Kel Kurekgi from Zapier explains why customers leave without complaining

Episode Transcript

Niraj Ranjan Rout: 00:00 

When working back in, you know, the call centers at Nissan, for example, one of the key things I love doing was taking on those customers that everyone hated dealing with, because they were really annoyed, really upset, really pissed off. And changing that into a really positive experience, or getting them around to at least liking me, it almost became like a bit of a game to achieve that.

And once I kind of became really good at that, I had the opportunity to sort of team lead and then manage and then senior management, etc, etc, etc. But it all started off by picking up those key transferable skills that I probably never would have achieved. 

Niraj Ranjan Rout: 00:39 

Our guest on the podcast today is Kel, who manages customer service for Zapier, a company we all know and love. Kel’s career is an interesting story in itself, where he started by working with BBC, went on to write the script for the first Asian drama in the UK, took various twists and turns through his career and then landed up, you know, heading customer support for Zapier. So, really looking forward to the conversation with you, Kel, and welcome to the show.

So, where are you right now, Kel? 

Kel Kurekgi: 01:17

Oh, right now, sorry. I am based in Milton Keynes, which is a small city in England in the UK. So I was kind of originally, or my family originally from Turkey. And I was kind of born and raised in London, and I’ve been in Milton Keynes for about nine years.

So quite a distant way from where you’d usually have people in the tech world, which is kind of more often the west coast of the US. But yeah, over here in the UK. 

Niraj Ranjan Rout: 01:46 

Great, so the west coast of the US is where I am right now and then great to be speaking with you. So yeah, let’s start by talking about the start of your career, right? How did you get started and how did you end up at customer service, right? Was it by accident?

Was it by design? How did you go through the entire process? 

Kel Kurekgi: 02:07 

Yeah, it’s been quite a journey, really. So, you know, I was in that kind of era, and I don’t actually know if it’s any different now, I imagine it might be a little bit different now. But when I was back at school, you know, we had the opportunity to go to a university or college, as it’s known in the US. And teachers very much try to push that agenda of, you know, like, you have to go to college and get a degree in anything, you know, that’s how you’re going to make something of yourself. If you don’t follow that path, you’ll be a loser your whole life and not amount to anything.

Or of course, you can join the army, which is another option. You know, there were two options that they went into. And when it was kind of, you know, go straight into work, it would almost be, you know, frowned upon, people would turn their nose up at that notion. And back then, I was a bit of a rebel, I was really into kind of my heavy metal rock and roll. And I thought, you know, let’s, let’s, let’s challenge that actually. 

And I don’t actually know if I want to go to university and spend all that money and come out of it, not having a clue what I wanted to do. What I did think I wanted to do was work in media, right? So I loved the music industry. So I kind of took on a load of different roles in in there, I kind of did some bits in television, was in front of the camera, as well as doing script writing, as you kind of suggested. And during that time, as a lot of people know, you know, I was working a few jobs at one time. 

And a lot of people in the media industry know, especially when you first start out, there’s not much money in it at all. And when there is money, like you have to really hit the big time to be able to earn some decent money. Otherwise, you know, you kind of just get by in a lot of scenarios. So during my time when I was kind of working three, four jobs, at any given opportunity, I was doing kind of customer service type roles in the interim, right? So I was like working in retail, and on the shop floor, or I was working at call center and all that stuff. 

And I kind of landed like a few roles that people would be like, that’s a dream job to have, right? And I landed them, and I wasn’t really happy. And what I really noticed was that the things that I love doing, and whether there’s kind of picking up those transferable skills that I was getting from my time in customer service, customer support, customer experience, how we want to label it, and utilizing those. 

So when I was working back in, you know, the call centers at Nissan, for example, one of the key things I loved doing was taking on those customers that everyone hated dealing with because they were really annoyed, really upset, really pissed off, and changing that into a really positive experience, or getting them around to at least liking me, you know, it almost became like a bit of a game to achieve that. 

Kel Kurekgi: 04:56 

And once I kind of became really good at that, I had the opportunity to sort of team lead and then manage and then senior management, etc, etc, etc. But it all started off by picking up those key transferable skills that I probably never would have achieved, had I stayed in the media industry, right, already taken me a lot longer.

And so from there, I was just like, why am I still trying to break into the media industry when I really like this other stuff that I’m doing? Like, it makes a lot more sense to focus on the things that A: you’re good at and B: that you enjoy, rather than doing something because it’s got a bit more sort of clout when you’re at a dinner party, right, and you’re sort of talking about what you do, that kind of thing. So ended up like maybe about 10, 12 years ago, just being like, Hey, you know, I’m just gonna, I’m just gonna give this, give this CX thing a real go and see what happens. And it’s been a it’s been a great journey ever since. 

Niraj Ranjan Rout: 05:51 

Very interesting Kel. I think you made the right choice. Thank you. Appreciate it. 

Kel Kurekgi: 05:57 

I’ll let my mum know that, you said that. 

Niraj Ranjan Rout: 06:01 

I’m sure a lot of your customers say that too, so yeah. 

Niraj Ranjan Rout: 06:07 

So, you know, I mean, continue on the same subject of you picking up those transferable skills. And I think you worked very deliberately towards picking up those transferable skills, right? Which would probably give you a very good sense of what is it that you would want to look for when you hire for customer sellers, right? So, what is it that is absolutely non-negotiable for you when you’re looking for people to be on your team, right? And what do you think are the things that are fine, that are coachable, fixable with some work? So, what do you go for as the absolute non-negotiable must-haves for someone you’re looking to have? 

Kel Kurekgi: 06:39 

Yeah, it’s a really good question. I’ve made some really good hires in my time and I’ve also made some really, really terrible ones. And it’s one of those things where I don’t think there’s like a key set of rules that you always have to play by, but the things that I always look for. And it also depends on the level that you’re hiring for, right?

So like if you’re hiring for like a customer service assistant in their first job or their second job is going to be quite different. So if you’re looking for, whether it’s a team leader or a manager or even senior manager, et cetera, et cetera. 

The thing that everyone has to do though, is they really have to understand what it is they’re trying to build within these teams, right? What do they want? And not necessarily from a hard skills perspective, right? Like I need someone who understands and can read and write code. 

Of course, that’s going to be important in some roles, but the real key element is like, what kind of team are you trying to build that would make both you and your customers proud of that? And it all comes down to the actions, values, and behaviors of the people that you’re interviewing.

Right? So if you can focus on actually when you’re asking a question or that, or maybe even kind of deciding on the questions you’re asking to give for the person, the applicant, the candidate to give examples, what actions are you trying to pick out from the way in that they dealt with a difficult scenario? What values do they have as a person? What behaviors they don’t consistently demonstrate, whether it’s teamwork, whether it’s empathy, you know, what is it that you’re trying to unravel? 

And those two things, by the way, kind of sort of the key things that I really, really look out for. Another one is not with every applicant, but with some applicants, I find it really important, just have someone that’s hungry, right? When I say hungry, that’s in terms of, you know, making sure that you have someone who is trying to raise the bar of the standard across the team. And you never know if you’re going to actually get that person, right?

People can be very, very good and also very deceiving in interviews where they’d like, yeah, I always strive and I stay here till, you know, 13 o’clock at night and all the rest of it, you know, in reality, that might not even be the kind of person you’re looking for. 

But people will tell you a lot of what you want to hear, especially when people are a bit greener in their, in their, in the tenure. But it comes down really to, you know, would I want this person in my team? Would I want to bat for that person? If push came to shove, like, if I was stuck in a lift, and I had to just deal with this person for like 24 hours straight, would I want to do that? 

And a lot of people kind of sniff their nose up at that, like, well, I don’t have to like the individual, I just have to work with them. But you spend a lot of your daily time working and dealing with the people that are in your team, you really need to want them to succeed and want them to grow and want them to develop in whatever way that looks for them. 

Kel Kurekgi: 09:33 

So before it comes down to any element of hard skills, just make sure that it’s someone that meets those same needs, sorry, not needs, actions, values and behaviors, as you do. And as you want your team to embody, if you’re hitting those marks, you’re already starting off from a great, great level.

And the rest, often the rest you can teach. But if you can meet someone who’s got those actions, values and behaviors, and they also know the key elements of the job, like how to troubleshoot, how to handle API documentation, how to demonstrate empathy properly on a call and make it sound legitimate rather than forced, you’ve got an absolute A player on your hands. 

Niraj Ranjan Rout: 10:18 

Absolutely. So that is useful, not just for customer service, but for probably everything that we have.

Empathy being so important, right? Is there anything special, anything specific that you do to make sure that you get that right? It’s so difficult and so critical, especially for customer service. 

Kel Kurekgi: 10:36 

I think you genuinely have to find people that actually care, right? Like, and that’s the crux of it, people that actually care. And the thing is like, you can find the most caring person going. And if you don’t do some key things in your organization, I guarantee you that person will stop caring eventually, right?

Because in customer service, in customer support, in sales, in project management, in all these roles, you hear the same thing over and over again, right? You hear the same nonsense sometimes, or the same actual real-life issues that need fixing, and after a while, you become desensitized to it, right? It’s no different, and apologies if there’s any doctors that take offense to this, it’s no difference to a doctor that has seen so many horrendous accidents in their life, like, you know, they’re working in the ICU, they’re working in ER or whatever it might be. 

And they’ve seen so much that often, after a while, what a lot of doctors will say is they become desensitized to it. And it’s exactly the same, or it’s very similar, but less life threatening in customer service or sales or account management or whatever, where after a while, when someone says, Hey, you know, my order didn’t get delivered, and it really messed up my plans for the weekend, when you’re fresh into a job, you can be like, oh, you know, I really understand how that must, how that must have impacted you. 

After three years of hearing the same thing, I guarantee you, your support people are like, sure, mate, I yeah, I’ve heard it all before. Great. Let’s try and get it fixed, shall we? The real key element there is if you really want your people to be, become empathetic, remind them of why they’re there and why it’s important that they do the job properly. So having that vision, having that why is super, super important in this. Because if you don’t do that, that’s where the desensitization comes in.

But where you’re consistently making sure that people understand the vision of what you’re going for and the importance of why they’re there, then that really helps people to join up the dots and not take it for granted in terms of why we’re delivering the service. 

Niraj Ranjan Rout: 12:39 

That makes so much sense, Kel. Which brings me to the next thing that I want to talk about.

Empathy is so hard to get right, even in three months. So what stance does AI stand with that? And then leading into, what have you actually seen done well with AI? I mean, with all the news, all the developments that we’ve seen in the past, probably six to nine months or a year, have you seen anything change? And where do you see this entire thing going in the near future? 

Kel Kurekgi: 13:13 

Yeah, I think AI is a really interesting one. I’ve done a few sort of presentations and keynote speeches recently about AI and the impact it can have on the customer experience. The first thing I’d say is there are a lot of organizations right now. I say you can probably split the organization into two different parts, right? 

There’s one type of organization that is like, AI is everything, we’re going all in, everything is going to be AI, and they can sometimes forget about AI isn’t the answer yet, right? Like you still need a human there, you still like sometimes AI will just make something up, right? Or it will overrig something, you know, it’s not perfect right now. So utilize AI to make it easier for your people to care. You know, so taking away, you know, utilizing AI to take away those really manual ad hoc tasks that no one really wants to do, like writing up notes, like summarizing, and like trying to create an action plan, like helping write out an email afterwards, you know, a good email after after a complaint call can take about 20 minutes, people often think, yeah, three minutes, we write the email, it doesn’t, if you’re taking three minutes to write the email, that email is terrible. 

And, you know, so utilize AI to help with that and train a chatbot, or some sort of AI interface, to be able to actually say, hey, you know, when we’re sending a follow up email, this is the tone you want to demonstrate, this is the this is the context is the app, you know, have that already preset.

And so and then the other side of the coin are where some organizations just do not believe in AI whatsoever, right? So they’re making it really difficult for their people, because they refuse to accept this happening, and they’re burying their head in the sand. What makes a lot of sense is doing some some something like halfway between that. So know that AI is coming and it’s going to make an impact regardless of whether you get involved or not. 

And make sure you’re aware that the people that are within your support center, have the ability to make your customers day fantastic, or terrible, and empower them to the former rather than the latter. So that’s the kind of easy thing I’d say about about like AI and about how it’s going to kind of change the industry. Just like for now, make sure that you’re doing everything you can to give your people what they need to be able to do their job really, really well, and AI helps with that. In terms of some of the AI tooling that I’ve seen do this really, really well, and I noticed kind of not fully out yet, but there are some companies that are utilizing AI for things like customer sentiment. 

So historically, through our customer sentiment, we’ve looked at CSAT, customer satisfaction scores, NPS, net promoter scores, and customer effort score. And these are all well and good, right? But it’s kind of relying on someone to tell you that either you’re really good or that you suck. 

Kel Kurekgi: 16:14 

The problem with that is most people don’t say anything at all, whether they love it or they hate it. A couple of examples. I mean, I am for those who are listening to this rather than seeing this I am bald, right? I have no hair. But back when I did have hair, I tried so many different barbers, right? I’ve gotten so many different hairdressers. 

And every single time, you know, that hold up that mirror behind you and say, is that all right, mate? And regardless of whether I had the best haircut in my life, or it was the most atrocious Edward Scissorhands style cut that they’ve given me, I would just say, yeah, lovely. Thanks, mate. I’d pay my money and walk out. And then I’d just either never go there again, or I’d go there again. That was the outcome.

Now, that happens every single day with our businesses. And we don’t know about it. Right? Like we have and we pray that someone actually turns around and says, Hey, you know, this is actually terrible service. That is the ideal outcome. The reality is a when a lot of organizations get bad, bad feedback, they go on the defensive, right? They go straight away. Our team’s great. Everything’s great about our processes. 

This person is just just being grouchy. They just want a discount. They just etc, etc, etc. And all the they sometimes what I’ve seen a lot of is they manipulate the results to look better, because maybe their their bonus is tied to it. They just don’t want to look bad, right? Like I don’t want the reality of what’s going on. They just want to be able to say to senior leadership, hey, look how great we are and how well we treat our customers. Ignore that one detractor.

It’s not important. These are all the ones that’s important. The other part of it is that at the moment with those scores, we only track like one part of the journey, right? So both we’re tracking one part of the journey and we’re tracking the only the people that actually want to say something, ignoring those that just like me with it with a bad haircut, I just leave and find someone else, especially in today’s day and age where there’s so many options for every software, every app, there is now so many options, you know, gone are the days where it’s like, you know, back when you’re choosing an electricity company, where it’s like, I just have to go with this company, because they’re there and they’re cheaper than the others, right?

Like, that’s it. So there are tools now. There’s one company, actually, ultimate, ultimate GPT, where they’re actually making a really good headway in this space. So do try and check it out if you can. What they’re doing is they’re tracking sentiment analysis throughout the entire conversation. 

So whether someone is complaining or not, their tool is starting to say, and I don’t think it’s ready yet, by the way, but from what I’ve seen of it, it looks pretty good with because they’re totally saying like, this customer hates you. 

Kel Kurekgi: 19:05 

And they’ve hated you from start to start to finish of this interaction. Because that’s a big deal.

Because a lot of tools at the moment, what I’ve seen is like, it will say right the beginning that they don’t like you, but if we turn it around at the end, we don’t know about it. So understand that utilizing AI to make it easier for everyone’s day to day is one point. And make it easy to understand how your customers really feel about you with the use of AI is another point that I can’t stress enough has to be done.

It’s something that I think a lot of businesses, if they are truly interested in fixing how they how their customers feel about them. And you need to use AI for those two things, make it easier for your people to look after your customers and know what your customers are thinking. 

Niraj Ranjan Rout: 19:52 

Thanks. Ultimate GPT sounds interesting, it can be useful in so many other cases. Telling whether your customer hate you.

Kel Kurekgi: 20:00 

Well, yeah, you definitely want to know if the customer doesn’t like you. The thing is, they’re still with you, right? For now.

So whilst they’re still with you and you’ve got that feedback, do something with it. I can’t trust this enough for every CX leader out there. Please do not sit on it and just bury your head in the sand and just try and look good for senior leadership. At the end of the day, it will catch up. It always does. But it will catch up in the notion of churn rather than about CSAT score. 

Niraj Ranjan Rout: 20:29 

Yeah, which is your worst case. So to summarize, you mentioned two things. One is using AI for assisting humans smartly, which is very important, very useful. And the second thing that you talked about is essentially getting a sense of what is going on, getting a better sense of what is going on, and getting behind what is actually being spoken to understand what the customer might actually be thinking or feeling, which might not be very evident in the words that we might have spoken. And then that is how AI is probably best used at this point of time.

Where do you see this going in the next five to 10 years? Taking a slightly mid to long term view of where this is going. Can you talk about where you think AI can be in the next five years or 10 years and how that would be? 

Kel Kurekgi: 21:12 

It’s a really interesting question and it’s one that keeps on getting asked and my response is always the same, which is most people, some people did, most people did not know that chatGPT was a thing a year ago, right? Like it’s come out of nowhere, it’s completely changed the game. That’s in the space of a year.

So if we’re looking at five years time, like the speed at which technology is advancing is huge at the moment. It’s advancing so quickly. I’d be foolish to even contemplate what would be in 10 years time because the landscape is changing so quickly and so rapidly that trying to make an assumption, like we only know what we know and the reality is the things that are being cooked up in the background are just stuff that our minds can’t comprehend. 

And that’s what I truly believe that the game will be completely different in 10 years time. And that’s purely because of the rate at change. We’re seeing more change in the last 12 months than we saw in the previous 12 years. What I do think one prediction I do have is that people’s time will be spent differently in five years time or 10 years time. At the moment, like if you take anyone in CX, anyone in sales, anyone in any of these kind of customer facing roles, the majority of your time ends up being stuff that you didn’t like. 

The reason why you were hired is not the same as what you actually do day to day. The reason that you often hire customer service people is because they’re really, really good with people. They know how to troubleshoot and find the solution to a problem. They’re empathetic, they’re caring, they’re kind, they’re great at speaking, great with words. 

The reason why you pick sales people pretty much exactly the same apart from they’re also, they’ve got that element of persuasion or being able to link up, you have this problem, we have this solution, let’s go, they’ve got that persistence, they’ve got all that account managers, similar, they’ve got great relationships. 

In reality, when you look at what your team does, whether you look at account management, sales, customer service, the majority of your time is not spent looking after your customers. The majority of their time is spent writing up notes, doing admin, ticking the boxes that people need for reporting purposes, chasing off the different departments for things, trying to get hold of people, all this stuff that actually detracts from the whole reason that they’re there in the first place, which is, I’m going to talk to you about what your needs, what your wants, and what you value right now. That’s why I want to talk to you. How can I help unblock this? How can I help provide a solution for that? 

Kel Kurekgi: 24:08 

I think the way in which we’re going to move forward is going to be much less based on all the admin, nitty gritty, tick in a box kind of stuff, and it’s going to be all about personalized service, direct personal interaction, because the more in which technology starts building on our lives, the more we as humans will go back, I believe, will go back to our more tribal instincts of, actually, I just want to connect with some when I need something. 

Having said that, I do know that doesn’t mean every single interaction, they’re going to want someone’s going to want a human contact, right? The majority of time, and we’ve been trained to do this as well, right? Because companies often have historically offered a really, really shoddy experience. So we as people have been trained to not want to speak to someone when we need something, when there’s a problem. We’ve been trained, if you can find out the answer for yourself, just do that. It’ll just be easy than waiting for 35 minutes on the end of the phone, trying to reach out someone to be told no, right? That’s what we’ve learned.

But when there is a scenario where you have to build a relationship with someone, when something’s going really, really wrong, when the customer is just furious, because there is a process, a flow that can’t be dealt with, because no one’s experienced it before, I believe we’re probably going to see more of that, where technology can’t fill in the gaps. 

And it’s going to mean that we’re going to spend more time speaking with, communicating with, and getting to know on a more personal level what specific individuals need, want, and value from the service that we’re offering. So if we can start training any one of our teams on anything right now, perfect those soft skills. Because when something’s gone really wrong, the last thing you want to do is speak to a chatbot and hope that it gives you the answer or the empathy that you need. 

Niraj Ranjan Rout: 26:07 

That’s very insightful Kel, absolutely. And what you just spoke for the last couple of minutes, there’s so many great ideas for founders like me to go ahead and build. So very, very interesting.

So the last question of the day, I find career paths like yours which are very non-linear, very interesting and very inspiring. So any thoughts, any advice for people who are just starting their career, you know, in college probably or in school, looking out to the big world, getting daunted, and then really grapple with the question of, you know, what is the right course of action for them to do well in life, be happy. Any piece of advice that will be really useful to them. 

Kel Kurekgi: 26:50 

Yeah, I would strongly recommend to, especially when you’re early in your career, to just try everything and say yes to everything. Say yes to every opportunity. A lot of people early in their career sort of go out with this mindset of, I know exactly what I want to do for the rest of my life, or even somewhere like most actually say like, I have no idea what I want to do with the rest of my life, but I know I don’t want to do that. I’d say just be bold enough to say yes to everything because you never know what it will lead to.

I had no idea that I would ever get an opportunity to write a script. I had no idea that I’d ever get an opportunity to work for some record that I really admired, whether it would be on like a freelance basis or a work experience basis or whatever. I had no idea on these things. So put yourself out there, say yes to things and just try everything. And if it doesn’t, like give it enough of a go, if it doesn’t work out, that’s absolutely fine. 

Move on to the next thing. But the more you put yourself out there and the more you say yes to things, the more you try different things, opportunities just happen to arrive. They just, I don’t know how it works, something aligns and eventually something clicks. And when it clicks, you will know, but you have to remain open-minded and willing to say yes. If you don’t, it ends up being you kind of, and I’ve seen people in this state, you kind of look back and think, could I have done more? And I think that notion of like regret is the worst one, right?

So to give another example of my career, you know, often when someone is doing really work customer experience or customer service, they’d say, someone somewhere would say, hey, you should work in sales, right? Because people want that, people want the new money coming in. And even that I was absolutely petrified, because I haven’t worked in sales in years. I’ve no idea, like, you know, and I did it. 

And I knew that it wasn’t exactly what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. But I was pretty successful. I had some good numbers. But all it did was gave me more clarity in terms of what I did want to do, or I did love adding value, you know, how that works. 

So even if it doesn’t work out, say yes, give it a go. And just watch those doors open. I can’t stress that enough for absolutely anyone that’s starting out. You’ve just got to say yes and try. 

Niraj Ranjan Rout: 29:25 

That’s so true and so relatable, Kel. Thanks for that.

It’s been great speaking to you Kel. Thanks for your time and I’m sure there are a lot of learning, a lot of insights for everyone there in this conversation. Have a good day Kel and I look forward to speaking to you again. 

Kel Kurekgi: 29:44 

It’s been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. And yeah, look forward to catching up again soon. 

Niraj Ranjan Rout: 29:49 

Thanks, Kel. 

Kel Kurekgi: 29:50 

Take care.