Gary Pudles: 0:00

One of the things that we say it at the AnswerNet is the manager's job at AnswerNet is to unsuck things that suck. And our job is to support the people picking up the phones.

Rick Denton: 0:18

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. Serial entrepreneur who grows by evolution over disruption, intriguing. A drummer for rock and roll bands cool. A father of five with a blending of five more energizing, a teacher of Wharton School of Business impressive. an Eagles fan? Well, alas, that's disappointing to me as a Cowboys fan. But well, I'll forgive him. When a potential guest says a sentence like this. I'm one of the luckiest people on the planet. I hustle hard, but had plenty of blessings and luck. I gotta get them on the show. So today we meet Gary Pudles President and CEO of AnswerNet. Gary has a multi decade career filled with varied companies and experiences. Those help influence how he approaches customers and employees today in ways that aren't always what you'd expect. That's going to happen when you're the type of person who gets asked to play backing drums for the first solo show for the Smithereens guitarist, a life and career filled with unique experiences. Gary also tells me that the CRM is dead. An undercover boss is offensive to him. How about that? Those are statements that I definitely want to understand in today's episode. Travel presents the opportunity to enjoy to experience to learn. And Gary's got to tailor travel in two quite different environments that show and continues to shape how he approaches life and business today. We'll explore that as well with Gary today will be a journey indeed. Gary, welcome to CX Passport.

Gary Pudles: 2:18

Well, thank you, Rick, for having me. Very excited to be here.

Rick Denton: 2:22

Let's do this. Gary, you started AnswerNet it back in 1998. And I've seen a ton a long and varied evolution of how customers contact and interact with businesses. Now, while the modes have changed, I wonder about that core customer need. So when you think about across the decades, would you say what would you say has stayed the same. And what's evolved, what's changed about how customers are connecting with brands.

Gary Pudles: 2:51

So what has stayed the same is that people want to communicate with people. And every business has to communicate with their employees, with the public and with their clients. And so that will always remain constant. What has changed is the number of ways in which we communicate. So when I got into business in 1998, the big talk was that the speed of the computer chip was changing every 18 months. Well, today, the number of ways we're communicating is changing equally as fast. So when I originally got into the contact center business, you had pagers, you had voicemail, you had fax today, we have all of the social media, we have Skype, we have our you know, RTC real time communications from the actual browser. There are hundreds of ways that businesses communicate. And understanding how businesses communicate is the same, but how they communicate and how they're working in different channels has significantly changed.

Rick Denton: 4:04

Yeah, that that gives me the thought of when you said that we're expanding the channels, right. And then that's something that I think a lot of us would have sort of come to realize, right? Yeah, we think back to pagers, we think back to email, my gosh, I probably wrote a letter, a physical letter to a company at one point in my history. And yet, you talked about the expansion of those contact modes. It does seem like though that sometimes businesses are pushing towards continuing to contract those more about what are the modes that are appealing to the business, but not necessarily the mode that the customer wants? How are you seeing that evolution? And I'm specifically thinking about the business saying, Okay, I want them to use the bot. I only want them to be in the digital channel. I don't want them to engage with humans. How are you seeing that tension play out in the business versus customer world?

Gary Pudles: 4:56

Businesses want chat Where their customers communicate with them and how they communicate with them. And it fails almost every time. Trying to force somebody to communicate in a particular way, is not really going to help the business. Businesses have to be prepared to communicate and the way their clients want to communicate as the as leader of a contact center business. We now can communicate over metta over Twitter, we can communicate by Skype and WhatsApp in addition to LinkedIn, and all of the other social media forums. So businesses today are having a much more difficult time, because they have to be omni channel. And more importantly, there's always been this tension between human interaction and technology. You know, GPT chat is now the big cool thing. But GPT chat is nothing more than the sum of what it finds on the web, as opposed to sort of this this creative thinking, and understanding the emotional impact of communication. And I think that's where the human being comes in. So that's where we see businesses struggle, they want to tell you what to do, but it goes all the way back to the beginning of the internet. When a lot of those early internet companies built their business plans, they had no intention of providing live customer care, and many of them fail because of it.

Your CX Passport Captain: 6:34

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Rick Denton: 7:00

Yes. Oh, absolutely. And you're certainly speaking to my heart there that I do. I think there's a great place for digital solutions, listeners will probably roll their eyes as I start to say this, because I've said it so many times. I don't want to talk to human when I'm booking a restaurant reservation, I want to use a digital solution. But by golly, when I'm My flight is canceled my family stranded in Fort Lauderdale, well, then, yes, I want a human and I want somebody to work with me there. So it's my choice as the customer what channel I want to engage with. And what you're saying there, the internet companies and those that have started without even considering a live option will find themselves struggling going forward. When you and I talked earlier, you had mentioned that there was a new service, something you were really proud of that y'all have developed this answering service platform. I'm here to describe it certainly tell me more about that. But what's driving the need for and the development of this platform?

Gary Pudles: 7:50

So the platform called answer my texts, is a platform that allows businesses to commute to text enable their business lock line number, which is not that unique today. But it gives them a program that allows them to answer texts on their business line. But here's where it gets cool. What we've done is we've now allowed clients that can answer their texts from their business line, but if they don't answer it, they can have it automatically get forwarded to an answering service. So what we've done is taken a model that is over 100 years old with voice and moved it chat, to text to email to every other non voice channel. And that will change the game because small business owners have been struggling to get a way to communicate in the non voice channels in actual real time or near real time. And that's been a struggle for them. And I think that slowed down the adoption of texting. And as you know, as we talked about, I was part of a team that brought texting to the US. So I know that that's always been a killer business app, the killer app for the phone. But until small businesses fully adopted so that every number is assumed to be text enabled. We're never going to have full adoption of the non voice channels.

Rick Denton: 9:22

That's that's an important distinction that I don't think I fully appreciated when you and I were talking about this earlier is how this is so helpful to that smaller businesses that medium sized business. And I can see how that would be particularly valuable both to the business. And to me the customer that I get to engage in the channel that I want to engage in.

Gary Pudles: 9:41

Where it's really a struggle is when you're in a small business and you or you have a receptionist who wants to go to lunch. This is what the answering service industry has done for 100 years. I mean, part of my company, at one time was known as the Western Union telephone answering service So we go way back in. Right. And so it's really been, it's really been almost 100 years that operators have answered the phone calls of businesses. And the proliferation of the number of channels, just like we talked about, has not that what the technology to allow third parties to only answer it when the business owner or the business team can't. That's brand new. And that I think, is going to be one of the biggest changes in the adoption of the way businesses do you know how the way small businesses work, for example, you're a plumber, you're under the you're under the sink, you got to tax. The other big thing is, our cell phones are very personal. Our cell phone is very personal. And when you're a small business owner, you're giving out your cell phone number, and all of a sudden now people have unfettered access to you. Yeah, this gives you an opportunity to take time be with your family. You know, there's a lot of great things about being a 24/7 world. And there's a lot of difficult things. Something that I talk to entrepreneurs about all the time, is you need to make time for yourself. Yeah. And you need the comfort to know that your business is being handled when you're not available.

Rick Denton: 11:26

Boy, I'm grinning from ear to one that makes complete sense. I can totally visualize the handyman that we have a fantastic relationship with exactly that. I text him sometimes. And it can take a day or two to get back not because he's a bad dude. But because he's doing exactly what you said he's under a sink. He's on the he's on a ladder somewhere. Having a service, I grin because we talk about the 24/7 you may have another offering you need to consider for individuals as they leave their their corporate job for the day. And you know, I'm sorry, boss, no, I'm not available, but my answering service will pick it up for me. And so you get the opportunity to improve work life balance for employees.

Gary Pudles: 12:03

That's what, that's what voicemail did for a lot of people right on. And, you know, again, while a lot of people don't, don't use it service that way. A lot of people are using services like, like mine for for their side business for their side hustle. You know, we are living in a side hustle world, I mean, and that is another place where you can have that feeling of not missing your business. Because I mean, as we've talked about, Rick, I love to play music. When I'm sitting behind the set, it's very rare that I'm gonna put I'm gonna put pick up my phone or answer my text. And, and I'm on I have a team behind me. So

Rick Denton: 12:49

it's really that makes a lot of sense. Absolutely. Hey, I want to talk about another area that I know it's been important to you certainly in in the past, it's also been important to you, even as you're in your current world, you've described yourself as a serial entrepreneur. So you've gone through a lot of different companies. And I like to talk about the front line and how the front line is so important in the delivery of great customer experience. And it's this really rich source of insight to inform the creation of great customer experience. So as you think about all those companies that you've had the opportunity to work through to be a part of you've been around humans that are developing this particular sense of leadership. And you've seen that. So how have you learned those lessons, taken those lessons and been able to then to connect with the frontline? How are you finding the best way to engage with the frontline as they are such the epicenter of great customer experience?

Gary Pudles: 13:45

So your question could be broken down into 75 different parts?

Rick Denton: 13:49

Yeah, I realized, as I was saying, I want to I want to, I think what I

Gary Pudles: 13:53

want to focus on to respond is what I'll call intentional culture. Okay. And when I say I call it, I'm sure I stole it from somebody else, right? r&d stands for rip off and duplicate. But what I think is the most important thing to think about is your intentional culture. When somebody comes on board, in answer net, we are, they have to watch the fat guy blue shirt videos, and I happen to be the fat guy in the blue shirt. And they have to watch they have to learn about the things that drive the company culture. We have a newsletter that goes only you know, that goes only to the frontline employees. What you have to do is remember that there are people they have lives, they want to feel connected to the brand that they work for. And whether this is you know whether this was music back in the day when I was running music, whether it was we were part of a team that built the first wireless PCs, which was a ditch all digital wireless back, you know, back in the 90s or we're what we're doing now Now, it's about making people feel connected, making people feel respected. Listening to them, one of the things that we say it an intranet is the managers job at answering that is to Unsuk things that suck. And our job is to support the people picking up the phone. So orange chart looks like concentric circles with the agents in the middle. And everybody's trying has to support the agents in the middle. It's not a hierarchical thing. And we supplement that with a thing called management without walls. Now, management without walls is a concept where you can go to any manager in the company, without fear of territorialism, reprisal, etc. And we have an employee hotline, we offer that service, and we use it ourselves. And the idea is, we want people to feel like there's always a place to go where they can feel safe, where they can feel respected. And that's really what you know, what most people want is they want to get up in the morning, they want to have some security, they want to go to work, feel respected and appreciated, and they want to go home and have the rest of their life. You know, and one of the things I learned as we grew, and we grew from 20 people to nearly 2000, is that more, you have to be more self centered on family, I won't call it work life balance, because that just doesn't exist. It's about what are the things that are important to the people you work with? That will make them want to be a part of your organization, because now with remote work, they can be a part of almost any organism. Yeah,

Rick Denton: 16:49

absolutely. And that that, that approach to talent, that approach to connecting with the frontline, and like how you sort of extended even beyond the frontline, it's really just connecting and creating that culture throughout an entire company. It's understanding your employees, you just, it's almost the cliche that we talk about on the customer word, okay, I need to listen to my customer. And then act on what I've heard, you are listening to your employees, you're connecting with them, and then you're acting upon what they're expressing, either verbally or just, you know, as part of being a human, what their needs are when they come into work

Gary Pudles: 17:20

in in you just mentioned, you know, listening to your customer, remember that most of our clients are actually not the people we're talking to, we're talking to their clients. So it becomes even more important for us to listen and for us to report back to a client as to things that we're hearing that will affect their brand, and make sure that they're matching their brand promise, as we try to match our own brand promise.

Rick Denton: 17:47

You know, I can I can sense a lot in what you're describing your personality and just and how your personality is caring for it. I've mentioned this in the introduction that you'd had some interesting travels even as I'm about to ask you about two places that are distinctly very different. And I could sense this observant eye and heart when you were telling me the story. So I want to bring that story and those observations into the show. You have traveled to both Cuba, and the Caymans. And these are islands for those that may not know their map as well, they are super close to each other. You if you're flying from Miami to Grand Cayman, you're flying over Cuba to get there. They are miles apart, however, in experience, so what was it like for you to travel to both of those destinations?

Gary Pudles: 18:29

Well, Cuba was a very sad place for us. And the reason it was sad is because people were people were really wanting to connect to the rest of the world, but they can't. They they could. And almost everybody had a side hustle. Almost everybody was trying to figure out a way to make money and to to live somewhat a better life. But the best story I can tell you about the sadness was we hired a guide in Cuba because we don't know the country. We don't know the culture. So we hired a guy. And we had about three hours between one tour and the dinner. And so I said to the guy, where are you going? And she told me that she was going to sit in the lobby for three hours. And I said, Well, you know, you want to use the pool. We don't care. You can just say you're with us. No, I could never do that. So then I went to the you know, then I said, Well, you know, are you going to work on your phone or do something? She said, I don't have internet. And I knew that I got free internet. And I went up to the front desk. I said, Can I get free internet from my God? They were like no. I said, Okay, can I have the card for free internet? And I handed it right in front of them to the door to the guy who was completely embarrassed and but but it was that kind of having to have not, and then the less than 30 minute flight to the Caymans, where opulence and wealth, just rain the day and It was, you know, we stayed at a luxury hotel and my friends were building a house there and it was beautiful. And that you know, and one of the, one of the best things in life is is, is experience. You know, things don't mean much, right? You know, I have a nice house, I have a car. But you know, things aren't what drive me experiences drive me. And I'm very lucky. And I have a wife, who's my partner in crime and also partner and experience. So we traveled together, and we traveled together very, very well.

Rick Denton: 20:40

Gary, that is so deep what you're describing that contrast between the Caymans and Cuba? Absolutely. And your description of how experiences are what motivates you, that's so true, even in my own family, and that, that's where I get that exposure, I start to learn about things. And honestly, well, you know, in some cases, it's just fun, right? It's just fun to have these great experiences. They aren't always learning when sometimes they're special ones. I also know this. And there's not too much of a segue here when we're talking about what you're describing in Cuba, but it can be as a traveler when it is hard travel. And as far travel and we've exhausted, it can certainly be nice to stop down in the lounge. And so that's what I invite you to do now is join me here in the first class lounge. We'll move quickly here and hopefully have a little bit of fun.

Gary Pudles: 21:23

I'll I'll have ahave a cocktail, please.

Rick Denton: 21:24

Oh, yes. Oh, now Gary, I will say there was actually a guest and employers before I was doing video, man, I wish I'd had video back then. He brought his own cocktail. So you could hear the ice clinking during the

Gary Pudles: 21:36

I only have my bottles of tequila. So

Rick Denton: 21:39

Well, that's the beauty the lounge you shouldn't have to So Gary, what is a dream travel location from your past?

Gary Pudles: 21:45

So from my past, South Africa was one of the most interesting places that I've ever been to. And my wife and I went to Japan. And one of the coolest things that we did was, we landed on my birthday and saw Simon and Garfunkel at the Tokyo Dome on my birthday. That's a surreal moment. It was it was amazing. And we were hungry. So we went to this little booth, Flipkart. And all we saw were these round balls look like fried dough. And we said we'll take one and we took a bite. And it was it was Squid, squid balls in potato. So I mean, all the all my favorite food groups, it was great.

Rick Denton: 22:29

I love those and am brainfarting the name we just got back from Japan, a holiday trip as we took my son overseas for him to study abroad. And we just made a vacation out of it before it and I love those little squid octopus balls spectacular. What did they were wonderful. Japan, what a great place to be for your past. Now you've had South African Yeah, Japan. So what is a dream travel location for your future? What's next.

Gary Pudles: 22:51

So there are two that I really want to get to, but I don't think I'm gonna get to them while I own the company. Because both of them I would want at least two weeks and one is Australia, and the other is Israel. So those are two places with great historical and emotional significance for me. And so those will be two of my dream places to get to. In the meantime, my wife and I just got back from Colombia, which was so cool.

Rick Denton: 23:18

So okay, all of those.

Gary Pudles: 23:21

Yeah, I mean, that's what's again, I have I have a rider die, who is who who's my best friend, and we have the best time traveling and seeing new things.

Rick Denton: 23:31

Oh, that's awesome. I love that. I love having that and the experiences that you've had and the ones that you're intending to have. Now, we talked about squid balls. And so I love to ask what is the favorite thing of yours to eat?

Gary Pudles: 23:42

Well, my favorite food is prime rib. My mother, my mother and I used to used to enjoy that together. And as I got older in college and law school, when I get home, my mother would make her own prime rib with homemade cream, spinach and salads with her homemade blue cheese dressing. Now I'm guessing that was not a diet meal, but it was one of the best meals ever. And it was me my mother was my mother's favorite thing to make reservations. So it was it was very special to me that she took the time she made it we would enjoy it together. That's always been my favorite meal.

Rick Denton: 24:20

That's awesome. Well now get I'm gonna go the other direction. What is the thing your parents forced you to eat but you hated as a kid?

Gary Pudles: 24:25

Well, you know it's interesting. So what I never wanted to eat was liver and onions. That was the that was the one thing that I couldn't stand now I like chopped liver, but liver and onions I can't like even just talking about it. I want to gag.

Rick Denton: 24:42

I love it. I love asking the question. I love seeing the faces change ever and it has come up before as that answer so you you are not unique in that and I would join you in my distaste for that for sure what is one travel item not including your phone or your passport that you will not leave home without

Gary Pudles: 25:01

My CPAP.

Rick Denton: 25:08

Gary, I mentioned this in the intro, you said the CRM is dead. That's a bold statement. Tell me more what you mean by that.

Gary Pudles: 25:18

So when I say the CRM is dead, what I'm really talking about is the fact that historically in business as the CRM was created, that was your single place of, of data. And all data had to be fed in and out of the CRM. Today, there's data being created in all parts of the of the organization. And that data needs to be shared in different parts of the organization. Not all of it begins belongs in the CRM. So the reason I say the CRM is dead is because the CRM, as the primary and only place for data in the organization is dead, we follow what has been described as the Jeff Bezos mandate. And that is that there should be no private data stores which CRM is historically have been. And it should be all data should be accessible and shareable around the organization. In in Jeff was very, Jeff was very specific when he said, and if you don't follow that, you're fired. Now, I don't go quite that far. But as we think about the work we do, we're now accessing all different types of systems, all different parts of the organization. And most of them are not CRM, they might be they might be data systems, where they have billing information, they might be data systems that have customer set up into, you know, information. So as we have grown in the types of services that we offer, we're moving and pushing data and pulling data from more systems than ever before.

Rick Denton: 26:57

Okay, that definitely clarifies it. And I love the shocking, you know, CRM is dead, and then the clarifying of it. But that makes complete sense to me in the fact that there's so much more than just the CRM, where customer information, customer insights, and the like, Heck, we even talked about a source earlier, the front line, well, that's not a CRM, the front line itself is a source of customer information.

Gary Pudles: 27:19

And any entrepreneur knows that, that data, those who control the data are now controlling everything. Well, that's really important for us to understand.

Rick Denton: 27:33

Absolutely. And we have an entire business ecosystem built off of it. That exact true isn't true, isn't there? 100%? Yeah, I talked about you being a serial entrepreneur. And one thing that caught me off guard, because a lot of times you hear the entrepreneur, the entrepreneur wants to be the disrupter, the black turtleneck, the all the all that sort of stuff. You said you really aren't looking to be that disrupter. You want to grow businesses through evolution. That's not viewed as the sexy way. It's not the traditional off told sort of way. But it has been frequently successful for you. Why did you choose that approach? And what are some of the stories of those successes.

Gary Pudles: 28:14

So we'll start all the way back to my first job out of law school, which was in a collections law firm. And, and it was a business litigation law firm. And I learned that if I wanted to make partner if I wanted to be successful in the law environment, what I needed to do was find services that the clients of the existing firm would need, so that that weren't being provided by the firm currently. So in that case, I got involved in real estate, real estate litigation, I got involved in bankruptcy litigation, and I was able to, and I did a state planning for the business executives who are sending us their their litigation work, so I was able to bolt on the services. Then I went to then I went to music. And as I was at Muzak we originally had two channels of music delivered by what's called SCA, where you find the heart, the HD channels now on radio, those used to be your foreign language channels, before you had before you had satellite. That's where you have your unique programming, including the music. So then we went to satellite. And again, it's not about changing and disrupting. It's about slowly moving these businesses to the new realities using the technologies. I got into the answering service business. And I was, you know, they were they were most of the centers weren't even connected to the internet. So we we slowly move things to the internet, we were able to bring applications into the answering service. Now as a BPO. We're you know, we're able to connect everything and changing you know, like the like the text, answer my text product we were talking about earlier, being able to understand being able to understand how businesses and work and communicate, and how your business makes money and being able to slightly change. One of the things that I'm most proud of is the number of people in the contact center industry who come to work for, for answering that, because they know we do stuff that nobody else does, we're actually known as the call centers call center, because we will do the small stuff the big companies won't do, and the big stuff that the small companies can't do. And what's more, we do the weird stuff, we do the stuff that nobody wants to do at all. And, you know, that makes this more fun for us. You know, I had I had breakfast this morning with a with a CEO of a company three times my size, great person. But what he was saying was all of a, he was talking about all the things that he didn't do. And all I kept thinking was, well, all the things you don't do, I'll do, and I'll do it well, and you know, we can make money together. So that was part of our conversation.

Rick Denton: 31:19

I love that. I love that. And I love that idea of the you know it, it doesn't have you a series of successful businesses, by identifying what's missing. What's the gap? Not the revolutionary, not the shocking, not the new, but rather, what's the gap and incrementally adding to that with that evolution? Gary? Well,

Gary Pudles: 31:38

I want to I want to add something because I think your listeners might be interested, you know, when people especially older people, you know, let's say people 50 Plus wind up on the wrong side of their job, they like wind up without a job, you know, what they don't think about when they start thinking about what's next is they don't think about what's available. There are hundreds of 1000s of businesses for sale, that have customers and cash flow. They're not sexy, okay. And being not sexy doesn't mean not being able to earn a living, not being able to, to find success and happiness. And that's part of what I teach, which is go out and find something that that you're you're passionate about, that you can take your skills, and just turn your savings into cash flow by buying something that exists, making sure that you don't mess it up. And then using your talents to make it better. And you'll be surprised at what opportunities wind up in front of you.

Rick Denton: 32:41

I want to end with that, though. I'm glad you added that on as a bolt on there at the end, huh. You incrementally added to the show you kept your theme right there. Because that's so important. And heck, as someone who just crossed the 50 threshold, you might be giving me some inspiration. Gary, it's been great talking to the day if people wanted to know more about you more about answer net or heck even asked you about that idea of buying businesses and your your post 50 years, what's the best way for folks to get in touch and learn more?

Gary Pudles: 33:10

Well, I'm all over social media, and it's Garypudles with one D. And you can always check out answernet.com Or at answernet on the social media platforms because we're out there all the time. And of course, our website is www.answernet.com.

Rick Denton: 33:29

Awesome. I will get all that in the show notes. As always listeners and viewers scroll down and you will be able to connect with Gary. Gary, thanks so much for telling me today. Thanks for having me understand how the CRM is dead and what that means. Thanks for sharing that authentic expression of what the Cuba experience in the Cayman experience was like. And thanks for telling the internet story. I think that's intriguing how you have created this thing that this offering that is so can be so impactful for that small business. I love the plumber example and all the other examples that fit in with that. It's great hearing that conversation. I enjoyed learning from you to get today, Gary and really appreciate it. Thank you for being on CX passport.

Gary Pudles: 34:08

Thank you for having me, Rick.

Rick Denton: 34:15

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.