1954 – Transforming Customer Support with Zingtree’s Juan Jaysingh

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1:05With us right now is Juwan Jaising. Juwan, you are the CEO of Zingtree. You're on the web at zingtree.com. Juwan, thank you so much for joining us. Josh, thanks for having me. Well, please give us an overview of what Zingtree is. Certainly, you've really had the opportunity to work with some amazing companies and improving customer experiences out there. Yeah, we've been fortunate to work with some of the largest companies in the world, the largest healthcare company, UnitedHealth Group, the largest insurance company in the world in Allianz, the largest B2B credit card payment company in the world in Corpe.

1:43So we've been very fortunate to work with these companies. So what do we do for them? We help them support their customers in a more efficient way by supporting their customer support reps and their end customers to self-solve and troubleshoot any customer issues that they have. So in a nutshell, Zinktree is a customer support automation platform that helps our large, complex, compliant businesses support their end customers in a successful manner. Yeah, and I think all of us can identify with experiences that have been subpar, right? You contact your insurance company or your health insurance, you log into their portal, you pull up the app, and it's just confusing, it's a mess.

2:32that has potentially significant impact on client retention, customer retention, certainly customer satisfaction, which then leads to word of mouth. Can you maybe just give a little bit of a mini TED Talk of why CX is like so critical for companies to pay attention to? Yeah, that's the, you know, unfortunately, the cool part of a job, because anytime I go speak somewhere, I always say, who's had a poor customer experience recently? Everyone raises their hands. Okay. And wherever I give a talk in, even in the CX space, in the customer experience space, because, you know, like you just said, we've all experienced it.

3:13You know, you make a phone, you know, you buy a product or a service, you have a negative experience. So what do you do? You make a phone call to that customer support line, or you go on that company's website, try to find the right information and their knowledge base, or you try to do a chat and all of that doesn't resolve your issue. So it leaves you more frustrated as a customer. So even today with billions of dollars that have been spent in this space to address this issue, the tide hasn't turned. When you look at the data, almost 85 % to 90 % of people who have experience calling into a customer support line or interacting with the chatbot have a subpar experience.

3:55So why is that? We have a very strong view on it because these customers that I called out earlier, United Health Group, Allianz, Corpe, guess what? They came to us. We didn't go to them. They came and found us. So why is that? Because what we feel is happening in the customer support space is the whole industry has been built around tickets. Okay? What is a ticket? In our view, a ticket is a failure. A ticket is created when you as a customer, Josh, have an issue and that issue cannot be resolved. Okay. You just bought a vacuum cleaner and your vacuum cleaner is not working. Okay. So what do you do?

4:37You call the support line. They can't resolve your issue. So what do they do? They create a ticket and they say, hey, here's Josh with the vacuum cleaner. Here's a ticket. Let's try to help them resolve this issue. And the ticket is created, is maintained. It gets passed around. You know, different people engage with it and eventually they resolve it. Okay. That whole experience is subpar for you. But that is how the technology infrastructure is set up for customer support. Yeah. Right. And it's been great for a lot of people. And yes, it has, you know, helped to improve customer experience. However, we believe strongly that, yeah, there are great companies that have been built around tickets.

5:21Okay. They've raised billions of dollars. They've generated billions of dollars of revenue. They've had a great run. We believe the future is, they've had a great run, but the future is a ticketless world. You don't have to create a ticket. When Josh has an issue with his vacuum cleaner, resolve it right there instantaneously. Don't build an infrastructure to create a ticket, monitor a ticket, manage a ticket. You have an issue, instantaneously resolve it, and that's what Zinktree is doing. Yeah. You don't just, I don't want to get too distracted on this, but you're using the terminology ticket and my brain is like, why do we even call it tickets?

5:56What a weird term. I don't know where we came up with that. That's great. I need to dig in and look at that history. I don't know who came up with that. It's great. It's made a ton of, you know, given a lot of people jobs, it's created a ton of, you know, value for investors, for business owners, all around the ticket. But, you know, we think in the next decades that's worked, but it hasn't moved the needle in customer experience. But we do believe in the next 30 years, some of the biggest companies in the world and customer support will be companies like Zinc Tree that are creating a ticketless world, a keyboardless world, where you don't have to type into a keyboard to resolve an issue.

6:33You just speak and say, hey, my vacuum cleaner is not working. It starts working on resolving that issue right away. Yeah. You know, I can tell you that as someone who I would probably consider myself in the top 0.001 % of AI users. Like I really search for and look for opportunities just simply because I've just developed this habit. I'm probably using ChatGPT a good 30 to 60 minutes a day on different things. I mean, I'm having an issue with my cool salt chlorinator, for example. So instead of doing a Google search, I'm having a conversation with ChatGPT to kind of narrow this down and fix it so that I can get resolution today.

7:16And so obviously, as I'm looking at Zingtree, you are incredibly AI enabled. Share with me a little bit more about where we're going and kind of illustrate this world a bit better for kind of how good, how much more we can improve this. Absolutely. So I'll give you two points of view. One is the AI influence in our industry. It's here. It's here to stay. It's going to move the needle tremendously for better customer experience. So you're seeing all of that. You engaging with GPT shows that it's happening. It's happening, and it's going to provide better experience. The other point of view I want to say is from our customers.

8:04And our customers that we work with are large enterprise companies that have what we call the three C's and the D. A ton of complexity, a ton of compliance requirements, constantly changing business environment, and a ton of data. right so who has this kinds of you know i i checklist in an organization healthcare companies insurance companies financial services companies maybe large you know consumer product companies because they have a ton of products and ton of skews like sony is a customer of zinc tree right so when you run into these types of businesses who have been here for decades and they will continue being here for the next multiple decades.

8:48They've got a ton of data, a ton of knowledge, a ton of systems. A lot of these companies 10 years ago used to have eight to 10 major systems. Now they have over 400 major systems that they use to run their businesses. So what happens there? Of course, they want to implement AI because they see the power of AI. It comes top down from the executives and their board. But to implement AI, they need to go through a crawl, walk, run approach. We're seeing that happen with UnitedHealth Group, with Allianz, with Sony, with Corpe, you know, with Experian, some of the largest companies in the world, most complex businesses in the world.

9:27And yes, we've got great AI solutions. Unfortunately, when they come to us, they don't say, hey, I want to get your AI right away. We have a vision to do AI. But they actually come to us and say, hey, we need to build the right foundation layer. Okay. We need to build the right foundation layer and able to take all my data, all my knowledge and put it into a solution like Zinktree, where I know the data is going to be clean. It's approved. It's compliant. It follows my company brand policy. It has the right card rails. And guess what? Once I do that, then I'm able to set myself up, whether it's through Zinktree AI or any other AI out there, to then put it on top of Zinktree to be able to successfully implement AI at a large scale for my complex, large enterprise organization.

10:18We're seeing that happen. It could be a very different approach for a mid-market company, for an SMB. That whole way of implementing AI could be night and day, but this is how you implement AI successfully for large, complex enterprise organizations. And we're seeing that. So yes, it is going to change even for large enterprise companies, but they have to. We've been fortunate because we've been doing this for a long time, where they need to build the right foundation layer, the right AI orchestration layer to allow them to then successfully implement whatever AI solutions they want on top of Zinc Tree.

10:56Because guess what? For AI to work well for these large companies, what do you need? You need clean data. You need the right workflows, because if you have those, then you can use those right workflows to accurately program the LLM models to give the best solution and answers to resolve your issues. So you need that foundation layer, and that's what we're seeing even before they implement AI. You know, it's really interesting. I'm curious about your views or research on consumer sentiment, because I think that currently there's a lot of sentiment out there that, oh, no, I don't want AI. I want a human.

11:38And I can't tell you how many customer support stories I might read on Reddit or whatever. And people are like, what's the fastest way to just get to a human? And I think a lot of that is just because the phone trees have been very cumbersome and confusing. And I think that the experience is so poor. So I really think there is a tremendous opportunity if we can get this done well. Like, for example, like I'm looking at your website right now and think about this, like outbound, you know, outbound call, you know, processes, customer, of course, customer support, but medical scheduling, scheduling like that.

12:18This should be a very, very simple thing. But unfortunately, I think, again, we've all had experiences that are like, why is this so confusing and cumbersome? All I want is to do X. And so my belief is that a lot of the maybe skepticism around automation AI is just simply because we haven't yet had that amazing experience. But I think you're seeing a lot more of your Gen Zs and your millennials who want that. That's what they're asking for. They're ordering Taco Bell on their app, right? And they don't need to deal with people. Like just, it's easier once you know what you're doing, right? If you can give them that great experience, consumers will choose this.

13:03Yeah, you're 100 % right. But, you know, my view on that is a little bit different. It's, you're right. When I call, I mean, I'm in the space. What do I do? Zero, zero, zero, zero, zero. Right? We all do that. Why? I don't even think about it. We are trained to know that this customer support doesn't work. We've been trained to know that chatbot is a dead end. Over the years, you know, it's been happening. So we don't even think about it. So it's going to be a huge, I think, change management. You know, the behavioral change is going to be, you know, the biggest barrier, not AI. Because we as humans, and as you've had experience with customer support over the many decades we've been alive, has been subpar.

13:48So we say, hey, no AI, no automation, no bot, zero, zero, zero, give me to a human. I do that without even thinking. So we've been programmed. But when you look at the data more closely, what do consumers really want? They want the issues to be resolved instantaneously. That's what they would like. Whether you do it through a chatbot, you do it through an automation layer, whether you do it with, you know, AI agent assist, you know, AI agent that does the work for you, you know, or a human. Okay. And there are different use cases where different types of these solutions is the right fit. I, you know, think about, hey, you have, you know, unfortunately, you know, you know, I have, you know, a debt of a hundred thousand dollars.

14:39I can't pay my mortgage. I can't pay my kids schools. I can't buy, you know, lunch and I'm trying to consolidate my debt and I'm calling into, you know, one of these debt programs. I don't want to talk to a bot. I want to talk to a human who can empathize with me. Okay. Or I'm going through cancer and, you know, I got to set up my cancer schedule, you know, schedule, you know, treatment for the next six weeks. I need to schedule all that in. And I want to talk to someone, you know, a human who can empathize with me and say, hey, let me help you. Here's what you need to do for each of these treatment.

15:10Here's the aftermath. Let's support you through that. So there are some use cases where humans are the best people in the front line to support that customer. And there are some cases where you don't need a human. You can have a bot. You can have an AI get that situation done instantaneously. Hey, I'm trying to order a pizza. I just want to click or I got my pizza and it's cold and I want a refund. I just want to click and have that issue resolved instantaneously. So I think that's the biggest challenge for the industry in my view, is how do you get the humans who have been trained by subpar experience and they just want to click zero, zero, zero every time, right?

15:51How do you get them to see how this can actually work in a way that they really want, which they want at the end of the day is resolve the issue instantaneously as quickly as possible, as seamless as possible. The technology is there. However, there are bad actors that keep bringing that down from time to time because they say it's there and it doesn't resolve it. So you run into these dead ends. But how do you, over the course of time, get the humans to trust and believe and make that change management where they don't call and just press zero? They don't even call. They just send a voice message where it instantaneously fixes their issue.

16:29So that, you know, I think that's the biggest hurdle that the industry faces. And I think we're starting to tackle that. But it's going to take... Yeah. You know, on your website, zingtree.com, to our friend that's listening, you need to look at some of these case studies. It's remarkable when we think of like agent onboarding time and the potential cost savings. But again, most importantly, It allows us to better serve our customers, to truly do what we want to do without a lot of the existing frictions that have taken place, certainly on the customer service side of things. But, Juwan, to our friend that's listening, obviously, my recommendation would be that if they're in marketer, they may be able to solve some major problems.

17:20problems thanks to Zingtree. You've worked with companies like Sleep Number, Groupon, Experian, Shark Ninja, Dropbox, and a lot of other ones. Say someone has researched you and they've come upon this podcast, they've listened to our conversation. What would you recommend they do next? And if you could, in your answer to kind of address who Zingtree is appropriate for. Yeah. So, you know, in general, forget Zinktree, right? There's a lot of, these people who are in customer service really have an empathy to provide great service to, you know, customers, whether they're the leaders in customer service or even, you know, entry-level call center people.

17:59Because you need to have that kind of mindset and skin to get into the game. You're not getting into customer service like, hey, I want to screw people. You genuinely want to help them, right? That's what I've learned being at the ground level and talking to great leaders in this space. So I would encourage every one of them to push the needle harder on solution providers like Zinktree. Push Zinktree hard. Push all the other vendors in the space hard to really see under the hood what is real, what can they do, what can they execute on now, what's their vision for the future, and hold them accountable.

18:32I think that is really critical because when you do that with your vendors, guess who benefits? Your end customers. You're not going to screw your end customers. You're not going to have them think about, hey, I just need to press zero every time. So that is my ask to the people in this industry to hold people like Zinktree, companies like Zinktree to the fire, right? What do you do? And then guess what? From there, you will find the right solution that's the fit for your organization. Not every solution is the right fit for every organization. So in that same manner for Zinc3, the right customers for us are companies that have a ton of complexity, compliance requirements is critical, costly changing business environment, and a ton of data.

19:17And they tend to be in healthcare, insurance, financial services. And that's where, you know, we make the most impact. So they could be customers that are in consumer goods. We can still make an impact. But where we make the biggest impact for our customers are in healthcare, you know, health and wellness, insurance, financial services. Yeah. So on Zingtree.com, there's a button where it says request demo. And then just really quick, because I know we only have a couple more minutes left. What happens from this point forward? So when they have a demo, is onboarding something that takes a long time?

19:58Or how is that process? The implementation of Zinktree is fairly quick. That's one of the reasons why we win. You don't have to implement a solution like Zinktree for 6 to 12 months and spend all this money as part of the implementation. Then wait to get the ROI 12 months from now. we can implement Zinktree today. We can build a workflow today for our complex businesses and show them what kind of value they can get immediately. So that's something that has given us the chance to be competitive in this space, especially with customers who have been burnt before. They come in and say, hey, I've tried this AI solution.

20:37I spent all this money. I just need something that works and gives me an impact, gives me an ROI, gives me a win so I can look like a champion within my organization, right? So that's been a strength of ours. And that's served as well. Yeah, when people come in and request a demo, they talk to some of our experts, you know, and these are folks that have a ton of experience in the customer support space. It's a very consultative approach. We know a lot, but we don't know it all. So I think the number one thing that we do is to learn about the people that want to engage with us. You know, what are you trying to solve?

21:12Because it's got to be a mutual win-win because you may come in and think Zinktree is the right solution. But as we learn about your business, we may say, you know what, it's not the right fit. Because, yes, we could get a small term win. We could get you as a customer. We can make some money now. But I always tell my people in my company, you don't celebrate when you sign a deal. You celebrate when you make an impact for your customer. That's when you celebrate. Right. So can you really make impact for this company? If you cannot make impact, let's not sign them up because that's a short-term win.

21:46We're here for the long-term focus. So if it's the right profile customer, you really think you can genuinely help them and make an impact, then let's get into a partnership. Otherwise, you can tell them, hey, here are five other companies that are out there because we know all the competitors, all the different players. These five companies are better fit for you. And we do that all the time. So to do that, I also get involved in some of these early calls when people come in and request a demo. Sometimes they get to do a demo and I'll jump on the demo and I'll tell them, hey, this is what Zinktree is about.

22:17But let's learn about you. And let me tell you from my assessment, are we a good fit for you or not? And sometimes we are the right fit. It's teed up perfectly. And sometimes we're not. And we tell them that because not only do we want to not waste their time, but it's not good for us to bring a customer and then they leave after six months because they're pissed off. We're a business that is looking to run profitably. And so therefore, we don't have an army of people who can do everything. So we have to be very disciplined and focused on how we execute. Juwan Jaising, you're the CEO at Zingtree.

22:52Thank you for being on the forefront of great customer experiences. Your website is zingtree.com. Juwan, thank you so much for joining us. Josh, thanks for having us.

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