[00:00:00] All of the foundational principles of customer service come right from the scripture. Treat others the way you want to be treated. Serve others ahead of yourself. Go the extra mile for the customer. We will never sign a contract for more than 12 months. The, the good news is, Priscilla, I can tell you stories of clients that we've worked with for 20, 23, 27 years because we've been able every year to provide that value and they want us to be a part of their team.

What God really taught me is like, no, proclaiming my word isn't limited just being a pastor in a pulpit in a church on Sunday morning

Welcome to The Entrepreneur's Kitchen. As always, I've got a special guest for you Tom Vander Well. Tom is the CEO of Intelligentx, and the author of a book called [00:01:00] "This Call May Be Monitored." I don't know how many times you've heard those words, but you're about to understand what that means.

Thank you, Tom. Tom, how did you become the man in the middle, and what do you mean by the man in the middle? Let's get everyone into the story.

that's a big question. Yeah I was hired to do this job, it was in 1994, and the whole idea, of call monitoring or call recording was really brand new. And in fact, my first client, Priscilla, I like... Nothing was digital. It was 1994. We walked into , this closet, and there's this wall of analog phone jacks, and we would plug a cord into a jack that corresponded to somebody's desk, and then we would plug it into a cassette recorder for those who remember what a cassette tape is.

And we'd wait for them to answer the phone and hit the record button. So I was in this whole thing from the very beginning when nobody was doing it and everyone was trying to figure it out. But when I was hired by [00:02:00] my spiritual mentor who founded our company, his name was Chuck, and he said, "Tom, I need somebody who can listen to these phone calls and analyze them, and then with the data can walk into and talk to the frontline customer ser- service representatives in the morning and talk about what's happening in the phone calls and what it means and how they can do a better job of giving their customers a, a really good customer experience.

But then be able to walk into the CEO or the senior vice president of customer service in the afternoon and have a completely different conversation about what the data means for the business from a strategic perspective." And so I just found myself in this place, this man in the middle, where I am working with both the people who are talking to the customers in those moments of truth, and the executives [00:03:00] who aren't talking to customers but need to know what those customers are saying.

Man in the middle is a must, because as you're explaining it, every organization needs that man in the middle. Now it's a standard, every call is monitored. But what made your spiritual mentor Chuck, say that, "I need someone who listens

did he explain to you why at that point he thought that was important?

Our company, Intelligentix, was founded really as a classic research customer survey firm. And so- Okay ... let's do the survey and find out how satisfied the customers are and what's driving their satisfaction. Chuck was a person who's like going, " But that's not good enough.

I don't want to be the person who just hands the information over and says, 'Here's the data.'" I want to help our clients," because he was really driven by the biblical principles. "I want to serve our clients. I want to help them succeed." And so if you have the data and you don't put it to [00:04:00] work, it's not gonna do anything.

So he envisioned this idea of where okay, we've done the survey. Here's what your customers are saying, and here's what's driving their satisfaction. So now let's actually listen to what your team is providing, what your team is doing in those moments of truth, whether it be a phone call or an email or a chat session, and let's find out what those customers are experiencing, and let's then marry the two.

Here's what your customers expect. We know 'cause we listened. Here's what your team is providing. We know 'cause we listened. And here's where the gap is. Here are where the opportunities to improve. And so the third piece of what I've always been asked to do is then okay, let's take the data and turn it into some actionable training and coaching to help the team improve the customer experience, [00:05:00] and it becomes a cycle of continuous improvement.

, And I know Priscilla, a lot of your audience are, entrepreneurs, and they've got a small operation, and maybe it's just them trying to make things work. But there are so many lessons that I've learned that are applicable no matter the size of the company. In fact, we're working right now with , a client, we're just working with one person.

They have one person who's talking to customers at the front desk and answering the phone. But it works whether you're talking about one person who's talking to the customer or you're talking about hundreds of people in a huge contact center. The principles are the same.

That's so good. I like that it was really about serving ', we have people who are listening who are coaches and consultants, and I think they can attest to this. You've done the consulting, you've handed over the work, and then nothing happens. And you're "Oh gosh, but I handed them the thing

and just going that [00:06:00] step further to make sure that people actually find it easier , or it's a no-brainer to apply what you've helped them with. Even with coaching, you've done all the coaching and then you wait and "Oh, nothing is happening." So you know, thinking through that, how you can make it so that the work actually serves the people and gets them to succeed is really important because, it's not so much about the service,

but, the success of your client. 

if there's no value, it's not worth investing the time and the energy and the resources to it. our company was founded really with this whole spiritual principle that we have to serve well. We have to provide a measurable value. And so our founder, Chuck, started, and we still operate by the same principle.

We will never sign a contract for more than 12 months. We'll, we will sign a contract for a year of services, but never beyond that because we believe that [00:07:00] we have the burden of serving well providing service that is of value to the client. And if we aren't, that client shouldn't be paying us, we shouldn't just be resting on our laurels and pretending.

That just goes back to the, the things that God asks of us, to constantly provide a servant heart and to lead with integrity. that's the way we've always done business. , The good news is, Priscilla, I can tell you stories of clients that we've worked with for 20, 23, 27 years because we've been able every year to provide that value, and they want us to be a part of their team.

And so for me that's a huge measurement of success that clients have kept us around that long.

No, that's a huge measure of success. And I think for those who listen, something will go off for them because Tom, , a lot of times it's that you've done the coaching you've put in the work but [00:08:00] you haven't gone those extra step and then you continue to circle with looking for clients. But if you really went that extra mile to make sure that the client succeeds, and not just provided your service. I like that. Tom, tell us the story behind this 'cause at some point there's a change of hands between you and Chuck and I just thought that was interesting.

I've never heard of that before and I wondered how that came to be.

, It's a journey. I liken it to a lot of the Exodus journey and, Moses handing over the reins to Joshua, and it's not always easy. A lot of times it's messy, and here's Moses who brings the Hebrew people to the promised land, but he doesn't get to lead them in.

It gets transferred over to Joshua . whenever there's a transition of business, even with believers - we're all humans and it can get messy. I will tell you that with Chuck, he actually retired in 2005, [00:09:00] and he handed the business over to myself and a business partner my colleague Scott, who's now retired.

Then Scott and I took over, and Chuck remained as the chairman of the board and continued to be the, patriarch of the company. But he really wasn't an owner at that point. And so it was really an interesting process because we tried very hard to honor him as really the father of the business and continue to involve him and which he was involved until his death.

And he passed away and went to his reward. And then my business partner, Scott it was it was very interesting because Chuck actually spiritually mentored both Scott and me when we were young men. Scott when he was in college, me when I was in high school. so it was an interesting story to have him as a spiritual mentor, but then going into business to have him as a professional business mentor and to have him [00:10:00] pass on that legacy.

, It's, was really unique and it was really a lot of fun to walk through.

You want a mentor, you want a spiritual mentor, you want a business mentor, and then how do you manage all these relationships? 'Cause you've been in business a long time, and for the founder who's, like, all alone right now desiring those relationships,

, there's a piece, Priscilla, that is on both sides of the equation. For those in my waypoint on the life journey where we h- we're further along on the journey, it is important for us to really take on that mantle that Chuck did with us of saying, "Look, no, I need to be a mentor to others.

I need to be open and available and giving of myself to younger people in the business world who need that guidance and direction, and I need to be able to serve and give of myself that way." I think that there's also a responsibility [00:11:00] in younger generations to say, "No, there is a value in learning the lessons that that people like Tom or people like Chuck, people like-- that the older generations have."

And one of the things that we're discovering now in our research at Intelligentix, because we constantly do customer research, is the differences in generations are really stark. And unfortunately, there is a segment in Generations Y, the Millennials, and in Z who look at those in Generation X or those in the Boomer generation and say, "You are the ones who messed everything up, and we're just going to reject you, and we're gonna do our own thing and go our own way.

You have nothing to teach us." So I've experienced some of that. A- and again, that, I don't wanna make a huge generalization 'cause that's not everybody in those generations, [00:12:00] but there are a lot in that generation. In the same time, there are people that I see in our generation, in Generation X, and even in the Boomers who are, like, going, " We've done our time.

We've done our thing. We're now going to go into the sunset with our 401k and let the younger generations just ride with it." that's not good stewardship either because we're called to bring up the next generations and take care of them. So I think there's pieces on both sides, but I really believe that where the spirit of the Lord is, he's going to bring people together for those who are willing.

Yeah. No, that's good. Thank you for sharing that research with us. Tom, , you speak about principles a lot in, the way you guys operate at IntelligentX. Could you speak some more to that so that we can have an understanding of what principles you're referring to?

Yeah. It's part of the mission statement that our company was founded [00:13:00] with. by applying the principles of God's word to our lives and work, we become examples of servant leadership, integrity, bring measurable value to our clients, and profitably build our lives and our business. when I was a young man, I thought, and I talk about it - my book, I tell the story of God called me to proclaim His word when I was 14 years old, and I thought...

And so when I'm 14, 15 years old, I was traveling the state of Iowa preaching every Sunday. God just did this thing where I'm like... And I thought for sure this means that I'm supposed to be a pastor and I'm supposed to go into pastoral ministry." And what God really led me to is no. I have this path for you where you're going to analyze over 100,000 business phone calls, and you're gonna be in the business world, and you're gonna work with companies all over North America."

And I would never, [00:14:00] ever have wanted that or desired that or thought that, but it was exactly where God wanted me to be. And so kind of the principles being like what God really taught me is like no. Proclaiming my word isn't limited to

just being a pastor in a pulpit in a church on Sunday morning." I got to take... and Chuck really taught me as he mentored me like no, Tom. All of the foundational principles of customer service come right from the scripture." Treat others the way you want to be treated. Serve others ahead of yourself.

Go the extra mile for the customer. If somebody asks for your cloak, give them your coat as well. Serve if you want to be a good leader. All of these principles that I have taught customer service representatives and managers and executives over three [00:15:00] decades, they all come straight from scripture.

So when God called me to proclaim His word, I thought it meant one thing, that it just meant me being in a pulpit on Sunday preaching straight from the Bible. And instead, what He taught me is no. Proclaiming my word is teaching these principles in a company, in a conference room, in a training room, in a coaching closet with people, and I will open up opportunities for you to have conversations that you could never dream of with people who would never dark- darken the door of the church."

And that's been one of the biggest lessons of my career

Oh, wow. 'Cause when I did read your story, I thought that moment where you go from, okay, pastor to okay, not pastor anymore, that must be a very challenging moment or, I don't know. I'm asking you what that moment was like.

yes, it was radical. it shook me to my core. And I've been joking that like, when I was in high school, if you told me that, [00:16:00] "Tom, what God's going to lead you to is to analyze 100,000 recorded business phone calls," I would've just said, "Oh my gosh, find me a therapist and give me a prescription for antidepressants because that sounds like the worst thing in the world."

But it just goes to show you that what we think, our ways are not God's ways. What God has for us is not always what we think it is. And so that was a huge lesson for me. , At that age of 14 when I gave my life to Christ I literally prayed, "Wherever you want me to go, whatever you want me to do, I will do."

And here's the thing: when you pray that prayer, God could lead you to places that you can never, ever think of. And so be careful what you pray, but He's always faithful, and He's got our best in mind. I now look back and kinda go, I couldn't have asked for a career that was better for me, for my giftedness, for my calling, for my passions, for the things [00:17:00] that I'm good at.

But God knew better than I did where I needed to be

When you talk about embodying biblical principles in your business, the people who are listening, Christian entrepreneurs, there's this sort of like rub i'm looking just your personal opinion.

Do you name it a kingdom business? I've even seen people asking in, forums, "I started this business. I'm a Christian. I called it a kingdom business. Now I'm wondering, do I just serve everyone? Do I only serve Christians? How do I keep the kingdom mission in the business world?"

So I'm interested in your personal opinion because I think it's interesting the way that you've done it over there.

Yeah. No, that's a great question. I love that question, and here's what I would say is that my life journey, my spiritual journey, , my business journey would tell me that we were constantly looking for a binary black or white answer. Yes, you should make this a kingdom business. No, you should, [00:18:00] you should fly under the radar.

When the reality is that God calls different people to different things. In fact, I have this blog and podcast that I do every day, read a chapter of the Bible, and then write what it makes me think about. I'm working through 1 Kings. So here's Elijah, whom God calls to this amazing experience of going off and in the wilderness and being fed by ravens, and he goes to Mount Carmel and he calls down fire from heaven.

But then we also have this guy named Obadiah, who God calls to work within the system, within the Ahab administration, hiding away 100 prophets of God and taking care of them and feeding them. And Elijah says, "I'm the only prophet of the Lord left." I'm like wait a minute. Time out. Elijah, Obadiah just told you that he's been faithfully serving the Lord, doing what God called him to do." But Elijah is so focused on I'm the [00:19:00] only one that's doing it this way. And I think that's such an example of what I see and w- what you're talking about, where God could call one entrepreneur to go, "You know what? I am going to be unashamed and unapologetic, and I am called to say, 'Yes, I'm a kingdom business.'"

And God could call another person to say, "You know what? I am going to serve well, , I'm gonna do business by kingdom principles, but I really feel called to fly under the radar and do it differently." It doesn't mean that one's right and one's wrong. God could have called different people to different things.

And so for me, the real answer is, are you listening? Are you being discerning to what God is calling you to do? And when you lay your head on the pillow at night, do you feel like, "Yes, I'm right where God is leading me to be, where God's calling to be"? And if you are, great. And if you're not, then you've got other questions that you need to ask.

Yeah, thanks for sharing that, immediately when you [00:20:00] talked about flying under the radar, I thought of Esther. But it was for a certain time that she would be able to help the people. 

Yes, exactly right. And it's the whole thing, Esther. , When Mordecai says, "Who knows but that you have been brought for such a time as this?" And that's a great example

, Tom. You write, "This Call May Be Monitored." Okay, what's the premise and lead us into what the book is about

Yes. So we really haven't talked much about the book to this point. So in my career, you hear all the time, "This call may be monitored for quality and training purposes," and everyone wonders, does anybody listen to these calls? That's been my career. Starting in 1994, for over 30 years, , companies of all shapes and sizes from all different markets, from all different things have hired us to monitor those phone calls, to analyze what's happening, and then to translate that into how do we move our company culture [00:21:00] from service mediocrity to a culture of service excellence.

I was journaling about 10 years ago, and I started writing all of the life lessons that God taught me in my career. And very quickly, I came up with a list of 30 things. And I'm not talking about business lessons. They are business lessons, but they're also life lessons. They're spiritual lessons that God has taught me from listening to and analyzing 100,000 phone calls and training hundreds and thousands of customer service representatives and working with all these different companies that have taught me how to be a better husband and how to be a better father and how to be a better friend and human being.

And so I thought, "Oh my gosh, this is a book." So the book is not just about the business principles, and it is, you're gonna learn a lot about business, the subtitle is "What Eavesdropping on Corporate America Taught Me About Business and Life." What [00:22:00] people have been surprised by is I'll talk about the business principles and how do you listen to a phone call and what do you listen for and how do you turn this, translate that into a better customer experience?

But then I will go, "Okay, now here's the life lesson. Here's the scripture in verse. The same principle applies to me being a better husband to my wife, Wendy." And so it's almost like a, okay, here's the business principles, and then almost a devotional thought, here's how this applies to life.

I wanted to just especially with Christian entrepreneurs, Christian business people, to say, look, , God's Word is not confined to the church. God's Word is true, and the principles apply to everything, both business and life, and that's one of the things He's taught me.

Do you mind if you could share one of that, like, listening to the call through to a devotional we can have an idea for that? Yeah

Absolutely. in the book, I talk about the fact that [00:23:00] when we do customer research, every company, every customer base, every industry, there are certain, what I would say are particular nuances to that customer population and what drives their satisfaction, what they're looking for, what they want at this point in time But there are also some universals that just come back to our human nature, and I call them , the Holy Trinity of customer satisfaction.

There are three things that are always true, no matter what company, no matter what industry, no matter what client we're serving, these three things are always true. And in order they are, number one, I want my issue resolved. I have a question, I have a problem, I want it solved. Number two I wanna know that you care.

It's the courtesy and friendliness and know that you care about me as a customer, that I feel cared for as a human being. so it's all of the soft skills and the customer service skills. And then [00:24:00] number three is don't waste my time. So it's the time-related dimensions of service.

And I remember early in my career, I'm with a client and I'm training all these principles, and I just began to think, " You know what? These are the same thing my wife Wendy wants." When she hands me her honey-do list in the morning, what does she want? She wants it resolved. She wants me to get on it.

... And time-related measures, she doesn't want me to procrastinate and take forever or forget to do it. She wants it done, and she wants it done in a timely way. She also wants to know that I care about her as my wife and that I appreciate her. And so I began to really think about when I come home, how do I apply these things every day in my marriage?

the example I use in my book is in our home, Wendy always does the laundry. She doesn't really want me anywhere near the [00:25:00] laundry room. She's so afraid of what I might do there. So every week I walk down from my home office and I find her doing the laundry, and I began to kinda go, "You know what?

I always teach customer service representatives always say thank you to the customer. Always use courtesy." And so I began every week saying, "Thank you for doing the laundry," and I've done this over 20 years every time, "Thank you for doing the laundry." And you know what? She does the same thing for me when I come in sweaty and gross and dirty from doing the lawn work.

But the reality is, and this has been proven by research, that couples who communicate gratitude to one another for the things that you each do on a continual basis builds a really strong foundation for a positive marriage. , It was an online survey of 40,000 couples that proved this to be true just about a month ago, and I'm like going [00:26:00] I learned this 30 years ago from doing what I do in business," and that's one of the principles that God taught me, and it's helped me be a better husband

Sometimes we forget what the word principle means, that it's must be true in, a variety of circumstances. that example, that it's true with the customer, it's true at home, it's true of human relationships.

. And I like that it's biblical principles true in, in situations in life. That's really good. Now, something I came across that was very interesting, Tom my AI told me that the people that work at Intelligentics, some of them have worked there for 20, 25 years and more.

I'll let you confirm that because I do know AI can hallucinate, but I'll let you confirm that. And I wondered, how do you get people to stay? I think that's a big question these days, especially with this whole kind of quiet quitting thing.

Yeah. it is true. the thing that I have found over the years [00:27:00] is, one, to give people a sense of mission and purpose that is more than just earning a paycheck. And so having a business that's founded on biblical principles and having a mission statement that really speaks to, we are trying to be an example, we are trying to be servant leaders, examples of integrity, that's number one.

Because I think that there are people who are looking for a job with a company that is about people more than profits, and I really believe that. And so when You build your business with that mission, and you communicate that mission well, and you live out that mission continually, I think that is a big part of it, because people feel drawn to it.

And people have a sense of "Look, what I'm doing is more... there's a greater purpose than just making a profit." The other thing [00:28:00] is I think just giving people as best you can without knowing the future, a hope in the future. I know the plans that I have for you, and we're going to continue to follow God's lead in this business, and we believe that the best is yet to come, and good things are coming down the line, and have vision and hope and purpose and future, and to be able to communicate that.

I always say, Priscilla, and I learned this in the business as well, one of the things I've learned is that almost every customer service issue comes down to a problem with communication, either a lack of communication, poor communication, no communication, miscommunication. And I think the same thing can be true with management-employee relationships.

Lack of communication, miscommunication, no communication, those are the things that have always driven conflicts and problems when it comes to management and employees.

So what do you do specifically to the person who's listening thinking, [00:29:00] "Okay, I've gotta work on the communication part of how I communicate to the people I work with, the team members, the contractors, people who help me in my business." , How can I begin to think about that communication?

I would say the number one thing , that I have learned is that there's some things that you ... This is true in customer service, and I think it's true in internal business communications. We fail to say the simple things that need to be said regularly and consistently. It goes back to the saying, "Thank you for doing the laundry."

And I've had people that are, like, going that's stupid. Why should I thank my wife for doing what she's just expected to do?" And I'm, like, going, " Because I wanna have a great marriage." Because I want her to know that I love her and I care about her. And I just so often find that the default is just they should just know that I think this.

They should just know that I feel this way. They should just know that this is the way it is." And so we don't say it. We don't talk about it. And I have [00:30:00] learned that businesses that are really good at building those great internal cultures are ones who speak it. They say the words. They don't expect people to hear it once in new hire training and think that they've got it and they know it and they've ingrained it.

No. they need to hear it all the time, repeatedly. And that's the only way to reinforce it, which is why you don't just read the Bible once and then go, "Okay. I read it. I'm done. I've got it all." No. You go back to it again and again, and every time you go back to it, there's something different, there's something deeper, there's something better for you because you're at a different place in life.

And it's the same thing with internal business communication. You need to communicate how important people are. You need to communicate the mission. You need to communicate the vision. You need to communicate that this is important. You need to communicate how much you appreciate people, how grateful you [00:31:00] are for them and why we're doing this over and over again and find different ways to do it.

I think that's the biggest thing is people just don't communicate.

Faith comes by hearing. You hear enough, you believe. You keep hearing it, you believe. Just like we believe negative things 'cause we've heard them repeatedly. If we heard positive reinforcing things repeatedly, we'd believe those too. I'm getting the string of the biblical principles of everything in life.

Now you mentioned that you thought you were building a business or that God was building a business through you, but you realized that God was building you. Speak to that some more.

Yeah. And I think for me personally, because Business was never my trajectory. I never wanted to go into business. It was not what I had envisioned, and yet God led me here. As a young man, so my journey in this career was that I really didn't know what I was doing, and I was honest about that.

I don't know. And I was really intimidated especially early on [00:32:00] when I would get called into an executive's office or I'd get called into an executive meeting or presentation and, and fortunately in those early years, nothing was expected of me other than to sit and watch and absorb.

But I still, I, yeah, I had lots of feelings of inadequacy, anxiety. And so over the years now that I look back, I can just kinda go, " God taught me so many things." And I suppose it's a lot like the disciples. I would imagine that early on in Jesus' ministry, Peter, James, and John, were like, "What in the world?"

And there are even stories , like, here's Peter kinda going, "Let's build some booths so that you and Elijah and Moses can..." God just interrupts him. Not the same Peter who wrote First and Second Peter, who became the rock on which the church was built.

The same thing's true with [00:33:00] me. God built in me, taught me so many things that I now look back on and go, "Wow, what a journey it's been." But that's for all of us. God grows us up and matures us

Now I wonder through the tough times when you're doubting yourself and you're not sure what you're doing and you're filled with anxiety, 'cause for a lot of people things stop there. How did you move forward?

Yeah, so for me part of that was building into my everyday life, and here's where your personal life and your business life merge together. Because in my personal life, I was building spiritual disciplines of I've been writing this chapter a day blog now for over 20 years, and it actually started with a discipline,

when I started doing that, blogging didn't even exist. But I began, it's like, no, I am going to be in God's word every morning. I am going to do-- have these spiritual foundations of being in the word and [00:34:00] praying and surrounding myself with people who I can have spiritual conversations with about my faith and my walk.

And those things when business has gone bad, when I was going through a tough time in business, it was those spiritual disciplines that I had built that became the channel through which God was, like, going, "Don't give up. Don't give up. Don't give up. I'm faithful." Because I was constantly in His word being reminded of how faithful He was, being reminded of all the examples of His faithfulness.

Being in prayer on a constant basis and knowing that God has not abandoned me, and no matter what happens, I can trust Him. Without those disciplines and without those, things that I had built into my personal life I'm not sure that I would have made it in my business life.

And so I encourage everybody out there all of your listeners, [00:35:00] that your business will come and go. It may succeed, it may fail, but at the end of this life journey, it really doesn't matter in an eternal perspective. What's really important is your heart, your life, what Christ has done in you.

And so start with that foundation, and the whole business thing will take care of itself because God will be leading you.

And the principles of God are true in every circumstance. Thank you for that. Now, Tom, I just to take you back a little bit, for the founder who's listening, who's maybe a one-person, two-person, three-people team, who's like, "Okay, I can take the data that I'm getting. Now how do I translate that into the strategic things I should do?"

I like that you were like bridging those two things, which are very important. .

So when we do and again, there's three pieces to it. Let's survey your customers. What do they expect? What are they saying? What's driving their satisfaction? Let's listen to the communication between you and [00:36:00] your customers. What's happening in those moments of truth? When the data comes back and we do the analysis part of our role is to say, "Okay, here's what your customers are saying."

Whether that be, a huge global corporation and we're, again, measuring hundreds of CSRs in multiple contact centers, or whether it's just a small business where we only have a handful. We did , a project for a marketing agency a few years ago, and their entire customer population is like 30 clients.

So we talked to all, like all 30 clients. So it doesn't matter whether it's big or small, our job then is to translate what the customers are saying into, " Here's what you're doing well. Here's where you have opportunities to improve." So the, the report that we bring back says, "Here's what you need to focus on."

It becomes a blueprint for if you're [00:37:00] gonna move the needle on your customer satisfaction, that's gonna keep them more loyal, that's gonna bring them back again and again, that's going to make these customers or clients for 20, 30, 40 years these are the things that you need to do. When we listen to the phone calls, the same thing because we know what your customers expect.

We can listen and go, okay, there are so many opportunities, even in just a one simple phone call, to push those buttons of I'm resolving the issue, I'm respecting your time, I care about you through my courtesy and friendliness, things that most people don't even think about. But once you're trained in them, once you learn them and you start applying them in every phone call or email or chat session it begins to...

Like customers begin to notice, because most companies aren't delivering that. So if you can deliver the thing that nobody else is delivering, customers begin to notice

It's interesting that a lot of [00:38:00] times we get carried away with the tech and we forget about the principles that are true. Now that we've got AI and people are saying you can have an AI customer service agent," and what do you think about that? Because that's becoming a

Yeah. Yeah. So here's where we're at with AI. I talk about it a little bit in the book but as we all know, AI is a constantly evolving thing. Right now, AI can do some things really well, and one of the principles I talk about in the book is this: truth, you'll always find truth at the point of tension between the two extremes.

And this is where where being a man in the middle has taught me, is that look for where the two extremes are. And with AI, it's, it, the headlines just even this morning, this guy that's out there going, "There's a 10% chance that AI is going to kill the entire human race within the next 10 years."

And all the news agencies are talking about it. So that's one extreme. And then you have other people on the other extreme saying, [00:39:00] "AI is going to, usher in utopia." The reality is that truth is at the point of tension between those two extremes. I have found the same thing, like even within our business.

Can't AI just listen to the phone calls?" Interestingly enough, you know what? Right now, I'm sure this will change, but right now, AI cannot listen to a audio recording It can listen to a live recording, like Fathom and all these, all the AI bots that we use when- whether it's Teams or Zoom or whatever.

It can listen live and transcribe and tell you what happened. But you can't, right now, you cannot upload an MP3 audio recording and have AI listen to it. I don't understand why. If you want AI to measure a phone call, you have to transcribe it and then feed the transcriptions to AI.

And as we all know, transcriptions are not perfect. We do use AI. We'll do it. We'll transcribe it, and we'll feed it through AI. I [00:40:00] still analyze calls all the time. I analyzed, I don't know, 20, 25 calls today.

And AI had taken the first pass at all of them, it was wrong about 20% of the time. Did it save me time? Yeah. It got about 80% correct. But if I wasn't listening, if I wasn't reading the transcription and listening to the audio recording and looking at what AI said and catching the places where it made an obvious mistake, the data would be all wrong.

And so I think that is a very apt place , that I'm finding as I talk to clients and and everybody that's using AI. It does about 80% really well. But if you're not monitoring, if you're not watching it, if you're not checking it it could be making some really bad mistakes that you're not catching.

So be careful

Yeah, I get it. 'Cause when it's written word and spoken, it's very different because the same word spoken with a tone, a lot of things change what something [00:41:00] means. So it would be to assume that AI would know without hearing what that exact word was

That's exactly right. So it's the tone it's the intonation. If you can't listen to the audio and listen to the voice, that's not gonna happen. Also one of the things you find in a customer service call is dead air. Like, when the CSR just leaves you in 30, 40 seconds of silence and you don't know what they're doing as a customer you're, like, going, "Hello?

Is everything okay?" It's like, "What's going on the other side of the phone?" And your confidence is diminishing, but if AI is simply looking at a transcript, it's not gonna know that dead air was even there. So there are things that it's always going to miss

Oh, that's very interesting. I wonder what's gonna take place because, there's a lot of people who are marketing it out there to say, "Hey, you don't have a big team. You can create an agent, and it can be a customer service agent and you can now have someone who takes that role."

So something to think about, but something to look further into, I think being aware that sometimes it has that margin of error, [00:42:00] and, depending on how big your customer base is, can you afford that margin of error? So thinking through those things. Tom, thank you so much. Thank you for all the insights and your book, "This Call May Be Monitored."

Please tell us Tom, where can people follow you, connect with you if they'd like to know more?

Yes, absolutely. So the book is on Amazon. That's probably the easiest way to find it. "This Call May Be Monitored: What Eavesdropping on Corporate America Taught Me About Business and Life," by Tom Vander Well. My chapter-a-day blog you can find at my website, and you can find out more about me at tomvanderwell.com.

I love to speak. I love to talk about this stuff in front of groups, so if you've got a, I don't know, a men's conference or a, a Christian business conference out there, and you're, like, looking for somebody to talk, I would love to do that. Go to tomvanderwell.com. You can reach me there.

Thank you very much, Tom.

Thanks so much, Priscilla. Thank you. It's been an honor to be on your show