The Trick to Aligning Tech, People & Process for Operational Success

I feel like our future in five years is going to be a lot more predictive.

And the first few months, that's when we saw that 26% improvement in technician response time.

We're looking into how we can use AI to leverage that data and essentially predict when a machine is going to need service.

Most engineers are playing the game of like making things and actually doing the hands-on work.

And so that transition to leadership can actually be really difficult.

If your customer's calling you, it's already negative and this is your opportunity to make it a positive.

The double entry problem is something that I think every company suffers from.

That when we actually went live, it was a very successful launch.

Since we went live with a new system, we've seen a first-time fix rate above 99%.

So it's been a huge win.

The system is running through billions, if not trillions, of different permutations when it's working.

Wow, wow.

This wasn't about replacing people.

This is about helping everybody do their job.

Everybody wants to do a good job.

Welcome back to Experts of Experience.

I'm your host, Lacey Peace.

I just got off mic with Phil Parbery, who is the core services manager at Tamra Collection Australia.

That's right, we had an Ozzy on the pod, which was really cool.

I am currently recording at 9.35 p.m.

my time to account for the time zone difference.

This episode was a really amazing under the hood look at how operations affect customer experience.

So for those who aren't familiar, Tamra Collection in Australia has a bunch of reverse bending machines, which I actually didn't even know was a term before talking to Phil, where you return items through the vending machines.

And then, of course, they take them and distribute them.

So a good example of this might be like plastic bottles that you turn into the vending machine, you get some money back for turning them in, and then Tomra will take it and dispose of those plastic bottles, right?

So it's a really unique and very niche business model.

But what I loved about this episode was that we got to talk to Phil about how his field service team is using technology in new ways.

So that way they can increase what he calls uptime, which basically means that all these machines are operating.

And obviously, if your machine is working and there are no problems, then you are not getting those customer sport phone calls that say, hey, this machine's not working.

I'm frustrated.

I'm annoyed.

So it's really important that these operations are very buttoned up, that the response time is super high, that these machines are operating to their fullest capacity as often as possible to avoid the negative customer experience.

So it's a great masterclass in navigating the digital transformation.

But we also talked a lot about what's in store for the future with these new technologies.

So we talked about predictive maintenance, predictive analytics, personalization, when personalization is too creepy or when it's really helpful, and how to navigate this new world where your human employees and human agents are going to be actually working with AI tools and AI agents.

The right way to do it, the wrong way to do it.

You won't want to miss this episode with Phil.

Plus, did I mention he's Australian?

I mean, that just makes it even more cool.

So tune in to this episode.

But before we do, please like and subscribe to our YouTube channel, to Rappa Podcast, to Spotify, to wherever you're listening.

And please drop me a line, DM me on LinkedIn, and let me know who you want to hear from, what company should come on the show, what questions you have that I have not yet asked.

And I would be more than happy to answer those questions and invite those folks onto the show.

So without further ado, here is Phil Parbary of Tamara Collection Australia.

Phil, welcome to Experts of Experience.

I'm so excited for you to be here.

Thank you for having me.

Yeah, and you have to humor me.

You have to humor our audience.

Most of our audience is in the U.S.

So I would love for you to explain where you're calling in from.

So I'm based in Sydney, and Australia.

So other side of the Pacific.

It's actually a day ahead for us as well.

Yeah.

So what time is it for you?

So for everyone listening, I'm currently recording at 8.30 p.m.

This is my latest interview I've ever done.

So what time is it for you, Phil?

It's 11.30 a.m.

the next day.

Yeah.

I don't know why that always blows my mind, but every time I'm like, man, that's so cool and wild and interesting.

Before we get into what you're doing at Tamra, I do want to kind of set the table there.

Since you are in a different location, most of our audience is US-based.

Is there any differences that you've seen with Australian culture from like a buyer or customer perspective that you think is interesting and worth kind of flagging for our audience before we dive in to what you do today?

We get a lot of influence in the American culture over Australia as well.

I think

generally, I think a lot of the patterns can be very similar from my experience.

I haven't spent a huge amount of time in the US.

But yeah, it's, you know, people like to have options.

They like to have

a high level of service and feel like that

a valued customer and not just a number, essentially.

Yeah, absolutely.

And doing it all while there's just insane amounts of different animals and insects trying to get you.

Oh, well,

it's a beautiful country, but yeah, full of lots of wonderful wildlife.

Yes, I have to visit.

It is on like the top of my list.

We will be going there at some point.

Cool.

Well, with that said, I would love to do an intro to Tamra and what you guys are doing since I don't know if it's a company that maybe people have heard of.

So if you could explain what it is and kind of what you do today, day to day, that would be great.

Sure.

Yeah.

So the Tomra is a global company.

We have several divisions.

I work for Tomra Collection Australia.

And what we do in Australia is we make, operate, and maintain reverse spending machines.

So reverse spending, i.e.

you return the empty container and get some money out as opposed to a traditional vending machine.

We operate these as part of container deposit schemes across the country.

We have about 2,600 machines across maybe 750 sites nationwide.

And most of those are automated unstaffed machines.

So we haven't got staff on site.

The customers are just working with automated machine.

And my role is head of what we call the core service team.

It's a cross-functional team.

We support our customers in different states across the country.

My responsibilities include leading our supply chain, our technical team, and our customer service team.

So it's

quite a big role.

It's one I

enjoy.

Yeah.

and how long have you been there i've been at tomer a bit over seven years now and i've taken on several different responsibilities in that time yeah that's amazing what were you doing before you started there i originally trained as an engineer so i was i was a mechanical research engineer at a manufacturing company in australia and i've also worked in aerospace in the uk as well so wow okay wow so what was what was the drive to kind of transition out of that for you

well i joined tomorrow initially as an engineer as well so it's more of a transition to operational and service management over time within the company.

Yeah.

Oh, I love that.

I love that.

So I used to go to school for engineering before I went completely different direction towards creative work.

So I always find it interesting whenever I get to hear like people have different backgrounds before they ended up in these operational roles that, you know, kind of result in managing people.

Most engineers are.

playing the game of like making things and actually doing the hands-on work.

And so like that transition to leadership can actually be really difficult.

So it's very cool whenever someone's been able to do that well.

And with that said, I know when we last chatted, we had talked about this transition that you saw.

Was it three to four years ago whenever you were kind of stepping into this new role?

Could you just kind of set the table of what

challenges and pain points you were initially seeing the first couple of years that you were at Tamra?

what you guys were kind of thinking about three to four years ago in terms of what you needed to change or to tackle.

When I joined Tomra Collection Australia, it was very much at the beginning.

The company had only been operating for maybe four months at the time.

And we were in that startup phase, that rapid growth phase.

So

over those first couple of years or so, we were launching lots of new sites, moving into new markets.

And

we didn't really have the time to set up our support and service and operations in the best possible way.

So it was very much, you know.

Let's just grab whatever kind of works and fit it in.

It's like think like square peg into a round hole sort of thing.

We'll make it work and we'll

sort it out as we go.

We'll build the plane as we're flying it, as it were.

That's

quite a favorite expression we have around here.

No, I mean, that's like every startup, though.

It's just like band-aiding things together as we start working.

So it's always interesting too, even when you have a global company that

it is still like a startup whenever you're starting out in a new country.

You still have to think really scrappy.

You have to get really creative with what you're doing.

And that can be a great way to propel you initially.

But yeah, as you guys, I'm sure saw, there were gaps as you did that.

Yeah, definitely.

And

yeah, and then that's, as I said, a few years ago, we kind of took a bit of a step back.

We had, we had a little bit of breathing space.

Like, right, okay, let's, we've got a lot more growth coming.

Let's pretend we were starting again.

How do we do this properly this time?

So, you know, I initiated a project where we just did a full

operations-wide systems assessment.

You know, what are all the tools we have?

How are we using them?

And what do we not need?

And And what are our pain points our teams are having?

What kind of came from that as you sort of uncover that?

We had lots of these different systems.

I think we worked out about 25 or 26 different tools in the end that we were using to manage the network.

And

there was a lot of double entry, a lot of information being duplicated in different places, but then contradicting itself.

So it was quite a challenge for our frontline teams to deliver that.

high quality service that we wanted to deliver when they're having to search five or six different tools to find the information they need and to create a work order to get something out to site and fixed.

So, yeah, we're really just taking that step back and

starting with a blank piece of paper

to draw out the kind of golden state we wanted to get to.

Drawing that golden state was a really effective way of setting up this is the destination, this is where we are, and that helped us map a journey to get to that point.

Yeah, and when you were putting together this map, were you guys looking just like a year in advance years later in advance like how far are you sort of planning as you were you guys were kind of tearing this apart and rebuilding

we were tying it into our overall organizational strategy as well you know we have like many companies we have a five-year plan that we review every year and and uh what are we going to do in those next five years and how are we going to keep us operations working in the best way to support that continued growth So in terms of rebuilding the systems we had,

it was a two-year process.

And it's a process I don't think we'll ever finish.

It's something

one of my managers is, you know, we're continuously looking to do this better, continuously improve.

And we're always learning new things as we go.

And it's not like we can just set this up and then forget it again.

We have to continuously evolve and continuously refine what we're doing to, again, deliver that really high quality service.

Like, did your leadership team, they're like completely on board with this?

And they're like, yep, we got, I've noticed these challenges as well.

Like, we're willing to bet with you and work with you on this.

Or was there any kind of, I don't know, advice you might have for other people who are in your position who are like, hey, we really got to work on this thing.

Maybe you have some like advice or lessons learned as you were working with both your leadership team, but also, you know, the team that you're managing and trying to convince them and get buy-in from them on like, hey, this is actually going to, it's work now, but this will actually result in something that's better for us in the long term.

It was very much.

Let's get everybody involved in the journey from the start.

You know, it wasn't just people I managed.

It was people in other teams, other frontline teams, leadership team, as you said, getting everyone involved, even from the beginning of assessing what we have and what we're doing now, giving them an opportunity to voice their concerns, their pain points, but also what they've used in previous companies.

What do they think we can do differently?

That's great.

And kind of collecting all that into one essentially scoping document and

starting the vendor selection based off that central document as to where we're going to go.

And the leadership team were well informed what we're doing.

And when the time came to ask for the money, they were already 80% of the way there.

So it was this wasn't a surprise.

They were like, we knew this is what we've been working on.

Yeah, I love that.

That's great.

Yeah.

And when you talked about like kind of scoping out what systems you guys were looking at or looking at vendors, was there key things you were looking for?

Or how did you kind of make that decision?

Because

I don't know, when I look at the tech space now, there are so many options that it's very overwhelming.

Were you just kind of listening to your peers and hearing what they were using and what maybe people in your company had already had experience with?

Or was there a different way that you were sort of looking at and evaluating who or what you wanted to work with?

It was a combination of things.

It started out with, I said, yeah, what do we want?

What is our, what are our goals?

I set three goals that we're trying to achieve with this transformation.

Okay.

You know, eliminate double entry.

or a single source of truth, so all the information in the right place and a system that's going to be scalable and sustainable to grow with us.

We, as I said, involving different people as what was used used in the past, and also looking at external publications, what are other people using.

Yeah, we went through quite a significantly long list of different vendors before we narrowed it down to a short list that we worked with a lot closer.

Those three goals, you know, you're able to communicate them really well and like articulate them pretty short, but they're massive goals to tackle.

Like the double entry problem is something that I think every company suffers from.

Single source of truth, like, oh my gosh, how difficult that is.

I mean, just those three goals, it's, it's funny because they just sound kind of simple, but they're so hard underneath to like actually tackle that and solve that.

So yeah, I just think that's, that's interesting that, you know, you're just kind of nonchalantly sharing those, but those are very, very difficult solutions to solve.

Yeah, I mean, so I kind of want to dive into lessons from that transformation journey.

I want to hear how it's playing out now, but are there any key lessons or advice that you might have for other people that are sort of in that

transformation phase currently?

Because you guys were doing it a few years ago, but there are plenty of companies that are making that investment and decision now what do you wish you knew when you were doing that i think you know keeping it grounded to the to the core goals what are the core goals that we're trying to achieve uh yeah because it it can be you said there's lots and lots of different options out in the tech space and it can be quite easy to get distracted by uh yes you know the shiny new thing here over here and and the and the really awesome feature over there but it's like okay but bring it back to what are we trying to achieve right and we don't have to do everything everything all at once.

It's like by mapping out that journey, you know, we don't have to go from zero to 100 immediately.

We can, we can step along the way and realize those gains at each step rather than, let's say, trying to jump straight to the finish line.

I think that was, you know, it was a really, uh, really key learning for us.

And so what did that rollout look like then?

So you've, you know, gone through the process of like blank piece of paper.

We're just going to lose all of our assumptions.

Anything that we built, we're just going to pretend like it doesn't exist.

What does it look like in a perfect scenario okay what tools can help us accomplish that maybe it's something we already have maybe it's something we need to invest in okay now we've agreed on this plan we've gotten buy-in from leadership we got the check we've got the money ready to go to do this investment right like then what you said it took two years to roll out the technology so what's happening in those two years it took us about six months to assess where we were

to build that proper scoping document, about six months for vendor selection, and then another six months to get all the approvals before we actually started the implementation so there's a lot of whilst we had local local approval relatively quickly the level of investment we were trying to make required high level approvals like a global company there's always different levels of authority

what we were proposing very different to what a lot of our you know sister companies were doing in other parts of the world so there was a lot of work involved in in getting that buy-in we got there and uh so a lot of work during that kind of approval time, a lot of work was spent planning implementation, you know, making sure we everyone knew what their role and responsibility was during the implementation process.

And then it was only four months of actual implementation before we went live with the new platform.

Oh, wow.

That's actually really, really fast.

It was quite a quick implementation.

We were against a hard deadline ourselves as we were preparing to launch in another state.

And it wasn't like we can't do this at the same time as the launch.

We have to be ready before that.

So

it was a case of this is the deadline.

There is no pushing this back.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Allowing lots of time for users to test and to learn and to get involved in the development of the system meant that when we actually went live, it was a very successful launch.

So I want to paint a picture for our listeners of kind of we're talking about, you know, you've developed and launched the system, but like, what does the system look like?

You know, what are you talking about when you're saying there's this new system that has been launched?

So I'm wondering if maybe you could paint a picture of

like before we had 26 different systems and now we have you know this one system or two systems and the day-to-day customer rep experience looks like this, or the field service rep looks like this.

Do you mind just kind of sharing this compare and contrast for us of it used to look like this?

And now, with what we've implemented, we're seeing this.

Sure, yeah.

I'll probably break it down more or less into two general groups.

So, we have our kind of office-based customer service team and our frontline field teams.

The office-based customer service team, they've previously had to use six different systems to create one work order because that involved checking, is there already someone going to the site?

Is there already something else happening?

Now it's just one.

It's our Salesforce platform that we're using now.

For the field teams, it's like, I actually have the information on my mobile device or tablet.

I have the information on my mobile device as to, you know,

what has the other technician done at this site last week?

You know, it's that sort of level of information that they...

they have at their fingertips to to then better diagnose a problem on site and do a longer lasting solution.

And so previously, were they having to like call up a technician and be like, Hey, I saw you were working on this.

What did you do?

Or now it's just all kind of in this iPad system that they can look up on their own?

It was a case of, yep, they might call up somebody else, say, what happened here?

Or they have to scroll back through other jobs and struggling to find it.

Or they just ended up doing the same thing the previous technician had done a week ago.

Yep.

And the problem wasn't really solved.

It looked like it was solved and it probably did hold for a couple of days, but it wasn't really getting to the root cause.

So it's all those little things like that, really.

And since we went live with a new system as well, we've seen a first-time fix rate above 99%.

So it's been a huge win.

What is kind of driving that?

Because on the face of it, I hear like, okay, a new system has been developed.

If someone needs to go back out and fix something, now we know what was going on previously.

But you're saying even initially that first-time fix is happening at a higher rate.

So what do you think is driving that?

Is it just better communication between, you know, the dispatch and the person on the ground?

There's definitely an element of that.

There's also an element of having access to the more information at the fingertips as well for the field team.

Yeah, okay.

In terms of, yeah, we've got things like user guides in the app.

So if I send you for a job about a printer, some information about the printers, that sort of thing.

So that's all automatic.

And yeah, that helps, especially for the technicians who might be doing a job that they haven't done very often or have less experience with.

Has that helped with training new techs as well?

I think so.

We haven't adjusted our technician training approach with the new system, but it does help with the follow-ups and technician when they're on site if they need help they can call up the technical support team but then they they also have they said those user guides available to them as well and some of them use it more than others that's that's always the way it is with the oh for sure

yeah yeah oh yeah um i that's actually kind of a good segue into a question that i was thinking about with this is as much as we love new tech especially like from a leadership perspective we're like look you only need one system now you don't need these six other ones people can be really like oh but those six other systems are my babies and i don't want to give them up and like i'm really used to using them so was there sort of an element of getting the team comfortable with this new technology um as you guys kind of rolled it out or was it just it sounds like it was a maybe a long enough process that people had time to get used to the idea before it was in their hands during the implementation phase we made sure there are representatives from all the major teams impacted in the development phase, even before the testing phase.

So it was like they kind of do like mini testing as they went.

So our implementation partner, they'd build something and say, hey, what do you think of this?

Try this out.

And then there might be some feedback, make some modifications.

And then we did a formal user acceptance testing phase, again, where they had a chance to use it as if they were doing it for real and again, provide any feedback or input.

But even after we went live, there was always going to be more lessons learned.

There's always things you missed during testing.

We've made updates as we've gone along.

We've overhauled the field service app again since we went live with it to, again better streamline that user experience for the field teams.

Yeah.

I think what's funny is that we actually haven't, I don't think we've mentioned the word or the phrase AI yet.

I don't think we've touched that, even though I'm automatically already assuming part of the system update is AI.

Do you mind sharing if and if any of the system that you guys have invented is you know, writing off of some AI tech and how you're using AI with your teams now?

Definitely.

The main use case we have is with dispatching.

The system is running through

billions, if not trillions of different permutations when it's working out what's the most optimum allocation of jobs to different technicians in the field.

If you had 10 work orders and one technician, there are over 3 million different ways you could arrange those work orders.

Wow.

So our dispatches are very good, but there's always, and they'll probably get close to the best one, but there can be a better way.

And then when you add in multiple technicians, those different numbers grow significantly.

And then we have new work orders coming in during the day.

Again,

you got to almost restart the process.

So having that AI involved in the dispatching help present,

this is an optimum way of dispatching your technicians to get your best results.

And our best results are what's going to maximize uptime.

And since we've fired that up,

we've seen a 26%.

improvement in technician response time, which means machines are getting attended to quicker.

You said the term uptime, which I'm sure some people who are listening know what that means, but do you just mind defining how you guys would define uptime?

Uptime is the time a machine is available for a customer to use it.

For us, that's our most important KPI as an operations team, because if the machine is not working, it can't generate any revenue.

And also, it will just annoy the customer when they turn up to use it and find it's not working.

Yep.

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Tell me a little bit more about that.

So how are you guys getting notified that, hey, these machines are offline?

Is there a system inside this machine that lets you know and you guys can get dispatched that way automatically?

Or is it a customer is like, hey, I can't use this.

Please come fix it.

Short answer is both.

All the machines are online and part of our customer service team's role is to monitor those machines in real time throughout the day.

They're all connected to our central system called Tom ReConnect.

And they can see, all right, this machine is not working.

We can try and fix it remotely.

Or if not, we'll get someone out there to sort it out.

But then, of course, the customer may also also call in and say, hey, this machine is not working.

What's happening?

And then that feedback to them that we've got someone on the way or give us five minutes and we can sort it out for you.

Or there's another machine around the corner.

You can try that one.

We know that one's working.

I can see it's working right now.

Sort of thing.

Yeah.

It's honestly really impressive technology to just be able to like remotely restart that.

I mean, I'm just thinking like even a couple of years ago, you would have to physically go do that with all these machines.

So to have the tech in place that you can do this all remotely is very impressive to me.

And I can only imagine how much better it's all going to get as AI continues to improve what it can predict and

sort of like what it can do with dispatching.

So I'm really excited for what the future holds there.

But before we get too far into like future trends, which I will definitely be asking you about, I wanted to talk more about results.

So you said 26% faster resolve of issue, right, if there is a machine that's broken.

Is there any other sort of metrics or results that you guys have seen?

It's been, what, about two years now since this has been implemented or a little bit less than that?

Just under two years since we went live.

We've continuously made

upgrades as we've gone along as well.

So for example, yeah, the dispatching assistant is not something we turned on straight away.

We had to,

with any system, it's only going to work as well as the information it's got, as the data it's being fed.

And

before we decided to fire that part up, we wanted to make sure that everyone was comfortable with essentially inputting the data into the system and using the system.

Once we were at that stage where we felt comfortable, we essentially activated the AI dispatching assistant or optimizer, as we call it.

And the first few months, that's when we saw that 26% improvement in technician response time, which is really powerful to us.

Have you seen any other results or like success metrics with what you guys have rolled out so far?

Yeah, so we're definitely seeing an improvement in uptime to go along with the response time,

which is really good.

So again, linking those two together, we've seen a reduction in cleaner work orders.

As

part of operation, we use contract cleaners to go out and clean the machines.

Yeah, they're collecting empty drinks containers.

They can be dirty and they can be a mess.

So it's important that the machines are cleaned regularly.

But then the machine machine can go down if it gets too dirty.

And if we have to send a cleaner on an extra work order, we have to pay a premium for that.

And as part of part of what we've seen since we launched the new systems is we've seen a reduction in those essentially additional premium work orders.

So yeah, obviously very good for the bottom line and goes well with the increased uptime.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And with all of this, have you seen any interest from

other countries or other parts of the your guys' organization, like actually seeing the results from what you're doing and saying, hey, we kind of want that.

Because it sounded like when you were initially going through this process of rewriting the script, there was a little bit of like needing to convince.

So I'm wondering if now it's like, oh, we actually really like what you guys are doing there in Australia.

We have had some interest.

Yeah, I've

shared what we're doing with some of our other markets.

The Australian business model.

uh in tomorrow is quite different to many other countries business models so it doesn't necessarily copy across in the same way.

They've got different objectives.

But yeah, we are seeing some of the other markets have expressed interest, although they haven't gone as far down the same journey as we have.

So besides what you guys have already been investing in and doing with AI and the systems and technology that you guys have implemented, what are you currently maybe in the process of working to roll out or what are you planning to be rolling out in the near future?

Yeah, of course.

I think the next step for us, again, with the focus on uptime, is predictive maintenance yeah we can be quite reactive so we wait for a machine to be down before we uh action it and we do have preventative maintenance runs and and so forth but it's an area for improvement um from our end that i've identified so yeah we we get a huge amount of data from the machines and

we're looking into how can we use AI to leverage that data and essentially predict when a machine is going to need service.

And then again, we can better streamline our field teams and our contractors to deliver that and further improve uptime, which is again better for our customers as well.

Yeah.

And or predict before it needs maintenance, right?

So just understanding kind of all that.

So when you talk about sort of the data that you guys are getting from these machines, is that just like how many times someone's been using it or how many pieces of, I don't know, cans or glasses we've sorted?

Is that the kind of data or is there something else that maybe I'm not hitting on that would help predict if it needs maintenance?

Yeah, so we get every single container that's put through the machines

as a data point that's fed through

all the different, you know, it's a customer session A had 26 cans and customer session B had 35 or whatever it is and so forth.

But then the machines also report in their status.

There's lots of sensors in the machine.

So it's all the raw sensor data as to this sensor seeing this, this sensor seeing that, and then converting those technical data points into actionable insights.

Yeah.

And so are you guys, you guys are actively working on something like that right now or you're sort of planning on it in the next year?

We're planning on it.

We haven't actively started working on that just yet.

We're essentially we're scoping it out at this stage.

Yeah, awesome.

No, that's really cool.

That's exciting.

And I think this like predictive maintenance piece is going to become a lot more common across industry.

So I know we're just talking about vending machines or I guess reverse vending machines.

But, you know, you mentioned printers or

like AC.

I know here in Texas, we all love our AC units.

So there's a lot of stuff that I'm like, if you can apply more sensors and can accumulate that data over time, I feel like our future in five years is going to be a lot more predictive and maintenance will be a lot smarter.

Like even with cars, like the ability to really start to see, oh, you need, you actually need your oil change now.

And like this, not just roughly around this timeframe, you probably need it done.

So yeah, I'm really excited by that for sure.

Are there any other industries that you sort of like look at that you have been impressed by or follow?

I think it's something I think airlines do very well.

You know, obviously

an aircraft can't have a failure mid-use.

The lessons from that industry is something that I think you can apply to a lot of different industries in terms of

actioning or fixing things before they go wrong.

Also, in said in your car, the last thing you want is it to conk out in the middle of the highway and then you're stuck, right?

So it's it's yeah, yeah, so I completely agree with you.

I think that the ongoing internet of things and connectivity of different systems and devices can have a lot of benefits in their space and making sure that when the end user is using them, that they're, it's reliable, that it's always going to work in the way they expect.

I mean, yeah, from the customer experience standpoint, that is 100%

like the dream, right?

Where I am actually never calling your support team because I'm never having a problem because the machine is never broken and everything's always working.

So it's like sort of the dream scenario of like, I don't, our support team doesn't hear from anyone ever because it's always working.

What about like customer behavior in general?

Are there sort of trends that you're seeing in the space as people start to rely on AI?

They get more comfortable with AI.

They're getting more comfortable with predictive analytics and things like that.

Are there any things around customer behavior that you're tracking closely that you would want to share with our audience?

Yeah, I think there's a couple of things.

I think one of them is about the personalization.

People,

I touched on this earlier that people want that more personal touch.

I think everyone's getting much more comfortable.

There's a lot of data out there, but at the same time, not excessive amounts in terms of you don't want it to look creepy.

So that's that personal touch, that personal level of service.

And when it comes to AI, lots of companies are using various levels of autonomous agents as their frontline customer support.

And I think that's how well they work can be a big factor in the customer satisfaction with that company.

I think we've all used

a chat bot that it's been like, this is terrible.

Just let me speak to somebody.

Oh my gosh.

Whereas I had an issue

with my bank a couple of weeks ago and their frontline service was autonomous.

It was great.

Solve a problem.

And

it was a potentially very frustrating scenario that they were able to sort out for me.

That sort of thing where people trust the AI agent is only when it actually actually works for them and helps them.

And they feel like they're still getting the level of service they would get from a human agent.

Well, or they have the option to get to a human agent if you needed to, right?

Like it sounds like your bank was able to support you with this autonomous agent.

But if you really were like, no, like I need someone to talk to, like this is something that this can't help with, the ability to quickly get to a human and they have the context of, I already know that this person has been on the phone for this many minutes.

They've already asked these questions.

They've already said these things.

I have the account pulled up.

Like that level of service is amazing.

And I had that experience recently with, I'll shout out FedEx, I'll shout out StubHub because both of these companies, I had, you know, random mishabs.

The StubHub tickets, I suppose, get for concert are day late, but I was traveling.

So I needed them the day that I needed them.

But when I called, they tried to do the automated thing.

I was like, no, this is actually a thing.

I need to talk to a person.

I was immediately able to get to a person.

They knew who my name, my tickets, when I needed them by, what was going on, like all that context.

And the woman went so far as to say, Hey, I know this isn't resolved yet, so I'm going to call you back at this number in a couple hours to check in on you.

Is this time frame okay?

Like, such good service.

And that was all because I'm assuming they have, you know, autonomous agents kind of working on the back end for them to support the agent whenever a human did.

Like, I did need a human in that instance.

So, you know, random rant there on like my own experience, but I think that there is, you know, this huge opportunity for these AI agents to be supportive when in certain circumstances,

where I get sort of upset is whenever people are pointing fingers and saying, oh, that was just an automated system.

Sorry.

So like I've had a recent call with a customer service agent where they're like, our

automated system flagged it.

I don't know why.

I don't know how to fix it.

But try again in a couple hours.

Like that to me is, okay.

AI is not working properly for that company.

Yes.

Like that.

Yeah.

So, so yeah, I think people will get a lot more comfortable with it.

And I think the companies that are doing it well are just going to continue to really stand out.

And the ones that aren't and can't move quick enough and can't figure out how to get it to work with humans, they're going to really start to suffer.

And people are going to start to have to choose to work with them.

And that's my side rant, Phil.

No, I think I agree.

And I think, yeah, a big part of setting up your company to deliver that is you've got to train your human agents to work with your autonomous agents and

make sure that they understand how it works and how it's supposed to work.

Yes.

And if and they then they and also empower them to take decisions when it doesn't work.

What we see as well is if our customer's got a problem,

they're usually much happier if it's solved quickly.

Like I said, don't call me back in two hours.

That's just not a good experience.

And typically, if your customer's calling you,

it's already negative and this is your opportunity to make it a positive.

And you don't want to let that opportunity go to waste.

And a big part of

setting up your uh support center and your support teams around that is making sure that they can have they do get all the information you're not asking the customer to repeat themselves or even repeating what they already told the ai oh my gosh i know yeah yeah yeah and as i said just be able to say look we'll take a decision we'll sort it for sort out for you right now it's setting up your people and your systems to work together to deliver the best outcome for your customers yeah and to me you know you said personalization that's personalization like i get on the phone the ai agent agent knows who I am already because they know my number.

Um, you know, then I need to be transferred to a human.

The human already knows, like that to me is not creepy personalization.

That's helpful personalization.

Now, like the text message from some random spam message that knows my name and all this other information about me, no, that's creepy.

And I don't want that personalization.

So, like, I definitely think personalization in the right way, to your point, is going to continue to be way more expected.

I don't, I shouldn't have to tell you my email.

Like, you know, my email.

I don't need to give it to you.

I've worked with you guys for 10 years as a company.

You have my email address.

Like, you don't need to ask me for it.

So yeah, I think, I think that that will be really interesting.

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With bringing in new AI systems, bringing in systems in general, any kind of new system, new technology, there is a unique culture in a company that's willing to do that.

And I've talked to companies that

are moving very slowly.

And frankly, I'm surprised because these are large enterprises.

And I'm like, I can't believe that, you know you aren't accepting this like innovation and rapid movement um so could you talk to me a little bit more about what makes the culture at tomra unique such that you guys are willing to make these bets and these investments and provide such an exceptional experience to your customers and to your employees yeah definitely one of our core values as a company globally is innovation it's one of our three core values so it's something that we encourage you up and down uh the business you know all over the world when it came to you know this specific digital transformation yeah a common reaction sort of thing can be, all right, does this mean that you're replacing me with an AI agent?

Or is this going to threaten my job?

And I think it was what different companies can see.

What worked really well for us is that by having that kind of openness and transparency all the way through the process is that everyone knew what we were trying to achieve.

And this wasn't about replacing people.

This is about helping everybody.

do their job.

Everybody wants to do a good job and give them the tools, the information to do their job in the most effective way.

We had the advantage of being quite a rapidly growing company as well.

It was like, you know, yes, this probably means we're not going to recruit as many people to support the growth.

It's about doing more with what we have already.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Setting ourselves up for success, essentially, and also reducing the admin burden and reducing the pile of job that no one likes.

It's data entry and,

you know, a technician doesn't want to spend an hour fiddling around with their tablet trying to enter the information to what they did.

And more often than not, they'll probably,

they might skip over it.

Right.

And by making it easy for them, they can focus on what they're good at and what they like doing, which is actually working with their hands and

fixing the machines and getting the satisfaction out of fixing those machines.

Yeah.

No, I love that.

I think that's, it is something that I find actually really impressive that a company as large as Tamra is

like, I mean, a lot of people say, our core value is innovation.

And you're like, cool, great.

Like, show me.

And, you know, you guys are actively playing that part doing that.

And it sounds like your team up, like from leadership down to, you know, everyone that's working on fixing the machines, getting them placed, your operations team, making sure everything's connected, the customer support team, like everyone is on board with that philosophy and moving that way.

And that's a really special, especially in a fast-growing company, because it kind of can be easy for a fast-growing company to bring out a bunch of people and keep doing that and use that as a means to continue to grow.

So to decide to kind of be like, okay, we know, we've got the core team, we've got it in place, we're ready to go.

How can we make what we have work best as we continue to grow?

I mean, I really commend you.

I think it's, it's a very, very hard thing to do.

I appreciate that.

Of course.

Phil, as a consumer, or, you know, even as a business leader, are there any other trends or technologies that you're really interested in or betting on?

Are you just like praying to all the companies out there that something someone please invent this the trends we're seeing is that uh people have very different ways they want to interact with the companies now so yeah it used to be that you'd always just pick up the phone and uh and call uh but now it's you know there's so many different channels that people want to use and and

yeah it could be it's some people still want to pick up the phone and call and speak to someone some people prefer to email or web chat or whatsapp social media you know there's so many different uh channels to interact with the consumer and having those channels available to the customers and still setting up your support team in a way to handle that in an efficient and effective way

is something I think is really crucial for businesses to do and something that we're continuously evolving as well.

Yeah, that's actually, that's a really good point.

I mean, there could be a future where instead of calling you and saying, hey, this machine's not working, I'm just like on X and I'm like, yo, hey, this machine isn't working.

And like, how cool would it be that you have a system in place that can pull that get it to the support agent and they can be like hey so and so i immediately can support you on that um that that is a really interesting feature that i hadn't fully considered in that multi-tunched way um but yeah i'm thinking about even like an issue i had with benmo earlier today that i'm like how cool would have been if i could have just been like instagram tag hey benmo this isn't working here's a screenshot and they could like call you and contact you and get it figured out for you.

So that's a really interesting feature that I would I would very much appreciate.

All right.

I am going to take you down a new path that we have never gone on our show.

Okay.

I'm going on Reddit.

So for those listening, we've never done this before.

This is the first time.

And I think we're going to start doing it unless someone LinkedIn DMs me and is like, hey, that was horrific, Lacey, don't do this again.

But I made a Reddit account.

I've had several Reddit accounts over the years, but I made a special one that's only customer experience related.

So my whole feed is just customer support, customer service, customer experience, marketing, sales, business, logistics, operations, all kinds of things.

That's just a business feed.

So, I went through and found one question that I would like for us to answer on air right now

and see,

yeah, if we can't help this lovely Redditor out by answering their question and sending it to them after we're done here.

So,

hello,

Cry Revolutionary 7536.

They have asked Reddit, what tools or strategies have actually improved your customer experience?

And we obviously have discussed some here that you've talked about.

So if you wouldn't mind just sharing quickly what your answer would be to this Reddit user, what tools or strategies have actually improved your customer experience?

At the risk of repeating something I said earlier,

the main thing is empowering the frontline agents to make decisions to support the customer.

I think we've all had experiences with different companies where, okay, I'll have to contact my supervisor or I have to come back to you on that one.

It's like, yeah, be able to have that resolution on the spot, that decision on the spot

is really big for customer satisfaction.

And I think that's probably my, I'd say that's my main strategy I'd recommend in terms of, I said, improving that customer experience is empowering those frontline agents to take decisions.

Yeah, and empowering them with what you guys have done is use technology to empower them, right?

So they can, they have a great system that they can leverage, they can use, they feel comfortable in.

You've trained them, you've prepared them.

So there's a lot of different things that you've done to really make it so your team feels empowered to do that.

And the reverse of that is what we have discussed.

Yeah, of like whenever you get on the phone and someone clearly doesn't know what's going on with the system and can't help you in that real-time moment.

So yeah, thank you, Phil.

And I will share this with our Reddit user and let you know how that goes.

Okay.

I will report back.

Okay.

Our final question that that we ask every single guest before we leave is one of my favorite questions.

It's

what is one experience you've had as a customer recently that you were impressed by?

So, this is your own experience as a customer.

Maybe you bought something, maybe you went to a restaurant, maybe you got a haircut, right?

So, what's something?

It could be like a local business, could be a big business that you were like, oh my gosh, I was so impressed with how they served me.

Bought a new set of sneakers a couple of months ago.

Yeah.

So, it's just the way you know i had been there before um so they knew who i was and uh uh you know sneakers wear out about after a year or so so yeah i do quite a bit of running so they tend to need some new ones um probably more often than some others uh and it's just the way you know that they were able to okay we have we realized that we we did a you re-detailed measurement of your feet uh

you know last time you were here so we don't need to do that again we've got uh you know here's uh here's some quick options for you i've got them out in your size and uh yeah see what you think and i was able to you know to try them on pretty much straight away and the fit didn't feel quite right but they were able to quickly say okay well try it with this insert instead and it's like yeah that feels spot on and um yeah the fact that they just they just knew so much about their product and knew uh exactly how to kind of they said solve my problem uh and uh able to provide that solution yeah on the spot ready to go uh that was really really impressive and really exciting And actually care and say like, oh, actually, like, I want to help you get this shoe.

So I'm going to figure out a solution that would work for you.

I mean, if you go to like a large, I'm sure this must have been a smaller store.

If you go to like a really large store, they're like, oh, it's not in your size.

Sorry.

You know, good luck, you know?

So I think that's, it's really special.

And it's, we've gotten shoes before recently.

My husband and I went to this toddler shoe store and they met, they did the same thing.

They measured our kid's foot.

And I was like, whoa, this is really intense for like toddler shoes.

Normally I just spend 10 bucks at Walmart and get him stuff, but they were like showing me why it's so important that his feet have like a certain shape and da da da da da.

And they like picked out the exact size shoe that he would need and they documented in their system so next time we need to go in which is pretty frequent when you have a growing kid they would know exactly which would be the next step that he would need um and it felt like so luxurious it was like a i don't know 15 minute interaction it was very quick but it was just felt luxurious to be able to you know have his feet taken care of in such a way so i i think that's a great example uh do you want to shout out that that store or do you want to keep it anonymous Yeah, that's fine.

Yeah, I was thinking athletes, but uh, it is actually a chain in Australia.

I'm not sure if they're in the US as well.

Uh, but I think they are.

I'm not, I'm not sure.

I don't, I guess I don't shopper shoes enough.

Yeah, there's it's a it's a chain, Australia.

Yeah, there's yeah, the staff at the local store I was at, um, yeah, just said they knew exactly what they were doing, and it was a great experience.

And uh, yeah, the sneakers have been fantastic.

I've um, yeah, done a lot of miles on them.

Oh, that's great.

That's amazing.

Awesome.

Well, Phil, this has been so much fun.

Thank you for sharing everything that you guys are doing at Tamra.

I feel like if we were to check in in a year or two years, like there'll be so much more like interesting transitions you guys have done.

So like keep up the amazing work.

I can't hear, can't wait to hear how it all goes.

Where would be a good place for our audience to either get in touch with you or follow you and keep up to date on what you are doing or just in general, maybe connect with Tamra if they're interested in learning more about what that business does?

Yeah, I think best things reach out to me on LinkedIn.

Yeah.

Okay.

We'll drop LinkedIn or your LinkedIn in our show notes and people can go add you.

So if you get an influx of emails and DMs, I'm not responsible for that.

Okay.

No worries.

Awesome.

Well, thank you, Phil.