Customer Experience Superheroes - S16 E1 - Jacob Moelter - Managing so much more than service tickets

In this episode, we speak with Jacob Moelter, of SupportNinja. The conversation explores how support teams can move far beyond traditional ticket resolution and contribute directly to customer loyalty, operational clarity, and long-term business growth.

In conversation with Lexden CX Head of Consulting, and CX Superheroes podcast host, Jacob explains how many organisations still view support as a cost centre. He shares how SupportNinja helps companies shift this mindset by redesigning support roles, workflows, and metrics so teams can focus on prevention, insight, and value creation. He outlines how frontline teams can become a source of product feedback, behavioural insight, and customer advocacy when they are trained, empowered, and connected to decision-making.

You will hear specific examples from SupportNinja clients who have reduced customer effort by simplifying processes and improving knowledge flows. Jacob highlights how small changes, such as clearer ownership of customer issues or faster access to information, can reduce repeat contacts and improve resolution quality. He encourages leaders to ask where their support teams spend the most time and what insights they are collecting but not using.

The episode also touches on the future of outsourced CX. Jacob describes how SupportNinja blends technology, human capability, and cultural alignment to deliver support that feels personal and consistent. He shares how companies can build scalable support operations without losing the human touch that customers expect.

If you are assessing your support function, planning to outsource, or looking to elevate the role of customer service inside your organisation, this discussion offers practical and actionable guidance.

Learn more about Jacob: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacobmoelter/
Explore SupportNinja: https://www.supportninja.com/

Learn more about Lexden CX: https://lexdengroup.com/

Learn more about Christopher: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christopher-brooks-cx/

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:09

Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Customer Experience Superheroes podcast series. My name is Christopher Brooks, and it's been my privilege to be the host of this series since the very beginning. In this series, we bring you individuals from across the vast spectrum of customer experience. We've introduced you to leaders, to mavericks, to extraordinary specialists in very different fields. And today is no exception. Today we called up with the quite wonderful Jacob Multa, who is the chief operating officer and CFO at Support Ninja. Now, Support Ninja is one of those organizations that just make things work. And their focus and their ambition is to ensure that startups or larger companies are able to kind of scale up as they grow and still provide kind of a high quality level of customer experience as a service, recognizing how important that is. We caught up with Jacob to understand just what it is that they do and how they make a difference for their clients. So without further ado, let's jump over and meet Jacob. So it is a delight to welcome Jacob Moulter from Support Ninja to the CX Superheroes Podcast Series. Jacob, welcome.

SPEAKER_01 1:36

Thank you, Christopher. Pleasure to be here and looking forward to connecting.

SPEAKER_00 1:39

Great. That's excellent. Well, I'm particularly excited because quite often we have individuals on the superheroes podcast series who talk a good story. Yeah, in fairness, they do talk a good story, but they don't roll their sleeves up and actually get to work with the wiring, which you know you and your teams do every single day. So you're there in the engine room making sure things are working. And I guess when they're working, no one gives you the praise, but when they break, you you hear about it. So it'll be good to get some stories on that.

SPEAKER_01 2:09

Yep, it's a very thankless job at some point.

SPEAKER_00 2:12

But essential. I mean, it's kind of the unsung heroes right now. So Jake, as always, government always so supporting engine. Obviously, if we've got listeners in from small and medium-sized businesses, they may be well very familiar with your solution, so which is great, but we're going to help everybody understand its value and probably more the importance of having experts in that space because it's a real connection point with your customers. And if it doesn't work, boy, kind of all that goodwill you've built up, quality of products, investment you made in your brand just falls away if the experience isn't delivered at that particular point. But you've not done this forever, have you? I mean, I was having a look at your profile. You've got quite a, I'd say, a respectful and a scary background because you know the numbers on these sort of things, which a lot of people in CX are now coming to realize they need to know the numbers. They've always needed to know them, but you've always known the numbers. So give us an appreciation of your background, Jacob, and kind of how you've ended up in your role with the support ninja.

SPEAKER_01 3:11

Yeah, no, thanks. Yeah, my interesting is my background is very interesting. I would say so. Started my career actually in investor relations, where I was partnering with recently public companies or companies that were planning to go public and working with their C-suite on telling their story to the investment community. So it was great. I got to work with a lot of different types of companies, a lot in the SaaS space, in the technology space in general. But I came across a company called support.com actually, which was a small, publicly listed outsourcing company focused mostly on telco. And so they they were my client. I worked very closely and developed a really good relationship with them. And then eventually I actually joined them internally, where I ran their finance organization as well as their investor relations. So I got the best of both worlds to kind of understand how the sausage is made and really understand the business in general, and then being able to tell that to the investment community. And as I kind of worked through there at Support Ninja, I really became enamored with the CX space and outsourcing space in general. And support.com kind of went through a number of different evolutions. But what I noticed there was that there was a gap in the space in terms of companies that are really catered towards small and medium-sized businesses, companies that are growing rapidly, that things may be different, right? I think there's a lot of companies out there that will outsource or outsourcers out there that are really good at focusing on two or three tasks and doing them as efficient as possible. But in the SMB space, things are evolving rapidly. And so some of these companies are really looking for a partner that can work with them, evolve with them over time, and help scale. And so that was the premise of Support Ninja. And I joined them in 2021, got introduced a little bit earlier than that. But that was really their core philosophy was really to be focused on fast growing organizations and a flexible partner to really help them grow and scale over time. In many cases, some of the clients that we work with have not necessarily outsourced when in their history. And so they they do really good at their products or services that they offer, but they they really didn't know how to set up really a CX function and really help drive that. And so it's been really great to be a part of this organization to really help partner with these companies and help them build out best-in-class support organizations. And the interesting thing I think about my role is I started really on the finance side and really helped build out the structure. And as I I do like to roll up my sleeves and get in there. And so as I sort of progressed through my role, I really became enamored with the operational component, partnering with clients, helping them solve the problems that they're looking for. And so it's been really great to kind of transition my career from both just finance to finance and operations and really partnering across the organization and with our clients to develop for really great outcomes.

SPEAKER_00 5:49

Excellent. And I do see operations as kind of, whilst it's customer operations, we've got one particular client that calls it kind of custom and commercial operations. And I think it's a very healthy way to sort of look at it. I think that I mean, you just skim through the type of customer you have there, but I think we should just dwell on that because this is not your. I'd imagine most of your customers are probably owners and are probably very hands-on. Even if they are expanding rapidly, they've still there's kind of like a connection back to them. And what you're doing is actually probably a recognition of their growth and their success because they no longer can manage this or or have the capacity to manage it, because they've got to focus in on other sides. So give us an appreciation of the SME customer type that you're dealing with, because it must be, as you said, they've never done this before. And we're working with a family office, I work in the luxury market in some areas, and the family office owner is moving into using us for strategic advice. They've never done that before. And I think too many people forget how big an emotional leap that is for clients to go through. Because whilst you know everything there is to know about what you do, they don't know that necessarily. So give us some context, appreciate how interesting it is, and so I guess kind of challenging working with that customer type.

SPEAKER_01 7:10

Yeah, yeah, it is interesting. I think, and like you said, in many cases, some of these business owners or leaders have a hard time letting go and of the control aspect and being able to manage everything. And I think that's sort of where these companies are at. They're in many cases, they are at this ref inflection point of their organization where they're not going to be able to grow and scale at the pace if they try to manage everything. And so that that's definitely one group of clients that we have. We do have larger on the SMB side that maybe they've had a really bad experience with some of the larger outsourcers that that change order them to death or that that really aren't willing to set up a customized solution that's really geared towards these companies that scope may change over time. And so I think that's that it is an interesting dynamic of the types of clients that we serve. I think we have about 200, a little over 200 clients that are across a number of different verticals, right? And anything from SaaS, e-commerce, health and wellness, fintech, and a handful of other emerging industries, including actually AI companies that are coming to us. And so I think the common thread of those is that it's really the mindset. It's that we're we work best with the types of companies that see CX as a true differentiator, right? Not as uh necessarily just a cost center or a line item in their budget. And right, these are organizations that want more than just agents handling tickets. They want a partner who's gonna help them solve problems, help them understand how to best engage with their types of clients, right? We have 200 clients that we've serviced. And so we've got really great sort of success stories of how you know certain companies in these industries have helped reduce friction points in their customer journey and really deliver outcomes that are gonna be great and improve their loyalty and their retention and their their revenue ultimately, which I think is really interesting.

SPEAKER_00 8:48

And it was a point I was gonna come to, and you've mentioned it there that sometimes I guess when your SME and you're growing, your frame of reference or your selection criteria for the partner we need perhaps isn't as in tune as it needs to be. And you may look for a larger kind of a bigger player because you go, well, they'll be conf, they'll be confident there's safety there. But as they then find out, it was a cookie-cutter approach, which actually didn't fit at all. And your invoice that you're paying them is not enough to justify some tailored services. So some people come to you with a I guess almost you're carrying the can for bad practice in the industry, and there's a little bit of a prove it to us as well, rather than or save us. So you get those types as well. I mean, how do you transition that? Because obviously what you're describing is actually the solution they should have had in the first place. Much, much softer kind of onboarding, a tailoring to their particular needs. So, so what happens when you have a client who's like, the industry has let me down, you're here to fix the errors of the others, sort of thing. I mean, how do you cope with those guys?

SPEAKER_01 9:52

Yeah, I think you kind of hit the nail on the head as it's really a really strong onboarding, right? And actually, it starts before that, right? It's like we we do a lot of work in understanding our clients and their business and what their pain points are. And in fact, in some cases, we'll actually do a mystery shopping exercise where we we kind of identify what are the pain points across their customer journey. And so when they come to us, we say, hey, this is the type of value that we're gonna deliver to you. We see that your common sort of pain points across your customer journey are refunds, are response times. And so that gives us really good insights and to say, hey, as if you're gonna engage with us, like we're actually going to look at what the pain points are, we're gonna address those right up front and really make sure that we're focused on outcomes and not just delivering, you know, the cheapest and fastest service, right? And so we want to make sure we're not gonna be the cheapest provider that's out there, but I think we really focused on delivering outcomes. And so we try to connect the work that that we do with the outcomes that the clients are really looking to drive. And in many cases, that's retention, right? Maybe they have had a return issue, or maybe they're really looking to scale. And we want to make sure that we're driving opportunities to maybe deflect some low complexity work and really focused on on high value work. And so I think that's where we look. We try to understand our clients holistically and understand really what's their underlying premise for outsourcing that and really making sure that we're maniacally focused on those areas, doing the work that we need to do, but also how do we bridge the gap and connect what work we're doing to the pain points that they're trying to solve. And that allows us to deliver and come up with plays and initiatives that I think will really help ultimately drive the outcomes that they're looking for.

SPEAKER_00 11:28

Sure. And I can imagine it's it's it's a two-part offering. It's not only the solutions you're providing, but it's kind of hand holding and managing your customers so they feel confident they can eventually just leave it all with you. I get the in my mind, I kind of see the owner or the person you're dealing with looking over your shoulder heavily for a while until you see something go through and they're like, Oh, it does work. It does work. Because as you say, that letting go is really difficult when you're growing a business, the idea of letting go. So, I mean, obviously they recognize they need to if they come to you in in in the first instance, but is there a magic moment where you kind of go, yeah, they see we've got it now?

SPEAKER_01 12:06

I don't know that there's necessarily a magic moment. I think the we care a lot about the outcomes, we care a lot about our people. And I think, like I said, we work best with clients that are very well aligned to that aspect. And so we treat our people really well, we keep them very engaged, right? We do a lot of work on our employee engagement. I think that's where it starts. And I think they understand the work that we do in setting up scorecards to make sure all of our ninjas, all of our team members know exactly what you know, what success looks like. But I don't necessarily think there's a magic point of, yeah, this is working. I think we just continue to look to make progress week over week. We continue to understand pain points. We try to continuously deliver insights and actionable insights that I think we can deliver to our clients to say, hey, this is a problem. I think that's the interesting thing about customer support and contact organizations, where we have the frontline view as to what our clients' customers are dealing with every single day. And so we do provide a rich feedback loop. And I think as clients start to see that we hire really great people that are truly passionate and care about the brands that they're supporting, and that we're delivering insights as to how to make their business better. I think that's where people start to get really comfortable and allow us to continue to take on more and more. And I think that's how we view the industry in general, is that the new enterprise customer is not necessarily 5,000 seats doing three tasks. It is us focusing on higher complexity work across the customer lifecycle. You may have seen Support Ninja really transition over the last couple of years to really be focused on full life cycle CX is what we call it. And that way we can help customers across the entire life cycle from customer acquisition, doing lead qualification, research on leads, outbound or inbound type sales activities, all the way to renewals, account management, and finance and accounting. And I think that's really resonated with clients that we support high complexity, high value work across the value stream.

SPEAKER_00 13:57

Well, I think it, I mean, it's probably again testament to your background that order to cash process is an operational piece. And many focus in on the pre-sale and then kind of run a mile, hand over to another. You I'm sure you come across this, that they'll even hand over to another technology provider. And it's like you pass a baby with no instructions. What am I going to do with this? But being an operations expert, you recognize that is where the retention happens. That's where you reduce your cost of acquisition because you're providing a great service. Oh, if I can just come to something that I saw in your words. I really loved. I'd just like you to unpack what it means in both parts. So it says on there, and if this is your quote, then you know you should publicize this. If it's not, you should pay the agency erotics. It says, Great CX is powered by people and supercharged by technology. So you said about looking after people, give me an appreciation of what power by people means. What how does Super Ninja ensure the people you have working for you in tune, in love with your clients and providing the best of themselves to support your clients?

SPEAKER_01 14:58

Yeah, yeah, thank you. I think the interesting thing and what there's a lot of point solutions, there's a lot of technology that's out there. I think the one thing to make sure that everybody's aware is that technology is also not a strategy, it is an enabler of strategy, right? And so I think whether you can implement technology and you may not get the outcomes that you're looking for. I think you really need to understand what you're looking to drive and look for how technology can enable and help drive those outcomes. I think there's a lot of really great examples and a lot of really great work that we're working on internally. And to give you a couple of examples, you know, I think there are one client that we had is an e-commerce client that that has sells sporting apparel and primarily for their women client base. They you call them the stylish squad. They have a really confident, really great brand voice that was across their channels. And when we got in there, we we understood that for the support organization had a slightly different type of communication style. And so they would have this really great, unique brand voice across their social media channel, but on the support side, it was very, you know, lacked empathy, it was very robotic and uh canned responses, if you will. And so some of the ways that we looked to empower supercharge our ninjas, if you will, is we leveraged an agent assist co-pilot with our ninjas. And so we could train that on their brand voice. And so it would really help supercharge our ninjas because we could speak in a way that was very much aligned, you know, across whatever channel that these end users were interacting with the brand. And so it was a very seamless experience for those end users. And one of the really great things we were able to do is, you know, because they were selling sporting apparel for college teams or professional teams, there's so many different catchphrases and things that are really important to sports enthusiasts. And so we could actually at scale really help train all of our ninjas on that account so that we can inject unique flair into those types of interactions. So if somebody purchased a an Ohio State sweater, we could end that interaction with OOH and encourage a really fun I/O response from the people. And so I think it creates like a really great experience, something that you can do at scale. You may not be able to train your handful of agents across every sport and across every team and what's interesting, but you can do that with technology. And so there's some really great things that can be done, expanding the quality, understanding sentiment analysis. If you're doing manual QA and you're only getting a handful of interactions every month, you know, how can you leverage technology to get better sentiment analysis and understand again what are the friction points, what are things that we may want to solve over time? And so yeah, I know if that was a great example, but it was it's really cool some of the things that we can do and deliver again, focused on delivering amazing client experiences for our customers and uh ultimately hopefully driving value for in an ROI for their own.

SPEAKER_00 17:42

I think well that it's a great example. I think what it does when I had a look at support ninja, there were many things that you did that I wasn't aware of, and I can only assume they've kind of come about of conversations with your customers, like the content moderator, where you sort of identify, hang on, brand the brand voice changes across these different channels. We no one's looking into this. And I guess it doesn't happen in the organization because you all sit there in your silos doing it, you don't have some standing over you and saying, hang on a second, we're saying different things. We're saying the same things but in a different way here, and that's confusing for customers. No wonder there's a spike in the contact center or the chat because people don't understand what's happening. So, do some of your products and solutions come about based on evolving client needs? Would you say that's fair?

SPEAKER_01 18:27

Yeah, 100%. I think it's it would be unfair to say that there is a standard solution that fits across all clients. And I think that goes back to we actually have a center of excellence team within our organization that we look once we get a client onboarded and we kind of go through this process, we really understand and do journey mapping and really understand what are the pain points across the client lifecycle. And then again, we want to make sure that we understand what outcomes our clients are looking for. Is that scalability? Is that driving retention? Are they having a churn problem? Are they really looking to drive upsell or cross-sell with their existing staff and really looking to drive lifetime value for our customers? If some of these things will help us understand, you know, what are the things that are the highest priority and what are the things that are gonna have the most impact for our accounts? And so, yeah, I would say there's definitely not a one size fits all. It really is looking at each client, looking at the problem, looking at how can we leverage and able to drive those outcomes that they're looking for. And then there's so many different tools and capabilities that are out there. We don't want to be a product company, a technology company. We want to be the that orchestrator, that integrator that really helps drive outcomes. And I think that's where we become very sticky with our clients because we want to be the Switzerland, if you will, and really be neutral to whatever technology that our clients are looking for and really ultimately believe whatever is best for our client is going to be best for support ninja as well.

SPEAKER_00 19:47

And I guess that you said you work across many different patterns sectors there. And I'd imagine you know, with within each sector, you quite often get kind of micro technology providers, don't you? And sometimes you find they've got the entire marketplace. You don't see it anywhere else, just see it. Oh, my father used to work in the automotive and kind of the insurance quotation system. It was like two men and a dog who ran it, but actually everyone in the industry had to use it because it was it felt filled as so. Do you how do you work with that? Do you find yourself needing to learn or adapt to different markets as you go through? I guess it's back to what you say. There isn't a single solution. You can just go, right, there you go, in we go, walp, move on to the next one.

SPEAKER_01 20:26

Yeah, I think there are definitely some of the major players that are out there from a technology stack, technology stack perspective. And so I think we want to make sure we understand the capabilities and the features of those. I think, you know, changing tech for our clients is not, I know we would like to be able to believe we can flip the switch and switch technology, but I think that the reality is there's a lot of data oftentimes in those systems. It becomes very challenging to do that. And so we like we have a, like I said, a center of excellence and a digital innovation team that is always looking for various technology solutions that are out there and what might be applicable to our accounts, how are these differentiated? And so that way we can be somewhat educated when we have conversations with our clients. And in some cases, they we they may not be aware of feature and functionality within the tools that they have that can help them improve their own operations. And so I think we we do have to be somewhat aware of all the different capabilities of technology that's out there. But I think ultimately, again, our goal is to be somewhat net neutral and be a strategic partner to our clients and not have a strong viewpoint one way or the other, but really to help drive the outcomes that they're looking for.

SPEAKER_00 21:31

Brilliant. And support ninja, it sounds like ninja's an attitude rather than a company name. I was just thinking here, I mean, we're talking about technology and we'll come on to talk about kind of what where you think it's going next. I get the confidence that actually, if you were around 150 years ago, you'd have still had a role. That the solution provider would have been you guys, and you'd use pencil, paper, whatever was available to you to solve the problems, male coaches and parry, whatever it took, it just so happens now you. Got the technology to help make that job easy. I mean, do you believe that? Do you believe at the core of Support Ninja is this philosophy and this passion for making the kind of the mundane and order processing and the service better and easier for the customers, regardless of where we are in time.

SPEAKER_01 22:17

Yeah, I do believe that is the case. I think Ninja, like you said, is the way of this organization. And that's sometimes we're, you know, we're behind the scenes, but we're really driving value, right? And you can't really necessarily see us. And in reality, we want to view ourselves as extensions of our client's brand, right? And so you want to, we don't want to necessarily be known as the outsourcer that our clients are choosing. We want to make sure that our clients really understand the brand of the company that they're supporting and really, like I said, view themselves as an extension of that. And so in many cases, some of our clients will send us swag and we've got it up on the walls in our sites, and our ninjas are really excited about the companies that they're supporting. And so I think that's definitely one aspect of this industry and our uniqueness in it, if you will. And I think in general, with the industry, the way that it's shaking out, there, there's a lot of uncertainty. And I think that for us, we're really excited about it, actually. And I think as we've seen conversations with our clients continue to kind of progress and the way things have shaked out over time, I think the way that this industry is sort of shaking out is that there's going to be AI and automation that's going to help automate some low complexity work. And I think what we're really excited about is a lot of the research that we've done and a lot of the conversations is that even if clients are willing to are able to drive savings by leveraging AI or automation, they are looking to reinvest those savings in other areas of CX. And I think that's the interesting part about our client base is they are not necessarily completely focused on driving cost optimization. I mean, obviously they are, and if they can drive savings, they they will, but they really want, they see the value of CX and how it can impact long-term sustainable growth. And so that is the really great part about our client base is we may take savings from one area if we're able to drive that and reinvest it in others. And that creates great opportunities for our ninjas, right, to continue to upskill and learn new things and reprofile and so into higher complexity work. And so I think that's why we're so excited about the outsourcing space in general and CX, how that all fits in, and clients are looking for really strategic partners. And so I think that's us leadership team at Support Ninja are really excited about the future and how that will shake out.

SPEAKER_00 24:22

Well, I can imagine, I mean, the space you're in, many SMEs don't get to the next level because they get that bit wrong. Because this is obviously going to be an area where they can create certainty for repeat business. They can get, as you say, that that differentiation, as they start to get bigger, they realize there's enough players out there that do a similar thing to them. So the experience is something that they can have that's different. And also it just frees up the mind of that leadership team to think bigger rather than. I know this from doing work with SMEs, there is a kind of a natural desire to go back and look at the problems because it's safer, because this is what we've always done. We've thought small, and we I can't think big because I've got to look at this small problem here. And we're doing leadership work with leaders of small companies, trying to get them to visualize ambition and go that way and having the courage to do it. They can only do it when they have partners in place like yourself who say, Look, we've got this, we've absolutely got this back here. So we were talking about looking back and let's talk about looking forward then. So you've spoken about technology as the enabler. I had a really interesting conversation the other day with I have run like a leadership forum for CX leaders, and we were trying to position AI in the team, and it was really interesting that there was a concern one of the leaders has who is works for an international technologies company, that their organization was seeing the AI as the boss of the CX team, whereas they wanted to see them as can I introduce you to the new employee? They can do great stuff. There's some things they can't do that we can do, but they can do a lot of stuff that we can't. How do you see it fitting into your organization?

SPEAKER_01 26:00

Yeah, great question. I think we're really excited ultimately about AI. And I think we we talked about that in terms of the quote. And I think we really truly believe that it is going to supercharge our people. I do think folks that are not willing to learn AI and how it can help improve there, though those are the ones who I think maybe their jobs might be at risk, right? If they're not understanding how technology can improve the way in which they work. And so I think that's internally. We do a lot of training, we do a lot of upskilling around our with our people to make sure that they understand, hey, these are the capabilities that we have internally. These are kind of our roadmap of things that we're looking at. And this is how we expect you to use them. I think that's really the important part. There's sometimes I think there's a level of scaredness. I'm not sure if that's a word, but sorry, let me try that again. Yeah. Sorry, can you just start the question again? I lost my train of thought.

SPEAKER_00 26:47

Yeah, of course, no worries at all. So I was I run a leadership forum with the CX leaders, and we were talking the other day about where AI fits into the CX team. And one lady who heads up a technologies function for a global technologies company said the worry was that AI was almost being seen as the new boss, kind of make the decisions and we should be respectful of it. Whereas her view was that actually it should be seen as a new employee in the team that brings their own capability and skills, but there's certain things they can't do. And I just wondered from a positioning perspective, uh support ninja, what where does AI fit into your world?

SPEAKER_01 27:24

Yeah, great question. Thanks for asking. I think we're really excited about how AI is going to impact CX and how it's going to impact the outsourcing industry in general. I think we we firmly believe that AI is a way to empower our people, empower our teams, and not replace them. And I think that is a big distinction. We talked about a couple of examples of how we can leverage AI to augment the work that we're doing. I think AI will replace some lower complexity work, but I think in general, we're we firmly believe that will free up people's time to really focus on high value solving actual problems versus necessarily managing the day-to-day. And so we've seen that with a lot of our clients. They're looking for ways to automate some of that low complexity work, but they want to reposition our team members to be focused on escalations, to be focused on another area of their business that is a pain point. And so that's why for us it's really important to be that strategic partner where we can identify what those pain points are, right? Like I said, we work with 200 accounts, we kind of know what success looks like in a variety of different industries. And so I think that's where we get really excited. We want to make sure, like I said, we understand what those pain points are, and we want to make sure we're upskilling and you know, training our team members on how AI can empower the work in which they're doing. And so I think there's a lot of education. There is a little level of nervousness, I think, of using how do we use AI to impact. And I think, like I said, we train a lot. We provide specific examples. And so I think some of those things, it's going to take a little bit of time, but we're really excited how our team is technology is resonating with the team and they're understanding the power of how this can really supercharge the work that we're doing. And we've got a great innovation and technology team that's looking for capabilities. How do we solve some of our problems internally? And how can we identify with our clients what those pain points are, and then how we leverage AI and technology to help enable the solution and then and enable the outcomes that they're looking to drive.

SPEAKER_00 29:16

I mean, that sounds really responsible to be honest, Jacob. I mean, I'm a little nervous with some of the organizations that we've spoken to that it's an implementation that's going to happen and we'll manage the fallout from it. And you just think we we've not done that in the past. When perhaps we introduce mainframe computers, we help people understand, look, you're not going to need to walk down to the floor, but like we've helped people understand the impact, the learning curve's going to be high, but there's as you say, there's some of the mundane stuff you won't have to do, but it'll free you up to do other stuff. And it seems as if I don't know if we've just got lazy and complacent, but some organizations just seem to say, well, we're going to do it anyway, and therefore we'll just manage what happens afterwards. I'm worried there'll be a towel of kind of impact onto the mental health of in of individuals, because as you say, there is that kind of anxiety about what can it mean. But it it sounds as if, as you say, you're going at it at the right approach, you're trying to demonstrate internally how it's helping, so you can demonstrate that to your clients as well. And I would imagine in the SME space, one, they're probably very happy to adopt stuff that can save time and drive efficiencies, but two, probably aren't thinking about the wider opportunity impact of it. So you're a really good demonstration to them of actually you take a topic you're very familiar with and we use AI to a greater advantage for you. So you're almost kind of a bit of a role model for them in terms of the AI capability, I guess. Do you see that kind of weight of responsibility?

SPEAKER_01 30:48

Yeah, yeah. I think to your earlier point, I think it is a little scary, kind of where we're headed, I think, in terms of how people implementing some of these projects without doing a lot of the groundwork that typically is done for a lot of technology implementations that that seems to have a little bit gone by the wayside with AI. But I think going to your next point, uh a lot of our clients may not have a huge research team or huge IT team where they can explore some of these technologies and how they may integrate with theirs, solve some of the business problems. So we are in a really unique position, I think, in general, to partner with our clients and help them understand, hey, we could potentially use technology or AI or automate some of these processes that can help free up time to focus on other activities. And in reality, I think in many cases, it may not even be technology, right? I think some of our clients are really looking for how can we improve this process? I think what was really at the forefront for us and for a lot of our clients is how do we improve CX for our clients? How do we improve the way that we're interacting? And can we improve processes to do that? And I think also can we leverage technology to do that? In many cases, it's you know, you have to have good processes before you can implement technology. And so that that's typically the first thing we want to look at is how can we improve processes and workflows? Is the data set up in a way that will allow us to use technology? And if not, how do we help our clients structure that in a way? What are the types of data that we need to track and report on? And then and then we could potentially layer AI or technology on top of that to help solve problems. But you've got to have the foundation really set up first.

SPEAKER_00 32:20

Yeah, no, I'll get that. Give a scenario that we're a we're a growing advisory business. We use we use a lot of automation for the work that we do. But probably if we get to the level I'd like us to get to, there'll be a point where we need to consider outsourcing some of those. So let's assume we're having that conversation. I'm a little nervous about it. How do you reassure clients this is the right step to take?

SPEAKER_01 32:45

Yeah, it's a great question. I think, like I said, it oftentimes we'll start with the overall scoping types of questions that we're gonna have in the discovery phase. And we want to make sure we really understand the pain points that you are you're looking to ultimately solve, right? I mean, I think again, we work best with clients that understand that CX is a differentiator and not just a cost line item in their PL. Yeah. And so we want to make sure we understand what is the underlying reason, what are the outcomes that you as a client are looking to drive. We can then take that, we can do a little work on our side to say, hey, let's look at if it's a technology company, looking at kind of the reviews that are online, let's do a mystery shopping exercise, let's do some work that we can coin and be really educated about to our client, the space that they play in, how they're different from some of their competitors. And then we can provide some recommendations on how they double down on those areas and really be a true business partner to our clients. And so I think a lot of that sort of confidence is done before we actually ever engage in a contractual relationship. And I think from there we need to do what we say we're gonna do, but we need to make sure that we're staying aligned, that we're driving continuous improvement. I think one of our core values as an organization is to improve every day, right? We don't want to if we set targets, KPI targets, we want to make sure we're not just hitting those targets every month. We're identifying ways to improve them, we're looking for ways to elevate the overall customer experience. And I think that's where clients can get comfortable with interacting with us and us being really that true strategic part and really looking out for more than just doing the work. I think we've all known, especially with technology, that it's really, you know, doing your job is not enough in this day and age, right? And it's really about how can you drive outcomes for the organization. And I think we've got some really great people, and kudos to our talent team. We we've really been fortunate to hire across the board from good leaders down to frontline ninjas that truly care about the work that they do. And I think that's an important aspect. And you know, like I said, it's actually really hard to create a culture across multiple time zones, across multiple countries and 3,000 people. And we've been able to do a really good job of that.

SPEAKER_00 34:52

So just we didn't touch upon that. So which countries are you? I mean, you 200 clients, where are your client-based spread over? Give us an appreciation of the geography.

SPEAKER_01 35:00

Yeah, most of our clients are US companies, but we service them across a number of different geos. The Philippines is our primary geo, if you will. It's got where the most concentration of people, but we also offer and operate in Colombia, in Ireland, in Romania, and in the US as well. And so we can kind of cover all the different time zones. And it's like I said, it's interesting across those cultures and across those geos and time zones. We've been able to do a really good job of you know staying engaged and connected as uh as an organization. That's sort of our, I think our CEO, Craig, is really great. He's probably transparent to a fault, but he does a really great job of giving the workforce a sense of connection and pride to the work that they do.

SPEAKER_00 35:44

And it is challenge. I've done a number of projects where I've been to places like Manila and South Africa, places like Gibraltar, where a certain particular sector has their a lot of their outsourcing. And one of the reasons to do that is to try and understand is there a culture here coming through from the outsourcing partner? And it's not easy to achieve. I want to ask you one last question, just jump to mine. It's a bit of a cheeky question. So if it if I hopefully it'll be okay. But we've been talking about business outsourcing and we've talked about customer experience. And I sit and provide customer experience management advisory services. And often when I'm looking into that those two areas, you can be forgiven for believing that customer experience is a a slice uh in the BPO will as opposed to uh business outsourcing being a part of the wider customer experience requirement. Do you understand what I mean by that? I mean and with it, I'm wondering in your sector, what are the standards that you think other organizations need to kind of really move themselves up to? Because I'm a firm believer in the world of customer experience that we have a number of stakeholders. And one of them is obviously we've got our customers, we've got our colleagues, but the communities and society, but also the competition. If we can provide a better outcome, which forces the competition to raise their standards, then everyone benefits. So, in what would be your wish, Jacob, in business outsources in terms of how can we raise the standards so that it's an even more rewarding and valued part of the business?

SPEAKER_01 37:19

Yeah, when I put my CFO hat on, right, I want to make sure we're driving efficient growth for the organization, that we're being as optimized as we can be. And so when you look, when you put my CX and COO hats, I have a slightly different, similar viewpoint. I think it just I think this is one of like the biggest sort of CX crimes, if you will, that I've seen is how do we make sure that all parties understand the benefit of good CX and how and what that impact can have on long-term financial health? I think we can really improve the lifetime value by decreasing or improving churn and driving cross-sell and upsell, driving loyalty, right? There's so many different long-term impacts of good CX that I think a lot of companies are really aware of. And so what I would say is how can we get organizational leaders to really understand that strategic value that CX can bring to their organization? And so, like I said, it's one of the richest feedback loops that you can have. It's a direct line of how customers interact with your product or service. There's if you invest in that, you can really have that really rich feedback loop that I think will help guide your product and your strategy and really help drive the outcomes that you're looking for. And so I think we we really view CX as a growth lever. And I think that's if we can get more organizations and more leaders to think that way versus uh a line item in the budget, which, you know, again, I'm speaking out of out of two sides, but it's uh I think that can have the biggest impact on the industry. And how do we drive to improving CX and elevating that customer experience versus how do we drive the fastest and most efficient? And we've seen this, right? Where we may have a complex software company where we provide support. One of their KPIs is first contact resolution, right? And it may be such a complex product that first contact resolution might actually be a negative customer experience, right? And so I think that's where understanding the your organization and how CX can really be a true growth lever for the organization.

SPEAKER_00 39:21

Brilliant. I mean, we very simply we work with clients, we often will say to them when they tell us who they're working with, say put them in one or three buckets quickly. Are they a heartbreaker, an order taker, or a memory maker? Are they strategic partners? And the language you're talking there is that strategic partner. But you do quite often find the client that say, no, they're definitely an order taker. They that's all they do for the transactional. And I think probably to your point, that's where we need providers and clients to see the role of business outsourcing as a strategic partner, thinking about the long term. Otherwise, you drive short-term thinking and you are just like all the focus on on efficiency. I mean, remember working with a it was a client and they used to have a scorecard and they go see their clients, and the first thing they would say is, How much have we saved you? And we're just like uh how on earth and they were saying, Oh, they never see it as strategic. It's like, really? What a shock there. So, I mean, everything you said from the moment we kicked off to this moment, Jacob, has demonstrated that support ninja are strategic partners. That's where they want to be. So if someone wants to get hold of you and further the conversation, what's the best way to do it, would you say?

SPEAKER_01 40:27

Yeah, they can do it on our website, so which is support ninja.com, or they can check my LinkedIn at Jacob Multer here at Support Ninja.

SPEAKER_00 40:34

Awesome. Well, we'll include those both into the summary piece. But uh, I've had a real education, I really do appreciate it. And it's and it's it's great to know there's organizations like you out there who are focusing on a particular segment that you know are going to be, let's argue, I don't know how much revenue is generated through SMEs, but it's such a significant contribution to the economy. But you want those organizations to succeed, and the area you support is helping them achieve that. So thank you for the work you do. And I look forward to seeing how the organization evolves in the future. And regardless of what technology comes along, it will just be enabled by, as you say, these brilliant CX people who kind of power it all. So fabulous to speak to you, Jacob. Thank you very much for that.

SPEAKER_01 41:18

Thank you, Christopher. Yeah, pleasure chatting with you and looking forward to staying in touch.

SPEAKER_00 41:22

Awesome.