that others can discover the show as well. Now, sit back and enjoy the rest of the episode.

Rick Denton: 6:38

I like what you said at one if I can. You and I have not actually known each other very long, we've connected on LinkedIn over a conversation around I think technology and customer service I remember correctly. And I'm already feeling sort of a symbiotic spirit there. Because you talked about Yeah, we do want to restore that relationship. But it's important to us to make sure that there isn't another one of those failures. You also said something that is an absolute sweet spot for me. And that is that the agent is the epicenter, the agent is where you can learn some of those insights. I think, if I remember the phrasing, exactly, we hear from what our agents are telling us that the experience is that can be done sort of ad hoc, it also can be done some systematic, where are you all in that spectrum? And if it's this discipline approach, how are you gathering that information from your agents in a way that you can prevent the next issue, the next baggage loss? The next negative experience?

Jeremy Hyde: 7:35

Yeah, so I mean, a couple things on that. So first, I would say in terms of getting feedback from the agents, we do, we have a process that we set up for that we call it the voice of the agent, I've written about it a little bit on my LinkedIn is kind of our employee engagement process. But But basically, it's it's a virtual suggestion box. And every Monday, there are four leaders that get together. And we look at the most recent or the kind of open and pending items that came through. Everyone always gets a response, even if it's going to be, we don't like your idea, or we can't do that. Because, you know, I think it's important to close the loop. And then we we work to create a lot of visibility around that as well. So on a monthly basis, we recap, here's all of the suggestions that we received. Here's what we did with them. This one, we move forward, this one we did not this one is pending. And they get to hear the why this is why we did or did not move forward with that. So So from kind of capturing the voice of the agent on behalf of the customer. That's our formal process. And like I said, every Monday morning, 10am we get together, and we go through Alright, what's still open, you know, who's owning this one? Where are we on that one? In terms of using data? You know, for us, one thing that's kind of nice is the way that we're organized. We have our contact center team that I would say they're really they're the firefighters, they're the ones that are kind of handling things in real time and whatnot. We also have a team that handles formal complaints, more complex cases, things that come to us from the Better Business Bureau or the Department of Transportation. And the nature of their work is much more investigatory and much more trending. And so we don't have the same people trying to do both. I see. We've got our firefighters be good at that put out the fire deal with you know, help the person that needs their help right now. But then we've got this team that on a daily, weekly, monthly basis is still helping people they're still doing service recovery as well. But really trending, what we're seeing and identifying opportunities, you know, do we have something that popped up in Kansas City we're going to we're going to be able to see that or is this topic Suddenly a problem, we're going to be able to see that. So I do think that that's useful when you have people that are focused and not focused on 17 different things, they're focused on one or two things,

Rick Denton: 10:10

and being able to run that right to the ground and be able to solve that from a trend perspective. And that balance. And there's different labels for an internal closed loop feedback, external closed loop feedback, and what which one is the one that actually resolves the company processes, which one solves the customer's issues. Either way, it sounds like you've got both of those in place. Now, one of the things that is and I've talked to other airlines about this, folks from the airline industry that is particularly unique for your world, is that so much of this industry, and just the delivery of the experience is beyond what you control. So you might know the root cause, but it's outside of your control, yet the customer is going to contact some country when something goes arrived, even if it's truly sincerely outside of your control. How do airports and other entities affect the travel journey? And how does that influence your delivery of CX? And how do you handle that with the customer?

Jeremy Hyde: 11:09

Yeah, this is actually a fair amount of what we deal with the partnerships with our colleagues is huge. You know, I mentioned we collect a lot of information and some of that information, data that we analyze is about what we're doing what we can control. But a lot of it's not a lot of it is again, this is what's happening in MSP this is what's happening in Pittsburgh, this is what's happening in Florida. And so working with our partners, helping to identify what's trending, helping to identify what's important, and what's critical. There can be a lot of noise and data, you know, you can't act on everything. And so trying to work with them to say, Hey, this is an area of opportunity. This is something that really matters. It's trending up. It's trending in a negative way. So So yeah, that's a lot of what we do, you know, if we see like, oh, the ticket out counter is supposed to be open at a certain time, we've noticed the last seven flights, you know, we're getting reports that it wasn't we can work with them. We can also work with them in real time, too, though we've we've got the relationships within the organization. So that same scenario, all sudden, I've got 20 people on the phone saying, hey, there's nobody here to check us in. We can we can have someone call out to the local agents, hey, where are you? You guys are supposed to be there checking people. And so again, it's kind of that two part thing is like, what do we need to do in real time? But what can what can we do in terms of trending as well?

Rick Denton: 12:34

Do you find that that real time works? Well, when it's an internal Sun country partner, but if it's the TSA lines are awful, or parking was horrible at the airport, or there was impossibility to get to the baggage claim? Because there was so much congestion in the the the driving area? When it's internal, I would imagine you've got those phone calls? How are you addressing that with customers, when you know, man, it really is kind of airport operations. And it's just the way that airport does,

Jeremy Hyde: 13:05

right? I mean, that that's a challenge, there are certain airports that just seem to be trouble all the time. You know, and this is the thing is like, who's going to be responsible? If if you have a negative impact to your travel, if you end up incurring some costs, you miss your flight, who's going to be responsible. And to your point, like, we don't run the TSA, we don't run the parking garage. So again, you know that some some negotiation and empathy and trying to find reasonable solutions where we're not just picking up the tab, right, really kind of comes in into play big time. But But again, you know, we might know, hey, they're doing some construction in San Diego, that's going to impact people's ability to get there in a timely manner. So we might do some email sends, and a lot of that stuff is happening, customer service is driving it, either because the customer tells us about it, or one of our operational partners, that they don't really know what to do, but they know that they should get it on my radar. And I love you don't need to know how to solve the problem. Just let me know there's a problem and then I can figure out how to facilitate a solution.

Rick Denton: 14:16

And I love how we got into that because I could see almost in your brain like it will Rick actually know that is a challenge. And it's something that isn't necessarily solvable, other than, as you said to empathy and understanding and, and in in getting to a good place with the customer. And then watching it evolve. And we do everything we can to be pre emptive when we can when there is known weather coming through Hey, guess what do you want to have some flexibility with your flight? Hey, this there is construction and I've been the recipient of that as a passenger and I've seen those advanced communications and it has definitely both given me the flexibility and it's given me the ability to prepare for some of these things both physically alright, I'll leave earlier and mentally today's going to suck and then once you're prepared for You know, all right, it's not as bad for, I'll just make sure to get enough time to get that beverage in the airport or wherever that needs to be. This is an area because of that challenge employees can be particularly affected by that in a culture of a contact center is so vital because this is a very hard role, and particularly in this industry, a very hard industry for all the reasons that we've been discussing, how are you going about at some country building a culture that supports the customer at the center, and provides for a great employee experience?

Jeremy Hyde: 15:33

Yeah, over the last couple of years, especially as we kind of slogged our way through COVID, and started to kind of come out the other side of things. There's a lot that we've been doing, focused on recognition and engagement. You know, I'll admit, there was a point where things were about the worst during the pandemic, that I wasn't in our team wasn't as focused on our frontline team members as we needed to be. Not intentionally, of course, but the stress and the Herculean efforts that we were trying to put into place to solve all of these, you know, what felt like unsolvable problems. You know, in March of 2020, there was a day where normally we would get about 2000 phone calls, and we had 60,000 attempted phone calls to reach us, and there's just nothing we could do. And holy crap. Yeah.

Rick Denton: 16:30

That's rational, but good gravy. Yeah, gosh, and

Jeremy Hyde: 16:34

what do you do, I mean, you just you could never, you could never, you know, be able to respond to something like that. So like, you do your best, but, but yeah, there was, there was a period of time where things got dark, things got hard. And in retrospect, I can see that, unfortunately, we weren't there for our team, the way that they needed us. I think we were all kind of going through stuff and struggling. But but we've turned the ship significantly on that. And so there's, you know, there's a handful of things that we do, that are really all about hearing our team members, giving them a voice recognizing them, we have dollars budgeted, that is going to go towards just things, you know, it could be cash giveaways, or gift cards or trips, or, you know, that sort of thing. So that's kind of nice, you know, just knowing like, there's a pot of money, every year, every month that that we can go to spend on things, but but a lot of it really is like that voice of the agent thing, for example, stuff like that, or, you know, recently, and actually through the voice of the agent program recently, we had some feedback from our part time employees, we have a lot of part time team members. And there was something that really specifically affected them. And they didn't kind of feel like it was fair the way that we were handling it. And so once we were able to manage the the change that needed to happen from a technology perspective, we put that into place. And I got several notes from people after the fact saying, Oh, my gosh, I can't tell you how happy I am. One person told me, she was on the verge of having to quit and she didn't want to, but just, you know, her the nature of her life and the stress and like this removes some of the stress. So she's gonna stick with us. And so that has just been super huge is creating this conversation and creating this venue, I think. I don't want me to be the center of things per se. But I think that our team members knowing that they can talk to me that they can get a message to me if they feel something like I think there has been some value in that for sure.

Rick Denton: 18:39

The and there's a theme that I heard there. And it was it was actually kind of fun for me to watch that theme come together unplanned. And it was, it's listening, right, it's the listening to the agent and then exposed more directly in that voice and you rewards recognition, and that's one layer. Then there's the voice the agent, hey, we're listening to you, when it comes to customer, you don't want to deal with customer issues. You're smart, you know the issues, share that with us. And then listening to the voice of the agent about their own agent experience. And going forward. That part that that just feeling a sense of belonging and a sense of being able to say, I know I'm being heard, maybe they won't agree with everything. But at least I'm being heard and can make decisions there. And then hey, they actually did listen and fix something that actually really focused on a much better way of life now. Yeah. Jeremy, one of the things that is a treat, about being an airline employee, I have not one now, but I Well, I'm still married to this person. She used to be an airline employee, is that wonderful flight benefit that does exist and so I want you to visualize, you're standing at the departure board at MSP. It's you your wife, you've got a passport, a credit card and a totally open weekend. Where do you go and why?

Jeremy Hyde: 19:58

I have so many places Is that I want to visit. So that is a really difficult question. But as you said, I mean, one of the benefits of working in the industry is you get to travel. One of the places that's on my mind right now we actually just booked a trip to we just booked our spring break trip to St. Maarten. So so that's that's really on my mind. We've never been It looks amazing. The beaches, there's a ton to do, you know, mix of Dutch, French and island cultures coming together. Yeah, we're really, really excited about that one.

Rick Denton: 20:40

Jeremie, that sounds awesome. It does. And so one of the things about travel is when things are going well, they're going well, and even still, you might want to take a little break. So even though things are going to go well for your trip, you might want to stop in a lounge. It's kind of a nice time to take a little break there. We're gonna do that. Now. We're going to do a little change of pace here. Join me here in the first class lounge. We'll move quickly here and hopefully have a little bit of fun. What is a dream travel location from your past?

Jeremy Hyde: 21:06

Recent past with my wife and daughters, Puerto Rico. That was amazing. You can tell we're Minnesotans because we're always thinking about Sandy destinations. beach destination here. Absolutely. But Puerto Rico was so cool. We were all over the island. And there's so much to see. It was amazing.

Rick Denton: 21:27

That's awesome. That's a place that I've only changed planes. And so I would like to actually spend some traveler time there. That's inspiring to hear you say that? What is now I know that St. Martin's on the list coming up soon, but overall, just in life, what is a dream travel location you've not been to yet?

Jeremy Hyde: 21:46

Man, there's so much of Europe that I would love to see. You know, we could spend months probably just going all over Europe. At the same time, man, there's a lot of the US I haven't seen honestly, that that's one thing that I kind of battle with is like, because I have these flight benefits. I am always inclined to go international go to islands, that sort of thing. But, man, I haven't seen much of the East Coast. I haven't been to places like Montana or Wyoming. I'm in Minnesota. I've never been the Dakotas. Like I have so much to explore. I just I gotta get out there. I don't know what I'm doing.

Rick Denton: 22:21

That is true. I have a very international bent and my travel mindset as well. And yet, it is amazing. My wife and I just were we were at the Grand Canyon a few weeks ago and what an amazing and spectacular and meaningful place that is. And so it is it is a good reminder that you have you don't have to leave the borders you don't need your passport for some great destinations for those of us that live here in the US as well. Absolutely what is a favorite thing of yours to eat?

Jeremy Hyde: 22:49

I love everything. I'm not picky. I love a great steak. I love tacos. When I'm out on the West Coast I love me some In and Out Burger we got to hit every time we're out in California so those are those are a few

Rick Denton: 23:03

you would not believe the lines and the excitement went In and Out Burger came to my hometown of him in the Dallas area. So Frisco has a location and maybe someday you'll get one in your homeland for sure what is let's go the other way. What is something growing up that you were forced to eat but you hated as a kid?

Jeremy Hyde: 23:24

I don't remember anything that like my parents would make me eat but I remember if I was with my grandma, she always made me drink milk and I think I was like the only kid in the world that didn't like milk but she always poured me a big glass of milk and I had with every meal I had to drink a big glass of milk and I hated it.

Rick Denton: 23:42

I know it may not be visible it certainly for those of you that are listening did not see that. But my hand is raised and pointing to me I was a milk kid. It wasn't the least favorite thing of mine but I was not a milk kid. So yeah, it was I'm with you there Jeremy we are finding ourselves more aligned in many ways than we expected. Yeah, with all those good flight benefits. You've got to travel under your belt. So what is one travel item not including your phone, not including your passport that you will not leave home without.

Jeremy Hyde: 24:08

I attended travel pretty light, which is an interesting battle between my wife and I because she tends to not travel very light. And I always tell her especially now that I'm in the industry. Like I want to keep my bag with me. I don't want to check it. I guess one though, especially as I'm going to all of these beach destinations. I guess my prescription sunglasses would be a good one.

Rick Denton: 24:36

Yeah, I got to make sure that you can still see inside that son Jeremy. Absolutely. As much as I want to stay in travel though. You are still getting to stay in travel. But I want to get back to your career because I always admire those that actually started. As a frontline agent. You've lived that role you understand it? How did those experiences that you've had then stay with you and influence you today?

Jeremy Hyde: 25:01

I think that that is a big part of what shapes kind of how I am as a leader in this industry and how I think about things and just being able to understand the perspective of the team. Some of us were just me and some of my team members, were just having a conversation yesterday. And if you can't understand the pressure of being on with a customer, and and can't understand the pressure and the stress, if you don't know the answer, or you, you can't seem to give a response, or a solution that satisfies the person that you're speaking with. That's really hard. And so that, I mean, I think that that's a big, a big part of it is like understanding what that's actually like, I think about all the things that bothered me that made the job harder. You know, I think about situations where I felt like people weren't listening to me, I think about two things that I couldn't understand at that point in time, and being able to try to help folks understand differently, you know, for example, it's really hard to maintain a perspective and understand that it's not that everything is going wrong, it's just that only the people that have things going wrong are contacting you. And that's just a really different, difficult perspective to have or maintain when you're dealing with the things that are going on. So it's just all of that I use that and really try to think about how would I receive this? How would I feel about this, if I was still in those agent shoes.

Rick Denton: 26:37

And it's as some I was not a frontline agent, although I served in the frontline in a different way I was in the grocery store, checking, taking groceries and bagging groceries, and so totally different, not the same, not even the same level of intensity. It does when you've participated with that direct customer interaction. It does open your eyes a bit and the intensity that you're describing. Having done that, inside the context Center as a frontline agent, it has to influence you today in in, in everything you said, I have to imagine, do you find who this is hadn't even thought of this until just now? Do you find yourself now as the leader, that you have even more of a tension in wanting to solve for the agent while understanding overall business objectives that might prevent you or there may be other things that stand in the way of solving for the agent? Does that increase the tension in your mind now that you've had both of those worlds?

Jeremy Hyde: 27:35

Yeah, I think so. I mean, I, I'm always kind of looking from both of those angles. decisions would be much easier. If I didn't care about the impact to the frontline team. They just want. And to your point, though, being able to feel that and understand it from having started there. I think it does, I think there are certain things that it just really slows me down or, you know, I hear about a change that's coming and like, oh, no, like people are not going to be happy about that and trying to figure out how to manage through that. It. The other thing that it's done, and I think that this is one of those double edged swords things, there's the there's the positive side of it, and there's the negative side of it, I always, you know, I got really good at solving problems. And I try to stay really close to the customer and really close to the frontline. I never want to lose that perspective and that connection. At the same time. That's not where I should be spending a lot of my time. And so that I actually find a lot of tension there. Because I want to be different than what I've seen, you know, people that weren't connected and weren't making an effort and weren't listening and understanding. But again, you know, I I've got hundreds of people whose job it is to solve customer problems every day. And so me sitting down trying to like, figure out what to do about this one person that missed their flight, like probably not the best use of my time. But I never want to lose that connection, though. And so that is a that is a tension that I find in myself all of the time is like, Alright, it's time to let go Jeremy, there are people that can do this, let them do it.

Rick Denton: 29:19

Boy, what a what a great example. And I actually love that that what you just said there's unresolved there's not actually an answer that's provided just a description of the tension. And I would imagine I don't work for you. I haven't worked around to interview people but I would imagine that helps make you a better leader that that you can appreciate that tension in and recognize it on both sides and handle it that way. I try

Jeremy Hyde: 29:40

to tell my my team members I'm like, it's okay to tell me to shut up or back off or you know, like, you can say I've got this we don't need your opinion. And you know, I always have an opinion if you want it you know you'll get it but if you don't, it's okay. You can tell them you don't want my opinion.

Rick Denton: 29:56

Oh my gosh, we could start talking about family dynamics and everything else in this conversation. But that would be a massive derail. Maybe it would be a part of my, my podcast that I do with my wife about becoming empty nesters, the loud, quiet. So different topic, different conversation. There's another tension that is particularly acute in the industry right now. And that is, this is a people heavy industry and you've been in it the 15 plus years that I described. It's an industry that's always had an element of technology, as well, right, just from dialers to as the evolution to what we see in technology today. It really does feel like to me, though, that context center, the spectrum is shifting even more towards technology. So how are you approaching this, this balance between human and technology? How do you balance that and the delivery of customer service.

Jeremy Hyde: 30:49

So I've said this a couple of times recently chatting with other folks. And so if anyone listens to more than one thing I've been on, they're probably going to be sick of me saying it. But a lot of people like me have spent the last decade or two decades or however long, gaining expertise in contact center operations. And really a large focus on people and process technology was there to your point, but not the Not, not like it is today. And everything that I've spent time learning and trying to grow expertise. And for the last 10 to 15 years, none of that has prepared me for what's happening right now. When we think about large language models, and you know, all of all of the things that are happening and the speed at which they're happening. I wasn't focused on keeping up with technology necessarily, because it just it I'm, I'd say like, I'm okay, I do fine with technology, I understand it, you know, to a point where I can get by. But But yeah, I haven't been prepared for this moment. And so that's something that over the last year or two especially I've been kind of grappling with, I guess, and trying to figure out like, I don't think it makes sense at this point for me to try to become an expert in something that I'm not. Right. So I have to, I have to acknowledge that that's not where my strength and my background is. And that means that I need to identify people or partners that can fill that gap that I have, and figure out how we start to create the roles and the skill sets that we don't have. And I think that this is a gigantic gap in the context on our space. Specifically, we're not necessarily a group of really technology, educated people, you know, you know, a lot of people aren't going to school for computer science, and then walking into the contact center. Right, we are very people focused people. And so we have to figure out how to continue to bridge that gap. And this is another one that I'd say like for me is not resolved. I have partners in the organization, certainly within EECOM. And it and that sort of thing, but but we need to be driving a lot of the things that we're doing as well. And so need to continue to kind of focus on that, when and

Rick Denton: 33:09

the driving part of it too. And forgive me, I'm maybe leading the witness, Your Honor. But I a lot of what you're describing, if you've grown up in the people side of the industry, I think will serve well. Because what I'm seeing a lot of out in the market, right? The just generic sentence of the market is a lot of focus on Well, here's how technology can immediately reduce your cost or can immediately improve your efficiency. But I'm not hearing as much about here's how technology can improve your employees experience and your customers experience. Oh, and by the way, it will improve customer experience and it will improve employee experience. And I would imagine that folks like you that are you're describing as someone who is focused more on the people side of it, that'll be a good counterbalance to those that are solving the technology for the technology improvements sake. I have to imagine there's been some healthy conversations as you've been ramping into that and have been being introduced to or being shown different technology options. Imagine you've had some healthy conversations around that topic?

Jeremy Hyde: 34:11

For sure. Well, and you know, I imagine that our team members and when I say our I don't mean just some country, I just mean the contact center people out there, the team members, some of them are probably worried. And and so I'd say from the people side of this question, I just try and be really transparent and open and let folks know. You know, I'm not doing anything to try and get rid of their jobs. Now what I might be doing is trying to prevent future hiring. I'm okay with that. I hope they are to you know, if if our top of our team at this size, can you know, scale with the organization and be able to through the use of technology helped more people without having to add a bunch more team members. So we talked about things like that, you know, we have a BPO partner that we work with in a very small way. They account for maybe 8% of our output. And we have a knowledgebase article that describes this relationship. Who are they? And should I be worried about it? It's, it's that sort of thing. No, you should here's, here's who they are, here's what they do. Here's why they are not a risk to you. At no point, will they ever replace you? If they grow? It's not at your expense, you know? And so like, we just tried to be really, really transparent about those sorts of things. So no, one has to wonder.

Rick Denton: 35:41

I think let's, I, I would like to close there, actually, because I like that approach to it of, I don't necessarily know the answers. I've heard that theme in there. But I'm going to be as transparent with you and whomever you is, in this context, with what I know what I don't know. And what that means for for you and your your job, your role, your career, the company, whatever that looks like Jeremy, that was this was the kind of a well, this was a fun flight to take with you today, I learned a lot. I did learn that you and I share a similar feeling about milk growing up, you and I do share an enjoyment of having our toes in the sand. But we also more perhaps more importantly, share this absolute belief that the context, context Center and the frontline are the epicenter of the delivery of customer experience. Jeremy, folks wanted to get to know you a little bit more about your customer service approach and what that looks like. What's the best way for folks to to learn a little bit more about you?

Jeremy Hyde: 36:42

Yeah, find me on LinkedIn, Jeremy Hyde, hyde, I've got posts and articles and love to engage with folks. So if I post something, comment on it, I love I love some banter in some some conversation.

Rick Denton: 36:54

And listeners, as always, that'll be in the show notes, scroll down, it's there. You didn't have to write that down. You just click that link there. Jeremy, I may want to get that the specific link of the voice of the agent blog post, and put that in the show notes as well. I also listeners can attest to he's sincere he'll engage with the online and that is the only reason that Jeremy and I have been connected because we got into a discussion online and we actually had this slightly Opposing Viewpoints. They weren't horribly contrasting, but they were opposing. And Jeremy is a fantastic person to have an actual honest to god authentic conversation where you can share ideas, even if you aren't seeing eye to eye and I love that. Jeremy, it was fun having you on the show today. Thanks for being on CX Passport.

Jeremy Hyde: 37:40

Thanks for taking me on this trip, Rick.

Rick Denton: 37:47

Thanks for joining us this week on CX Passport. If you liked today’s episode I have 3 quick next steps for you Click subscribe on the CX Passport youtube channel or your favorite podcast app Next leave a comment below the video or a review in your favorite podcast app so others can find and and enjoy CX Passport too Then, head over to cxpassport.com website for show notes and resources that can help you create tangible business results by delivering great customer experience. Until next time, I’m Rick Denton and I believe the best meals are served outside and require a passport.