 Live from Orlando, Florida, it's theCUBE. Covering Enterprise Connect 2019, brought to you by 5.9. Welcome back to theCUBE's continuing coverage of day one of Enterprise Connect 2019 in Orlando. I'm Lisa Martin with my co-host Stu Miniman and we're excited to be joined by a first time member visitor to theCUBE, Ryan Cam, the CMO at 5.9. Ryan, welcome to theCUBE. Thank you, good to be here. Thanks for having me. Thanks for having theCUBE in the 5.9 booth, Contact Center as a service. Tell us a little bit about, first of all, this event. This event is, as Stu and I were talking about in our intro, 28, 29 years, lots of evolution. From your perspective today, what is Enterprise Connect 2019? And what opportunities is it going to provide somebody like yourself in terms of modern marketing? Yeah, it's really interesting. Modern marketing's obviously evolved. CMS, CRM, the Contact Center, all part of the modern marketer. I think the show really proves out how much that modern marketing idea, the space, has expanded. This is my first time here. It's amazing to see all the companies, all sorts of different technologies that are coming to market and some that have been here for a while. One of the things I find really interesting is that we're all consumers every day. We want to transact things on our phones, tablets, video chat, this idea of Omni Channel where the consumer is so empowered. We sort of bring these demands to the surface of, whatever my problem is, if I'm trying to transact something or I'm trying to get information on a mortgage, a pre-afforable or something, I want to be able to have a company be able to follow my conversation regardless of channel and then have enough data to take action on it in a timely manner. Where in your thoughts from a modern marketing perspective, where are we in terms of maturation of like integrated Omni Channel? Yeah, that's a great question. I think we're finally at a mature point in technology where we can start to meet the demands of the consumer or the expectations of the consumer. Obviously, that's the dream scenario for everyone. Follow me on my terms, not on the company's terms. I think at 5.9 we want to make sure that no matter where your customer is or your prospect is, that we're there to meet them on their channel, wherever it would be. So, Ryan, when I look around a show like this, cloud is something that has really transformed what this was. I've looked at what's really from the early days of companies like Salesforce. You've got some background there as to the enterprise, is it okay? Can I trust it? Today, cloud is here. It's not going anywhere. It's a major piece of the IT landscape. When you're talking to your customers, how does that fit into the environment? Have they gotten over some of the legacy IT mindset of OGs? I'm not sure if I'm safe to go out there. That is, we're at a critical point right now where the contact center is starting to evolve. A lot of the companies that have built on-prem contact centers are starting to age out. What we're hearing from our customers is that the cloud has never been more important. And the reason, because of that, is the data that they're collecting from all their different touchpoints. How do you collect it? How do you use it together? How do you make it coherent and make it into a clear plan? The only way you can get the data out is to have it all in the cloud. So, Ryan, I'm glad you brought up data because when we look at our research, data is at the center of everything. Obviously, it's majorly important in cloud. I can't have AI if it's not for the data. Exactly. I think back to, you know, my first job out of college, I worked in a call center. We talked about data being important. We talked about, oh, we're going to have a database that's going to help you get your customer's information fast. That was back in the 90s. It's very different today. Can you talk about how things are different today when we talk about data? How does that drive your business's 5.9 and your role as a CMO today? Yeah, well, the first thing about 5.9 is that we have over five billion minutes of data, conversational data. And data's evolved over time. Early on, we had a lot what we call operational data. Data that says, how many people have clicked on your website? How many people have viewed impressions and things of that nature? At 5.9, what's really interesting is this thing that we talk about is contextual data. What are your customers asking for? What do they want? They're literally on the phone telling you what's wrong. So that meantime to resolution is really important. But if you start to look at that data deeper, you can start to predict what your customers are looking for from your services, from your products. I think that's what's really going to be transformational. And as a marketer, I've spent a lifetime looking at that user data and always trying to ask the question, what are our customers saying? What do they want behind the data? And now we're starting to look at that and marrying those two data sets together. I think that's going to be the next evolution of data. And that's why I think at 5.9, that conversational data, along with operational data as a marketer, that's really important moving forward. So one of the things that I'm interested in is, you have a lot of organizations in any industry that are reactive. They want to get to proactive and eventually to predictive. What are some of the things that an organization, whether it's a telco or a financial services organization, how can they remove some of the barriers in the way between a contact center and those customers so that they can glean those actionable insights in a timely manner? Yeah, I mean, it's really about the connection between your earlier question about why the contact center is so important. And you see all the companies here, they're starting to be more and more companies driving into this space and really looking at AI. So the two things that we've touched upon already is the power of the cloud, power of the data, power of AI to look at all that data and make certain predictions, certain conclusions from that data so that you can start to have a clear path to your customer and react faster. Because it's all about zero distance to your customer. Yeah, Ryan, can you bring us in the customer experience? I think we've all had in times as a consumer where you're frustrated. I can't find stuff on the website. I've called interactive voice response or not my favorite thing to deal with. So if companies aren't using solutions like yours, what are they in danger of? Well, your customers and your prospects are really the heart of every business, right? And part of that is your brand is really important in those moments when they need you the most. And when they're reaching out, contacting you through email, SMS or on the phone, your brand, is that going to be at its best but also at its most vulnerable. And that's where the contact center, your agents, that experience is crucial to the overall customer experience. You have one bad phone conversation, you have one bad SMS, your brand is really at risk, and your brand, if it's at risk, so is your business. Because consumers have more choice than they've ever had before. All right. So one of the things, oh, sorry, Stu, that you, when you're talking with customers that you say, you know, you have to look at every customer interaction as possibly your last, but also as an opportunity to delight that customer and drive an increase in customer lifetime value. Do you talk to customers about, you got to look at it through both lenses? Yes. I mean, if you don't look at the, that's the contextual data. That's the context in which you serve your customers. And at 5.9, nothing's more important than the customer. And we always try to make sure the human part, the interaction never leaves. As technology keeps on expanding, we have to imagine ourselves in our customer seats. What is it like to be on that phone call? What is it like to be on that interaction? And how do we provide companies a platform to be better and better and better? I have this saying, better, better, never best, which is this idea of always evolving. Never feel like you've achieved something. Always try to get better. Ryan, your business is cloud-based. One of the things about the cloud is you're usually talking about, rather than just something that I install and might have maintenance on, it's something that I'm paying for every month and every year. And therefore I need to maintain a relationship with a customer because otherwise, they can just say, well, why am I paying for this? Can you talk about the relationship you have with your customers? How you make sure that you're giving them, not just a day one experience, but an ongoing experience that grows? Yeah, I think for 5.9, the customer experience, we're in the customer experience business. And so it's really important. We know that our technology is only as successful as the people who adopt it and use it. That's where the technology comes to life. So we want to make sure that we not only sell our product, we help you install it, we help you go through the change management, which is critical. If you don't have your agents involved and they're having a hard time adopting your technology, that means that they're focused on that and not the consumer, not your customer base. So at 5.9, we want to make sure from beginning to end, you are held to our highest standard of customer service, which is like this five blue star customer service. Stu and I talked about that in our intro. It's not just ensuring that an organization can facilitate on the channel or ensuring that the customer experience, its tables take these days, it has to be delivered as effectively as possible. But it's also the agents who are on the front lines, who are dealing with, let's face it, oftentimes if we're calling in or we've used multiple channels, there's maybe an escalation that we're not getting the resolution that we want. So where do you guys have those conversations with? It's not just about implementing cloud technology and cloud tech center as a service, but it's also about the training and the enablement and empowerment of the agents to have the data to make those decisions because they're on the front lines. Absolutely correct. And that's why we've renamed our platform, the Genius Platform, because we feel that every agent should be a genius at what they're being asked to do. We want to make them feel confident about the information at the fingertips so that they can focus on the empathy. 5.9 believes that the technology is just a part of it, as I've said before. But really it's the combination between the change management, the agent, the customer, the answers and the questions. It's all those things combined. And we want to make that easy for the agent to deliver amazing touch points for your company. Well, Ryan, that's a great point because when you talk about, I have automation, I have intelligence, I even, you know, robotics helping in there. I need that person where I'm not going to have that empathy. Yeah. And we see that in our NPS scores. The agent experience is critical, right? So we really focus our platform on delivering that for the agent. But the other side, too, is making sure you can gain the insights from these conversations and delivering it back to the business. Because we feel that that's the, as I said earlier, that's the next evolution of data is pulling out that contextual data and marrying it with all your different data sets. Yeah, you brought up NPS. I'm curious, do you have any way of measuring, you know, customers that use your solution versus customers that might have been doing things the old way? Is there a bump in NPS? Is there a bump in retention of agents? Of course. How do you measure success? Yeah, we take both NPS for our customers, and I know our customers take NPS for their agents and their customers. And when you use 5.9, those numbers obviously go up. When you start measuring something, people really, if you analyze it, it'll happen. So what we see is a huge adoption of making sure that the customer empathy, the customers at the focus. So last couple of questions here, Ryan, you guys had a good amount of enterprise growth in FY18. In fact, I see large growth in customers with a million in ARR annual recurring revenue, one of your fastest growing segments. Enterprise, small and medium-sized businesses often have the same challenges, but I'm wondering if you're seeing any sort of early adopters from an industry perspective, financial services, healthcare, anything, or do you see that it's fairly horizontal in organizations that have to reach that consumer? It's fairly horizontal. I think the definition of a contact center is obviously expanding. People are really focusing on customer experience and they're starting to realize that contact center is a competitive advantage. If you deliver great customer experience, you deliver great brand loyalty. And that just means your customers will continue to come to you, trust your brand, and ask for more services. And that's obviously, we all know it's easier to retain a customer than it is to find a new one. So we think that this is a huge advantage and we're seeing that across the enterprise. They're starting to realize this is a huge difference when everything else is the same, deliver great customer experience. All right, so Ryan, let me ask the brand question. As the CMO, when people come to Enterprise Connect or they're reaching out to 5.9, what is the brand promise? What do you hope people are walking away and understanding about where you fit in the landscape? Yeah, I think that one of the key things I want people to understand about 5.9 is that we're about a platform about delivering relationships. It's not about, it's about the technology. We want to make sure you have cloud the latest and greatest. We want to make sure our features are up to date, but really what's important is that service all the way through from implementation to your agent's happiness to your customer happiness. The contact center is a complex blend of technology, people, and this interaction with your customers. We want to make sure that each part of those are being serviced, not just the technology, just not a person, but the whole life cycle from beginning to end. Well Ryan, thanks so much for joining Stu and me on the queue this afternoon and inviting us into the 5.9 booth and also kind of setting the context for the Enterprise Connect 2019 event that we appreciate your time. Thank you for having me, it's been great. First Stu Miniman, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE live from day one of our coverage of Enterprise Connect 2019.