The Customer Success Playbook

Customer Success Playbook S3 E26 - David Singer - Automation Balancing Act

• Kevin Metzger • Season 3 • Episode 26

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Summary: In this episode of the Customer Success Playbook podcast, Kevin Metzger and Roman Trebon sit down with David Singer, Global VP at Variant, to tackle a question that’s top of mind for every organization: How do you balance automation and human connection? From chatbots to IVRs, David shares invaluable insights into how businesses can strategically integrate automation without losing the personal touch that customers crave. Plus, we dive into the metrics that determine whether automation is working—or backfiring. And of course, we get personal, discussing superheroes, travel dreams, and a must-read Jackie Chan biography. Tune in for an engaging conversation that’s as fun as it is informative!

Detailed Analysis: Automation is revolutionizing customer interactions, but there’s a fine line between efficiency and alienation. David Singer highlights the evolving customer threshold for automation, explaining how expectations shift over time and why businesses must adapt continuously. He shares real-world examples, including a banking case study, demonstrating how a data-driven approach can prevent over-automation.

The key takeaways? First, know your customers—automation preferences vary based on demographic and experiential data. Second, automation isn’t an all-or-nothing game; hybrid approaches often work best. Finally, measurement is everything: businesses should track CX scores, deflection rates, and containment metrics to ensure automation enhances, rather than hinders, the customer experience.

Beyond business, David gives us a peek into his personality, from his love of Captain America and Spider-Man to his aspirations of visiting Italy and Greece. Whether you’re a CX professional or just someone who loves a good superhero analogy, this episode is packed with value.

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Kevin Metzger:

Hello and welcome back to the Customer Success Playbook podcast. I'm your host, Kevin Metzker, here with my co-host Roman Trevon. It's Wednesday and we're joined again by Dave Singer Global VP at Variant Roman. Should we start with the tough ones? Yeah, this is

Roam Trebon:

our one big question, but we got Dave with us. so Dave, thanks again for joining the show. we want to ask a couple of questions for our audience to get to know you a little better. We talked on Monday about you having the captain America shield, right? So my question is who is your favorite superhero? Do you have one?

David Singer:

I have two, but I can never pick between. So, I always try to give more than I'm asked for. So I'll give you two for the price of one. one is Captain America. It's because I, you know, I'm a Canadian, right? I moved down to the U. S. about, 12 years ago. Born and raised in Canada, and I find, Captain America is the most Canadian superhero. Always polite, always there to help, always, you know, doing the right thing just because. And I think, you know, if you remember in the Marvel movies, the, giving the team grief if they, swear at the wrong time? Nothing, nothing more Canadian than that. So I think somebody, you know, always doing the right thing and using the right tools is great. my second is Spider Man because he is highly powered than most people give him credit for when you read, any of the comic books, but he's still a street level hero. He's not up, fighting the galactic threats. He's there to make sure his neighborhood is okay. And I think it's the joy he brings to it. And the fact that he's bringing all that power just to keep his neighborhood safe. I think it's amazing.

Roam Trebon:

I love it. Or, side question, are you going to watch Brave New World, the new, uh, Captain America movie that's in theaters now?

David Singer:

Absolutely. I've already, booked tickets for next week to take my son.

Kevin Metzger:

Yeah, we're going this week sometime too with my, me and my son. Nice. They're on break this week, so we're Got to try and find some time. What's a book that you might recommend?

David Singer:

I like to look at books that are not business books for the relate. So I think one that is fascinating is, Jackie Chan, my life in action. Awesome. So it's the story of how he went from, growing up in the Peking opera company. Training school and move through and how did he and his classmates, become, the cadre at the time of international, coming through stars that wasn't a thing. And I think, you know, looking at it, the dedication to your craft, the staying with the people you came up with, the expanding what you love and bring it to the world. it's just a great story. And it's Jackie Chan, so I don't want to go wrong. It's Jackie Chan, baby, I love it.

Roam Trebon:

Okay, last one before we get into the one big question. One place that you'd like to travel that you've never been. Ooh,

David Singer:

that's a good one. I'd like to go to Italy and Greece. I've been a lot of places around the world and i've never hit that part of europe and I want to go there for a long time. My wife's been my daughter's been i've never gone

Roam Trebon:

may have heard they've been around for a while.

Kevin Metzger:

I managed to get to Italy in college, as part of a summer trip. I, well, did a study abroad, but then got to travel, ended up sleeping on the big beaches in Cinque Terre and diving into the Mediterranean. It was once in a lifetime experience. It was incredible. That's

David Singer:

amazing. After, uh, after college, I did a walkabout in Australia, New Zealand and Fiji for four months.

Kevin Metzger:

And so it was

David Singer:

just, see where the winds take you. It's a fantastic way to, you know, I love

Kevin Metzger:

it.

Roam Trebon:

I love it. All

Kevin Metzger:

right. So, so have you already get to the big question? It's a big question, right? Big question of the week. How can organizations effectively balance and efficiently benefit of automation, automated chatbots and IVs with the need for genuine human connections? So kind of running back, you know, if we're looking at the automation piece, how's it connect with human connection? Sure.

David Singer:

I think the important thing is to keep in mind, there's a number of dimensions to it. One is it's always changing. Right. People, will accept more and more from automation as time goes on. So where that threshold remember I talked in episode one about there's a threshold of emotional or financial importance where people want to speak to people that threshold moves over time, right? And so recognizing that is important because otherwise you either, you know, under or over automate. The second is. That it differs by person, right? So it's really important to understand your customers, understand, their profile and look at, you know, by measuring, customer CX on different transaction types, and then through different, times you can decide, maybe we want to offer a good example. I worked with a bank building, an IVR for them a number of years ago, and they had defaults to say, Hey, for our top tier customers, they always get to a human. They're always going to get that personal connection. It was terrible. They hated it, right? Because, you know, example, if you want to check the balance on your visa card, You don't need a human empathetic connection and talk to somebody. You just want to get that fast. They had to, you know, decide for by profile, by demographic, by, you know, experiential proof, look at metric CX or experience types. What are the right, things to automate versus director person by customer. And the third thing is to recognize it's not all in one, right? It's not this transaction should be automated. This transaction should be, an emotional connection with a human. The first 60 percent can be automated. And then we want to get a human involved because that's when the importance of the complexity or the fear of completion happens with the human. I talked about when I bought a car online and it was like, Plus percent automated, but then right at the moment when it mattered, they got a human involved to make sure I was comfortable coming across the line. So I think when you decide you need to think about in your industry, what is that moving threshold of importance where people want to talk to people? You want to understand that different people require that connection at different times in different ways. And you want to recognize that it's not all or nothing for transaction types. You can break it down to say, we're going to do this much and then automate. If you think about those things, you look at your industry, you continually measure, you know, measurement is important, right? You can't improve what you don't measure. So, you know, look at how it's changing, look how it's evolving and make sure you're evolving your self service strategies in the same way.

Roam Trebon:

Dave, you mentioned over automating and measuring. So I'm curious how you see organizations, what metrics are they looking at to determine maybe where they are over automating it? are they seeing a repeat of calls? Are they seeing negative sentiment on customer feedback? Curious how companies that you're working with are seeing may they've gone a little too far out on the automation

David Singer:

There's two things I'll generally look at. One is the experience measurement. Is it CX scores, NPS? I don't know. Depends. But there's some number that says here's what, was your experience good or bad, right? And you can do that through surveys or inferred response or all the ways you do that measurement. The other is looking at the difference between containment and deflection. Or good containment, bad containment. If you're just straight up measuring in your IVA or IVR. Hey, you know, we had, a million calls hit my IVR and only, 50, 000 got to agents. I got 95 percent containment. Excellent. But if 500, 000 of those hung up halfway through and went somewhere else. That's not containment, that's bad containment, right? I can easily stop calls in the contact center. That's not a problem. If you look at the completion rates of self service and of those completion rates, when do lack of completes go to assisted serve versus going away? And as your, as your, you know, incomplete go away ratio goes up. You've, you've way over automated and made it too hard to get to a human when you're, when you're, you know, non complete rates go up, but they transfer a human, you're running that threshold, right? maybe offer them a person before they get to that point because you know what that point is. You can easily measure where that point is.

Roam Trebon:

Dave, this is great stuff. Chip, thanks for shedding light on that. You're coming back Friday, right? We haven't scared you away. You're coming back Friday to wrap up this three part series. he's back, he's back. All right. You're going to come back. You're going to talk about how we talked about it all week, but we're going to, we're going to talk more about how AI can, it really goes from hype to real outcomes, right? There's a lot of talk about AI, but how are you seeing customers and organizations get real outcomes, AI, AIs and full CX automation. So for our audience. Again, like subscribe, to the podcast, share it with your friends and colleagues, Dave, really appreciate you having you back on the show and Kevin as always keep on playing.

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Kevin Metzger

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Roman Trebon

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David Singer

Guest