Eternal Inflation is the idea that baby universes are being created all the time. It’s actually a dominant theory in cosmology today, not just an idea invented in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. When Tom Holland’s Peter Parker (aka Spider-Man) starts babbling on about the multiverse in 2019’s Spider-Man: Far From Home, he’s actually babbling about current quantum mechanics and string theory. What it suggests is that, yes, parallel universes exist.
For those that have been involved in both, IT Support and Customer Support can feel like parallel universes. The tools are similar and they both work toward resolving customer issues, but Matt Beran points out that despite these similarities, there are some striking differences between these two universes. Whether there’s a universe where Peter Parker is working IT Support is still up for debate.
We discuss:
- Why Matt has been dubbed “The Negotiator”
- Differences between IT Support and Customer Support
- The impact of Cloud Adoption on IT Management
- Current Information Security Challenges
- How Quantum Computing may impact Security
- An Unexpected Detour into the World of Composting
Connect with Matt on LinkedIn
Music courtesy of Big Red Horse
Transcript
Rob Dwyer (00:02.702)
Back for another episode of Next In Queue. Today I have Matt Barron, AKA The Negotiator Next In Queue. Welcome,
Matt Beran - InvGate (00:13.496)
Thanks for having me on, Rob. Good to see
Rob Dwyer (00:16.25)
It's good to see you as well. I feel like I should clarify for the guests that you and I are both in something called 2020 ish. Put out by some friends of ours, who Jameson and Michael Mattson and your superhero nickname is the negotiator per them. How excited were you to get that nickname?
Matt Beran - InvGate (00:45.848)
You know, it is a that is a pretty bad ass nickname. Actually, I don't actually think of myself as a negotiator. But when I listed my superpower as being able to get groups of people to agree, then I realized I now I know why they called me that. I just never really I never thought of it as a negotiation as much as like. I don't know, listening and alignment, I guess.
Rob Dwyer (01:12.536)
Now you've got a new word for it. It's yeah, you can just you can just shrink things down. Matt, you are a fellow geek and that's mostly the reason that I invited you on the show. If I'm being honest, you work for Engate. Tell us first a little bit about you and then a little bit about what it is that you
Matt Beran - InvGate (01:18.082)
Yep, negotiated.
Matt Beran - InvGate (01:40.27)
Cool. Yeah. So I got into the service and support industry as my first career out of college, did customer service for a great clips corporate. So if you've ever had your hair cut somewhere, I probably know the franchisee or did know at one point. And, you know, from there, I kind of fell in love with all of the back office.
Even just the support and service function. I fell in love with it and quickly migrated over to an IT shop that needed service desk agents and they were growing out their service desk team and I fell in love with it more because there was even more complexity and more nerdiness to get my hands dirty. And there was still, of course, the usual call volume and personal person to person
you know, the power skills, the soft skills that you have to leverage. And that was so much fun. And after those two jobs, I realized I wanted to be in this industry forever. Took a consulting gig, did ServiceNow implementations for 11 years, and then realized that ServiceNow is the new Oracle. And I don't really like working for Oracle or SAP or, you know, huge organizations. I feel like sometimes they're too big. They must fail in many ways.
And then shortly after my many stints doing ServiceNow implementations joined Invigate and Invigate is of course a competitor to ServiceNow, one of the smaller dogs in the market, but really making huge growth strides with some massive financial backing that we got last year. So it's been an exciting ride. We're growing quite a bit. So it's as you know, there's a lot of chaos when you're growing.
Rob Dwyer (03:35.)
Yeah, absolutely. Well, you're giving English majors hope for a job all across the country, I'm sure.
Matt Beran - InvGate (03:43.926)
Nice. I love that you dig a little bit into the history and just kind of pull that out.
Rob Dwyer (03:49.534)
I mean, I gotta have a little bit of fun. It is always interesting to me to see kind of what people studied, what they thought they were going to do, and then where we end up. And I think it's good advice for everyone who maybe is ending their high school career going, I don't know what I want to do. Like, it's okay. None of us knew what we wanted to do. And most of us ended
Matt Beran - InvGate (04:17.464)
Bingo.
Rob Dwyer (04:20.204)
And even if we did study this one thing, it doesn't mean that that's where you're going to end up long
So we are going to talk today about the differences between IT support and customer support. And I think a lot of people don't necessarily realize that there's a difference if they've never worked in an organization where there's an IT support desk. Maybe they don't have a lot of experience in that realm. But certainly, I think most of us understand
customer support or customer service, whether that's in person or on the phone. But these are not wildly different worlds, but they are different worlds. It's like a parallel universe. So let's just start with what's different in the parallel universe that is IT support desk.
Matt Beran - InvGate (05:24.558)
That's a place to start. And I think if this doesn't resonate with you, leave a comment. We want to continue this discussion because this is such a fascinating problem or a juxtaposition, if you will, that in customer service and customer support, your intention is to retain that customer's revenue. You're going to get money from them. They're going to continue. It's like a partnership.
And in the IT space, it's more like they have to use the service desk. They have no other option. You know, you can't shop the market for IT support. Sure. You can ask your uncle, your cousins, your nephews, your nieces, you can ask them for tech support for your company, but you're kind of stuck using the IT service that your company uses because there's so much custom work there. There's so much, you know, whether it's
Rob Dwyer (06:02.048)
Thank you.
Matt Beran - InvGate (06:22.828)
security related around your device and just protecting that endpoint or security related in the applications. What you see in an application in an enterprise might be different than a public version of that application. And then yeah, can't just go and if they don't like the service, they can't just go somewhere else. They have to go through you. So it's a very interesting juxtaposition between the two.
Rob Dwyer (06:48.824)
Yeah, absolutely. So how does that then impact kind of the culture of the service desk, the culture of the leadership around that? Like, how is that different?
Matt Beran - InvGate (07:04.362)
I love this question because in the customer support in the external facing support functions, we have this concept of CX customer experience. And a lot of times in the CX space, it's hard to raise funds. It's hard to get executives to believe in customer experience and get an invest in it. How do we, you know, research these people understand what's problem, what their problems are and then solve their problems. But on the IT side,
It's not necessarily that we're worried about the customer experience because they're going to attrition. IT's customers are employees. And this is why I think experience management as a discipline is such a fascinating concept because in the context of how you're interacting with an organization is going to determine what kind of experience you're measuring. there's, we say this all the time in IT that employee experience drives
customer experience. So if your employees are unhappy with your technology, unhappy with your systems, then when they're providing support and service and products to your customers, they will also be frustrated doing it within those systems. So that's kind of like one of the things that we try to communicate is that employee experience actually matters.
And then we have the advantage of being able to do a lot more in that space. And you would think that I .T. isn't actually that interested in experience management because we're a cost center. The more the less you spend on I .T., the more revenue you actually get to realize. But our customers are prisoners in way. I don't mean that to sound so negative.
But we not only have access to their version of our application, we have access to their computer. We have access to their email. We have access to chat. We can actually, like in many organizations, especially some of the larger ones, it's very common for HR and IT to have a system to literally watch employees use their computers or measure activity or...
Matt Beran - InvGate (09:27.682)
you know, see how this computer is performing. And so we have a lot more insight into the total employee experience that we can leverage and gain, gain insight from and really optimize for. But the question is, do we actually want to do it? Do we want to spend money on doing it, especially, especially on employee experience? Because again, it is seen as a cost center.
It's taking money away from us. So why would we invest more? But I think if, if you're in the CX space, you understand that if we did invest more in that space, then the employees will be happier and the customers will be happier. Revenue, share price, everything goes up from there. Hopefully.
Rob Dwyer (10:13.272)
Yeah, there are two things that these aren't recent, but relatively that I'm curious to get your take on how they have impacted the way service desks operate. The first is cloud adoption. So let's talk about that. How has the adoption of cloud and keep in mind for the audience, like not everyone is
got everything on cloud. are tons of companies, especially large enterprise companies that are still using all kinds of legacy on -prem systems. But cloud adoption continues to increase. What has that, if at all, impacted with the way that we manage IT as service desk professionals or IT management professionals?
Matt Beran - InvGate (11:09.038)
We have this concept that we created, I don't know, about 15, 20 years ago called shadow IT. And the concept kind of came from the way that Salesforce went to market. it was really Salesforce was making sales reps really successful. so sales reps would talk and they heard from each other, oh, this is what's making me successful. And they would come, they would actually go and buy Salesforce. And back then it was a hundred dollars per month per user.
And so that you had all these sales reps that were buying Salesforce, putting customer information into Salesforce and then really being successful with it. And that is kind of how Salesforce made its way into so many organizations. Because of course we want revenue to go up. And of course, if sales reps are finding tools that make that happen, let's get those tools on board, right? It's an obvious spend. But the concept of shadow IT is pervasive. And that is.
One of the largest problems that we will always have an IT You know from the website you visit that you're not supposed to go to To the to an application that you're installing that you're not supposed to install To the AI tools that you're using that you're not supposed to be using The shadow IT realm is where IT really lives because what we I think what
inherently understand is that whenever there is shadow IT, there is pent up demand. There's demand for something, you know, whether it's whether it is AI and you kind of see this in organizations now where a lot of organizations for the AI change that's happening are having regular meetings, what tools are you using? What tools are you using? And the really good organizations are not only brainstorming what they're using,
but they're also developing a committee around safety and security of those tools. And so that's kind of what IT is always trying to do is try to meet those demands, but also the constraints. So IT is kind of in between, know, cybersecurity, regulation, SOCs compliance, like all of these compliance factors, and then the demands of the employees.
Matt Beran - InvGate (13:34.742)
And we have no option to raise our prices. We have no option to address a bigger part of a market. know, our total addressable market is our employees. That's it. And so because we can't raise our prices, we're stuck with this limited budget. And but we still want to provide a great experience and comply with with compliance needs. So, if I'm in IT and I see this pent up demand or no, if I'm in IT and I see all these new technologies being put into our ecosystem, into our infrastructure, I want to basically have a list of those things because that's what helps me stay compliant. It helps me understand what I'm spending. It helps me manage those things.
Rob Dwyer (14:38.403)
Yeah.
Matt Beran - InvGate (15:02.876)
And for cloud adoption, I think that was one of the first times that IT really got a slap in the face. Like there is software that is being used out in the cloud and you don't even know that your employees are using it. And so as such, a lot of the asset management tools in our space, in the service management space, have started to watch that. know, pairing with a web platform to understand what websites people are going to.
Rob Dwyer (15:17.134)
Thank
Matt Beran - InvGate (15:30.818)
and then understanding that those SaaS applications need to be managed in a new way. Because before all we had to do was look at a computer and see what apps are installed and those are the applications you're using. Now we need to see every website you go to and then we need to know if it's a SaaS tool or not. And then we kind of determine to a repo, we should manage this thing, make sure we know who has access to it, make sure there's not like four instances of it where marketing has one and sales has another and just kind of put
governance around this thing so that we comply, we don't waste money, and we get what we want out of
Rob Dwyer (16:12.61)
Yeah, there's a lot going on there. And you really touched on really the next aspect of that. And that is both the security aspect and coupled with the rise of AI in ways that I think if we looked back a year ago, probably none of us would have predicted how quickly things
would morph.
What are you seeing in the industry today to guard? Because that I feel like is also one of the differences, right? I mean, yes, frontline customer service agents are, they take training every year about security and privacy and all of these things, right? And they are an integral cog.
in making sure that customer information stays safe. really, IT is like if somebody is going to fall on the sword, it's IT. like how has how has that group changed or have they changed when it comes to security and managing privacy? Because we see it all the time, right? I just saw AT &T had another breach.
and they're in the news again and it's not the first time and I'm a T -Mobile customer. I've been breached multiple times. It just feels like it's a never ending onslaught. What's going on with the poor IT folks who are in charge of protecting us?
Matt Beran - InvGate (17:57.976)
Yeah, it's an unenviable job, really. It totally is. There's this concept of DevSecOps, which stands for Development, Security, and Operations. There's this idea of a SOC, Security Operations Center. And kind of depending on your organization, you may have an entire department focused on information security.
Specifically, if you're in finance, you probably have information security, and they're probably on every agile team and every project across your entire organization. And they are the ones that are making sure that we're not only using data well on a regular basis, but then also that we're making big project decisions with that security in mind. And I think that's kind of
Just the tip of the iceberg. You know, you said it, you said agents take this training, you know, every year, there's usually a cybersecurity touch up, like every year, you've got to touch touch something, go through a training, say you agree to something, some sort of element. And I believe that that is going to become more and more important as as as we move on, especially in this AI space.
Rob Dwyer (18:56.133)
Hehehehehe
Matt Beran - InvGate (19:21.046)
I, what I really don't want to happen, and I fear will happen, is that organizations will start disabling the clipboard. You know, making it so you can't copy and paste, or installing an application to watch the clipboard. What are people copying? What are they pasting? I think in some organizations it's already gotten to that level.
Rob Dwyer (19:35.364)
Thank you.
Matt Beran - InvGate (19:48.136)
I just hope that it doesn't get like widely distributed because it's such a it's such a productivity drain and I think that's really what we're asking here. What is the balance of productivity, employee productivity and security risk that we are willing to take? And that is where you find your culture. That's where you find
you know, what kind of organization you're a part of. That's where you see what the leaders are saying and how it's going to be implemented into your systems. Because some companies, especially startups, Twitter, Facebook and the like, they will move faster and break things. And as a result, your data is a little bit more at risk. And we've seen that through their problems that they've had through the years. And so I think people just
Rob Dwyer (20:38.451)
You
Matt Beran - InvGate (20:41.602)
Yeah, every organization just needs to find what works for them. And I do think that regular trainings, the regular trainings will continue because it can't go away. People are the only thing that can help you comply with these regulations because otherwise they'll just find a way around it. Nothing is stopping me from going into the CRM and writing down Rob Dwyer.
Rob Dwyer (20:41.86)
What risk? What are you talking about?
Matt Beran - InvGate (21:09.048)
Here's his address, here's his phone number, his email address, and then typing it into another system. So security is a mindset, not necessarily a technical implementation.
Rob Dwyer (21:23.482)
Hmm, very interesting. You know, I remember when I first got started in the contact center world, there was this this shift in going paperless, right? It was everybody was trying to go paperless because of these exact same reasons that that you're talking about, right? The danger is I can write down customer information on a piece of paper
Matt Beran - InvGate (21:36.11)
Mm -hmm.
Rob Dwyer (21:52.568)
notebook or what have you and then I can take it somewhere. the reality is that I can do that with a clipboard and even more so more and more employees who have access to sensitive data and work from home. So the way that we look at security has to evolve with
I want to ask a little bit about some of the ways that we go about securing information and just in general, like, are they effective or do they just make us feel good at night? So let's talk about passwords. Passwords. 12 characters.
At least one uppercase one lowercase a number and a special character what what's your initial reaction?
Matt Beran - InvGate (22:50.212)
Passwords is such a good one. I love passwords. It's such a good topic and one that continues to change. know, how many times do you get a text every day with a code now with a six number or five number code? That's a lot. A lot of times. passwords is a great one because it's one of the original tropes from IT. Everyone forgets their passwords all the time, you know, and when they reset their password, you
Rob Dwyer (23:05.923)
Mm -hmm.
Matt Beran - InvGate (23:19.062)
Your last password was your first parakeet. The second password is your second parakeet. The third par... password is going to be your third parakeet from high school. you know, it's going to be your dog. Max is your dog. you got a new dog. His name is Larry. That's your next password. Great. And so passwords, they do work. This is why multi -factor authentication exists is because passwords don't work. Humans, humans refuse to let passwords work because we're fallible.
Rob Dwyer (23:35.374)
You
Matt Beran - InvGate (23:48.696)
We can't remember the strings. We can't remember our security questions and answers. And really the only way to truly be secure is if you don't know the password. Right? If you can remember the password, then that's a problem. And those security questions, those shouldn't be real answers either because I can find most of it on Facebook or through digital media, or maybe you accidentally shared that
Rob Dwyer (23:52.406)
Thanks.
Rob Dwyer (24:04.91)
Mmm.
Matt Beran - InvGate (24:18.784)
used to live in Redwood Falls or whatever. And so the best security is biological and then also multi factor. So yes, type in a password, the password is only so secure. then past that, know, do a dual authentication to a phone, dual authentication to another service, dual authentication to another something that is good enough.
The problem comes when quantum computing becomes reality. When quantum computing becomes reality, the hashes that encrypt our data today are not secure enough to protect us from quantum data. So quantum encryption is kind of like one of the next things in technology. If you're into crazy nerdy stuff, I highly recommend you check it out. But quantum computing is a...
It's a mind game. You really need to get your head wrapped around it a few times before you realize you don't understand it. And so I think that when we get to that point, they have this concept called Q Day. When quantum computing is created and nothing is secure anymore, hopefully we're already ahead of it with quantum encryption. But if we aren't, how are we going to protect our data? And I think it's such a fascinating question.
and one that AI is kind of helping us solve. It could be through obfuscation. know, instead of, you know, if I hack into your CRM system, instead of it being just your customers, it's actually your customers plus 8 billion other entries. And you have no idea which one actually is your customer, except for if you know this very specific detail about how the information is structured. And so there's all these concepts that have been theoretical.
for decades and data nerds have loved thinking about them. The idea that data someday dies. IBM has some crazy patents about files that eventually disintegrate. They eventually don't have the information that you expected to have. And I think that's such a fascinating thing that we're gonna be able to leverage some of these crazy concepts that exist to sort
Matt Beran - InvGate (26:40.714)
innovate the way that we think about security and information security. How's that for an answer, Rob?
Rob Dwyer (26:47.266)
I did not anticipate us getting into quantum computing on the show today. And I'm pretty sure it's the first time it's, it's come up. Speaking of things dying, what tips for composting do you have for me?
Matt Beran - InvGate (27:03.616)
my gosh, Rob. Okay, I love how deep you're going on this. This is fantastic. And this is the danger of sharing personal stuff on LinkedIn too, by the way.
Rob Dwyer (27:16.302)
Let's talk composting.
Matt Beran - InvGate (27:16.74)
My tip for composting, if you actually are a composter, like you save your food scraps to turn it into compost. My trick for composting is to freeze everything. Everything that you're going to compost, you freeze it first because then the cells all expand and then they explode. And so the structure of the food breaks down really fast. It's kind of like you're pre chewing the food for the bacteria, the worms and whatever else is going to generate your your compost.
Rob Dwyer (27:48.504)
That is a fabulous tip, and I know you did not see that one coming.
You compost indoors. Is this true? OK, so. For those that don't know, you live in the frozen tundra of Minnesota up in the cities. So tell us why you choose to compost indoors, because there is a very good reason for this.
Matt Beran - InvGate (27:57.954)
Yes, it is true.
Matt Beran - InvGate (28:15.428)
Yeah, since we have winter for nine to 10 months out of the year and most composters are outside, I needed a way to compost year round so I could make compost, really just remove waste from my life. so I looked up this concept called vermiculture, which I had never heard of. it's really worms are eating your food scraps and you put them in this multi -layer farm.
And what happens is as you're putting food in this farm, you start by the bottom layer, you put the food in, you put the worms in, and then they eat it and they make the compost. Then you put a new tray on top and you put your food in and the worms will crawl up into the food and then begin eating that new food. And through some light, you take that bottom tray and put that on top, throw some light on it, scares all the worms back down into the first layer where your food is.
and then you can take your compost and throw it out. It's a very fascinating process, very geeky. And I do have an outdoor composter too that's a massive thing. And I think we're actually gonna switch to just composting outside because it does actually work kind of in the winter from Minnesota. And the compost we got is so big that I think we might be able to fit all of our winter food scraps in there and not worry about it.
Rob Dwyer (29:43.734)
If not, you just need to buy a bigger freezer.
Matt Beran - InvGate (29:45.39)
Truth. Yeah. And you can store it. You can just, well, and that's the beauty of Minnesota winters. You do not need a bigger freezer in the winter. And so I'm not sticking them in the freezer in the winter. It just goes outside. And I think that's where it's gonna stay.
Rob Dwyer (29:53.914)
I don't need a freezer.
Rob Dwyer (30:01.858)
Yeah, OK, OK, well that's good. Maybe you and I will talk in more depth about composting in the future. I need to I need to set up a compost pile, but I don't think that anyone. Hopped into this show thinking, yeah, I'm going to get some composting tips. But I am curious aside from composting and quantum computing
Matt Beran - InvGate (30:10.083)
Yes.
Rob Dwyer (30:31.022)
What do you really geek
Matt Beran - InvGate (30:31.994)
my gosh, I love it. I would say the thing that I spend the most time geeking out on is the tech space. can't, like there's not a thing that comes across that I don't want to learn or be able to do. I don't like the idea that I talk about IT and I'm not well informed or the concept that I might lose touch. I'm always kind of afraid of that as I grow older.
the vulnerabilities coming out in this podcast people. But it kind of in line with the composting gardening. love gardening. My goal, my personal goal is to be fully self sufficient by the time that I retire so that I don't have to buy a lot of extra food. I don't have to.
you know, replace my clothes a lot. I'd like to reduce my costs and my impact on the earth as I grow as a human. And really, for me, it's an excuse to learn and understand the systems of the waste and the problems that I'm creating as a human consumer, not necessarily to judge it because that is paralyzing and no one can be perfect at being sustainable. But
not taking a plastic bag at the grocery store has a huge impact. can't like that little little change in your life can have a massive impact on the trash that's blowing around in our earth. And so that's kind of what I geek out on the most is probably sustainability after it. And then after that, it's dogs. I love dogs. I've got two of them and I spend so much time training them
spent loving them, you
Rob Dwyer (32:29.208)
Yeah, yeah. OK, so let's go back to the gardening for just a moment. What is your favorite thing that you've grown in your
Matt Beran - InvGate (32:40.628)
I have to say tomatoes. Tomatoes, if you don't, I didn't like tomatoes my whole life. And I realized why when I got older and started growing my own that the ones in the grocery stores tastes like garbage. They are absolutely terrible. You might as well eat a potato. They have basically the same flavor profile. And the tomatoes that you grow in your garden are so good that you can eat them alone. A tomato can be a meal.
And if you haven't had a BLT with a fresh garden grown tomato, you are not living. It is. Key to your human experience to have a BLT or if you're not a bacon person, you know, you're vegetarian, you know, do do something else. Gwak guac, lettuce and tomato, I don't know exactly, but that's huge. And then I also really like spicy food. I am a huge spice lover.
And so we grow quite a few different peppers. I think we have three different kinds this year. And if you like spicy food, DM me. I will bring you a jalapeno that will kill you. is amazing.
Rob Dwyer (33:55.418)
don't want to die, but I do love a good jalapeno. Spicy food is definitely up my alley.
Matt Beran - InvGate (33:57.389)
Mm.
Rob Dwyer (34:05.802)
I am so hungry now. Thank you. We're recording this around lunchtime. And now
thought of food in my head and I appreciate it. So thank you. I am no longer scared about quantum computing. I just want to eat. So Matt, thanks for being on Next. Thank you. This was awesome.
Matt Beran - InvGate (34:19.05)
Yeah, I'll get you hungry.
Matt Beran - InvGate (34:31.074)
My pleasure. was so glad. I'm you know, I waited a long time in the queue, but here I
Rob Dwyer (34:39.97)
It can be rather long sometimes, but you know what they say, you save the best for season three. Is that what they say? Something like that.
Matt Beran - InvGate (34:47.3)
Nice they do say that don't they?
I love it. Well, I'll to get you in my queue, Rob. We'll get you on ticket volume.
Rob Dwyer (34:59.094)
That's right. So for those that don't know, and they should, we should make sure they know you're the host of a podcast called Ticket Volume. You've done lots of podcasts. This is not your first rodeo. But if you are in the IT space or you want to learn more about the IT space, you're probably not going to get that kind of content from me on the regular, but you can get it from Ticket Volume.
on the regular. It's a weekly show, right?
Matt Beran - InvGate (35:30.207)
It was weekly.
Rob Dwyer (35:35.991)
Okay,
Rob Dwyer (35:51.83)
Yeah, well, you just need more fiber in your diet. You'll... Then you'll be more regular. Matt Maron, thanks for being next in queue.