SUMMARY

Neal Topf is the founder of Callzilla, ICMI Top 50 to Follow, and a new podcast host, Fireside Chats without the Fires. He reflected on his tenure in customer service, the difference between customer service and customer experience, and lessons he has learned along the way.

 

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Nick Glimsdahl:
I'm honored today to have Neil Tof, Neil is not only the founder of Callzilla, a top 50 to follow, but he's also recently created a podcast, Fireside Chats Without the Fires. Welcome to the podcast, Neal.

Neal Topf:
Nick, thank you. It's a pleasure to be here with you. I love that you're taking the same role. The podcast is a pleasure to be part of this. Really appreciate it.

Nick Glimsdahl:
Yeah, well, you said you set the bar, so I'm just trying to follow you and learn from your success.

Neal Topf:
Thank you, I appreciate it. Look, this is I think you and I are walking many of the same circles as far as what they call thought leaders and people to look to. And you look at your stuff on LinkedIn. I love the stuff that you post and comment on its original. It's thoughtful, it's considerate, it's not regurgitating. You're you're actually creating and sharing valuable stuff that we all learn from. So it's a thrill to be part of it. Again, thank you for including me.

Nick Glimsdahl:
Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, to kick things off, how long have you been in customer service?

Neal Topf:
So I've taken the path less traveled to customer service. I've been doing this for I think sixteen and a half years now. I am not someone that started in the contact center. I never work the phones. I never had a contact center job. Many people that I've found in our world started in some way, shape, or form doing one of those tasks, working the phones, being involved in the contact center. And that's not me. I can tell you. I'm from the Washington, DC area, suburban Washington, DC, Chevy Chase, Maryland. And I got to tell you, like growing up, I don't know what a call center was. I never heard of that.

Neal Topf:
And if I had it, I would look my nose down on it. I took a business path into this. Long story short, I worked in telecom. I worked for one of the greatest companies in our lifetime, I think, in the US called MCI or the phone company that rivaled and challenge AT&T. So I had a telecom background, long story short, Internet boom and of the 90s beginning to thousands, we have a global crisis. And right before the global crisis hit because of 9/11, I decided to take a different route and went and got an MBA.

Neal Topf:
And I knew coming out of the MBA wanted to do something entrepreneurial, something on my own. The big company experience was amazing. I had this telecom background, but as I came out, there were no telecom jobs. OK, but what there was when I would look for telecom jobs were call center jobs. There were thousands of call center jobs ranging from call center agent or they would call customer service, customer service support, that kind of stuff. But I knew that wasn't me. I was coming out of an MBA. I wanted to do something a little what I thought was more sophisticated anyway. A guy who you probably are familiar with and certainly a thought leader in our space chat with Daniel headhunted me at that point. And I don't know why I never worked in the call center space, but he had an opportunity for me and he hired me to be the VP of Biz Dev for at the time was a very large BPO in Columbia, South America, which I have a separate tie and connection to. Long story short, I told Chad, look, I don't know, I got to learn. I know some telecom stuff like I'm sure like the things I know about eight hundred numbers that apply to this somehow. What a surprise. Right. But it was like a baptism by fire. I jumped right in and got an incredible education on what customer service call center and nearshoring and BPO, this whole world and ecosystem that we all live in now.

Neal Topf:
I got a great education to that. Over a year and a half I learned about things like the ISO quality system. I learned about things like customer experience. I learned a little bit about call center operations, although I never really had a chance to walk the call center floor that had extensively interact with customer agents, listen to call records. I just kind of I would smell it and breathe it a little bit and I'd hear some stories, but I was out there selling and selling the services anyway.

Neal Topf:
Because of the business background, I realized that, wait a minute, there's something here. There's business to be had. And the combination of near shoring and outsourcing at the time, going back now about fifteen, just about fifteen years to two years, June 30th, I co-founded my company called Zillah with a partner.

Neal Topf:
And that was the moment. It was the aha moment. It wasn't exactly one quick moment. There was a kind of genesis over.

Neal Topf:
It was a genesis over a period of time because we felt the opportunities, we knew the opportunities were there. Fast forward, we formed the company shoestring budget, bootstrapped it, and we said, let's see if we can get a client, got a client and we just destroy the client. I'm going I got to tell you, we were thankful the client didn't sue us. We didn't care job.

Neal Topf:
And it's one of the stories that we just had no idea what we're doing. We thought we went into it. I think we got this is how to do it. In fact, we're going to operate. And it just kind of fell apart. We obviously had to regroup and we realized a ton of different things. If you don't own and operate the decisions around the people who hire, who to fire, how to train them, what to train them on the systems, how to get calls from one place to another, how to show the reporting, who's going to walk the floor and supervise it? We didn't have full control over those things for a number of different reasons. The business model was, wait a minute, we've got to invest some more money, put more effort and operational focus on this. And I got to tell you, we've been doing it for the last 15 years.

Neal Topf:
We've been iterating my partner as a technology guy, brilliant business mind, but he's never worked at a call center for either he's pickier than I am and would have looked his nose down on walking on the call center and looking in the closet as much or more than I would have if. But we've learned. We've iterated, we've adjusted. We've paid attention to the thought leaders in this world. I mean, forums like ICMI have been incredible, learning or learning experiences, SOCAP sharing the stuff on LinkedIn that you and I, you and I share stuff. Those I learned from everybody. And like I said, 15 years is the amalgamation of all those experiences and contacts and connections. And here we are.

Nick Glimsdahl:
Wow, what a story, man. Yeah. So what do you know now that you wish you knew when you started out?

Neal Topf:
Lots of things, a lot of these, of course, lots of things, there's no call center, easy button, there's no button, you press that everything's resolved. Every single challenge in the contact center, from people selection to hiring, to people management, those have their own unique processes and details. And you got to have people that are experts in each one of those areas, the same operations, people that are really like the operation. The operation is the most tedious, toughest thing when you're trying to manage and balance technology, people's performance, customer expectations, client expectations if you're a vendor, et cetera, et cetera.

Neal Topf:
There's no easy button as much as I thought it was. So our first client we were selling was a sales program and I thought I would do this. Come on, guys, start selling.

Neal Topf:
What do you mean you're not selling what the conversion percentage is supposed to be this, not this.

Neal Topf:
And I would like to start selling, and I realize, no, it's not. It's how you'll clap your hands. You'll press a button. There's no training. There's a vision, there's the definition, there are mission statements. There are all types of things that you have to be able to put into place and define, by the way. And to take the credit to this concept to Jeff, Twister was always said, you must define everything you do in the context. And I didn't understand that the A.I. I would have to define it. I'm going to tell these people what to do. They just know what to do wrong. You have to get them to you have to define and share the mission and communicate it. And there's just no easy. But you have to be very deliberate and intentional in everything you do in the contact center.

Nick Glimsdahl:
So you're saying that you can't just have a have a mission statement and then kind of set it and forget it? Right.

Neal Topf:
That's not to tell you. Fifteen years that I've been doing that, I said I've said mission statements before and shared it and hit send on the emails.

Neal Topf:
All right, guys here's the mission statement. And then when it comes back a month later and I point to the mission, Steve said, wait a minute, but our performance doesn't reflect the mission statement or the problems that the client is complaining about. Don't reflect the mission statement. No, it's not like that. And I know you said it facetiously, but that's how I originally came into this thinking. I'm going to just put it in the email. I'll think about it. It won't really matter that much. What does it mean? That mission statement? Who cares?

Neal Topf:
It matters, man. It really matters. You've got to have people really marching to the beat of that mission statement. Not an easy task to get at our stage of the game. Now, fortunately, you know, several hundred, hundreds of people, but even your management team, you got people going in different directions. If you don't corral them within the mission statement and have them understand and act accordingly, it's never going to work.

Nick Glimsdahl:
Yeah, I think this is a good time to pivot on. From your perspective, what is the difference between customer service and customer experience?

Neal Topf:
So coming from the BPO world, we are largely responsible for customer service, but by the time a call or chat or email gets to us.

Neal Topf:
There's a whole set of other interactions and activities and experiences that have taken place, what happened in the buying experience before a transaction actually took place between a customer and brand, all those touchpoints, whether it was at retail, whether it was online, whether it was through Amazon, there's a trillion different possibilities and iterations of what happened before the transaction took place once a transaction took place. Also, what happened? Did someone go to a store to try to return something? Did they have a question that wasn't answered? Did they go to the website? Did they call into the contact center? Do they not want to call and want to chat like that whole series of of of activities and touchpoints in the ecosystem? That's the customer experience. I also like to use the word journey. What was the journey? How did the person before they were a customer get to the brand? What was that like? What happened once they became a customer and transacted and once they become a customer, what has happened come into post-sales, world communication channels, a number of interactions where they resolve but not resolve.

Neal Topf:
And then you have a whole separate thing around customer lifetime value. But it's certainly I think it's an ecosystem. And those of us in the BPO or call center contacts in the world, we manage the first part of customer service. But the brand is responsible for the rest of the ecosystem. And that ecosystem is called, in my opinion, customer experience.

Neal Topf:
Yeah, absolutely. I think I heard of it inside that customer journey is what are the what are your customers thinking, feeling, saying and doing? And if you go through that process, that contact center is significant inside that customer experience, but it's only a piece of the pie. But it is a is important piece of the pie.

Neal Topf:
Yeah, exactly. So if you look at voice of customer metrics or things like that or net promoter score or customer effort score or even, is it necessarily bossy.

Neal Topf:
But but but resolution the contact center can control a certain segment of those and in some cases, it can control all of it, but in many cases, it can't. There are processes, there are other elements and groups that are part of the organization, the supply chain operations and general operations in a company, things that the contact center doesn't even come into contact with or know about or influence or have. Have a seat at the table of discussions and decision making that definitely affect customer experience. So I've always made sure that the clients that we serve and the people understand, look, we can only control certain things, what we can control. We're going to try to do our best to actually influence those and provide outstanding performance of high quality and all those things like that. We just have to understand the context that can't be held responsible because the shipment didn't get out the door right back in that kind of stuff.

Neal Topf:
The whole set of key things, systems and accesses and and things that the contact center usually doesn't control or influence either those. And it's a whole nother ball of wax when you talk about customer experience. But again, the point being, I think that the contact centers can only control so much and only be held accountable for so much right now.

Nick Glimsdahl:
That's a great point when it comes to the contact center. Know, I think somebody said I think it was real trauma from from the CEO Five9. He said the contact center has innovated more in the last five years than it has in the last twenty five years. What are you paying attention to in the next one to two years on the innovation side?

Neal Topf:
So I think when you and I first started talking about kind of thoughts about for today, one of the questions, I think, as you wrote it was what are you looking at for the next 12 to twenty four months? And before these last two years, I think I would have said we could have a five-year plan and a ten-year plan. I don't think you can do that. And it was a five-year plan or ten-year plan that it's impossible to predict what tools and technologies we're going to have at our disposal. I think you look at up to two years.

Neal Topf:
So in our world, we have traditionally been a light agent, only BPO with brick and mortar. Obviously, because of COVID, the whole brick and mortar world has been challenged.

Neal Topf:
We are now working almost exclusively from home. So we have the challenge to figure out what our next site plan looks like, meaning we have no site. We have some sites. How many sites, what are the sites going to look like, look like? Are they going to be as close in terms of space as they had always been? Are we going to be done we have to build out some additional space because of what's going on in health conditions and ergonomic conditions, all those things? So space is certainly one of them we're going to have to pay attention to and where the work will be done.

Neal Topf:
But beyond that is in my agent BPO, one would have thought we'd leave aging BPO.

Neal Topf:
You get to worry about the agents in hiring and hiring and training agents. Well, yeah, I mean all that stuff. Absolutely. But I got to tell you, I'm kind of tired. Training and hiring and firing people like I think that's a very difficult end game and by the way, the cost of this stuff just continues to go up. People get more and more expensive, benefits get more expensive. It costs more and more to train them. Wage inflation, at least before COVID salaries were increasing, increasing in most of our labor markets. It's a very hard treadmill to keep upon. We have to look at automation. Automation is the key. And there are a lot of agent-centric people used to always say, well, what do you mean automation? I mean, you put yourself out of business. No, of course not. Now we're bracing it. We need to be able to offer automation tools and understand where and when to offer them how to combine them with a live agent or the other way around, how to offer and leave first with the automation and then introduce livington as a part of the automation tool when necessary.

Neal Topf:
It's an ecosystem. I think there are times and places for each, and they have to be looked at on individual case basis bases. And that's what we're trying to figure out in the next 12 to 24 months.

Neal Topf:
I'll say this to close this particular point off is that in our company at the board level, we said we need to adopt a revenue plan, that a certain percentage of revenues in this current year are one, two and three of the next three years of what we think how we're going to transfer and transition from livington only. To automation and what percentage of our overall revenue mix should live, but should automation have and it will be growing. So we are very much proactively and energetically pursuing the opportunities run by my agent, getting their hands on the technology. We have some tools, but those tools are just going to get better and better and probably cheaper. So it's a big thing at all on automation for me.

Neal Topf:
I couldn't agree more when it comes to the customer. They want to find their solution to their problem as quickly as possible with the least amount of effort. And if automation is it, then it's it. Right. If you can find a way to bring them to that last person that they spoke to around accounts payable. And you're saying, hey, Joe, it's great to talk to you again, how's it going? And you didn't need somebody to go through that process and say, hey, this is X, Y, Z company, how can I help you? And then you have to explain your system again. And it goes straight to Joe. It's a better experience. Right. And it's both a better experience for the employee, but it's also a better experience for the customer.

Neal Topf:
Absolutely. Nobody wants to wait around any more. The days of making a customer wait five minutes, 10 minutes, whatever like that. I think it's a terribly selfish thing that we do. We have to offer if we're not offering automation or bots of some sort for the other team to call them back, call back strategy or, you know, someone chats in and strategies available, you'll take the number and say, well, we'll contact you back shortly. What the old days, for example, emails you service levels of twenty-four to forty-eight hours. What customer wants to wait around for that anymore. They're going to run it and compete right now. The way the world works, if there are very few monopolies left and the customers turn, they're anxious. They're, they're not, they're impatient and the world is too competitive to any other competitive brands out there. So yeah, I agree. Maybe it's not possible to automate everything, but if you could cut parts of it out, it get right to the heart of the matter and skip processes and get by the time the contact, the call, the email, the chat, whatever it is, gets to the live agent.

Neal Topf:
All that stuff has already been hopefully kind of chewed up and digested a bit so that by the time we get to the agent's hands, they know what they have to do. That's the dream of automation. And we're we're all trying to get right.

Nick Glimsdahl:
Yeah. I think where it starts is automating the routine. And if you can automate that process that you don't have to do or the or the context generations don't enjoy doing, that's the best place to start. And you can hopefully save money on that process, too. But one question that really intrigues me is what book or person has influenced you the most, let's say in the last year or so?

Neal Topf:
I would do it in a couple of different things. I think in our particular world of customer care, I'm reading this book right now. I'm not quite done yet if you can, while you can see it. But I'll read it for those that aren't don't have the video on, ignore your customers. And they'll go away by Michael Sullivan. I'm a big fan of Michael's, I think Michael's a pretty cool guy, smart guy, practical. I love that about Michael's stuff. It's practical. It gives examples. It's real life. It's not theoretical and ethereal and stuff in the cloud. It's it's grounded that I would think the customer care world in the larger world. There's an author named Thomas Friedman and his book is, I think, hopefully of the title, something about thank you for being late, I think is what it's called. It just kind of talks about not necessarily the business world, but the world as we are living in it today and how the business world and expectations have changed and the way people interact and communicate. It's a really good read. I think there are some lessons by Thomas Friedman writes books every year to three years maybe. And so he's due for another book. But I love his stuff. And he's a he's someone I look to for kind of inspiration. We talk about the future in any kind of where things are going. I think he's a fun one. And any of I forget his name, I just forgot to say one second. The outliers.

Neal Topf:
Did it come to you in a second anyway? His stuff is really great and you'll know exactly what I'm talking about in a second. All sort of outliers. Malcolm Gladwell. Exactly. Malcolm Gladwell, thank you. Had a senior moment for a second. Sorry about that. I love his stuff.

Neal Topf:
And outliers is is I don't know, is it 10, 15 years old now? But like the lessons of outliers, there's a reason for everything. Nothing happens just because of luck. There's usually an explanation. Think I love that. That that message, I think resonates as we continue to go and do all the stuff that we do. There's always a reason stuff happens. No one is just damn lucky, unfortunately.

Nick Glimsdahl:
Absolutely. So with the last question that I have is, you know, it's not really a question. It's more of a challenge to you and is what message would you like to leave the audience around customer service in a customer experience? You know, there's a lot of noise out there. And what knowledge can you share with with with the audience?

Neal Topf:
So on the customer care side, I like to tell our team members or frontline employees this. Shut up and listen, listen. Our role as providers of customer care is to listen, it's to let the customer express themselves, usually, the customer will share everything they need to share in the first portion of the conversation. We'll know how they feel. They're upset or angry. They're happy or pissed off or whatever and listen and we can listen. Usually, that helps to disengage them and calm them down and give us a sense of what we need to do to fix their problem. What they're really looking at. Some people in the mental health field say that it's never about the thing. Listen to them. It's never about. The delivery that never got there. What's going to make them happy as you listen to them, let them get that bad energy out? And then I'll come down and then you provide a solution, but you can only provide a solution if you're listening, that this lesson applies in sales, it applies in customer care, I think applies leadership.

Neal Topf:
It applies in H.R. and operations. It applies across the board. I would.

Neal Topf:
I would I would say this shut up and listen, on the flip side, if you're a customer. Know that the person on the other side of the Shatt.

Neal Topf:
Or phone or email.

Neal Topf:
It's a person they have feelings, they have families, they are not perfect, the brands they work for not perfect, the customer care platforms that they're using are not perfect. Cut him some slack. A customer care person is not out to screw you, the customer care person is not out to hurt you or make your life miserable. A customer care person wants to help. Let them help you, but don't treat them like crap. I think that's that's a little humanity understanding patients. And hopefully, these lessons that we learned COVID will apply once we start to get out of code. A little more humanity, decency patients, less volume, less keyboard strength. I think it would be that.

Nick Glimsdahl:
That's awesome, that's a great, great nugget and a great one to finalize this one out. Thanks for your time, Neal. Where can people and listeners find you?

Neal Topf:
I appreciate I love to interact with people, so I'm pretty active on Twitter at Neil Tof and I'm on LinkedIn. On Facebook. Facebook isn't the best place for business stuff to get a hold of me. But if you want to get me on Facebook, that's fine. And but certainly, LinkedIn and Twitter, if you're a texter, why not? I'm gonna give you my mobile number seven eight six two five two five six two zero seven eight six two five six two zero. Texting or WhatsApp, by the way. Talk about communication channels for our world. That's coming up. What's app? That's an interesting one. Nick, I really appreciate this is sensational. I wish you the best of luck in your podcast work. You're doing great things. You're content that you're putting up is amazing. You're a thought leader and your community is blessed to have you to listen to you and watch you and hear you. Thank you so much.

Nick Glimsdahl:
That's awesome. Thanks again, Neal. Take care. Thanks.

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SHOW NOTES

Neal Topf is the founder of Callzilla, ICMI Top 50 to Follow, and a new podcast host, Fireside Chats without the Fires. He reflected on his tenure in customer service, the difference between customer service and customer experience, and lessons he has learned along the way. He reflected on his tenure in customer service, the difference between customer service and customer experience, and lessons he has learned along the way.

The book that has influenced Neal the most in the past year:

Micah Solomon: Ignore your customers and they’ll go away!

Jeff Toister, CPLP, PHR “You must define everything you do in the contact center”.

WHAT IS PRESS 1 FOR NICK?

Nick Glimsdahl is a Director of Contact Center Solutions at VDS. On this podcast, Nick interviews customer service and customer experience leaders to talk about their stories, best practices, and lessons they have learned along the way.

 

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