One on One - Yuval Brisker

--- SpeakerText Transcript of the Track: Hello, this is Brent Leary, and I just came across a really interesting survey around customer service, and it was aimed at the business side of customer service, getting the impression of what's important to their customers. And it was a survey that, it's put together by a company called TOA, and I had the opportunity to talk to them about another survey they did, a little while ago, on the cost of waiting. And that's a really interesting survey. But right now, I would like to introduce you to Yuval Brisker, who is the CEO of TOA. Yuval. Hi there. Thanks for joining me. My pleasure. Thanks for having me. So, before we jump into this study, which has some really interesting stuff, maybe you could talk a little bit about who you are, and what TOA does. Yes, I'm the CEO of TOA Technologies. TOA provides a Cloud based software solution for managing mobile employees, with a view and focus on the customer experience. managing mobile employees like technicians, service people, delivery people who go to people's homes on an appointment basis. With delivering cable, telephone, delivering furniture, delivering any kind of service basically to the home. Of course, we've all experienced what it's next two weeks waiting for the cable guy, not knowing when the cable guy is going to arrive. And It's all about the cable guy problem, meaning customers waiting at home without knowing. We have a software that can actually predict when an appointment will happen. predict a one hour window for people to wait with ninety-eight percent accuracy, so instead of waiting for all day, or four hours, or half a day, you know not knowing when the guy's going to arrive at your home, using Towa solution, call companies like COX, like BrightHouse, like like Cablevision, like Virgin Media in the UK. All use our solution, to reduce the time that people have to wait at home, with a very sophisticated Cloud based software. I only wish that Cox, or excuse me, Charter in Atlanta, used your service, because they are stuck at the four hour window. I really appreciate that you're actually able to get it down to that one hour, which I would assume makes a huge difference, when it comes to that customer base. So that's great. But just recently, you sponsored a research study by the Economist Intelligence Unit, that really talks about current customer service challenges and future trends. It's really some interesting stuff here. Maybe you could tell us a little bit about why you sponsored this kind of study, and maybe some of the high level takeaways that you got from it? So you know, we're really interested in understanding what executives around the world are thinking, and what their perception is about customer service, and what they need to do as organizations to actually improve the customer experience, and how they actually grasp the trends out there, in terms of customer service and customer experience. So, we're constantly looking to have our finger on the pulse of what both customers are thinking, so, that's the survey that you actually mentioned before, which we call the cost of waiting survey. And, that's a very, you know, consumer focused survey to understand what consumer's experiences are of the waiting game, what we like to call the waiting game. I call it the crying game but, that's okay. On the flip side of that, you know, we have, we are also interested in understanding what business executives, who are leading companies that provide those kinds of in-home services, what they are thinking. And, together with the Economist's Intelligence Unit, we put together a survey that really, really, went out to talk to business executives around the world, asking them what are the biggest issues on your mind? What are the things that are of concern to you these days. As you basically manage your bussiness in relation to the customer and the customer experience. And that's kind of what we did. Now, it looks like one of the big findings or the top takeaways, was that there is an increased need for tailored services. Apparently, ninety-five percent of respondents cited that is a big deed for their business to do. Absolutely,i mean I think as we all kind of get a bigger and stronger grasp of sort of personalized things for ourselves. And I think a lot of that actually comes from the experience of personalizing you know the Facebook page, or the Twitter page, or GooglePlus plus, it's just all these experiences that people have of creating their own environment that's sort of tailored to their needs. Twitter is I think a key one for, you know you follow the people with you you know that you are interested in hearing about. And you kind of get a stream of news that you knowreading out there, that's relevant to your interests and your focus. Those kinds of, that's kind of like a stream of consciousness almost. It happens in the world, in which people are getting used to the idea that they can actually tailor things to their specific needs and specific desires, and that's beginning to spill out into, you know beyond the virtual world, into the actual real world where people are experiencing some level of interaction with services, and they want the same kind of level of personalization that they have in the virtual world, and also wanted in their physical world and their physical environment. You know, it's pretty interesting because I think what you talk about here is customers are on social networks, they're using mobile devices, and they really want to be able to use these things that they're using in parts of their life. They would really like to expand it and use it in as many parts of their life as possible. And it sounds like customer service is another one of those avenues, where they expect vendors, to engage them in order to serve them better. Well, you know, we are all deeply connected today, right? Yesterday, I left my mobile phone in a taxi, on the way into New York City and I was, you know, I felt like my right arm had been cut off for about 45 minutes until I got the taxi driver and he came back and delivered it to me. It's that deep connection with the devices and through it with the network, the network being the social network, the information network, and in this case, the service network. Those kind of connectivity's, are something that we've grown to not just expect, but depend on and be completely, I would say, almost addicted to. And that addiction, quote unquote, in the positive sense, expands out to wanting to get information and wanting to give information and want to interact around services, the same way that every other aspect of connected, of the connected life exists in people's, you know, day to day experience. So, I don't' find it's at all surprising in that sense, that people are wanting to extend that sort of level of connectivity and level on information that they have into their service experiences. It's completely logical to me. And it sounds like it's because of that customer-driven need that fifty-one percent of respondents say that they will introduce new customer service systems or software in the next three years. Yeah, I mean, I think that if you're a service organization out there, some of them already took the step of at least the large sort of more visible ones, like Comcast, like Charter by the way, from my point of view, Charter, Comcast, the service providers in your area, it's just a question of time when they will become Tooha [sp?] customers, and you will have that great experience of only having too wait an hour and getting information throughout so you actually have a access to the information. But you look at what, for example, UPS just did the last week which is say to customers, that you don't have to wait for the package anymore, you can actually go on our website and start tailoring information that you want to you can actually have, about receiving your package, on our website and we'll give you information throughout. tailor the time that you would like to get your package delivered to your home. Whereas before, you would have to get it when somebody came to your door. And if you were there, you were there, if you weren't, you weren't. So, I think the trend is very clear, these companies who once just felt that may this having a twitter site is enough. Now they want, that's kind of my mind it's almost like a passes activity, you set up for a twitter site you respond will actually come to you. Now it's more about proactiveness and how to actually transform the sort of social media social enterprise experience into a proactive experience for your customers. There's a lot of great information in this survey, but is there anything that surprises the results. That it's not a 100 percent of the that I thought that it was an important you know, to engage in social media and really tailor and personalize those services to customers needs. I think it's at the point, to me my expectation would be that well of course in the 90s is very high. But I wasn't surprised to be honest about the fact that this was, you know this was that high, but you know our goal is to make sure that all companies out there think in terms of you know how do best you know my, you know, services and my, you know experience based projects to my customers you know needs, and that's kind of our goal. So if you were a year from now, where do you think companies are going to be and being able to merge social and noble in any kind of other new technologies that in between now and then. How are they going to be able to leverage this to improve, keep improving the customer experience? You know, I think that there's a clear convergence of all these kinds of technologies. What we have that's unique, I think, and what I think is going to be the next wave, a year or two, maybe three years from now, it to be a lot more predictive, to start trying to anticipate what people actually are expecting not just, you know. So when you go on Amazon today, you buy something, and they say, customers who bought this also bought that, or they start you know, there actually is an intelligence of predictive engine, that tries to anticipate what it is you might want to buy more of or might please you as a consumer, and they'll offer it up to you. I think that when we take what we're We're doing and what the survey basically came up with. And you take that and extrapolate that a year forward, I think that you're talking about a much more anticipatory Experience that will predict, not just respond to or give customers the ability to personalize their services. But also take the step in terms of looking at patterns that they have in their buying activities or their service activities and use that information, to and to anticipate in advance, rather than just acting. So, offer that up to the customer. The other is really I think that there will be more Used for that extending, so that the one to oneness of the communication between, you know companies and their customers The customers have more channels of not just receiving information, but giving their information back, and it becomes more of a conversation and less of a sort of a complaint-based undertaking between customers and their companies, companies and their customers. So those two things, I think, would be my predictions for a year or two out. Which is, like I said, it's one to one communication in a conversation. You know the word conversation is out the conversation between companies and their customers is going to be much more enhanced. And the other thing is really anticipating and predicting what customers desires are in putting those options out in front of them and letting them just choose, rather than having them do it themselves. Where can people go more about the study maybe you're going to pick it up. The study is going to be posted on our website, and it also will be on the economist.com website. The economist Intelligence Unit. And we invite you to come to our site and enjoy the fruits of the survey labor. I'm already enjoying the fruits and I'm also looking forward to the next edition of the The Cost of Waiting survey there was a lot of good information in that one too. Yea, and we did a much more extensive deep survey this year. We are doing a lot more [xx]we're doing it with zog by and you know we're going to be slicing and dicing the information a lot more, in a granular fashion, so you'll have a lot more interesting information to talk about. and maybe i can get you to come on and do another one of these talks around that one as well. Love to do it. Thanks a lot Yuval, that was great information. That was Yuval brisker from from [xx] technologies. Thank you very much. Review Transcript and Additional Download Options Right-click and choose 'Save As...' to download HTML for CaptionBox