Ep. 121 AI Overload and the Mind-Blowing Ways AI Elevates CX- with Ken Westermann
Welcome to the podcast designed to fuel your success in selling technology solutions. I’m your host, Josh Lupresto SVP of Sales Engineering at Telarus and this is Next Level BizTech.
Hey everybody, welcome back. Today we’re talking about customer experience 2.0, and more importantly, the hot topic, how AI is reshaping the CX landscape. Today on With Us, we’ve got the wonderful, the amazing, Mr. Ken Westermann leader for partner solution engineering at Zoom. Ken, welcome on, man.
Hey, Josh, thanks for having me. Glad to be here.
Ken, give us the down and dirty in your background. How the heck did you get here? Where did you start out? You know, were you folding beach towels and then you said tech is where I want to be? Or did you know what you wanted to do? How’d you get here?
Yeah, you know, it’s kind of funny. It wasn’t really beach towels, but I was going to graduate school at University of Wisconsin. And in 2006, this small little startup company called Thinking Phone Networks approached me and said, Hey, would you ever consider being an SE project manager, you know, PSMS kind of guy, they were looking for a hybrid person. I happened to know Stico Kenos and Derek, you know, fairly well or this little well. And so I thought, you know what, let’s get my masters and head out to Boston. And so I ended up there is the number six employee, which, you know, back in 06 sip was still a pretty non common conversation to have with people. They liked it sitting in their closet and this whole cloud thing wasn’t really what they were used to. You know, 13 years I was there, grew from being that hybrid person all the way through when I left as the left as the channel leader. So I got to create the channel program for them. I got to run marketing and se and ps and, you know, phenomenal way to see something grow. But, you know, like a lot of things, you know, like Kenny Rogers said, you got no one to hold them and no one to fold them right and so 2019 came and, you know, some of the old timers have left and so I thought it was time to take a break. Took about two months off and then zoom came knocking at my door and said, Hey, we’re looking for someone we are going to launch our channel program at channel partners in 2020 that of course didn’t happen because the pandemic. But would you want to come over and, you know, help build out a channel se program and so I’ve said sure why not I’ve only been in startup companies before but you know zoom to me had only been public for a long time. I’ve only been public for a year and the way it was pitched and the way it actually went down is it’s still very startup mentality and so I took a chance and I just had my four year anniversary in April. So a month and a half ago and it has been one hell of a roller coaster. I love it. Congrats. Yeah, time flies. Holy cow. I can’t wait for years. Definitely does.
Okay, so let’s talk about I think you know zoom obviously has incredible brand recognition and I’m sure people’s first default is the collaboration platform but we’re going to get into some of the really cool crazy AI stuff here in a little bit but just walk us through a little bit about you know your role right now at zoom and really just some of these core products and how you see them standing out from the competition.
Yeah, you know, our role of zoom is I envisioned it with our leadership was really to kind of engage empower and encourage our partners to learn more about zoom and position zoom in other ways. When I started, you know, funny enough, I think there were a total of three products at zoom when I started and and of course we’re ubiquitous with meetings right the pandemic truly helped us to get that name recognition and phenomenal for us.
But, but really zoom is a lot more than just that right we have so much more as a platform that that’s really out there today for partners to leverage, you know if you hadn’t heard, you know zoom has a phone platform and you know we have, I think we announced on earnings that we saw like 7.8 million seats sold or something that affect, you know, so really great opportunity there. But really it is that platform play you know zoom has prided itself over the last my four years of being here and in it, the dating really quickly and trying to drive that so for my team it’s, it’s really about how do we keep getting out to the partner community and what we’re doing next and kind of where it’s going and kind of where we’re trying to shape where we envision shaping the UCCC, you know, field for years to come. I love it. Yeah, you guys are doing a phenomenal job from an investing perspective right I think that’s great. That’s great for everybody to see that you guys are, you know, with technology changing so fast you’re changing right there with it and adding all these great products of which we’ll get into here in a little bit so we’d love to see that the channel loves that for sure.
Let’s talk about let’s go lessons learned here so so if you flashback 1015 however long you want to flashback here. What’s a, what’s a really hard lesson that you’ve learned or something that you picked up from a mentor just something you can share right well, can we, how can we summarize that.
You know, I would say the biggest thing I’ve ever learned in my life is no matter what your title is at a job, you’re still an employee.
You know for me, Stephen Derek. You know look they were co founders very successful guys who had done this was I think they’re for startup company together thinking phones. But, you know, it never, it never surprised me to see Stephen Derek sitting in the support pen or getting on a sales call or doing whatever it took to ensure that everyone was successful around them. You know their mantra was, we’re all here together, like we’re doing this together and that’s the way it’s going to be.
I loved it right I mean I’d be on calls with Steve on you on a sales call and, and then all of a sudden you know we’d be overseas and in a minute later he’d leave that meeting and hop on a support call and then start triaging that support call for someone back in the States because that’s what he believed and his idea was, I need to get your big rocks out of the way so that you can be successful as an employee and I really tried to take that with me ever since right I would never ask someone on my team to do something that I wasn’t comfortable doing myself or felt that I could do myself. And, and it’s really weird to say but like Eric you want is kind of the same way right as a leader. He’s all about ensuring that you know he gets the job done for us which I think is absolutely phenomenal and but for me that was a really big lesson learned from Stephen Derek and something that I’ve now you know 19 years after I started with them it’s been part of how I look to interact with my work environment but also at home and I’m on nonprofit boards kind of the same way I believe in that you know fully. Love it. It’s a good one. All right. Let’s talk about some CX challenges right so we’re talking we’re talking about CX 2.0 AI and kind of how that’s that’s shaping everything so so you guys are right dead smack in the middle of this so question being how has zoom been so quick to productize AI in this CX realm talk to us about the work you guys are doing there.
You know I think the quick to productize right me look AI has been around for a long time but it really came into fruition what 18 months ago give or take right when you know chat GPT kind of launched and came out there with with zoom has really been thinking about where AI and where technology is going to go for a very long time. You think about you know even the advent of zoom right some 13 years ago 12 years ago Eric was on that cutting edge of making video communication simple and easy to leverage and so when it comes to AI it’s kind of the same mindset right for him it’s how do we take our current products and then wrap AI around them so that it makes it easier to leverage them and you can be more productive in your environment so he’s been thinking about that for quite some time and
you know if you think about it right AI has been kind of woven into what we’ve been doing for a while and as a cloud company it makes it even easier right because you can easily you know weave that into your product line but for us that that platform now is just you know fully interlaced with what AI is and and you can spend kind of there the whole time. So let’s talk about that let’s go deeper I think I mean we could probably talk about 20 of them but we’re gonna for the sake of time pick on three here so we’ve seen a few recent products come out let’s go line by line here so so there’s some new cool stuff in there flow charts mind maps talk to me about that and kind of AI companion and how that all works right a lot of people might not even know that you’ve got this capability yet.
Yeah, so, you know, just thinking about like the flow charts and the mind maps right so zoom launch.
We call it whiteboards and we launched whiteboards, I don’t know maybe a year, maybe a year and a half ago, and how he I works there right. Look, we all get stumped trying to create something whenever that something happens to be. And, you know, just yesterday I was at an event and I, and in kind of real time I said, how do I improve my golf swing in the whiteboard and so it literally created this 17 step process for me to create or sorry to improve my golf swing.
You know, some of the steps I was like, Oh, you know, I didn’t even think about how that would be helped me to improve it. And it just that quickly helped to create that, whether you want to look in a sticky note form or a racy chart or a swan analysis or a flow chart, whatever it is, it’s there to kind of help just kick start where you think you want something to go and so for us it, you know, it’s kind of a fun demo yesterday, but, but really it’s every day. How do you use it? My team and I constantly are trying to think about, you know, how do you help a customer create a flow chart for a call flow for this type of a queue or this type of environment.
Look, if you’re stumped, it’s a really quick, easy way to just go in there and just literally type in create flow chart for X generate and within 510 seconds it’s there for you and then like with all AI, you have to teach it and train it, right? So is this right or wrong, et cetera, and it gets smarter over time, but it was a, you know, it’s a pretty fun tool to leverage and use and you can get kind of create it with it. Yeah, I love that. I mean, if I look at, I look at kind of the work we all do right on a daily basis, we’re talking with partners, we’re talking with customers, we’re trying to solve business challenges and there is just sometimes it’s just, just drawing it out helps. When I like about this feature is I like that the whiteboard gets people to use flow charts and mind maps more and the flow charts and mind maps get people to want to use and realize, I didn’t even really play with the virtual whiteboard before, right? So they draw each other in, but I like that kind of breaking down barriers of, you know, Hey, have you guys thought about it like this solving the problem such as this? And so I think the cells itself, right? You ask it one question and somebody’s gonna go, my gosh, I didn’t, I didn’t know I needed that, but now I can’t, I have to have that, right?
Yeah, I mean, it’s, I mean, it’s all about that collaboration. I mean, it’s the ability to, you know, be able to collaborate with myself and then you can come on an hour later and do something to it. And then, you know, a teammate in Japan can work on it, you know, 10 hours after that, and it’s still all available to you. And just a great way to share content and your ideas and really keep things going, you know, going in a truly hybrid global environment. All right, let’s go. Let’s go number two. You guys have got something out there called WorkVivo. So we saw something about Meta discontinuing their whole workplace engagement platform and saying we’re going with WorkVivo as the preferred partner here. So that’s huge news, right? When somebody makes an announcement like that. But break us down, break it down for us. What is WorkVivo? You know, I’ll give you the marketing side first, right? WorkVivo is the digital heartbeat of any company. And that, you know, that is very marketing driven. But really, that is the truth, right? The pandemic sent everybody home, right? So four years ago, we were all forced to work from home. And then what, a year, two years ago, companies said, no, we’re going to come back to the office. People revolted. And it’s probably, you know, if we get to 50% back in the office, I’m sure that’s probably going to be a big number, but maybe achievable. But WorkVivo really is that ability to kind of ensure that people have this great employee experience via a platform. And to me, that’s really what it is, right? We use chat every day, and we use all these other tools. But WorkVivo is a chance for me to connect with people who I might not connect with on a regular basis. And that can be anywhere from our CEO all the way down to someone on my team or on someone else’s team. And for me, that’s really how I use it every day. I log in, I log into it in the morning to see what’s going on. Are there any, you know, global announcements that Zoom is pushing down? We’re doing this called Tour to Zoom Bike Race in June to raise money. And so that’s a big part of our WorkVivo now. And so it’s, you know, these teams that are all together chatting with each other and, you know, fun things like that. And that makes me feel connected to something. It makes me feel connected that, you know, Eric Yuon recommended a book about two months ago. And in his little chat, people were commenting, “Oh, I bought the book.” And every time someone made a comment, he would at them and comment back to them, you know, which to me is also very personable. And it’s a great chance just to, I think, have that connection. As I think about, like, where the future is, right? My mom retired a couple years ago, but my niece is now in the workforce at 23. That Gen Z is coming in and they really want that connection to a company, right? That’s their, yeah, salary is important, but that connection to feeling like they belong is really what they’re looking for. And WorkVivo to me is a way to kind of create that belonging within a company that’s not just this chat that’s, you know, “Hey Josh, how’s it going? Great. Have a good day.” It’s an actual true heartbeat of what’s happening in your company that people can feel truly connected to it. Yeah, I like that. You know, you bring up a good point. After you’ve been at an organization for a number of years, you kind of, you just understand the full ecosystem, right? And you know who you need to reach out to, you know, you feel as connected as you need to feel connected. But you’re empathetic to those kind of coming on board of going, “Oh my gosh, like there’s 10 years of history here that this brand new person that didn’t even know.” And a brand new person that didn’t even come from this space, it’s got to be really hard for them to feel connected in some instances. So I love that. It just breaks down walls. I think that’s huge. Awesome product there.
Yeah, it’s really, really interesting. And I think it’s going to, you know, help, especially with the hybrid environment, right? I mean, we’re advocating for hybrid still, and this does help to keep people connected to something they’re probably never going to see, right? Or maybe see once every, you know, every six months, right, in office. And it’s a great way to have that feeling. All right, let’s talk about, this one blew my mind, right? So we just we just spent a good clip of time with your folks and revenue accelerator. So talk to me about what is revenue accelerator and how is this? How does this service, how does it help sales teams transform all these customer conversations into revenue?
Yeah, you know, back in the day, as a leader or manager, you got to maybe audit or listen to three to 5% of the phone calls that were happening from your Salesforce. And that was a lot. And you were able to garner some information and data from that. Well, with our revenue accelerator, you know, all of these calls now are being, you know, they’re being transcribed and listened to. And so now that ability is there for the managers to go in and understand, you know, how great Ken did at closing jobs, or inversely, maybe we didn’t do a good job closing you. And so what can we glean from that? And then on the surface is just kind of the beginning, it gives you things like, you know, what I don’t like looking at sometimes is like my talk speed, you know, I from the Midwest tend to talk really quickly. Well, it kind of helps me understand, okay, I want to be in the 110 to 130 words a minute frame. That’s really good. How many filler words am I using to complete a sentence? My longest spiel? Do I have empathy when I’m listening and talking to you? All of those things are there for you as a, you know, user I see to understand, but also as a supervisor, I can go in and say, you know, hey, Ken, let’s maybe talk about not using so many filler words or something to that effect. But it also gives you insight into keywords, right? Maybe I want to know during a call that you and I had, how many times you brought up a competitor. So I can then go in and look to see how many times you said competitor a or competitor B or C. And maybe that’s why we didn’t close the deal. Maybe that was part of it. We need to remind our picture, something to that effect effect. But it also is it takes out the guesswork, right? We’re, you’re able to leverage within your CRM to say, hey, you know, I mean, if you and I are both on a call, and as an engineer and a salesperson, we may have totally different views, all that call went, I may think, man, I’m going to close this deal tomorrow, and it’s going to be great. And you may be like, Ken, there is no way I’m God’s green, that’s going to close. And, but this takes the guesswork out, right? Because now I can go in and, and, you know, we can as a ZRA tool with your CRM, we actually can bump that from, say, a phase two to a phase three or something like that within your med pick process, or back with three to a two because we think it really went bad.
And then, you know, your, your boss can then go in and look to see, right? So there’s, it takes that ambiguity and guesswork out of it from a reporting standpoint, and it really helps to, you know, drive, I think, better, just accountability within that sales process. And inversely, it could be the same thing for a support person, right? Maybe you’re looking to, you know, take support calls, this also helps out with that standpoint, too. So I think it can use on both sides. Mostly it’s that revenue accelerator kind of concept for sales, but it could be used inversely for inbound calls to, you know, close, you know, some kind of a support issue down as well. Yeah, what a couple thoughts here, and then maybe I want to add to this or hit you with another question on this one that you made me think of. I hope what everybody sees here is this, this CX offering that you guys have is just, it’s constantly filling out, filling out, filling out. And you guys are being so smart, too, about, you know, you’re not, you’re not just saying, ah, we got AI, like, we’re adding it for the sake of AI. It’s truly productized. You’ve got, you’ve got quantifiable value props, you’ve got quantifiable ROI.
I love that, that use case, I think revenue accelerator is going to be huge. And the thought you made me, you made me bring up is, okay, if I’m if I’m a partner listening to this, and I want to go talk to my customers, my prospects about this, is there a good question or two that you know, you like to draw out to find out, okay, maybe, maybe this is a fit, maybe I bring zoom in here. You know, what do you ask to kind of draw some of those out based on, you know, the last couple products we talked about revenue accelerator, whatever you want to tap that on? I mean, for me, I mean, look, being on on the SE side of things, I want to know more about like peeling that onion back, right? So for me, I’m looking at, you know, what are you doing today? And what do the outcomes you expect, you know, like, what do you expect that to happen, right? Are you trying to grow your business? So for me, it’s more about, you know, why are you coming to zoom or coming to any vendor in the first place, right? Like, what is your problem? And what are you trying to solve for that problem? If I think about work vivo, for instance, okay, well, maybe the problem and the questions are around, you know, your employee retention and your employee training, are you constantly having this cycle of employees come and go from your business? Well, that could be part of it, right? How do you get more empathy with them? Well, do you have any tools internally that help grow that community in that camaraderie? And if the answer is no, then we’re Vivo, you know, with zoom could be a great option for you. revenue accelerators, you know, look, how are you? How are you working and engaging and closing your business, right? Are you? Are you trying to close half of your calls? Well, if so, great, what tools do you have to get there? Are you not closing half of your calls? Okay, how do we improve that? You know, how do we start to see? And get everybody to be equitable. So for me, it’s about trying to peel back that onion little by little and, and really, you know, look, zoom is this massive platform, we have lots of services and products you can sell. I just want to help you solve one or two problems today. And then let’s land and expand and kind of move from there. But for me, it’s about trying to understand what is the problem? And how do I try to help drive a better outcome for you for that problem? And hopefully, you know, like a lot of our customers, right, they come in asking for zoom, fall, phone, but they leave with our workplace or they leave with phone and rooms and something else. So they’ve left with three or four products versus just the one they came asking for. I like it. Let’s talk about a surprising win. Any any moments where you kind of walked into this and thought, Okay, I’m gonna be able to solve this with one product. And you just blew the customer’s mind and said, Okay, we’re, we, we delivered a lot more than we planned on before we went into this call. You know, it’s, it’s very easy to say, but like, I hear all the time from partners and customers, oh my gosh, I never realized that zoom can do x, y, z, that zoom even had, you know, fill in the blank for a product, right? Um, I will say though, and I was actually just at the major league baseball headquarters about a month and a half ago, and, and their story to me still really resonates and sticks out for me, right? They, they, a partner brought them in, you know, brought them over to zoom, we were talking, they really had, you know, one thing, right? They wanted to make one thing better. And that was the fan experience or baseball, but they didn’t really know what that meant. And so for them, it was like, well, how do we enhance the fan experience? Can we enhance it by giving them a sneak peek into the bullpen or into the replays? And, and so that was kind of why they came and let’s just figure out this meetings, like, how can we leverage your video technology to do that one thing? And, you know, over the course of multiple meetings, over a six month window, it went from, Hey, we can not only improve the fan experience with this, even though the peak into the bullpen and replays, but also we can increase the fan experience by the way we sell tickets, the way we engage with them, how we’re leveraging our contact center, which they’re rolling out all of these things that they again, didn’t realize, right? But now it allows them to go deeper in that fan experience and make sure that the fans, you know, are, are getting the best, you know, bang for their dollar, right? And so they’re sitting in the ballpark and they bought tickets through some service or they’re sitting at their home watching replay while eating that hot dog. You know, that that is really, well, that’s important, majorly baseball. And so for me, that, that story just, you know, it just resonates so well because there are so many customers that, again, it’s that, Hey, I want to do one thing, but then that one thing kind of expands out when they see all that zoom can do and offer. Love it. And then I have to ask then, what is your MLB team? For those that want to know, uh, you know, I grew up in Chicago and live in Chicago and I am a Cubs fan. Um, although I will say it’s 15 years in Boston, I did. And I still actually have a Red Sox hat over here. Uh, we had tickets to the games as a, as a company. And so I used to go to a lot of the games, but I’ve been a Cubs fan my whole entire life. My mom brought me up on them. And yeah, it has been my, that that’s my team. Here you go. I love it too. And, you know, fellow, fellow Midwesterners, uh, you know, growing up in that neck of the woods, you do get a little spoiled from a sports perspective. Uh, you know, growing up in the, the Jordan era, I mean the Cubs, the Cubs victories came later, but we all waited and we all, we knew the time would come. Uh, but man, there’s just so much good stuff around there. Uh, great plate. Great place to grow up from a sports Mecca perspective. Love that. And you can’t go wrong. Yeah. It was the past couple of years. I’ve been that great, but I have Boston to those in between years. And so I was changing ships there and, uh, but yeah, back in the year, I’m rooting for the Cubs every, every day still. So, all right. Good enough. Uh, let’s, you know, you guys see, uh, you see a lot of data, you talk to a lot of customers. What are, what do you see? Is there any kind of common threads you see customers complaining about? Like, ah, we’re all trying to solve this problem or that problem. Anything there just for, for kind of partners to be aware of, of common things you guys are hearing? Uh, you know, I think for us, it really, you know, what, what we hear a lot of is I have so many products and applications and there’s so much training that has to go on and there’s just so much confusion around, you know, how do we get this new employee to understand all eight tools that we have or 10 or 15. Right. I think I heard, I think maybe you guys even said a time. Yeah. Which is like seven tools per company. So, you know, a lot of tools to use, how do we get them all to combine? I mean, look, zoom has that same problem, right? We have a lot of different sales tools as well. The good thing though, is that zoom embeds into all of those tools. And so, you know, we have that ability to either have them embedded into us or vice versa with our open API’s, um, you know, so that, you know, that helps to alleviate some of the pain. But for us, those are the biggest customer complaints that we hear every day is just, man, how do we solve this big problem and get people to be more efficient in what they’re doing? And, you know, look, I’m, I’m not naive to say zoom is the one stop shop for everything. I realize it’s not going to be the case. But if we can get you from eight or 10 applications, down to three or four and zoom is at the middle of that, you know, I’m pretty excited. And I think your employee base would be pretty excited as well. I agree. Yeah. Less, less to manage. It goes, it goes along with the, you know, IT folks constantly being pushed to manage more with less or the same resources, those kinds of things. So I love, love that. It’s a good, good, good point you bring up there.
Okay, so I want to get deep into a case study here. So walk me through an example. I know you guys have seen a lot of complex customers. Tell me what the environment was, what are some of the tools they had? What was the business problem? And then what did that tech stack look like after that? Kind of get me into the weeds on that.
Sure. So we signed a company called gain site about a year, not even a year ago, a global company of about 1200 people. And, you know, they came to zoom because they were trying to solve this multi media, but for meetings application problem where they had, you know, five different AI tools that were summarizing all these conversations globally. And, and they were really concerned about security, but also just training people which tools to use, where was it going? And, and so, but like with any good partnership, our partner and our AI came in together and said, Okay, well, we can solve that. But what else do you guys have that you’re looking for? And, you know, again, they had some competitors that were out there for a chat tool for a phone tool, you know, I think they had about eight, nine, you know, like you said, right, the average is seven, eight, nine, they had that eight, nine, ten.
You know, applications. And so, you know, coming to zoom, it was let’s solve one need with zoom was able to solve multiple needs for them, right, being a multinational company, having now one phone system to support them along with one meeting system to support them with the AI behind it really gave them that flexibility for their employees. And then it became more of a let’s talk about the roadmap, where are we going to go? Where are we taking things? And so for them that sparked a lot of conversation around features and products, again, things that they didn’t know that we offered that they were thinking, Oh, hey, maybe we could leave this type of application and go somewhere else, especially knowing it’s all baked into the platform. So for them, you know, that that tech stack, they wanted to add something to it. And then instead, we actually took things away from it and made it more consolidated for them, and giving them, you know, I think personally, you know, a much better application and much better tools for their employees to use on a global basis. I love it. There’s good common themes here. If you know, for anybody that’s, let’s listen to all of these, the the thought is, people are using a lot of tools. Business problems just seem to as you keep peeling the onion back to your point. We find that they have more and more tools, more and more needs. And there’s this, how do I manage and maintain all of that? So if you, if you take all of that together, and you look at kind of the advice for partners, as we wrap up final couple questions here, if I’m if I’m going to get deeper into some of these conversations, or I just want to expand my knowledge of what you guys have that’s possible, where do you steer me to that? Where do I go? What do I learn more? What’s the best place for me to kind of garner some knowledge on this?
I mean, you know, again, as these very, very tactile people, for me, it’s about using the tool, right? I can read everything I possibly want to read somewhere, but I like playing with it and being able to touch it, feel it and see it. Zoom does offer a NFR program for our partner community. So, you know, whether you are working, you know, with, with talented people, you know, on your team, Josh, or somewhere else, you know, connect with one of my SEs or one of our cams, and we can get you into the program to learn more, you know, our partner portal has a vast array of trainings and documentation and things like that, too. And I wouldn’t say don’t start there. But, but again, as someone who’s technical, I much prefer to play with it and get in the weeds and see what I can break and fix and know it that way. Because I’m going to be probably more apt to be able to answer questions around where technology is, how it’s going to, you know, solve those problems that that partner or customer may be having and trying to solve. Good, good. Love that reference. Love the back end that you guys have and love the NFR program. Can’t double down enough. Get your hands, get your hands wet, get in there and play. Great, great advice there. All right, Ken, final thoughts. So you guys are right at the epicenter of CX. You’re staring down the barrel of the future. Where do you see this thing headed for the future of CX, the customer experience? What kind of innovations are you most looking forward to here?
I mean, you know, my crystal ball is a bit hazy, I suppose I haven’t won a lottery yet. So it’s, you know, but, but, but, you know, I would honestly say like, look, CX, I heard someone say this about a month ago, right? We’re kind of in that third wave of what CX is or where it’s going now, right? That first wave was sitting in your closet, inbound calls only, and you weren’t doing much with it. The next one is this, you know, proper CX where you’ve got technologies in the cloud starting to blend things together. And I think honestly, the that total experience or that TX I’ve heard people call it, really is going to be what starts to bridge a lot of these technologies to gather, right? That UC, CC, CRM, but it really makes it this seamless, personalized experience for the employee, the customer, but also the brand. I mean, look, we all serve, you know, I serve a customer, but that customer is serving a brand or they are a brand. And so really, it’s about, you know, where does that brand want to go and grow? And for that brand, it’s about increasing loyalty, increasing customer satisfaction, increasing better sales. Those are all really important things. And I think, you know, each journey is really personable. And so, you know, it’s how do you want to connect with that brand? And where do you want to take that? You know, the omni channel concept is there today. And it’s, you know, five, six, seven different areas from an omni channel standpoint. What’s the next thing that gets added to the omni channel? You know, I certainly don’t know. But I think as a vendor, you need to be able to have that ability to have the right tools in place, right? So as a trusted advisor, as a partner, I think you need to have your eyes open to the fact that, again, I have to pick on my poor mom. You know, my mom is that person wants to pick up the phone and call someone to get an answer. I would much rather send you a text or chat you on, you know, on your URL that way, because my time is more valuable than my mom’s time. So, you know, I think those those journeys are there. But, you know, for me, it really is just having that ability to craft that total experience. And, and again, you know, I couldn’t tell you, right, like where it’s going to end up. But for me, that’s what makes it really exciting because nobody was talking about AI 18 months ago. And now that’s the big rave. You know, who knows what those next two letters or four letters or 10 letters are going to be, but really, I think Zoom is on that cutting edge. And I think, you know, the people that see that and realize that are the ones that are going to be, they’re going to be the most effective, I think, when it comes to solving their their customers’ needs in the future. I love it. All right, man. A lot of questions, a lot of good stuff in there, but I hope everybody gathered here is a lot of great products, a lot of things you might not know that Zoom did, but how how much investment, how you guys are expanding phenomenal job on productizing. Love what you’re doing in AI. So, Ken, thanks for coming on, man. Great stuff. Thanks for having me, Josh. I appreciate it. Good luck out there, partners. All right, everybody, that wraps us up for today. As always, don’t forget, wherever you’re tuning in from Spotify, Apple Music, go like, go subscribe, you’ll get these, they drop every Wednesday. And that wraps us up for today. So, big shout out Ken Westermann leader for partner solution engineering at Zoom, customer experience 2.0, under host Josh Lupresto SVP of sales engineering at Telarus