Show Notes
welcome to another episode of peers over
beers
your favorite digital and social
evangelist podcast
with your industry veteran hosts michael
sandoval
and chris detzel this podcast starts now
it really does i like the way it does do
the countdown so three two one
hello welcome to another episode of
peers over beers my name is michael
sandoval
and i'm chris stetzel hello chris how
are you doing good man how about you
you know well i am not in the
the seven day trial of alaska weather
for texas
so yeah i'm assuming you're going to
cancel your alaska subscription
oh show
yes i think what michael's talking about
is here in texas he lives in el paso and
i'm in dallas and
you know we just had kind of a
big snowstorm but also cold i mean super
cold for us
i think three degrees Fahrenheit one
time it was negative two like at night
uh 10 degrees i mean it was like five or
six days
and we're still kind of in it and it's
sunny today but 30
it's gonna get up to 36 but the point is
is a lot of people didn't have power
we didn't have hot water for three days
um
i was afraid our pipes were gonna bust
but they didn't luckily
hot water came back on and i think it
took like three showers in like five
hours you know
because i'm so
you know so it's it's amazing how
quickly
uh things go to mad max beyond
thunderdome
uh yeah i know you know i still watch
the news local news and dallas and
just watching all the folks just
i just kind of people are just standing
in lines and
um fighting i mean chopping down their
own furniture to light it up i mean it's
just it's just nuts
yeah it was yeah it hurt you know all
this firewood is gone and
you know they couldn't sell enough yeah
or they could uh
yeah they could yeah it's gone i mean
they gotta go chop down some more trees
exactly and folks are chopping down
trees but they forget that it's still
wet it won't light
they didn't know they get in there and
this yeah
let's take down that tree where we're
gonna do and then all of a sudden they
try to light it and just
blend exactly
it takes days to dry out
uh but i i will admit for for us for
good for bad for whatever it is uh el
paso is on a separate power grid we're
on the
on the west coast power grid uh the one
that's connected to
uh edison ercot i mean sorry edison
and we get a lot of our power from a
nuclear power plant
called palo verde and so i think yeah
and i can't say a percentage but i feel
it's a large percentage of our power
percentages from uh
is from a nuclear uh facility and when
they were doing some of the thought that
i guess el paso was part of the
discussion to deregulate but they said
well it's going to cost
more because power distribution from the
center of texas is
further away than the power distribution
that we get from
the nuclear power plant that's just only
a few hours away
let's tell you how far out we're over
here yeah you guys are
yeah what is it like eight or ten hour
drive from dallas to
dallas yeah yeah yeah that's tough uh
i'm glad you're safe sir i'm glad you're
doing okay and
i wish you many more warm showers
to start off you know you sent me
a fascinating invite to an app called
clubhouse
yep and i felt immediately like an
old man because you are like what's the
shape cole clubhouse
you know how to do this had to
investigate and look at it
but it's kind of like a like a like
a a talk if i were to say
ted's you know the ted's software like
or the ted's
what do you call it not ted's pet talk
ted talks right
like you could host a proverbial
clubhouse talk right just get people
to listen in and it seems to be like
this
uh maybe um
almost like the podcast effect but like
this information
distribution easily distribution of
people getting
information did you ever do you know
something called i think it's called
speaker square or speaker's corner
in london no so in i think it's in
regent park but
you know it's it's where we get the term
to stand on one's uh soap box
uh-huh during the victorian area that
they general on sundays they would take
soap boxes you know there were these
large crates sit
and they would stand on top of it and
then you would just talk about whatever
you want
yeah and so they would soapbox
they still do it by the way it sounds
like a little bit this but maybe not so
much whinging
yeah no it's i think that's similar you
know
we had this conversation a little bit
before but basically i've had an
opportunity to get on there several
times over the last week
and just listen in on conversations
sometimes have conversations and you can
have specific topics look it's been
around a year uh
and the way you get the way you can get
on is through an invite so it was
exclusive for a while and now it's less
exclusive because everybody has an
invite now
everybody's getting more invites and
they gave you even more than two invites
now they give you five
to pass along different people but
basically you could pick a topic like
you know community strategy and
you know let's say you and me let's
let's look at piers over beers maybe we
have a live peers over beers
uh community call and all of our
followers that follow us
on clubhouse uh will get a
notification to say here's over beers
chris detzel or michael
sandoval whoever's following you get a
notification they come in and listen
you can also invite them to be a speaker
as well so
so that could be open you can also have
closed conversations but it's just audio
it's live
you know but it's it's interesting
because there's also
a thing going around and which i didn't
mention this to you before
that you know clubhouse a lot of people
are against clubhouse because
of the moderation is not there
right so anybody can start up they're
talking about you know there's some
racism going on
there's a bunch of other stuff that you
know it's like anything anybody get on
and
say whatever [ __ ] they want you know and
so oh
i see so also a big
you know so you know
i think i think it's kind of cool and if
there was
somebody that said some racially bad
things you know maybe
i would just leave you know if i didn't
like
what they were saying but i think it's
probably more than that
you know maybe if there's a way to say
this person's being racist or this
person's
you know report person or whatever right
so they have some work to do
but i just see it as kind of a it's
pretty cool but
you know they have some work to do i
think on the moderation and things like
that
yeah i think we're maybe talking about
doing an experiment with with the
peers over beers we'll have to give it a
go you know it's interesting i would use
this line
a lot whenever i was trying to sell
community to senior managers and they
would immediately go
to well they may say some bad things
about our brand
yep and my response
was people already saying bad things
about your brand
anyway they're just out there so
it's better there's two ways i would
approach the subject one
wouldn't you rather have an environment
in which you can control the
conversation
so that sometimes that plays well you
know
when i say control sometimes manage
would be a better word
and then another way is to say it's the
it's it's kind of like the the free
market
economy of good ideas so in other words
if you truly are bad at what you do then
you kind of deserve what you're getting
back
right and you should probably change
more than likely the companies i've been
with
are pretty good at what they do so you
know challenging their
kind of hubris to say no we're actually
pretty good then let your customers
clients respond in good kind let them
take the battle not
you as the brand right and
eventually the free market will kind of
move and that will get suppressed
it's interesting like places like
clubhouse it's probably the same way
right so if you have something racially
sensitive or something like that
folks will like run away and eventually
the popularity will go down and
free market wins but there is a negative
side to it right
which is it if it keeps going down it
then therefore
it's you start it starts to collect
people who think the same right like
yeah that's right this guy is right you
know and
it's like that one thing that uh
everybody got in on the trump bandwagon
they left facebook to
get on that other exactly correct that
is a perfect example uh
parlor parlor yeah i mean i never get on
planet
but you know i was kind of curious to
see what it was
i've never got a chance to really even
get there but
you know it's a racial kind of
a racist type thing or i'm not saying it
is racist but it became
that way and people started using it
because they wanted their free speech
you know yeah it's you create this
environment which allows
it's something that's had been morally
for right terms
and just socially repressed yeah they
gave it a you know pandora's box if you
will so i could see where something like
this comes in so yeah they'll work on
their moderation and
like all new technologies right uh
they'll figure it out
uh it's kind of cool i think you know
maybe
uh as you kind of play with it for this
next week which i know you won't but
let's say you do
and i always
jab michael because you know he's always
like yeah man i'll try that out
yeah did you do like three days later
yeah i forgot i installed it
yeah i already uninstalled it i was like
no dude put it on so we could
but what i'd like to do is you know just
test it out like you know during our
lunches or during these peers over beers
we just turn on our phones and
uh have a peers over beers on uh
um live chat but also record it for our
podcast i think that's a good idea
see what happens yeah do it a few times
and maybe nobody shows up but that's
okay
yeah i know i'll give it a try
okay um that being said speaking about
work yeah uh i thought we'd do a little
bit of like what are we working
uh kind of session today and um
i mean uh if you don't mind i'll i'll
give it a go first right so please do
because what's been kind of hard in my
mind recently is that
from our from my vantage point we're
getting ready to
change an entire financial core right
this is the heart of
how we manage um financial content from
our customers and it's given me an
opportunity to kind of talk about self
help and self uh
support if that makes sense right and so
i'm laying down that
groundwork for community and for
uh you know hey wouldn't it be great
to allow our customers to
help themselves right
self-help yeah so i'm i'm crafting
you know some of the requirements if you
will
in terms that i think you would
understand or not would not mean you but
us as community professionals would talk
about like a
you know a place where folks can go in
and ask questions where they can
have a response as relatively immediate
some sort of online chat portal we can
take that collection and put it into a
place like i don't know let's just call
it
a community a forum a community you know
that kind of thing
and i'll be able to use that word portal
interesting i'm not a big fan of that
but anyways
what the word community portal oh yeah
portal is like the way of like yahoo
like when yahoo first came out they
called it the yahoo portal
well people still call it portals and
i'm like yeah
this is community if you're of a certain
age
i don't know man i i've heard it a lot
in the tech industry especially when you
start talking to
support people or you know kind of these
folks that aren't doing self-help or
email stuff because
it kind of is a portal a lot of times in
their mind but not community necessarily
but
they just see it as another way
customers have to log into something and
use it
right so we'll log into that portal you
know and i'm like
it's just not really i don't i don't
like it you know it just sounds
negative or something to me anyways keep
going yeah i don't know so
i i was having some excitement kind of
talking about
that in that way and it's given me a
platform to talk about how we can
change the way we help our members right
so today we spend and it just reminds me
about this
the cell solution about community which
is you know we
we because digitization is happening
faster than we're doing it
internally you know we're having to
increase our
our and the the speed is because of
covet
right so covet is created now forced
let's use that term
a forcing function to go digital and
core competency the core digital
competency internally
is still evolving so yeah a lot of folks
internally
can't answer some of these questions
right and so i get them i feel them or
whatever
but we have distributed that across many
people in organization and if i took the
time you know
and added all up of how many people are
answering questions
that in itself is a good sum and what's
more interesting is because
in the banking industry we tend to go to
our quote home
branch you know branch a and branch b
have their customers but they're all our
customers
branch a may answer the same question
from branch b but because they don't
talk
we wasted two times right the the
information
so and you know what they're not when
they do go online to try to find an
answer they're not getting it
yep and you're right so it creates a
frustration so for those individuals who
are used to going online not seeing it
if they have to call they call their
branch and they're already frustrated
and so i'm using that kind of moment of
this change to help
create that structure so it's it's it's
good to start the very beginning again
to kind of like
hey and i think it'll manifest
interestingly right so i think
uh until we get there i think uh we'll
do
more of a chat interface first a very
robust chat interface
on the main website yeah right and then
get folks to move that into an faq
database and then eventually that'll i
think it will be enough to cede
the community but that's what uh is
going on my side how about you sir
how's the new job have you built your
community has it launched yet
yeah i mean you're it's what you're what
week six
two months officially today all right
well uh
let me know when i get my invite for
your new community yeah imminent i was
talking to somebody today and she was
like
hey you know the sooner we can have
community the better like
maybe you can do it by march i'm like um
you know
the better you can actually build the
stadium the colosseum of rome
the better i look um
i get it you know like i i'm as excited
as they are
you know so it's not that i don't want
it sooner
i do um but you know i think that
you know people think you can just throw
up a community and then all of a sudden
all these people are going to come you
know and i'm like
and i told her i said hey look um i i'm
supposed to get the design
uh stuff today so i'll finally get the
look and feel
but you know let's take a couple days to
kind of look at i probably have to talk
to
you know marketing or somebody to say
hey yep you're on track or whatever or
no i would change these things i said
i'm still going through some legal
discussions that you know they're
asking me to move the t's and c's at the
top right
over here and there and that kind of
stuff and you know
and i said and then the harder part is
now i've got to find the customers that
are willing to seed the community and be
kind of the founders or you know the
and i said i've started that but you
know that's always
kind of difficult since i've only been
there for two months
i have no you know and i said i'm asking
people to do it and i said there are
some things you can do to help
i said but i said there's just a lot to
do
uh for one person and then even even for
me to go get and build a team of
virtual people uh which i have uh it's
still hard because
they say they wanna go do some stuff but
you know they're busy
all the time and so i gotta push push
push
so i just tell them you know look uh
april
may 1st now it's april 28th it's kind of
a soft launch i guess but
may 1st is the official date that's
going to go live i feel
confident that it's going to go live
yeah i mean
look i'm not done with everything you
know like i still have
but you know i think it's doable um
it might not be perfect but it'd be
close to where we want to go
so that's what i've been working on you
know legal sent me some more stuff to do
and you know we're done but i think yeah
that's that team
you know hey it's just it's just
something you have to go through and
it's better to
to to work with everyone that you can to
get the buy-in
you know it's i'm still confident no
matter what you know look
i've got this is a big company goal i
think i told you is
my boss said a couple weeks ago chris no
pressure but
you know community is um going to change
the culture
of all of reltio but no sure
but no pressure and i'm like okay i mean
because it's true i mean the way we
interact and engage with our customers
and partners
will change it won't change overnight
but it will
uh you know getting those answers there
pushing those customers you know
from a support deflection standpoint
pushing those people into community
you know i heard some stat today from a
support person i'm like i don't know
about that but
we're looking at deflecting 95 percent
of our cases to go to community anime
you know like i don't really well you
know what maybe there's an
opportunity to set expectation right so
one of the learnings i've had
um is it
when you said that that immediately kind
of triggered this like twitch
which was uh this immediate
you know shangri-la feel of like once
community goes up then
like it's like a scene out of the wizard
of oz at the very end right so
yeah it's not like that so you know
remember we talked about
when we were together that there's a
ramp
phase you know and it takes effort
from the organization right it's just
like rolling something downhill
that it doesn't start until somebody
pushes
and that is energy that energy comes in
form of
individuals time you either purchase
those resources or whatever and
eventually once you get some critical
mass then it'll start to take off itself
right and that
time to do that is unknown
right sometimes like months you know it
depends people are like how long does
that take it's like
i mean let me say best guess is it could
take
six months it could take a year you know
like i don't know
but i have to do a lot of put i always
do it like this
is so my left hand is up on the top and
my right hand is at the bottom and
your organization's at the bottom or i
mean your organization's at the top
customers at the bottom and then as time
goes on
custom you have to push push the
organization has to push content
has to push programs has to get people
engaged and involved you have to answer
questions for customers when they do
get it and do it quickly and then
customers start to trust over time and
then when they do
then they start getting engaged and
involved
through you know uh being rewarded and
recognized and
being happy that they're answering
questions and and trusting that this
thing is going to work
you know just it's a lot of things that
um
it has it it has to go i mean customers
don't trust i mean it's not
it's like this i i mean i go into a
running community for example even if
it's online or
offline maybe it's face-to-face i don't
just start
i mean i do start talking to people but
you know
i'm but i'm not best friends with
anybody i'm not going to be like hey i
know everything about running or
or whatever right like i'm going to get
in there even if i do
i don't but let's say i did but the last
thing i want to do in general is to
you know i've got to kind of look at the
audience how do i fit in
and that could take weeks or months or
whatever you know and it doesn't
it just doesn't happen overnight it's
the same thing go online
people are a little timid to post their
first question or answer
a question or or whatever you know and
so that's one
then you got to get them to come back
you know so that's another thing they
come back once they come once
doesn't mean they come back a second
time so you get to have good content
you've got to have
something that's valuable you know and
all that stuff so
you know i was gonna as you were talking
through like this thing
popped in my head like you could almost
start setting the stage i mean i know
you have a lot to do so you're probably
the only
one uh again but maybe you could float
this to the marketing team or something
or
where you can have a leak campaign
internally where the subject matter is
are you ready for it could be a couple
of terms
are you ready for community are you
ready for a more intimate discussion
with customers
are you ready for uh are you ready
you know are you ready to uh
you know i'm trying to think of the word
like to
are you ready for right and that leak
campaign
says it does it allows you to do things
one is
begin telling people and set
expectations what community is going to
do
and two creates that each department has
you must get ready for right it applies
some authority
of what are you going to change and how
are you going to change over the next
say
six months to when the time comes you're
going to be asked
to help a customer online so are you
ready what does that mean
have you do you know what it means to
post do you know how to answer questions
do you know how to
as you just said those things you were
talking about you can almost spend some
time in that education before you go out
assuming elite campaign within the
organization inside yeah not outside
inside and reason i say insights because
i think we've always said this the value
of member coming to the community
is not you or me subject matter experts
so
in a sense they have to be ready and you
just mentioned that you feel like
that your ceo wants to fundamentally
change
and use it that's a great platform to
start setting that stage
i agree but i've done a little bit of
that but
i do like that idea of you know maybe
doing some kind of
campaign to each department or you know
i've what i've tried to do individually
or you know i've tried to get on teams
calendars like the marketing team or the
product
team or you know uh the
um different teams that run different
departments
sells ses the smart people uh
to let them know hey and i've even
created a
you could call it a community team if
you will
you know and we have weekly meetings i'm
going to push that back to every other
week because
literally i mean i run out of things to
say every week i don't have something to
say every single week you know but
um but i agree i think that's
a pretty good idea and i think i might
use that but i also think we could do
something with
customers too so i can get content from
them
yeah i you know i start i start roping
it into something that's kind of big but
you know you're very i think your value
is being able to be very personal
so i think you could just break this up
into three simple five minute videos
that you post on
say march april oh yeah
and it's just the chris stetson talk
show five minutes and saying
this month here's how you're going to
get prepared and this is why
and be done post it on your favorite
video channel and
and then you can say the wizard has now
spoken be forth and communitized
but don't tip me man i i'll i'll start
kind of noodling that around and be like
hmm
and then i'll bring this intro be like
yes exactly my name is i am the
community
i'm the wizard of community you must
listen to me now
when a customer posts you must reply
quickly
yes we want other customers to do it but
we need you to do it first
yeah don't ask why just [ __ ] do it
just [ __ ] do it
i have spoken return to work all as well
next because it works that way oh my
gosh
anyway well chris i think we're at the
top of our
time and it's a good way to end it on uh
something that's a little bit
uh i don't know machiavellian
yeah it's a good word i guess
alas my friend it's always a pleasure to
talk to you uh
thank you so very much and thank you for
another episode of peers over beers
i am i'm sorry i am your host michael
sandoval and i'm chris detzel
all right talk to you later chris all