David C. Williams With FlexAgent

Intro: [00:00:04] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for High Velocity Radio.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:14] Lee Kantor here, another episode of High Velocity Radio and this is going to be a good one. Today on the show we have David C Williams, tech entrepreneur, inventor and author with AT&T. He is also the inventor of Flex agent. Welcome, David.

David C Williams: [00:00:31] Hey, how’s it going? Lee, great to be here with you.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:33] I am so excited to learn what you’re up to. Let’s start a little bit about talking about Flex Agent. I know that that’s something an initiative within AT&T that you were intimately involved in. So share a little bit about that.

David C Williams: [00:00:45] Yeah, sure. So flex agent is customer service reinvented. You know there’s nothing wrong with customer service. We all need it. We all run into issues where we have to talk to someone to get some support and help. But the difference is with flex, it works off a gig economy model. And so similar to Uber and other services like that, folks get paid by the task and by doing so, it drives a ton of efficiency and so it helps to save expenses for my firm. It helps to make sure that the folks that are taking the calls are actually earning a wage, and typically much higher than the average customer service wage, and also that the customer there’s parameters, just like in any other gig economy model, where the customer is made sure that they’re taken care of and they get the great service that they deserve.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:28] So like most marketplaces, it’s two sided. So how does it work? Like, I have a kid, he does remote work for a lot of companies. How would he kind of plug into flex agent?

David C Williams: [00:01:39] Oh yeah. So it would probably just go to flex agent Comm sign up. It’s a very simple registration process. Uh, it walks you through just a number of quick pre-hire questions. I think you usually do that with just voice. Put in your information so that you can sign up for your payments and instant payments and things like that. There’s a national background check that goes through. Training is all self-paced. You do it at your own leisure. Once you finish all that, there’s an onboarding process that happens in the background to get all your credentials together, and then we set you up so that you use your phone and your home computer, and you’re able to take calls working from home and provide customer service help for customers that may have, you know, questions about their bill or their phones and working and things like that.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:26] So it’s like you said, it’s like Uber. So I can say, okay, I want to work today from 2 to 4. I just kind of log in and, and set myself up. And then exactly as the calls come in, I deal with them. And then if I’m if I have something to do at 415, I just turn off and then I go about my day.

David C Williams: [00:02:44] That’s right. We just asked you to take about 20 calls a week as the requirement. Right now it may change over time, but yep. Uh, people get to make their own schedules. That’s the beauty of it. And so we want folks that are engaged when they want to be engaged, so that they can provide the best service to the customer.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:00] Now, is the service am I talking on the phone or am I just typing in a chat or can be a combination? No.

David C Williams: [00:03:07] Yeah, you would be talking on the phone. There’s a the system that they use is uh is that flex agents use is one browser. And so it’s a pretty simple system. But they are talking on the phone to a customer.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:18] And then how did you come up with this. What was kind of the pain point you were trying to solve?

David C Williams: [00:03:23] Well, you know, um, I’ve worked in operations and the service industry and technology for decades, and so I’ve seen a lot of the issues and problems of leaders trying to solve for. And I just realized that, you know, over time that that particular business model, I believe, is outdated and that a new business model could be used to leverage, um, and drive efficiency. And so that’s what started it. Um, the pandemic hit. And, you know, that kind of sent everybody home. And there was an opportunity to do a little toe in the water testing with it, and things looked promising. And so we just went for it. And it’s been a wildly successful.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:02] And then, uh, is this kind of only is AT&T the only customer for this? Because I would think this can work in and you know, for pretty much anyone.

David C Williams: [00:04:11] Yeah, it possibly. But right now AT&T is the only customer. That is correct.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:15] And then uh, your background has been very varied. Do you mind sharing a little bit about your back story?

David C Williams: [00:04:23] Sure. Um, yeah. Um, I don’t know where to start, but I would tell you, I’m a Dallas native. Um, and, um, I come from a very, uh, underserved neighborhood, maybe the poorest corner of the city, South Dallas. And, um, I lost my father very young. Um, however, you know, I believe that innovation is born out of necessity. Um, I kept that creative mind as I entered telecom, and, uh, I always felt like, um, you know, there are. Ways to drive efficiency to go, you know, proactively go find something broken and and try to fix it. And so that’s kind of been a mantra I’ve had. I went through a lot of different roles and technology and network and uh, chief of staff and customer experience. And I landed in technology just because, um, you know, I have a passion for automating things and really trying to find a better way to, to do the same things. And it’s worked out pretty well. I’ve been able to drive a culture in my organization. That culture trumps strategy. And so we work like a family and we have a lot of fun, and we go after really big problems, and we’ve been pretty successful solving them.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:29] Now, I know that diversity is important to you and your work. Can you, um, share some of your thoughts on that intersection between technology and diversity?

David C Williams: [00:05:41] Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, I believe that, um. Having a diverse perspective gives you a chance to see things that you normally wouldn’t have. A lot of the folks in my organization, um, are people of color, or they don’t have a traditional technology background. Um, also, um, you know, about half the team is female. Uh, all of these are not necessarily common attributes of a technology team. We’re not a homogenous team. That gives us a perspective that that gives us a perspective where we can, um, put an idea on the table a, an issue, a problem on the table, and everyone’s voice is heard. And so you’d be surprised sometimes where, you know, the PhDs are engineers are sitting with folks that, um, are, you know, not as quote unquote technical, but the collaborations come together and they can see that really one and one is 11. You just got to get close enough together. And so that diversity of thought has proven to be very successful for us. It helps us to drive exponential results. We typically drive two, three, 4,000% ROI and, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars of impact every year. And so it’s working. The proof is definitely in the pudding.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:51] Now. Um, for some people, diversity is starting to become kind of controversial. Can you share some of your thoughts on why it’s important, um, to not neglect diversity and, and to make this part of the conversation in the business world today.

David C Williams: [00:07:08] Yeah, I think the important thing is just that, you know, I understand there is an argument that, you know, you don’t want to necessarily, um, um, disenfranchize or over incentivize others just based on a specific attribute. But I would say that the key for me is to just remember that we’re all individuals. And although I may be a black man and you’re a white man, there are many things about us that make us unique. And you’re not like every man or every white man, and I’m not the same. And so I think if we’re open enough to allow people to have that type of freedom where we can view that, then we can start to appreciate the specific talents of each individual. On my team, I ask that, folks. I say, look, if you want to come to work and bring your whole self, um, you’re automatically approved for vacation. Stay at home, because the problems that we are working on are too big for Clark Kent. We need your super self, we need Superman and Wonder Woman. And so we ask everyone to come to work and bring their super self in. And we even call ourselves by those super names. There’s a burn rubber river. There’s a Obi wan Kenobi. I’m optimistic Prime. And so we take those. It’s fun, but we take those things serious. And it helps the culture that we have. And by doing that, we drive diversity without having to have a diversity label to it all. It’s really about bringing the best out of us all.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:28] Now, do you find the folks that are kind of reluctant to embrace this are maybe there is some sort of a subconscious bias in that, that they’re not seeing the need to do this, and they are in their minds believing that, yes, I’m only looking at the individual, but they’re not noticing maybe that if they look at the team or they look at, you know, kind of all the photos of the leaders on the wall, that they might all look the same. And they they just think that they are doing what you’re saying, but they’re just happened to land on this, you know, kind of group that looks the same.

David C Williams: [00:09:10] Yeah. You know, it’s interesting. It’s it’s a it’s a slippery slope and it’s very easy to just gravitate to our own. I mean, it’s super easy, you know, for guys to go talk to guys and women to talk to women. And, and before you know it, it’s guys promoting guys. And we’re not looking at promoting women. And so in these unconscious biases biases happen. Um, one thing that comes to mind for me is this. And this is a business example, but you could use it in any flavor. There was a hotel once. I was at a conference. The very nice hotel might have been a, I don’t know, a $5,060 million building. I mean, it was just absolutely gorgeous hotel. And in the hotel that all the showers had this specific type of shower head. And for a specific demographic of women, it did not work well at the conference. That topic hit the stage now. Wow. They made a huge investment. But by not necessarily taking in enough diverse perspectives, they made a small faux pas that wound up being a really big black eye for their facility. Wouldn’t it have been nice to maybe consult several types of women to get a perspective on this before going to production and rolling it out? Right? And so that’s just one example of where folks had great intentions. But by not having a diverse perspective, they didn’t get the best solution, the best reaction. That is the same in every aspect of life. We may think we have it covered, we may think we know it all. But if you get a few more perspectives from people that don’t look or talk like you come from where you come from, you may see something that you didn’t see before.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:52] And it doesn’t always have to be negative. There could be huge opportunity out there just by talking to a broader group of people that you might be missing, you could have the exact right product and service for this group, but you’re just not framing it, right? Or you’re not even asking them if they want to participate.

David C Williams: [00:11:10] Absolutely, absolutely. You know, um, here’s an example. Um, in America, cancer is a very big topic, right? Um, and I’ve definitely lost people in my family from cancer. In other countries, cancer is not as prevalent. What are those other countries doing that maybe we’re not doing in America? There are a lot of things that we can learn from others. It just takes a moment to just go look outside and say, and again, talk to the folks that don’t look like you come from where you come from. You learn things that you just didn’t know. And it’s it’s really a cheat code. Um, I believe one and one is 11. If you put two great people together and they have some conversations, they can go further, faster.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:51] Now talk, talk a little bit about Hyperautomation. I’ve never heard that phrase before. Can you talk about that and how you got involved with that?

David C Williams: [00:12:00] Yeah, absolutely. And so Hyperautomation, I like to define it in two different ways. One, it is a culmination of technologies that typically work very well together, like machine learning, robotics, process automation is a big part of it. Um, AI, ML, things like that. Um, another way I define hyperautomation is it’s the least expensive way to solve business problems with software. And so we work in very short development cycles. We typically carry a very high ROI because we spend just a little bit of resources and drive a very big impact. It’s typically how most hyperautomation programs work. And so instead of, you know, spending a lot of heavy IT resources to go solve a problem, we may solve something in the back, a process we may engineer and optimize and then provide that to the business. And so it doesn’t have to take as heavy resources to produce that solution.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:56] Now is hyperautomation something that a small business or a solopreneur can take advantage of? Or is this something that only kind of these mega companies and these enterprise level organizations have access to?

David C Williams: [00:13:10] No. Um, actually, I think about hyperautomation in at a, at a entrepreneurial level, it might look like bots, it might look like some web tools that you can use, Zapier and MongoDB, things like that, where folks can, let’s say if you’re running a dry cleaner business, um, and you may need some automated spreadsheet accounting stuff, you may need some process optimization so that the clothes register in the budget and the the supply chain of ordering materials is, is is, uh, visible. You may want to connect a few of those things together. You can use some hyper automation tools to do so.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:49] So now if you were an entrepreneur or a solopreneur, how would you kind of go about learning about this where you can take advantage of it? Is there something, uh, is there some sort of training out there or is there some is this something that, you know, you just got to kind of tinker with?

David C Williams: [00:14:05] Yeah, it’s a bit of both. And so, um, one of the huge platforms is Microsoft. They have a Power Apps and Power Automate platform. It’s it has 500 connectors into the Microsoft suite of everything that they do. And so they have some very cool, uh, cloud flows where you, even if you’re not super technical, with just a little bit of training, you can connect a few different things together and see the lights come on. And so, um, that would be the first place that I would start. You know, also the University of YouTube does pretty well.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:38] Yeah. I think a lot of folks, um, really do a great job on YouTube explaining a lot of complicated things in a very efficient manner, and it is a great tool for education. Do you find that in your work? Um, that that’s the case as well. Even at an enterprise level, you can kind of lean on YouTube for some intelligence.

David C Williams: [00:15:02] Yeah. Um, there is a huge community, especially if you, uh, so getting into hyper automation to collection of technologies, the place to probably start, um, is bots or robotics, process automation. Um, there are absolutely tools out there, YouTube videos, things like that. There’s UiPath, there’s a lot of different, uh, great resources. I will tell you, when I think from a enterprise perspective, things that we’ve been able to do and in a solopreneur could do the same. But like, um, typically when you work with software development, there’s this long list of requirements and it’s an arduous process. It takes a long time. And so we thinking in a hyper automation type of methodology, instead of writing all that stuff out, we may just capture it on video. Right. And that just truncates this. It simplifies the process. It makes it a lot more fun. Uh, it moves a lot faster. And so we can move things through the development cycle a lot quicker.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:00] Is there any bot that you would say is a good starting point for somebody?

David C Williams: [00:16:06] Um, typically where people start is can they create a bot to do something with an Excel sheet? That’s usually where most people start, right? And um, if so, then they will say, okay, I’ll go from a web sheet to a website, uh, website and a web and a, and a excel sheet. Can I put these two together? And so it just starts to build more logic from there.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:35] Now, um, one of your mottos is legacy over entourage. Um, when it comes to, uh, I guess, inspiring and growing the next generation of leaders. Can you talk a little bit about that?

David C Williams: [00:16:50] Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, in my career, I’ve worked in telecom for a couple decades, and I’ve only had two professional goals. One is to, um, impact society at large, hints, um, the patents and all that kind of stuff and to mentor. And so when I think about mentoring, there’s, um, probably a few flavors of mentoring. There’s crisis management when someone really is, you know, in a situation, there’s, um, you know, helping folks to kind of find their way. And then there’s when you have folks that are hitting it, firing on all cylinders, right? They’re doing everything right, and they just need some help to get over the fence or get to the next level. And when I find those situations, you know, and I asked my own mentees to hold me accountable. But if a mentor has been mentoring someone for a long period of time, six months or more, um, we should either be. Giving constructive feedback on how they can improve things, or opening up the Rolodex, the contact list to say, how can I help you? And who can I help you with, right? Who can I connect you with? If that’s not happening, then you know, we’re really not building a legacy. We’re building an entourage. And I think sometimes, um, unconsciously or consciously, those things happen. And we have to be very mindful that we’re not, uh, that we’re empowering the youth to not only do well, but to do as well as we are or beyond. Right. I think that’s very important to make sure that we continue to strive for that, to see the next generation or the next wave of leaders go further and faster than we have.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:29] Now, is there any, um, kind of a system of mentoring that you’ve learned over the years that’s effective? Like, how important is it, you know, to set clear goals or to have regular check ins or, um, like, how do you create that accountability while combining it with the support that a person needs, a mentee needs.

David C Williams: [00:18:51] Yeah, well, I think you have to be very intentional. And so, you know, there’s probably a couple things I would say is every mentoring session I have with, um, in a group setting or one on one, I try to remember to say to the person, hey, look, if there’s ever a time that we’re having these sessions and it’s not valuable to you, I want you to speak up and say something to me. Right. And I try to say that frequently so that it is not a tough conversation the day they want to have it. And I share with them, look, you should feel this way with me and any other mentor, right? I’m not here to waste my time or yours either. The second thing is that, um, I believe that yes, you do have to set some clear expectations in the beginning. And with that, I try to just really break the ice. Let’s not have corporate speak. Let’s talk like family for a moment. Right. What is it that you really want out of this relationship? Be very direct so that we’re clear on the goals, and then we can figure out how to get there.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:52] So, um, what’s next for you?

David C Williams: [00:19:57] Well, um, it’s been a heck of a ride thus far. I’m just coming off a pretty, uh, big, uh, weekend. I just, uh, picked up the Distinguished Engineer of the year award, um, at the Nsbe conference in Atlanta. Um, next for me is going to be pushing flex. Um, I think it’s a great program for everyone involved, customers, the company and, and, um, call takers. And, um, that’s probably the the next big thing in my immediate future is pushing flex and watching it, uh, become something amazing in our society.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:28] So if somebody wants to learn more about flex, uh, what is the way to do that?

David C Williams: [00:20:34] Sure. Just go to Flex Agent Comm.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:36] Good stuff. Well, David, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

David C Williams: [00:20:42] Thank you.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:43] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you on the next time on High Velocity Radio.