Embark on a transformative exploration of the customer experience cosmos with the formidable Cathrine Jooste, President of Global Business Processing Outsourcing at CGS.
From the rich tapestry of her personal evolution, leaving behind the consulting battlefield to command the global contact centre fleet, Cathrine divulges the intimate camaraderie and family-like atmosphere she's embraced within CGS's ranks.
This episode is a treasure trove of insights, where we dissect the shifting tectonic plates of economic challenges, regulatory frameworks, and business model metamorphoses that are reshaping the way companies approach customer care, weaving in the profound implications of generative AI and the unyielding necessity for ironclad security measures to safeguard our future.
As we navigate the multifaceted realm of customer service, we touch upon the emotional resonance of cybersecurity and its paramount importance in our digital age. The conversation then sails through the complexities of delivering omnichannel support, bridging the gap between automated efficiency and the irreplaceable human touch across a kaleidoscope of languages and cultures.
The journey doesn't end there – we peer into the crystal ball to forecast the contact centre industry's trajectory, spotlighting post-pandemic workspace evolution, corporate crusades for sustainability, and the anticipated wave of generative AI's influence.
Cathrine's voice also carries the torch of empowerment, offering a beacon of guidance for those carving out their careers in this ever-changing sector, with an emphasis on the power of self-belief, a message that resonates with a special poignancy for women in executive leadership.
Join us for an episode brimming with wisdom and strategic insights that are sure to enlighten and inspire.
Embark on a transformative exploration of the customer experience cosmos with the formidable Cathrine Jooste, President of Global Business Processing Outsourcing at CGS.
From the rich tapestry of her personal evolution, leaving behind the consulting battlefield to command the global contact centre fleet, Cathrine divulges the intimate camaraderie and family-like atmosphere she's embraced within CGS's ranks.
This episode is a treasure trove of insights, where we dissect the shifting tectonic plates of economic challenges, regulatory frameworks, and business model metamorphoses that are reshaping the way companies approach customer care, weaving in the profound implications of generative AI and the unyielding necessity for ironclad security measures to safeguard our future.
As we navigate the multifaceted realm of customer service, we touch upon the emotional resonance of cybersecurity and its paramount importance in our digital age. The conversation then sails through the complexities of delivering omnichannel support, bridging the gap between automated efficiency and the irreplaceable human touch across a kaleidoscope of languages and cultures.
The journey doesn't end there – we peer into the crystal ball to forecast the contact centre industry's trajectory, spotlighting post-pandemic workspace evolution, corporate crusades for sustainability, and the anticipated wave of generative AI's influence.
Cathrine's voice also carries the torch of empowerment, offering a beacon of guidance for those carving out their careers in this ever-changing sector, with an emphasis on the power of self-belief, a message that resonates with a special poignancy for women in executive leadership.
Join us for an episode brimming with wisdom and strategic insights that are sure to enlighten and inspire.
Welcome to CX Diaries. Cx Diaries from the Customer Experience Foundation is our podcast where we talk to the people at the sharp end of CX and contact centers, the movers and the shakers, the innovators, the disruptors and the people delivering in the real world who share their personal stories of their journey through our industry. This week, I'm delighted to be joined by Catherine Juist, President of Global Business Processing Outsourcing at CGS, Future Generated Solutions. Cgs are a 40-year-old company based in the US with technology in their DNA. They're a global contact center business servicing over 28 languages, with multilingual call centers in North America, Romania, Chile, Israel, India and Colombia. Catherine, welcome pleasure, Israel, India and Colombia. Catherine, welcome Pleasure to have you with us today, all the way from Florida.
Speaker 2:Thank you, Keith. It's a pleasure to be with you.
Speaker 1:So can you share a bit about your journey? So you're president of this global contact center business. How did that come about and what was the lead up to that in your career?
Speaker 2:I appreciate that I have been with CGS actually coming up to a year now, so not one of our most tenured employees, but it feels like a lifetime. It's been a very welcoming experience Getting into the contact center space. I'm traditionally in the consulting world. I grew up in consulting technology systems integration and about five years ago I switched over to a global top five consulting firm sorry, bpo's customer experience firm with a huge presence in Latin America, and that was kind of my first entrance and I'll tell you the mark change, coming from selling a piece of cloud which is so obscure, to actually selling services that there's humans behind it and a whole story.
Speaker 2:It's it's. It's very touching in a very different way that you could see your end product. So I've been with CGS, as I said, about a year. We are privately owned. The founder is still active in the business, phil Friedman, and he brought me on to really take CGS to the next level, particularly as we start going into all these new technologies and the changing business models and all those kinds of things. So super excited to be here. It's a wonderful company and we'll talk a little bit more about it.
Speaker 1:Amazing what inspires you.
Speaker 2:What inspires me? Oh, my goodness, there's a ton of things that inspire. We started this conversation as we were warming up, keith, by just talking about the weather. I live in beautiful St Petersburg, florida, and we year-round enjoy some sunshine. My mom is visiting me from Chicago right now and she walked outside the other day and she said I don't understand why, I'm just happy right now there is sunshine. They've had a very dull winter and it's gray and it's little things like that. That's on a personal level, but I will tell you on a more professional level. I mentioned our founder, phil Friedman. He is actively involved in the company. He started this company 40 years ago and he's the embodiment of the American dream. He came here as an immigrant with his wife, with $400 in his pocket and nothing but a dream and some hard work. And here we are, you know, four decades later, and he's built what he calls an extended family. So I really love the way that he embodies this organization and it's really a big family, amazing.
Speaker 1:Thinking about contact center businesses and the organizations that you serve. What do you feel are the challenges facing these organizations when it comes to customer? Service experience in 2024 and beyond.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's an interesting question and we are in interesting times. So there's really, you know, think about the big three Economic pressures. It continues to be an uncertain macroeconomic marketplace. Depending upon what your views are is how uncertain we are about it all. There's regulatory pressures with the changing environment and there's changing business models. So, you know, let me start with the first one for a minute. If you think about economic pressures, it's always been. You know, I want to do more with less. I want to do more with less.
Speaker 2:But we're seeing companies that now, for the first time, are breaking their own norms. Companies who said we will never outsource customer care that's our core asset they are now asking to do that. Companies who said we will never go offshore, we need to be in the country that we support, they are now asking to do that. We will always need a human to interact with the customer, end to end. Well, maybe, maybe not right. Maybe there are some happy path scenarios where the customer experience can be a little bit better without the human. And then we're hearing companies who are saying generative AI, science fiction, not interested in it, let the other people work out the kinks are now saying, well, maybe there are some interactions that actually could provide a better customer experience, even in right now. So I think that's a huge mark in the world we're in.
Speaker 2:The second one is on regulatory pressures. So it's not new that we've had data and privacy concerns, but what is new is just the magnitude of the threats out there and the speed that we have to recover to them. In this industry, with so much consolidation, it's going to be a different company. It's going to be a different industry in pick your date five years, seven years, 10 years could even be sooner, even be sooner, right, and the companies that are not really leading the charge with staying abreast with regulatory concerns, with making the right investments in the security protocols and their people, process and tools are not going to survive.
Speaker 2:There's going to be a Kodak moment for some of those companies, and I think it's incumbent on all of us. We have about 10,000 employees and it's really incumbent on us to make sure that we find homes for those as we transform our workplace in a very different way. And then the last one I would say is the changing business models. Right, it's not just moving the Tesla business model as an EV, but we continue to see the evolution from brick and mortar to, let's call it, e-commerce, and it's not just in the retail space. We're seeing it in financial services, in health care, even in things like the government sector, utilities and other things like that. So it's an interesting time, and it's an interesting time for a company like CGS, with our strong technology foundation, to be able to take this challenge to the next level okay, so given all those challenges, um, how can or should a business differentiate?
Speaker 2:the end, the end customer, like the, the client's house, should they differentiate with their brands? That's a really interesting question, because I have customers on both spectrums of that question. Right, and what I should say perspectives. The one side says the end customer is the only asset we have. Let's treat them with absolute kit gloves, let's make sure that we put all our energy, all our investments, to the best possible customer experience. And then there's the other spectrum and I'm thinking of even in our own client base, of very technology-enabled customers who are automating 99% of their interactions on a daily basis and they're very proud of it. Right? I don't know, maybe the truth is somewhere in the middle. I think that the true differentiation comes when you're able to figure out how to use technology and the human touch and really how to marry those together so that you can provide the best customer experience. So that you can provide the best customer experience.
Speaker 1:Really interesting. There's a lot of discussion going on across call center businesses about Gen AI. There's a lot of discussion going on in end user businesses about Gen AI and there's a lot of debate about whether Gen AI is going to replace the call center or not. What's your take on that and where's Gen AI going to take us?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I can't tell you a day that we don't have that same conversation internally. Is it a doomsday or is it the next pot of gold? Time will tell right. But one thing is for sure is it will change the industry the way we know it today. We are already.
Speaker 2:We have, just within the last six months, we've dramatically changed our technology stack to take in generative AI, and the most obvious ones are the ones we've seen where you know there's going to be, or the demos that we've heard of, that there's going to be a computer on the other end and you won't even know it'll feel like a human. They'll anticipate your needs. I don't think we're there yet. We're not. The key word is yet we're not. The key word is yet we're not far away from the human being able to, from the machine being able to replace a lot of the interactions.
Speaker 2:Where we're seeing it in a huge way today are things that customers don't see in the back office Some of the way the analytics are generated, some of the way the knowledge repositories are generated. It comes with huge amounts of data at an incredible speed and it really has already changed our business in a very meaningful way. As for the future. We're very bullish on the future. We believe that there are enough technologies out there to provide value to our end customers, which in many cases means taking cost out of their current cost of ownership. So there is a place for Gen AI and we are super excited about what the future yields.
Speaker 1:Amazing. Another subject that is important to our listeners and members is data security and privacy concerns. What are you doing at CGS to keep up with the strictness of GDPR, CCPA and all these regulations across all your territories, while still prioritizing great service and customer?
Speaker 2:protection. Yeah, I smile, which I don't know if this is going to be audio or video. I smile because you know I'm reminded of the saying the first rule of Fight Club is we don't talk about Fight Club. If our CISO was on this call, he would tell us we don't talk about our protocol. But I will tell you we spend an immense amount of time internally talking about the protocol.
Speaker 2:Cgs takes our security protocol very seriously. We're certified in all the major certifications that is needed, probably above and beyond a company our size that you would expect, because we do believe that this is what the future is about. We do believe that if we cannot comply to some basic data concerns, some basic ways of doing business, there's no place for companies that don't do that. So we have a mature CISO organization that manages all of this with an iron fist and he tells us no for every time. For every five times that we ask him four times he tells us no before he tells us yes. So it's frustrating to manage a business, but it's also we believe that this is what's protecting us to be secure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm thinking about the customer, the end user, customer. There's an expectation these days across the globe, increasingly, of 24-hour accessibility. What do you think the challenges are for an organization providing omnichannel support and what do you advise your clients on their model?
Speaker 2:Let me make it a little bit personal for a minute. I was hacked just last week. I ordered dinner I'm going to keep the names private here of the organizations but I went onto one app on my phone to go order dinner and I changed my mind. I said I don't want to order from them. I probably put some things in the cart maybe, maybe not. And then I went onto another app and I ordered from a second place.
Speaker 2:After I picked up my dinner I got home and I saw some alerts from my credit card company that there were charges from the first place. My first inclination was oh my gosh, did I accidentally hit buy? I didn't mean to hit buy. I went on to the app and the first thing I noticed is that my email address had changed to some obscure email address and all of a sudden there were five different transactions at a city in Atlanta with this place, a different franchise. You know it wasn't very much money, but I was furious and I had no concern that I wouldn't be compensated right, because between my credit card and the app, I called both of those quickly. They very quickly dealt with the issue and they very quickly assured me that the money would be recouped.
Speaker 2:But that's not what it is. It's an emotional experience for a consumer at the other end, the fact that I was able to talk to an agent and I'll speak specifically about the food franchise that I spoke with. The agent was incredibly empathetic. They understood where I was coming from and they were quick. They said let's put some stops in it, and they moved through all of this.
Speaker 2:If it wasn't for that, I mean, I probably would have removed their app from my phone. I would have never ordered from them again. I probably would have removed their app from my phone. I would have never ordered from them again. My credit card doubled back. So I think as consumers, we have this sense that the companies out there are protecting us and we deal with companies that have the resources to protect us. That doesn't change us as a consumer, that it invokes an emotional reaction. So, going back to the human versus machine question for a minute, there is a time and place for a human and a machine, although it may have had all the same information as that human did, could not have satisfied me the same way that that agent did.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and interesting as someone from a tech background that you still had to call and there wasn't a tech or an AI or chatbot solution that could support you with that. What's your feelings on that?
Speaker 2:And even if there was that emotion that I had at that minute and I consider myself pretty technically savvy, you know, compared to maybe my parents' generation or so forth I needed to talk to someone. I needed to tell someone that I am so frustrated right now and you better take care. And probably, like I say, maybe there may have even been an AI text click here and we'll disable your card. In fact, I think my card was already disabled, but I needed to get those certain sentiments off of my mind. So I put myself in the head of a consumer for that moment and I've been talking about it in a number of calls.
Speaker 2:Internally, we work so hard at making sure that self-service is adequate, that we have text interactions, all these kinds of things that we can interact with customers, but in some cases a human needs to be heard by another human. But it doesn't have to be in all cases right the happy path. In most cases we can automate. I would rather connect or disconnect an electricity bill while we're sitting here multitasking than hang up now and schedule some time and wait on the call.
Speaker 1:Yeah, really, really interesting. I want to understand a bit more about your operations. So, thinking in the context of your global operations, how do you tackle the challenge of cultural and lingual diversity and still get great quality service?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's our greatest strength and it's probably the one area that takes the most work. Because if you think about how companies have evolved, we talked about changing business models. In the beginning, when God created the earth, not in the beginning, not too long ago there were all these little franchise kinds of models. Then you had these global multinationals gobble them up through industry consolidation and make it a global company. The care center in many cases were an afterthought. They got sent to, let's call it, new York right, or to US, or maybe in some cases to the UK, and it wasn't acknowledged that people in some small town in Germany needs a very different experience than somebody might want out of Iowa in the US.
Speaker 2:So what CGS has done is we have, through a number of acquisitions and organic activities, assembled a global workforce where we span over 28 different languages and with that we've also created. So there's a balancing act. We have a very entrepreneurial vision, so we encourage each of our different regions and heads to act in entrepreneurial ways so that they can serve the customers and employee base in the way that is meaningful to those locations, but then balance that with the idea that we do have these multinational companies that we're serving and they're looking for a consistent experience. They're looking for one voice. So we have a CGS one voice governance model that we use to facilitate a consistent experience.
Speaker 2:So we have some tools that we use, we have some processes, but I will tell you, probably the one of the most meaningful things is for these big companies. We have a once a week call where we get leaders globally from our different operations on and they just share. It's unscripted. This is what I saw this week. Did you see that? Oh yeah, we see that all the time it's turned out to be a very valuable kind of organic method for sharing information.
Speaker 1:Really interesting. With remote work becoming more prevalent, certainly in the Western operations, how has your approach to workforce management and employee engagement evolved?
Speaker 2:That's another very interesting question, keith, you're full of them. I've traveled quite a bit of late. I just came back from India and Singapore within the last couple months and we're also in the process of renegotiating our lease in the Tampa area, where I am today, in Florida. We just signed a new lease in Columbia in South America. So let's use those three geographies to just compare and contrast. There's very different movements going on in different places. In India, I'm seeing a huge get back to the office. I would not be surprised if 90% of the companies are back in the office by the end of this year. In fact, that's the mandate for most of these companies and the employees are happier, I think. You know, given some of the working and the living conditions, I think it makes for a better environment to work from home and separate that home and work piece.
Speaker 2:In places like Tampa, where we just signed a new lease and we were grappling, or we're in the process of signing a new lease and we were really grappling with the idea of should we go very small? Should we go big? What should be the thing? I will tell you one thing that is markedly different Every site that we toured, we wanted to make sure that we had adequate space. We were not going to repeat another COVID scenario. The days of these funeral graveyards of, you know, just cubes back to back are over. We're not sardines, we're people. We need more space so that we can, you know, keep the viruses out but just kind of acknowledge a little bit better space. But then we've also created different environments within the workplace to create these hubs to really force employee engagement. A lot of fun activities there's foosball, there's beanbags, there's all these kinds of things. That forces a better employee engagement.
Speaker 2:Having said that, your question is how do we change with work from home and the workforce management practices? There's a time and place for both. In the US and even in places like South America we're seeing a lot more of an employee stand that they prefer to work from home. It's a much more effective piece. The workforce management you know, whether we wanted to or not, we kind of figured that out during the COVID years.
Speaker 2:So the way that we schedule and work people, that part seems to work. The question that comes into play is employee engagement. How do we create the same employee engagement when it's in a distributed fashion, particularly when you do things like a sales campaign where you have you know you can't go down the hall and ring a bell because someone made a big sale and let the confetti splurge out. You have to figure out how you do that in a gamified mode, through teams and through all these kinds of things. So there's a time and place for both. We are huge advocates of bringing people back to the office where it makes sense. We also have a very strong work at home platform for the cases that that makes sense as well.
Speaker 1:Amazing. Another hot topic, particularly in the UK and I'm sure in the US, is sustainability and corporate responsibility. In what ways is your organization committed and driving sustainability and social responsibilities in the communities that you operate in?
Speaker 2:the communities that you operate. So at CGS we're privately owned so we don't report our sustainability metrics the same way that other companies might. So I almost feel in a way it feels more genuine the things that we do because nobody makes us do it. If I look at every one of our offices, there are, at any given time there's an initiative toward giving back to the communities that they serve. We look at ourselves as a canvas of the communities that we serve. So in Florida and Tampa we just had a beach cleanup day, which is huge for us here. The environment, the beach and all those things, the waterways of how we serve there's, you know, we serve people in.
Speaker 2:We have operations out of Israel which are a number of Ukrainian refugees that we're working with there in that capacity. So every office has a little bit of a different view, but it is a core value that we instill from the very top to be able to give back to the communities that we serve. And in a lot of cases, like I said, it's unsung heroes. We have to like go dig under the covers to find out what they did. They just do these things food drives, building houses in the community. These things just happen organically and I think, again going back to the BPO industry, this is one of the most beautiful things that this industry supports.
Speaker 1:Amazing, super to hear. I'm looking ahead. What's the outlook? What do you think the emerging trends are that are going to shape the future of the contact center and BPO industry globally? Is it just AI, or is there more to it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was going to say maybe it's generative AI, generative AI, generative AI. I only say that partly as a joke, because every conversation we have is generative AI and I think it's almost become this catch-all, which it's not necessarily intended to do. That, but I think some different flavors of generative AI is going to have the most meaningful impact in our industry today, because this is really the way that we're going to have the most meaningful impact in our industry today, because this is really the way that we're going to engage with our employees in a much more effective way, really get inside, what are their concerns and how do we better serve them. We're going to be able to engage with our end customers in a much better way and we're going to be able to engage with our customers in the middle in a better way. So I'm sure there's going to be another some big movement in the world that will make me a liar a few years from now, but for the time being, our energy is in generative AI and all the supporting technologies around that.
Speaker 1:Right, really really interesting to hear that you're now very closely to that one. Really really interesting to hear that you've you're now very closely to that one. Thinking more personally.
Speaker 2:Catherine, what advice would you give to someone that's looking to have a career in the contact center or BPO industry, as someone relatively new to the sector? Yeah, you know what that's. I just celebrated a milestone birthday without aging myself. It's a big round one, so I've had a lot of time to reflect. You know, what advice would I have given my younger self? What do I wish I knew then that I don't, or what do I? Yeah, that I know now that I wish I knew then? And I think the answer is and maybe my perspective is a little bit tainted because I am a woman executive, right? So I came slightly different path in the world and for me the answer is I think you know it. We just didn't have the confidence to execute. I think you know everything you need to know to be successful. I think you just need to take that seat at the table and speak up in an accurate way.
Speaker 2:In the contact center space in particular. I've spoken to so many executives that have grown up as a contact center agent and I always ask them so what did you want to be when you grow up? I never thought I'd end up in the contact center space. This was a side job that I was supposed to do to get me through high school or maybe college, and this was just a thing and it dug at my heartstrings. The contact center space is very personal, it's a people business and in many ways it's a calling. So with those two things I would say put those together. Recognize what you want to do. You want to impact people. This is the space for you and as an executive growing up in the ranks, you know own your voice and speak confidently.
Speaker 1:Amazing you touched on it a little bit there speak confidently.
Speaker 2:Amazing, you touched on it a little bit there Reflecting on your career what are some of the most valuable lessons you've learned about leading and growing a business? So lessons about growing a business you know I am a huge advocate of Brene Brown and one of the American authors who you know. I believe the quote belongs to Theodore Roosevelt and I don't know the exact quote, but it's something to the effect of it's the man in the arena quote that says it's not the critics that matter, it's not the bureaucrats, it's not all the people who have opinions, it's the man who's in the arena, who's marred with blood and sweat and who's trying and failing again and again and again and he dares bravely. That's the one who ends up mattering.
Speaker 2:And I believe that in everything we do we have to make mistakes. I always encourage my team make mistakes, make as many mistakes as you can, because that's how we're going to learn. Please don't make the same mistakes over and over. Go make different mistakes, but make as many mistakes as you can and be bold. Try new things. Just because it hasn't been done before doesn't mean it shouldn't be done again. So I know that's a little bit of a vague answer, but that's really a guiding principle for how I believe we should run our businesses.
Speaker 1:Amazing Catherine. It's been an absolute pleasure having you with us today. Very, very enlightening. Hope our listeners have found this as fascinating as I have. You can find out lots more about the customer experience foundation at cxfoorg, and do please check out cgs. Thank you for joining us and we hope you can join us next time on cx diaries.