Dirty Little Secret featuring Casey Denby

Transcript

Rob Dwyer (00:01.987)
Hey, I am back with another episode in season four of Next in Queue today, in queue, Casey Denby. How are you Casey? How's it going?

Casey Denby (00:11.072)
Great, Rob, thanks for having me today.

Rob Dwyer (00:13.949)
I am so excited to talk with you today because we are going to dig into some of the dirty secrets and training and development in the contact center space.

Casey Denby (00:24.622)
So we should have called it Dirty Little Secrets, know, kind of like the All -American Reject song. that could have been our intro for today. We should have thought about it.

Rob Dwyer (00:30.179)
Yeah.

That's right.

Rob Dwyer (00:37.286)
It could have been. It still might be. You never know. Let's introduce people to you who are not familiar with you. You are currently VP of strategic partnerships at Zenarate. But tell us a little bit about your background and what we should know.

Casey Denby (00:40.0)
It still might be, we'll throw it in.

Casey Denby (01:00.376)
Yeah, I appreciate that Rob. So currently leading some strategy, some business development and growth as well as partnerships at Zenarate. And we're a software startup been around about eight years. And I was, if you go back in time, I was a customer six years ago. So I was an early adopter of the solution of the tech in the training space because I led global training at multiple organizations.

And I was looking for a solution that could fill a big gap. And that's a little bit of what we're going to talk about today is there's some science that's proven and studied and researched around how people learn. And I knew that I had to make a change. I had to pivot, but I didn't know how to do it. So I'll talk a little bit about that in our conversation today. But my background before that, I mean, I've been in operations and training leader for, for 18 years now.

And I started my career kind of in the telecom space, doing some business roles. And there's always this little thread of training. And I was never a corporate trainer myself, but somehow I always was. And there was a project and they're like, this guy's loud. He's got a lot of energy. think he can be a trainer. And so they would throw me on to train certain things for certain projects. And I actually kind of fell in love with it.

Rob Dwyer (02:10.062)
Ha ha ha ha.

Rob Dwyer (02:14.969)
Ha ha.

Casey Denby (02:22.798)
And so eventually became, you know, an operations leader, did more training there, and then my career transition. And I led two global training organizations, like I mentioned, and that became a passion of mine. And how I ended up here was because I bought the software in this. Everything that we do is focused around training and development of human beings. So that's a little bit of my background. I'm in Denver, Colorado. And, you know, four kids been married 17 years really love

what I do, love my family, my kids most days. You know how that can go. They're wonderful until they're not, but that's a little bit about me.

Rob Dwyer (03:03.823)
And you can rock some Jordans. I do know that. do know that. Nice. I feel like as you are talking about Zenarate and the fact that you were a customer before you came to work for them, I don't know why, but I get a hair club for men vibes, which I probably could have used at some point. Maybe I still can. I don't know.

Casey Denby (03:05.888)
And I can rock some Jordans, that is correct. I just busted out the high tops too of similar fashion, so I'll have to show you that next time.

Rob Dwyer (03:34.329)
But I feel like you're not only right. You're not only the VP at Zenarate, you're also a member. Let's talk about that a little bit because you were at Western Union when you discovered Zenarate. And I feel like this is a good time to dig into some of the things that.

Are misunderstood or maybe that we keep on the down low about training in larger organizations. So not to pick on Western Union because he did an amazing job and turn them around and they're awesome now. But what were some of the things that you discovered there? Maybe that you had seen at other places that you were like, this just doesn't work and it's problematic yet we've never fixed it.

Casey Denby (04:34.486)
I would say it comes down to one general large gap in corporate America. And it's the fact that most training programs, training curriculums have been focused around a individual or a couple of individuals that stand in front of a group of people and lecture. And they might have

some PowerPoint slides to go with that. They might have a YouTube video or a pre -recorded video or like this 20 minute film that people are gonna watch and all of a sudden leave super inspired. But what's missing is learning via application. So I'm an athlete, I would still consider myself an athlete today, just not quite as fast or limber as I used to be.

Rob Dwyer (05:23.599)
Hmm.

Casey Denby (05:32.024)
But I played ever since I was a young boy and there was one constant theme with sports. And it was you had to go to practice. And why do you go to practice? I mean, everybody knows why. Bring up the Allen Iverson quote, right? Practice, we talking about practice. But practice is how people deliver on stage, in game time, under the lights.

Rob Dwyer (05:50.895)
you

Rob Dwyer (05:57.953)
Mm -hmm.

Casey Denby (05:59.926)
I don't care how much natural talent you have. That does matter to an extent, but if you don't hone in your craft and apply your skill sets, you will never be better. Go back to just dribbling a basketball, dribbling a soccer ball. That takes skill. It takes time. Some people have much better hand -eye coordination, and now being a father of four, you can see that very evidently amongst your own brood of children, right?

Rob Dwyer (06:27.801)
Ha ha ha.

Casey Denby (06:29.61)
Some have that natural ability and others don't. They have to work at it more. But if you want to go from capable to good to great, you have to put in the work. You have to practice. Why then do corporate environments bore people to death with lecture that doesn't work, with PowerPoints that doesn't work, with e -learnings that they hope people can check the box?

Nobody's becoming proficient at anything through an e -learning. It's just not happening. I even go back to not just corporate education, but what about actual education in school? I went through, I have a master's program, you know, a master's degree. I went through four years at university, two years of a master's program. And I remember maybe five to ten percent of what I learned.

during those six years. It's not because it wasn't important information necessarily, although one could argue that there's a lot of that, but it's because you're in a classroom and you're not actually applying what you're learning into real life scenarios. There's a whole theory around this called the adult learning theory, which many people have heard of. I could get into those points as we keep in this discussion, but it's 100 % on point with the application piece.

It's great if I tell you, Rob, be empathetic, Rob. And you're like, cool, let's have a theory conversation around empathy. I'll tell you the history of why it's important to be empathetic. Who cares? Like that's cool, but it doesn't help me become empathetic. Reason why? Check, great. What is empathy? Check, great. But how do I become more empathetic? You gotta practice. You have to...

show empathy in times that would fit in empathy situation. And so how can you make that happen? I know it's a long -winded way of saying we don't get enough practice in what we do. We don't apply what we learn. Therefore, statistically, and this is not "Casey's statistics" right? This is the learning pyramid. Statistically, over many, many years of proven science, five to ten percent retention is average.

Rob Dwyer (08:41.157)
.

Casey Denby (08:55.992)
when people go into a classroom, when they hear a lecture, when they see a PowerPoint presentation. And guess what? Like college, when you leave and you're not using that over and over and over again, that percentage eventually goes down to zero.

Rob Dwyer (09:10.895)
Yeah. You know, it's it's been a minute, but you remind me. So I studied German in high school and college. So I took three years in high school and another couple of years in college. And I could reasonably speak German. And then, as it turns out, German, not a terribly useful language when you live in the United States.

Probably should have picked something else, but let's just say I didn't use it a whole heck of a lot and.

Casey Denby (09:44.492)
Rob, you wanted to be the guy who was different, right? You're like, everybody's doing Spanish and French, I'm gonna go speak German.

Rob Dwyer (09:47.331)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we only had two options at my high school. It was Spanish and German. French didn't come along until my senior year and I did take a semester of French and I can ask you what time it is. And if you answer me in French, I have no idea what you said, but back to the German. About five years ago, I had an opportunity to go to Germany. Now this is

Casey Denby (10:00.173)
Okay.

Rob Dwyer (10:17.325)
Right? A lot, many, many, many years removed from my study of German when I was relatively proficient in German. And I'll tell you what.

Rob Dwyer (10:31.533)
It was a real struggle for me to understand. Luckily, if you go to Europe, like most people speak English as well because that's a lot of people throughout the world speak English. And so you can get by without it. But I remember the last day we were there, the cabbie did not speak English and I could kind of sort of be like I could communicate with him in the

pidgin German that had slowly come back to me. But your point about not using, not applying, like even if you have a skill, it's one thing to acquire and use that application. But even once I've acquired it, if I don't use it, like it's gonna disappear. You're gonna lose almost every.

Casey Denby (11:24.632)
will give you a Spanish language example because I am fluent in Spanish, but similar to you, I did two or three years in high school and I eventually ended up getting a Spanish minor because I became fluent Spanish, but it wasn't because of school. I learned some grammar, I learned some words, I learned a little bit of conjugation, but to be honest, if you've ever learned the Spanish language, the hardest thing to learn is the conjugation.

the concepts around why you say it this way versus why you say it that way. And it's the exact same phrase, but in a different context. And it wasn't until I actually lived in South America, I lived in Ecuador for two years. And guess what? I learned Spanish. And do you know why? It wasn't because I lived in Ecuador. It was because I spoke it daily.

Rob Dwyer (12:20.133)
Mm

Casey Denby (12:20.374)
And I studied it daily. didn't just speak it, but I studied. had a dictionary and I would go through and do lessons every morning. And then I would talk to the people all day long. And I eventually ended up three months in, I ended up living in an apartment with three other Latinos who spoke zero English.

Talk about immersive learning. And that's the concept, right? Immersion. You learn by immersing yourself in whatever topic it is. And let's just be honest, Rob. Nobody in the world is gonna be the best at 12 things. You're not. It's okay to be competent at many things, but I would highly recommend for people to choose an avenue. What are you gonna be really good at?

Rob Dwyer (12:46.898)
Yeah.

Rob Dwyer (13:15.267)
Mmm.

Casey Denby (13:15.692)
What's something you're passionate about? And focus and commit and dedicate to that. So like I love to play pickleball. I love to play golf. I would say I'm above average in both of those activities, hobbies, as you would call them. But I am terrible at playing the piano. I learned at one point in time, I taught myself actually, and I started to do the thing, but I could never get to the both hands, you know, five keys at once.

And it's because I would do it and stop and do it and stop kind of like I try to learn the acoustic guitar to impress girls in college, right? Like I taught myself a few songs. I was capable, not very good at singing, but I learned a few songs. Now, if you asked me to play a G chord, I could play a G chord, but I forget the C. I don't remember E. You know, like I don't remember these things because I haven't touched a guitar in four or five years. But with the Spanish language, I flex that muscle consistently.

Rob Dwyer (13:53.445)
You

Rob Dwyer (14:14.945)
Mm -hmm.

Casey Denby (14:15.182)
And I learned and got better and better and better and better. And 20 years later now, I still speak fluent Spanish, but it's because I apply it as often as I can. And that's the key. That's really like, it's, we call them dirty little secrets, but it's not a secret at all. Everybody knows these things. Like naturally inherently as human beings, understand this. Why then do we not do it?

Rob Dwyer (14:29.561)
Yeah.

Casey Denby (14:44.684)
Why don't we apply it in the classroom? Why don't we apply it at work with a new trade? I mean, could you imagine an electrician who sits through lecture and then goes out and tries to fix your electrical problems? mean, you might burn your garage down or worse.

Rob Dwyer (14:44.964)
Mm.

Rob Dwyer (15:03.417)
I can, it'd be on the abrupt chaos subreddit in a hurry.

Casey Denby (15:11.234)
But the example we use, which you and I kind of chatted about, is the pilot example. Pilots have done this the right way, like pilot training. I think because they were forced to, because FAA regulations, you don't want to kill a plane full of people. Also, those planes cost hundreds of millions of dollars to construct and operate. So they've created.

literal flight simulators where you are in the classroom, you learn a topic, and then you jump into the simulator. And for anybody who's seen the movie Sully about Sully Sullenberger, I think that's his name, the guy that landed in the Hudson, there's a whole thing about that. They actually proved via simulation technology that he was right. That was the only diversion path that would not have caused imminent death.

And it's wild because the simulation capabilities today are bar none better than they've ever been in the history of humankind. And I tell you what, that works. I don't know if you're a golfer, Rob. So there's this machine, it's called something like the golf track or something. They have this for baseball too. So a simulated robot can actually simulate like Shohei Otani's pitching delivery. Every pitch he has,

every speed at which he throws it, and as a batter you can step up like you're in a batting cage and hit against Shohei Otani in a game -simulated environment. It's wild, and it's accurate as accurate can be. Same thing with golf. There's this simulator that you can do like Rory's swing or Tiger's swing, and you can actually go and try and do that swing with the simulator. And here's the thing, is

Rob Dwyer (16:45.029)
while.

Casey Denby (17:04.288)
It works, right? Because you're applying what you're learning and then to your point, it just becomes muscle memory from then on.

Rob Dwyer (17:10.725)
Yeah. Yeah, it's fascinating. I'm excited that Shohei Otani may actually be pitching next year, but he may.

Casey Denby (17:19.982)
Next year he's back, but man, he's already got 50 homers or he's gonna be at 50 pretty soon. My goodness.

Rob Dwyer (17:23.941)
I think he's 48. I think he's gonna be 50 -50 this year, which is is fascinating just Yeah absolutely Speaking of inspiring athletes Do you want to talk about your your favorite fictional golfer happy

Casey Denby (17:31.264)
It's pretty wild what that guy is capable of doing.

Casey Denby (17:47.726)
My favorite fictional golfer, do you mean Happy Gilmore? Is that a reference? Hey, by the way, he's not fictional. He's a legit golfer. He's just not as good as he is in the movies, right? But excited to say Happy Gilmore 2 is coming out. But that's part of it too, is you have a character like Happy Gilmore. And the irony of this is he was passionate about.

Rob Dwyer (17:51.641)
I do.

Casey Denby (18:17.134)
hockey, right? And he wanted to make the hockey team just so bad. And he would go out for these junior tryouts and get his tail kicked every single time. But he was passionate about it and committed and he was there. And let's just be honest with these with ourselves. Naturally, we are not good at certain things. That's okay. Some people are blessed with beautiful voices. I'm not one of those.

Some people are blessed with a lot of energy. I am one of those. So how can I use energy to my benefit? How can you use great vocal talent to your benefit? How can you use maybe hockey or in, you know, maybe not so good hockey skills to your benefit, right? You have to be able to identify those things, which is critical. And that matters in the trade that you go in. So if I was to give the audience another dirty little secret, don't try and be great at something you're never gonna be great at.

Rob Dwyer (18:49.893)
Ha ha ha.

Rob Dwyer (19:14.658)
Mmm.

Casey Denby (19:15.336)
And by the time you get to adulthood, I think you'll recognize what those things are. Except for maybe half the people that try out for like America's Got Talent or American Idol, right? Like they show up, they think they're so amazing and you're just like, my gosh, do they realize how they sound? You know, like this is, whoa, this is really bad. But that's proving my point is that natural abilities are there for everyone. Everyone has natural strengths and

It's what you do with those. So getting back to our favorite, Happy. Happy realized at some point he was terrible at hockey and he wasn't about to give up, but then magically stumbled upon golf, started hitting golf balls, you know, 400 yards, which actually nowadays is a thing, right? If you're Bryson DeChambeau, you can hit the golf ball 400 yards with his swing, his strength, and his new tech, you know, the new technology of golf balls and clubs. I wouldn't recommend that for the...

Rob Dwyer (20:03.013)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Casey Denby (20:14.446)
the average golfer, but that's the truth is he could do that. Now, Happy was doing this when everybody else was hitting, let's just say 250, right? So he was crushing it and realized he could be good at it. Somebody had to convince him, guy named Chubbs, his coach, that he could actually play on the tour. And so Happy started to hone it in and he was terrible at first. Like he could hit the ball really, really, really far, but he couldn't chip, couldn't putt, he couldn't do about anything else. And through coaching,

you know, the mini golf scene, you all remember that, where he hits the clown's nose off and, you know, gets all frustrated, but he was practicing and finally was able to hone in on his abilities and win the gold jacket from Shooter McGavin. The point of the story is always the same. Every sports story I've ever witnessed in a documentary or a movie started off with somebody who had abilities and needed to master and or...

get to the next level in those abilities and ultimately win. Do you ever watch the rowing, the one about the Olympic team from the United States that was from the University of Washington? I can't remember the name of the movie, but it just came out last year. It's a really, really good and inspiring movie. You'll see that the JV team of the University of Washington actually gets chosen to compete in the Olympics over the varsity team.

Rob Dwyer (21:24.037)
I don't think I've seen that.

Casey Denby (21:37.642)
And they win a gold medal. I mean, it is unbelievable because they had natural talent and they worked together as a team, but they had to practice and practice and practice. It was the crew team, right? Practice, practice, practice, boom. And they ended up achieving ultimate greatness, being the best in the entire planet. And that is, again, case in point. If you were to take all of those rowers out of the boats and tell them, hey, you know, go play soccer.

and win a gold medal. It's not gonna happen. Right? Not everybody's Shohei Ohtani or Bo Jackson. I think that's my point.

Rob Dwyer (22:11.503)
Yeah.

Rob Dwyer (22:14.777)
Right. Well, and one of the things that you just brought up that I think we should dig into a little bit is it's not just about application and practice because those are critical, but it's about the feedback, the coaching that also comes with that because I can go out. I am not a golfer, right? If I go out and I start, I go to, now I can play some mean golden tee. Don't get me wrong.

Casey Denby (22:31.843)
Yes.

Rob Dwyer (22:44.505)
But if I go out and I just start practicing off the tee by myself, I can do that for eight hours a day and not improve very much. I'll improve a little bit just by figuring some things out for myself. But what I really need if I want to rise to a level where I can compete with a Casey.

Casey Denby (22:44.924)
yeah.

Casey Denby (23:03.992)
Mm

Rob Dwyer (23:11.501)
is I need a coach, right? I need feedback. I need someone to observe and tell me where it is I need to make changes and to help me understand what are the things that I'm doing right so that I'll continue to do them. And that piece, even in corporate America where we are providing space for practice, we're not always giving that coaching.

So let's think about contact centers. If you're in a training world, how many people are actually there to give feedback when we're practicing a mock call in the traditional way? If you're in my class, Casey, and we're practicing, I can only give feedback to one person at a time because I'm just one person, right?

Casey Denby (24:06.488)
You mean you can't scale yourself and replicate yourself to give feedback to people want?

Rob Dwyer (24:09.935)
Well, I've tried. There's some experiments that I've got going on on the side. I'm trying to replicate myself, but to date that hasn't happened. And so. Yeah, there's just me right?

Casey Denby (24:25.614)
Well, Rob, this, what you're describing was my gap. I knew that people needed to learn through application, but the application couldn't just be nesting. Nesting is not even practice. It's practice on people. Like these are customers. Why would you practice on your customer? You know you're not going to be great. Is that the experience you want to deliver to your customers? I think every business executive in the world would say no. But if you ask the business executive, what are you doing about

They say, well, training's really expensive and we have to get them out to the floor because otherwise it's a sunk cost and we're losing productivity. Well, you're also losing customers because your delivery of customer service is below average. Let's just say that. Now the movie name is The Boys in the Boat. Just wanted to share that with everybody. It's a wonderful movie. But getting back to contact centers, we had a global footprint. We had 5,000 global associates.

across 17 different countries and 35 to 50 different languages. How do you train that? Like seriously, how do you train that? You have different languages, you have different curriculum with different tiers of agents and no way to scale being at different locations. And this was even pre where video conferences were normalized for training.

Rob Dwyer (25:34.425)
Right.

Casey Denby (25:53.986)
We did some remote training, but for the most part, it's on -prem, right? It's in the site. So how do you get trainers to be consistent? They're human beings. Quality people can't even be consistent with how they evaluate, and they're following a quality procedure document. Everybody has bias, and everybody has a way of interpreting things. Same thing with trainers. So how do you deliver an excellent experience without practicing on your customers? And that's where Zenarate

Rob Dwyer (26:04.484)
Mm -hmm.

Casey Denby (26:23.854)
came into play for me is I didn't even know it existed. I happened to live 20 minutes from the co -founder and CEO of the company. And through a mutual connection, we became connected because I happened to be in a golf match that I wasn't ever supposed to even be at. Amazing how things turn out. But that guy worked directly with our CEO, Brian, for several years and knew what he was doing with software. This was before they even had three customers, right?

Rob Dwyer (26:25.348)
Yeah.

Casey Denby (26:52.128)
And so I came in and I was actually the fourth customer and I've recognized the value right away because this is what I was trying to do. I was trying to scale with technology at a low cost and create consistency that was effective and controlled, controlled in the sense that it was my content. knew what was being delivered and I knew how it was being delivered and the trainer could be some become more of a, you said it, a coach.

Rob Dwyer (27:08.57)
Yeah.

Rob Dwyer (27:20.185)
Mm -hmm.

Casey Denby (27:20.576)
instead of just somebody lecturing. Because everybody's getting the same simulated practice, talking to a figurative customer like Happy Gilmore, right? It's not an actual customer and that's the beauty of it, but it represents the scenario. Somebody's pissed because their Netflix isn't working or because their insurance claim is getting rejected or it's not going through.

I mean, there's so many different scenarios why people call in. In my instance, money wasn't hitting the bank account. It was getting stopped in compliance and people depended on this money for their livelihoods, for education, tuition, for housing, to pay their rent, to buy their food, to pay medical bills that you couldn't get a procedure. This was serious stuff. And it was my obligation and I took it very seriously.

It was my obligation to make sure that these people got the service they needed so that we could quickly get through these issues, which many of those were valid, but many were not. So how can you use training to create efficiency in the customer experience? And that's what we ended up doing. We were able to scale role play and training across this footprint that I mentioned. And since that point in time, the company has really exploded because we filled this gap.

Like a first mover like Amazon, people didn't know they needed two day delivery and then they got it and they're like, how did I live without this? And now they're doing same day or overnight in many locations. It's the same concept, Rob. It's like, we didn't know we needed it, but we kind of did. We just didn't know it existed and now it's possible. And now the AI train, my goodness. The, the Zenarate team early on jumped on this train, but the capabilities of the technology have now just, you know, boomed.

Rob Dwyer (28:49.753)
Yeah.

Rob Dwyer (29:10.168)
Mm -hmm.

Casey Denby (29:12.47)
And so now we're leveraging that technology and I get to share this with a bunch of great enterprises around the world. People who are in this very same need and you'd be shocked. I will not name names, but you will be shocked at the companies that you know, you recognize you may purchase from often who still use antiquated traditional training methodologies. It's wild.

Rob Dwyer (29:39.321)
You know, something that you just touched on a little bit, but is very much true is that just like every other person, right? Trainers are biased. Trainers are at different levels of skill. And so when we talk about also trying to bring people up,

to a particular performance level before they interact with real customers, there's some variation. Even if I am doing a good job of facilitating practice, human -to -human practice, I may let some people go because I think they'll probably be OK. I may judge them differently.

misjudge their performance or their readiness because that's just who we are. We look at things subjectively as people. And that is one of the, one of the flaws of being human is that we're subjective as well. And so I do think also when you are spreading across a global organization, right? You've got all kinds of different skill levels that you're bringing people into.

different levels of experience as well. And I don't think a lot of organizations want people to know, yeah, we've got so -and -so training our class. They've been with the organization for three months because we just promoted them because we had some turnover, right? That happens. That's a real thing.

Casey Denby (31:26.86)
It's more real than it's not real, right? You have to fill a need and you have to fill it fast. And if you have somebody who can jump into that with some sort of baseline skill, they're gonna do it. But same thing, if that person gets promoted, I think the biggest challenge, Rob, is actually early promotions. Not because they are merited, they very well deserve the promotion. But are they ready to step into that role without the skill set that's needed?

I always use this example. My dad worked as a software engineer for many years and ended up finishing his career at Boeing, leading groups that were building airplanes, especially in the defense space. Now, engineers are a great example of when not to take someone who's your top engineer and make them a manager of people. Most engineers just because of

who they are, personality -wise, are not going to be great people managers. Now, there are exceptions, don't get me wrong. But naturally, they're not. Because they're very, very analytical, detail -oriented, they like to get their hands on, they like to build stuff, and unlikely do they like to deal with people and emotions and difficult conversations and people who don't show up for work or deliver. Because they're people who deliver the actual goods.

Rob Dwyer (32:46.159)
You

Casey Denby (32:55.424)
I think of Elon Musk as being the unicorn. He's the Shohei Otani of brilliant engineering minds who can also lead people, build businesses, and create multi -billion dollar organizations. Wow. Like that's a unicorn. Most engineers are not built for that. So why then do we promote the top performer who has no skillset or maybe even a desire

to jump into that role. Well, because it pays better. That's why you take the job because it pays better. And ultimately it's not good for the organization. Same thing with contact center. If you're promoting somebody to coach, how do you know they have coaching abilities? If you promote somebody to trainer, QA, how do you know they have those capabilities? And that is a whole different conversation. We could get into that and talk, that's more HR, you know, we're not going to jump into that, but that's...

of the deficiencies of training and where it's missing the gap. And maybe they can be competent in those areas, but they need support. They need training. They need coaching. Some companies have gotten this right. They have development programs where they put people through these programs and they actually do the work. One of the groups of individuals that I would say in an organization that does this better than most, believe it or not, is an internal audit organization.

And the reason for this is because they're auditing many different parts of the business and they actually get their hands in and they do the work. They realize what's going on and they, they analyze it to a deep extent and they become experts in this area in a very short period of time because they're, they're in it. And then they move on to the next and they can get really proficient at many different groups. And I worked at the Comcast global audit organization for two years running their operations. And you see it firsthand. You become experts in certain areas, not.

Rob Dwyer (34:40.164)
Mm -hmm.

Casey Denby (34:55.434)
saying everybody should go be an auditor. You know, you have to have a personality for that too. But it's just one example of where they're doing it better. Because I don't mean to blanket say everybody's training stinks. That's not true. But in general, if you look at contact center training and the approach to contact center, it mostly does stink. It's not good. And nobody wants to be told that their training program stinks. It's true.

But you have to be a leader and recognize and get better. And that's where the best come from.

Rob Dwyer (35:31.395)
Yeah. You know, one of the other things that I think is important to recognize is scale impacts a lot of things. So when we talk about prepping new people and getting them ready for the role that they're moving into that next role as a trainer, as a coach, as a supervisor, whatever that is.

Larger organizations are better equipped to handle some of those things. But as you get into smaller organizations, what often happens is I need someone, and I need someone quickly. And so I don't have a lot of luxury. I don't have a lot of time that I've spent developing someone. I might need a training class in two weeks.

And I need someone to facilitate that. And my training staff has left, right, or is unavailable for whatever reason. And so there is a challenge for organizations that they face. And we don't talk about this enough, I don't think. It's like, you make do with what you have. But that absolutely impacts the preparedness

of the people that are being trained because they're probably dealing with someone that doesn't have a lot of experience in this role.

Casey Denby (37:05.514)
is absolutely true. If you really think about how can I apply learning in that instance, Rob, I think there's a couple of different ways where you could do it strategically without totally bombing. But it doesn't mean you're gonna be best of the best. You're gonna be adequate. You're gonna get through. So the technology piece, regardless of scale, is gonna benefit everyone.

So you create those and people can practice regardless if there's a human being or not. So creating that realistic scenario is what you need.

But what happens when, like you said, the rest of the mechanism is now kind of a little disheveled because you've lost the people who are the experts? Well, then you have to rely on shadowing, coaching in real time, tag team. What can you do that gets you to your objective quicker than just saying, good luck, Rob? That's not good for that person.

Rob Dwyer (38:14.863)
Right.

Casey Denby (38:15.384)
That's not good for the people being trained by that person. That's not good for the company. So there are ways you can do it as fill -ins, as stop gaps, but ultimately it comes down to getting people the application and the support that they need. Everybody started a new job, many times in their career probably. I can tell you the sentiment of people starting a new job in the first three days to maybe four weeks.

is one of high anxiety, high stress, fear, frustration, you name it, the list could go on. And it's for one simple reason.

They don't know what they don't know. That's really what it comes down to. When you start a new role, I don't care if you've been in a training role before, but if you started a new company, you have to learn things. You have to learn the culture. You have to learn the people. You have to learn the processes. You have to do all of this analysis before you can even think about going in and making an impact. Because if you do that prematurely, it could backfire, and it likely will backfire.

Rob Dwyer (39:01.338)
Mm.

Casey Denby (39:29.378)
because you don't understand the nuances of that business. But guess what? Something happens after you've been there three weeks, four weeks, five weeks, five months, you start to gain confidence. Because of one simple thing, you've achieved a certain level of competence in your role. And people are not confident until they're competent.

unless you have a really, really big ego and think you can do everything. I know several, but competence drives confidence, which ultimately results in good performance. So people need to understand that and you need to help people get to competence faster. And Rob competence is achieved by practical application. It's not achieved by reading. It's not achieved by watching.

Rob Dwyer (40:02.373)
Ha ha ha ha ha.

Rob Dwyer (40:11.396)
Yeah.

Casey Denby (40:27.246)
simply observing, those are beneficial, but have low propensity of success. Your retention rates in your brain actually go from five -ish to 10 % if it's a good audiovisual type engaging situation to 70 to 75 % simply by applying what you've learned.

Go back to the golf example. If you were to be told, Rob, keep your left arm straight when you're coming back with the golf club and then bring it through and now your left arm's not straight and actually becomes your right arm and you go through and you're like, yeah, theoretically that makes sense. But until you pick up a golf club, man, I've seen it so many times when people first pick up a golf club, my wife included, and they know what they've been told but they can't actually physically perform.

Rob Dwyer (41:21.411)
Mm -hmm.

Casey Denby (41:23.23)
And that is the critical piece, but guess what? Practice, repetition, practice, repetition, all of a sudden you gain a little bit of confidence because your competency is going up. That is one of the dirty little secrets of training. In a classroom for contact center, it's no more prevalent than today. If people don't get to competency fast because this generation of workers will just leave.

They will quit, they can go down the street and get another job, one that's easier, one that they can feel like they can do earlier on and be more successful at. So the obligation falls on you, falls on me, falls on the organization to deliver a great training program and development program for them to gain that competency. That's where it all starts. And you can't skip steps.

Rob Dwyer (41:53.177)
Yeah.

Rob Dwyer (42:17.741)
I want to dig into so good.

Casey Denby (42:18.028)
So that's, mean, that's just something that I would, yeah, it's just something that I would tell any organization, like I get in front of inherently people know this, like this is not rocket science, Rob. It's not, but why then are so many organizations trying to skip steps? Well, it's because of money. It's because of lack of buy -in from executives. It's from lack of planning and strategy.

Rob Dwyer (42:31.801)
Yeah. Yeah.

Casey Denby (42:45.582)
You name it, the line could go on forever. But when you've got organizations that are massive, massive organizations that are doing the same thing they've been doing for 40 years, you have a problem.

Rob Dwyer (42:56.877)
Mm -hmm.

Casey Denby (42:57.998)
And I know there's a shift in the market. It's changing today. But in my mind, it's 20 years too late. We should have been doing this even before the technology was prevalent, given people more practical applications so they could be successful at their jobs.

Rob Dwyer (43:05.06)
Yeah.

Rob Dwyer (43:13.577)
Mm -hmm. I want to dig into one other thing that I know because I've experienced this as something that happens when you don't have things really well structured and planned as to what we're going to practice. And that's the edge case.

So often, and this is maybe not exclusive to contact centers, but I feel like it happens a lot in contact centers because agents get to observe things in real time through things like nesting, right? I'm going to go out and I'm going to sit, whether that's physically or virtually with another agent and kind of observe their calls. What drives interest from

Casey Denby (43:55.021)
Okay.

Rob Dwyer (44:07.759)
brand new agents that don't have a ton of information. What drives interest is edge cases. You get really excited, really curious about edge cases, things that are very uncommon. And they're interesting because they're uncommon. But then when we come back and we spend time practicing, agents want to talk about that particular edge case. And you might get a classroom of

Let's say you've got 15 people that you're training and they've all observed different interactions. And then all they all want to talk about are these different edge cases that they've witnessed and they want to explore. And that can be a real detriment to your timeline for training and put focus in the wrong place. But it absolutely happens when you focus your

a big part of your training on observing those live interactions as opposed to practicing the 80 plus percent of interactions that people will experience on a day to day basis, the core stuff. And that's just like, if, I'm a golfer and I go out and I'm practicing before I'm any good, before I can even hit the green, I'm practicing these really, you know,

Potentially, I need to practice my wedge when I'm in the sand trap, but at this very specific spot where I'm really close to the lip, that's what I'm going to spend all my effort on instead of spending my time just practicing my putting. You want to be a good golfer, practice your putting in your tee shots. The other stuff, yeah, you need to work on it, but get the basics down and you'll be way better prepared.

to succeed than if you worry about all the potential things that could happen. But that's what we do as humans.

Casey Denby (46:12.782)
You just eloquently described Pareto's principle and why people get excited about going outside of the principle and going to the 20%. And that's a mistake, a common mistake that many people make and many organizations make. And I agree with you wholeheartedly. I was actually thinking in my mind as you brought up the golf example, the example I was thinking of was,

Well, what about the shot where you're behind the tree? What do you do? Right? How often are you behind the trunk of the tree? I mean, maybe if you're a crappy golfer, maybe a lot, but that's typically not the 80 % of where you're going to be. And you need to practice something that's realistic. see, I see shots where people have to put their feet in the water because they're on the edge of the pond and they're, they're in bounds. And it's like, guys, that's not.

Rob Dwyer (46:51.939)
Wait.

Rob Dwyer (46:55.97)
Mm -hmm.

Rob Dwyer (47:04.545)
out.

Casey Denby (47:09.688)
the norm to your point, most of the money's made on the putting green, right? So practice that, and that's a perfect example. But in a context center world, you are going to have edge cases. They are going to happen, and they probably will happen maybe a little more often than you being on the edge of the water. Now, what do you do in those situations? Well, you train skills, not scenarios.

Rob Dwyer (47:39.159)
Mm -hmm.

Casey Denby (47:40.43)
So what do I mean by that? Okay, if I'm training you how to putt, Rob, there are principles of putting that apply whether you're at a three feet or 30 feet or 20 feet off the green and you're trying to putt up. Those principles apply. Now maybe they're not perfectly applied to every single one of those putts, but you know enough, you're competent enough that you can get through that scenario, that situation. Same concept.

Why would I train you on a scenario where somebody is incredibly frustrated and there's a thousand different frustrated scenarios and frustrated personas when I can just teach you how to deescalate, how to negotiate, how to probe, and how to empathize? If I teach you those four things, those are skills.

Rob Dwyer (48:26.671)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Casey Denby (48:36.408)
that I can teach in a finite, focused way, and that used to be a phenomenon, micro -learning, now it's everywhere, but most people don't understand what micro -learning is. Well, it's a targeted, singular focus, something you can train somebody in a very short period of time. So let's focus on your three -foot putting. That's a micro -based, focused content. Let's focus on empathy. How do you empathize? Well, I can't teach you a thousand different scenarios or edge cases.

on how you empathize. What about the top 80 % though?

That's probably realistic. It is. Because what happens is there might be a top 10 call driver that's driving 80 % of your inbounds. So you can train on the top 10. It doesn't mean you forget about the other 20%. But if your skill -based training is focused and targeted on the skills that apply, they apply on almost every call.

Rob Dwyer (49:13.188)
Hmm.

Casey Denby (49:38.774)
And that's what matters. You're equipped to be able to handle the scenario. You might not know every single little detail about that particular scenario, but you know enough. You know enough and you can figure out how to get through. Just like, let's go back to Spanish. When I was learning, I didn't know every word. I didn't know every conjugation, but I knew enough where I could pick things out and understand the context of what was happening.

Rob Dwyer (49:48.813)
Mm -hmm.

Rob Dwyer (50:07.603)
Mm -hmm.

Casey Denby (50:07.894)
And I was able to respond in kind. Never perfectly at that point in time. But over time, my proficiency levels just skyrocketed. And before long, I knew all the words, maybe not a few that were never used. Yeah, yeah, I mean, naturally, right? My son knows the bad ones. He's in high school now. But the point is, you are getting to a level of competency that can get you through that scenario.

Rob Dwyer (50:21.817)
bad ones. You knew all the bad ones. Let's be real.

Casey Denby (50:36.556)
And then it just gets better and better from there. So that's what I would say about edge cases. Don't go after the shiny edge case. Don't do it. You will waste your time and your effort and everybody will be frustrated by it. Training content designers are going to go mad. They're like, Rob, you want me to come up with all the edge cases? Come on. And exactly all they need is skill -based learning. So if I learn how to dribble, I'm just going to keep doing sports, man.

Rob Dwyer (50:56.793)
Right, do not do that.

Casey Denby (51:05.854)
If I learn how to dribble, and dribbling is dribbling, I can figure out the other things. When a defender comes up, how do I dribble around or avoid the ball being stolen? How do I dribble on the baseline versus down the middle of the court? I mean, this is just common understanding, but the core skill is dribbling. And I'm gonna figure out how to do that, and I'm gonna flex that muscle, flex it, flex it, flex it until I'm really, really good at it. And guess what? During the edge cases, you're gonna figure it out.

Rob Dwyer (51:35.213)
Yeah, absolutely. Well, look, if you want to talk with Casey about your crazy edge cases, or maybe just about improving learning in your organization and how you can go about doing that, you know what to do. Go down to the show notes. Find the link to his link and see Zenarate as well.

Casey Denby, thank you so much for joining me on Next In Queue today. It's been great.

Casey Denby (52:06.498)
I've had a blast and this is something that I think anybody can inherently relate to. You and I did not practice this at all. We didn't even, it would have been way better. But you and I didn't come prepared necessarily with a dialogue. You had a few questions, I didn't even know what they were. The point of this though is I've become proficient in training.

Rob Dwyer (52:19.129)
No, if we had it would have been way better.

Casey Denby (52:35.286)
and learning and I understand it because I've put all these years into it. And so when it comes to performance time, this is an edge case, Rob. You know what I mean? Like this is an edge case. I didn't know what was coming, but I could manage it. And that thought just came to mind because of the concepts we're talking about today. So I just want to give people, listen, it's not all doom and gloom. Like there's a ton of excitement. There's a ton of opportunity for people to really thrive.

Rob Dwyer (52:38.873)
Mm -hmm.

Rob Dwyer (52:44.249)
Yeah, absolutely.

Casey Denby (53:03.49)
but focus on what matters and everything else will kind of follow suit. So thanks, Rob. It's been an absolute blast. Appreciate you taking the time to talk.

Rob Dwyer (53:10.777)
What a great tieback that Casey just did. for all my training professionals listening, that's how you do a tieback. Great job, Casey.