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Dan O'Connell

Dan O'Connell

CEO of Front, the AI-powered customer operations platform; previously CEO of TalkIQ and former Chief Strategy & AI Officer / CRO at Dialpad.

Aug 29, 2026

16:47
What are you seeing in those, that sort of area where it's sort of been seen as a panacea for all ills or whatever?
16:55
Yeah, I think it's really interesting.
16:57
I take screenshots of the news every few weeks.
17:00
It's funny to go back even two years ago and see some of the statements that we have made and how they have played out.
17:06
I will just say even around customer support and customer experience, because I think two years ago, everyone would say, look, there's no need for humans to be customer support.
17:15
It's really interesting.
17:16
I'm in the middle of doing a separate survey for some founders and CEOs and leaders of support organizations.
22:00
How in the hell do you get AI to do it?
16:48
What are you seeing in those, that sort of area where it's sort of been seen as a panacea for all ills or whatever?
16:55
Yeah, I think it's been really interesting.
16:56
Uh, I take screenshots of the news every few weeks.
17:00
Uh, it's funny to go back even two years ago and see some of the statements that we have made and how they have played out.
17:07
I will just say, like, even around customer support and customer experience, because I think two years ago everyone would say, "Look, like, there's no need for humans to be customer support." Um, it's really interesting.
17:16
I did a, uh, I'm in the middle of doing a separate survey for, uh, some founders and CAs and leaders of support organizations.
17:22
I'll probably ask you to, for your, for your perspective as well.

9 MINS LATER

26:50
What would you, what would you advise them to do?
17:47
And drive this different way of working, which I think were kind of necessary if we're going to try to win in this in today's world.
17:57
Yeah, we go through, I think being a CEO of a scaled business today is one of, and I was talking to a friend about this literally yesterday.
18:05
I think it's one of the most, it's probably one of the hardest jobs, just given the time of all of this.
18:11
You've got new tools, new technologies.
18:14
You constantly have to think like, should we replatform ourselves? Should we rebuild from the start? Should we structure things drastically different? So you're kind of like flying a plane and rebuilding the plane at the exact same time.
18:25
You have to deal with this upskilling and really transformation of literally every function and role within a company.
18:33
How do you get people on board with that to recognize that these tools are not going to go away? You need to understand how to leverage them.
23:37
Where do you think the competitive advantage is compared to the brand new AI company that started yesterday?
49:41
prison or jail better, like in terms of food, jobs,
49:45
et cetera? Listen, man, if you've seen one prison, you've seen one prison.
49:51
They are all different.
49:52
They did based on the staff, based on the facilities.
49:56
You could be in a county jail in a very rich area where there's the best services and everything.
50:02
You know, you could be, yeah, prisons tend to have more services because they're bigger and they're better funded.
50:10
I think some of the worst institutions are probably city jails and really small out of the way jails where there just isn't any services whatsoever.

33 MINS LATER

83:38
Yeah.

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