HELLO FUTURE: Press 0 for Hope: The Future of Customer Service (Without the Wait Music)

Speaker 1 (00:03):
The other day, I was in the checkout line of
a convenience store. I'm not going to say which one,
because hey, you know, we're always open to sponsors. But
it was some robotic voice telling me that I didn't
put my bag of ships in the bagging area, but
I did put my bag of chips in the plastic
bagging area. So here I am trying to be in
the automated world and put my bag of chips in
the plastic bag and I can't get it now. That
would not have set me off. And by the way,
I didn't have a breakdown in this convenience store. I
did complain about it to my mother on the phone
about an hour later, but earlier in that day had
to make a call, had to make a call to
an unknown insurance company. And let me tell you something,
I felt like I was ready to throw my phone.

Speaker 2 (00:58):
Plus one.

Speaker 1 (01:00):
If you would like to reach this, okay, So I
press one, press five. If it's for this, you press five.
If it's this, this or this, press this number or
this number, this number. It's like you're playing on a
Ouiji board with your phone trying to talk to a
freaking human. Hello future, it's me keV. This is a
dispatch from the Digital Frontier. The planet is Earth, the
year is twenty twenty five. My name is Kevin Sirilli,
and today I am talking all about customer service and
the modern world that we live in. Because if you're
not having to take a test to see if you're
a robot, or getting yelled at by the robotic voice
in the grocery store, or spending twenty minutes just to
talk to a human and automation, then that's life in
twenty twenty five. So my guest today has worked for
some of the greats, including Steve Jobs at Apple, the
late great Steve Jobs, and also a host of mother
We're going to get into all of that. His name
is Scott Hazard. He's the co founder and CEO of
Symmetric Call. I want to make sure I said Tory
Symmetric Hall, right, Scott, you got it, and he's broadcasting
from Miami. I mean one of us got the role.
End of the deal. I'm still in Washington. See, I
keep moving out. I'm a technically in Maryland, brought in
our studio, but I keep I'm base in Washington, DC.
But so Scott, your whole philosophy is human customer experience
and technology behind it. Tell me a little bit about
what you do, and then let's get into how life
in this modern age provokes an emotional reaction from the
grocery store trying to pay your insurance bill.

Speaker 3 (02:36):
Well, I love your story because that's how I ended
up getting my co founder pulled in and starting this company,
and was looking at my life where I had really
very little procrastination happening other than every time I had
to call a customer service line and I would put
it to the bottom of my list, and I didn't
want to deal with it because it made me feel small,
like somebody that didn't have a voice in the game.
And as a guy who's grown up in technologies, you said,
it's not right. Technology should enable good connections with people,
not move us further away from human connection. And so
we founded Symmetric called two years ago. We built in stealth,
developed quite a bit of IP because we built a
very different solution to make sure that when you call
into a business moving forward, you're treated symmetrically with the business.
It's a two way street, not a one way street
of you giving them stuff, you getting off a call
and finding out you're left with nothing.

Speaker 1 (03:25):
But how did we get here? Ess? Because I mean,
you've worked at worked at Apple and you were I mean,
I don't want to describe it, you did if you
put it best in your own words, but essentially the
customer experience of the Apple stores and this was like
back when the Apple store was new. To be honest, sorry,
I don't want to knock, but when you I remember
when when Steve Jobs walked down on Stae said one
more thing and change the world with this iPhone, and
then you would go to the Apple store and it
was like going into the future. It was it was really,
really incredible, and no stores were like that. You've worked
at Google as the head of Global the global head
of retail Development. You've worked at Citadel, grid Matrix, Coinbase,
you've worked with them before, and you've co founded and
started a bunch of companies. But Symmetric A Symmetric Hall
is your is your co founder and CEO. Now, but
how did we get here? Because I would assume that
when you hear automation, you think efficiency. I don't want
to assume that the convenience store overlords were like, how
do we piss off someone buying eggs, you know, but
it's a mess. Nobody likes it.

Speaker 2 (04:30):
It will put well put.

Speaker 3 (04:32):
You know. The quick answer I'll give you is it
feels like most technology builders have lost touch with the
human connection and have kind of started to feel like
technology should replace, as you've well, put, the human rather
than in our view, empower and motivate the human to connect, right,
And so I think that sort of bad set of assumptions.
And in our specific world and telephones and telemetry, nothing's
changed since nineteen twenty when the early nintors we'll call it,
when phones were really becoming prevalent. I mean it was
really built on point to point and when we went
to the iPhone, all it did is replace the desk phone.
And so the way it all became this sort of
serial point to point tech and people built upon it,
and nothing was ever really built to connect the consumer
to the business. And it was really built around compliance.
As you may know, most businesses have to have customer
service to sell a product, otherwise they can't sell you
a product by law, and so born out of i'd
say necessity, and then technology thrown at a necessity because
there's not really the passion in most businesses, especially at
the large scale, to solve it. And so I think
it's really one of the last pieces of our world
where technology hasn't improved it, it's actually made it worse.
And that's why we exist and we're bringing us back
to This is a piece of my life that's totally
inconsistent with every other type of interaction I have, whether
with technology or not. And it's interesting. Your point is
people sort of talk to us. And as we built
this company, there was almost a belief people preferred talking
to robots still.

Speaker 1 (06:07):
Who thought that who in God's name what market research
consultant got paid all that money to say that humans
want to talk to an automated voice. I mean, this
person must vacation at the DMV literally, I mean.

Speaker 3 (06:23):
And the anecdotes I got where elderly people love to
chat with an AI robot and they don't want to
deal with a person or sort of personal anecdotes.

Speaker 2 (06:32):
But I've never met anyone that wants to talk to
a robot.

Speaker 3 (06:35):
I always meet people who say, oh my god, this
product's going to change my life because I just want
to go back to the business owner I do business with.
When I show up in the store, we have a chat,
I have a relationship, I have a rapport. I feel
empowered when I call in. They don't answer when I
call in, they're too busy talking to another customer. Like
there's no way to be consistent at the small to
medium business, which is really what we've targeted. And again,
when you look at the origin of the industry, it
really was to sell compliance products to enterprise, and then
small medium business owners, which actually make up a majority
of the businesses in the world, are left to try
to use some enterprise solution that starts to go down
the technology rabbit hole.

Speaker 2 (07:13):
So it really is just a lost space.

Speaker 1 (07:15):
It's so interesting because as you're talking, I mean, I
think everyone listening to this can think of times where
you've had to make a call and you get lost
at a quiredmire and you know, and it's it's not
coming from a place of wanting to be negative, but
it's coming from it. So there's no it's you know,
I don't care what part of the world you're in.
If you're a human who can answer my question and
we can understand each other because communication is a two
way street, but whoever's on the other end of the
line can can understand what I'm saying, I can understand
what they're saying. Then you have a higher return on
customer satisfaction. And I think that's just been totally totally lost.
And you're sitting there and you're thinking to yourself, of
the only reason this call is taking me twenty minutes
is because they've outsourced their customer service. And when you
think of that, when you actually think from the customer experience,
that you have a thought that someone outsourced customer service,
why the heck would you want to give them your business?
So you're it's so, and it's it really isn't raging.
I mean, I'm but and then that there's part of
me that's like, we can put a laser on an
interstellar satellite or not a satellite, and a voyager two
out past the Solar system, but you can't find someone
who can tell me why I can't change my address.
Sorry I'm my really odd one right now, but why
I can't change my address for insurance? And it's taking
me an hour? Like this is crazy, but like, but
you'll send me a speeding ticket if I don't change
my titles. But anyway, so what so, yeah, but as
you but as you think, as you so you identified
the problem, like could talk to me, I couldn't give you.

Speaker 3 (08:56):
The problem, Like, I'm you right, So I'd make a call.
I'd say how long do I need for this call?
I have no idea. There's no way to predict in
your schedule. If you're calling a business, how much time
to allocate? You've got other things in your life. You
just have to drop off. In Miami with the rain,
your calls drop all the time. So you're on a call,
all of a sudden it drops. You got to start
all over again. You talk to the same person, you
never do. You always get a new person you have
to start over with. Then my favorite is the promises
I used to get that I just couldn't harvest.

Speaker 2 (09:27):
So you know, all these issues happen. That's why I called.

Speaker 3 (09:30):
Oh my gosh, we're so sorry, mister Azard, Like, here's
what we're gonna do. All of a sudden, there's no accountability.
Now a person left the company. Sorry, we don't have
any record of that, but they told me they were
taking notes and.

Speaker 1 (09:40):
They're kind of threatening. They're kind of threatening because they're like,
this call is being recorded, So if you drop an
f bomb, this could come back and haunt you. Yeah,
so so, but in reality, technology should make this simpler,
like if we have the capability, So, how are you
trying to change that user experience?

Speaker 2 (09:58):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (09:59):
So we you know, we really looked at what do
we hate about placing calls into businesses? And we hate
it and we built a product that just addressed it.
And it sounds profound, but this is stuff. We looked
at ourselves as we built it and we said, how
could people have not been thinking about this? So and
of course we're in an age of AI right. One
of the things we thought a lot about was how
do we use AI in the right ways and pull
in the latest and greatest technology, but put it behind
the scenes so the customer doesn't have to deal with
it but they benefit from it. For instance, in our product,
when you're driving in the rain hits, you get disconnected,
you call back in, you don't have to go through
the robot menu, you get reconnected to Scott who you
were talking to. That's AI at work helping the customer.
When the business owner gets the call from somebody calling
in about something, we've got AI pulling all of the
past transcripts and all the customer data. So, hey, Kevin,
how's that flat tire that I've changed for you last month?

Speaker 2 (10:53):
Is that an issue for you? Again?

Speaker 3 (10:55):
Wow, this business owner actually cares about me and knows
me the way that they should know ac cust Sstomer
and a small medium sized business. Then we look at
things like how do we make sure you're actually calling
and getting what you need quickly? So in our menus
that we're designing with our customers, it's issue based plus one.
If it's this issue, business owners know why most people
are calling. They've been running their business. Ninety five percent
of the calls are predictable issues, and so why does
a customer have to go all the way through the
process of their business set up to really get their help?
And so we're really looking at this from both sides,
and that's again the name of the company's symmetrical right.
We want it to feel like a two way street.
The business owner gets transparency on everything happening in an interaction.
Both sides have a real time transcript of the call
to your earlier point. This call is always recorded. Nobody
ever pulls those recordings in less.

Speaker 1 (11:47):
Yeah, because when I call back, they never know what
my problem.

Speaker 2 (11:49):
Is ever and you never get the recording, so how
do you know what even happen?

Speaker 1 (11:53):
Right?

Speaker 3 (11:53):
So in our product, both sides get the recording because
customers want proof of their time. And again we've used
AI where hey, the recording is on the is on
the owner side. So if you call back in or
your wife calls back in, she can pick right up
where you left off.

Speaker 1 (12:08):
You don't have to pull that number that you lost
or you wrote down on a coffee company whatever said.
But what's interesting and I had an aha moment when
we were when we were talking, which when earlier in
the interview was when you said assist when we transition,
when Steve Jobs made us all by smartphones, the customer
service experience that was built for the landline jumped to
the smartphone. But it was the wrong system and that
got lost, that literally got lost in translation. So the
lesson is as we update to AI. And I think
history is a funny way of rhyming. But whether it's
learning from our mistakes of the Internet and the mental
health impacts on young people and not just young people,
all people with the internet, with social media, what are
we doing to have to be thinking like that? For
artificial intelligence DATO the lessons that we're learning from artificial
intelligence from a national security standpoint, What are we doing
for quantum computing as we adopted from horses to cars,
how are we thinking about flying cars all of these
types of things. But that's a really interesting thing because
it I never thought about that. I never thought of
it as this. The system was misallocated to a new technology,
which is the.

Speaker 3 (13:23):
Fundamental architecture never changed, and the fundamental phone became the
desk extension to You're exactly your point, and it's.

Speaker 1 (13:29):
Like, you don't want that when you were working for
Steve Jobs because I'm a huge I'm admirer of the greats,
I like to say, and actually my newsletter the last
section of my newsletter, but you can get MTF TV,
but it's it's called one more Thing. And I got
it that idea comes from Steve Jobs walking out. I
was I was that loser in high school who was
you know, Oh, Apple's releasing their new products, like gotta
get on Apple Insider, like gotta see what they're releasing,
you know, And my parents were like, we're not buying
you an iPhone. Let's the same here. And now everyone
has one. And by the way, now I'm like, if
you knew how many cracks are in this iPhone, it's horrible.
I need a new iPhone. But what did you learn
from Steve Jobs? What was that like? You know, that
must have been a very transformative experience for you.

Speaker 2 (14:17):
It was.

Speaker 3 (14:18):
I worked there in grad school as an intern, and
the I went full time and was offered a role
when I graduated out of grad school and I spent
almost ten years there, so I really my formative years
and some key things. I mean, Steve really obsessed the customer.
He was thinking through the customer lens, not through what
he wanted to sell them, but what would be transformational
in their lives. And to your point, you know, very
few companies still think that way. They're really thinking about
their internal P and L and even with AI that's
really pretty lost and sort of pulling it through to
the customer. My first project when I got to Apple
was kind of baptism by fire. I was called into
a senior VP's office and said, we're not able to
ship our new round of portables because of this new
connect that's magnetic that Steve is absolutely obsessed with. Because
customers were writing him emails endlessly about tripping on their
power cord, the computer falling off their desk and they'd
lose everything and their life was over right. And so
we had this concept and invention inside of Apple, this magnet.
This was two thousand and four.

Speaker 1 (15:20):
So think back to the technology of two thousand and four.
This is fascinating. Yeah, yeah, this is this is awesome. Yeah,
keep going.

Speaker 3 (15:27):
So this product literally was the reason we couldn't ship
the computers because it was really kind of the new
thing in the portables, and as a guy fresh out
of school, I was running around manufacturing facilities and getting
a lot of heated phone calls because Steve would never
compromise the customer experience, and for him, it was.

Speaker 2 (15:43):
Pivotal that we nailed this for the customer.

Speaker 3 (15:46):
And so I was at twenty three years old, critical
path and shipping all portables for Apple, and very quickly
learned to commit to what I knew I could execute
on and stay focused on the customer, and we pulled
it off. And that's how I ended up with a
longer career, and that ended up getting me moved into retail,
which was kind of new at the time. They'd built
the cube that had been immensely successful in New York.
And the real statement for retail was two things. One
is glass, which is really instead of a window. It
was a structural element for the first time in the
Apple stores, just like the cube.

Speaker 2 (16:18):
And that was a.

Speaker 3 (16:19):
Material Steve loved because it made the store disappear and
people really just see the product and everything happening inside
of the store. And one of my challenges was inspecting glass.
I had to look at everything from designing through manufacturing
to inspecting and Steve, if he found any bubbles or
inclusions in my glass, you know, I'd get the call.
And that was something he personally looked at on every
single project.

Speaker 1 (16:41):
So hold on, holda has so everyone can think of
an Apple store in their mind right now and there
is glass, Like I'm thinking of like three Apple stores
come to mind, and all of them are of glass.
I never thought of why. I was just like, oh,
maybe they just I don't know, it's just glass. So
the point of the glass from Steve Jobs was he
wanted it to just focus on the sexy new Apple product.
And you're right when you walk into the store, you're like, oh,
I want to see the glass, which you know I'm
not gonna Yeah, you want to see the new thing.
So he would call you, like, walk me through the
worst call, but like this is fascinating. Walk me through
a call that and I don't want you to break
any NDAs, but give me an example or a lesson
that you've told to your friends or something that you
still think about and of the bubbles on the glass
or something.

Speaker 2 (17:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (17:33):
So we rebuilt the cube in two thousand and nine
to eleven.

Speaker 1 (17:37):
And the cube is that tilted cube that was in
New York, hopefully people remember, and it was the flagship
in New York or the Apple store. Go ahead.

Speaker 3 (17:45):
We rebuilt that cube because I had worked on the
glass for about three years at the time, and we'd
moved the technology quite a bit forward from we could
do much larger pieces. Instead of eighteen pieces of glass
per side, I could do it in three and so
Steve wanted to update the cube because it looked outdated
from a glass technology perspective, and so we really pushed
the limits with one of our partners to get the
glass done. And we were racing because we wanted to
get it done. You know, Steve. Steve had some things
going on in twenty eleven, so we were moving things
a little faster and I ended up having to reject
some of the glass for quality issues. And this sad
reality was we opened about a month after he passed away,
and it was in some ways I was so proud
because we had held so tight to his principles on
making sure we did the right thing and hadn't compromised
to a timeline that we'd kind of created internally. But
it really kind of stuck with me and he would
show up really inconspicuously at openings. People wouldn't even notice
him walking through. Sometimes he'd walk through in the night
like he was a contractor, Like he wouldn't ever want,
you know, the Entourage or the Show and Tell. And
that's when you get the call going, hey, I noticed
something wasn't quite right on the railing of the staircase,
Like what's the plan and you need to know it already,
have a plan and have a timeline against it, right.
And so it really was one of these you know,
stay on your toes at all time. But what I
loved about it was you knew why there was never
a oh, we're just doing things to do something for quality.
It's like it was always really clear, this has this
end benefit and this is the reason we're kind of
stacking the wood behind this initiative.

Speaker 1 (19:22):
What advice would you give yourself back then, twenty two
years old, knowing what you know now, talk to yourself
in the past of that baptism by fire moment, because
I can very I mean, I did not come from
the technology world. I had a very different background that
was somewhat similar of a baptism by fire moment. When
I was assigned to cover Trump's some probable presidential campaign
in twenty fifteen and then became you know, the Chief
Washington Cors Moondern, the Bloomberg. But that was baptism by
fire because the only election that I had ever covered
was a college student government election for my college paper.
Nothing against Penn State's EPUA, by the way, because it
prepared me well. But the first selection I ever covered
was a presidential and it was a wild ride and whatnot.
So what I'm fascinated by baptism by fire career moments.
What advice would you give that twenty two year old
working for Steve Jobs? Yeah, what would you say?

Speaker 3 (20:22):
I'd say, try to have some fun while you're doing it.
It was really high pressure. Obviously, you know your job
was at risk at any given time. I used to
joke at Apple, you'd know you weren't going to work
there anymore. When people's badge just stopped working. You could
be walking with somebody would go red on the door.
They kind of knew wasn't an accident, right, And it
was really a high intensity culture and that's what made
it exceptional in many ways. And so I would have
told myself, hey, life shot, try to have fun during
this kind of golden era, because as you probably know
from your coverage and your baptism, you only recognize the
Golden era in hindsight sort of it's in the moment.
It's hard to tell you're in sort of such a
special time.

Speaker 1 (21:03):
See, I wouldn't call it, but see I hear you
on that, And that's really good advice to have fun.
I have the same advice, have fun and try to
have fun even when it's when it's crazy. But I
think I would add on to that, which is it's
not your only chapter. And I think when you're in
those moments, you think that like that's the whole story,
and it's not, and it you know, and and that
was that took me years to understand. I never would
have started Meet the Future or had this great partnership
with iHeart with Hello Future if I didn't leave and
for you, you never would have co founded and been
the CEO of a Symmetrical if you hadn't closed that
previous chapter.

Speaker 3 (21:52):
Well put, and I think you know, like you said,
we're saying similar things. If you take things in perspective,
you can have a little more fun and not feel
the life for death existential tension as much.

Speaker 1 (22:02):
Thanks so much for coming on and saying hello to
the future, co founder and CEO of Symmetrical. Thank you
for indulging all of my questions about Apple. And again,
he's worked for Google Citadel, he's done some independent development
for coinbase as well grid Matrix. I mean, it's really
really impressive stuff. So I hope you'll come back on
the program when I'm down in Florida. We'll catch up.
Thank you so much, and yeah, have a great tomorrow
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