 Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE, covering Dell Technologies World 2018. Brought to you by Dell EMC and its ecosystem partners. Welcome back to theCUBE. We are live day three of Dell Technologies World. I'm Lisa Martin, back coasting with Dave Vellante, and we're very excited to welcome back to theCUBE, Karen Kintos, Chief Customer Officer at Dell EMC. Hey, welcome back. Thank you. Thank you. It's great to be here with you both. We saw you on stage on Monday, recognizing innovators and trailblazers. I always love, as a marketer, when customers are recognized for their achievements because the voice of the customer is the best brand validation that you can get. Talk to us about the customer awards program and highlight a few of the winners that were on stage. Well, first of all, I agree with you, Lisa, that the best way to talk about your products and your solutions is to do it through the eyes of the customer. So being able to honor eight of our supermost inspiring customers on stage was great. We had hundreds of submissions from our sales teams working with our customers. We really wanted to bring the transformation stories to life. The stories that we were able to tell and the evolution that these customers have done in their industry and their business was remarkable. So you think about Ford and the autonomous car, you think about J&J and the work they're doing around securing their customer data. You think about Vovo and Xenuity and the opportunities that they've had with technology. And then some of my favorite, Arrow Farms. So connected farm. And they are using technology in Newark, New Jersey to transform the way that farming is done, conserving our natural resources, using 95% less water in being able to do it and the IoT of farming. I mean, they're just all super rich and really, really great, great stories. And then I have to ask you to say it to pronounce. I loved your pronunciation of unidad. Come on, help me. I know it was the very first one, right? J. Conocaman Miento. Yeah, yeah, you got it right, got it right. They're a great story too, right? I mean, here's an organization in Columbia that is a consolidation of different industries that are providing these services across Columbia and Latin America. They've absolutely figured out how to take a country like Columbia out of the perils of what has happened there with a drug cartel, really thrive on economic prosperity and they're absolutely kicking butt when it comes to the services that they're providing to all of their customers. So it's really great. And the State Bank of India, was that the other one? State Bank of India. They really had a global representation. Awesome. Well, we looked hard for that. We looked hard for the global representation. We also looked really, really hard and gave extra points to companies that had a purpose and a soul. So what they were doing, either with the technology or with the services that they're providing to their end customers, what's that purpose side? And you saw that in a number of these really awesome organizations. So I want to ask you, so I'm going to ask a leadership question. So when we first met, I think it was a Dell world. It might have been like 2012. I think you were seeing a mow of Dell at the time. So like a lot of leaders, you chair hop. That's kind of what you do. So you now play in a- But 18 years at Dell? Right. Yeah. Right, but so you take your best leaders and you say, I go fix this problem, go fix this problem, go inspire some people to do that. So you've been, and also it's the, is it the chief customer office that you started? I did, watching Michael started it. Maybe a year and a half ago? Right, right. Well, what's that all about? What, how's the progress going? Give us the update there. Well, you know, I have to tell you, I give a ton of credit to Michael because he saw an opportunity and something that was quite new and quite novel. And now you look a year and a half later at what some of our competitors and others are doing. You know, Microsoft just named somebody that sits at their executive leadership team meeting, recognizing that customer relationships are the ultimate prize. Our ability to deliver a great customer experience is going to be the, is the next battle ground. And we've been leading in that area now for a year and a half. So I'm the first chief customer officer ever at Dell Technologies. And our mission is really to make sure that we continue to push the needle and drive an even better end to end customer experience. We're doing a lot around taking our top most important customers. And there's a couple of thousand of them at Dell. I'm not talking about five or six. I'm talking about like thousands of customers that have consistently honored us with their business over the years. So how do we put high touch, high loyalty kind of programs in place? The customer awards were a great way to recognize some of those top customers and put them on the stage and tell their story. And the piece that gets me even more excited is what we're doing around our customer data. So how do we unleash the power of our customer data? How do we integrate it? How do we automate it? How do we put real time predictive analytics by looking at a customer end to end and being able to figure out if that account is going to go red because they've had a combination of things. Go figure out what are the sources of value for them and unleash those. So we're living in this like AI big data world and living at real time with under the remit of the chief customer office. And if I heard you correctly, at the leadership team, you're kind of the voice of the customer representative. I am. There's a lot of voices for the customer. Well, yeah, because the head of sales are going to be doing that. But they all come with their own bias, right? Or their own lens, right? So we're actually, my team is a very, very strong partner to our heads of sales. Because sometimes heads of sales, I mean, they see these things clearly the same way that we do. But sometimes the voice around, well, this isn't working. We need to get better at this. Our customers want us to go faster here, tends to get lost in business performance and close rates and all of that. And we have this unique ability to look at this end to end and help to really advocate on behalf of customers and really do the right thing for them at the end of the day. Independent of the transaction metrics is what you're saying. Yes, yes. And it's a different perspective, right? We talked about the voice of the customer being an objective brand validation. And you come from it, from a different perspective. One of the things that we had, your CIO on earlier today, Baskin, he said, we drink our own champagne and then we had Ravi Pendicanti and he says, we eat our own dog food. We're right next to the therapy dogs. So I like that. But from what you're saying, you're using customer data to help make Dell Technologies differentiated, be able to revolutionize the customer experience. Listening to those customers is key. Can you tell us a little bit more about how some of that data is being applied to revolutionize that experience? Sure, so some of it's basic, some of it can be pretty transformational. So, and by the way, Baskire has been a significant partner with me on this journey because he understands it. Dell's the only technology company out there today that has the rich direct data that we have combined with rich channel partner data. So we have all of it, right? And some of our competitors do everything to the channel. Few of them do everything all direct. We do both. So we have a huge advantage when it comes to that. So, we can look at the amalgamation of all of the listening posts that we have for our customers. We have a booth here where we've brought in hundreds, thousands of customers and we've asked them a series of questions. We have voice of the field surveys that we do with our sales team. We do NPS surveys, this survey, all of that. We can bring all of that together using big data and insights and we can prioritize the big things that matter. So one of the things that I see a lot of my peers at other companies get caught up in is they're chasing 15 or 20 things. You know, at any given moment, we're chasing three to five and we want to move the needle on those three to five and then we want to get, you know, capture and address the next ones. So that's what I would call kind of the basic fundamental pieces. What I think is exciting is we can now take a view of a customer, a complete view of that customer. We know what they bought. We know who they bought it from. We know the number of escalations they've had. We know what their delivery performance has been. We know how many times they've changed the AE on the account. We know what their corporate responsibility priorities are and we can look at that in totality and we can put a outreach kind of program in place for them or we can look at it and go, this one is about to go south and we need to put our best people to go call on the account and help the account executive who in a lot of ways sees this also and help to figure out how to turn it around. So, and you can do that across the integrated company today? We have piloted across the integrated set of companies and in the Q3 period of time working closely with VASC, we're going to automate this. That's pretty fast. And turn it into like an Amber Alert, early warning type of system so that we can help the AE and our customers before things happen. And the other piece that we can do is we know, we know the 10 levers of customer value. And for the most part, we do those generally well, but in some cases, some of the reasons that our customers come back to us is because we've discovered things at their account that they didn't even know was happening. So we're, you know, got this power of big data sitting right in front of us with chief customer office that can really, really, really light it up. Well, the other thing you said, the account teams know when there's a problem, but the executive teams, they have limited resources so you don't know where to prioritize, and that has got to be... Well, and some of our AE's have more than one account. Yeah, right. So, you know, some of them are handling 20 accounts. So where this thing becomes really interesting is as you think about scaling it down through the organization, not just at the top ones. The top accounts, they're one to one kind of engagement and those types of things. It's really interesting when you start to get it below that and you start to really use it in a more scalable way. Plus, as you go more channel, right, and you go more to edge, you get all these other complexities beyond just product portfolio. You're dealing with that stuff, but the channel complexities and then the new markets that are emerging, particularly at edge and the channels that that's going to precipitate. Right, right. I mean, this is even more important. Yeah, okay, I agree. So 18 months into this new role that Michael Dell created, lots of accomplishments. It sounds like you're really leveraging data to partner with customers, to help not just them, but also your internal teams be able to identify where there needs to be escalations. What are some of the things that you're opening up with respect to diversity and inclusion? Because that's also under your purview. That's right, that's right, Lisa. What I think is really interesting is how much our sales teams now is coming to my team to use some of these other platforms to open doors and have conversations with CIOs that they could not get before. So I'll give you a perfect case in point. The sales leader in the UK came to me and said, I have a particular account in London. I haven't really been able to make any progress. The CIO is a woman. Their head of infrastructure is a woman. You're gonna be there in London. Would you send her a note? And let's have a conversation around some of the things that we have some mutual interest in, technology being one, as well as getting more women involved into technology. So we had this conversation, an hour in, she said, you know, if Dell would host a session with other female CIOs in the UK area, I will open up my roller debts and we will get other women to come. So two months later, we did it in London in January. I was there, Michael was there, our heads of sales were there. We had about 15 or 20 of these super impressive women in the public sector, the private sector, higher education universities, big brands. We just did a similar one here at Dell Technologies World, where we just hosted, as a matter of fact, yesterday, 20 women. We actually had a couple of men that were there too, all just coming together and talking about areas that we deeply care about. How do we get more women and minorities interested in these technology fields? And here we are in, sorry, here we are in 2018. This is still such an issue and it's something that's still surprising when we get to see females on stage in keynotes, like yourself, like Allison Dew, who was just chatting with you, Dave and Stu. It's still, we're actually kind of going, hey, we're starting from a deficit whereas 20, 30 years ago, we were kind of going up. What are some of the things that you hear from your male peers in terms of the importance of showing multiple generations of girls and women, you do belong here. This is something that you're interested in. Do not be afraid. Yeah, what I find remarkable in these conversations is there's clearly a number of key themes that are emerging. One of the biggest ones is, this is an economic imperative. When you think about, they're gonna be 1.1 million jobs in the computer science technology field over the next 10 years. 45% of those jobs are gonna be filled by U.S. college grads, that's a gap of 55%. Women that are graduating in the area of computer science and technology is down, significantly from like 30% down to like 18% right now. You are simply not gonna have enough of what has been the traditional workforce in order to fill these jobs. So that's one and that's one that we at Dell care about a lot. Second piece we care about is, we just know that when you're bringing together a diverse group of individuals, you always get to a better answer for your customers. You do. Research has proven it, we can prove it, we can see it, all of that. And then the third piece is, I just think women bring unique skills in a collaborative global context that can really bust through some of the big, complex, thorny opportunities that corporations are working through. So ladies, let me jump in here, if I may. So there's two sides to this coin. One is yes, we got to get young women excited, but the other is you've got to promote women to leadership positions. Obviously Dell does a good job of that. Clearly IBM gets high marks for that. I mean, one of the sad things about seeing Meg Whitman go was that you had a dynamic woman leader, maybe not the greatest speaker in the world, but one-on-one, super strong. And I think an inspiration to a lot of young women. And I think our industry clearly, Silicon Valley, Boston, I mean, just not doing enough, particularly in smaller companies, larger companies, I think, do a better job. So your thoughts on that? My thought on that is it's a hard problem, but at its very basic, it's actually quite simple. And these are the things that we're doing at Dell. It takes commitment from the top, and at all levels of the company, to make change, drive the accountability, set goals to your point, go play some bets on the younger generation up-and-coming diverse talent, put them in roles, and then surround them with a support system that they need to be successful. And we've done that, Michael has done, hey, he did it with me. When six or seven years ago, he called me and said, how'd you like to be Dell's next chief marketing officer? And then called me 18 months ago and said, how'd you like to be Dell's first chief customer officer? So you need people that see things in that talent and you need that commitment. You need a culture that supports that. You need more role models. You need to get rid of and totally eliminate the harassment and the bullying and the old boys kind of club. You got to create places where women and minorities feel like they can be themselves. Culture plays a huge, huge role. And then communities play a huge role. So we have a very, very growing and thriving employee resource group. Set of networks, we have 14 of them across Dell and Dell EMC. And they're just a safe haven for where people of color, women, LGBT, veterans, disabilities can come and just be themselves and be with others that they feel safe with. So at some level, it's not that hard. It really does take the commitment and the wherewithal and the sense of urgency that says we got to fix it and we have to fix it now. I feel like 2017 was a milestone year. I'd love to know what your thoughts are. You had that incident in the tech industry with that poor, misguided soul from Google who decided to write this Jerry McGuire memo and just brought a lot of attention to the issue. And then the Me Too movement. So I feel like 2018 is a more optimistic year, but still a lot of that stuff that you were talking about goes on and it needs to be exposed. Again, I think the Me Too movement brings that out and a lot of people are thinking, uh-oh, wow, this really has to stop. Your thoughts, do you agree with that? Or do you just think, no, David's still way too far away? No, I think what Me Too has done is opened a lot of eyes around how pervasive all of this is. I know in the case of Dell, we have a zero tolerance policy when it comes to all of that. What was so shocking to us is how pervasive it still was in either other companies or other industries. To me, what is encouraging now is the conversation is going beyond harassment to aggression and bullying and culture and some of the things that have happened over the years is that by the way, it happens across all genders. There's articles that are being written now around women that are bullying and have bullied. So this is something that all corporations need to be setting the tone around, what are the right behaviors and those types of things and we've been doing that now for years. The other piece that I feel very strongly about is if men retreat from this conversation, that is a huge problem, a huge problem. Leaders like you have to be part of it. They have to be part of this has to change. I want to be part of the solution. I have daughters or wives or nieces or whatever it is that I know that they have just as much capability as boys and men do and my job is to help them. Yeah, no doubt. So I love it. I love the way that men and women are both coming together in engaging in this conversation and we are seeing progress. I mean, I think everybody wants it to be faster but we are seeing progress. Hey, yesterday at this CIO round table that we have one of my favorite quotes, we got into this whole conversation around, well, what is the next generation feeling? And one of the women that was there said, hey, my daughter told me three weeks ago, you know, mom, she goes, I really think it's really, to me it's really simple. I want to be a mom and I want to be a CEO. That's simple. Wow, I love that. So in the last few seconds or so, Karen, you've made a tremendous amount of progress and impact as the Chief Customer Officer in 18 months. What are you looking forward to accomplishing the rest of 2018? Well, I think the thing that gets me really energized too is how we're applying our technology in the area of corporate responsibility and innovation. So you saw our plastic bottle demo that we had here that fish moves from one event to another. We got really serious around how do we play a really key role in stopping the plastics from entering the ocean. So there's 86 million metric tons of plastics that is in the ocean today. By the year 2050, there'll be more pieces of plastic in the ocean than there are fish. You have to stop the plastic from entering the ocean, which was a pilot project that we did about a year ago. And we recently announced an expansion of that called Next Wave, where we have a number of our customers that are partnering with us to figure out how do we scale that. So General Motors, Herman Miller, are just a couple of examples. And then at CES this year, we announced an effort that we're doing around how do you extract gold out of motherboards and using that and recycling that back into our motherboards and using it in jewelry, jewelry manufacturing. So we partnered with a jewelry manufacturer out of the West Coast, Nikki Reed. She is creating this jewelry, these rings, by through recycled gold. And it's 99% more environmentally friendly. So I love the fact that we can use our technology to innovate, change the world, reuse the stuff that we're putting into the economy. So scaling these is a big, big priority for me in 2018. Awesome. Wow, momentum is the only word I can think of to describe what you've achieved, what you're doing so far. Karen, thank you so much for stopping by and trying to look at Dave and me. And congratulations on what you've accomplished. And we look forward to talking to you next year. Thanks, thanks very much. We want to thank you for watching theCUBE. We are live finishing up day three at Dell Technologies World in Las Vegas. I'm Lisa Martin for Dave Vellante. Thanks for watching.