You Give Me One Shot featuring Bryce Cressy

Transcript

Rob Dwyer (00:00.922)
No stress, no stress at all because Bryce Cressy is Next in Queue. Thanks for joining me today, Bryce. How are you?

Bryce (00:09.482)
Rob, I am absolutely fantastic. Thanks for having me on.

Rob Dwyer (00:13.914)
One of the things that I love about doing the podcast is being able to have conversations with people from all over the world. And you are not exactly in my neighborhood. Why don't we share with people where you're joining me from and tell me about that fantastic background, which is not virtual. That's a real background.

Bryce (00:42.026)
Yeah. So, well, I'm, I'm only a good, I don't know, probably like 10 ,000 miles away or something like that. so it's just a stroll, just a stroll across the, across the border. but I'm from Johannesburg, South Africa. I'm currently in our beautiful Sandton offices, our headquarters of Nutun, which is the company that I work for. and yeah, it is, it is really, it is a, it's a stunning background. It seems virtual.

but then every often or so you'll see a person walk past and they'll pop their head in and see that we're recording something and you'll just see them like looking and seeing what's happening. So it always creates an interesting dynamic if you somehow get bored of what I'm saying, just start looking over my shoulder for some reason.

Rob Dwyer (01:29.21)
Yeah, absolutely. And we actually met quite some time ago through CX Accelerator. So shout out to CX Accelerator. If you're not familiar with CX Accelerator, it's a great Slack community. Go check it out. If you know Nate Brown, then you should know CX Accelerator. And I believe that's where we first connected. And that's been quite some time ago. And we've talked about a number of things back and forth.

And today we're going to kind of continue on a little bit of a mini BPO series that I've got going this month, but we're going to focus on innovation versus just kind of chasing the shiny new thing that's out there and maybe talk about some success stories, talk about some not so successful stories, but.

I think to frame this correctly, we should talk about kind of your role at Newton and what that is. And you have a great title, by the way, the head of human partnerships and innovation. But for those that aren't familiar with what you do and what Newton does, tell us more about.

Bryce (02:49.45)
Yeah, thanks Rob. So, it's a, it's a, I guess a shiny title, what, what I do have, but, it's such a, it's such a, for lack of a better word, it's a fun job. so the, the main function of, of innovation and partnerships is leveraging external relationships, around Newton. And I'll give a bit of a background to what Newton does, but it's leveraging those external relationships.

leveraging experts, influencers, leveraging the best technology in the world to provide innovative solutions for our clients. I'm a glorified problem solver for our clients and our prospects. So I work very closely with our sales team to problem solve from an operational efficiency perspective, from a tech efficiency perspective, even research trends, trust pilot reviews.

I kind of do a lot of different things on a value add basis for our clients. And that's just a kind of a tip of an iceberg for what I do within the business. But Newton itself, we're a global outsourcer, so a global BPO with our headquarters in South Africa. We provide sophisticated customer experience and customer care solutions, as well as debt collection and credit lifecycle solutions.

for enterprise customers in the U S in the UK and Australia and in South Africa. and we are also wrapping amazing people from South Africa with a technology solution to provide an all encompassing customer journey solution from an outsourced provider in South Africa. So in a nutshell, that's what we do. And that's what I do within the business.

Rob Dwyer (04:21.338)
Thank you.

Rob Dwyer (04:38.01)
Yeah, it's good stuff and fun stuff, right? I mean, the one thing that I love about what you do is it's just kind of, I imagine not very many days are the same or involved in doing the same kinds of things. Every day's got something a little bit new and allows you to every now and then, you know, have someone hit the gong.

Bryce (05:05.61)
Yeah, so I do, I do love that about my job that it is, it's different every day. I think I get, I get the privilege and honor of communicating with guys like you, around the world, for, for a living, networking, creating friendships, creating good partnerships. and then when that helps our clients, sorry, our sales team sign a deal, sign a client, get a new client into the business with.

which creates jobs for hundreds or thousands of South Africans, we get to hit a massive gong within our little auditorium that we sit in. And that gong is all the way from Wuhan in China. Every time you actually hit it, you feel vibrations throughout your body. And everyone else in the immediate 10 to 15 meters around gets a bit of a shock, and you hear it ring throughout the entire building.

which is quite nice. And there's also a story that if you hit the gong without actually having signed a deal, then you'll have something like seven to 10 years of bad sales. So best believe everyone around it is very, very, very careful.

Rob Dwyer (06:07.61)
Thanks.

Rob Dwyer (06:24.858)
Nobody, nobody needs the, the walking under the ladder effect of the gong or, or, the black cat crossing your path or anything like that. So don't hit the gong unless you actually had a success that day. So speaking of success, let's talk about this innovation piece, right? I mean, that's something that you're intimately involved with, with your partners and thinking about.

the next step in this ever evolving journey of support and customer experience. And you help companies identify opportunities to potentially adopt new technologies to solve interesting problems. Let's talk about some recent successes and the kinds of technologies that...

you are using today that are solving real world problems.

Bryce (07:32.138)
Okay. Well, I will refrain from using any client names naturally, but I will refer to the industry in which we are servicing those clients. So a recent success that we've had is actually in the retail and manufacturing industry. So it's a company that sells luxury coffee and microwave and general household appliances.

that provide a very premium experience. They were having some difficulties with their technology. They'd spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on Salesforce implementations that hadn't gone the way that they'd hoped. So we've got a good relationship with them. We serve them across Australia, across the US and across UK. So we cover all time zones for them. And We've...

done a really, really good job on the BPO side. We, we constantly increasing this, their customer satisfaction scores. and they're very happy with the experience that they received from us. So we've kind of got our foot in the door to say, okay, let's go, let's move away from providing people only solutions. Let's, Let's see how we can take our learnings from working with you for two years, to see how we can supercharge your operation.

So, I, before I'd even spoken to the clients, I went to go sit with some of our agents, which is actually on the same floor, sorry, in the same building, two floors above me. and I just sat with them just to see their daily duties. and had a talk with them. I had a conversation with some of the operations managers and it was very clear that whilst, the brand is very premium, the operational methodology was not, and.

There were, there were cases of, of manual, manual call summary entry. There were cases of where documents being used. There were cases of, of general, like, like typical human solutions to making their life quicker on the daily. It's not something process driven. It's not something technology. It's just someone who's found like a loophole to make their life a little bit quicker. Right.

Bryce (09:59.818)
But in doing that, it comes in anything when you're having to listen to hundreds of calls in a day and then still make summaries after every single call. There will be, there will be examples of human error. I think that's natural. So we went to, we went to this clients and we said, listen, we've sat with your agents. We've seen some operational inefficiencies coming through. Are you keen to talk about them?

Rob Dwyer (10:00.154)
Mm -hmm.

Bryce (10:29.802)
They said, sure, it's going to get in a call. So, we got on the call with the, with the clients and we basically said that we see there's word documents being used. We see that there's manual summaries being used. we see that there's some human error capabilities, that are present within this campaign. What are you doing on the technology side to supplement this? and they were like, well, we tried Salesforce implementations. We spent.

Rob Dwyer (10:31.258)
Thank you.

Bryce (10:59.594)
hundreds of thousands of dollars using, using the AI feature within Salesforce, but it was, it was just that it was just the feature. That's what they were doing. It wasn't taking it into the context of a contact center into the context of someone on the other side being an advisor or an agent that is actually using the tools on the other side. So off the back of that, we presented a couple of solutions. One.

Rob Dwyer (11:00.762)
Thank you.

Bryce (11:29.002)
was an intelligent knowledge management to take away from their use of word documents. And that word document was used for like FAQs. So like common call drivers that are coming in that an agent has an easy way to answer those calls. But it also allows their internal team and our team, right, to act as one, to have access to the same knowledge base, to have access to real -time knowledge while on the call with the clients.

with the end user on the other side. So that was one piece where they were like blown away. They're like, wow, this is exactly what we need. We've had some issues in trying to work with knowledge management because we've got legacy systems and often the knowledge management isn't able to read like PDFs. It isn't able to read this form of content. But there are solutions out there that can do all of that. It's just about finding the right one for that business.

Rob Dwyer (12:19.834)
Come on.

Bryce (12:24.746)
So there was that instance of innovation where we've now plugged in that knowledge management solution into their campaign. And it's kind of revolutionized the agents ability to access information while they're on the call with the clients. But also we've included a piece of AI automation into that. And now I think that's a, that's a, it is a buzzword. People have to speak about automation. They love to speak about AI.

Rob Dwyer (12:49.21)
Thank you.

Bryce (12:50.506)
but what's the use case, right? Rob, like what's, this comes back down to what you were saying, like adoption versus innovation. Anyone can adopt AI. Anyone can like slap it onto something, but what is it solving for? What is the use case that it's actually making your life a little bit easier? so in this case, it's a piece of software that automates the, the core summary process. So it automates, it listens to the call, transcribes the call, summarizes the call, and then puts it into Salesforce.

In the right CRM record where it's supposed to be so that it saves our advisors time on the phones by least 45 seconds, 45 seconds over a day, over a month, it all adds up. It adds up to time that they could have been spending on the phone interacting with customers, which is revenue lost. so that small piece of automation, even though like some people listening to this will be like, okay, AI automation, summarizing a case file and putting it into Salesforce. What's the biggie? But

something small like that is where AI is most relevant to solving a small problem that someone's having on the everyday basis. Yes, we can speak about conversational AI. We can speak about voice AI, which has its place, but it needs to be solving a problem for the customer. And that was probably one of the more successful stories that we've had recently that happened in the last two months.

Rob Dwyer (14:14.874)
Yeah, I love that. So you talk about multiple things there that that I want to expand upon. First of all, and I have talked about this multiple times, but this is a great example of BPO serving as a strategic partner, not just someone who can answer calls and emails and chats and whatever other channel you've got enabled. They are helping businesses.

identify ways that they can streamline the customer interaction side of their business so that they can focus on making great products, right? And the sales and marketing and all of that stuff that goes on with their primary core business function and allowing someone else to say, Hey, we're the experts in this. We deal with this stuff all the time. We'd love to help you do this even better.

And right as a partner, like if you're saving 45 seconds on every single call, what does that really do? Well, it reduces how much revenue you're collecting because you're actually moving through things faster or you're handling more volume. But it shows this partnership. Like we're here to help you be successful. And I think far too many people view.

Outsourcing as simply a way to save money and it can save you money But it can also really benefit your business. So I love that example and then when you talk about You know the AI solving little problems. I had a conversation not that long ago with someone who was building like custom custom GPTs through open AI and

You know, one of the things that they were doing was creating custom GPTs to do something that wasn't something that needed to be repeated over and over and over all the time. And I, my feedback to them was just like, what? That doesn't actually help me. I can just go to chat GPT and plug that in. I don't need a custom bot to do this for me where you really get.

Rob Dwyer (16:38.65)
Gains is when you can automate things that happen all the time over and over they may not take a ton of time But when you start to add it up That's where all of a sudden like 45 seconds on every call if you can just eliminate that that's a huge aggregate savings of time and effort and You and I both know that agents typing

can have mixed results depending on how good they time. I've seen agent notes that are all caps. Maybe the spelling is not ideal or maybe they don't always recap all of the most relevant and important items when they're summarizing because they forget about certain things that happened during the course of an interaction. And so there's a real business value to automating that piece.

because I don't have those concerns anymore. I don't worry that the spelling is an issue. And I don't subject the agent to any potential embarrassment about their ability to spell or type or anything along those lines. They can focus on really taking care of customers, which ultimately is why they got hired in the first place. So really, really great examples that you're sharing there.

Bryce (18:05.93)
Yeah, yeah. And I think exactly what you said there. We hire our agents because they're really good with people. We don't hire our agents for the admin skills. And I think once we've got a use of technology that is taking that away and empowering them to be on more calls, to be in front of more customers, I think that's where we also get our best work done. So it's incentivizing the customer.

our end customer because they are paying less for our services because we being more efficient, they're acquired less agents to handle their volumes. We get paid less, but we also providing a better service at the end of it because our agents are more empowered.

Rob Dwyer (18:51.194)
Yeah, absolutely. I want to talk about the other potential side of this, right? So here's a great example of a company who's adopting a technology. It's saving them really some money. It's making the agent experience better, but that's the technology isn't always the answer to everything or.

I should say that the wrong technology can can lead to the wrong results. Do you have any examples of maybe one of your partners who was like gung ho, hey, we're going to do this. And it turned out like that just wasn't a great adoption and it didn't really solve the problem.

Bryce (19:43.946)
Yeah, I think, I think many, many BPO's will have many examples of this. but I unfortunately do have an example of this, but I'll say, unfortunately, but I'll actually change that to say, fortunately, because it's, it's learned us, it's, it's taught us so many lessons. We learned so much off the back of it about how the best way to go about innovating for our clients. And it is, it's coming from that, that stance of,

attaching a technology to a desired outcome and not slapping a technology on just because it's fancy and shiny. and that was the reason why it failed. It was, a utility client of ours that were looking for transformation, but that was, that, that was where it stopped. They were looking for transformation. They didn't really go as far as to say,

How are they planning to transform? It's a huge business. There are multiple lines of business that come from that as well. And it was not a specific enough tool. So I think learning on our side was we didn't do a detailed enough analysis of the business before suggesting technology solutions. They didn't provide us a detailed analysis of what they are looking to get from technology. They were just looking.

for some form of technology, right? So that's where the first, I'm sure you can see there's some issues, some problems that started there. This was also last year sometimes. So it was a decent time ago, which is loudest to learn a little bit more, but it came from, we suggested, right? So they wanted digital transformation and we were like, cool, we've got fancy and shiny tools. Let's roll them out to you. We don't know if you need them. We haven't done a detailed analysis to see. You want technology, we'll give you technology.

So it was the fanciest, shiniest automated QA and speech analytics solution. It was the fanciest, shiniest AI training solution. It was the fanciest and shiniest workforce engagement management tool. And there was also an element of conversational AI that they wanted. All of those, we were like, okay, I mean, say less, we can...

Bryce (22:04.554)
give you these these tools, we will obviously make money from it.

And we didn't ask any more questions after that. So we went along this process. We broke off into the Splinter call as we presented the solutions to them. We were speaking with the partner that we were showcasing the solution through. And we went along probably six to eight months into the process and they actually paused and stopped and realized actually, this isn't going to revolutionize our business. Actually, these tools might not be as relevant for us as we had initially thought.

actually maybe we're not ready for these yet. And that took six to eight months of time wasted on our side dealing with the external providers, promising them a certain amount of revenue, a certain amount of licenses, a decent, cause it's a big clients, a decent size of business that they can, they'll be facilitating through Newton of course. But it was a learning because,

We had these solutions, we could provide them. We were happy to, no pun intended there, but we were happy to do it, but it wasn't necessary for the business. We didn't do the needs analysis. We didn't make sure that the outcome that they're looking for met the technology that we were providing. At the end of it, it wasted six to eight months of time. And it could have been something that was a lot more productive at the end of it.

Rob Dwyer (23:25.146)
Thanks.

Bryce (23:38.09)
That is why we've shifted to say, first and foremost, anything we implement, we need to believe that you need it. Not only you are going to tell us what you need, but we all work as a strategic partner to make sure you're not just spending money willy -nilly. So that was unfortunate, but it happened. We learned things, they learned things, and we move forward.

Rob Dwyer (24:00.666)
Solving an actual problem is so critical. And I want to go back to what you talked about with your success story. One of the things that you did, and I can't stress this enough for people that are considering new technologies to solve problems or just considering how can I make things better within the context of my customer experience. Go to the front line.

sit with agents, talk to agents, understand what an agent's process looks like and how they operate on a day -to -day basis. And you can find those points of friction from an agent perspective, from a customer perspective, and then you can start to think about, well, what are some ways that I can use potentially technology or a

process or some kind of automation to to make things better to reduce the friction and You talked about right people using a word document like that's the one thing Agents are so smart and creative in trying to make their lives as Easy as possible so that they can provide great service that they'll do the same things that they used to do

10 years ago before we were all like, we're paperless environment, right? They'll do it paperless, but they'll just do it with virtual paper. It used to be call centers always had like these binders, right? Full of all of the information that agents could reference at any given moment. It was like their Bible for taking care of customers. And we think we've moved past that.

And some organizations absolutely have, and they've got great knowledge bases and, and agents are able to find exactly what they need at a moment's notice. Those that aren't trust me, they are creating their own knowledge base. And that knowledge base is not necessarily aligned with the current state of things of the business. And they may struggle to keep it updated, right? You won't know that.

Rob Dwyer (26:21.754)
until you sit down with an agent, whether that's physically sitting in a contact center environment or virtually sitting with an agent and having them share their screen. And then potentially after the fact, like asking them to kind of walk through their process, their thinking, what tools they use on a regular basis, that's such a critical thing. And then...

Right, that discovery process goes right back to what you were talking about with your partners. It's a discovery process. What are you trying to solve for? OK, you want digital transformation. What does that mean? What do you expect to get out of this? And it's a mistake that we've all made, but some of us, until we've gone through that, don't know when to say no.

Or can we hit pause here and just talk about what you're trying to accomplish? Because we want to we want to do what they wanted. Did they want to give us more business or they want to try new tools? We're like, yes. And then after it fails miserably, we're like, no, I shouldn't have done that.

Bryce (27:44.202)
of it's something that like a project that's actually come off the back of this learning is this hub that we're creating down by in one of our contact centers, which will be a place for clients to come and play with technology, see its use case, see its relevance in a live campaign. And there'll be key outcomes attached on that on the walls behind where the technology will be.

will be showcased. It'll show, it'll show them like, okay, if you want X in terms of an outcome, Y is the technology that you need for that. If you want this, that is what you need to get there. and I think that's the model that everyone needs to go for. It's what is the outcome that you want and what do you need to do to get there? Is it operational? Is it, is it, will technology fix it? Will technology fix it? If it will, then please let's, it's adopt.

Let's utilize, let's implement. But if it is process, if it is, if it is branding, if it's on the brand side, if it's a brand issue, if it's a product issue, that will stop, cause coming in, then we need to be the ones who are letting them know that this is happening. Right. so.

Doing that initial diagnosis could not be more critical than what it is today, especially with if you had CCW the other day, especially with the 50 million different AI solutions that we find ourselves in the market with. So yeah.

Rob Dwyer (29:25.498)
Yeah, it's also interesting that you never know what you'll uncover if you take a moment to just think about whether or not a technology that someone's asking for is going to solve their problem or create new problems. Because that's also part of adoption is understanding how is this going to change certain things that we do and what potential new

issues does this create that we need to think about ahead of time? Because adopting a new technology, number one, if I have a bunch of people using it, there's a potential for friction there. Even if it's ultimately going to make their lives easier, I have to convince them that it's going to make their lives easier. I have to show them that it's going to do that. And I have to teach them how to use it to make that happen.

But in some cases, the technology adoption doesn't make someone's life easier. And in that case, you may find that there's an adoption pushback. And that's something that people need to consider. Are users going to push back against this? Because it actually makes their life worse, even though we get something out of it that we really want. And.

There are times that you can stumble on new ways to do things or new ways to approach a problem just by saying, that's probably not going to work out. Let's see if we can figure out a different way to solve.

Bryce (31:10.538)
Yeah. Yeah. And I'll even go as far to say that with the technology that you're onboarding, if it is, say you're a brand that operates 15 different BPOs around the world, which we see regularly, they will make a central decision about a technology that will affect every single BPO that they're working with. if that technology is not user friendly, if it is difficult to learn, if it is making

the agent's life more difficult than it is enabling them, then that's going to have massive effects on the overall operation. So choosing the technology right is also so important because a good technology is one that allows an easy and friendly user experience as well. As well as all the flashy things on the outside and the ability of analytics and AI that comes with it. So that usability.

metric is extremely important when choosing that technology.

Rob Dwyer (32:15.578)
Yeah, absolutely. I want to talk about something that has nothing to do with technology. I want to talk about hockey.

Bryce (32:29.066)
Okay.

Rob Dwyer (32:30.554)
Specifically, I want to talk about your experience with hockey. I don't think people think of hockey and South Africa in the same sentence, but I understand that maybe we should be thinking about that.

Bryce (32:49.738)
So first and foremost, I want to say that when I refer to hockey, it's completely different to what an American or a Canadian will refer to as hockey because we do have ice hockey in South Africa. my brother was actually the, the physiotherapist for the South African national ice hockey team. they aren't as good as obviously the U .S. and Canada naturally. but the hockey that I refer to.

is field hockey, which is also quite big in the States from, from, from what I, from what I have seen, I've never played there. but man, I love it. I love the sport. I think it's in South Africa. It's, it's pretty big. every, every major school will be playing it. I was lucky enough to play, inter university games in South Africa. and that's also an incredible experience.

and our South African hockey team is, is it's, it's, it's tough because we, we're really good, we're really talented, but there's not as much funding in South Africa for it. So they often have to make their own way to, to national events, to the Olympics, to, the hockey world cups. and yet they still compete. They still one of the top eight teams in the world when it comes to hockey. so it's yeah. Rob, that, that was a bit of a curve ball. That's, I mean.

I'm more than happy to talk about one of my passions.

Rob Dwyer (34:18.394)
So you talk about lack of funding. Is that because all the money is going to football slash soccer as we would call it in America? Is that the is that the bigger sport?

Bryce (34:32.202)
Yeah. So there's three sports in South Africa that really have a lot of funding and a lot of support. rugby obviously is one of the, one of the top ones. We also are rugby world cup champions. So it's natural that there's a lot of funding that comes in there. Also, it's really nice to say that we're world cup champions. then there is crickets, which is actually the rugby, the T20 world cup is happening in the USA right now.

So there's a lot of budget in crickets and watching cricket in America is also weird for me because they also weren't known as one of the bigger cricket states. And then the third one is soccer or football. And that's also got a lot of budgets and a lot of money in South Africa. And unfortunately, it also comes with viewership. A lot of people prefer to watch those three sports and we'll watch them live and they will watch field hockey, unfortunately.

So it is one of those things where sport in South Africa will get more money when it's getting, when the viewership is providing the numbers to validate the funding off the back of it.

Rob Dwyer (35:40.73)
Yeah, I mean the same is true here in the US. I will just say I don't think most Americans pay much attention to rugby. However. Those in the Chiefs Kingdom of American football. My Super Bowl champion chiefs recently brought on Rees-Zammit and he is going to.

Learn American football and we'll see what happens. He's been a rugby superstar and I guess he's decided he's going to try his hand at something else and I'm excited to see what that happens. And if you haven't watched a rugby match. Man, those are so much fun to watch. I don't know what's happening. I don't understand all the rules, but I can tell you it's exciting to watch.

because sometimes when we talk about sports from an American to non -American, there are different names for things. And that happens even though we share a common language. A lot of South Africans speak English, even though there are multiple languages spoken in South Africa. This is true of England as well.

And then you find out, well, there are lots of terms, Australia, there are lots of terms that are unique to a particular area or country, even if you're speaking English. So I want to take some time to learn some interesting, but probably not offensive terms in South African that you think my listeners should know that they probably are not familiar with.

Bryce (37:35.434)
Okay, I'll keep the defensive ones off record because there's some stuff that South Africans love to teach non -South Africans to say, which I will not disclose on this, but I think something that is such a South African word is the word LEKKER. It's L -E -K -K -E -R. So you pronounce it LEKKER and that just means

great. It means good. It means, awesome. It's like, I'm having a lack of time. you such a lekker guy, that, that food tasted lekker. so that, that is such a South African word. We also say like a greeting. I actually said, like just before we recorded this podcast, I said, how's it. And then I need to stop myself and realize that that's a South African slang term for hello. It basically means.

How is it going? Like how are you doing? So there's that. There's Eish, E -I -S -H, which is like, it's a term of surprise. Like, like you'd see like a car accident happen in front of you, it'd be like Eish. Or like you'd get hurts playing American football and you'll be like Eish. And some...

Rob Dwyer (38:59.066)
Yeah.

Bryce (39:01.77)
One more thing that I'll give you, Rob, it's quite funny. South Africans say shame for anything. So like how the typical like word is is shame. It's like a feeling of like almost embarrassment to an extent. But we'll say like, will you shame is like, shame. Like we feel sorry for that person or shame as like a sarcastic shame, like, shame, you got hurt. He deserved it.

So it's, there's so many slang words that sometimes when I am traveling to the States to meet, to go to conferences, I actually have to check what I'm saying to understand that people actually understand what I'm saying.

Rob Dwyer (39:42.874)
Yeah, it's fascinating to me to hear regional and other country, the little unique sayings or phrases that are used and what they mean. And to anyone that has seen a demo of happy to and has seen one of our highlights.

that has to do with slang, I have to tell them that lacquer is a South African term because it's actually in my slang word bank in there, thanks to you. So thank you. I've introduced that term to quite a few people in the US and I always have to preface what that is because I know they'll have no idea.

Bryce (40:26.218)
I remember that.

Bryce (40:41.226)
Rob, you're actually such a legend. I feel like you could be an advocate for South Africa in your own right.

Rob Dwyer (40:49.978)
I first probably need to visit. So if you can if you can make that happen and also pay for it, that would be great. So we can talk after about making that happen. Bryce, we've talked about some incredible. Opportunities that are out there for companies to innovate to use innovative technology.

Bryce (41:02.442)
Thank you.

Rob Dwyer (41:18.714)
ways that they can approach their business and also some warnings about going too fast without knowing exactly what the problem is that you're trying to solve.

What kind of parting message do you have for companies as the because you just mentioned CCW, right? And it's not just CCW. It's any trade show that you go to. You are going to be bombarded by new technologies. Almost all of them are going to say AI on them somehow. What kind of parting advice do you have for companies?

as they're trying to navigate all of these options that are out there.

Bryce (42:08.522)
Before looking externally, look internally and see what's happening within your operation, within your own internal tech stack, within your process flow, your workflow automation, even your voice of the customer, your brand messaging, your general customer experience strategy. I think first look internally there, find out.

where you see inefficiencies, find out where you think you guys could be better, where you could save time, where you could possibly optimize in some way, shape or form, and then look externally for something to solve that problem. Because it's so easy to go to a massive trade show and see 200 different companies that are all selling to you, that are selling you dreams, that are selling you what, how they see the best use of their tool.

what they see as a best use for their tool may not be relevant to your business. So that's what I say. Look internally first, have a clear outcome in mind that you're going to be solving technology for and be strategic and, direct when you're going to these trade shows or when you're looking for technology to adopt. I think that's the best advice that I could give.

Rob Dwyer (43:29.178)
That's some lekker advice, Bryce. Lekker advice.

Bryce (43:32.298)
You, that delivery of that was impeccable.

Rob Dwyer (43:35.322)
Bryce Cressy.

Hey, you know you gotta practice right? You gotta learn something and you gotta practice the application so I'm working on it. Thank you so much for joining next in queue today. It's been a great conversation and I really appreciate you taking the time.

Bryce (43:45.514)
Yeah.

Bryce (43:57.962)
Rob, thank you so much. Really appreciate it.