[00:00:07] Antony: Hi, everyone. Welcome back to our episode. Lots of things happening. So I don't even know where we wanna start guys. What do you think what's the best topic to open it?
[00:00:21] Robb: I think let's start with Daisy talking about the recruiting side and what she's seeing, it's the beginning of OneReach becoming a skillset.
[00:00:30] Daisy: Yeah. Yeah. Hey everyone. I think that there's some really exciting things happening that we're starting to see, that we haven't seen previously, which is, from a recruitment standpoint, there's a lot of excitement around OneReach as a company. So there's people in the industry as we're recruiting or are looking to recruit that already know who we are that are already excited about our company. And so that's a really positive step in a great direction, but we're also now starting to see expertise being wanted within our platform. So people are actually putting requirements out to recruitment companies to find people that are experts and have experience with the OneReach platform, which we haven't seen previously.
So I think it's a really exciting thing for us as a company that people are seeing OneReach as a skillset and looking for that expertise in the industry as it's really interesting from a job seeker's perspective to have our product listed, but it's also almost like a reverse marketing as we're looking for people that we're asking the recruiters that we're utilizing to look for OneReach skill as well. And they're finding it that are out there in the workforce that aren't necessarily coming from our company.
So it's just, it's a really cool thing that we're starting to see a trend in. It's a really new wave of recruiters starting to settle in skillset outside of general knowledge. So instead of looking for people that have general knowledge on NLU or general knowledge on machine learning, which are such large categories. They're starting to really dive into expertise and skillsets into the solutions that people can build. So if you have an expertise with a platform, if you're skilled within OneReach really looking for that level of expertise.
It's a new trend that we're seeing, which is really exciting. And I think it's just gonna get better for us as far as that stuff goes. So more and more people will want to have a OneReach skillset because it will, really give them a substantial leg up in the work.
[00:02:54] Robb: Yeah and, conversational AI is, taking the top spot and on demand for AI skill sets. I think AI skill sets are still, they're still looking in the expert category. So they're looking for experts in these technologies, not, sort of beginners but, that will evolve over time.
But yeah, conversational AI kind of taking the top spot in that most in demand AI positions and in demand, meaning like per capita number of jobs per job applicants.
And then, OneReach is now a skillset that applicants are putting on the resumes. And that recruiters are specifically looking for, a skill set on OneReach and on one of the top platforms as well.
So yeah, we've come a long way. And I think that's just gonna continue, I think as more and more companies start adopting and we're just gonna see that grow and grow. I think the thing that's most important, isn't the number of companies looking for the skillset, but the per capita number, the number of jobs available per applicant that has that experience. And, right now there's essentially more people looking for the skillset than there are people that have it.
[00:04:06] Antony: Yeah, and so in, this case, these demand will drive appearing all these new specialists in the field. So yeah, it's like chicken or the eggs sort of
[00:04:18] Robb: Yeah, and, as, Daisy rolls out the next version of the platform LMS, we're gonna start seeing a lot of people taking the classes, not necessarily just to become an employee of OneReach, but taking the classes, just to add it to their resume, as an accomplishment, that will make them more valuable in the workforce.
And that's, I think that's a big moment. I think we can, we'll really start to see a rush of people just coming through training. And that training on one reach can become its own revenue center for us as a company that we might find that we make more money on training than we actually make on building solutions for clients, which to me would be very exciting.
I think enabling others to use our platform is always what we're about. Whether that's through building it for them, whether that's through training all of the above. But yeah, super exciting to think of it at a scale. So I think what we'll start tracking how many people, once we launch this LMS are coming through the training programs on a weekly basis signing up for it.
And I think we'll be able to watch that grow over time into the thousands. So pretty cool.
[00:05:32] Daisy: Yeah, and it's really cool that training can also not only become a revenue source, but also can become a recruitment channel. And so I think That's also really exciting as we start integrating and putting not only badges, but certifications out there, which is in the very near future things really get exciting from how we can control, as people are taking their certifications or taking their test and demonstrating their capabilities, they would wanna work with us potentially more than they would wanna work with the company that isn't part of leading the effort in creating this, future and. For everybody coming behind it. So it's an exciting place to be for sure.
[00:06:11] Robb: Yeah. One of the areas that we're focusing on the marketing side right now is academia. So we're launching a program for universities and so forth, based on the we're funded by uh, top universities.
So it kind of makes sense, but it's where PhDs and researchers will be using OneReach to help them conduct their research better. So you could imagine, there's just plenty of ways that research intersects with conversation and needing to talk to people, get feedback etc., like whether it's testing drugs or just simply, trying to get feedback on certain programs, or just getting information. From people to do better research. And you can imagine that researchers are very limited by staff, to be able to hire people, to go out and talk to people. So bots are like a great way to help academia conduct, better research, more thorough research.
So we'll be launching a program where PhD students will come in, take the classes with a specific intention to use OneReach to attach to research projects. So we'll see ourselves part of grants, that researchers go and request where part of that grant will be to use OneReach and have their students train on it as a part of how to conduct better research.
And, I think that's super exciting because the research that they do, that's what, moves us forward as a society. The things that they learn. And if, obviously are are the things that are the sort of golden nuggets of knowledge that we all kind of share and grab onto.
For us to participate more broadly and helping lots and lots of people do research better just means our impact is just, unmeasurable. It's great. Great to see. So you'll see that page pop up on the website here soon. And we're working with a professor Lametti. Who's working with Oxford, and Stanford in a series of other universities to kickstart the program.
[00:08:13] Antony: That's awesome. I can imagine that in some near future, even like systems like Coursera, Udemy or systems like that might start seeing, courses on conversational AI, conversational design and usage of OneReach as well built not by us, but by others as well, but that's somewhere in the future.
[00:08:40] Robb: Yeah. Well, You never know. I mean, Why wouldn't they choose the number one platform, right. if, you're gonna choose one to demonstrate on you're you not, you're not gonna use the, number 50 so, yeah it's very likely that will happen. And so actually if we're, promoting it and pushing it.
[00:08:55] Robb: A lot of this training that we're seeing, the intern groups and the stuff Friedi's doing, the stuff that Alexandra's doing, out, with it the pods and boot camps like this is really a major, sort of next phase of our company from having a platform, getting the number one spot as a platform and as a technology.
So where, what, do you do next once you're number one, besides trying to stay number one? You have to move to the next big thing, which is, getting people up to speed on it, getting it used. And so this is, what, we're seeing a lot of positive traction on as we see that our programs to getting people up to speed are working. We're getting better at that. People are producing better stuff.
I think one of the stumbling blocks we had was we focused so much on learning the tool. We didn't focus on the design of good conversational experiences. I think we've suffered with our customers on that. We've suffered internally on that.
It's a, lesson we've all learned in software and unfortunately we remade it, but I think we're correcting the focus on design first experience first is something that is critical. So the whole journey map first, mock flows or alpha flows to to make sure we nail down the experience first, make sure we're proud of the experience first, before we go into building. It's so important.
When I do demos to customers and I'm showing them the tool. They do like the features, but I will tell you hands down that when I give them little tips about design, when I say things like: "Hey, look, if someone hangs up a phone call prematurely, I can send them a text message saying, Hey, would you like to reconnect?" They're like, oh, you can do that? That's cool. But then when I say: "but I wouldn't send that message immediately, cuz they're probably already calling back and I'm interrupting their call back with a text message, so I'm gonna put a ten second pause here. And then before I send that text message, I'm gonna check if they've called back in and if they have called back in, I'm not going to send that message when they, hear that design pattern and they think, oh my God, that's so true. I didn't think of that that's what they fall in love with. That's what they get excited about. They actually care more about the design knowledge that I'm sharing than the actual feature. And that's, it's interesting cuz they come in looking for features, but they really get attached to the design tricks.
And so at the end of the day, when you're out in the world, and people are looking for a skill set, yeah. We'll probably see a lot of focus on: what tools do you know? do you know, OneReach? but what's really gonna separate the the kids from the adults is your ability to create experiences and design them in thoughtful ways.
[00:11:50] Robb: So you know what I'm starting to see from the interns that we saw in the demo is they're not focused on the happy path. I didn't see a lot of happy path demos, which is so relieving to me. What I saw is exceptioning. They tried to do this, but it's the whole IRA glass thing, which is, the user came in thinking one thing was gonna happen, but something else happened instead.
And, that's really the story of experiences. The, people that get pissed off about the experiences is because they thought one thing was gonna happen and something else happened instead. And when you account for those, when, you say here's the experience of coming in thinking that your PTOs gonna be accepted, but it's not, or something goes wrong. And here's the experience of getting that train back on the tracks really fast. That's what connects with people because they're like, oh my God that's, what's frustrating. When, you're not on the happy path and the system didn't expect that it just expected you to do everything the way it was designed to do I love that.
Listening to Max, even Max, who did the voice recognition piece, where it could recognize the voice you could see that if you didn't give it enough audio to program it it would say, I need four seconds more. And then you gave it some more. And then he said, I need another second more. Just so elegant, such an elegant way of knowing that no, one's gonna set a timer. No one's gonna count the 15 seconds or 20 seconds that they need to give audio for. And and so knowing that they're probably gonna get not given up and then not having them start over, but just continue talking and then piecing that together into ultimately a complete voice print, just, this is music to my ears when I see that stuff. It's so it's so what this is all about, and it's, so what experience in this field looks like.
Expertise, isn't just about the ability to build that flow, but the ability to think through the exceptions and handling those exceptions yeah, love what I'm seeing. And can't wait till we start adding more of that kind of training, versus just the, how to use OneReach training.
[00:14:08] Daisy: Yep. And those trainings are actually in process of being built out as we speak. So we're working with both, UX designers, as well as team members to create some of those videos and training courses. So hopefully, you'll be seeing that type of training coming through short.
[00:14:24] Robb: That's awesome. Awesome.
[00:14:26] Robb: Yeah, I'm super excited. I got a sneak peek at the designs for the new LMS. I know the next version, won't fully embody those, but man Melody and you guys did an amazing job. They look so inspiring. I loved the concept of kind of modeling after Nike like a fitness tracker, and this idea of goals fitness goals and badge just, yeah, I was so inspired. It was, it looked really good. I'm super excited to see that.
[00:14:57] Daisy: Yeah, the team has done the next no practice. Yeah, The team's done that great job. I think it looks fantastic too. I'm really excited about it. And it really kind of ups the level experience. You know, We talk about that, just a general statement, but experience makes a difference. Even this just even designs. And when I say just even, that's a hard thing to do but designs alone can make such a difference on how important people, feel. This is how inspiring it is to get through them, how engaging it is to work within the system. How proud they are to have a certification from this organization. So it's for everything that you're saying, that's the outcome of focusing on design and we really are trying to do that ourselves first as well. and this is an example of that. So I'm really excited. I think it's really gonna level it up a lot.
[00:15:52] Robb: Yeah, me too. I...
[00:15:53] Robb: On a separate note maybe Jordan, you have some more to say on this, I'll kick you off, but OneReach is getting that spot in Gartner, you know, we're starting to ask, so what what does this mean for us and how is it changing? How one reach is perceived in the world? I think some of the, most important things are, happening right now. Something that's very familiar to me from Effective UI when I started Effective UI way back when it was a bunch of nobodies and then we started bringing in people, Daisy came on board and others. And the next thing you know, we had some of the top developers in the world, attracted to the company and on board. And that just made a name for ourselves to where everybody wanted to work there. And now OneReach, we're seeing some of, the top names in conversational AI experts that are starting to come on board with us that are starting to, work with us and work for us and help us make this platform better. It's exciting. I don't know, Jordan, if you want to speak to that.
[00:16:51] Jordan: Sure. Yeah. It all really started just by trying to create relationships with those influencers throughout the space. Just by reaching out and saying, "hey", uh, with no other agenda other than to just talk tech and talk conversational AI, and Rob and I got a chance to give a few demos to some of these individuals. And throughout the demos they became intrigued in the technology and also in the OneReach story that it naturally just came to the point where we said, Hey, let's work together. We have so much we can do together.
One of these people is Maaike, who were we're working with right now to try and finally bring on board, despite some difficult contract issues being global. But she's one of the top voices, in the space.
obviously everyone knows about Cobus who is just named one of the top voices in medium in, in artificial intelligence. Cobus has written about us quite extensively calling us the Tesla of conversational AI, saying things like "if you can think it, you can do it with OneReach", which is pretty incredible. And beyond that it's starting to really change the ecosystem. If any of you are following Cobus on LinkedIn, he's posting these amazing articles about OneReach. And following his process after talking with us of this paradigm shift of what is conversational AI and realizing that the Gartner reports of identifying who's the best in NLU doesn't matter. Because if you're an orchestrator and you can use any nou, how can you say that orchestrator is any worse than anyone else? And so Cobus is starting to challenge Gartner's idea of what is a conversational AI platform and in the comment sections, these influencers like, like Mikey and Sherry Combs, who is now running PWCs, conversational AI program and was running Deloittes before they're all commenting back and forth. And they're saying, Hey, clovis you're right. Why are we judging them on these 13 different categories? And why does one vendor have to do this? Each of these things, the best in the world when they can just use anything in the market, this doesn't really make any sense.
And so we're starting to see this shift where, people are realizing that our vision of that future of orchestration and being an open architecture system is the path that, is a brand new category probably the right one. And so that all that excitement is yeah, is carrying us forward in, in a pretty big way.
[00:19:10] Robb: Yeah. It's cool. You mentioned Sherry Combs, it triggered something for me. I don't know if we've mentioned this. I don't think we have, but Sherry was the former CTO of IBM Watson. Distinguished engineer. CTO. So she's a, serious somebody. Also Jordan's former uh, boss, right?
[00:19:29] Jordan: Yeah. Yeah. That's right.
[00:19:30] Robb: And, she actually read the book. We, she got a, an early copy and gave us a quote. The quote was amazing. It's, she said the more she read, the more she agreed this goes on her must read list. So on our book from the formers CTO of Watson, we have a quote that says, this is a must read. That's absolutely like amazing. That's, gonna be really cool, but it, but the most important thing there isn't that she's promoting our book. That's not what matters is she supports the ideas in it. It means we're on the right track. it. means that she agrees with our approach and our ideas. And it also means that those ideas. are fresh. They're not, we're not just spouting the same thing everybody else is saying. We're saying something new and we're saying something that's resonating.
Kevin, I think you had an experience with, a former IBM-er recently as well
[00:20:22] Antony: Unfortunately I think Kevin had to go.
[00:20:25] Robb: Oh, he did. Okay. So I'll speak for him. Um, He also did a demo for I think it might have been the person who took over for Sherry on IBM Watson. Who's now working. Oh, I can't remember. I think at Chase bank, running their conversational AI practice. But anyway, yeah, he took a look at the platform and was just he listened to the concepts and the ideas that Kevin had shared and showed him the platform. And he this is like the the lead designer of Watson and, he said, oh my God, you guys have stolen all the ideas in my head without me having told you. This is where they wanted to go. This is where he wanted to go. He was shocked that there was a company out there that was doing what he was dreaming. And that's super, super exciting for us because I think Watson is probably the most well known name in AI. I think if you wanted to, to pick a word that an average person might know, Watson would be that word, when it comes to a, an actual product in AI. I think it was the first, most commonly known product. And of course then comes Siri and Alexa. But
Anyway, yeah it's really exciting as a company we're, we're emerging of like coming out in the world and people are noticing us in a really positive way and it, it's taken us a while to get there, but it's, I, think for all of us, especially for me, you create something you, think the world needs and you think the world's gonna value, but you don't know until the experts in the world, see it and comment on it. So what's happening now is the Spielbergs of the world of conversational AI are saying great movie. Wow. That's phenomenal that the people that that know the most value us the most. And I think that's gonna, it's gonna help us a lot in getting our technology out there. So super cool.
[00:22:19] Jordan: And, the the fun part about that is it really is an echo chamber of those Steven Spielbergs in the world. They there's, so few of them, they all know each other, they all talk. And, So we're seeing people that we're already in discussions with presenting alongside the other influencers in the world and of course, they're talking about this as well. And so that feeds the relationships of those new influencers to come to us as well. So It's only gonna accelerate.
[00:22:43] Robb: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:22:44] Robb: So I always like to give bad news. I don't like to just give good news cuz I feel like, news is news, right? Whether it's good or bad. So the bad news is that it's still an immature market. Companies are still, they don't know what they're doing. It's complicated work. And so we're seeing a lot of failure out there. Companies are trying to do this. They're, adopting technologies like OneReach and they build really crappy things. Part of our sales pitch is it's really easy to build bad things on OneReach. It's we make building complicated things easier. And we're still seeing a lot of people underestimating that work. It does come down to design. They're not designing for exceptions. They're, not even going through a design phase. They're just going straight into build. They're focused on a checkbox of, did you integrate with this and did you integrate with that and not focus on user testing and is this working even down to not, not putting in the basics of redundancy so that we can upgrade them without their system going down.
So we're just seeing a lot of sloppiness from the customers, a lot of bad habits that they're forming a lot of, a lot of them don't know what they're doing, and unfortunately they're acting like they do. They're so used to driving vendors and telling vendors what they want and being in charge. And our teams are so used to customers being involved in saying the customer's always right. And doing what they're asking. So they're leading us off of a cliff with them. And then of course we get blamed when you know, everybody realizes that's what's happened.
And what I'm kind of seeing is like the road runner effect, which is like the coyote road runner can fly. So it goes off the cliff and and then the coyote follows it off the cliff and the coyote is our team and the road runner, is the customer. And then there's that period of time where the, coyote doesn't realize that there's just, there's no ground beneath him. So he is just running and it isn't to the moment that he realizes there's no ground beneath him that he falls. And if we can just catch our teams before that happens that moment is of, them looking down is the moment when the customer has an outage and they start yelling at our team. And we realize that we didn't push them to have redundancy. And they're fine, they can fly, so they'll stay in that company. So they'll just turn and blame us and our teams don't know what to do with that.
And it's not just us like that's the good news, in all this, the silver lining is Kevin just, had a number of meetings with customers, but we're getting customers calling us that are, complaining about our competitors in the same way. Really out there in the world, it's just a blood bath. There's just a lot of failed projects. A lot of things not going the way they should. It's very normal for an emerging technology to experience this.
If we look at the original websites when the internet came along, they were terrible. Terrible experiences. They were ugly. Like they're embarrassing. If we look back today, same with mobile. Our, that company I had mentioned earlier in this podcast, Daisy and I were hired to do one of the first iPad apps when they came out, we were one of the first eight paid by Apple. And the whole, the whole idea was to set the bar for the quality of experience we were hired because of our expertise in design experience, but all the iPad apps that followed like many of them, just these terrible experiences.
And it came down to, you know, Martha Stewart who tried to hire us right after we did that and said, hey, I want an app that can help somebody design or plan their whole wedding. And we said, okay the design phase will be about $300,000. A wedding is a very complicated thing to plan. And she said, oh my God, I could get a college kid to do it for $15,000. And that was the mentality early on.
Like that, the way to mitigate risk is to just not spend much money when the truth is it's the way to guarantee failure. Don't give us enough time, tell us what to do when, you don't know what you're doing. And that's just the phase we're in this will pass and just about who can stick it out. But but yeah, that's the kind of bad news. we're still in that phase where customers just really don't know what they're doing, but they, try to direct us.
So I dunno if we wanna jump to business model or if you guys have something to say on that?
[00:27:16] Daisy: The only thing I would add to that is what counteracts that is time, but also data. So I think making sure that we're tracking as we're doing these things and saying, this is where people fail as much of that, kind of hand holding as possible, but a lot of customers don't let you drag from the front, but you can sometimes push from the back, I think is also gonna be important as we move forward with how we manage customers as well.
[00:27:49] Robb: Yeah. I think it's a really good point. The question of great Robb, but what, do we do about that? Do we, just argue with customers when they tell to do something? I think the answer is no. Once, the customer's told you to do something, it means that we've already gone off the rails. We're already wrong.
I think of it very simply as if you were a tour guide and everybody arrived, and and met at whatever flag you had posted. And you said, okay, everyone, we're gonna tour the city. Where do you wanna go? They'd start say, I wanna go to the restaurant. I'm hungry. All of a sudden they'd start spewing out stuff. The way that you avoid that is long before they arrive at that place long before you're in that meeting long before you're face to face with them, you send them an itinerary of what you're gonna do. And you say, here's what we're gonna do day one hour one, and then we're gonna go here and then we're gonna go here and you give 'em a little space for, this is, Hey, whatever you guys wanna do we'll do for this hour. So that they get to contribute and they know there's a space for them to be heard in a space for them to contribute. But then when their time's over, we're gonna go here. We're gonna go here.
So we're calling those playbooks flight planning, however you wanna refer to it. The bottom line is before you show up to that meeting, if you have the itinerary already planned, we're gonna build this. we're gonna do this. That itinerary is the journey map. The, mock flows what we've essentially done is we've already said to people, this is where we're going. That way. They realize that this is not a free for all. That we have an iterary planned and they also feel like they they didn't come on a tour for us to just make it up as we go, this isn't an improv. They came on a tour because they assumed that we know the best places to go. So they feel safe and they feel like, okay, we're gonna have a good time here. And they let you lead.
But the important thing is to understand they don't let you lead. It's not you as the person that they're letting lead. It's the itinerary that they're letting lead. and what a lot of people misunderstand here is to get on a customer call and have them follow you and your voice and your expertise, and that's not gonna happen. But what they will follow is the itinerary that you got everybody to agree on you use that itinerary as the tool to get them to follow you say, we all agreed on this. This is what we're doing next. Not, I think we should do this because that's not gonna, work
[00:30:16] Daisy: And then it becomes reliable for repeatability and consistency moving forward as well.
[00:30:21] Robb: Yeah.
[00:30:22] Robb: So, great. I guess I'll just wrap this up with, the structure we're leaning towards as a company. I'll just give you a taste and I think we can dig into this more in future podcasts, but basically the idea is if we're gonna scale this company, we gotta scale from the bottom up. We've always been a bottom up sort of company, the leadership of this company, as most other companies would call it leadership is I think Alex brought this term to my attention, which is servant leadership.
When I was in the film industry, the executives at Warner brothers supported the makers of the movie, not the, other way around. We were in charge, we made the films and they got our lamps for us. They got our equipment for us. They booked time in the studio for us. They supported us, we made the product, they didn't tell us what to do. They helped us get it done. And they directed traffic to make sure that as we were trying to get our thing done, we weren't stepping on other people, trying to get their things done. So it was a coordination role and a support role and That's how they could scale. That's how they could make lots of great movies at the same time.
And I think for us, that model is the pods. The pods are teams and our company is here to support them and, that they are the center of the universe that we work for those pods, us as managers in the company we listen to what those pods are saying and what they need, and we're trying to prioritize their needs. It comes down to this If the pods are successful, delivering to the customers, then our company will be successful. It really is that simple.
So what a lot of companies do in the leaders of those companies do is they don't listen to the people doing the work. They dictate to the people doing the work. They tell them how they should do the work. They create rules for the people that restrict how they do their work. They think that they're controlling something, but really what they're doing is just hindering creativity and hurting process.
And so what our job is, to create a process that makes sure that people don't step on each other. We need roads, we need stop lights. We can't just have people driving anywhere, but we're not going, we're not gonna be so prescriptive that we're gonna start specifically telling pods how they should run. we need them to think for themselves to, to adapt to the skill sets that they have and the personalities that they have on their teams.
So as McDonald's think of how they grow, they count the number of stores that they open and how pleased those customers are with each store that opens and the consistency of each one of those stores and how They deliver consistently.
So the customers it's the same for us. The we're gonna count our success as a company, not by our revenue but, by the number of pods that we're able to light up, whether that's within OneReach or our customers and the quality of the work that they're producing. And that's, what's gonna matter to us most revenue is a lagging indicator of whether we're doing that job. So it's, to me, one of the lesser important factors in all of this, what I care about Is the quality of work that's gonna come out of each pod and the design, the execution, and the overall experience our customer has with that pod and how consistent that experience is across pods. So our customers don't feel culture shock if one pod is working on a project and, then they switch pods and and they do, and it's like a completely different experience.
If we can try to create just the right balance of flexibility within the pods, but consistency, that's gonna allow pods to float around between different clients and different projects, which is gonna be far more interesting for them they're not gonna get stuck on a client or a customer. And it's gonna for the customer give a sense that no matter what pod they get, they can, they know what experience that they're gonna get.
So for example if we all do journey maps and we all start at journey maps and those journey maps look similar from one pod to the next, the customer's gonna feel very comfortable with the new pod, cuz they're gonna know their role in it. They're gonna know what to expect. But if one pod uses journey maps and another one decides to use scripts, that's gonna be jarring. And we're gonna have customers that don't wanna switch pods because they don't want to learn entirely new systems.
So finding this fine line between flexibility and autonomy, which is I would say every business's goal is key. And I think the best way to do that, for us as a company is to focus on our pods as the center of, the leadership that our pods will lead the company. And they will tell us what they need. And then we will service them, make sure they have what they need to be successful.
So we'll talk more on that as this, as we have more time in the podcast and I think get more practical in, how this is gonna lay itself out, but just know that a good company is a company that can scale quickly with consistency and deliver consistent experiences, to their customers.
And the best of that Discount Tire being one of our customers, who've got number one in customer centricity. All you ever hear in their headquarters is that the store managers are the boss. Everything revolves around what they need and what they want. and what we know is we've seen it firsthand that the lead person at that company, the executive might be happy with us but if two store managers come in and complain about the phone, all of a sudden that executive changes their tune in an instant, from loving us to being angry at us. So what do we learn from that? Their store managers and really those stores and employees at each store, that's who they work for. That's who matters. That's who we work for. And that's who matters. And I love that they got number one in customer centricity, across all retail, beating out Apple and all of these unbelievable brands. And you can see why, because they put the stores and the employees first. And they said, if our employees are having a good experience, our customers will. And if our customers will we'll make money.
And so that's what you're gonna see us roll out is an attempt to try to measure on a regular basis satisfaction of our employees and our customers. And we're going to ask you guys to, it's not gonna be an option to not give us feedback. We're gonna, We're gonna, demand that you let us know how it's going, and, how we're doing every couple of weeks. and and we're gonna, and we're gonna prioritize our work based on that feedback. So look for that. You're gonna start to see that roll out soon where we're gonna start checking in on a regular basis with each of you to ensure that that you're getting what you need to be successful.
So bottom line is there's plenty of companies out there that are customer first shareholder, second employee. Third. Amazon's one of those you hear about a lot of customer centric companies. OneReach is taking a different approach. It's employees first, customer second, shareholders third. Our belief is that happy employees, equal happy customers, equal happy shareholders. So it's a new idea. It's accepted by a lot of experts out there as the way we need to go in this world. And I think as a company, we've always believed in that. But we wanna lead the charge and I think now we can show other companies that this works. We are the number one in our space and And if we continue to be successful as a company, we will be a model for others to follow. So
I know we're not perfect. It's when it comes to pleasing people And pleasing everyone, like there's no silver bullet it's, I don't think there's any, anybody who could imagine, a company that that every single employee has everything they want and need. But what I can say is that's gonna be our priority.
So that's what I got. Any comments guys or anything you wanna add?
[00:38:39] Antony: Well, It's hard to add something specific to your presentation here. Yeah I agree. It's questionable, is it right or wrong when you think in terms of like it company with building conversational AI solutions, but it is more obvious if you put it back into terms of I don't know, McDonald's and hamburgers, and who is responsible for making sure like what manager's role is to help specific branch to succeed. So support them or kinda be the big guy and the big boss and tell them what exactly they need to do without listening back to them and to their problems. Yeah.
[00:39:26] Daisy: And I think it comes down to sometimes it's not about uh, what people need And what people want is also cuz you know, easier ways to get their job done successfully. So that also includes process and tools, not just other obvious things that people may ask for. And so I think discount tire is a perfect example: I need my phones to work. I need an easy button so that I don't have to focus time in these areas. And I think that's really what we're gonna be focusing on too. And that's where the playbooks come into play. The process comes into play. It's really there to hopefully make people's jobs easier and make it easier for them to be successful.
[00:40:07] Robb: Yeah. Yeah. And use your research you learn very early on that you wanna listen to the customer's problems, but not their solutions. A lot of times we mix those up.
We think that someone says. I need a hamburger. Know what they're really saying is I'm hungry. Hamburger may not be what they need. It may not be what they want. That might not be the right answer. There's a lot of reasons it could be the wrong answer. So, as as somebody who's, had a long time career in user research, I realized that you gotta pick out the problem and separate it from their prescriptive solution, what they don't want as a hamburger, what they want is to be fed. And that way you can really delight them.
So an example would be you walk into a restaurant, you say, I want a hamburger. And they say, you know what? This place has an amazing filet mignon right today. Like it's so fresh and they go, oh, that sounds great. I'll take that. That is a great experience. Cause that person understood that what they said was I'm hungry and I feel like eating something good. They didn't hear give me a hamburger and I'll be happy. So they exceeded expectations by hearing the problem, but not, but prescribing an, a solution that they think might be better.
Same with us with customers. We need to hear their problem, not necessarily their prescription to the solution. We need to look internally for that. And the same with you guys, when you complain to us or you give us feedback as employees and we try to fix it, we may not do, and we may not fix it in the way you ask us to fix it, but what we will do is absolutely listen to the problem. And do our best to come up with the best solution to that problem and if we're wrong we'll try again until we're right. So sometimes people perceive, the fact that we're not doing exactly what they asked us to do as not, listening, but in fact, it's better listening. We're listening to the problem and we're asking a lot of other people and we're looking at many possible solutions. And then we're ensuring that the best solution is the one we roll out.
[00:42:14] Jordan: Yeah, and the key to that is, is that we're gonna be wrong when we roll out those solutions and we think in hypotheses, in, in this company. and so when we believe that there's a right way to solve that problem and we try it and it doesn't work, then we'll hear that too. And we'll regroup and try to keep what works and to build on what isn't, and that's a continuous conversation as we start to grow this company altogether.
[00:42:41] Daisy: Yeah. And I think that's why data is so important, right? is, that it is the iteration that gets you faster to success. Failure is a part of that. It's another data point that shows you what works and what doesn't work. And so it's really important that we track both positive and negative outcomes. I think.
[00:42:59] Robb: Yeah. I think that's a really good point. It's the, one thing in, in user experience you always learn is that there's no place for, "I think", "I want", " I would do this". User research is about talking to other people and collecting data and seeing what they want. The moment someone says they're, in UX or they're, they wanna get into UX. And the second I hear the word, I think I immediately know they're new to it. It would be in the form of, " I think that other people might like this" that's okay. But "I would like this", or "I like that". This is a classic newbie mistake.
What you like is one data point and are you representative of, the broader population in that particular case? Probably not, possibly, but you are a data point of one. So you're really not that relevant. What you think is really not that relevant. What you think others will think, that's what matters. And how well do you know them? How have you asked them?
So to your point, Daisy, user testing, like there's ways to get that data. You don't have to guess you can go get it. And when you bring that data to your customer And you get them to stop saying, "I think we should make it this way" and "I think we should make it that way" and you stop saying, you think it should be one way. And then you get into a fight with your customer about who's thinking is better and who's smarter. You get into: "that's an interesting let's test it". And then you bring back the data that says we tested it on 10 people and they all hated it. You're out of the fight. It's not you, it's not your opinion. You don't have to bend your opinion. You're you have it supported with data.
So if you wanna be right. And I think a lot of us love being right. I like being wrong, but I think most people like being right. When you're right. If you wanna be right, go out there and get the data because the person with the most data is the person who's right. Most often. So anyway.
[00:45:00] Antony: Yeah. data, equals IQ
[00:45:03] Robb: You got it. So interesting how just having information makes you look so much smarter in the room.
[00:45:12] Daisy: And I think also not trying to be the smartest one also makes you look so much smarter when you let other things, speak for you, you're listened to a lot more.
[00:45:22] Robb: Yeah. Not being sure. Here's what the data says. It is a 80% chance. It's right. Nobody knows the terms, the right or wrong thing to do. They only know in probabilities, but, we speak in absolutes. It's always a subtle, but unconscious observation of other people when they're speaking to somebody who speaks in probabilities, they don't necessarily identify it. They may not be highly aware of it, but they just react in a way that makes them feel confident in that person.
So, I, I don't know. I think we're running over time here. What says to you, Antony?
[00:46:01] Antony: Yeah, we are at the edge of wrapping up today's episode.
So do we have any specific topics we wanna cover or just outline real quick?
[00:46:13] Robb: Yeah, I covered all of mine. Yeah. I think I got enough for people to absorb
That, do you think there's anything people may wanna know that haven't touched upon.
[00:46:23] Jordan: We didn't talk much about our successes with customers. I think the, one of the really amazing things is the speed at which we're now deploying for customers. And obviously, you guys have been here and have this history, But from my understanding, the number of deployments that we've had in the last three months has been more than the last couple years by a really big margin as well. I think we've had seven successful deployments in the last couple months, which is just incredible and speaks to the progress that we're making in the customer department and the investments there are really paying off in some big ways.
[00:46:59] Robb: Yeah. That's a good point. It's fantastic.
Back to my prior point the next step is now to gain consistency across the quality and speed of different teams. I'm seeing a bit of a gap that'll be our focus is to try to help you guys be able to deliver consistently timewise and quality wise. And I think, sometimes it's not the best that wins, it's not the best burger that wins. It's the burger you can deliver consistently that wins. So I think we'll be working on that to figure out how do we deliver these projects consistently. And that, that may not always mean the best possible features or the, as Daisy said, the flashiest experiences. But the ones, that, that are useful, so
[00:47:43] Jordan: That's right. Okay. Maybe that's something we'll pick up on the next episode and try to dive through what that, looks like.
[00:47:49] Antony: All right.
Thanks everyone. Thanks for listening.
[00:47:53] Daisy: Thanks, everyone.
[00:47:54] Jordan: Thanks, all.
[00:47:55] Antony: Have a good time. And hopefully you'll hear from us soon. Bye guys.
[00:48:00] Robb: Bye-bye