#56 Why Emotional Intelligence is the Key to Customer Experience Success
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One thing that I think that's never going to be replaced by AI or by any automation, it's EQ. It's the emotional intelligence that we can actually bring to our customers. How you make people feel is what actually matters at the end of the day. AI is changing a lot, but when it comes to listening,

what is underneath someone's words, listening to the nonverbal cues, listening to someone's tone of voice and pairing that with the context that you have about them historically over time. That is something that I just don't think the AI will ever be able to solve for. And I don't think we need it to either.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Experts of Experience. I'm your host, Lauren Wood. Today, I am thrilled to have Danny Pozo with us. He is the vice president of

of the U.S. commercial market at Cisco. So we are going to explore how he is leading transformative customer experience strategies, driving value through lifecycle management, and leveraging global talent to meet the evolving customer needs.

Danny, so wonderful to have you on the show. Lauren, thank you so much. I appreciate the opportunity to have a conversation with you and share some of the experiences we had at Cisco and elsewhere. I'm really excited to have this opportunity to have this fun conversation.

Yeah, we're going to make it fun. I already just in the little bit of conversation I've had with Danny, he is full of life. So we're in for a good one. We'll want something to laugh about. I can guarantee you. Guaranteed. So Danny, you have been at Cisco per your LinkedIn for 24 years and you began your career at Cisco in sales and then transitioned to customer experience, which I love a sales to CX transition personally. Yeah.

I'd love to kick it off by asking you, what do you believe about the customer experience space that few people would agree with you on?

So, yeah, I think, thank you so much for kind of putting my age out there. Sorry about that. 25 years in Cisco, I like to say that I started really early, so it doesn't show how old I really am. But in all seriousness, I think that it's an evolution, right? It's like when we started building this technology many, many years ago, it's about what the customer needed from a solution perspective and how can we actually bring that solution to the customer, right?

As you evolve into that, what you want to make sure is that the customer is getting what they need to make sure that the business outcomes are realized. It's all value realization. So I've been in Cisco, as you said, 25 years and about 18 of those years have been in sales. So it was about how do I actually make sure that I position the right solution for our customers? And then I go to my next customer and say, how do I position the right solution for my customer? And then I go to the next one, right? Yeah.

In the case of CX, it's a different approach. It's a more consultative approach where you say, okay, what can I do to make sure the customers is realizing the full value of their investment? How can I help our customers understand that they're really building a model for their business based on our technology? And it's just a process that makes it really exciting because I always say in sales, you build and you win a transaction. Customer experience, you win a customer. Mm-hmm.

And it's all about that long-term relationship that you're developing over time. And as you said, value is key to that. But we also need to understand what is it that our customers actually value so that we can deliver it to them. And I think Cisco, I mean...

The little bit I know, just because Cisco is such a broad and deep company in terms of what you offer. I'd love to just take a moment to understand a little bit about your team. Who is your team made up of and what is their core goal for your customers?

So it's an interesting thing about how Synscope built our customer experience blueprint. When you talk about customer experience in general, you talk about adoption, right? It's about software adoption and realization and utilization of those licenses or software that the customer purchased. Because we are a hardware company mainly, and we are transforming into more of a software recurring business company. What we did at Customer Experience is we put a number of teams together to make sure that we look at the lifecycle throughout.

So the first team that I have, it's a business development organization. It's more of a consultative approach. So when you have a new customer, it's like, okay, what is the problem that you're trying to solve? So I have a team that is dedicated to listen to our customers to see what is the problem they're trying to solve and how is our technology matching to that problem they're solving, right? So once we get that blueprint, which is a long process to understand that,

What we do have is I have an engineer in our organization that says, okay, so how do we make sure that what you have, we're going to make it work, right? Implementation, typical advanced services, implementation, optimization of infrastructure, putting everything together so it works. And then we start building our adoption model, right? It's like, okay, we have three layers in our teams. One of them is more of a...

High customers, big customers that we have, or we have experience with executives that are dedicated to the specific customers, where they walk in throughout, where they are the face of Cisco after the purchase. But then, as you know, we have just in U.S. commercial, we have about 25,000 customers. When we look at programs and people that are dedicated to programs, so we can go to many customers with the same approach and processes.

The last thing, but not less important than any, is how do we work with our partners and the people that work with us so they can build similar practices. They can take that process to the rest of our customers. So we have four teams that are dedicated just to one mission. It's making sure that the customer falls in love with Cisco. Mm-hmm.

I love it. And I've heard you speak about your lifecycle model for customer experience. Obviously, when you're bringing customers on board or you're selling a Cisco service to a customer, you're expecting to be with them for a long time. This is a system that is going to be

integrated into their work deeply. And you need to really be thinking about not only what does sales and onboarding look like, but really what is this going to look like for many years to come? And so I'd love to understand a little bit about your approach to customer lifecycle management and

And then I have a whole bunch of questions about what it actually looks like. Yeah. So if you look at what we call in the past, what we call the racetrack, which right now we're migrating to a different model. But if you look, I like to use just a symbol of the racetrack because it's infinite, right? It's just continued. It never ends. So and that's how we have to make sure that we look at our customers because it's a relationship. As you said, our relationship is like anything in the world, right? It's just like people.

We have good days, we have some days that are not good. Our purpose, main purpose of customer experience is to be there in the days that are not good, to make sure that our customers understand the commitment that we have with them, for them.

When you talk about a long journey, you want to make sure that you're not building leading-edge technology, but you're building leading-edge technology that our customers are able to use in different segments, right? So there's all kinds of customers. We have very sophisticated customers that are probably very sophisticated in the technology they're using. But we also have very small customers that are looking at us to guide them and make sure that they follow some of the use cases that we have built.

So when you actually listen more than talking is when you have that able understanding to say, hey, how can I bring those solutions? How can I make sure that within the life cycle I'm helping my customer use at the right place and the right moment for them to make sure that they get in that investment? Mm hmm.

And I would assume proactivity is a piece of this, getting ahead of those bad days as much as possible. How do you do that? Well, I'll tell you what, the world is changing so much right now. The new buzzword is AI, right? Yeah, of course, of course. Artificial intelligence and preemptive and preemptive. Well, nothing happens the right way if you don't have the right insight and data in front of you to make sure that you are getting in front of the problems.

And now that we have these tools in AI that I go to reach the further aspect, you get more data, you get more use cases, maybe use cases that are sitting somewhere else in the world. And nobody was able to look at it before. But now you have access to those and you can actually see if this happens, what's the behavior is going to happen in the future. You can actually correct that ahead of time.

That's why AI is so important, right? There's just so much to talk about that I wouldn't even dare to talk about it because it's just so much that we can say, how can we get in front of the problems and behaviors that happened in the past and get that data in a matter of seconds and be able to preempt those problems?

The other thing is automation, right? The more that you automate and you get templates to make sure that you use the same use cases, the less issues that you may have because those have been proven to be successful already.

So those are the two things right now that are changing as far as being predictive rather than reactive. It's making sure that you use the tools based on the AI infrastructure that you can build and also the automation that is just seamless that continues to happen. And you'd be able to correct that quickly because when you automate something, if you find a problem, you can fix it in one place and automatically goes into the rest of the infrastructure to make sure that it fixes the next one. I mean, the data conversation when it comes to AI is...

When I think about a company like Cisco, it must be mind boggling because in order for AI to work correctly, it all depends on the data that we give it. And I'm curious to know, have you had to do any data overhauls in terms like to make sure that you had the right data to be able to predict, to be able to automate?

What was that process like? Or did you have all the right data in all the right places? Well, I mean, I couldn't say for myself because I wish I could be one of those guys that actually the data and be smart enough to actually look at that. But what I can tell you is that, um,

You know, the data that goes in is as good as the data that comes out, right? You got to make sure that you have the right data and to make sure we get the right solutions. In Cisco, what we do is to make sure that we're consistently looking at our data mining to make sure that the data that we have is the one that's going to be able to solve our problems. So our tag, for example, right? So we have tag on a number of issues that we have been able to fix throughout so many years.

Everything has been obviously put into a repository where we can actually go back and say, how do we do that? And how can we do it better? And we're constantly looking at that and making sure that it's as healthy as possible to make sure that now we can solve some of those problems by automation. But yes, I mean, we have teams in Cisco that are dedicated to make sure that we have the right data in place and that we make sure that our customers get the right decision based on the insights that we have.

I want to talk a little bit about customer engagement, just switching gears a little bit, although it's probably quite connected.

I just hear this from so many leaders, like how do we keep our customers engaged over time? How do we engage our customers in new things that we're rolling out that we think might be valuable for them? But I don't know, we're not the hot new thing anymore because we've been working with this customer for a long time. So how do we get in front of them? And how do you approach customer engagement and get your team to approach it effectively as well?

If you look at any podcast or YouTube or read books and everything, we just talk about data and insights for about five minutes, 10 minutes. Yeah. But they can never take the place of a person. In my mind, I think that how do you interpret that? How do you actually translate the value that that has into your customer values about having the conversation? It's about making sure the customer knows that there's somebody that cares at the other end. It's just not a machine, which is extremely effective and efficient, but

But it's also a person that's able to understand what are your KPIs, right? Because it's not only about the KPIs that we have internally as a company. It's about the KPIs that the customer is having to make sure that they're successful. And until today, as far as I know, maybe things have changed since like last hour.

Our AI doesn't understand all our customers' KPIs. It's about the person's having that conversation. How do you translate into that? So how do you keep the customer engagement? It's by building relationships, by understanding that there's a trust factor there that you can actually have that with your customers.

It's about having the right relationship at the right level, right? I mean, that's my job. My job is to make sure that I talk to the CX level that says, what's the value that Cisco is actually bringing to your company? And guess what? To you personally, right? Because you're the one who's driving your company. How is that actually building that for you as well?

So it's a combination of those two things. And then you look at alliances, right? So if Cisco is not the one that is actually leading that technology, what is that company that is leading technology? In the past, we have announced alliances with Apple, Nvidia, with other companies that are building other things that complement what Cisco is doing so they can give a holistic solution to their customers. Mm-hmm.

This relationship piece is just so incredibly important. And having been in customer facing roles my entire career, I know that deeply. And I feel like as we're talking about AI more and more, I've been to quite a few conferences lately, and it's the topic of conversation is AI, AI, AI. And that is great. And that is awesome. And there are efficiencies to be had and predictive actions that we can take. Great. But at the end of the day, if we don't have a relationship with our customers,

you don't have business to do with your customers. It's just so essential. And I'm curious, how have you, with your client facing teams, how do you instill that mentality of relationship development? What types of skills do you help your team learn? Or how do you make sure that it's not just you who's holding the relationship? Because that's a lot of relationships.

Too many relationships. How do you make sure that your team is also able to hold those relationships in an expert fashion? I tell you, first of all, I'm extremely lucky person to have the team that I have. I mean, it's just like incredible the people that level professionals that work for our organization. I always say that Cisco's asset, it's not so much

their hardware, their software, their services, because they are great. I mean, I work for the company and I think they're wonderful, but it's the people, how smart they are. It's the one that actually building that value to customers. One thing that I think that's never going to be replaced by AI or by any automation, it's EQ. It's the emotional intelligence that we can actually bring to our customers. And I read that the other day. It says everything can happen, but EQ will never be replaced by anything.

Because we're still our beings of feelings. Why are customers loyal to you? It's because how you make them feel, right? They'll always remember when you're there and they're in the place where you need them. They're not going to remember usually when you're making a sale, you know, because there's always negotiations that go back and forth. But they will remember the moment that their infrastructure is not working properly and you're there at the moment that they needed you and you'll be able to resolve the problems. And you call them back and say, are you okay? Yeah.

How you make people feel is what actually matters at the end of the day. So I think the tools are an extremely great complement to our EQ ability. So what I'll tell them to your question is, what do you tell your team is always understand that you are the number one asset for any company and for yourself.

Be empowered to have that conversation with your customers. Ask the questions that matters and bring the solutions that are going to help your customers achieve their goals. AI, in my opinion, and I mean, AI is changing a lot. It has blown my mind and how quickly it has advanced. But when it comes to listening, what is underneath someone's words,

Like listening to the nonverbal cues, listening to someone's tone of voice and pairing that with the context that you have about them historically over time. That is something that I just don't think the AI will ever be able to solve for. And I don't think we need it to either. If there's one thing that I think for me, at least the thing I hope the AI will enable us to do is take us off of our computers so we can spend more time actually listening and understanding one another, which is,

Based on what you're saying, that's really the superpower that we need to cultivate in order to build our businesses. Actually, I was having a conversation with a friend yesterday and we were having conversations like,

Are young people now going to be less smart because of AI is going to do everything for them and it's everything in their hand? My answer to us, I think it's the contrary, right? I think they're going to make us a lot smarter because you're still a human being. You still have a brain that's going to be able to absorb content, right? The more content that you absorb, the more you know. It's just going to be micro learnings that you're going to be able to have in the period of time that you're using it.

I mean, do you need to know everything about algebra? Like we like not you because you're like younger than I am. But but when I went to school, it's like I needed to know everything about that.

Probably not, but I'm going to be able to resolve a problem because I asked my phone a question, but that's going to be still stick in my mind. So maybe the next time I have, I'll ask a different question. To your point is, I think there are tools that are going to make us better and it's going to resolve so many more complex issues because just the ability to get the data, put it into one place, transform it and be able to build conclusions in such a fast way.

it's just going to be mind-boggling. But...

Nothing is going to replace the water cooler. Nothing is going to replace a nice coffee or a nice drink. And I tell you what, I'd be a little bit sentimental here. Nothing will replace a big hug. I totally agree. And even if it's an emotional hug, you know, like not physical, but just like knowing that someone is there for you, that feeling, like you said, is the thing that goes the furthest.

I want to talk a little bit about culture and team, which I think kind of pairs with everything that we're talking about here. You speak a lot. I've just been creeping on your LinkedIn and I can really tell that you care about the people that you work with. And I'd love to understand a little bit of your approach to how do you develop a strong culture and also a culture that is customer centric? Well, yeah.

If you ask me, that's probably the number one thing that a leader has to do. Yeah. Right. There's nothing more important than building a winning and inclusive culture in my mind. Right. That's where everything starts, especially when you work in a company that people have different jobs and different KPIs and different ways to be to be rewarded.

The first thing you got to do is listen to people. I have a practice in my team that I try to meet everyone at least once a year, everyone in my organization to have a five to 10 minute conversation. How many people is that? Well, about 200 plus, like something right now. So what I try to do is, and there's no agenda. I don't want to talk about, you know, how are you doing in your job?

I want to talk about you as an individual, as a person. What is it you're thinking about? How can I be useful for you? Because what happens is that when people have a title, immediately people start thinking that you're not reachable because of where you are. You can never forget where you come from when you were sitting in those shoes at some point, right? So I think you build culture by communication. That's the first thing you're going to do. And you as a leader have the responsibility to actually build that communication at all levels.

The second thing I think you have to do is how do you build a common mission? All right. Because commonality brings belonging. You belong into something that is more special. So you bring a mission to say we as a theater, and that's how we call it here at Cisco. We as a theater have a mission and we've got to be ambitious. We've got to dream. So my dream and my challenge to my team when I took the role of U.S. Commercial was we are going to be the best theater in the world.

Right. Out of all the theaters in the world, we're Cisco. We're going to be the best ones. And there's absolutely no reason why we couldn't be the best theater in the world.

And people are sort of belonging into something becoming special. Now, how do you actually manage that down to make sure that people do their specific job to do that? It's just by having those conversations. Another thing that I think we don't do enough as leaders is having conversations outside of the business, right? Most of the leaders in every single call was just about what is a business? You know, what are the KPIs? How do we measure this? What are our success rates? What are the things that we've got to do better? Right?

We have to sometimes talk about life. And I bring that into, into our teams. I said, you know, we bring guests over and we talk about everything, mental health. We talk about, you know, if it's, if it's the month of African-American, how does an African-American feel incorporation is Cisco? How can African-American actually lead an organization and, and be, be one of the leaders or the, or, or, or the month of pride or Hispanic. It just happened that I am Hispanic. So,

It's just having those conversations that are world conversations, right? So what that taught me is people are starting having common grounds that has nothing to do with the business. And then that translates into productivity. So it's about the culture of becoming one team with one mission that makes people with the opportunity to have one result. An AI agent your customers actually enjoy talking to?

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I think this goes back to the relationship conversation as well. When you have relationships internally within your organization, people do better work. They're more excited to come to work every day. They are more engaged in the work that they're doing. They feel like they have community there and they're actually more efficient as well. Like the studies show if we have trust within an organization and between our clients,

our clients, we're able to move faster because we don't have to do as many checks and balances and questions if this is the right thing or not. If we trust someone, we can take what they say at face value and move on instead of

you know, double check everything. And talk about relationships. Last thing about this is it's how do you as an organization be able to provide back to others, right? To people who are less fortunate than you are. We have some of those chapters as well to make sure that we as a team come together and that becomes fun because every time you do something for something else, guess what follows? One or two things or a nice lunch or a good happy hour.

So every time you do something and then you go on and get together with the team and then you become more of a friendly organization rather than just an organization that's actually building something. And it works both ways. And it works really good in both ways. What are some of your favorite ways to connect your teams?

Human to human. I'll tell you one of the things I fail. Is that fair? Can I tell you one of the things I fail? Of course. We love that. Here we go. I try to start a reading club. Boy, that didn't go well. No one's got time for that these days.

People want to have a good time. People want to have a really good laugh. So what we've tried is just to just, you know, open to anybody. Just have like an hour once a month. They say, hey, come into an hour. Let's just have a conversation. Some people showed up. Some people didn't show up. It was not. And it's just about, you know, building that connection.

that external, you know, when you're remote. Another thing that I do often is when I go into our offices, it's, uh, making sure that our team gets together. Food always brings people together. We had other aspects, uh, things in our, in our offices of, you know, dance classes and things like that, that are fun. Um,

But we also, as I mentioned earlier, we have very serious conversations that actually bring people together because you never know what others are going through. Right. You never know what else. And just having that conversation that sometimes is difficult, you know, even brings you closer. But I try to combine both of them. Right. It's just like I like to have a really good time. I always think that having a meeting without a laugh is not a good meeting. I

I totally agree. Well, you're, you're full of the laughs too. So I, and I also think that's such a great skill to have is, I mean, for any leader, for anyone, just like, how can we have conversations that we can also make lighthearted? How can we bring the positivity even into difficult conversations? We never want to put lipstick on a pig and pretend that it's something that it's not, but you know, it's supposed to be fun, this life thing at the end of the day. So how can we make it that way?

And we always going to have that problem to resolve. We all understand that there's a problem we need to resolve because that's the reason we're here, right? The reason we're here is because an opportunity to resolve a problem. Solution technology is built because of that. Most technology is built because there's a problem that we want to resolve because we want to do A, create more revenue or B, create more efficiencies. So that's always going to be there. As long as you do it in a way that you're excited about it, it makes your life a lot easier. And it makes you, people want to work with you more.

It's just how it goes. So let's talk a little bit about value. I know we touched on this earlier, but as you're really, you know, looking for those opportunities to provide value, tell us a little bit about your approach to do that with your clients and then how you bring it back into the organization.

So to me, value is a very simple word. It's something that you actually understand that is going to do something for you. Right. That's what value is. Right. So if it's doing something for you that is going to benefit you in some way, you obviously can see that as something that you want to continue doing. Having those conversations with our customers as migration and transition happens, as a transformation, the digital transformation is always going to be there.

Transformation is not about a day that starts and a day that it ends. It's a constant thing. It's a constant change that's going to happen. So your body is going to change as the transformation changes. Mm-hmm.

So what you have to make sure is like, how do I listen to the customer's problem is? How do I bring that into the company to make sure the company understand how the market is actually reacting to the problems we're having? And how are the companies building things to resolve those issues and create value? So now it's about speed, right? You want to be first. If you're in a company, any company, you want to be the first one to be there. You want to have the first opportunity to grab that market, whatever you want, whatever you do.

So technology allows you to do that. So the faster you can actually bring those solutions, the more valuable you become. Or also you become valuable if you're actually making sure that you are cost efficient for the customer. That doesn't mean that you're the less expensive company. That just means that you're the company that allows your customer to be more efficient, that allows them to do other things.

And the third thing is how you create a brand for your customers and yourself to make sure you recognize in a very positive way and create that value that people are willing to spend more money to invest more in you because they know you're going to be there. So those are the three things that we always try to say. It's like, what is really valuable for our customers? How do you make sure we have a brand that we're very proud of, but we also build a brand that they'd be proud of working with our technology. Mm hmm.

Yeah. And I think when it comes to value creation, like you said, this is kind of the, you had said something earlier that I wanted to come back to around what are the KPIs that your client cares about? And we know there is always one, which is money. Are they getting the best bang for their buck? Right. We, and we need to, in every single situation, that will always be something your customer cares about. So how can we speak to that?

And show them that and build trust with them too, so that they understand that, yes, we are going to give you the best option. And I think that's one of the great things about CX and customer experience, because the journey allows you to be in all of those steps, right? It's about the onboarding. It's about the implementation, the optimization, the adoption, utilization, and eventually the renewal of that platform, right?

right? Or that software or that EA. If a customer is now renewing it's because he didn't see value or when you sold them originally. Our biggest KPI is our renewal rate. It's how can we get that to the right place because that means we did the right

thing. We build the right solution, we sell the right solution to our customers, and we'll be able to help them throughout. So that's one of the things that we measure very carefully is to make sure that our renewal rate is high as it can be. And yes, if they are renewing, guess what? They are making money or creating efficiencies with our software. Mm-hmm.

I wanted to talk a little bit more about KPIs. You said renewal is your core KPI, which I think is a great KPI because that is the ultimate proof that your customers found value in what it is that you're providing. What other KPIs are you tracking to make sure that your team is both providing a great customer experience as well as being efficient in doing so?

the first thing we got to measure even before renewals is NPS, which is the quarter score, right? It's how our customer's perception is, is we'll ask as a company overall, not just as a service company, but also as a product company, as a software company and everything else. So that's the first thing we always got to make sure. The second thing is customer satisfaction, right? It's,

And they're different, right? Because one of them is more holistic. The other one was more specific in some things. Those are the two that we really make sure that we'll look into. Like any company, we want to make sure that we continue to grow. We continue to make sure that we bring the best solutions in place. We want to make sure that we react to things that we didn't build

The way that our customers are looking at it. And I think since we do that very well, it's making sure that we pivot very quickly to make sure that the value is always there. So those are some of the KPIs we have. And, you know, I'm not going to lie to you. We want to make sure that we have a healthy business, right? We want to make sure that our business investments are there from the company and our, you know, and our business is always as healthy as it can be.

So those are some of the things that we measure. Myself, I mean, I give myself some specific APIs of having conversations with our customers at an executive level to

To make sure that, as we talked earlier, we listen to them and we say, okay, are we doing the right thing? Are we going the right path? Is Cisco the company that's going to probably achieve what you want to achieve? If the answer is yes, how do we do it better? If the answer is no, how are we going to be the ones that we can do it? So that's an API that I try to actually maintain on my own and my team as well. Mm-hmm.

Has efficiency been a big topic of conversation for you? I feel like as I speak to CX leaders, many people just with the economic climate of today, we're thinking about how do we make our teams more productive? How do we do more with less time? Is that something that you've been focused on? I think in general, yes.

I think generally every company wants to be efficient because having efficiency means that if you grow, you make more money. Your margins are better, right? Of course. But I think every company is at a different stage. Some companies want to be more efficient because they're maybe a little more mature company that had a lot of stronger competition, right? Some companies are hyper growth. They want to go faster to a different place. And what they want to do is how do you help them move?

Mm-hmm.

Our goal is to simplify technology. Our goal is to make sure that the technology is simple enough that with the executives things of their business, not something that they have to do in the business that we manage. And we in the services side of the business and CX, we do have engineer. We have all types of professionals that are working with our customers to make sure that that side of the house is given to either us or our partners that we there concentrate on our business. Mm-hmm.

Tell me a little bit about your partner relationships. I can imagine that those are very key relationships in order for you to deliver...

on your customer promise. Yeah. Yeah. Well, like I told you earlier, at US Commercial, we have over 20 plus thousand customers, 5,000 of them probably the ones that we actually look in between our customers, our partners and ourselves. Only so much we can grow. We cannot hire people to look at our customers. So we really depend on our partners to make sure that they are driving that solution with us.

So if you tell me some of the relationships that I have to build the most is with our partners because we're able to scale our business. Scalability is the most important piece for us in this theater. There are other things in Cisco that are more focused on top customers that are more custom made because they have a big, large service provider, big, larger enterprises. In our case, in U.S. commercial, we have to make sure that we have a very strong relationship with our partners and we'll be able to scale as much as we can.

Do you have any examples or stories of strategies you've put in place to deepen those partner relationships and make sure that the partners are delivering in the way that you expect them to?

Well, we have a whole partner organization that is dedicated to them, right? So we do have a, not in my, I have a small team that dedicates to partners, but we have Cisco as a very large partner organization that are obviously working with them, enabling them pretty much are enabling the partners to understand where we are, how do we actually get the same tools that we have to get the data we have and build the same processes that we have in Cisco that what we have in the same conversation with our customers.

Obviously, our partners work with us because Cisco brings a whole mega portfolio. I think you mentioned earlier, we're not one portfolio, one item that we sell. Our portfolio is just so broad. And I think that our partners, some of them specialize in some specifics. Some of them have a holistic view of our portfolio. So it all depends on that. I think one of the great things orchestrating

How do we actually get the right partner to the right customer, the right partners to the right customers to make sure that the whole solution is provided to them? We have a whole organization, partners organization in Cisco that is dedicated to that. I can imagine it's very complex having so many different partners and so many different products that you offer. Yeah, one always. Yeah, for sure. So I'd love to talk a little bit about the future.

Wow. And get your thoughts on what is to come in customer experience. What do you expect are going to be some of the major trends or things that CX leaders are going to be facing in the months and years to come? I think we always go back to the AI conversation, right? And we always go back because it's an unknown completely. And I think it's...

It's out of nowhere we're going. It just can go so far from where we are today that actually can help us actually resolve some of the problems that we may have today. But we talked earlier, right? The future is always going to bring somebody that's building that relationship as well. There are just so many new companies that we're going to see in the world that is going to bring different solutions to it. I was looking at some and I'm not going to mention the name of them today because I didn't get paid to mention the name of it.

But there are just so many devices that are coming in the future that are just mind-blowing, right? That we just don't know about today that is actually going to help us in

in so many ways, just the medical side of it, it's just incredible. So I think that you're going to find companies that are very technology companies that are specialized in various things that are more specific, that holistic today, the medical field, you're going to find partners that are dedicated to how do you actually match technology with the medical needs.

Today, we may just have broad opportunities. We're talking about a data center. Data center is all dedicated. It could be dedicated to anything. Maybe later on, because of all of this AI data that we need, we have companies specifically dedicated to segments that we don't know about today. So I think the future is just, I wish I had a little ball that tells me exactly where we're going.

But it's exciting to see that we're in the middle of a completely revolution. Right. So, you know, you went from mainframes computers to computers, to laptops, to the iPhone, to the iWatch. And now we don't know where we're going because things are just exponential to the next level. Yeah. Are there any tools or products that you're really excited about that you've started using yourself?

I think this collaboration aspect is great. I mean, we sell a lot of, we have collaboration solutions at Cisco that I think it helps us so much. Make sure that just right now we have a conversation. If we were to have a conversation on WebEx space right now, there is an AI that is actually summarized in absolutely everything we're saying. So maybe you don't have to go back to the recording and listen to write notes. Everything's already summarized to you and actually given to you in a way that is easy to digest. You can go back and actually look at your meetings and, and,

it's just so interesting. I have a board right here that I can actually write a whiteboard and have that conversation with somebody in China and it'd be completely seamless like we are today. So I think collaboration is very, very exciting and it's becoming more

Before it was for people that were in the technology space. Today, it's going to be for everyone, right? Everyone's going to have that opportunity. So I think that's exciting. Those tools are very exciting. And that really lets us build relationships. It gives us more attention to put onto one another instead of being in our computers. I mean, this is like old news now, but I'm still just like, oh, thank God of having AI transcripts.

I can talk to someone and not have to think about how am I writing this down? It's like, I can be present with someone. And I think there's just so much opportunity for us. I'm a terrible speller, so it helps me a lot. I'm right there with you.

So, Danny, I have two last questions for you that we ask all of our guests. The first is, I'd love to hear about a recent experience that you had with a brand or a company or a product or service that left you impressed. What was that experience? All right. So I'm going to brag a little bit here. Is that OK? Go for it. Please. So for some reason, American Airlines made me a concierge key.

And I have no idea why and how, but I'm not going to complain. I'm not going to raise my hand and say you guys made a mistake. Yeah. You did the right thing, American Airlines. I'm staying quiet until they find out. Oh,

And I just think that, you know, how they approach their premium customers in a way that they personalize it in a way that they know your name, they call you. And that can be translated into anything, right? You can go to a store and you can say to, you know, for some reason, you find that you're an important person to that customer. That makes you feel good.

Right. It makes you feel like you belong there. So I think that, you know, I use that as one experience that I have, but you can take it anywhere. Right. Starbucks puts your name in the cup and it feels like, Danny, your coffee's ready. It's not like who has a latte. Right. It feels personalized that it's

Again, you know, how do we move? How do we actually take advantage of the technology without losing the personalization of humanity? So I think companies actually letting you have that opportunity to to be that person. You know, it's it's a great experience. Yeah. OK, so bringing up the Starbucks thing, I was thinking about this yesterday. I just have to comment on it.

One, it is so genius to put the customer's name on the cup. It's like my barista knows my name. Genius personalization experience that is analog and it just, you know, it will run the test of time. Yeah. But then there's also the barista putting the wrong name on the cup and how that gets posted on social media all the time. Like I see friends do it all the time where they're like, someone thinks my name is this. Ha ha.

Do you think that they do that on purpose so that people will post about it on Instagram? I think they love messing up my name. I mean, that's why when you asked me the first time, how should I call you Danilo, Danny? I said, let's go with Danny because he always pronounces it in a different way. So guess what happens? They call me if I put my real name in, they call me something else. And by the time I go get my coffee, it's cold.

Again, because I didn't hear the name Danilo. They call me Danilo, Danilo or something else. So, yeah, you're absolutely right. I think some of us do it in the wrong and just on purpose. Now, there's the other factor, too, that sometimes we give another funny name so we can be called, you know, out loud. I've seen kids do it. Oh, totally. Yeah.

Completely. Well, I still think it's a genius concept. And hey, we're talking about it here today. And so Danny, my last question for you is, what is one piece of advice that every customer experience leader should hear? I think it's listen. I think that the most important piece is just to make sure that

The first thing you got to do is like sit with your customers and ask open questions. You know, what is important to you? Why in my case is why is Cisco a company that you are doing business with? How can I make it better? You know, let the customer have that conversation and listen to you. The second thing is take risk. You know, we are not doing anything.

Brain surgery. Sometimes we take ourselves way too serious. We can actually do things, innovate, try new stuff and be successful. And even if you are not successful, you can go back and try it again.

So it's always have that opportunity to take some risk and have the ability to say, hey, you know what? I didn't do it right. You know, we're human beings. We make mistakes. We don't always have to come with a perfect solution all the time. The 80-20 rule is very important, right? Because if not, if you think you're perfect, and I come from an engineering company, we in our companies are engineers. We want to get everything perfect before it actually happens.

And sometimes what that allows, what doesn't allow us to do is to be the first one of things that are innovative. So what I would tell anybody in CX is give it a shot. Try to listen to your customer and make sure you have those open conversations. And again, go back and take risks.

Listen, test and learn. That's such great advice. Well, Danny, thank you so much for coming on the show. For those of you who are listening, if you enjoyed this episode, please follow us, like us and give us a comment. Tell us what you think. It's been so wonderful to have you on, Danny, and I'm sure we'll be in touch soon. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. I had a really good time. Let's do it again sometime soon. Sounds great.