THE THOUGHTFUL ENTREPRENEUR PODCAST
Implementing AI in Customer Support
In a recent podcast episode, Josh, the host, engaged in an enlightening conversation with Joanne, the CEO of Zingtree. They explored the intricacies of customer support, the role of AI in enhancing customer experiences, and Zingtree's unique approach to ensuring seamless and efficient support for large, complex, and compliant businesses. This blog post breaks down the key insights from their discussion, offering actionable advice and expert recommendations for businesses looking to improve their customer support systems.
Joanne emphasized the critical role of customer experience (CX) in business success, noting that poor customer experiences can lead to significant negative impacts such as reduced client retention and lower customer satisfaction. Despite substantial investments in the customer support space, many companies still struggle to provide satisfactory experiences. Joanne highlighted that 85-90% of people report subpar experiences when interacting with customer support lines or chatbots, pointing out that traditional ticket-based systems often lead to prolonged and frustrating processes for customers.
Zingtree aims to revolutionize customer support by eliminating the need for tickets, envisioning a future where issues are resolved instantaneously. Joanne shared insights into how AI can be leveraged to provide immediate solutions to customer issues, reducing the need for human intervention and enhancing efficiency. For large, complex enterprises, implementing AI requires a solid foundation, including data cleanliness, workflow optimization, and a phased approach to AI integration. Zingtree's consultative approach ensures they understand the specific goals and pain points of each business, fostering long-term partnerships and providing tailored solutions.
About Juan Jaysingh:
Juan Jaysingh is President and CEO at Zingtree, leading the company’s mission to transform complex processes into clear actions for businesses around the globe. Since becoming CEO in January 2020, Juan has focused on scaling and expanding Zingtree as a profitable, B2B SaaS organization working with over 700 customers worldwide.
Juan’s years of experience in tech entrepreneurship include his time at Universal Tennis, the sports tech startup behind UTR Powered by Oracle. Juan led the GTM strategy and rollout of UTR’s community platform to elite clubs and tennis academies worldwide. Juan also founded ZeeMee, a social media community platform for high school students transitioning to college. Under his leadership, ZeeMee was named to the inaugural CNBC Upstart 25 in 2017. Before ZeeMee, Juan held various technology consulting roles.
An accomplished tennis player, Juan immigrated to the United States alone at the age of 14. A chance encounter landed him full tennis scholarships to study and compete at Georgetown Prep and then at American University. Juan says passion and integrity drive his work ethic. As he likes to say, “if it’s too easy, it’s probably not worth it.” Juan and his family reside in Palo Alto, California.
About Zingtree:
Zingtree is the AI enabled CX automation platform that helps B2C enterprises automate actions, self-service and agent effectiveness.
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Links Mentioned in this Episode:
Want to learn more? Check out Zingtree website at https://zingtree.com/
Check out Zingtree on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/zingtree
Check out Zingtree on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ZingtreeForBusiness/
Check out Juan Jaysingh on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/juanjaysingh
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Transcript
Speaker 1 (00:00:05) - Hey there, thoughtful listener. Are you looking for introductions to partners, investors, influencers and clients? Well, I've had private conversations with over 2000 leaders asking them where their best business comes from. I've got a free video you can watch with no opt in required, where I'll share the exact steps necessary to be 100% inbound in your industry over the next 6 to 8 months, with no spam, no ads, and no sales. What I teach has worked for me for over 15 years and has helped me create eight figures in revenue for my own companies. Just head to up my influence comm and watch my free class on how to create endless high ticket sales appointments. Also, don't forget the thoughtful entrepreneur is always looking for great guests. Go to up my influence. Com and click on podcast. I'd love to have you. With us right now, it's Joanne. Jason. Joanne, you are the CEO of Zing Tree. You're on the web at Zing tree.com. Joanne, thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 2 (00:01:18) - Josh. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (00:01:19) - Well please give us an overview of of what Zing Tree is. certainly you've really had the opportunity to work with some amazing companies and improving customer experiences out there.
Speaker 2 (00:01:31) - Yeah, we've been fortunate to work with some of the largest companies in the world, the largest healthcare company in UnitedHealth Group, the largest insurance company in the world, and Allianz, the largest B2B credit card payment company in the world. And corp. So so we've been very fortunate to work with these companies. So what do we do for them? We help them help them support their customers in a more efficient way by supporting their customer support reps and their end customers to solve, solve and troubleshoot any customer issues that they have. So in a nutshell, zing three is a customer support automation platform that helps, our large, complex, compliant businesses, support their end customers in a, you know, successful manner.
Speaker 1 (00:02:17) - 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.
Speaker 1 (00:02:31) - It's a mess. that 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? Oh, I see X is like so critical for companies to pay attention to.
Speaker 2 (00:02:54) - Yeah, that's the you know, unfortunately the cool part of our job because anytime I go speak somewhere, I always say who's had a poor customer experience recently. Everyone raises their hands. Okay. And whenever I give a talk in, even in the space, in the customer experience space, because, you know, like you just said, we've all experienced it. You 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, you know, customer support line or you go on that company's website, try to find the right information in the knowledge base, or you try to do a chat and all of that, you know, doesn't resolve your issue.
Speaker 2 (00:03:32) - 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. Yeah. Okay. So why is that? we have a very strong view on it, because these customers that I called out earlier, UnitedHealth Group, health Group, Alliance Corp, 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? And 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.
Speaker 2 (00:04:36) - Okay, so what do you do? You call the support line. They can resolve your issues. 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 him resolve this issue. And the ticket is created. It's 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 it's 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's a great companies that have been built around tickets, okay. 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 is why you don't have to create a ticket.
Speaker 2 (00:05:35) - When Josh has an issue with this vacuum cleaner, resolve it right there instantaneously. Don't build an infrastructure to create a ticket monitor ticket. Manage a ticket. You have an issue instantaneously resolve it. And that's what he's doing.
Speaker 1 (00:05:49) - Yeah. You know, I just I don't want to get too distracted on this, but you're using the terminology ticket in my brain is like, why do we even call it tickets? What a weird term. I don't know where we came up with.
Speaker 2 (00:05:59) - Oh, that's a 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 it's it's it's made a ton of, you know, it's people, you know, given a lot of people's jobs is created a ton of, you know, value for investors, for business owners or 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 sanctuary that are creating a ticketless world, a keyboard less world where you don't have to type into a keyboard to resolve an issue.
Speaker 2 (00:06:33) - You just speak and say, hey, my vacuum cleaner is now working. It starts working on resolving that issue right away.
Speaker 1 (00:06:39) - Yeah. you know, I can tell you that as someone who I would probably consider myself in the top 0.01% of, I 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 pool salt chlorinated, 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. And so obviously as I'm looking at Zinc Tree, you are incredibly I 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.
Speaker 2 (00:07:35) - Absolutely. So I I'll give you two points of view. One is the, the AI, AI, you know, influence in our industry.
Speaker 2 (00:07:45) - It's here. It's here to stay. It's going to, you know, move the needle tremendously for better customer experience. So you're seeing all of that. You know, you engaging with you know GPT you know shows that you know 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 my from our customers and our customers that we work with are large enterprise companies that have a, you know, will be called 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 kind of, you know, I, I checklist in an organization, health care companies, insurance companies, financial services companies maybe large you know, consumer product companies because they have a ton of products and tons of SKUs 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, you know, you know, multiple decades, right? They've got a ton of data, a ton of knowledge, ton of systems.
Speaker 2 (00:08:51) - I, you know, heck, they you know, a lot of these companies ten years ago used to have 8 to 10 major systems. Now they have over 400 major systems that they use to run their businesses. Right. 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 Alliance, with Sony, with Corp, you know, but Experian, some of the largest companies in the world, most complex businesses in the world. And 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 enabled to take all my data, all my knowledge, and put it into a solution like Zinc Tree, where I know the data is going to be clean, it's approved, it's compliant, it follows my company brand policy.
Speaker 2 (00:09:58) - It has the right guardrails. And guess what? Once I do that, then I'm able to set myself up, whether it's through Zinc tree AI or any other AI out there, to then put it on top of Zinc Tree to be able to successfully implement AI at a large scale for my complex large enterprise organization. Right? Yeah. So we're seeing that happen. It could be very different approach for a mid-market company for an SMB. you know, that that whole AI, you know, way of implementing AI, it could be night and day. But this is how you implement AI successfully for large, complex enterprise organizations. And we're seeing that. So that's my so yes, it is going to, you know, 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. Because guess what? For AI to work well for these large companies, what do you need? You need clean data.
Speaker 2 (00:11:02) - You need the right workflows. Because if you have those, then you can use those right workflows to, you know, AI accurately, you know, program the LM models to give the best, you know, solution and answers to resolve your issues. Okay. Yeah. So so you need that foundation layer. And that's what we're seeing even before they implement AI.
Speaker 1 (00:11:24) - 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, I, I want a human. And that's, you know, and it's I can't tell you like how many customer support stories I might read on Reddit or whatever. And people are like, how do I get 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.
Speaker 1 (00:12:02) - 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, this should be a very, very simple thing. But unfortunately, I think again, we've all had experiences that 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 that's what they're asking for. They're they're ordering Taco Bell on their app. Right. And they don't need to deal with people. They just it's easier once you know what you're doing, right. If you can give them that great experience, consumers will choose this.
Speaker 2 (00:13:03) - Yeah, you're 100% right. But you know, my view on that is a little bit different.
Speaker 2 (00:13:08) - It's you're right when I call I mean I'm I'm in the space. What do I do.
Speaker 3 (00:13:13) - 00000 right, right. We all do that.
Speaker 2 (00:13:18) - Y 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. It's 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 have you had experience with customer support over the many decades we've been alive has been subpar. So we say, hey, no, I know automation no bad 000 give me to a human right, I do that, you know, it's not even thinking, right. So we've been programmed. But when you look at the data more closely, what the consumers really want, they want the issues to be resolved instantaneously.
Speaker 2 (00:14:09) - That's what they would like. Whether you do it through a chatbot or you do to an automation layer, whether you do it with, you know, I, I 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 you know, unfortunately, you know, you know, I have, you know, a debt of $100,000, I 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. Yes. Or I'm going through cancer. And, you know, I got to set up my cancer, you know, 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.
Speaker 2 (00:15:08) - Here's what you need to do for each of these treatment. Here's the aftermath, you know, let's support you through that. Right. 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 to refund. I just want to click and have that issue resolved instantaneously. Right. So I so I think there's 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 000 every time, right? How do you get them to see how this can actually work in a way that they really want with what they want at the end of the day, is resolve the issue instantaneously, as quickly as possible, as seamless as possible.
Speaker 2 (00:16:01) - The technology is there, but I however, there are bad actors that keeps 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. so but how do you, over the course of time, get the humans to trust and believe and make that change, you know, change management where they don't call and just press zero. They don't even call it just. You know, I sent a voice message with, you know, it instantaneously, instantaneously fixes their issue so that, you know, I think that's the biggest, hurdle that the industry faces. And and I think we're starting to tackle that. But it's going to take your.
Speaker 1 (00:16:38) - Yeah. You know, on your website zing. 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 and the potential cost savings. But 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, you know, existing frictions that have taken place, certainly on the customer service side of things.
Speaker 1 (00:17:07) - But John, to our friend that's listening, obviously my recommendation would be that, you know, if they're in market or they're may, you know, they they may be able to solve some major problems. thanks to Zing Tree, 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's entry is appropriate for.
Speaker 2 (00:17:44) - Yeah. So you know in general forget Linktree. Right? I there's a lot of there's these people who on 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, because 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.
Speaker 2 (00:18:05) - 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, you know, encourage every one of them to push the needle harder on solution providers like Zinc Tree, push zinc Tree 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? I 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 zinc tree companies, like zinc tree 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.
Speaker 2 (00:18:59) - Not every solution is the right fit for, you know, every organization. So in that same manner for zinc tree, the right. Customers for us are companies that have a ton of complexity. Compliance requirements is critical. Constantly changing business environment and a ton of data. And 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.
Speaker 4 (00:19:38) - Yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:19:40) - so on sentry. Com there's a button where it says request demo. and then what? 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 like is, you know, is onboarding something that takes a long time or what? How is that process?
Speaker 2 (00:20:00) - The implementation of Linktree is fairly quick.
Speaker 2 (00:20:03) - that's one of the reasons why we when, you know, you don't have to implement a solution like Zinc Tree for 6 to 12 months and spend all this money as part of the implementation, then wait to get the ROI. You know, 12 months from now we can implement zinc tree today, we can build a workflow today, for our complex businesses and show them, you know, what kind of value they can get, you know, immediately. So that's something that, you know, has given us the chance to be competitive in this space, especially with customers who have been burned before. Right. They come in and say, hey, I've tried this AI solution. I spent all this money like, I just need something that works and gives me, 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 that's been a strength of ours. and that's, you know, that's that's served us well. yeah.
Speaker 2 (00:20:52) - When, 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 our about the people that want to engage with us, you know, what are you trying to solve? because it's got to be a mutual, you know, win win because you may come in and things increase 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, you know, this company? Can you make if you cannot make impact, let's not sign them up because that's a short term win.
Speaker 2 (00:21:46) - We're here for the long term like 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 get into 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 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 is this about? But 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 I because, you know, not only do we want to not waste their time, but it's not good for us to bring a customer.
Speaker 2 (00:22:33) - And then they leave after six months because they're pissed off. We, you know, we're we're a, you know, business that is running, you know, looking to run profitably. And so therefore we don't have army of people who can do everything. So we have to be very disciplined and focus on how we execute.
Speaker 1 (00:22:49) - Jason. Jason, you're the CEO at Zing Tree. Thank you for being on the forefront of great customer experiences. Your website is Zing Tree. Com Jason, thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 2 (00:23:02) - Josh, thanks for having us.
Speaker 1 (00:23:09) - Thanks for listening to the Thoughtful Entrepreneur Show. If you are a thoughtful business owner or professional who would like to be on this daily program, please visit up my influence. Com and click on podcast. We believe that every person has a message that can positively impact the world. We love our community who listens and shares our program every day. Together, we are empowering one another as thoughtful leaders. And as I mentioned at the beginning of this program, if you're looking for introductions to partners, investors, influencers, and clients, I have had private conversations with over 2000 leaders asking them where their best business comes from.
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