Creating a customer service system that scales without losing authenticity - Interview with Ty Givens of CX Collective

0:00So welcome to another edition of the Punk CX podcast. Today I'm delighted to welcome Ty Givens to the podcast. Big wave to Ty. Ty is the founder and CEO of CX Collective and helps support leaders in fast growth environments and also build operations that don't burn people out, more importantly. As a result, one of the primary things that she focuses on is on the employee experience behind the service experience. With over 20 years leading CX strategy operations for high growth brands, Ty specializes in helping companies transform customer support from a reactive service channel into a proactive growth engine through smarter systems, strategic leadership, and future -ready technology like automation and AI.

0:44Ty. Yes. Welcome to the podcast. How are you doing? I am really good, and I'm glad to be here. How are you? I am splendid. it now i did that intro but i always like to ask people after i've done the intro anything that i missed out that you'd like artists to know ah oh um that we have a second part of our business that focuses on developing playbooks for leaders so okay yeah so i think that's worth mentioning uh there's consulting of course and then there's also the other side of it which is like a diy why sort of opportunity. Awesome. Well, maybe we can talk about that through our conversation.

1:24If not, we'll point people in the right direction if they want to find out more. That sounds good. So here's the thing. So we were talking recently in the setup of this podcast, and you mentioned a number of things that I thought would be good to explore on the podcast, as I thought listeners might benefit from hearing your POV, apparently is the lingo, So that's your perspective. Now, the first thing that you said that I wanted to explore is that you said, you often step into organizations where emotional labor and systems thinking are missing from the top. Now, as soon as you said that, the systems thinking bit, I was like, well, that's my jam.

2:00That's the thing. And so I wanted to get you to kind of explain some of that, both the emotional labor and systems thinking kind of bit, because I'm a big fan of systems thinking. So can you help me understand what you mean by that? and what happens when these things are missing? Yeah, so as you mentioned, I've been in this support industry for 20 plus years, actually 25 years, and I'm only 25. So how about that? You see, since I'm - Wow. That's how it works. That's heroic. That's heroic. I'm answering calls. So in that space, what I've learned, like back from when I started, it's a totally different world.

2:39A lot of times companies misconstrue the customer service aspect of their business with just the person who's nicest to customers or the one that customers love the most. Right. And what I think they miss is that once you start to grow and scale, being nice is not actually the remedy that you think it is to a great customer experience being proactive is. So when we talk about systems thinking, if, you know, I'm the nicest person on the team and I have no operational background, then as the team grows, the scope of work will outgrow me. Okay. So I see that a lot. And then also as the team grows, the emotional labor becomes much bigger, right?

3:28Because not only am I doubting myself as a leader, right? Because I don't know what I don't know. and there's a right okay i'm being asked to do things that i don't know um that frustration in my doubting of myself can manifest itself in the way that i interact with and engage with my frontline team okay so now we have this compounding issue of me not feeling like i'm good enough like me feeling like i can't do enough compounded with the ever-changing expectation of the role me wanting to hold on to this role because I've never been in this position before. And what does that mean for the frontline who feels like I can't even go to my boss because she's too busy?

4:13Right. There's a bit in a lot of companies that I've worked in that happens a lot. And it's because the expectations from the executive level, they don't understand the what it takes to actually do those things. And if you have a leader in place who also doesn't understand what it takes to do those things you're like you're you're building your house on sand and so if you're i mean this i guess this probably manifests itself like you were saying in teams that are within a high growth environment so like startups scale-ups those those sort of things And so what should leaders or aspirant leaders or new leaders be doing to try and grow, to keep up with the growth of their scope, if you like?

5:10Yeah. First thing is to be okay with understanding that although the company's hired you in that role and the company believes that you're the one person who's supposed to do it all, you're probably not enough to do everything that they're expecting. okay leaders are often required to be in the past present and future and focus on people process and technology and if you try to do all those things at once it's kind of like me trying to answer a chat while i'm talking to you and i think that um experience will teach you that you need to communicate what you need in order to be successful and sometimes that could be an additional resource.

5:57So for example, I've oftentimes been hired as the operational leader that matures an organization. A lot of times you come in and you do that and you don't have the financial support to grow the team. So you can't add to headcount. But what you can do is take the resources that you have within that team and start to allocate them to different parts of the business where you can get a bigger ROI than if they were on the phones or if they were emails or chats. So you look for someone to help you with quality so you can improve how you're engaging with customers. You look for someone who might have a knack for statistics and ask them to help you with some workforce management or planning around that.

6:38You might have someone who is a good teacher and you want to have them help with training. So you can find those resources within the team, repurpose them, right? And maybe you're not answering, you know, an additional call at 200 tickets a day but maybe through those roles you're reducing your tickets by 300 a day right so you have to think on the roi side i mean one thing that that strikes me as well i mean and this is a story from a guy who was a player in the large enterprise space particularly in the transformation space there's a guy and it's this is one of these stories that i i learned years and years ago from somebody that i met and had on the the podcast i met him at a vendor event and he was running a business and he's a brilliant Dutch guy called Martin Grubno and he had a very interesting way of working and he said what particularly when he went to interview for something and I mean he was a veteran of a lot of large and transformational kind of efforts and very successful at it and when they were about to say when he interviewed for it when he was about to offer they were offer in the in the role he said look here's the thing i need to make clear to you says um this is this is how i operate if you don't like it don't hire don't hire me yeah and he said look i broadly he said i i what i tend to do is i tend to try and work as an intern for a month before i start any role because then i get helped me understand the organization and you understand the kind of levers that you can kind of pull or what's available to you because you see it from an a you know a and it's an unsanitized perspective let's say he said then when he goes in he says he splits his time three ways he says he spends his so a third of his time hanging out with people on the front line okay to properly understand kind of what's going to be going on he spends then another third of his time wondering about the business to actually understand how the business works and then it says and then i spend the final third of my time doing the stuff that sits on your job description and he said that's the way i work and that's if you don't like it don't hire me and i think what's interesting about that for me is it takes a um very systems thinking sort of approach it seems to me because it understands that we don't operate in isolation and actually were part of a system.

9:09And actually to understand that, to better understand how you operate within that system, you would be well suited to try and carve out the time. And this is the important kind of bit, I guess, is carving out the time to try and understand the system that you're in to allow you to figure out how to operate more effectively within that system. You know what that gentleman has on his side that a lot of leaders don't have. He has two things, I think. Okay. One is the confidence to say what. The second thing is the experience to know what's necessary to build success. Yeah. And then when you're coming in or you're promoted internally, he didn't start out that way.

9:55No one is going from phones to leadership and then saying, oh yeah, no, I got this. I'm going to carve out. they have no idea they're on that hamster wheel and like for me when one of the reasons I went into consulting there's a lot of reasons but one of them is that I got every job that I interviewed for and I think that part of the reason why I got every job I interviewed for is because I never went in there wondering if I was the you know if I could win them over I couldn't care less about winning them over the question. Can I like, can I work here? Do I want to work here? Tell me about your culture.

10:37I read the job description. I know what you guys are about, but tell me about, or tell me, I know what you're looking for. Tell me about what it's like to be in there. And I love the approach of saying like, I'm going to split my time. You know, sometimes people have the ability to do that. Sometimes you kind of get in and then you figure it out. Right. But if I feel that if If you and the reason why I'll say this, that I can say, do I want to work here and let that be the lever? Not do you want to hire me? Of course, you guys want to hire someone. But do I want to work here? It comes from the confidence of one, knowing that I know what I'm doing to I know what they need.

11:18The main question is, can I be successful in this environment? A lot of workplaces are interesting, to say the least. Well, that's a kind word and a very generous word. But I think he makes a great point. I know that Mr. Grubman's sort of example is an extreme example. And it's based on experience and confidence and just his very nature. He's like, well, I don't care. And that's great. And it's brilliant if you have that. But I think that, you know, pretty much 99 % of the people would turn around and go, that's not for me. But I think for me, the real insight from that is if you dilute and dilute and dilute and dilute all that down, it's a bit like, can you create the space to go and explore and to find out and to build connections within your kind of like system and things to help you better understand how things operate?

12:20And whether that's one or two hours a week or a lunch with somebody or a cup of coffee in the morning or whatever it might be. Because a lot of people get into a job and then they're like, head down, doing their thing. And they don't realize like, oh, you're part of a system. And actually, you are figuring out how to build those connections. And building that connections and building your understanding of that will ultimately help you. 100%. And I know, you know, this in transparency that I have been guilty of going in with my head down. And it comes from, well, there's two reasons. One is that I go in, I have gone in to companies.

13:01This is as an employee, not as a consultant, but going in and then you, you've inherited a mess. And so I think I'm trying to clean out my own closet before I go step into someone else's. and that can cause me to have my head down especially if you're stepping in and there's no one else that you can really delegate to just yet because they don't even understand what to do so it is difficult to to go in and keep it broad when there's when they've been waiting for someone to walk in the door to hand you that that pile of issues that need to be worked through a lot of times they they're hiring you far after they have the need oh no i think so i think it's right and And I'm not saying this is easy by any stretch of the imagination.

13:48I mean, I think that, but I think it's, if you step into that, that leadership role, it's imperative that one, you, one, you look after yourself to you deliver and three, that you build your knowledge and the connections of things around. And the only resource that you have that's available to you is your time. Oh boy. So yes. Yes. And let's talk about time because that I think is one of the signs that a leader has burned out is don't have time. And it could be a small thing of not even having time to think. Right. Carving out time to think. I have a playbook on time management. And one of the things I talk about is take time to actually think.

14:37And it's funny to be in a space of telling others what to do, how consultant of me, and not doing the things that I should be doing, which are those same things. So I just came off of a stint before this previous weekend of five weeks of some daily work. And I was exhausted. And I decided on last Friday, I said, you know what? No, I'm going to stop. I don't care what comes in. I've got to just clear my mind. And taking that pause, so many questions and things that I had been working through, I started to get answers to. some of the processes I was stuck on, I started getting, you know, able to work through it because taking just that beat to think matters a lot.

15:28And it's also tying into that ROI conversation we had just a moment ago, you taking that time to process and think the return on that is far more significant than you being on that hamster wheel. Absolutely. And that neatly brings us to the um the next thing i wanted to talk about because sort of linked because you talk about when people see burnout or churn or performance dipping and inconsistency and all that sort of stuff you know and a lot of people go like let's buy some tools yeah yeah yeah because tools are the answer they do yeah they chase the tools to try and reduce kind of employee churn and inconsistency but actually you were like going actually no you hold on there's a better way right you know there has to be a better way or you believe there is a better way rather than just jumping on the tools I mean and so I wanted to ask you to sort of help me understand kind of your perspective on that too definitely so you're right I mean marketing is a beast right you you see this ad that tells you that exactly your problem is going to be solved if you do this one thing so now you're like let me buy this tool and you get the tool and you realize not only do you have to understand how it works, but you have to focus on trying to implement it.

16:47You have to teach other people how to use it. Then you have to go through the change management process for your team and how this impacts them. And it can be a complete nightmare when in reality, a lot of times the issue is really with your process. And the tool, even if you implement it, if your process is broken, your tool is just going to further exasperate that. You don't, you don't want that. So my belief is that you have to look at the processes. Like if we start to work with a company, I literally start at like, what are your policies? If you have them, what did you put on the website?

17:25Right. And then what did you tell your team that they could do above that? And then how does your team actually execute that? So I go through this series of questions and then I'm looking at how does your system support that? Now, if we find that the systems can't support it and the process is key and critical, then we may entertain either readjusting how that system works and seeing if the capability is there or do we need to fit in another system, but that's far down the line. Instead of just adding another tool to the list. And believe you me, anyone who has worked with me knows that I am a tooth gal.

18:03So if I've gone down the road of deciding to get another tool, it's because I have clearly identified there's a gap in the process that this tool is necessary for. But I always, always, always start with processes. I mean, that reminds me of a story that I learned. And it was about, you know, In the midst of all of this, the excitement around, let's call it excitement. Let's not call it hype. Let's call it excitement around kind of artificial intelligence, particularly around generative AI and now agentic AI. One support leader went, oh, we can use this. We can use agent sort of assist technology.

18:41We can build this RAG system to put all our policies kind of in to help kind of like provide quick fire answers to agents so they're well equipped. they did all that set it all up the agents didn't use it you know why because the recommendations were garbage and they were like going huh wonder and they unpicked it all and they figured you know they asked the kind of agents kind of like um so what was wrong with the the the suggestions like they were wrong yeah they were like making wrong policy recommendations wrong this they're wrong that, wrong whatever it might be. And what they didn't realize, because this is the assumption that people often can make, is that the policies that you have in place and your documentation to support all of that and the knowledge base and everything else, that it's good.

19:34Yeah. But actually, what we need to realize with many of these systems is like, if you put garbage into it, then you're going to get garbage out of it. Oh, sure. And so they had to go and just go, you know and what didn't account for is that this situation had been like that for a long time and the agents just knew how things worked yeah because they had biological supercomputers in their heads yeah um and they were help they were working with each other and sort of figuring kind of things out and then that was their network to intelligence as it were but the big assumption when there were people were trying to um to make things better was the assumption that was that oh the precious that we use and the policies and the documentation that we have and all the knowledge that we have, oh, it's all great.

20:22So we put it in two, it's going to be fine. And you're like going, no. So like, be careful of assumptions. That's so true. That's so true. I feel like AI exposes how well we communicate as humans, especially if you're plugging in a prompt, you have something in your mind that you, you know, I might say, take this list and turn it into a table with column one reading X, column 2Y, column 3Z. And then I get it back and I'm like, well, that's not what I meant. And it actually caused me to think about how I communicate expectations to people. When I get something back that I didn't intend, it's forcing me to look at myself and identify that maybe I'm not doing this right.

21:09Because literally it will do exactly what you ask. So if you have all of those systems or the documentation in place, but it's not organized properly, it's just to find the information and present it. And then that's that. And it's really important that when you're rolling out these different products and tools that you bring your team along on the journey to so that you're part of it. Because otherwise, it's going to feel to them like, yeah, see, that's why we don't need to go that route. instead of understanding if you're teaching the AI how to function, that then becomes your role. So you have a place here.

21:49Once AI starts to operate and do the logic-based things, if that's what your job is, then that's when things are called into question. The question is, what are you going to do? So my opinion, my recommendation is make sure that you're leveraging AI to work for you so that you don't end up working for AI. and yeah no perfect i mean can we go back to the kind of process sort of thing where you start with process rather than starting with tools yeah i wanted to understand is like how do you surface that because oftentimes there's a there's like a process document somewhere that sits in a sits on a server somewhere or possibly in a file if they still print things out and there's there's there's often the way that people say things are done and the way that things are done yeah um so how do you go about surfacing kind of that you know to almost said to if you like to almost shine a light in all the dark corners to make sure that you'll have a clear picture uh we do a lot of screen shares so we'll actually sit and watch agents work quietly.

22:59And then we'll compare that to what the documentation says. And there's often, like you said, there's something that's amiss. And it's not because the agent is going rogue, it's because they found a better way to do it. Finding a better way to do it, they may or may not have the avenue on which to escalate or communicate, hey, I found a better way to do this let's update the process instead what you get is that that you know the i'm going to share my process with the person next to me who's going to share with the person next to them who's going to share with the person next to them and you never actually get anything um updated yeah when you're doing when you're trying to use those processes for ai the job then most people become knowledge management people yeah right because then you have to continuously update your documentation.

23:49So I think that if we start the process in a way where people are sharing information openly and that we have one source of truth, we're going to all be in a better place. But that is a shift in what our world has always been. Support has always been about being, you know, efficient, right? Being the best at your job, getting high CSAT, impacting that, you know, that NPS score. And it hasn't necessarily, unless you're on the operations side, been about enabling other people to do the work that you do in the same way. And so we're seeing things move towards the agent now being the knowledge management person who actually informs the ai agent right they're they're becoming they're becoming managers they're becoming supervisors to these agents what's fascinating is that the um this is not necessarily often talked about but particularly when you have all these systems and platforms and tools that people are using increasingly in service and support is the the nature of enterprise software is fundamentally changing.

25:05You know, normally it would be a case of like, you do your research, you come up with a shortlist, you invite people to RFP, do a whole bunch of demos, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you pick one and you're like, it was like, yeah, great. And then you have some training and some do the onboarding, do the installation. And then you're often kind of running, you've got access to a success person, but then you, you know, and some help function, so on and so forth. And then there's your QBRs. That's how it was, right? now it's like that but also it requires an internal team as well to set things up and to monitor and and to manage and and to qa kind of a lot of this sort of like stuff and that just feels i mean it's like you to your point around knowledge management is like um i remember talking to adrian mcderma across at zendesk a while ago well a few months ago he's the cto is at desk and he said um he said if ai is this is the next industrial revolution then knowledge is the coal which i really liked actually to your you know to your point um and but i think that the nature of the role around gathering curating creating the data whether it's knowledge articles to be able to put this and then managing the systems in itself and and traditionally service and support hasn't really done that it's more about being super responsive at the point of kind of demand and knowledgeable and efficient and effective and all these different sort of things and now it's a bit like no there's all this other kind of work that needs to get done as well and the role is kind of changing so i mean i think it's fascinating and it's it's a real struggle but there's the one thing that makes me think there's like and there's an explosion of startups that everybody's kind of trying to be the you know the next big thing or whatever in this sort of space and many there are being successful and are growing fast but because i know that you because you're working in that sort of space where we with fast growing companies and you also talked to me before about this idea that you work with a lot of companies that are fast growing but are often structurally shaky yeah um and here's the thing i mean it's a bit like if you got this fast moving car it's a bit like you're asking them to change their tire without slowing down exactly and i'm a bit like how does that work how do you how do you do that well you know okay so i talked about um watching how teams work you'd be surprised at um the small tweaks that you can make that will give massive efficiency okay and um it could be something as small as the way that their help desk is set up and by help desk i mean a zendesk a gorgeous and intercom um they're not properly using auto replies right it could be something that small where you're saying, hey, if someone is saying I need to return something, just reply to them with the return policy and the link to the return portal and solve the ticket out.

28:26It's little details like that that will collapse the inbound volume in a very significant way. This was a while back, but Thrive Cosmetics was a client of mine and I feel like they were on Help Scott in some areas and gorgeous in others. And one of the things that we did back then was I just looked at what the tickets or the messages were about and the ones that were just straightforward. I just auto replied. Now today we have AI, so AI would handle that, but we didn't have that at that time. It wasn't a thing. It's something that we had to figure out. So a lot of times what we'll do is just look at how they're working without changing anything and spend maybe be the first couple of maybe a week or so just identifying small wins that won't change their process but those small wins have huge huge impact and what they also do with with our ability to work with them is it gets them to trust that we know what we're doing so now we have to make these bigger changes they understand it we fly planes that are flying in the air all the time all the time.

29:39There are things that we just work on behind the scenes. We can revamp an entire Zendesk instance without them ever filling it on the front end until we're ready to train them on it. Right. You know, so the way that you do that is, you know, you build, you build in a separate instance. It's not like rocket science or anything like that, but you build in a separate instance, we have our demo environment. We can do all of our testing. We get team members from the, from our clients to test with us. We make it what they want by having the team members a part of the conversation, then what are they doing?

30:10They're socializing it with the team. Oh, you just wait until this comes. It's going to be so cool. They know how to work it. So now we've got boots on the ground. We can actually handle it. So that's, I feel like that's the, that approach has worked for us. And I think I have that mindset because I have worked inside of companies as an employee where they were growing so significantly that I couldn't break anything in order to repair it. I just had to fix it as we went along. And I think if you circle back to the leader kind of point around time and things. Yeah. And I think that's the, again, it's the added responsibility of leaders because many leaders are, they get promoted into positions of responsibility and then the training comes afterwards.

30:58Yeah. And then you get any training. Yeah. If you get any training, indeed. but i think the thing that seems to be what you're what you're saying is that you know regardless of where you're kind of at and how mature your operation kind of might be there are probably going to be some things that you can notice that are your quick wins to your point from earlier was that you have to create that space to be able to notice or to identify those kind of quick wince and whether that's you're using tools to help you identify kind of patterns or kind of like kind of things to do that or you're just sitting and listening and watching and and and figuring through that and speaking to people and consulting them on where the where the common snags kind of might be yeah but it's your point it's like rather than going maybe kind of head down sometimes you've got to realize that you can't just be head down all the time sometimes you have to kind of look up and actually look around um and that is that's that's your that's your role and your responsibility to one look after your team but also continue to improve their their environment yeah so yeah it's um it's i mean it's because as you say you can do that without losing momentum you can but it's you know part of the reason why i had worked out the playbooks that I have, I used to call them trainings.

32:26And then I realized that it's not necessarily training. It is like a real time how to. So for example, if you're struggling with time management and the conversation sounds good around time management, but you're like, I don't even know how to start. That's what the playbooks are about. It's the concept of it, how other companies might use it and then more specifically how you can use it so they get you thinking about application applying these theories into practice right now so you can see how it works for you yeah and then walk away with something tangible so if you're if you're struggling with you know how to get started the main thing is um to like i'll basically make use of resources that are available to you.

33:17And you take what you need and you leave the rest, right? So if you're like, that doesn't apply to me, then don't worry about it. But if there's a part of it that does apply, it could really help you. Because I feel that, you know, and I'm speaking for myself, I always say I developed these playbooks for me at 24 when I was first running and managing a team. The whole idea is that it's okay for me to not know. So it's okay for anyone to not know. that doesn't make you a bad leader there are just systems and and circumstances you've never been a part of to lean on somebody who does know and you don't have to do it exactly their way take what they're giving you and leave the rest and those are the things that i try to give you know give back to people is i've been down that road don't make that left but if you do make that left here's how you get back on course right perfect so we talked about a bunch of things and i thought what might be useful if you can is to maybe share an example of a brand that you're working with or have worked with where you've employed this type of approach you know it's almost describe the environment tell us what you can like kind of did and tell us what kind of like happens kind of things just to sort of just to bring it all to life yeah so one client is brighton collectibles Um, they are, they have both, um, online presence and they have retail stores.

34:39You'll find them shopping strips or you'll find them in, um, air airports. We've been working with them. I think this, I think this is the second year could be coming up on the third year. Um, which is kind of crazy to say, but they've, they've been lovely. And I think that, um, they're a good example of building the plane while, while it's flying. Because when we started with them, um, as I mentioned, they were on one help desk and And we switched them to a completely new help desk one month before their busiest season, which is obviously Q4 college season. And I can't say that it was completely seamless, but what I can say is that it was effective and it was efficient.

35:21And a lot of that came from just understanding how they work. For anyone who is consulting, who listens to this, there's no such thing, in my opinion at least. as the right way to do anything. So when it comes down to it, I had to understand how they were working and what did they need from us in order to do their best work, even if I did not agree with it. And I think that because of that, we were able to see success. And like I said, they're still a client to this day. We adore them and I feel like we do good work with them. And we are now in a rhythm where we take one to two small projects every month and we iterate and execute on them and bring them along the journey and we can we continuously improve and i think and what has been the impact on some of the outcomes and things i mean have they been able to service more volume or have they improved their their their fcr or their ahd or all those kind of good things has it all gone in the right direction yeah everything's going good um one of the big changes was um reworking the way that their help center is set up and um rewriting those articles so that when one uses the bot, it surfaces the right information.

36:36They are a unique company in that they have no desire to keep their customers from reaching out. They want their customers to reach out to them and they're okay with it. But one of the things that we do with that is we do give the customer the ability to solve their issue. So we've seen self-service increase by about 20%, which is really nice. So that's brought down some of the ticket volume for the agents as well. And what that does is it gives the agents the ability to focus on other things because I listened to a previous episode of yours and you talked about how some company, I think 35 % of companies are on legacy systems or older systems and Brighton is one of them.

37:15They've had their systems have been in place for a long time, but the ability to get some of those requests handled by the customer themselves that don't actually come into them has given them the ability to still foster and work in the environment that they're used to without them feeling like they've stepped into a totally new world but they are modernizing and they are much more efficient now just from us looking at what are people searching for and updating something as simple as a task or the way that we're wording things on their help center awesome i think i know that brand actually i think they've got i think they have a store in las vegas airport they do they do like this they always send me gifts this is from them they send me handbags they are so generous and um i i every year i send them something too they are they are lovely lovely wonderful people just genuine i am going to stop by that store next time i'm i'm passing through las vegas airport please do uh brilliant so um ty that's it for my kind of like main questions i mean before i ask you some quick fire questions anything that uh we've missed that you want to highlight or shall we go into the quick fire questions let's do the quick fire perfect right so here's the i've got three for you um the first one is boiling everything down i always ask for people to give me their best advice yeah and the way i've been asking people to do that lately is to ask them to complete this sentence yeah and the sentences um if you want to improve your customer or employee experience because i know that's your kind of like your your focus so let's actually remove the customer let's focus on the employee experience if you want to improve your employee experience ty says do this complete that sentence time well i do think the employee experience ties into the customer experience 100 um i would say um listen to them right listen to them and i and um listen to them with an open mind even if you think you know better and let them influence your processes because everything is about the process and at the end of the day what you'll have is an advocate someone or some or a few someones who um understand your vision and on are on your side and want to see you be successful in rolling out something you've then increased their skill set so you've helped them to achieve something new and different give them something to put on their resume and i think at the end of the day that's a win so awesome i would 100 agree with that and it doesn't happen enough yeah often enough yeah um and i always say to people that the you know people talk about all of this kind of technology and stuff and i says but you've you forget that you have a network of biological supercomputers right in front of you.