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Vasu Prathipati: Alright! People are starting to flood in. Oh, wow! Already we got to 10. Nice, some pent up demand. Alright. So, folks, if this is your 1st time joining, or if you're a repeat, joiner of this series, please just say hello in the Zoom chat. If you can say your name where you're zooming in from, and what company you're with that would be awesome. And, as you know, the best ones of these are when we get a little live chat going on during the conversation. And

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Vasu Prathipati: Dan O'connell, we're gonna go by Doc, with him for the day or for the hour, if you don't mind kicking it off in the zoom chat with just a little intro as we let people flood in for a couple of minutes.

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Vasu Prathipati: Lot of new names, though excited to see that. Let's see if I oh, Jez, Hello! Jazz! Good to see you.

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Vasu Prathipati: We're gonna talk about the 5 bars today.

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Vasu Prathipati: Josh Wilcox. Hello, Josh, how was the conversation with Guild about the quality program? Did you guys end up connecting

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Vasu Prathipati: Nate from Chegg? That's great to see

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Vasu Prathipati: Monica, Mtd. What is Mtd. If you don't mind spelling out for me

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Dan O'Connell: Probably be mountain view.

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Vasu Prathipati: Oh, Matt, I see that's the location.

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Vasu Prathipati: Portugal, Germany. Nice

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Dan O'Connell: And say, Portugal, love it.

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Vasu Prathipati: Yeah, proud of that, you know. I've heard Portugal. I haven't been. I had to cancel the trip because it happened right around Covid, but I heard it's right up there with San Francisco is one of the most beautiful, like similar architectures in cities. Have you been, Dan

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Dan O'Connell: I have. I have not. I've been to far. I've been to Portugal, but I've been to Faro, which is Mediterranean side, and then I just saw we have somebody joining us from the Uk. I was born in

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Vasu Prathipati: Yeah.

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Dan O'Connell: I was born in Southampton. Nobody would ever guess that

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Vasu Prathipati: And you went to Southampton just for this person

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Dan O'Connell: No, I said it. I saw from from the United Kingdom

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Vasu Prathipati: Oh, for the in the in the little zoom chat. Yeah, I mean, we got all over. We got Mexico, Southampton. Hi, Jennifer, I'm excited to get to work with full script soon. I got we had a good night at the gladly Conference a couple of weeks ago, so

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Vasu Prathipati: hopefully we get a similar one

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Dan O'Connell: Nice

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Vasu Prathipati: Hi, Rachel, from Angie.

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Vasu Prathipati: excited about the stuff we're doing. We'll give it, you know, like I said, based on people flooding in. We'll start at, maybe at the 4 ish minute, Mark. So please continue to introduce yourself.

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Vasu Prathipati: Right?

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Vasu Prathipati: Hello, Joe. I I hear you're talking to Roshney these days. I'm excited to hear those conversations go. Oh, nice! So the Combo went well with Guild. Thank you for taking the time to carve out we had Nick met on last time, Dan from gain site, and after this some some of his customers were like wanted to dig deeper into quality. So we connected Guild to Josh from Veronas, and but a bing. Some good things can happen. This little community field

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Dan O'Connell: Nick's. Nick's a tough guest to to go compete with and come after. So, thanks for team me.

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Vasu Prathipati: Yeah. Well, that's why we knew that we knew he was a tough guess. So we schedule a little further out. So people would kind of forget about it. So don't worry. We have you. We have. We have your back too.

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Dan O'Connell: Could have pulled back, dust it off my blazer, and put it on

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Vasu Prathipati: Yeah, exactly like where one of Nick's wacky in a good way, Wacky Nick, if you listen to those wacky outfits

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Dan O'Connell: He's he's awesome.

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Vasu Prathipati: Okay, 3 min, Mark. Alright. We'll start in the 4 min. Mark 62 people live. This is awesome. Alright. The doc is pulling in the pulling in the fan. Thank you very much.

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Vasu Prathipati: Okay, South Africa. Wow. This is amazing. All right. So make sure, you know. As for those of you haven't been again. And it's been a minute. I'm gonna give a quick reminder story about Maestro. Then I'm gonna introduce Dan. And then we're gonna jump into questions and then feel free to hit us with questions. Live in the zoom, chat, and I'll take them in the moment if it makes sense, or I'll take them towards the end, or we just won't have time for the questions, and that's how it'll go, so we'll let it rip

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Vasu Prathipati: for a minute, mark you, ready to kick things off

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Dan O'Connell: Yeah, let's do it.

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Vasu Prathipati: Okay, all right, I'm gonna share my screen. I'm gonna tell a little story

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Vasu Prathipati: all right. Welcome everyone to my Buddha frog. If you came to our customer summit. You probably saw this a couple of weeks ago, but the reason I bring up our Buddha frog is, I want to talk about quality as a very holistic concept. First, st Dan and I were just Doc and I were just talking about how our past can escape us, and we connected to quality immediately, because quality is far bigger than just a support concept or con customer conversation concept.

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Vasu Prathipati: But it's something that matters to us in every part of our life, personal and professional. We talk about quality friendships, quality relationships, quality trips, quality business partners, quality employees. It's an adjective. You can append to everything, and what

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Vasu Prathipati: you don't always realize is it's invisible. So you don't always pay attention to it until you do pay attention to it. And this is our suspicious frog. And this line we use is when quality goes down, mistrust goes up, and so quality and trust are these very synonymous or connected concepts. And this is the frog. Sometimes, you know, I've had these moments where something happens. And all of a sudden you're checking your shoulder twice, checking over your shoulder twice before you make any decision.

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Vasu Prathipati: And so our mission at Maestro is to help our customers build cultures of quality and really make quality. This default on concept where it's not just the lip service. We kind of feel it is today where everyone says they care about quality. But the actions and dollars don't always back it up. And so hopefully, through conversations with the Doc and others. We can inspire people to continue to pay attention to quality as a mission and really put actions behind it.

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Vasu Prathipati: So for those you don't know, my name is Boss and the CEO and co-founder Qa. We're a little under 70 employees. We have a little under 500 customers. And we're just obsessively working with them the best of our abilities. How do we help them create cultures of quality and burn the old playbooks for the new. And so that's part software. That's part our consultation. But then it's and very much do thought leadership through folks like the Doc. So

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Vasu Prathipati: the number one mistake we see in the old playbook that we're trying to burn down is, we think the world has gotten so overly rotated on numbers and dashboards. And while they have a role in the place, we think through the in the last 10 to 15 years. We've just gotten

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Vasu Prathipati: so obsessed with numbers that it's actually hurting us in many ways we've gotten this idea of being a data driven culture. I fundamentally disagree with. I like data informed data aware. But it's all data driven like it's running my life. I just don't ascribe to. And so I see that type of mistake all the time, and we think there's an under waiting on stories and over weighting on dashboards to the point where you can see all the numbers looking up into the right.

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Vasu Prathipati: But next thing you know, but everything's actually burning behind the scenes, because you're so focused on the charts and not the reality.

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Vasu Prathipati: The best example I like to give up, not the best but easily relatable example like to give is and I'd be curious if anyone. If this resonates, put it in the Zoom chat, you do a Google search for a restaurant. But you hit with 50 Google Ads before you actually find the organic search right? And I'm sure the folks at Google are seeing the numbers go up into the right revenue wise. But we all know from a customer experience standpoint, we start to trust those search results less.

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Vasu Prathipati: And so I'm not that smart. So I lean on. I lean on people like Doc and Jeff Bezos. They're probably right in the same tier. Right? You'd agree with that, Doc

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Dan O'Connell: I'll I will take. I will take that

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Vasu Prathipati: Take it. But he has this great line. When the data and the anecdotes disagree, the anecdotes are usually right. It's usually not that the data is being miscollected. It's usually that you're not measuring the right thing. And he has this story where they're sitting in a customer support boardroom, and everyone's saying the dashboard said, Sla's pickup is under 2 min. They're all, but he's getting all these complaints. He picks up customer service calls them, and he's waiting on hold for 10 min.

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Vasu Prathipati: and then another one. You get a genius scientist like our Einstein frog, who says not everything that counts can be counted not everything that can be counted counts. And so these are very analytical people who really just emphasize the stories.

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Vasu Prathipati: And that's why I'm really excited to also talk about this with Doc, who runs front. I'll let you introduce yourself shortly. But he was also the CEO of a company called Talk IQ. That was acquired by dial pad and then he loves skiing in Japan. But talk IQ was an early pioneer into thinking about conversations from a really stories lens. So

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Vasu Prathipati: I'm excited to tap into Doc's wisdom about why he felt conversations were so important. Well, before Chat gpt. But, Doc, how would you like to introduce yourself in front

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Dan O'Connell: Yeah, that's no really nice. It's so funny because people are probably like, where did you get Doc as a nickname my name is Dan O'connell, one of my friends had

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Vasu Prathipati: Oh, true!

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Dan O'Connell: Pretty, neat.

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Vasu Prathipati: Okay.

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Dan O'Connell: Doc. And so that's just kind of stuck with me. But yeah, to your point, like, I grew up in the Bay area and Silicon Valley started. My career like very early at Google. Google is just a couple 100 people. When I joined, I was there for a decade.

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Dan O'Connell: And at there I started my career in support, answering their 866 line, and then fell in love with, look, you can understand conversations in real time all of these different opportunities open up for sales and support. And so that's led me throughout my career to both start businesses

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Dan O'Connell: to take over businesses and then most recently joined front about a year ago. And we're a modern help desk platform over 9,000 customers we'll cross a hundred 1 million in arr we like to think of ourselves, as I said, much like you like throughout the old, the old playbooks to how you deliver support.

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Dan O'Connell: And how do we bring the best of shared inbox ticketing and digital deflection together, and then obviously put on top of it automation and insights

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Vasu Prathipati: Yeah. What my recent I got connected to Doc through our Vp of sales, John. They went to college together, at least for short period of time. And when I was doing my research on

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Vasu Prathipati: do my research, I found out that you were doing support. You get on the front lines yourself, which will touch on a little bit later. But I just thought you would be you. And what front is about, and communications and quality communications. I can't wait to pick your brain. And about how you think about quality holistically for your business and share that wisdom for the group. But before we get into like support or conversations, as you saw with the Buddha frog quality is a very general concept.

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Vasu Prathipati: and I would love to hear from you how you think about quality, whether it's as a consumer or as the CEO upfront, how it shows up in the customer experience

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Dan O'Connell: Yeah, I think it should. You know to to your point that you're that you're speaking about like I think I think it shows up in dashboards, right? Which is like that natural way. I think we we can think about things of like, how do we measure quality? Whether that's.

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Dan O'Connell: you know response, time.

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Dan O'Connell: clarity of communication. I think it also shows up in the things that are hard to track. Right like, are we demonstrating empathy

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Dan O'Connell: What's the precision of the answers that we get? And then, you know, I think, like most importantly, are you able to resolve things without friction.

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Dan O'Connell: And I think that's an important part of of the quality aspect which is like, can I get a consistent answer? That's right without introducing additional friction. And to your point, you know, I think there's specific metrics that you can measure with that. And there's things that again popping on calls which I think is important, that you're alluding to allow you to see things that you can't see in a dashboard, or you can't see in a metric

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Vasu Prathipati: Yeah, I'd love to just one of the guests we had a while ago, said the his greatest Aha moments, or when he hopped, went behind the numbers, and I would love to hear some anecdotes from you. But I'll circle back to that in a moment. How do you think about quality, not just in the support side of the conversation, like resolving issues, but it shows up on the sales side, or it shows up in the marketing side, or it shows up in the account management, customer, success, customer, success side across the journey

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Dan O'Connell: Yeah, the way I, the way I talk about it to our employees and we call them frontiers is, I often talk about being proud of your work. And I think what I mean by when I talk about being proud of your work is exactly your notion of quality, which is how you deliver an exceptional experience. And how do you do that? As I said, without introducing friction? On.

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Dan O'Connell: And so that means that every interaction matters. It's not just the quality of the output of work that people experience, whether that's what the homepage looks like or what the pitch decks looks like, or even what the quote looks like. I think it is about like the responsiveness that you have when you engage with somebody, whether that's in sales or whether it's somebody needs something for me.

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Dan O'Connell: Maybe our finance team is pinging me for something. How quickly do I get back to them? And then again like, what?

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Dan O'Connell: What's the quality that shows up in that response? Is it empathetic? Is it a good answer? Does it resolve the issue without back and forth. So I think quality can show up literally everywhere. Again. I will talk about it slightly in terms of like, are you proud of the work that you do, I naturally think, hey, find a place and be in a role where you're proud about things. But again, that's really all about quality.

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Vasu Prathipati: Yeah, that's a great way of it's like quality, trust, pride. I think they're all quite correlated. I've never heard it put that way. The I wanna put. I was talking to the this guy named Rob, who's the chief customer officer at Canva, and I was asking him about how he thinks about quality from the customer experience standpoint. And I I want to get your reactions to how he described it. And so he was at like Clorox and Procter and Gamble. And so he was familiar with this idea of total quality management from a manufacturing standpoint. And he said

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Vasu Prathipati: in the manufacturing line, There's an assembly line, where you start with raw goods and you produce a raw goods and you produce an output. And every step you're checking quality of a physical transformation. Put the liquid, you maybe solidify. You put it in a package, then you put it on a package, you label it, and there's these physical transformations. And you talked about you do these quality checks along the way. But in the world of software or services, or where you're not just selling a physical good, but there's so much around it.

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Vasu Prathipati: Oftentimes the value chain isn't physical, but it's mental, and I was like, Whoa, Rob, tell me what you mean by this, because now we're talking about the Buddha frog, maybe. And he said, every stage in his in the canva world is like a mental transformation. You're getting a customer to believe different things. So what could service be like? And so how do you get people? How do you do quality checks from a

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Vasu Prathipati: mindset or communicate how to to check. If your communication is driving the right mental transformations with your customers. And I thought that was just a really insightful takeaway that I'd never heard before. I'm curious if that resonates. If you have a different point of view, what spin you would take on that

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Dan O'Connell: Yeah, no, I think that resonates, I think, to your point, like the hard part. I think the hardest part of like being a CEO. You know, and I hope there are people that will be founders out there and and want to run businesses. Is that is like, I stress on quality all the time. Whether that's somebody shows up to our website and engages with our chat bot to to get some answers. Then they've got to go and interact with sales. And the Sdr team. What are all the checks and balances through that process? Where, again, I know somebody is going to get

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Dan O'Connell: the right experience to answer their questions, that we are selling a vision of the future. Because I think that's also important. Again, it's not about just being reactionary to the problem at hand. It's about, how do I person to think about a different way to do things that's going to provide value to them? And so these are little checks that I stress out on all the time of like, hey, how do our teams have the right conversations? And how do they do that in the right manner that aligns with our values as a business right? Empathetic

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Vasu Prathipati: Yeah.

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Dan O'Connell: Be with collaboration. Right? All of these things that matter

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Vasu Prathipati: Precise as well as what you alluded to earlier. The so that's a great that I think you touched on something I think would be really helpful to hear of the audience and myself to learn which is this quality, do you believe have to be set from the leadership level down. And if so, or can it be bottoms up generated? Or, yeah, do you feel like that's a top down cultural thing, and it and

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Vasu Prathipati: what is the cost

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Vasu Prathipati: when you don't have that type of top down culture? If you believe that is the case.

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Dan O'Connell: Yeah, I hate giving the business school answer of it. It depends. I think it

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Vasu Prathipati: Okay.

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Dan O'Connell: I do believe. And and you know this is obviously open to debate. There's no right ways.

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Dan O'Connell: I do believe that leadership sets sets the culture for for companies.

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Vasu Prathipati: Okay.

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Dan O'Connell: A lot of people will say, look like culture comes from from the collective. We I do think that like you got to have leadership that's going to say, like, these are the values, these are the expectations. These are the metrics that we're focused on. Right. These are the things we are going to do. These are the things that we are also not going to do.

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Dan O'Connell: So I do believe that, like the leadership, are the ones that are going to go, set the direction and and and hold teams accountable to that. I would argue that that's an important, an important step of like leadership for those pieces. For me it it is that which is like the leaders have to go set the direction of where is the bar, and then it gets into, like both the metrics and the dashboards that are there. What are the measurements that demonstrate whether we're on the right

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Vasu Prathipati: For that bar.

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Dan O'Connell: But I think what's important to that is you've got to have leaderships that are going to be on the front lines to go get behind the scenes and understand the what and the why.

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Dan O'Connell: the dashboard

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Vasu Prathipati: Yep.

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Dan O'Connell: Tell you the what. They're not going to tell you the why. And I think what gets missed, especially as businesses start to scale is, people get pulled away from actually talking to the customers and being on the front lines.

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Dan O'Connell: And that to me, is like something in my own leadership style, I think, is incredibly important. I've been a Cro in past lives. I've built a startup from 0 to one in past lives like you got to be close to customers, and if you're not, and if you don't demonstrate that closeness and that care, I think it's really hard to then go put that expectation on any other employee, and hope that that they that you know they're going to go and raise the bar for you.

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Vasu Prathipati: Totally like. It's almost like a hypocritical company or hip to say your customer centric as a value. It'd be a hypocritical if the leadership aren't on the front lines, living that as well like those 2 have to be one and have to be like peanut butter and jelly type of thing

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Dan O'Connell: Absolutely. And and I think like 2 ways to 2 easy ways to do this for people where I just like when we do sales enablement one of the 1st people to go through our sales, enablement trainings

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Vasu Prathipati: Oh, you yourself are getting enabled to see how you feel about it.

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Dan O'Connell: I I well, one is check quality, like what's the best way to check. And you see you see us like smile and laugh like these are. These are the. These are the things that I think actually matter, and and again drive alignment within the business and drive consistency with the values, and then the 2 is like I'm always on customer calls.

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Dan O'Connell: fly into Atlanta and meet with a customer.

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Dan O'Connell: I was on customer. Call Brighton early yesterday, at 7 in the morning.

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Vasu Prathipati: Yeah.

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Dan O'Connell: And again, it's about getting behind, understanding the whys to the issue and understanding like, where are we breaking down on quality like, where are we doing really well on quality

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Vasu Prathipati: Let's spend the majority of time really unpacking the nuances of the importance of being on the front lines. I would like to take it from 2 buckets. Bucket one is like the pain or the negative consequence of not doing it, and then we can talk about the benefits when you do do it like, whether it's through anecdotes or stories like.

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Vasu Prathipati: and then not doing it. Why do you.

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Vasu Prathipati: if you were to survey a random group of leaders just like a pick, a subset. What percentage of the time do you think really are? Get what percentage of them

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Vasu Prathipati: are actually getting on the front lines. Where's the default culture of leaders being in the details on the front lines of customers? I'm assuming it's low, but I'm curious how low you think it is. That's my 1st question.

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Vasu Prathipati: I I think it depends at large companies. So when obviously, you know, I guess to to pull from experiences,

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Dan O'Connell: When I left Google it was 70,000 employees when I joined it was it was smaller than Frontis days, 250 employees. When I joined

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Vasu Prathipati: Wow!

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Dan O'Connell: So there were very different mindsets within that experience at 70,000 people.

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Dan O'Connell: I did not feel that the leadership was as

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Dan O'Connell: on top of of talking to customers as as you would expect like, I would put that, you know.

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Dan O'Connell: less than 10% of their time talking to talking to customers like on calls.

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Dan O'Connell: And I. And again, I look at our teams today, you know, we're 325 employees. And I would say, like we do a really good job of

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Dan O'Connell: people, probably spending the vast majority of them.

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Dan O'Connell: 40% of our time engaged with

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Vasu Prathipati: Yup! Wow!

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Dan O'Connell: Or prospects.

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Dan O'Connell: And that's intentional, which is, they see it from me. I'm on

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Dan O'Connell: probably 3 or 4 calls a week

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Dan O'Connell: for a seat for for a CEO. But I'm like I feel pretty in tune with the customer base and the prospect based of like those conversations. And again, like I get worried. I would be worried if I was in a business trying to.

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Dan O'Connell: We're going through massive transformations, not just in our in our own markets that that you and I are are trying to build up to build businesses within. But just in general

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Dan O'Connell: you have to go and engage with customers. I would say more often than ever right now, simply to understand the problems, the threats, the challenges that are out there. And I think that's it's with the easiest thing that doesn't get prioritized

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Vasu Prathipati: Yeah, it's it seems so optional and given the rate of change. It's it's like the fastest place to figure out what's going on on the edge of the markets. Mine! Let me that in. Oh, go ahead!

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Dan O'Connell: I was gonna say, but and and I think we default to tools, though to do this, some for us, which I would also, I think, is a little bit of a of a challenge

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Vasu Prathipati: I hate that. I agree

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Dan O'Connell: We I built. And for context, this is coming from

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Vasu Prathipati: Totally we build tools, that kind of enable

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Dan O'Connell: Be tracking, as mentioned.

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Dan O'Connell: But but you see that play out where the answers suddenly, then comes to like, here's the transcript of the call

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Dan O'Connell: right, or here's a recording of it, and that means that you don't then have to participate to build that trust and credibility both with the what gets missed. You don't build trust and credibility with the team, because and again, it's all we can tie this back to quality

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Dan O'Connell: right on the

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Vasu Prathipati: Piece.

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Dan O'Connell: But I think that's the part that then gets missed

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Vasu Prathipati: There's so many good things I wanna pick apart there, let's start with like, when you see what are some of the negative like types of decisions. People get wrong when they

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Vasu Prathipati: either over rely on tools or aren't close enough to the customers. They're only spending 10% of their time like any, and you don't have to call anyone out. But just anecdote to say like, it makes sense logically. But they you still get it wrong because you're not close enough to the customer. Does that make sense as a prompt? Any stories like that?

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Dan O'Connell: Yeah, I'm trying to think of stories. I think it comes down to like, Look, some of software building, I do believe, is like intuition, right? Like you can go and run lots of customer interviews right obviously, to go and and be pinpoint on stuff. But like some of it is like look that takes time, there's the reality of that. And so you need to be. Have an intuition and understanding.

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Dan O'Connell: And I think all of that intuition does come from these customer experiences firsthand, that you're having that are not told through the game of telephone that are not told through the recording. Because, again. If you're just listening to recording like you and I don't get to engage in a back and forth

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Vasu Prathipati: Yes.

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Dan O'Connell: Get to ask the follow up question, to go into the details of like, what is the specific issue? So I think, like what gets missed if you just rely on the tools is, one is I don't think you come across as customer centric, which I do think is a differentiator in today's day and age and

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Vasu Prathipati: Yeah.

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Dan O'Connell: I I think a lot of customers. A lot of businesses say, especially as they go up market, that they care about customers, but they kind of leave people behind. So one is, I think you leave your customers behind. 2. Is you miss the opportunities to go and ask the follow up questions to get really into the weeds of a better understanding. And again, you're looking for the shortcuts, and I think those shortcuts can lead to both not super

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Dan O'Connell: bad intuition, and then lacking some data and some information to make the best decisions possible.

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Vasu Prathipati: Yeah, like, I can think of stories where, like, we had some billing changes where we update. And we're trying to actually be more customer centric and simplify the billing thing, but we got it totally wrong, and I think

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Vasu Prathipati: it actually took a couple of conversations where I had to be on the front line and feel the pain of that person being really frustrated for me to like. Oh, click! And I'm like, I'm like, man.

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Vasu Prathipati: The signals are all there, but sometimes you need that visceral feeling to go and take the change and like, if you're too late, I'm glad I got in where I, when I got in, dang like I could have picked this up 6 months ago if I actually heard it directly. And that's like, Go ahead

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Dan O'Connell: No, I was gonna say to your sorry to interject. I I think you're

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Vasu Prathipati: Believe it'

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Dan O'Connell: And this is where I encourage, like that the leaders and managers to like step in on calls. And the reason being is.

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Dan O'Connell: especially if you're going through change management for me, like I've taken over 2 businesses as the CEO. So I I get like the unfounder mode. It's like

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Vasu Prathipati: Yeah.

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Dan O'Connell: As as me. And so there's a lot of pieces of like. The reason I also help on the calls is like, there's a lot of

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Dan O'Connell: past beliefs

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Vasu Prathipati: Thank you.

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Dan O'Connell: Then, if you got to change those beliefs like somebody, if I'm not on that front call, somebody is going to boss who's going to go and tell me. Here's how we've done things. Here's what I hear from customers, and I can either believe that and then start to make decisions from it. And that's a really risky place to be. Or I can go and say, like, Hey, that's a helpful perspective, right? That that's the past way of doing things. But we probably need to start doing things differently. And I need to start from square one. And I want to go have a different type of conversation with that customer.

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Dan O'Connell: And that's something that's shown up both here at front when I joined you know, a year ago was I would talk about our platform differently than I think some of our sales reps a year ago would be

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Vasu Prathipati: Totally because you have a fresh perspective, too.

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Dan O'Connell: Different different perspective. I think about the world slightly differently, just different experiences. And again, I would just be increasing as every business grows. I would just encourage leaders to think about that which is like at some point you're going to go through a reset. You're going to want to change, and that change is going to be like, get back to talking to the customers and the new customers or the customers you want to acquire in a different market, because they'll lead you along the way. But it's gonna take that time and effort

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Vasu Prathipati: Where do you think in that game of telephone like? And again, if there's any stories that come to mind where you got a wrong, or you got where you avoided the game of telephone. And you're like, I'm glad I talked to that person because you got to a different level of truth in your opinion, like, what's the cost of telephone like? Why is it so dangerous? And obviously you can't do it for everything. So how do you think about like when you do? Listen versus when you do, you need to go down to the direct source yourself like, how do you think through that trade off

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Dan O'Connell: Yeah, I think the I'm trying to think of like specific. It's funny. Asked me a specific question like, Do I have? What's my one specific story. I think the game of telephone breaks down again. It goes back to like when we think about quality and expectations. It's not just on the customers like how your internal teams are operating in the expectations.

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Dan O'Connell: and it goes back to like, well, what's good quality, you know, one of the things we'll get to is quality and trust.

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Dan O'Connell: Trust is a byproduct of quality.

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Dan O'Connell: And what I mean by that is, if I know that the teams right, let's just take the Pm's. If they are actively engaged with customers

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Dan O'Connell: and talking to them, then I know that their intuition and the feedback they're getting is spot on

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Vasu Prathipati: Same.

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Dan O'Connell: And again, like, because I know that they are taking pride in their work, and they have a high level of quality. I have trust in their decision making with that expectation and knowing that that's playing out what's gonna happen. Dan's got to go find time to go and say like, hey? Thanks for the game of telephone. I don't trust what you've said. Let me get the conversation to, you know, which is like not the healthy way to operate or build it or scale, you know, build a business

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Vasu Prathipati: Got it

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Dan O'Connell: Filling this out.

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Dan O'Connell: But I think like those things and and those things for us, I think, like as we have shifted like front started as email productivity tool. We've been focused on customer support for really the past 18 months. And so this is has required us to like really

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Dan O'Connell: get everybody to think slightly differently about the customers, but how they engage with customers and prospects

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Vasu Prathipati: There's a couple of things I'll double click. By the way, we got up to 80 participants, Doc, I think they put it on Twitter and some more people flooded it. I'm just kidding, but we got a great audience digging into this with us. Again, for people feel free to throw in questions as they come up. In the zoom chat. But let's talk about this quality and trust concept a little bit more depth.

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Vasu Prathipati: Why.

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Vasu Prathipati: So I also. And this is extreme, and unfortunately I like this is extreme. But I tell people like, I don't really trust your I'll listen. But I don't really trust you if you don't, especially on go to market functions. If you haven't spoken to customers, and you're not in the weeds like I I hear it, but it's like pretty much a requirement for me to even like, really trust that you know what you're doing when it comes like messaging, or how to do a discovery call what is a good product idea. It is a core requirement for me of how my instincts work. How do you

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Vasu Prathipati: create that. So you part of it. You lead from the front. But how do you talk about that to encourage your your manager spending 40% time when I'm sure you you have to. Some of them are gonna be like, I gotta do this and I gotta do that. And I gotta deal with this thing like, how do you create that culture when there could be a million excuses not to do that?

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Vasu Prathipati: Yeah, does that make sense

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Dan O'Connell: Yeah, prioritization. You know, I know this stuff sounds easy, but I think it is really sitting down and giving the guidance to the leaders and demonstrating, like, what are the most impactful activities like, what do you want to prioritize but prioritization? And I think you know our CTO and found and co-founder. Laurent talks about this all the time, which is prioritization is not just about the things that you that you are going to focus on and do. It is as much as about what are the things that you are not going to do.

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Dan O'Connell: And I think again, like for leader, for people that are managing teams, whether they're 1st time leader or whether you're an executive. I think it is being really clear about both the expectations that you have. And then what are the things you expect people to do? And then also giving very clear feedback of these are the things I expect you not to do or deprioritize

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Vasu Prathipati: And that happens all the time like, I will ask people like, What are you working on that you should they just taking time away from this, because this is the most important thing.

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Vasu Prathipati: Yeah, interesting. So oh, go ahead. Sorry

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Dan O'Connell: And I was gonna say for us, you know, we go up our number one competitor is Zendesk. So you got a a business, that's, you know, multi

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Vasu Prathipati: Lot of Zendesk customers here. So hopefully, we come switch over.

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Vasu Prathipati: So so we're trying to take market share

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Dan O'Connell: One of the things that we hear. And and this is not enough. This is just us, you know, but one of the things we hear is like, it's hard. It's hard to potentially talk to people at Zendesk.

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Dan O'Connell: So I would say, like, then, great like, what we hear is, we can go differentiate by showing up and talking and engaging with customers, or taking flights across the country to go meet with prospects like we can show up differently, and that that way that we show up differently is both a differentiator for us

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Vasu Prathipati: Yeah.

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Dan O'Connell: To build right a stronger relationship to demonstrate that like we care about that customer, and we care about that customer's voice. So we care about that customer's voice, whether we're doing something right, or if we're doing something wrong, that they have an outlet to go and help

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Dan O'Connell: change that tweak the roadmap, whatever it might be.

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Vasu Prathipati: Dang! I love that business

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Dan O'Connell: I try to tie it back to. If you're spending your time in meeting, you know, but I'll pick on some random meeting and offense.

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Dan O'Connell: I got a meeting, but I think like it comes down to that which is like look like the engaging with customers is not just about helping us best position the business in in this newer market for us. It is about like a point of differentiation against competition that allows us to look sound and feel differently, and I say, feel like that quality that conversation is meant to for you to feel something right, trust

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Dan O'Connell: that trust brings loyalty, right, that loyalty allows us to expand revenue. Have, you know, improve Ltv. Like all of the metrics that would. That would demonstrate that you're that you've got good customers and can grow those customers

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Vasu Prathipati: Totally. There's one part we'll circle back to. But I think what a lot of the folks in this audience the priorities are being set well above them, and so they might say. And these folks are right on the front lines, as you know, these folks deeply. But yeah, they so like, how would you? But it's not totally in their control. Maybe the culture isn't so isn't set the same way. You're setting it from front

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Vasu Prathipati: and assume someone's like, you know what? After this, after this, webinar, I'm gonna go talk to the CEO and say, this is what we're missing. What would be the pitch as to like

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Vasu Prathipati: and say like, what would be the pitch as to I mean, you've touched on elements of it. But if you think of it as a sales pitch. It's like you have to go pitch the CEO. We need to be reallocating our time to spend at least 10% more or 20% more of our time in the weeds with customers, whether it's on calls or listening to calls or reading calls. What would be that pitch you would make to that, CEO. So if they're not doing it, why not?

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Vasu Prathipati: Yeah. Like what they're listening

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Dan O'Connell: One. So 2 things. One is I would encourage everybody to like. Your role is what you make it, and I know at times it can't feel like that. But I really encourage everybody. And I talk about this to the teams, which is like, be the CEO of your function.

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Dan O'Connell: and that means that nobody.

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Dan O'Connell: I don't want our employees to feel like they have to operate within specific guidelines of like. Whatever the job responsibility says, like, I want them to feel power to make changes, and so like. I would just encourage you to be happier, more fulfilled in like your life and your role like if if you operate like that. So I encourage you to do that, and I think great opportunities happen, too, is like, if I was going to go pitch the Cfo right, or the CEO on this and and on quality like to me. It's all about an investment in in customer retention and loyalty.

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Dan O'Connell: And so like, poor quality isn't just like a customer experience issue like it's a revenue issue.

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Dan O'Connell: And what I mean by that is like, if you're not having

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Dan O'Connell: high impact worthwhile conversations with your customers. They're going to churn out less.

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Dan O'Connell: You're going to miss opportunities for cross sell and upsell. You're going to not improve like your brand loyalty or your brand recognition. Right? How people just react to like hearing what your company does and what you stand for so I all of that which is. It is like in a strict, a key, strategic investment in brand loyalty and ultimately revenue generation. And that revenue generation comes from obviously like, how do we retain customers and grow customers

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Vasu Prathipati: Yeah, I think there's a storytelling problem. Listen. The great news from for the people on this, on this conversation is you're hearing from a CEO himself where he's saying, quality is a strategic initiative, and I think there's a storytelling gap where

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Vasu Prathipati: the way the function has come about. The role has come about like you can think about a Qa software testing or Qa for customer experiences. It's more like this audit or check the box or that type of function, and there's a storytelling and then a rewrit writing of the playbook. Where it can be that strategic. And we have to figure out how to tell that story, but then also make sure it's not just a story, but deliver on it where we can really show how we're

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Vasu Prathipati: truly raising the bar bar of quality, and to make it a differentiator you mentioned. Go ahead.

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Dan O'Connell: I was gonna say, like, I think, like one thing that gets missed sometimes in companies, too, though, is that support is seen as an afterthought

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Dan O'Connell: and support functions can be seen, as I don't know that that best way to. For to as like the nice, to have versus the need to have

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Dan O'Connell: right and

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Vasu Prathipati: Yep.

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Dan O'Connell: The cost center

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Dan O'Connell: and something like we're really focused on. And and and people can see like we've got our how to support Kenji is is like a superstar. He's amazing

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Vasu Prathipati: Alright!

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Dan O'Connell: But we really try to elevate purposely our support team internally, and it's because, like one.

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Dan O'Connell: they're on the front lines, they we get to talk. We get to celebrate and talk about some of the customer stories. But 2 is like, because of the the business we're in, like we're building help desk software like that next generation of help desk software like.

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Dan O'Connell: we want them to be the ones that are helping inform the roadmap like we manage all of our 9,000 customers on front. So that means our support team uses like everyone up front uses

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Dan O'Connell: to like support our customers. And so again, like, I really think like businesses need to invest more in support, because again, they're the ones that can help dictate the roadmap. But they're also can be the 1st touch point that businesses are having

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Dan O'Connell: with the with the company, and I think, like those impressions really matter. And again, sometimes I just think that it's thought it's like this cost center. It's thought of this afterthought. And I think it's just

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Vasu Prathipati: Yeah.

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Dan O'Connell: Even a bummer, and just and sad, because I think, like those teams are so intrinsically important

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Vasu Prathipati: I think there's a really good point there. One is that also calling up the dog fooding and the impact of quality that can have on quality. I want to touch on that in a little bit. But as you talk about, yeah, support is so undervalued, and

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Vasu Prathipati: it's 1 of those things that you and I like it would we are!

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Vasu Prathipati: We must live. How much more strategic it can be, so that we can show others how much more strategic it can be. Why do you get on the front lines yourself? I saw something where you spend some amount of time taking support conversations yourself. What are the biggest like benefits that you've seen that you didn't expect from doing that yourself.

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Dan O'Connell: To me, trust and credibility. And so again, like that was intentional, coming into a business, and again, like just general advice for anybody that starts a new role, especially a leadership role, is like, I think, trust and credibility, or like

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Dan O'Connell: are critical. There's no better way. One of the 1st things I did in my 1st week was hop in our support. Queue. One was like, I want to demonstrate that I know the product. Because, again, like.

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Dan O'Connell: yeah.

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Dan O'Connell: the product like to what you said like, if I don't think you know how all the features, if if I have a Pm.

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Vasu Prathipati: Game, over

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Dan O'Connell: Our product. Then I'm like I. And and they

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Dan O'Connell: the customers like, that's a pretty challenged.

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Dan O'Connell: That's not great

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Vasu Prathipati: Yeah.

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Dan O'Connell: It's really important for me, like coming into a business like, how do I demonstrate trust and credibility? One is like it allows me. If I hop in the support queue, I have to use our product so that allows me to develop an understanding and nuance of like what features work. What don't? What would we improve for? Just how to manage product and engineering and get feedback and design? And then 2 is allows me to engage with customers and hear what are their frustrations, or what are the things they're really happy with.

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Dan O'Connell: And then the next part is like, it gives me credibility with the team, because people are like, Hey, our CEO is hopping in the support queue, or he's hopping in our sales enablement session, or he's hopping on prospect calls or customers.

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Vasu Prathipati: Yes.

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Dan O'Connell: I know that this person's going to ride is going to ride along with me and be side by side.

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Dan O'Connell: And I think that stuff gets again. It's like really easy stuff to go and do is hugely impactful, and I think can be easily missed and overlooked.

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Vasu Prathipati: Yeah, almost the tagline of everything we're talking about. If we had to take at least one key, theme is trust and credibility. The way we do that is, we get on the front lines and listen to calls, talk to customers, experience that in the weeds work. And if.

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Vasu Prathipati: the leader of a hundred millionaire company can do it. So can a frontline manager and their manager.

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Vasu Prathipati: you know. And it it might sound simple. But that thing you've talked, and I'm not saying we're not calling at any Pm's in general, but it's not uncommon for Pm's not to know the product as well as somebody far other removed and not talk to customers. And it's not an IQ thing. It's like we get to get so distracted with all these other priorities, and in so many ways. My big call to action is.

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Vasu Prathipati: we have to make it a priority, and we have to almost say to others like, that's what creates some degree job security, trust, promotion, opportunity. This really specific niche knowledge, not like organizing things in a Google Doc, really? Well, and putting a nice little framework in tables. It's like, Tell me a story about a customer I don't know. That's gonna inform me about my product strategy, about my processes.

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Vasu Prathipati: And so the more you create that culture of people on the front lines, you're creating this competitive advantage at that company where you know something that everyone wants to know. So I feel very passionate about for the similar reasons, is like

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Vasu Prathipati: it's the most important information you can collect in your role. So find, and no matter what your role, even if you're in finance, find a way to talk to customers or get customer insights directly to be better in your finance decisions, any reactions to that

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Dan O'Connell: No, I think no, I I mean outside of me, just saying like I I agree on it and spot on. And again I think it's 1 of those things of just encouraging people to to do that, because I think it's

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Dan O'Connell: Again, it raises the bar of like expectations around quality which is like, hey? I expect everybody to know our product. I expect everybody to be able to give the 3 min pitch on what front is that is unacceptable right to be in in any role. As you said, it's not just about being in product roles where you're building, you know, or engineering or design. It's like it's unacceptable for you not to know. Have a base, level understanding of the platform.

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Dan O'Connell: And I think again, there's people that will show up in different businesses and be like, I don't really know our software, you know I don't. That doesn't impact me.

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Vasu Prathipati: Exactly. That's the terrible answer, red flag answer, or it's like, that's on.

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Vasu Prathipati: Yeah, I know how to like, I know how to do my function. But the products are different. You know. We're all one company. Julianne asked a question. Can you elaborate a bit more on the nice to have versus need to have concept. I feel like I were you, that when you were talking about support

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Dan O'Connell: Yes, support. Yes, support being a cost. Yeah, I think. I think you can see it like I don't. I won't pick on you know, specific. There's been like businesses that talked about this. And and most recently, which was like, Hey, we're gonna go cut our support teams. We're gonna fully automate. It

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Vasu Prathipati: Yup!

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Dan O'Connell: And then you go back and realize that, like that rush to full automation sounds great

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Vasu Prathipati: Oh, it's Clarina!

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Dan O'Connell: Awesome.

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Vasu Prathipati: I know.

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Dan O'Connell: And then and then you turn out, and it turns out that you've like frustrated your customers because they.

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Dan O'Connell: the chat pants aren't aren't the solve for everything even create again inconsistent answers introduced friction. What does that do that leads to lower quality output? What does that do that leads to distrust in the brand, or like frustration. And again, like, I think we can get like really excited. Just the world gets really excited about, hey? There's all these new tools to help me reduce costs and and potentially produce work. You know, people.

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Dan O'Connell: But again, like, what's the trade off to that is, I don't think we're.

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Dan O'Connell: I think, like the human aspect of support.

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Dan O'Connell: Is necessary. Not all of the time. As I said, there's some remedial password reset stuff, but I don't

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Vasu Prathipati: Totally.

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Dan O'Connell: In some regard. But I want to talk to people. And I think that relationship building and like that, ability to demonstrate empathy is what makes it unique. And I think there are. There are brands that embrace that. And I think there is,

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Dan O'Connell: a higher level of trust and credibility. And just

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Dan O'Connell: you like the brand more because they engage in that. And then I think there's brands that don't do that, and you feel it, and you have a different reaction to like what that brand is. Again, it's a different level of trust or loyalty to to that brand

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Vasu Prathipati: Yeah, I I love that. I want to actually pull the string on that ruse. I see your question and I will. I'll make sure I get to that after we kind of close out this thread. So thank you for asking that I think

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Vasu Prathipati: I would love so the question I'll I'll give the question. Then I'll give a little context, and we can come back to the question which is like you spoke about the hidden ripple effects of low quality, right? And it's like, How do you really talk about that internally? Because it's not so, it's like, How do you? If, again, if you use a Cfo who's more numbers oriented so that persona

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Vasu Prathipati: well, what is the cost of that lost trust, or what is the cost of that brand thing like, how do you think about it? Really, when you're talking to the board about a big brand investment or a quality investment that isn't truly definable like, how do you?

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Vasu Prathipati: How do you develop that conviction? What's an example of it? But before I do that, I just remember hearing this or not hearing or reading this great story where, like, I live in New York City, and it's a doorman building, and they're very much could replace that doorman with automated doors right?

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Vasu Prathipati: And you could do a key card to swipe in. And it's like, Okay, well, that would make sense right away, financially for the the building to. Say, I don't need to pay a person to be at the door, but I will. What's it called, and and just have an automated machine that opens and closes in a key card access.

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Vasu Prathipati: But that doesn't, and yes, you save some money right away. But you don't capture so many subtle things, for example. Well, I like talking to my doorman sometimes, or sometimes if someone has a baby or in their stroller, they need help like with their packages and getting to the door, or there's an feeling of trust and personality to the building. It's not like walking into a severance office, you know, like there's a level of and the costs are so hidden. And

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Vasu Prathipati: yeah, go ahead. That's

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Dan O'Connell: Which is like that, that feeling that you have right that feeling when you walk in, you know your doorman like I've I've lived in a building with a doorman in the past, and and, as I said, there's like

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Dan O'Connell: Dante was our Dorian's name, and so

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Vasu Prathipati: There you go!

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Dan O'Connell: Like Dante and I used to talk about hoops all the time.

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Dan O'Connell: and it was like 5 min, 3 min conversations coming in the door, you know. But those are things that again, like up level, like

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Dan O'Connell: how you view that space.

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Dan O'Connell: And that's really hard to go and say, like, what's the value of that.

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Dan O'Connell: You know, the things that we measure like naturally are like, you know, your Cfo is going to go look at like, okay, we're making this investment is our Ltv is our. It's our Ltv improving right? It's a lifetime value of a customer.

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Dan O'Connell: cross, sell and upsell, are we able, you know. Nr, they'll focus on nrr, right? You'll focus so net revenue

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Vasu Prathipati: Yep.

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Dan O'Connell: I'm just spewing out acronyms, making sure, like, basically like, can you go expand that

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Vasu Prathipati: Revenue, metrics.

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Dan O'Connell: Revenue metrics.

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Dan O'Connell: I think there's naturally like the Csat surveys that you go and do like, hey? What's our Nps and csat, which I assume most people are familiar with. I do think there's also opportunities to do like unaided brand studies. And those can be like, really sophisticated. Those can be like really sophisticated like, go get a 3rd independent party to go do it, which I think can be like a big investment, or that's just like, Hey, have the marketing team just

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Vasu Prathipati: Yeah, send a message on

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Dan O'Connell: And send messages and do it. But I think, like that part that part needs to happen like the unaided kind of brand studies most investors in my experience like really hate brand spend

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Dan O'Connell: and that that might be just the investors that I've worked with. And I think because it can be a little bit fuzzy on, like the metrics, at least in

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Vasu Prathipati: Yeah.

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Dan O'Connell: Their eyes, and I I get it. But

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Dan O'Connell: from our, you know, from from the operator side, like we're in the trenches every day. So I think we have a slightly different perspective of like, Hey, this stuff matters, even though we might not be able to quantify it. But I can quantify it, because I'm on customer calls or engagement. I feel and see it

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Vasu Prathipati: Yeah, exactly. I 100% agree. And I think about, as you know, for people in the audience again, it oh, go ahead. Sorry

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Dan O'Connell: I was going to just finish my one thing on that thought. The reason you, I think you get trust and credibility on being able to push back on that is, if I can go and say like, Look, I'm on calls and meeting with the customers. So I know it, and I know that you're not right and not not like that's not their job, but that is like the difference in the credit to, you know, to tie this back to like credibility and quality is like because you're making that effort. There's trust and credibility that comes

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Vasu Prathipati: That's such a good. I love what you said right there like, and Nick Mehta had this line. He's like he'll he'll meet with the support team. And he's like, Yeah, and we have our Qbr and our tableau. We'll see the dashboard of the numbers. And like that's all well and got fine, and he's kind of saying he doesn't really care, but not saying that. But what he says is, tell me 3 stories, and that touches a little bit on what you're saying is like.

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Vasu Prathipati: oh, my God! Like for the people in the room who are so close to customers and conversations you're you're so close. You have access to these tools that maybe 90% of the company doesn't even have right, like you even have

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Vasu Prathipati: unique access to insights. If you go, and we have customers like zoom and a firm, and what they're doing is like having executives listen to calls.

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Vasu Prathipati: and they're creating executive listening sessions. And I was on a panel with the black tux. He was talking about how their top 20 people do these call listening sessions. And so

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Vasu Prathipati: for the people in the audience. If you just find a great call, and you just send it to in a slack and send it to a public slack. It creates a little accountability to listen to it. You will change. People will, because we are humans. We respond to stories that will change the mind. I bet there's certain calls I could send to our board, and you could send the board, and they would rethink decisions. And so the power of stories is really powerful.

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Vasu Prathipati: Even if you, we think we live in such a data, driven decision making world, it's more that just go try and share a story, and you might get a slightly different result. And the people in these quality roles on the in the front lines have access to these stories like 90% of a company doesn't

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Dan O'Connell: Yeah, and and even like easy things for people to do like if you are using, you know, call recording software for this stuff. And or even if you know, Zoom recorded, it's like record some of those meetings and bring them into all hands. We do this

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Vasu Prathipati: Oh, yeah.

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Dan O'Connell: Customer stories to all hands, both good and bad. Customers, you know. Mostly good. Rarely do. We have bad.

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Dan O'Connell: as I said, like, you're a business like you're gonna have some. But we celebrate it. And again, that's ways that you can elevate both the support organization or the account management teams. Right, whoever's engaging with customers, but, again, can bring those stories to life and those customers to life. So those are like easy things, and people love hearing it. There's nothing better than sitting in all hands and hearing somebody like talk rave about the product that they're using, and

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Vasu Prathipati: Totally.

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Dan O'Connell: How it's helping them and again, can be ways to actually bring everybody closer to the customer

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Vasu Prathipati: Changes the culture. Let's touch on Ruza's question, so I'll read it out loud, and then I'll put it in my own words. With AI. Now, in the mix and various conversation tools readily available. What are the top mantras to pivot from the conventional Qa role? How can quality teams shift gears from the age, old audit methodologies from the age, old audit methodologies

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Vasu Prathipati: Dan, or Sorry Dan, Doc. I would love to connect that to a little bit of what you said of like we might be. How do you find the balance of not over relying on tools, but using them the right way the way you were saying earlier, like we sometimes over rely in the agent

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Dan O'Connell: Yeah. So so I think, like the the piece, I always think about AI, and these are like the natural things everyone's saying now, which is like you're not trying to completely reduce the people and and say, like, Don't do this job like, Don't go listen to calls. The AI can do it. And this is like what I love about your platform. It's finding the finding, the balance of like look.

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Dan O'Connell: I want to make sure that we have tools that allow us to. Then, you know, score grade we can pick on a different word of like, get visibility to every conversation, and I think, like every conversation matters

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Dan O'Connell: and so I know that I can't have managers just show up every day, and what they're doing is listening to 8. 1 h calls. And like, that's all they get. So we have to leverage the tools because the tools can can drive some events, productivity and efficiency gains. But don't leverage those tools as meaning like that means that you don't engage with customers, or that you don't listen to calls

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Dan O'Connell: and I think, like those are the common things that people can go and say, which is like, Hey, the Qa tool is, gonna go listen to the call. It's gonna fully automate it. It's gonna give me the score.

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Dan O'Connell: You can't just stamp and accept to the score

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Dan O'Connell: right? It's not always AI is not going to be 100% right? It's not going to understand some of the nuances of the human experience. And so these are tools to help you drive efficiency and productivity. They're not there to replace you. And I think again, it's common, and we see it in the stories in the media of like these tools are here to replace you like. It's not, that's that's not

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Vasu Prathipati: Okay.

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Dan O'Connell: A lot of people think about it. It's like, Can you leverage these tools to drive productivity to help you do more to help you find the needle in the haystack, and like focus on

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Vasu Prathipati: Yeah.

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Dan O'Connell: And it still means like you're still gonna have to go hop on calls, because again engaging real time with those customers allows you to have all of these things that are immeasurable, that are immeasurable, right that actually provide a better impact. Just drive value for your business

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Vasu Prathipati: Yeah, I mean, I love what you said there, and the only thing I would challenge or or put a nuance that I think if I said it this way would resonate with you is ignore the external media we do see to. We see the majority of people that want to use AI in the Qa. Process.

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Vasu Prathipati: They don't. They say the needle in the haystack. But what they really say is, I want to automate quality instead of have a human look at it, and like the ideal. So because there's so much pressure on efficiency productivity. And

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Vasu Prathipati: I would like to like use this dialogue to push back on that, because I like it as

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Vasu Prathipati: hey use it as like a scanner, like to find the needle in the haystack. So you spend your time smarter, and we work with Ora Ring, and there's this woman Eglay, on the call, shout out to Egley, she's listening! But she said this brilliant thing, and they're going through their own transformation with AI. She goes.

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Vasu Prathipati: And

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Vasu Prathipati: like men like. And it was a journey. It was actually that quality is a transformational mindset. And I was like, Wow, I think we're really cooking on the same page. We're not making the same meal. And what she was, she said. This line just subtly. And I was like, Oh, my God, this is should be the tagline

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Vasu Prathipati: free transformation.

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Vasu Prathipati: We are. Gonna use AI to drive Qa efficiency. We are gonna use Qa to drive 100% audits right? It was like these very much productivity things. And then she said, my goal is to maximize our insights per hour priority. I was like boom, and obviously can't measure exactly insights per hour. But that mindset

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Dan O'Connell: So Di sounds so different, right? The value and like how that sounds is so different

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Vasu Prathipati: So different. And I said that I was like, Oh, my God, I go! That's amazing like, let's go. Put this on. Let's go. Now, speaking of being on the lines of customers. Actually Lauren, our Vp. Of marketing, she's on this thing, Lauren. We should think about some marketing campaigns around insights per hour, and to Rooza to close the loop on your question.

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Vasu Prathipati: I don't know your company. I don't know exactly the culture of it, but you might. If it's like the majority. I want people to have manual. Qa. I have 10 questions how to use auto, Qa. To answer all 10 questions, so I don't need to spend time. Qa. And I. I do think that's wrong. We will support the best we can if customers really want to do that, but really don't want that. What we really like is, how do you use it? To spend your time smarter to maximize insights per hour, and I feel like that's close to what Dan is saying in spirit

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Dan O'Connell: Yep, spot on

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Vasu Prathipati: Any other questions from the group. Otherwise I will pepper Dan with the last couple of questions

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Vasu Prathipati: before we wrap. Wow! We held the audience at 60 for the hour. This is great. People love it, Doc.

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Dan O'Connell: Nice. You're so entertained. You're natural

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Vasu Prathipati: Supernatural. Okay.

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Vasu Prathipati: what do you think our mission is like that? 70,000 person company, or 50,000 person company? We feel like Maestro's mission will be, quote unquote, solved. When

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Vasu Prathipati: you take that 50,000 person company and imagine a world where 40,000 of them are listening to one call a week like that would be, how transformational would that company be like? I? I hope we can achieve that mission and so you know, your smaller company happens a little bit more natural.

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Vasu Prathipati: But could you talk about any managers you've worked with? Who are so in the weeds? And just what is that trust like, what like? How do you work with them so differently than someone who might not be as in the weeds? With customers? And yeah, what is that best manager? Just do differently. Think differently. Tick differently from your experience.

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Dan O'Connell: Yeah, I think what what happens from being close to the, as I said, like close to customers and along the front lines. It's like you got a different level of credibility with the team. And and and I think a feeling of empowerment.

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Dan O'Connell: And I think, like the empowerment then leads to like.

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Dan O'Connell: I talk about being. Are you playing offense or defense within your business? And I think if you are constantly reacting and playing defense, it's a really bad place to operate. You want to be playing

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Vasu Prathipati: I love that

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Dan O'Connell: And I think again, that is like the difference that I see in what separates, like the great managers and great leaders that I've interacted. That I've worked with is simply that, like the great ones are playing offense and they're able to play offense because they're like in tune with the teams. They're in tune with the customers, and that leads to like a stronger level of of conviction and confidence. And then they feel empowered. And this is why I'm like act like the CEO of your function or your job.

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Dan O'Connell: If you have all of that confidence, trust me, you're going to feel like really empowered to. Then go and say like, this is right, and I know it's right, and that allows you to go. Have, you know, maybe hard. I don't know if they need to be hard conversations. I think you'd be surprised, like good leaders are going to give you a bunch of give you a bunch of runway to go and operate again, if you have like that credibility, and trust with them, and it all stems from that

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Vasu Prathipati: Yeah, I love that May. Maybe this isn't exactly what you're saying, but I think it is. It's just like offense, or living on the front lines like, who wouldn't want to work for a manager or for leader that's just out there doing the work with them versus somebody who's in their ivory tower, looking at dashboards all day like, maybe that's a dashboard search. Is the d dashboards equal defense

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Dan O'Connell: They did like at the reason I left Google 10 years ago is one of the catnip. Just

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Dan O'Connell: me wanting to get to something small. But one of the catalysts was actually an interaction with a leader that. Just

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Dan O'Connell: you could tell they didn't know what our team did. They

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Dan O'Connell: on the team. And you could tell they were managing in a dashboard. And it just it was like that moment that really clicked to me that, like this place had just become too big for for the experience that I was looking for.

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Vasu Prathipati: Totally.

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Dan O'Connell: And I think that shows up, too, like I've also operated in in other companies where you've had.

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Dan O'Connell: I will say, sales leader, show up sales leadership show up that has been more of like the metrics dashboards, and like you just lack credibility with the team.

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Dan O'Connell: And it's just not gonna work. And so that's where I really tell people like the very best thing you can do is like, Be frontline. You can't over rotate. I've also worked in businesses where, like the sales leader, is only

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Vasu Prathipati: Totally.

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Dan O'Connell: Lights flying around, and then I'm like I'm not

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Vasu Prathipati: Yeah.

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Dan O'Connell: They're being a 3rd

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Vasu Prathipati: Missing all this other stuff

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Dan O'Connell: Like, yeah. So there is the there is the balance to find there

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Vasu Prathipati: Totally and partly why we have this series, why we're so excited about the mission. My sure is, it's not that numbers are bad. It's just that

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Vasu Prathipati: the culture severely over rotated on putting everything in a data warehouse not make any decisions till data warehouse, not having any intuition allowed in conversations unless it's in a dashboard. And we just want to remind people that both matter and Dan spends far more time collecting stories than he is looking at numbers in a dashboard. He does that. But if you look at the actual hours on his week

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Vasu Prathipati: he's spending far more times collecting stories. And so you know, Doc, thank you so much for taking the time with us. I'm hopeful hopeful people got some great takeaways and hopefully we'll have you back on this talking about some more quality stories in the future.

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Dan O'Connell: Nice. This is all. Yeah, this is awesome, as I said, super fun. And then, love all the engagement, and questions too. So thank you for having me

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Vasu Prathipati: Thank you alright. See you later

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Dan O'Connell: Alright, take care!

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Vasu Prathipati: Bye, everyone