Is that help? Does that help you balance out your view of.

Yeah, it, it does.

You're, you're absolutely right.

It was very, it was I remember, you know, in my first organization after being kind of really mired in like the back office, like logistics and in our ERP and working on our ERP implementation and knowing that system inside and out and thinking that everything within the company was all in that ERP system.

And then kind of having the opportunity to do a project with our contracting and business development teams and seeing the CRM, it was, I mean, it was, game changing, you know, really eye opening to see all of the great data that I'd always seen our accounts and our contracts from an operational lens.

Right.

Like this is this contract.

so when you do come across a customer where you're not trying to pull them into this world of ce and crm and helping them understand the importance maybe they maybe they lead with it and they already understand that hey this is what i want to lead with this is really important to us we want to improve our customer experience not just necessarily be more efficient on the back end or in the back office what what's different about them like why why do they view things that way is there a certain type of industry or a certain culture that seems to be more conducive to that

Your parents left the Philippines with two little girls and started over in the U.S., Tell us about what you remember from that and what it's taught you and lessons you've taken away over the course of that, your career.

Thanks, Jim.

It's so nice to be asked about that.

Because again, it's not always, you know, it's not something that people necessarily think about when they want to talk work and culture.

But yeah, that's where it all starts and comes from, right? But yeah, so I immigrated here with my parents from the Philippines, as you said.

I think the biggest kind of, you know, takeaway or differentiation in my experience with that is just that, you know, seeing seeing that there's there's different sides to every situation where there's like there's very hard work for everyone who is not having to work that hard.

There's very hard workers.

What's it like on this side of the acquisition equation?

And then think about the tools and technology you need almost to deliver, if you like, that vision.

Honestly, that is transformation step number one, I would say, when we think about how to approach transformation, whether you're looking at it as a CRM transformation or AI transformation.

But CX, right? CX transformation.

Step one is to be business-led and value-driven.

And that's not just one department of the business, but enterprise level.

Who needs to be involved? Identifying the right business stakeholders to then come together and optimize around the customer and not design and optimize just for their department.

Right.

And so here goes, what company or brand do you think takes a more punk approach to customer experience and why?

And, you know, I want to begin to start thinking about how does AI fit into this picture as well, right? Because, you know, Microsoft has been one of the big proponents of the AI revolution, right? And so I'm wondering, how's that playing into dynamics? How's that, you know, coming into play in your transformation business? Tell us a little bit about that.

Yeah, yeah.

So in terms of kind of the bigger picture of technology evolution and organizations leveraging AI, I always like to remind clients and organizations that are so eager to start transforming through AI, that you've got to have, you know, AI has to sit on top of something, right? Like AI has, you've got to give it a foundation of of data, of information about your business, about your customers, kind of without that foundation, or if it's kind of fragmented across your business, then AI will just kind of amplify that fragmentation, right? So, you know, you can kind of transform one part of the business, give your customer service reps AI, right? But if there's kind of not that unified intelligence across all of the parts of your business that interact with your customers, then that's limiting and constraining for customer service.

Right.

So the way that CRM fits into it, I mean, I think for one, CRM is should be when done the right way.

CRM is the backbone, I think, of your customer engagement.

It's also that single pane of glass into your customers of an organization.

So are there places where you've already seen AI actually delivering value in the customer engagement right now or versus, you know, places where it's kind of overhyped? I mean, like, where is it really making a difference in the work that you're doing?

Look, it doesn't matter if you're driving a forklift or you're taking donuts to a customer, you're customer service.

Exactly.

Exactly.

Yeah.

And so, so often, again, all of the things that you just mentioned, right? Like inventory availability and supply chain and logistics, those are undoubtedly, that's the, those are, that's the core engine of, you know, manufacturing and industrial businesses, right? That keeps the businesses running, but the customer strategy and customer engagement, I mean, that is your ultimate, I mean, that's your, vision and that's your destination.

So you can optimize your back office processes, your operations, your engine.

You can optimize your engine, but without the destination, you're just going.

Now I want to ask you something too about what's really forcing manufacturers to finally think about the customer holistically, because you've been in this long enough to know it hasn't always been that way.