Rick Denton: 0:05

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. Crypto web three. Those are not topics we've gotten into on CX passport. Certainly not for lack of exposure to those worlds. Maybe the volume has turned down a bit as compared to the 2022 mainstream focus on those worlds yet they're as vital as ever. Now, crypto has been newsworthy lately for the wrong reasons with the FTX collapse and subsequent fraud and money laundering charges for the founder. So why would that be an area of focus for CX passport? Inter today's guest Clemens Behrend talking to us today from Vienna, Austria. Clemens comes with a wealth of experience in those worlds starting as a teenage digital entrepreneur. Building a business to monetize digital in game currencies through online marketplaces came mind as a teenager. Through university studies exploring new business opportunities in crypto including physical world solutions using the excessive heat of crypto mining to warm homes to the leadership of customer support for bitpanda The first unicorn in Austria, Clemens knows the digital world. Today, Clements has launched a new business focused on customer experience, weight web three, crypto and customer experience. Lemon status that simply I help web three companies to improve their customer experience. When I talk with Clements before the show, along with the intrigue of the web three and crypto spaces, he also spoke of the business results of customer experience. This isn't some out there idea there are real results to be had. And at least for now, there's still ample travel in the physical world with plenty of delight and business lessons to be had. I want to know more about Clemens in the real world to Clemens Welcome to CX passport.

Clemens Behrend: 2:22

Hi, Rick. Thanks for having me.

Rick Denton: 2:25

I'm looking forward to today's episode, certainly diversion departure from our normal topics on the show, and I'm looking forward to it. So you're building this customer experience consultancy for web three companies. And I have to admit, I haven't pondered that too, as the news was swirling around web three, and expanding beyond just the devotees and practitioners to the mainstream. But a question always sat in my head, and it was why. I know that sounds odd for someone like me who preaches customer experience and overarching importance of the value of customer experience. So why does web three Why does crypto Why does the one of those industries need to focus on customer experience?

Clemens Behrend: 3:04

Well, I think the crypto and directory industry is one of the industries which should focus the most on customer experience, why should they focus the most on customer experience? So crypto is everything. But people don't understand about computers, and maybe also money and one thing so they have questions. So then the next thing like customer experience, like what's very often overlooked in all of these hyped up crypto projects, there are no names, or real persons, but customer experience is actually when you connect like with a project or with people. And this is like this human touch with all this technology overlooked and so much ignored. So maybe for the listeners, let's explain what what bet three is. So

Rick Denton: 3:51

good. Yeah, I think all of us could use a little

Clemens Behrend: 3:55

web one, the element housing. So in the earliest day of the internet, when you logged in to a service, you have your username, you had your password. That's that one. So what's web two? Web two, you have an SSO login. So for instance, with Microsoft, Apple ID, who else Facebook login these things, these buttons, which you see on the website. So what's web three, rep three is now the next step. So you have your cryptocurrency wallet, for instance, meta mask, where you log in and actually sign things. So you have some sort of digital identity that you can use for all services. And then like why is currently like this web three term, upcoming at the moment. It's a little bit for marketing reasons, because like the term crypto has a really really bad reputation. Everybody is now a smart things around say let's use web three.

Rick Denton: 4:49

Yeah, cuz you're you're spot on. And what I love is how you explain all that because I think a lot of us, myself included, just tend to think that web three just means Oh, that's the metaverse right it's it's the digital representation of humans in a in a Tron like experience. And you're helping explain that it's so much more than that and know that it just I think people like me who aren't living in that space, tend to oversimplify it. And so as you've defined it there, yeah. So why do we even need to worry about customer experience in that space?

Clemens Behrend: 5:21

Why do we need to worry, for instance, about the customer experience in the data warehouse? Let's explain what the term meter versus everybody of us almost lives in the metaverse. As you most of your listeners, for instance, have an iPhone, on your iPhone, you get like every week like this push notification, you spend on average, like I don't want to say any number. Six hours on your phone screen. And the point when you spend it, then you also have to sleep eight hours and then you spend six hours on your phone. So how much hours of the days you didn't spend on your phone, maybe 10 hours. So at some point, the amount of hours that you spent actually in the internet will be bigger than in real life. And this twist this sweet spot. This is what we would call the metaverse. That's like so hard to understand for people. And of course, everybody says like when they go in a restaurant, they want to have like a good customer experience. But when we then spent like so many hours in the middle, where else, of course, you also want to have like a great customer experience because using services there you are interacting with other people. And that's the buyer the customer experience. In the meantime, we also met us This

Your CX Passport Captain: 6:26

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Rick Denton: 6:52

thinking about that, I'm almost kind of distilling it down to why? Because it doesn't matter whether it's Metaverse whether it's a digital representation of a person or a person's experience inside and online, the experience, they still want the same things. Fundamentally, it's still somewhere tracking back it becomes a human there. And that human wants a customer experience regardless of what the platform is. And this seems to be a new and burgeoning world and a place that which makes sense why you would want to set up something to explore that world. You mentioned something earlier that web three is the brand because crypto has such a negative connotation. And, and a lot of it is FTX related. It's not just FTX related, but that was the major player. That was the major thing that kind of drove us to lose trust in crypto when that collapsed. So how can that crypto beyond rebranding? That's one thing, but how can the crypto industry actually restore trust, knowing that it's not going away?

Clemens Behrend: 7:52

So in best case, we would just like, find the money which disappeared, which to the people, so they even like what makes it so where else they even donated like to public parties like to a lot of like politicians and now they're even asking them to send the money back to the FDA, so they can pay it back to customers to lawyers or anything. So the thing is, we cannot really like the process of like recovering this money will take. So for the people who are directly affected if FTX we cannot do anything. Of course, like what we can do is like, from the regulator perspective, that there are licenses and people need that, but you will never be able to hold people back from going to this offshore law exchanges. Easy to use. I think as the crypto industry in total, we cannot do much the crazy thing is we are from when we only look at bitcoin price as one metric how we could theoretically calculate the trust, we are already above the same levels when the FTX crash happened. So like on looking at the bitcoin price, it's almost that this question never happened. And the good thing is in the crypto industry, we need to be able to let like bad exchanges fail, don't do a bailout on public costs. And then just to move on. I know this sounds hard to the victims of it. But that's like how crypto functions because in 2008 2009, they said like, Okay, we have these bailouts for the banks. And we don't want that. Yeah, and

Rick Denton: 9:23

I definitely get the sense of you know, that is harsh for the victims involved. And I'm not here to say oh, we'll tougher them. They shouldn't have got it or you know, Hey, we should bail them out or anything like that. What I'm hearing you say though, is that from a trust perspective, it's really not. There's there's no magic bullet. There's no automatic opportunity to just suddenly Alright, here's how we're going to restore trust in the crypto industry, which helps me understand why you've created what you've created, in the sense that hate customer experience and making that better will start to get people more comfortable and moving forward. One thing you told me though, about FTX specifically is you had noticed some red flags that are kind of customer experience the red flags about the company. So it wasn't a financial observation. It wasn't an industry observation. It was just, hey, this customer experience element of FTX is kind of messed up, there's a red flag, how did you know that FTX was going to be, let's just call it a challenge for now.

Clemens Behrend: 10:20

Then I saw like two six. So first of all, so I went on the website of the FTX. I went on the FAQ on the help page. And it was like from Zendesk out of the box, like a template. And I was like, come on, this company has like a two digit billion valuation. Yeah, by customizing like this help this. But my company web 3x can do, by the way, also, as well. It doesn't cost like a lot. So I saw that FAQ page from FTX. Where barely anything was like customized now sounds like such a big company. How do they run their customer support operation makes zero sense to me. Yeah, so this was like the first big red flag. So then the second big red flag, I saw a video of Tom Brady embankment trying to fall off FTX they were standing next to each other. And Tom Brady was doing like some sort of selfie video, I don't know, like a tick tock or something. And he was talking and explaining something. And then like, SPF, to like the CEO of this company. Look, probably I asked him Tom Brady was his best customer. I think they deposit like 600 million C's maybe in the top 1%. So this is the type of customer you get, always give a warm handshake, and you really carry on your hands. And this guy looks at him, makes him yet face and walks away doing that video. I was like, you cannot read your best customer like that, especially when it's when it's Tom Brady is probably one of the most famous and best sports persons.

Rick Denton: 11:45

What a brilliant like that is a very indirect way of observing a company is struggling, right? The fact that you observed the FAQs, were so weak for a two digit million company, and then the way they treated their best customer. That's a that's a pretty astute observation. Those of

Clemens Behrend: 12:04

us whom he doesn't know American football, this can also be okay. So for instance, I have no clue about the woods, but I would at least know, okay, it's like this sport, it's like the best player. And I would be like saying that I wish I don't even know like the team where he's playing for you

Rick Denton: 12:20

hope at least the PR team was whispering in his ear, hey, this is your number one customer, it's the best. All that shows why Customer Experience matters, we wouldn't have thought of it in that regard. But Customer Experience matters. And it matters to the crypto world. And it is something that customers we should learn from of, hey, if they're not treating customer experience, right? Maybe they're not treating their business, right. And maybe the business results aren't coming there. And there's a lot of lessons out there about the whole tie between business results. And I loved how you brought that into our conversation before we got to recording the show. And I know that we're still in this world of customer experience, where we got one foot in the world that it's you know, of course, customer experience is vital to business. And then we've got this other foot and that we have to prove the ROI of customer experience efforts. And I know that that's a debate that is not going to be resolved anytime soon. But you had told me about a recent trip trip to Greece, and you had a specific set of experiences there. Especially the humanity of customer experience that ended up having you spend more money, ie better business results for that brand for that company. What was that trip to Greece? Like? And how does that influence your perspective on customer experience and the impact on business results.

Clemens Behrend: 13:34

So I booked like a trip like very spontaneously with my girlfriend. And so we went there. My expectations of course, were like super high because this was probably one of the most expensive holidays that I ever had. So I came there like as a customer like if a super high mindset regarding service. So then we arrived like in this oil in this Sunshine Village or whatever. And then we went to a few restaurants. Why was it worth it because of the small details. So first time when we went in a restaurant like it was completely full, but we still got like the best table in the corner. Being able to look in the sunset. It's about of course like replacing and not everybody can have like the best table in the restaurant. So this is one thing but if you have the best table you have the best customer experience and of course, then you like to pay a lot. But since we went there more frequently during our holidays, the craziest thing was the waiter could even remember what we ordered like two days ago how we customize the stuff how we want it. They asked they always asked like if you like how we customize it back then. And even when we told them like two or three days ago, like on this day we plan to do a trip like driving with quotes of motorcycles around the island. So they could give us an like tips where to go and then even ask us later about this exactly trip horse based on that experience, and never recreate spending any Euro They are all like and going in any fancy restaurant

Rick Denton: 15:10

now one of the things about a trip to Greece like that, that is absolutely wonderful trip sounds, it sounds like it was great. But for me to get degrees is a long trip mu is a little shorter. I know that you've had the opportunity to travel some long destinations and you know what it kind of wears you out. So it's nice to take a break. It's nice if you got access to the lounge. And today we have exactly that got access to the first class lounge when invite you in here. Let's move quickly and have a little bit of fun here. What is a dream travel location from your past.

Clemens Behrend: 15:39

So since we can exclude crease, I would say it's Canada and Spain. So they have been the Canary Islands they are directly next to us in Morocco and the West Sahara. So almost Africa, it's almost the same timezone. As in Europe, so for instance, same timezone is pulseguard. So only, I think London, so only one hour difference. And on Canal via the whole year, there's like some, like nice tempo like above 20 degrees. And like less pie mass is like one capital of one city. And then you can really live in a city. And you can walk to the beach in a city. And I visit like actually like my partner who I'm running web three, six together. So with Dominic who he's actually living there. Like always when he has a bad day, and just asking like, normal questions. Look out, look outside of the window, what do you see? And then he tells me it's sunny. And I'm like, Okay, I'm sitting here in Vienna. Yes, no.

Rick Denton: 16:39

Oh, that's awesome. Well, that may be a dream travel of mine for the future. What is a dream travel location for you that you've not been to yet?

Clemens Behrend: 16:47

And so first of all, very surprisingly, I'm also very sad to say I've never been outside of the of Europe. Are you? I mean, like Switzerland, technically not. You. Yeah. And so there are like two locations. One is Thailand. And the other one is I would say Mexico the US

Rick Denton: 17:09

Well, you've got to get to both of those. Obviously. I'm kind of like my us but I love getting out as well. Mexico has some brilliant places culturally beaches, and Thailand the same different but same beaches, culture food, all of that you've picked two great destinations to get to and I mentioned food, what is a favorite thing of yours to eat?

Clemens Behrend: 17:29

favorite thing to eat? So in general, it's Kpop it's like almost like the German national dessert. So it's like eating like a bread so it's like originally like from some people from Turkey but people in Turkey always put it on the plate. And the big innovation happened in Germany but they actually put it in a bread because what the people recognized when they moved to Germany, the Turkish people and having the restaurants German people are always busy running around doing half the time to sit down in a restaurant and that's why they put it in a bread

Rick Denton: 18:02

first to go food option I like that

Clemens Behrend: 18:05

yeah, and also really funny thing in the city where I grew up was like and bad and looking back but looking back it's like the state where the proceeds the MNC just ends so they have a small city the guy failed with the concept of a kpop in a breath and then he moved to Berlin and then he was successful and sang Skywalker and now we have it like all over the place

Rick Denton: 18:26

German Innovation right there in the in the home of Mercedes Benz love it what is on the other side? What's the thing your parents forced you to eat but you hate it as a kid

Clemens Behrend: 18:36

that's amazing. So I would say pineapple if I if I would have put political power and let's hope that this never happened I would even make pineapple illegal so I would benefit from selling growing it distributing it that would be like country or whatever without pineapple because I ate my youth wants like pineapple I think the pineapple was not good. It's not directly okay, but you everything out and since they sense that they barely touched it sometimes I headed like powerfully in any movies and I was like okay, still drinking it and it's fine and so on. But like, deep inside me the most irrational not hate this like what I have like regarding some food is definitely pineapple.

Rick Denton: 19:26

Oh my goodness. Well, yours is not a popular stance and that is what I love about the show is getting different perspectives. I would never have expected to get a pineapple option for the thing you hated as a kid that's fantastic to get something new like that. What is one travel item not including your phone, not including your passport that you will not leave home without. Then

Clemens Behrend: 19:49

of course it depends on the travel location where I'm going if it's cold or if it's warm, it's warm, then definitely my bed by trousers swimming if it's cold and definitely like a proper jacket that I don't freeze to death. On the other side, I would say to Eveleigh travel location, I will take my sports bags with me. So training shoes training equipment, because the body doesn't know the concept of something, what we call holidays. So sadly, I still have to do sports work out during the holiday.

Rick Denton: 20:27

LeMans that's a very practical approach to the one travel item, I have been one that has gone both ways, I'll work out and let's say it's a long trip, I'll work out for a few days, and then it starts to taper off towards the end. I think it's with good intentions that I bring my workout gear and then sometimes those intentions just don't manifest. So I like that. That's your your focus on keeping things active going forward. We've talked about crypto, we've talked about web three, you're helping these companies that are already in a technology space, improve their customer experience, you have experienced leveraging AI and customer service in a wide range of industries. I know that digital and digital solutions inside a digital industry outside of a digital industry are on the minds of business leaders. And there's a ton of dollars flowing towards digital solutions for customer experience. I want to know what you've learned working with digital solutions in the past. And I also want to know how have you made sure that you don't over index on the digital side of things and inadvertently abandon the human and humanity? Which that's what customers want?

Clemens Behrend: 21:36

That's a really great question. So it took like a quite long journey. So what we actually found out so to make like a quick story is so we analyzed like with AI, some sort of user sentiment, so how they are talking about our product and service, what we then realize, especially in the crypto industry, depending on how the bitcoin price goes up or down the sentiment of the customer changes and therefore also the expectation how they like your product, right. So when the prices are crashing, customers are really upset because of the losses and everything. And then they come to you they shout to you, they say really mean well. So you really also need like a strong character that you can deal with that stuff. And when things are going up, people say they love you, you are the best customer support or service, whatever in the world, this is what you need to be aware of. And we also talked about like this FTX scam. And let's assume I work at a company and one of my clients, they also send some money to FTX and they lost it. So how do I deal with that? How do I get the humanity back? So in crypto, I cannot reverse transactions as in the traditional banking systems. So if I give away the node, the node is gone. So now I have the customer who's saying like, Ah, I didn't know that like FTX and that this would happen and my money is gone. And so how do we get the humanity back? So if I would be anuman, I could just type in cannot reverse crypto transactions, you send it to FTX? Why did you deposit to our competitors, we just have the money left the US good luck with your losses to be like the approach in the world. But as Sometimes customers just want somebody there to listen that they can like talk to in like have some exchange and can just select Yes, I should have no better you guys want me I should not go like for a high risk or investments or unregulated exchanges or whatever. And then just need to be there and to listen in, take the time and look where it's worth to be efficient to work quickly on a lot of requests, and then check where you sometimes need to be human. Of course, it's like easy to say, I know that they like cases where you have like, I don't know 100,000 other conversations in the background. And then it's really hard, but it's what separates maybe like the loser customer support from the big winner guys that they still take the time to be humans.

Rick Denton: 23:56

That right there is to me the epicenter I love that we started this talking about why is customer experience relevant in the crypto space web three space, pick your brand, right? And the reality is, regardless of what medium you're in, it's humans and we are still humans, we haven't plugged into the matrix quite yet. And so as humans, we still have human interests and human desires. And so I love how you ended there with at that point of pain at that point of issue resolution that that point of question, whatever it is that that customer is contacting the company about how do we keep that human even in spite of all of our great tools and all of our empathetic listening and all of our text to talk to text and everything else that exists out there? It does come down to how are you understanding what that customer is experiencing and how are you empathetically responding to a love that human close to it. Clemens, it's been a fun conversation. It went into directions that I wasn't anticipating which I even say in the introduction of the show. So I love that if folks want to know a little bit more about You if they want to, if they're in the crypto space and they want to improve their customer experience or if they just want to know how to improve customer experience in general, what's the best way to get in touch with you?

Clemens Behrend: 25:09

So the best way to get in touch with me is web3cx.io. That's our website. In addition, they can also go on my LinkedIn and search for Clemens Behrend. And then they can drop me like a DM or like book directly a call on our website on web3cx.io, you are for instance, like in customer support agent, and you want to get started and work one day for like a cryptocurrency exchange because that's like, how I personally got into crypto for me it was not a big vision, like saying I want to work like in customer support. It was like, Okay, I want to work like for crypto currency exchange. This was like, right. But since like of some of our backgrounds, I still love to help people. So I had like some talent for it. So everyone who also want to get like in the industry and is currently working like a normal customer support position, philosophy. To reach out to me I can help you tell you like where you can apply like for jobs in the crypto industry, how you should apply and how you should get the knowledge. This is something that I can do totally for free on the site for you because I noticed Waggles when starting like as a normal agent or getting into this world how difficult it

Rick Denton: 26:19

is I'm gonna get that contact information down there in the show notes, users or listeners users. I'm already in the crypto space listeners head on down there you know where the drill, click the link and get connected to Clemens Clemens. Thanks so much for being on the show today. learned a ton thank you for being on CX passport.

Clemens Behrend: 26:37

Me too. I really enjoyed it.

Rick Denton: 26:42

Thanks for joining us this week on CX Passport. Make sure to visit our website cxpassport.com where you can hit subscribe so you'll never miss a show. While you're at it, you can check out the rest of the EX4CX website. If you're looking to get real about customer experience, EX4CX is available to help you increase revenue by starting to listen to your customers and create great experiences for every customer every time. Thanks for listening to CX Passport and be sure to tune in for our next episode. Until next time, I'm Rick Denton, and I believe the best meals are served outside and require a passport.