 Live from Orlando, Florida, it's theCUBE. Covering Enterprise Connect 2019, brought to you by 5ix9ine. Hello from Orlando, Florida. Lisa Martin with theCUBE, Stu Miniman's here with me as well. We are at Enterprise Connect 2019, and we've been graciously hosted this week by 5ix9ine. We're pleased to welcome to theCUBE for the first time the VP of product marketing from 5ix9ine, Scott Coleman. Scott, thank you so much for joining Stu and me today. Nice to be here. So day three of this event, biggest Enterprise Connect that they've had, 6,500 attendees expected. We're in the expo hall, which you can hear all of the buzz behind us. 140 or so exhibitors announcing new products, new services, et cetera. All talking about putting the customer at the heart of the contact center. Why is that so important? No, it's a great question. And to your point about the show itself and the floor, really the contact center is very much at the center of actually the floor itself in terms of who's here, what they're talking about. It's not an afterthought. It's really, I think it's an acknowledgement that companies are realizing that they have to take the customer experience seriously. And the contact center is that point where you either reinforce the brand or you erode it, right? So this is now the opportunity for companies to think a little differently about what role it plays and how they're going to use it to really build a better relationship. Yeah, Scott, it's been interesting. Lisa and I came into the show being the first time that we've been at the show, but we're both consumers. We've looked through it, I think back to the last decade or so, there was outsourcing, there was technology, which is just going to say, some of the big technology companies, I want to call them, are you kidding? You can't. They hide that. I can't even email them if I wanted to it. So the customer relationship is very different, but today it feels like the pendulum has been swinging back the other way. That customer relationship, we know when I need to talk to somebody, it's important that I do get to talk to a person and technology's an enabler of that. Yeah, absolutely. And the question is, why? What changed, right? And there's a couple of things that really changed to make that happen. Probably the primary thing is customers had more choice and they have a voice, right? They have more choice than ever before. It's no longer the issue, depending on whatever industry you're in, that you're only stuck with a certain cable provider or a retailer down the street. I can buy from anywhere in the world. And so I have choice there. There's disruptors in every industry, as we've seen over the last decade. And so that's one element. And just as importantly, they have a voice. It used to be that I could go home and complain to my wife, I could complain to my family members, my friends. Now I can actually amplify that through social media and other elements. So not only do I have a ability to move, but also in terms of the voice, I actually have a bigger impact on the brand, right? And those are really big elements there. So along those lines, if you look at the consumer behaviors being so influential, companies, are they looking at it as more of an opportunity to go, all right, maybe we have a few channels, maybe we're voice-only. How does Five Men help a customer that might be voice-only or maybe multi-channel get-to-omni-channel so that they can, as I loved what you said, this contact center moment in time is an opportunity to improve the brand or erode it. So how are they working with you guys to enable a customer to be able to have their issues identified, resolved quickly through various channels? Well, I think the first thing is, when you look at omni-channel, is why? Ultimately, you want to make sure that you're engaging with your customer over the channel and the method that they prefer, right? That's the most important element there. So it's not about having 10, 15 different ways to communicate. It's letting them do it when, where, and how they choose to. That's the most important thing. And then it's also then understanding what else do they expect? Well, the first thing they expect is they want you to know them. You know, our research that we've done through our customer service index and the like consistently shows that people, the first thing they want to know is, know me, understand my relationship. So when we work with our customers, we really focus on that. As they engage over a phone call, an email, a chat, another channel, always make sure that you, at the heart of it, you understand who they are. And one of the ways to do that is, draw that information and make it available to the agent. So integration with CRM systems, with workforce optimization and others, is critical so that when they're at that point of engagement, that moment of truth, they're able to acknowledge the customer and probably have a really good understanding of not only their history, but why they're engaging with you, why they're calling or contacting you. Scott, we had a great conversation with Darrow, who's part of your team about how cloud not only enables the speed and agility, but I could start using new features much faster and easier than in a non-cloud environment. Wonder if you might have some customer stories to help illustrate some of these journeys as to maybe just what they've gotten from day one, but also subsequent to your customers that have been with you for a while, so things that they keep innovating and adopting new things along the road. Well, you know, it's funny, I think of a couple examples. One, we had a customer who, a newer company, a bit of a disruptor in their industry, and they actually started out with digital channels only. They had no voice, so they were offering email and chat and other methods, and then to their surprise, they found that they needed to introduce voice. They were dealing with more millennials, folks that they assumed were going to communicate over the chat. Well, what happened was, there were certain times when they wanted to actually communicate over a voice channel, maybe it was a financial issue, maybe it was emotionally charged or something like that. So they brought that in, so we were able to help them by integrating in first to their CRM to be able to do digital channels and then open up voice. Now the other side of it is we have customers who will start with a voice channel, and then they, and again, understanding your customer, your end customer, what do they want? Introducing a chat and making sure that those agents have all the relevant information they need to be able to do that. Realizing that email is still around after all these years, there's sometimes you want to communicate that way because you can send a lot of information. So it's really about building out a plan with the customer, understanding what is that customer journey of their customer and how do they best treat it and help them along the way. On that customer journey front, I'm wondering, are the majority of customers that you're meeting with not aware of their customer journey and their customer preferences for different channels? Is that something that you're finding that you're actually from a consultative perspective saying actually what's ideal here is to really not make assumptions and to actually do some investigations and some studies to learn? Is that part of the process with you guys? It's a little bit of that. It's also sometimes that there's a journey, purchase journey, a service journey, an account management journey, the change certain things about your service profile, but it's been developed over time just through kind of osmosis, right? And so sometimes it's stepping back and understanding what is that, defining that journey and saying where are those critical paths, where it may break down, where problems occur. So really drawing from that and understanding where are those points where we can actually, and I say we being with the customer, help them to be able to make that better, overcome frustrations and delays and so on. So that's a really important element there. In terms of channels, it's really just listening, listening to customers, listening to agents, listening to people that are on the front line talking to customers day in, day out and realizing also what's the profile of your customer, your buyer, not everybody's the same and it doesn't always fit based on age or other demographics. I have my father's 89 years old and we text message all the time. And once he embraced that, it's a wonderful method of communication. So there's a lot of things you have to look at along the way. So Scott, one of the biggest challenges in technology is we need to balance simplicity with the customization and all of the choice in the world. I wonder if you might be able to comment. We know from a customer standpoint, from an agent standpoint, we want to get them the information they want when they need it as simple as possible. But on the back end, we look at how many partners Five Nines has and all the different technologies you work with and oh, my business needs these seven letters in the alphabet, not these other things. So how do you balance that from a messaging and from a product standpoint? Well, one of the things realized is that one size doesn't fit all, right? Companies are of different size, they're of different complexity, preferences along the way. So we really focus on how do you adapt the contact center to the needs of that business? And that could be, sometimes they have preferred vendors. So I'm a sales force or an Oracle or a Microsoft or a ServiceNow or whom you name it shop. I want to continue to use that. It may be on workforce optimization that I want, I have a certain set of capabilities I require that fits a particular vendor or not. So we really try to, and this is the beauty of the cloud is we can host elements in there in the case of like workforce optimization or integrate in the case of CRM to make that seamless. When you look at it from an agent perspective, it's all about giving them a common look and feel. You know, one term that's been really used a lot at the show is the single pane of glass. The one agent desktop where they can really navigate because we've all experienced when you call into a contact center and the agent is frustrated and they start complaining about the system. I'm sorry, I'm trying to figure this out. Oh, this darn system, oh, I got to wait or I have to find your information. I don't care. I'm the consumer, I just want my problem solved. And frankly the agent's frustrated. But by integrating it with the CRM, you can have all that information on the desktop, only the relevant information that the agent needs at that moment. You know, if I'm dealing with a purchase, then I need that information as an agent that's going to help me along the way. I don't need to worry about other factors. And I want to be able to customize that a little bit to the way I behave as an agent. So it is about convenience, intuitiveness, you know, and just ease of use along the way. I'm curious, so here we are, day three, almost done with Enterprise Connect 19. You've been at the event the whole time. What are some of the things that you're hearing, say, from the analyst community that is exciting you about, one, the direction that the contact center market is going in and two, what 5.9 is going to be able to deliver the rest of the year and beyond? Right, you know, it's interesting. A couple years ago, the buzz and the talk was voice is dead. It's all about everybody's going digital. And that was because of the increase in the number of transaction interactions that occurred over email chat, social life. Now, I was just talking to an analyst a little bit ago today, said, you know, it's really interesting, voice is hot again. Voice is cool, because people are realizing voice has a very distinct role. And so it's not your only digital channels. It's really part of that mix back to the comment we had before. So that's one thing you're seeing that. You're seeing that with other vendors. You're seeing that with the conversations with customers that it's really, it's part of the mix and it's appropriate. The other thing is contact center is hot again. It's kind of, you know, cool. And it's because of that change that we talked about earlier that it's no longer about cost center. It's no longer about, oh, I have to answer that customer question, but now I play an integral role in that relationship my company has with the customer and how I can really reinforce the brand. So those are the things I think we're also seeing and talking to the analysts as well. They're seeing that excitement. And also the conversations that are occurring at the event are very engaging. People are really thinking about how they can change their business. And you can feel that and you can hear that here. So Scott, as you say, the contact center is hot again. Stu and I thank you for joining us on the program this afternoon. My pleasure, thank you. Of course, Stu Miniman, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE.