One on One Interviews

One of the most interesting conversations I had during the Oracle OpenWorld was with Kellie Romack, Vice President of Digital HR and Strategic Planning for Hilton. Hilton was recently named the best place to work in the country, and during OpenWorld Kellie was part of a keynote session sharing why the company is gearing up to roll out Oracle’s new digital assistant technology to its workforce. And I had the pleasure of grabbing a few minutes of her time to ask her a few additional questions. And even though Hilton is a huge organization with locations all over the world, businesses of any size can learn from one of Kellie’s key themes – employees should have access to the same great tech as guests staying at their hotels do in order to create the best experiences they can for guests and themselves

Last month I had the opportunity to check out Twilio ’s annual user conference, Signal. Twilio, a platform that allows developers to build communications-enabled (voice, text, chat, email), shared a few stats that really caught my attention:

• Twilio sends 50 billion emails a month on behalf of their customers

• They send 200 million SMS messages a day

• 53% of WhatsApp messages Twilio customers sent got a reply

With numbers like these it’s safe to say that Twilio has a pretty good pulse on how current and emerging communication channels are shaping customer engagement, experiences and journeys. And I had a chance to speak with Nico Acosta, Twilio’s Director of Product for AI/ML, to dig in a bit on what they’re seeing in terms of how voice, chat and other new channels are impacting the customer journey.

While checking out the Refresh19, I had the opportunity to spend some time with Freshworks’ CEO and founder Girish Mathrubootham. He discusses why he sees himself more as a support guy who became a CEO than as a CEO who does email support, why automation should never compromise customer experience, and why he’s willing to give employees the time and opportunity to “find themselves” and their role in the company. And he also talks about hosting a fireside chat with Shaquille O’Neal during the conference, which to me was the highlight of Refresh.

I recently caught up to Jeremy Epstein, and I mean literally caught up with him, as we recorded a conversation while he was walking in the forest near his home. So this was definitely a different kind of conversation, but a fun one in addition to being extremely informative and insightful. And we cover a lot of ground as Jeremy Epstein touches on the current state of blockchain development, how the number of tech startups has grown roughly 20X over the past couple of years, the industries being impacted the most, and his future prediction of how blockchain will disrupt CRM as we know it today.

Rick McCutcheon, CEO and founder of Full Contact Selling, is an expert on social selling, and is one of only 85 Microsoft Dynamic MVPs in the area of customer engagement.

We discuss how AI and automation in CRM can benefit SMBs. And talk about how Microsoft Dynamics 365, CRM and other pieces of the Microsoft puzzle are coming together to create an integrated productivity/engagement platform.

Earlier this week it was reported that Facebook has been collecting audio from some voice chats on Messenger and paying contractors to listen to and transcribe it. The next day a Reuters report said Microsoft recently updated its privacy policy to let customers know that it had been collecting voice data (from Skype and Cortana) of its users with the help of employees and contractors. And in an email statement to Reuters a Microsoft spokesperson said they realized, “based on questions raised recently, that we could do a better job specifying that humans sometimes review this content.”

That got my CRM Playaz partner Paul Greenberg and I thinking about how all of these voice interactions are being used, what’s happening with this voice data without our knowledge, and what’s the right way for companies to engage customers as they leverage this growing treasure trove of data. And in particular how these two companies handled things this week.

Oracle recently conducted a study of 1,100 US consumers, and last week released a report of the findings called “One Size Doesn’t Fit All.” The report was done in partnership with and features analysis by Jeanne Bliss, a leading customer experience thought leader, author and founder of CustomerBLISS.

This week me and my Watching Amazon show co-host talked a couple of times about Amazon’s latest earnings report. And despite revenue going up 20% year over year, many financial analysts and pundits were disappointed that Bezos and Co. didn’t meet expectations, causing the stock price to take a sizable hit. So John and I dug in and spent a few minutes talking about the whether the short term impact of a huge investment in moving from 2-day free shipping to 1-day free shipping will be worth the short term hit on the latest earnings report.

Then we get into an interesting story of how before Amazon opened up their cashier-less, AI-driven Go stores, Bezos did a walkthrough that changed the direction of the shopping experience. And possibly these two stories together help to illustrate why he’s the wealthiest man in the world, and why we’re just a couple of guys Watching Amazon….

Chris Poelma, President and GM of NCR’s Small Business unit, sat down with me this week to discuss the current crypto landscape, where Bitcoin fits in, and the potential impact Facebook’s Libra could have on the market. And more importantly, he shares his thoughts on what all of this could mean for actually transacting business and not just using crypto for speculative purposes.

I had the pleasure of hosting a fireside chat with two of the C-level executives of the Historical Basketball League (HBL) – CEO and cofounder Ricky Volante, and COO David West. David also played 15 years in the NBA and was a two-time champion with the Golden State Warriors. The chat was all about the HBL, a startup basketball league that is looking to provide college athletes with an alternative pathway to the NBA, is looking to disrupt and the NCAA’s stranglehold by paying athletes, giving them scholarships and allowing them to benefit financially on their own personal brands. It was such an interesting discussion that me and my CRM Playaz partner Paul Greenberg asked Ricky and David to join us for an episode so we can dig in a bit more why they decided to challenge an organization with the power and clout of the NCAA