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 well 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. Okay, you realize you need to interact with a company, maybe an order didn't show up. Maybe need some help with a new product. Immediately your stomach sinks, knowing you're about to enter a world of confusion long wait times repeating your information to multiple people. authenticating by telling what is the first ever concert you brought your first pet to your elementary school on a Tuesday when it was raining, but also sunny? What if it didn't have to be that way? We know it's already a better experience than that for many companies. But there's still a massive opportunity ahead of us. Enter Ido Bornstein-HaCohen, CEO of Conversocial recently acquired by Verint. Ido is on a mission to build exceptional conversational experiences and create a world where the dystopia I described before never happens. I'm eager to get Ido's perspective on customer experience in a digital environment, and delivering your customer service and really an overall customer journey experience that makes customers want to engage with the brand. It's going to be fascinating today. Ido Welcome to cx passport.

Ido Bornstein-HaCohen: 1:35

Thank you, Rick. Much appreciated.

Rick Denton: 1:38

Well, let's start General, you've been in this field for 20 plus years, how have you seen engagement between a customer and a company evolve? You know, what are our expectations as consumers? And on the flip side? What are brands looking to deliver to those customers?

Ido Bornstein-HaCohen: 1:53

Yeah, so you know, the customer engagement space has really evolved over the last 20 years quite substantially. And, you know, our expectations as consumers have changed. The way that we interact with with our friends and our families have changed as well. And we cannot expect the same thing from the, from the companies and the brands that we we interact with. We don't want to go through all of those questions as, as we're starting to interact with the brand, we want it to be seamless, we want it to be easy, we want it to be proactive. So you know, if I had to choose just one word, Rick, that would describe like, the biggest change that is happening within the customer engagement space, is, you know, I would say that it's the move from being reactive as a brand, to being proactive as a brand.

Rick Denton: 2:43

That makes some sense to me, right? So as a customer, I don't, I'm fine. If I have to give you information and you react to some of that information. But I'd rather you know, ahead of time, I'd rather you be able to, you know, preempt some of my concerns. Oh, even Yeah, exactly. preemption, my concerns, but certainly be aware of them and head them off at the past, as we're getting into that. And I can see how that has changed over time, right? You know, imagine, shoot, imagine 20 years ago, right? When you were getting started in the field, it really was something broke, something is awry, I'm going to call and get clarity, you know, over the phone from this particular individual that happens to be the expert in that that particular space. So, you know, I was thinking about that I was reading a LinkedIn post now, it really was more of a rant. And I've been guilty of those two, that said, our field and specifically talked about kind of customer experience. And that area, we're not spending enough time trying to unblock customer service, they were saying, they were hoping to see customer service be as simple as having a conversation amongst friends via you know, text, or social or a phone call if needed. And I know you spend a lot of time and effort working to do just that. So making the customer to company conversations exceptional as if they were talking to a friend, how are you going about that?

Ido Bornstein-HaCohen: 4:00

So, you know, it's all about making it more of a conversation. And, you know, one of the things that seem very unnatural for us as consumers is that, you know, every time we interact with a brand that feels like a totally different company that we're interacting with. And the reason for that, you know, is because of the fact that the brand is represented by a multitude of people, right? And if these people don't have visibility into you as a customer in the conversations that you've had in the past, it just feels like a very broken up experience. And that's one of the things that I'm you know, that that's what are the things that I'm very passionate about changing.

Rick Denton: 4:42

I, I hear that and I think of you when I've interacted with a brand, and there's that kind of transactional approach. Like I feel like each engagement is a new transaction. you're describing this conversational element, kind of I know that's the aspiration. How are you going about How are you helping kind of bridge that gap between individual one off transactions into this overarching conversational flow as a customer relates to the brand.

Ido Bornstein-HaCohen: 5:11

So I think you need to think about the journey, okay? You know, and you need to think about the journey that the customer is going through. And you need to have connection points within that journey. And you need to have continuous, you know, it needs to be a continuous journey. Right, it shouldn't feel like it's a broken up experience. Because if it does feel like a broken up experience, you're just going to move to a different brand, why you keep on buying from the same company, if every time you buy for them, it feels like you know, it's the first time you're actually buying from them. So my mission and our mission, you know, both at Converse, social and now with verint, is to really make that engagement seamless, right? We want to make you Rick feel like every time you're talking to a brand, it's basically a continuous conversation. They know you, they you know, they know what you need, they can anticipate your specific need, even if it's a transactional thing, you know, a package was supposed to be delivered today, it hasn't arrived just yet. They don't have to wait for you to come to them and say, you know, where's my package, they know that there's a delivery that is coming to you today. And they know that it let's say an 80% of the cases if you reach out to them for a you know, customer service during the day where a packet is supposed to be delivered? more chances are you're asking them about that package, why not be proactive about it? Right?

Rick Denton: 6:28

That's that's really, that gets it that Proactiv that you were describing earlier. And it seems like some of those things are incredibly simple. With packages supposed to be delivered, you already know that it wasn't delivered. And so you you you raise the awareness of the customer? What does that look like? Is this sort of a an act of outreach to the customer? Or is it prepping the agents for the inbound call? What does that look like?

Ido Bornstein-HaCohen: 6:51

So this is where it becomes really interesting, because this is where, you know, we see automation and humans within the contact center, and just, you know, people who are representing the brand, we see it all come together. Yeah. And our goal is to be able to provide these people with the visibility that they need, and the systems with the visibility that they need let you analyze it for a second, let's say that our, you know, automated conversations or chat bots, and so on are, you know, part of our human infrastructure, right? Right. We want to be able to provide these people input to provide that the bot with the ability to actually be more proactive around those conversations. In some cases, you know, might some brands might elect to be more proactive around it, sending you a message letting you know, that your your package is going to be arriving today. So basically being a you know, even more proactive than then in some cases needed. You know, we've seen it, by the way in the services industry, and utilities specifically. So you know, if there's a power outage, you want to be proactive, you want to let your fans know about that. Right? Yeah, doesn't necessarily have to be the same when it comes to retail, you know, like, you don't necessarily have to be proactive around when the package is going to be arriving. But if you rate reaches out to the brand during that day, you want to be proactive by saying, Rick, are you reaching out to us because you want to know where your package is that just think about, you know, the level of, you know, connection that you would have to that brand, they know you you know, you have a relationship with them. That's one of the things that draws us back to you know, to keep on working with these companies keep on buying through these company right now, one of the things we you know, when you look at some of the studies that have been done in the past about really what frustrates people and what decreases loyalty. One of the main things that was found is that if you have to repeat yourself, right, yeah, level of anxiety goes up frustration goes up, you know more than anything else.

Rick Denton: 9:00

We have all as customers experience that pain, we've experienced it not only in engaging with the brand across different times in different moments, but that we're you know, the one we're talking about here that it's on the same call are the same contact moment if I already told you this, you should know this information, please don't make me retail, my story, my pain point or even just my transactional request or just the information about who I am. I love your your power company example. As you know, I live here in North Texas where Texas experienced just that ungodly week plus winter storm that completely shut us down. We lost power for weeks. And one of the biggest complaints other than just the simple fact of not having power and actually being a somewhat dangerous situation for many was there was no awareness, no sense of when the power was coming back on or for those of us that were going through rolling outages. There was no heads up that hey, it's going to be out. There's many instances of you know, you would be trying to do some activity Have you been cooking, be cleaning do it, whatever it was, and then the power is gone. And had there been that sort of notice of Hey, in 15 minutes the power is going out, then there would have been a lot simpler, simpler is the wrong word, but it really just at least a greater awareness, and it would have made us feel better. Not having a power outage and ice storm for a week makes you feel good. But nonetheless, at some level of comfort there,

Ido Bornstein-HaCohen: 10:21

we use the word trust a lot. Yeah. Right. Like, when you have visibility into what's going on, when you have, you know, prior notification, in some cases, you know, these utility companies, they can't really provide you with the upfront notification, but they can provide you with visibility into what's going on. Yeah, clinicians are on site, you know, estimated, you know, time of electricity return to in two hours, right, you know, and so on and so forth, that increases your level of trust. And as a result of that, you know, it improves the relationship. If I know I, you know, I'm humanizing brands. And I, because I think that, you know, we as consumers, and as human thinking, thinking as brands, you know, we kind of, we all try to humanize them, yeah, we're angry at brand, you're, we're happy with a brand, we're loyal to a brand, you know, and that's kind of the, you know, the relationship that we need to create, and that relationship, man is all created through conversations. Yeah, you know, that's how we create relationships as humans, you know, this is how our relationship has been created, right. But that's also our expectations from a from brands. And that

Rick Denton: 11:35

you're right, that is something that has evolved over time, and is how we establish that that connection with the brand. Now, one of the things that we talked about before, when you and I were just chatting is we talked earlier about how different it is to make a restaurant reservation today as compared to years ago. So using that kind of as an example or inspiration, what do you think customers are looking for when they're ready to leave the human approach and go digital.

Ido Bornstein-HaCohen: 12:03

I mean, this is where, you know, kind of the intersection between technology and how we live our lives, you know, comes together. And that's one of the things that I'm most passionate about, right? I mean, when we think about how things are changing, and what technology is enabling us to do, you know, I know I often use the example of restaurant reservation or a you know, car hailing. Right let's let's go with restaurant reservation for a second. In the past, you know, if we wanted to make a reservation in the restaurant, we needed to find a restaurants phone number, right, we needed to call them we need to speak with a hostess, give him all of the information and with the taking, as you know, first of all, we could not have done anything else during that time, we would we would have been, you know, 100% occupied with making that reservation, right? Because it wouldn't have to be over the phone, it would have taken us let's say 20 minutes or so because you know, there's wait times and the hostess is busy with with other things. And maybe the restaurant is not open yet. They're only open between certain times. So when I'm just trying to describe how complexities today you know, we find a restaurant probably on Google or an Apple Maps, we click on it, we click on two buttons, we say how many people would like to, you know, to reserve this the reserve for and that said, it's done, we get an email with with a notification or even better yet a, you know, a text message with a notification. And we're done. Yeah, you know, that, you know, this is, you know, when you think about how technology is really improving our lives, it's just making it simpler. If there's one thing that we can't get more of his time. You know, time is a commodity, like it's not something that we can't buy more of. Right? Right. And if we you figure out how we can buy more time, let me know because I'd like to buy some more. Right? But when you think about it, you know so when we save people time when we make things easier and simpler for them, they appreciate it right and they come back when when you there's something that you appreciate you know, people come back when we make things more complex people are going to lead so you know, when you think about customer engagement as a whole, we want to make it my mission and you know, variants mission and conduct social mission before it was acquired was to make customer engagement simpler.

Rick Denton: 14:33

Love that, that focus on simplicity. I think we're gonna do a little simplicity here, right? So a little change of pace here. I'd like you to join me in the first class lounge we don't have we were not in a zone that time doesn't matter. So we actually can pretend that this is a moment that we do have a little bit of time to kick back and relax, and just enjoy the simplicity of that first class lounge. So let's have a little fun here. What is a dream travel location from your past

Ido Bornstein-HaCohen: 15:00

And Thailand has always been you know one of my favorite places to go to you know the islands you know that the my kids I've got two boys my kids and my wife have always and myself we've always thought of Thailand is like the perfect destination we had a holy day there when the kids were really young and they you know it's one of those places where we've always wanted to go back to it is

Rick Denton: 15:26

a beautiful place and the food is the food

Ido Bornstein-HaCohen: 15:30

world yeah the islands you know the culture absolutely phenomenal like as a destination you know as a vacation destination one of my favorites

Rick Denton: 15:42

it is a wonderful place What is a dream travel location you've not been to yet

Ido Bornstein-HaCohen: 15:47

so Morocco is one of the yeah you know I'm a you know I I'm originally from Israel and and there's a lot of similarities in in cultures that you know from food to the you know, the way that hospitality and guests are treated color is I'm just you know, that's one of the areas that I have always wanted to visit and eventually it's going to happen

Rick Denton: 16:16

It is interesting to me I'm hearing Morocco more and more and I don't know if it just is because my ears are tuned to it kind of like when you decide to go buy a car then suddenly you see that same brand out on the road all the time but I'm hearing Morocco more and more it is a destination I would love to get to there's just something almost romantic about the the thought of Morocco like you said the food the smells the sights, the vast desert when you're in that and when you've left the cities I like that it's on my list as well. You and I have talked a lot about food already in the first class lounge so what is a favorite thing to eat?

Ido Bornstein-HaCohen: 16:54

I love eating meat in all you know in all its eyes you know in all its forums and all these you know all its cuts and everything you know I love you know just plain steaks hamburgers you know barbecue meat whatever whatever PC these what you know I'm getting

Rick Denton: 17:13

well you know you're talking to a Texan so clearly I know now whether it's a good Texas you know we've got some fantastic steak houses here in the Dallas area but whether they're a churrascuria you know good Brazilian steakhouse doesn't matter right

Ido Bornstein-HaCohen: 17:28

making me hungry man

Rick Denton: 17:30

that's right so for those that are listening Ido's in the in New York and Eastern Time Zone so he's even closer to lunch than I am right now so sorry about that. How about this will make you a little less hungry what is the thing your parents forced you to eat but you hate it as a kid breakfast breakfast Okay, that's my first time getting that answer not just a food but an entire meal. Tell me about that

Ido Bornstein-HaCohen: 17:52

time yeah when I was you know when I was young, like elementary school Primary School high you know even even throughout I would guess that my mom would try to you know, give me a sandwich as I was leaving the house even when I was in high school. Right? But you know, it was always like breakfast is one of my one of the most important meals of the day you want to be focused when you're getting to school. And you know it takes me a while to be hungry right? So I remember when we were kids we would sit next to the kitchen you know dining room table with a ton of food in the morning like omelets and like you know food yeah no and I was like I you know I can't eat all of that i mean i and that was one of the things you know that was one of the things we were you know we were my family is mostly boys and I got a funny story. One of one of the neighbors came to my mom you know one day and said hey, you know I think your kids are we lived on the sixth floor in an apartment building and you know as we were young and as young boys you know one of the neighbors can think to my mom one day and he was like I think your kids are and throwing the food that they're not eating out the window so you don't know that any I know.

Rick Denton: 19:21

So suddenly they're seeing omelets fly out.

Ido Bornstein-HaCohen: 19:26

Mom we finished all of the foods I mean my brother like

Rick Denton: 19:30

some people feed the dog others just chuck it out the sixth floor window tastic Yeah, that's awesome. Well, you know what is one travel item you will not leave home without

Ido Bornstein-HaCohen: 19:45

a phone charger.

Rick Denton: 19:53

Ido Let's stay with travel a bit. You and I share a very similar philosophy around travel and how that's a vital part of raising a family. So I just want to kick back what are some of the travels you've done with the family and how has that shaped their growth.

Ido Bornstein-HaCohen: 20:06

So I love traveling with a family, you know, I, you know, I, they're the perfect travel companions I got, I've got two boys one of them is in high school, one of them is in middle school, they've always loved traveling awesome. And, you know, my wife and I noticed that when we travel with them, they're much more open to things that they're not open to when you know, we're at home. Like my kids, my kids are eating speakers, like picky eaters, right? So, you know, they've got their certain types of food that they like, and, you know, things that they do not like, and we were at home, they're very, you know, they're very stringent about that, but when we travel, they try everything man, like, you know, they, they, their, their palates open up and they, you know, kind of think about like, they're willing to almost try everything. So that you know, so that's one thing, you know, and I've always I have always thought that you know, food is a is a mating gateway into civilizations, and different cultures and so on, it tells you so much about the culture when you can, you know, when you taste their food, and, you know, it really is, is a window into into societies. So that's one thing. The second thing is, you know, and they become much more like they're friendly as it is, but they become even more friendly and more curious when we travel. You know, they feel more comfortable talking to people and asking the questions and getting to know them and other travelers and so on. So it just, you know, I find that travel really opens up your curiosity. Yeah, really, you know, shows you things that you you know, have not seen before have not experienced before. And it gives you a different perspective about life. Yeah, so yeah, I you know, travel is like one of things that I love the most

Rick Denton: 21:58

well, and I do you know, you mentioning, taking the family to Thailand earlier, the, the the openness, I definitely feel that when I've had taken my family and when we've gone as a family and enjoyed that. It is amazing how that just and I think that's why a conversation around travel and customer experience often goes hand in hand and customer service is so much of that as being empathetic and understanding others perspectives, when you enter into any sort of moment inside a customer's journey. And those of us that have had the opportunity to travel, I think that openness, and that willingness to consider other perspectives becomes easier because of what we've seen out on the road. So let's stay in that vein, going back to the kind of the customer service a bit. So we've talked about connectivity to the customer across these multiple channels, via phone via text, chat, even their social media, but there's a blessing and a curse in there. There's a blessing in that, my goodness, we have so much information about the customer, they have told us so much in so many channels that we know, I guess I should say, have the ability to know so much about what they need and desire. But it's a curse, in that if we don't do a good job of connecting that information, the customers frustrated, we talked about that earlier. Right? The calls repeating information. So how are you seeing companies do a good job of connecting that information across all the channels?

Ido Bornstein-HaCohen: 23:18

You I mean, first of all, I think it's a must, you know, you got to connect all of the channels, you know, as a brand. And you you really have to think about the way that you're engaging with the customer in a holistic way, you know, across their journey. And I would even go as far as saying that you need to think about another somebody who's coming to you for a, you know, customer service case, right? It's something that we as brands invented just to make it easier for us to manage those customer interactions. Right? Right. But moreover, we need to realize that, you know, people who are reaching out to us might have different needs at the same time. So you know, they might have a service question, but then they'll jump into a marketing question. Yeah, so so you know, you need to be able to manage that seamlessly. The first thing that you have to do is you have to look at your, you know, it starts with first of all reporting, even if the channels are separated, totally separated, you know, start by connecting the insights around those channels and the reporting around those channels, right. But the end goal for every brand should be to be able to switch between channels seamlessly without the customer feeling it. Think about it this way. You're calling a brand, right? Right now you realize that there's another podcast that you have to record and you've been on hold for 30 minutes, so you have to thank or let's say you've provided some information just to make it interesting now, but now you have to hang up, right and you have to go back to that conversation again. Let's say you were left to go to back to that conversation via let's say chat, or by you know, messaging, let's say WhatsApp, you want to utilize WhatsApp to go back to that. You want To go back to that conversation, you don't want to start from scratch, specifically about you know how frustrating it is, you know, for you to spend 20 minutes on a phone, only to realize that now you have to go do something else. Yeah, right. And then you have to start from scratch. That's so annoying, right? So we're trying to eliminate that. And the way to eliminate it is by connecting the channels, both from a consumer standpoint, so you would have a seamless experience, regardless of which channels you're, you've elected, you want to approach the brand through. And from an agent perspective, you know, from a workforce perspective, and when I say agent, I mean, both the chatbots and the, you know, the humans do, right? You want to be able to connect those interactions for them as well. Right? You as an agent, look at the conversation that somebody has had, you want to be able to see, you know, where they've engaged, what are this? What is the sentiment? Are they happy? Are they angry, you know, how should you be, you know, approaching them. And the way to do that is by creating a seamless, coherent experience across channels. It's difficult, right? It's not easy to do that. That's what we've been trying to do, and the industry's been trying to do for a while stitching all of those channels together. But that's the Holy Grail. That's my personal mission. And I know, it's also the mission of verint. That's why I'm so excited that we, you know, we're now part of, of, you know, such a big company with all these resources. Yeah, and

Rick Denton: 26:28

you're so right. When I've had that experience, I have had that where I've been either on chat and pivot to phone or on text and pivot to through the app messaging, or, or whatever that might look like, when I've had that seamless experience it, it's still really almost still a delight, or it's still a surprise, but the reality is, it's going to be the expectation the norm. And when brands don't have that unification across channels, customers are going to bail, they're gonna find a brand that will serve them in a way that they don't have to deal with all that switching penalty and, and, and the pain that goes with repeating or just having a different experience. I don't, you are one brand, not four different channels inside a brand. You're just one brand. Now, Edo, unfortunately, I realized we're getting close to the end of our time, I think we you and I could talk for quite a bit longer. But I want to go back to kind of focusing on that digital piece of a human mentioned kind of the agent and the bot and that aspect of it. And so much of what we're seeing is this increase, and this push towards digital and that's good. We talked about that right before the first class lounge, why oh, my goodness, we want to do our restaurant reservations, purely digital. But fundamentally, we are still human. So how do you keep that human feel inside of a digital experience?

Ido Bornstein-HaCohen: 27:41

So there's, you know, there's a few ways by which you, you do that, first of all, and I think the most important thing to be aware of is that, you know, when you're having conversations, you want the brand, or you want your language to represent the brand, okay, yeah, I always give an example. Like if my you know, I love snowboarding, you know, if person reaches out to me and says, dude, how's your day going? We've got a great snowboard for you today. Yeah, this out? You know, that would make total sense to me. But if Chase, my bank reached out to me and say, dude, how's it going? We have a new investment vehicle that you should check out.

Rick Denton: 28:21

You're overdrawn, man.

Ido Bornstein-HaCohen: 28:24

It just doesn't work. Maybe, you know, you know, it doesn't work. Yeah. So so I think that, you know, brands need to make sure that they are designing their conversations. And by the way, that's like, we've got conversational designers, we've got people who are focused on designing, you know, figuring out the brand tone, figuring out the flow of the conversation, figuring out how to move, you know, from one area to the other while still, you know, keeping that human touch. Right,

Rick Denton: 28:57

that's huge. I almost want to stop down on that for just a second here. And that is, this doesn't happen by accident. In fact, I've got an example that I posted on LinkedIn a month or so ago, of a chatbot that responded in such a way I can, I guarantee I can imagine the person who wrote the copy for that thinking it was casual, but it came across so snarky. And it was, you know, I hope that a human can help you with that. And it was like, well, you better not hope you better actually do. And your point of having conversational designers is so important that this is a conscious activity to be thoughtful about that copy that sits inside that that bought or that digital experience. I've got to imagine there's a whole body of experience and understanding that goes into making that something special for the customer. 100% man, well, you know, now I now want to do a whole episode around conversational design, but we're out of time. I hate that I'm looking at the clock and seeing that, but I do want to ask this How can people if they want to learn more about this conversation Approach if they want to understand you know how to have this kind of human and this connectivity across all their channels How can they get in touch with you How can they learn more about going and moving their customer interactions in this way?

Ido Bornstein-HaCohen: 30:13

Yeah so you know, there's a there's a bunch of ways First of all, I I'd say take a look at our website that's always a good you know a good way to to start if you you know, reach out directly to me, you know, you could reach out to me over my Twitter handle@idohacohen and I'm trying to keep it pretty simple and straightforward, you can reach out to me over LinkedIn actually I've noticed that LinkedIn you know is becoming much more of an active channel so and you know, that's a great place either born sunako and on LinkedIn or you know, check out check out the various websites as well you're going to see we're making you know, a ton of, of movements on and on you know, on the various website from a digital standpoint as well. So you know, really check that out and and, and I and I also speak in you know, multiple events so there's, there's actually an event that I'm going to be speaking with in next week. So yeah, you know,

Rick Denton: 31:16

this is good. So I'll make sure that all of that shows up in the show notes so that anyone listening here just take a look at the show notes and you'll get all of those the Twitter handle the LinkedIn, the websites, all of that Ido I love talking to you about the human focus you've linking the channels you've brought so much to bear here I've learned quite a bit today and of course I love hearing about your travel stories and and I do hope that you get to Morocco soon. Thanks so much for talking with me today on cx passport. And I wish you both the greatest of customer experiences and the greatest of travels going forward man.

Ido Bornstein-HaCohen: 31:50

Much appreciated Rick, love speaking with you. And thank you for for hosting me. That was this. This has been really fun.

Rick Denton: 32:00

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.