Is faster always better in customer experience?

About the show

Hosted by Nikola Mrkšić, Co-founder and CEO of PolyAI, the Deep Learning with PolyAI podcast is the window into AI for CX leaders. We cut through hype in customer experience, support, and contact center AI — helping decision-makers understand what really matters.

Summary

Speed has always been a priority in customer service. But in the age of AI, a new question is emerging: is faster always better?

In this episode of Deep Learning with PolyAI, Michelle Schroeder sits down with Nate Brown, Head of Education and Enablement at Metric Sherpa and cofounder of CX Accelerator, to explore how customer experience leaders should think about automation, efficiency, and human connection in the AI era.

Nate introduces a simple framework that helps clarify where AI should focus: make the quick parts quick, and make the slow parts meaningful.

Many service interactions include repetitive tasks that customers simply want resolved as fast as possible. AI can dramatically reduce friction in these moments. But once those quick problems are handled, businesses have an opportunity to focus on something much bigger — helping customers accomplish what they actually came to do.

In the conversation, Michelle and Nate discuss:

• Why CX leaders often feel like they’re climbing a mountain when trying to modernize customer experience
• How customer expectations and priorities are constantly shifting
• Why automation should focus on removing friction rather than replacing meaningful interactions
• How to measure what really matters in CX beyond traditional metrics like handle time
• What customers currently trust AI to do — and where they still prefer human support
• Why collaboration across teams is essential for successful AI adoption

They also explore how customers are increasingly turning to AI-powered search, Reddit, and YouTube to solve problems themselves, forcing brands to rethink how they stay present in those conversations.

The big takeaway: automation should make it easier for customers to move quickly through routine tasks, but the most valuable moments in customer experience still come from guidance, understanding, and connection.

Key Takeaways

Transcript

[00:00:47] Michelle Schroeder: Hi, everyone, and welcome to deep learning with PolyAI. We're here to help CX leaders get a window into the latest and greatest developments in AI. Before we get started though, just a quick reminder to subscribe, give us a like on YouTube, and leave a five star rating on your favorite podcast app. Alright. Let's get into it. Today, I am super excited to be joined by Nate Brown, principal at Metric Sherpa and cofounder at CX Accelerator. Nate works hands on with businesses implementing AI and customer service, everything from helping them assess capabilities and design implementation to knowledge curation and change management. He's also deeply involved in research on how customers actually interact with AI. So I'm really excited to talk to him today about what sounds good in theory and what actually works in practice. Welcome, Nate.

[00:01:37] Nate Brown: Thank you so much for having me, Michelle. Let me fix one thing on that intro. Okay. Justin Robbins is our principal of Metric Sherpa. He's our guy, definitely a visionary in the space, and he's where I get a lot of my information from. So I'll be I'll be quoting him in this podcast quite a bit.
[00:01:52] Michelle Schroeder: Love it. Love it. So he's like he's on in spirit.
[00:01:56] Nate Brown: Indeed.
[00:01:56] Michelle Schroeder: Totally. But super excited to be chatting with you. So I guess we can start by helping our audience get to know you a little bit better. So if you could tell us a little bit about your work at Metric Sherpa and what brings businesses to you and what they're hoping to achieve.
[00:02:10] Nate Brown: Yeah. So I've come out through the space, started well, I started selling postage meters on the streets of Jacksonville, Florida and realized I wasn't very good at selling those. So went to a customer service role and absolutely loved that, Michelle, and just thrived in that environment of of the simplicity of help all these people out there that that need assistance with this adult learning software.
[00:02:33] Michelle Schroeder: Yeah.
[00:02:33] Nate Brown: Talking like a 120 tickets a day just and at the end of the day, just hanging up your headset and feeling so good about it and eventually took ownership of that team as as the leader in customer service inside of that safety science organization, and we had new software coming into that department as we acquired new new organization, new technology. And it became a really fun ride just in terms of learning and growing and evolving. And at one point, Michelle, I realized, you know what? We're taking tickets, and we gotta be thinking bigger about these relationships that we have with our customers, and we gotta figure out why these tickets keep coming upstream. And and the word I was searching for was customer experience and switching things into a more proactive mentality. And so that that began a journey of research and and new mentorship and excitement and eventually got into a a customer experience role inside of a division of of that safety science company and was able to learn a ton doing that and then became a consultant in the space and worked in a a BPO environment for a little while, and then ultimately now as an analyst with Metric Sherpa. And we have the amazing honor of helping organizations throughout the entire CX ecosystem to improve their customer interactions. And you can really think of us as an insight studio. We do the research. We're creating really compelling dynamic content. We're helping to elevate the conversation around CX everywhere that we can.
[00:03:58] Michelle Schroeder: Love that. And I just wanna focus on the word Sherpa for a minute just because it's, you know, in in the in the the company that you work for, but also it sounds like you started your career Sherpa ing through through tickets customers directly. And now you've sort of, you know, have this different hill of customer experience, you know, that you're Sherpa ing in businesses up. We just had Sarah Wright from ResMed on our show, and she talked about AI for patient experience on the health care side being her Everest to climb. So between that and you directly acting as a Sherpa, it's safe to say that CX leaders are kind of facing this uphill climb. Why do you think it is that good CX feels so hard?
[00:04:41] Nate Brown: Yeah. And, you know, we we use that word very intentionally. If if you think about the Sherpa people and how they are to be able to thrive in incredibly harsh conditions, It's remarkable. And and so, you know, that that attribute is so cool. And and then, you know, of course, the guidance element is is is exciting as well. But, yeah, I mean, it does feel like a bit of a mountain climb at times. And, yeah, I I think probably the most frustrating thing about climbing Mount Everest is that everything just looks white all the time. I can't imagine trying to climb that mountain on a cloudy day. Like, that would just be infuriating. Am I in the sky? Am I on the ground? What's even going on? What what is up? And and that's what it absolutely can feel like as a customer experience leader. Because if you think about how much customer psychology has changed, It's why I mean, I'll give you the simple example of, like, how much the sustainability conversation was going on. And, you know, that was the thing. Carbon footprint and all and and, like, you know, if you think about the zapping of resources with with some AI engine, like, that conversation is still very active, but, like, the sustainability conversation has really taken a back seat It does. To to price considerations
[00:05:55] Michelle Schroeder: Absolutely.
[00:05:56] Nate Brown: For many consumers if you look at that research. So, like, what is really important to consumers continues to evolve in these significant ways, and we've gotta stay really, really connected to that. We talk about personalization all the time, but good luck being able to really solve that mystery in terms of exactly what type of personalization is gonna result in real value and loyalty and, whoo, you gotta have such a good voice of customer engine. And you you just gotta be on the tip of the sword in terms of how you can continue to reduce friction and add value and ultimately proactively guide these customers to their definition of success.
[00:06:37] Michelle Schroeder: Yeah. I I could not agree more. Like, you talked about, you know, your your organization being an insight studio. Um, but one of the things, I guess, to extend the metaphor, one of the things that's sort of introducing more altitude sickness and more confusion, like like thinning the oxygen, I guess, is that there's so much data. You don't really know what to prioritize. There's so much AI. There's so much noise. There's so much sort of speed of the technology that I think a lot of clients, a lot of our clients even, are struggling to sort of parse through what they should focus on, what they should prioritize, and what is actually just noise. And I guess with that, you have this this phrase that I really love. And for our listeners and viewers, I don't know if you can see in the background of Nate's room, but there are guitars all over the wall or instruments all over the wall. And I knew when I read this quote that you must be a musician, but I would love to hear what inspired it. You've said, make the quick parts quick and the slow parts meaningful. Where did that idea come from, and how does it inform what you do?
[00:07:38] Nate Brown: Yeah. Yeah. I've been talking to so many CX leaders that are wrestling in this tension of trying to figure out what to automate and why and how to ultimately really achieve the objective, which is is customer value and loyalty and engagement. And and these two things don't have to be mutually exclusive, but it is a little bit of a balancing act to figure out what are the places in the customer journey where it makes sense to really focus in on automation and efficiency, and what are the other places where it really makes sense to value connection and slow parts, slow time, conversation, proactive guidance in the sense of just understanding where it is that you're trying to ultimately go. And so I think about these customer service interactions, and there there's parts of them, Michelle, where, historically, we have had a lot of nonvalue time that were baked into these interactions, where customer service workers were fumbling for information, where they were taking a resolution cycle that should not need to be something that they were ultimately involved with at all. I think of, like I call it the the case of the broken cake plate. So, you know, I'll use I'll use Crate and Barrel as as an example here. I mean, their their mission is to make beautiful living spaces for moments that matter. That's a cool mission.
[00:08:59] Michelle Schroeder: Mhmm.
[00:08:59] Nate Brown: But let's say, you know, I've I've got this party that I'm trying to host. I'm trying to figure out how to host this party, and I I ordered this cake plate. I'm all excited for it. The cake plate arrives, and it's broken. And so what do I do? I I'm either calling, and I get the automated agent. I'm going through the web portal, and I I'm I'm into the same engine, you know, the same great automation engine. And, ultimately, the same thing is going on regardless of which channel I'm coming in from. It's saying, hey. What's the problem? Cake the cake plate is broken. I see it. I see the order. Do you want the same item again? Is it going to the same address? Yes and yes. Boom. The problem of the cake plate is resolved. But but does that is that it? Is that the customer service interaction? No. Not not in the case of Crate and Barrel. It's just beginning because what matters to this customer is their ability to make a beautiful living space for moments that matter. So then the human gets to get involved. The cake plate is resolved. We got that out of the way. Now let's solve the mission problem. Let let's help guide this person to making a the most elegant party they've ever hosted and and making them feel empowered and equipped to do that with the right knowledge and items and different things. So it's not about the cake plate. That's a quick part quick. And make those so quick. You know, automate the right things, but then give people the opportunity to get very missional and very focused in their ability to defend the brand promise.
[00:10:23] Michelle Schroeder: Absolutely. It it almost extends perfectly into the world of automation where you said it. Really, the the quick parts, making those quick, the lower level tasks that are extremely repeatable and automatable, those are the things that that, you know, a business like ours should be focused on to free up those moments, free up those people, you know, to intercept and participate in those moments that matter and to build those connections and build those relationships that are going to help their businesses grow. And that's not to say that automation can't handle the complex or the emotional. We know it can. We do it every single day. But making those quick parts quick is a big part of the table stakes, uh, you know, automation, like, base level stuff that we can do. So I really love that as a frame.
[00:11:08] Nate Brown: I view, you know, these great these great capabilities that we now have as an assister in our ability to defend the brand promise. It's not you know, quick part's quick. You're right. That's where it begins. But then it's also finding and identifying these moments that matter and being being able to intervene in ways that we never ever could have. We would have never even seen it in terms of this critical moment in the customer's journey. So that's what excites me is getting to be so much more involved and generate so much more value as part of these customer interactions because of the data that we have and and the capabilities to pull things together and make recommendations, and it's just awesome.
[00:11:52] Michelle Schroeder: Yeah. I couldn't agree more. And the faster that that you know, the the quick part goes, you know, the more information you have, the more you can be that inside studio, the more you can slow down and say, where, you know, where is the business sensing that it needs to go? What is beyond the cape plate? You know, how do we actually make some decisions about, you know, what we learned from all the quick stuff, all the base level stuff that will make us better as business? And that's been I think, it sounds like for you too, it's been one of the most surprising outcomes of the work that we do every day is that sometimes these, you know, little decisions add up to something so much bigger and so much more surprising and and complex than you might have thought just by doing you know, just by automating a where is my order call, for example. How do you recommend that CX leaders actually measure what's meaningful in those slower moments beyond traditional metrics like, you know, average handle time or satisfaction?
[00:12:46] Nate Brown: I'm glad you asked that, Michelle. Yeah. I mean, if we if we think about value in two different ways, value in terms of efficiency, which which is it is a form of value. It's honoring my time. It's great, and it's reducing cost to the business. Like, it is a form of value. So, I mean, the the greatest question to me, is it easy to do business with x? And I just I just love that question, that ease of business concept and and score that you can identify different parts in the journey just asking, is it easy to do business with us? And and that idea of simplicity, if you look, Michelle, at the simplicity index and how powerful that simplicity concept is when it comes to competitive differentiation, it's it's amazing how much organizations who are easy to do business with are outpacing the the s and p 500. So, I mean, the the mathematical value is there when it comes to the efficiency play. And the way that we measure that is some form of that concept of ease of business or customer effort score if we're really focused on a customer service interaction that has a resolution element. But I do love that ease of business concept because it transcends the cake plate, and it's bigger. Yeah. It's it's not about did I resolve the problem? No. It's about are you guiding me well? Are you helping me to accomplish my mission? Are you a good partner for me? And in the area of efficiency, the way that I can ask that is, is it easy to work with me?
[00:14:16] Michelle Schroeder: Totally.
[00:14:16] Nate Brown: But then if we flip over to the other part of the value chain, which is that more strategic, more connection based value, I do love sentiment, and I have been able to successfully correlate the concept of sentiment to customer lifetime value, to share a wallet, and and other true financially driving metrics that help the business to be able to say, when we serve our customers well, we earn the right to grow this business.
[00:14:44] Michelle Schroeder: Yes.
[00:14:44] Nate Brown: And and that's ultimately the correlation that has to happen somewhere in this life cycle. So it it's that idea of of sentiment is is one. You know, another thing is just like, I I'm trying to create if if we're looking at the customer service center, I'm trying to create this balanced scorecard that represents these different ideas of customer engagement.
[00:15:08] Michelle Schroeder: Mhmm.
[00:15:08] Nate Brown: And then I can take that scorecard and say, alright. This interaction helped to engage the customer in this way. We guided them in this way. We had the customer saying this. We had the customer using this part of the tool. We had the customer navigating this more effectively. Now let's look at that customer's behavior and see if we're accomplishing the real objective, loyalty, engagement, share of wallet. So it's it's taking a really intelligent balanced scorecard and then correlating that to these actual behaviors and outcomes.
[00:15:41] Michelle Schroeder: I I couldn't agree more, and there's something so exciting about what you said and how you said it. You know, this this idea that, you know, the contact center forever has been a cost center. It's been a problem processor. It's been, you know, a place where issues kind of come in and hopefully get resolved and and go out and go away and don't always feed into the progress of a business. But the second you're able to connect that customer effort, lower the friction, get their problem solved, keep the sentiment high. The second you're able to connect that bucket of value to lifetime value, to revenue, it's an unlock unlike anything else. You talked earlier about the voice of the customer. What better place to have it? And in the place where they're using it to tell you exactly what's wrong, exactly what they want from you, exactly what they need. That translation, I think, is going to be the big revolution that happens not just in conversational AI and our space, but in customer service and customer support. The moment we get really good at doing what it sounds like you've been able to do, I think there's going to be a complete revolution of how customer experience is seen. And so I'd love to, like, use that to kinda transition into how customers are interacting with AI and what you're seeing. You've been researching this. You've done recent work with Sprinklr. At a high level, what are customers telling us? What do they want AI to do well?
[00:17:04] Nate Brown: Yeah. So there there's certainly some some cases in which customers don't trust AI yet to to handle certain sensitive types of things. And it's not as simple as this, but I ultimately oftentimes find myself saying, if it deals with your money, your family, or your health, then you have to be really careful. And and people want that additional level of assurance of a person who has real ownership and real stake in the conversation to be able to point you in the right direction. Uh, whether it's as simple as having a throat to choke or or in a more positive term, somebody that you can trust, a person that that is giving you real guidance on something that's extremely important in your life. You know, a lot of people are still are still seeking that in these different moments, But, you know, we are absolutely seeing the adoption rates increase, and trust is being earned by these automation engines doing an excellent job of very quickly and effectively fulfilling customer inquiries and providing information. I I think, Michelle, one of the things that's happening that's so interesting to me, if we look at how customers are using AI to resolve problems, they're not going back to the brand anymore. Mhmm. Look how many customers are going to Reddit and to YouTube and using AI enabled search to search for the answer to a problem, and this, it's the data is being pulled in from all these different sources. You're getting a step by step resolution capability. You're getting a video on exactly how to resolve it. You're getting different statements and guidance from different customers who have recently had the same problem in this neat little package. It it's a knowledge manager's dream in terms of being able to guide somebody to success. So, I mean, it's it's cool. Like, the the customer has never been so empowered to resolve their own issues.
[00:19:05] Michelle Schroeder: It's But It's absolutely true.
[00:19:07] Nate Brown: Yeah. But the brand has to fight to be in the conversation now. They they have to be present in these environments like YouTube and Reddit and providing really good guidance and really good content, creating their own community channels where people can come and learn from other customers because they really want to be able to do that and not just have the black and white resolution. They wanna fill in the grays with real customer commentary and create creativity from other customers to go beyond issue resolution to what? Achieving the actual goal. Absolutely. Goal, you know, beyond beyond the problem that they need to solve. And and that's that's what can happen in these third party environments that we we've gotta be very activated inside of.
[00:19:56] Michelle Schroeder: Absolutely. And I think, like, the the call to action for brands here is to own as much as that as they can to not let themselves get edged out of the conversation. Like, why do customers bypass the brand? Generally, it's because they can't get through to them, and it's much more efficient for them to look themselves and look at user generated content on all of those those platforms that you mentioned. If agents are able to consolidate a lot of this information and get you that answer faster, you know, make it so that you're not having to parse through this all yourself. And and something that we always say here, it's faster to just say what you need than it is to translate from your head to your fingertips and type in, you know, whether you're talking to chat PPT or not. Yeah. Oftentimes, it is just faster to say, hey, Siri. I need you to do this, or call into the brand and get the answer if the brand is doing it right. And and it's all back to your customer effort, uh, conversation. How can you lower that? How can you make it so that it's easier to get to what you actually need and also keeps the sentiment high? So I guess, uh, I have one last question for you. If you could ban one common mistake that contact centers or customer support centers or CX leaders are making when they're rolling out AI, what would it be?
[00:21:11] Nate Brown: Yeah. You know, I think that it's it's getting really territorial with it. And and that ultimately is is a bold in your foot in terms of being able to walk forward down this path. When when contact center leaders and CX leaders try to own their piece of the AI puzzle instead of really effectively collaborating inside the organization when it comes to agentic technologies and integrations and these agents working together because that's the only time when the real outcomes can be produced, when you get to go beyond a a chatbot to which which obviously, when we look at what is the social media network for agents right now that's so famous right now that's anyway, I I won't try to go there. But, yeah, it's transcending the the chatbot to to true agentic capability where action can be taken. You don't get to do that inside your customer service box.
[00:22:07] Michelle Schroeder: Very true.
[00:22:07] Nate Brown: You got to think bigger, and and so, you know, Mark Schafer keeps talking about how the most human company wins. And then I think I think that's a cool sentiment, but I think he's even kinda moved on from that. You know, now seeing the real power of these capabilities, I now suggest that the most collaborative companies are going to win. The ones that open up the ecosystem that that find the best and most powerful integration capabilities, uh, they're they're the ones where the technology is gonna get to show off and produce magic on behalf of customers that's going to keep them coming back.
[00:22:41] Michelle Schroeder: I absolutely love that answer and couldn't agree more. I think that we've been seeing for the last three years where we've also seen rapid adoption of AI that there's no clear owner within the organization. You know, sometimes it's the technology business or or or part of the the business. Sometimes it's AI or innovation leaders. Sometimes it's CX. Sometimes it's, you know, finance and operations, you know, people who are really looking for ways to kind of reduce the cost. But to your point, collaboration is going to be the thing that makes this work, is going to be the thing that gets this to be its best final form. And I could not agree more. It's very possible they'll never be a single owner for this kind of thing, and maybe that's how it should be. Love this. Thank you so much for joining us. This has been such a thoughtful and interesting conversation. I really appreciate how you've reframed AI and service, not just around speed, but around meaning. We'd love to have you on again. This has been a blast. Thanks, Nate.
[00:23:37] Nate Brown: You're a great host, Michelle. Appreciate you, and appreciate everything you all are doing. Have a great day.
[00:23:41] Michelle Schroeder: Take care. And I would love to encourage anyone who enjoyed this to please review and subscribe.