That’s Not My Name featuring Afshan Kinder

Transcript

Rob Dwyer (00:03.658)
Hey, welcome back to another episode of Next in Queue. My name is Rob Dwyer as always. And today I've got a guest who wants to have a little bit of a conversation. Actually, I want to have a conversation about names with Afshan Kinder. Welcome to the show. How are you?

Afshan Kinder (00:07.022)
you

Afshan Kinder (00:21.004)
Thank you so much, Rob. I'm doing really great. It's a beautiful Friday morning and looking forward to the weekend.

Rob Dwyer (00:28.198)
Absolutely. So just before we started recording, you and I were talking about name pronunciation. One of the things that I do with almost all of my guests, because I messed it up one time as I asked guests how to pronounce their name, but I usually give it a go first because I feel like I'm usually pretty good at this. But it's interesting because you're Canadian, you're in Toronto, you have a name that for

Afshan Kinder (00:46.52)
Yes.

Rob Dwyer (00:58.314)
Those of us in the Western Hemisphere may seem a little bit unique if we haven't seen it before. So tell us a little bit about your name and maybe some of the struggles that you've had with it over the years and where you've landed today.

Afshan Kinder (01:09.666)
Yeah.

For sure. So I grew up in Toronto. I've been here since I was three years old, so I had all my education here. And in my generation, I grew up with a lot of people who there was not a lot of diversity. And so I kind of stood out. And interestingly enough, I never really saw myself as anyone that was different. I see that younger generation saying, I need to be labeled. I need to have something unique.

And I maybe was a bit of a happy-go-lucky kid and it's like, I'm just here. I'm happy to be here. And high five and I'm glad I'm here. But people would always mispronounce my name. And in order to assimilate, I remember I finally got so fed up because if I tell you all the different names I got called, then people will start calling me those names. So I'm not going to say who they are. Yeah, exactly.

Rob Dwyer (02:04.926)
Let's not do that. Let's not do that.

Afshan Kinder (02:09.774)
And funny enough, there's a generation of people that I meet that are my aunts' and uncles' generation, so they're older than me, who are, like my husband is English-Canadian, English background, Canadian, and they mix my name around, so instead of Afshan is Ash Fan. And they can't get, I don't know how to pronounce it, it's only two syllables, so he gets very upset, because he doesn't understand how you can mispronounce two.

Rob Dwyer (02:31.958)
you

Afshan Kinder (02:38.946)
two syllables so differently. So anyways, when I was a little kid, I remember saying to all my friends, just call me Kathy. Just call me Kathy. So I remember someone called my house and asked for Kathy. My dad said, "We don't have a Kathy here." and he hung up. that. So that was the end of that name. no, it's, you know, I get called Affy, Aff, my family, you know, everyone.

Rob Dwyer (02:47.478)
Mmm.

Rob Dwyer (02:59.264)
No.

Afshan Kinder (03:07.81)
pretty well, I'm bit called A, you know, like it's gonna get shortened. I'm okay, you know, as long as, you know, I get treated with respect, it's all good.

Rob Dwyer (03:20.182)
It is fascinating to me, and I have a little bit of experience with some of my family about this, about generationally, particularly as it comes to immigrants, there was at one time this really, this huge desire to just fit in, assimilate, and kind of leave the culture behind, sometimes including language, right?

You learn English because you're American now, or you learn English because you're Canadian now. And I do think there is still a battle with families and kind of how they view that for their own family and how they think about that. But I definitely see some change in younger generations that still want to embrace and hold on to some of those things that do.

make them unique and are part of their identity from wherever they came from culturally or geographically, those kinds of things. It's just a very interesting sea change.

Afshan Kinder (04:31.212)
Yeah, you I would totally agree with you. Like when my parents came to Canada, there weren't a lot of other ethnic groups and they did assimilate. They were a minority. so what's interesting in our home, we only spoke English. So I can't speak my mother tongue. I can understand it, we never spoke it at home. So my English would get better. They just wanted my English to get better. And both my parents are well-educated.

Rob Dwyer (04:54.816)
Mm-hmm.

Afshan Kinder (05:00.386)
My mom had a PhD in microbiology and my dad had an MA in engineering. So when they came, both of them worked and I was a latchkey kid and all of that. And I seven or eight years and I would walk from school home by myself and we lived in an apartment and I let myself in. And then as life went on, where my family had some traditional

kind of values and beliefs is around marriage. So I wasn't allowed to date at all. And then, and I had an arranged marriage, which I didn't want to have. And so I just picked up my toothbrush and I left at the age of 19. Yeah. And I moved into university residence, which I wasn't even allowed to do. I wasn't allowed to leave my home, but I did anyways. And I have not been back.

Rob Dwyer (05:36.406)
Mmm.

Rob Dwyer (05:46.123)
Wow.

Rob Dwyer (05:57.458)
You've been trailblazing for a long time and not just in the contacts at our world. Really, it takes a lot of bravery and a lot of heart to just be able to make that leap with a lot of unknowns and, you know, leaving behind certain family members and just saying, can't be around that has got to be really challenging.

Afshan Kinder (06:21.346)
Yeah, little bit of youthful ignorance. You don't know what you don't know. moving into residence was fine. Then I graduated from university and then I couldn't get a job. And I didn't have any family support. So the first job I took was in a contact center. And it was one of those things where I said, yeah, I love talking to people.

Rob Dwyer (06:47.722)
Hahaha!

Afshan Kinder (06:49.128)
You know, and it was an airline. So all I wanted to do was travel, you know, and that's why applied, you know, and I finally did get a job there and I learned quite a bit as and I did every job in the contact center. So I was an agent - hardest job that I've ever had. And with the various, you know, companies that I worked with moved all the way through the ranks to a senior vice president. So, you know, it's it's interesting because even at a very executive level, I have so much respect, so much

Rob Dwyer (06:53.238)
Mmm.

Afshan Kinder (07:18.766)
awe of agents who do the job day in, day out. They have to be, make a connection in 30 seconds, be able to be the same personality on every single customer that they speak to. It's almost impossible for humans to do, really. We don't have that same expectation of leaders. And for leaders to be the same way with every agent that they speak to every moment of the day, every day of the week.

Rob Dwyer (07:41.846)
Yeah. Yeah.

Afshan Kinder (07:48.76)
You know, and I try to hold that high bar that I learned as an agent when I was an executive to be that consistent person. So when I walked into the office, when we had offices, you know, I would have a big smile on my face, say hello to everyone, because I knew my energy would be their energy. And I think that's a really important thing that you must do as a leader. And I think as we go into the future, it's something that we need to carry with us, you know, in the advent of AI, in the advent of

No automation for sure.

Rob Dwyer (08:20.662)
I love that you brought us there because that's really part and parcel to what we're going to talk about. I would be remiss if I didn't mention that you lead Switchgear and you have for nearly 20 years now. I think that name, don't know, maybe tell us what you were thinking when you came up.

Afshan Kinder (08:39.127)
mate.

Rob Dwyer (08:48.38)
name for the company but then I want to bring it to today as well.

Afshan Kinder (08:52.554)
Okay, sure. Yeah. So at that time it was really transformation, you know, being able to kind of switch from where you are to where you want to go. So that would seem, you know, the right thing to do because at that time people were struggling with, you know, do I provide service or sales? Do I provide service or productivity? And, you know, agents or team members were struggling and leaders were struggling to try and find the balance. And we felt that there was always a balance.

between all of those, and you just had to have the right strategy to get there. As time went on, we actually kind of split the company into divisions. So we have another division called Elevate to Great, and that is all people, soft skills, leadership. We create this, what we call the customer experience blueprint. And so what it is is a library of skills that allow an agent to deliver great service, but be themselves without a script.

you know, because at the end of the day, when you develop a skill, like for example, making an omelette, if you're cooking, you have a recipe, but you can make different types of omelets. And that's kind of the basis behind the Blueprint. And then that's the foundation for the coaching program that we have. And I'm proud to say that we have an awards for that program and it's certified by the International Coaching Federation as well.

And we have a lot of enterprise clients that really love the program and want to, we have done it globally for some of our companies who are based in Canada, but they have global sites all over the world. Remember one year I traveled around the world eight times. I would go Toronto to Guatemala, El Salvador, back to Toronto, all the way to Manila. This is when I got, I was.

Rob Dwyer (10:43.478)
Hmm.

Afshan Kinder (10:44.436)
Toronto for just a day, do laundry, over to Manila, to New Delhi, to Romania, then back to Toronto. And I would do that eight times.

Rob Dwyer (10:54.934)
That's a lot of frequent flyer miles, a lot of jet lag, and I feel I remember when I was traveling a lot for work, which I don't really do as much today, but I remember the one weekend I came home from three weeks out of country, got in late Saturday night, didn't unpack Sunday morning. My wife was taking me to the airport so I could go to the next place and I was like, I don't know about this.

Afshan Kinder (10:57.763)
Thanks.

Afshan Kinder (11:22.509)
hehe

Yeah.

Rob Dwyer (11:25.482)
Well, let's talk about. Switching gears because lots of companies are switching gears right now. They're switching gears by installing AI and they're installing AI in lots of ways, and I think for some of them they have really good intentions, right? So let's talk about virtual agents, AI assist. These are ideally.

Afshan Kinder (11:51.288)
Mm-hmm.

Rob Dwyer (11:54.432)
virtual agents maybe to reduce or take off the plate of agents. One of the low hanging, really easy, not very complex type of interactions, right? Checking my balance for instance, if I'm at a bank. The AI assist designed to help agents to know what to do next based off of the context of the conversation. I'm curious about what

Afshan Kinder (12:07.778)
Yeah.

Rob Dwyer (12:23.25)
you see happening with the level of complexity of the interactions that are left on the table for the agents. What's happening there?

Afshan Kinder (12:34.67)
Well, a couple of things, it's interesting because when you think about Agent Assist, it's really great for new hires who are really struggling. But think about your seasoned folks who probably are walking encyclopedias. If I'm using encyclopedia as an old term, nobody knows what that is.

Rob Dwyer (12:54.484)
Look it up kids, look it up.

Afshan Kinder (12:59.298)
You know, when you think about the seasoned folks who understand the nuances, because it's never black and white, there's lots of gray. You know, the level of adoption for agent assist may be far and few between for them because they know more. So it's the garbage in, garbage out with respect to your data. Your knowledge base has to be really strong. One of the things that I also see as we kind of move forward is with

whether it's Agent Assist or even anything to do with generative AI, is that we become a binary world. We look at that. I even see it for myself because I use Copilot or ChatGPT. If I'm writing something, I that doesn't feel too good. So I throw it in, can you say it better? And it always says it better. And then I edit it again. And I feel like I'm losing my writing skills. I'm a pretty good writer. And I thought, wow, have I become dumber?

You know, and so I think, you know, we're going to be in a situation where we're reliant on the AI to give us the information and we stop thinking. humans have progressed because they're innovative, they're creative, and the foundation of that creativity is critical thinking. And when you start losing your critical thinking skills, then where are we going to be in the future? And so when I go into...

talk to my clients and prospective clients, that's the first thing they say to me today without AI. My folks aren't critically thinking, like what were they thinking? There was a solution right there for them. So then the vendors say, well, we can provide that solution through agent assistant, now you've got it. And so they may provide the solution, but is it relevant to what the customer really needs? Are we thinking a little bit outside the box? We've got this solution, is there another solution? And I feel that is going to be.

The biggest challenge that we're going to have is building those skills because even though the low hanging fruit is gone, the complexity is going up. And therefore you need those types of skills as you move into the future. And nobody's talking about it. Nobody's talking about or thinking about it.

Rob Dwyer (15:06.698)
Yeah, it's definitely. I think a very challenging thing. First of all, I will say AI proponents will say. AI will continue to progress and will be able to do some of these things, whether you believe that or not. I will also say. When you and I were in school and we talked about math and calculators.

math teachers said, well, you're not going to carry around a calculator with you everywhere you go, are you? And they were wrong about that because we all do have a calculator in our pocket that does way more calculations than than our old TI, whatever used to be able to do. so those things are there and I think are still outstanding questions.

Afshan Kinder (15:33.294)
Thank you.

Rob Dwyer (15:59.114)
But I do agree that I'm part of my concern is how do we build those skills if I don't get the easy stuff first? we just setting agents up for potential failure? Because number one, we're creating something that's a little more binary for them. And we're just saying, just listen, just listen to the AIs. That'll tell you what to do. And number two,

Because I'm not gaining experience at a foundational level with some of the easier things. Is that a concern for you?

Afshan Kinder (16:33.848)
Yes.

It is unless you coach to it. So kind of think about sports. So we're not always in the tournament, or we're not always in the game when we're learning. We do a lot of things outside to build our skill set up. The if-then situations, the practice, the repetition, starting with the base layer and then.

Rob Dwyer (16:39.868)
Mm.

Afshan Kinder (17:02.818)
you know, really elevating that by looking at all the various combinations that can happen. You know, it's, I think those types of conversations and coachings need to happen. But I also think that to develop that skill, your leaders need to have that skill. And I seem to leaders not having that critical thinking skill. So it's a little bit about inconsistency at the leadership level. I'm not saying not many of them do, but some of them don't.

And so it's a trickle down to the agents. So you have to have that first level of leadership that really has to be strong in one being self-aware of their own energy and the energy that they give, and then being able to have some of the skills so they can demonstrate what good looks like.

Rob Dwyer (17:50.71)
So let's talk about that. Let's start with the first level of leadership, whether you call them team leaders, you call them supervisors, whatever they are in your organization. What's the first big challenge or miss that organizations have when they bring someone into that role? Often, it's an agent that they're elevating into that role. So what are they typically not doing ideally?

Afshan Kinder (17:55.47)
you

Afshan Kinder (18:20.76)
Well, we always say, know, it's Friday, I'm an agent, then we sprinkle this magic fairy dust on us over the weekend, we pop up as a team leader. Here I am, I'm ready to go, I'm so excited. And then you turn around, what am I supposed to be doing yet? And so I think one is, clear expectations, not about the 50 things that they need to do, but the top three things that they must be doing, right? And it's so interesting to...

Rob Dwyer (18:30.493)
Hooray!

Afshan Kinder (18:49.374)
See, because when we go into organizations, that's the first thing we do is where are you spending your time? Because where you spend your time determines the outcomes you're going to get. And a lot of time is spent in an administration of fighting fires, because there's questions from their team, there's escalations, there's lots of firefighting in contact centers. And it will always have some firefighting, but you can minimize it. But very little time in planning.

you know, what your month is gonna be, the results that you want to achieve and strategically how are you going to do that with your team? It's a lot of reactive and very little proactive. So the first thing I would say is we need to flip that. You we need to put at least a third of our time into making sure we're proactive and making sure that, you know, we're spending time with our people. And especially in remote environments, you know, I was reading in the article recently about

Rob Dwyer (19:31.52)
Yeah.

Afshan Kinder (19:46.102)
how some companies are upping their monitoring because they're concerned with productivity. And it's really not monitoring. It's connecting with people, building the culture with them. And in a way, they will then not disappoint you. You know what? Like if you don't have that connection, then it becomes very sterile and everybody for themselves. But when you have the connection, then you feel for the other person to say, well, I'm going to do this because I know Rob's counting on me. You know?

Rob Dwyer (20:00.534)
Mm-hmm.

Rob Dwyer (20:14.24)
Yeah.

Afshan Kinder (20:14.444)
So I think it's a little bit different. So the first one is being clear as to what is expected of you and making sure you have time to do those things.

Rob Dwyer (20:24.574)
You bring up something that I think companies are still grappling with in 2025. And that is when a contact centers, and this is true probably of a lot of different businesses, but I'm going to focus on contact centers for a moment. When contact centers were largely a brick and mortar environment, you could get away as a supervisor of just being present.

Afshan Kinder (20:32.046)
Rob Dwyer (20:53.472)
to build a little bit of a relationship because I'm at the end of the row and my people can see me and I can see them and we might have quick little conversations or I see you in the hallway, maybe you're on break or whatever the case may be. And I could get away with calling that building relationship with my team.

Afshan Kinder (21:18.094)
for sure. Absolutely.

Rob Dwyer (21:20.468)
When you go to a virtual environment, to a work from remote environment, however that looks for your organization, which a lot of contact centers, I know we embraced this long before COVID, but a lot of contact centers, despite a lot of return to office mandates and whatnot, contact centers have recognized this actually really works really well.

Afshan Kinder (21:47.49)
Yes.

Rob Dwyer (21:47.7)
because I don't need to worry about the space, because contact centers employ a lot of people.

Afshan Kinder (21:51.15)
Mm-hmm.

Rob Dwyer (21:55.338)
The change in how I have to lead and build relationships goes from being able to rely on

Afshan Kinder (21:58.595)
Yes.

Rob Dwyer (22:08.31)
chance. And proximity. To I have to mindfully. Do these things to build relationships to build trust with my team, which we should have been doing before. Don't get me wrong. But I could get away with it before and now when I don't see your face every day. If I'm not mindful about it, then it just doesn't happen. And here we are.

Afshan Kinder (22:09.358)
Mm-hmm.

Rob Dwyer (22:37.343)
five years later and it's we're in some organizations still in the same place.

Afshan Kinder (22:42.414)
Yeah, 100%. You know, I kind of see it like there's an evolution on building culture before it was, you know, the hallway, the wave across the room and, you know, and, you know, just a walk by hello. You know, those are different ways that we kind of, you know what it is? It's energy. It's a way of transmitting energy. And then when we got to, you know, remote and hybrid organizations, you know,

We're trying to find different ways of connecting, but it goes back to being organized and disciplined and gracefully saying no to things. The first line leaders have a tendency to say yes to everything because they're new and they think that's the right thing to do. And someone needs to say, hey, you've got these three things that you need to accomplish every week. You need to just do that. Be with your people, be with your people and be with your people.

Rob Dwyer (23:20.95)
Mm-hmm.

Afshan Kinder (23:41.414)
Those three things. That's it. And when you're there, everything else falls into place. You know, that whole adage of happy employees give you happy customers is so true. And so as leaders, our job is to build that sense of connectivity, the sense of community and culture. Now, the third level is when we get into, you know, AI taking the, you know, low hanging fruit away and the complexity rises where we need to build more advanced skills.

Rob Dwyer (23:42.592)
Ha ha ha.

Afshan Kinder (24:11.256)
for our team members, well, you're not gonna do it by not showing up. You're gonna have to show up even more for them. And I really think that's one thing, but you're gonna have to show up even more with good energy. We always say, like in our programs, when you have agents who are talking to customers, customers take the energy out of us, right? And so if customers take energy out of us,

And our leaders take energy out of us, what's left? So our leaders need to give us the team members energy so they can give customers energy. And it's a really, whether we're an AI world or we're not an AI world, that will always be. And that's the role of the leadership is to kind of build their team up, build their skills up and build their confidence up so they feel stimulated in the job that they do. And that's how we retain people, give them value and they'll give you value.

Rob Dwyer (25:07.614)
Yeah, absolutely. You touched on something that I just want to get your thoughts on. I was thinking about this recently. And when we talk about AI taking some of that less complex interactions off the table for us, I wonder.

Are we setting our agents up to be even more emotionally battered because they don't have the breaks in between? So I think back when I was taking phone calls, you and I both started taking phone calls. And so we recognize that there are harder calls and there are easier calls. And there's an ebb and flow throughout the day. Sometimes you have a day where you just feel like every single call is

someone who's really upset and they have a hard problem. There's a lot of satisfaction that comes with solving those problems, but it can be emotionally taxing. I think you have some calls where it's not a big deal. I can move through this and in some ways those can can be a moment for an agent to relax. If we're taking more and more of those opportunities off the table and

making AI do that for us. Is there a chance that we're going to see greater agent burnout, greater agent mental health issues because we're saying, no, no, no, no, you just do the hard stuff all day long.

Afshan Kinder (26:42.232)
Yeah, you know, it could be. It's interesting because I was just talking to someone just before I started talking to you about something similar to this. And we were just talking about, you know, Gen Alpha, Gen Z, you know, and the younger generations seem to have a bit more anxiety. And rightly so. There's a lot of uncertainty in the world, you know, and because of the

increasing amount of uncertainty, there's anxiety. And we're talking more about mental wellness in our organizations, not just at the team member level, but at the leadership level, just across the board. And we've also noticed that since COVID, the amount of customers being abusive has gone up. People have no patience anymore. And so put all that together, and then you add AI to that, your

point, Rob, know, just adding that complexity. So we need to solve for that. And part, you know, there's been some really good research done that, you know, if I have the tools and if I have the skills to be able to handle the difficult situation and I quit taking it personally, you know, then it's not as scary and it's not as much of a burnout. So I need to flip the switch to say this is a problem for me versus I'm a detective.

and I'm going to find a good solution, you know, and this is my ability to problem solve and help somebody. So it comes from an open heart and a heart of helping versus I'm a victim and, you know, people are beating up on me all the time. And part of a leader's role is to help people with that mindset shift. You know, because if we don't do that, we are going to experience burnout. Burnout at the leader level, burnout at the team member level.

Rob Dwyer (28:30.752)
Yeah.

Afshan Kinder (28:38.538)
And so we need to talk about that in very open environment and what are the tools that you can implement. And there are many tools that you can implement to help people with that change in mindset and change in perspective as to how they see their job.

Rob Dwyer (28:55.624)
Yeah, I think it goes back to the question of are our leaders equipped to do these things? Because if I am an agent in a lot of organizations, I just focus on being a good agent. And now what I hear you saying is when I move into that next level of leadership, I need to be able to not only be able to focus on

Afshan Kinder (29:13.571)
Yes.

Rob Dwyer (29:23.454)
teaching agents to be good agents and coaching and developing them. But I also need to start paying attention to the mental well-being of maybe up to up to 20 different people who are wildly different than me, who maybe I can't see because we are in a work from home environment. I have to imagine that as a frontline leader, that is both

daunting and maybe it creates a challenge of getting the right people into that position today. Are organizations struggling to find the right people to put into those frontline leadership levels?

Afshan Kinder (30:05.242)
I think it's always been the case, you know, it's always been the case and probably because 80 % of the, of the leaders are former agents. You know, like that's usually why we it's good for career development, but it's also the easiest path for businesses, you know? And so sometimes you see, you know, customers, sorry, companies come and they'll say, well, we want fresh blood, so we're going to hire from the outside. And sometimes it works and sometimes, you know, it doesn't work. So I think, you know,

Rob Dwyer (30:13.695)
Mm-hmm.

Rob Dwyer (30:20.277)
Yeah.

Afshan Kinder (30:33.771)
We need to recognize that is a challenge. There are some people, and I believe this, leadership can be learned. There's inherent charisma, so that's different. But that's not leadership. Leadership is something completely different. It's inspiring people, and you can do it in a quiet way, or you can do it.

Rob Dwyer (30:48.405)
Mm-hmm.

Afshan Kinder (30:56.108)
in a not so quiet way. You know, you have your own style, but if people, if you are an authentic leader where you truly care about people, they'll pick it up. They'll pick it up and they will follow you. I used to, you know, say to my team, you know, you're a good leader if you have followers. That's why you call themselves leaders, right? So, so I think, yes, they're going to have challenges, you know, getting good leaders, but they're going to have to cultivate that, you know, coaching culture, cultivate

the leadership styles that they would like to see. And that's by investing in their leadership, especially the first line leadership, and not just talking about the logistics of what they need to do, but the skills that they need to demonstrate to be really strong leaders.

Rob Dwyer (31:40.512)
So you just used a word I want to dig into and that's investing in leadership. I think we are all too well aware that often the contact center is looked at as a cost and it's one of the first places where we go to try and shave off some costs if revenue isn't where we want it to be, or if we just want to increase the profit margin.

Afshan Kinder (31:45.805)
Yes.

Rob Dwyer (32:09.15)
Where can we go? And the contact center is often that place and spending money on developing leaders isn't shaving cost. How do I justify that?

Afshan Kinder (32:24.75)
Well, this is the business case we put together almost all the time, you know, and you know, if you have really strong coaches, we see a direct correlation between the frequency of coaching and the use of our methodology directly to KPI improvement. I have one client, I've been with them for about five years. When we started with them, they had literally low teams for MPS.

for the last two and a half years, they've hit 65. Yeah, yeah, you know, and so, you know, it took a little bit of time because we needed to change some mindsets at leaders and we needed to change some leaders out as well, you know, because they were more analytical rather than people oriented. But once we got the right team in place, it just, you know, went like a hockey stick, you know. So I think what's really, that's where the investment is. So it's not just MPS, but it's,

sales, it's productivity, it's first call resolution, it's also the attrition of your customer base and the lack of attrition of your customer base. So you can look at a lot of different things, likelihood to recommend. There's a lot of other things outside of the KPIs of contact centers that you can look at and when you do invest and you have a good leadership team, you get stability.

And when you get stability, you're able to get those KPIs that you're looking for. If you're turning people out, you know, every six months or one year or even a year and a half, you're never getting that stability. You're constantly hiring and you're always behind the curve. So that's what leadership can do for you is create that stability.

Rob Dwyer (34:07.924)
Yeah. I wonder, is that a struggle for some organizations because it's not a quick fix? And as humans, we often are looking for the quick fix. And that doesn't sound like a quick fix to me.

Afshan Kinder (34:22.604)
Yeah, well, it depends, you because it's staggered a little bit. let's kind of, so NPS may come a bit later. But if we start first of all with employee satisfaction, making our employees feel good, it actually accelerates where you get your results. So if you don't focus on that first, then you might as well not focus on your customer. You know what I'm saying? Like we try to focus on our customers if we forget about our employees.

We're the other ones who are delivering the service and you really need to focus on them first, making sure that they have the tools that they need, the skills that they need, and they're supported and they feel valued and they feel heard. When you do all those things, which we can do on a daily basis, you know, I think you will see that acceleration. We actually, in our programs, we see results in 60 days. You know, we see results in 60 days and often, you know, it's because employees are happier, so we see lower absence.

which is a huge cost. And then we actually see kind of stability in the KPI so they're not as volatile. They're not flipping up and down. So one month they're good, one month they're bad. And that in itself creates some payback. And then we build on that thereafter. So typically, the first thing we try to do is balance that sales and service. And then after that is product.

Rob Dwyer (35:46.598)
I want to get your reaction to what I think a lot of people are saying about contact centers and that is AI is just going to take it all over and we won't need contact center agents in X number of years. Maybe that's two years, maybe that's five years, maybe that's 10 years, but what's your reaction to that?

Afshan Kinder (36:13.262)
I think there's probably some truth to that, in my personal opinion. think, you know, is it 100 %? I don't think it's 100%, but when you think about the containment that we're already seeing, I have a client center who has almost a 90 % digital adoption rate. So 10 % goes into their call center, and that's today. And they actually did it without technology. They just got a very compliant customer base. They have very compliant customer base, so they've been able to do that.

Rob Dwyer (36:37.334)
Ha

Afshan Kinder (36:41.934)
So when I went into their organization, they asked me, you know, what kind of leadership skills do we need? What we need to do that's different for the remaining 10 % that's coming in. So, you know, there's certain, you know, use cases, some edge cases, but a lot of it has to do with the types of people who are gonna call in that have more emotion, our callers have more emotional needs. You know, if you have low emotional needs, you're gonna use your digital.

you know, format to get your issue solved. But if there's something that's very emotional for you, you're going to call. You're still going to call. And we as humans have that. I have a client who's an insurance client. He goes, when you're in a car accident, you don't want to be going to something digital to just say, I've been in a car accident. Right. You want to talk to a human, you know, who can empathize with you. And the empathy you might get from, you know, AI bot is not the same.

Rob Dwyer (37:14.806)
Hmm.

Afshan Kinder (37:37.014)
as if you get from a human. And so that's why it's so important to build those skills with humans so they can be there for those really tough situations to help other humans that are going through that. So will we reduce our call volume amount into some? Absolutely. We're definitely going to be doing that. And will they be smaller? Probably.

But I think they'll be more interesting. And I think there'll be other types of positions that support the training of AI that will elevate the skill level. There's certain types of situations that AI will not be able to solve, even though the people who are building AI tell you all of these things that are going to happen. But you know the reality, Rob. If you live through that reality, it's not as perfect as we think. So I don't know.

I don't know what the future holds, but that's my prediction.

Rob Dwyer (38:37.014)
OK, well you heard it here folks. If you want to reduce headcount in your call center, focus on finding customers with low emotional needs and products that have no emotional value whatsoever. That's what Afshan's advice. That's what I heard, so I'm pretty sure that's what all of you heard. Like. I just hire AI as your customers. That's what you do and then we'll all go.

Afshan Kinder (38:38.774)
Hahaha!

Afshan Kinder (38:48.225)
It's good.

Yeah.

Afshan Kinder (39:01.656)
That's right.

Rob Dwyer (39:05.365)
We are getting close to the end of our time, but I wanted to make sure that you had a chance to talk about a couple of the organizations that you're involved with. So GTACC, which is a Greater Toronto Area Contact Center Association, and Contact New Brunswick. Can you talk to us a little bit about those organizations?

Afshan Kinder (39:26.666)
Absolutely. Before I do this, one thing I do want to kind of leave your audience with, you know, and it's something that I read and that is, you know, it's important that we lead this technology revolution and not let AI lead us. You know, and often what we're doing is that we're the C-suite saying, hey, we got to put AI in, we'll reduce head count by this much. So we're letting the technology lead us versus

us being strategic as to when it is very important for us to have that technology and what context, you know, so that thinking and that strategic thinking has to be there. And I wanted to kind of leave your audience with that because I feel that sometimes it's missing. The big picture is often missing. But anyways, on to GTACC. So I've been with GTACC for like, I joined them when I was SVP at ING Direct.

So in fact, I was, think, the first keynote speaker. so that was kind of fun. And now I'm a board member. What I love about GTACC and I think you know Sangeeta, who runs it, she's an inspirational person. And so it's a not-for-profit organization. So we make sure that all of the monies that we raise go to charity and it's often children's charities and women's.

charities and indigenous people. And so we make sure we do that. And our focus is the betterment of our industry. So how do we learn, grow and connect is our mantra. And we don't charge a membership fee. even if you're in the States, you can join us. There's lots of great content for you to really get your hands on. And then we have our annual conference in the fall.

That's the only thing we typically charge for and it's a great conference and there's lots of good sharing of information. Contact New Brunswick is also a really great organization. My fly out there, I've never been to New Brunswick before, I'm a K &A but I've never been there before. Advice, don't go there in February, but do go there.

Afshan Kinder (41:48.382)
And, but they're a fantastic organization. And, you know, one of the things that's really interesting about them, just a little plug in, you know, for them. So Frank McKenna was the premier of New Brunswick a long time ago. And he's the one who kind of created that government subsidy and attraction for contact centers to be located in New Brunswick because they've got a great pool of talented people that they could attract. You know, the cost was low.

from a facilities perspective and the infrastructure was all there. And so a lot of people moved their contact centers in Canada over there. So now he's starting an Institute for AI to help all of the businesses really embrace AI in a logical and human-centric way. And so they're doing wonderful work there too.

Rob Dwyer (42:40.47)
That's fantastic. Well, Afshan, thank you so much for joining me today on Next in Queue. My listeners know what to do. Go connect and go check out GTACC and contact New Brunswick. You'll have links in the show notes. Thank you so much for spending time with me today.

Afshan Kinder (42:45.07)
Here.

Afshan Kinder (42:56.728)
Well, thank you for inviting me, Rob. It's pleasure and a call out to your Lego set in the back. I'm in awe of that, you know, so, and it was really great chatting with you today. Thank you.