Making communications more human

Speaker 1:
Ready to explore the extraordinary world of tech. Welcome to the XTech podcast where we connect you with the sharpest minds and leading voices in the global tech community. Join us as we cut through the complexity to give you a clear picture of the ideas, innovations, and insight that are shaping our future.

Debbie Forster MBE:
Hello and welcome to the XTech podcast by Fox Agency. I’m your host, Debbie Forster, MBE. I’m the CEO at the Tech Talent Charter and an advocate and campaigner for diversity, inclusion and innovation in the tech industry. I’m delighted to be working with Fox Agency as the host of the XTech podcast and as a curator for the XTech community. Today, I’m really delighted to be joined by Chris Wade. Chris is the Chief Marketing and Product Officer at Gamma. Welcome, Chris.

Chris Wade:
Hi. Good morning. How are you doing?

Debbie Forster MBE:
Good. Chris, the audience and I really like to get to know you as a real life human before we dive into what you do. When we think about the tech industry, some people are born with that laptop in hand, others like me find their twists and turns and then find themselves surprisingly in tech. What about you? How did you get in?

Chris Wade:
How did I get into it? Probably a little bit of both actually. I was the kid who used to take stereos apart to find out what was inside them. At that stage, didn’t really understand what any of the bits and pieces inside them were, but was driven by that curiosity. At school, I was good at all the sciences and maths, so I was moving towards that pace and I ended up doing physics at university. I got the sense there that an academic career wasn’t going to be for me. I ended up going into consulting and then ended up gravitating totally by accident actually towards the software business as my first job out of consulting. It wasn’t to do with coding. I’d done a bit of coding at university and I was frankly, awful at it. I’ve got nothing but respect for people who write code, but I just can’t do it. Since then, I’ve been in the B2B tech space. For a frighteningly long period of time now, I’ve been in and around products marketing for technology businesses.

Debbie Forster MBE:
More I think like me, the fascination is that curiosity of the kids. What tech does rather than the tech itself.

Chris Wade:
Exactly. The intersection between tech and the real world I think is where the magic happens.

Debbie Forster MBE:
Fantastic. Well, once you find yourself in here, you’re now at Gamma. Now, not everyone has heard about Gamma. Can you tell me what Gamma does?

Chris Wade:
Sure. Gamma is one of those companies who powers a lot of things behind the scenes that no one ever sees. We are a communications business. We are predominantly based out, well, we are based out of the UK. We predominantly serve the UK market, but we are growing businesses in a few European countries too. We make communications happen. The wires behind the wall working with some of our partners are part of us. The wireless signals going to routers, but go somewhere of our phones and then higher tech pieces of kit, like what are called SIP trunks to enabling connections into the telephone network and then communications applications over the top of it. We make those conversations happen.

We are, as I say, predominantly a B2B provider, so we sell to businesses and help them with their communication needs. If you think about the kind of challenge that those businesses face today, we are trying to keep them keep up with our kids. Who use however many different types of communication methods in any given day, every given hour. Small businesses in the UK, they’re targeting those people as customers. We’re trying desperately to help them keep up to date and keep pace with us as consumers and make sure they’ve got tools they need to keep power in the UK economy.

Debbie Forster MBE:
Because it’s changed so much, when I was very young, we would never put communications in with technology and now they’re just ubiquitous, isn’t it? There’s been so much change to get through.

Chris Wade:
Oh, yeah. When you start work and you’ve got that cream or beige handset on your desk and it rings and you can do things like find people in your office in the directory and all those kinds of things, they’re all still real and there. They were very much driven by that piece of physical hardware. Now, I can’t remember the last time I had a phone on my desk. We are talking over a laptop hundreds of miles apart, but as though we’re sat opposite the desk, across the desk from each other. That actually extrapolates globally now, doesn’t it? You can sit and have a call with someone in San Francisco, Singapore, Sydney, all at the same time. That medium totally transcends location. We’ve gone through that technology enabled shift that really got accelerated through COVID as well with people having to retrench back to their locality, but still maintaining that connection in a global economy. It’s sort of totally, even just as a user, totally different, total different landscape that you operate in.

Then obviously in Gamma’s world, we’ve been powering and enabling and responding to those changes and making sure the technology’s being keeping pace or getting ahead of that pace ideally to make sure that those things can happen. Because getting applications onto people’s computers is one thing, getting people using them is another. Keeping them up to date, keeping them moving, keeping them progressing. It’s not trivial as anyone listens to this will know, let alone trying to understand the total spread of feeling that people have about the applications that they use. The things that they like and don’t like. The changes that they react violently to. You’ve got all those different bits and pieces going on around it. Our demands either as professionals, workers or as consumers just keep going up and up and up and up. It’s one of those things that only by moving to be a technology business really can communications providers get the pace and the control to be able to keep up going with those ways. Otherwise, traditional telco timescales just don’t work anymore.

Debbie Forster MBE:
No. We just don’t tolerate it. COVID impacted us in so many ways. As you say, we all had to go online whatever we’d done prior to that. As we are back in whatever, I don’t know if I’d call it normal, it’s new. Have you seen people’s expectations change in terms of communications and technology?

Chris Wade:
Dramatically. Children are the perfect example of this. If the wifi so much as hiccups, all hell breaks loose. It’s only the fact that we’re grown ups and try to moderate that. We have the same if Teams drops or any other, insert your communication provider preference here. If there’s a slightest glitch, the world ends, doesn’t it? Oh, it’s not working. What’s happening? That’s as in the professional world, you’ve got that. You’re just totally intolerant of anything other than high quality, high availability, high speed connections. If you think about what used to even be a standard broadband connection 5, 10, 15 years ago compared to now, it’s totally changed, dramatically changing in terms of the ability of what you can do. That’s driven by our use of more and more data in business and tools. We’re demanding more of that, but it’s also the bleed across from consumers. Everything is on demand now, isn’t it? Videos, computer games, sport, movie, all those things.

You don’t buy a DVD. Funny enough, we cleaned out one of the cupboards downstairs, found a box full of DVDs. What do you do with those? Why have you got those anymore? You don’t need them. We, as consumers, then driving that and reinforcing it. As I said, you use WhatsApp, email, Facebook Messenger, TikTok, any number of communication mechanisms. It’s hard for businesses then to keep track of those and to make sure that they’re using the right media to communicate with their customers. Obviously, it changes depending on who their customers are and what business they’re in. It all comes back to then in our world, Gamma’s world, a small business can’t afford a social media expert and an email tool and they’ve got to have a tool or a capability to let them draw all those things together, make them consumable and familiar to us as workers.

Otherwise, you get what I think people refer to in COVID, they get video overload and you spend so long on video calls that you just can’t function anymore. Then you explode that over different communication mechanisms and our brains are just not wired to cope with that. You’ve got a role as a technology provider to try and do the right thing. As a user myself or yourself on the end of a communication service, you are not just totally befuddled and bemused and overwhelmed by the flow of information you’re giving a way to interact with it and curate it in a way which is sympathetic to what you are trying to do. As a business, obviously, a majority of that is still telephone calls. To a small business, particularly still telephone calls, but they still need it to be handled and managed with them for them so the phone isn’t permanently ringing. If they’re on the phone with someone, it isn’t just an engaged tone, it’s a voicemail or maybe it routes to their business partner or to another phone in the garage.

Managing those types of things whilst again, as someone who moved into communications from software, you go, well, it just happens. Obviously, nothing just happens. There’s a lot of thought and intensity of effort and concentration behind the scenes to make that happen. Again, abstracting it to the point where people don’t notice it is critical. All COVID did was put that on steroids, make it go faster, make it better, and almost totally tore up the rule book of what’s the natural pace of progression and just made us as a business have to respond and as consumers and workers have to react to those and adapt to like you say what is normal. We come back to everyone will work at home a little bit. Everyone will work in the office a little bit and everyone will work everywhere in between a little bit. You think about the array of tools that are needed for that, mobile communications, devices that can talk, wifi, Bluetooth, all those kinds of things. Let alone the applications that sit on them. Incredibly demanding environment to be in, I think.

Debbie Forster MBE:
I think it’s really important for any of us who are in tech to remember something that you said I think which is key, which is our customers, our clients and our colleagues, our consumers first. They bring those consumer expectations to the office, to the workplace, to what we want from those who supply us. The goal isn’t it, is that making things seamless and making the tech invisible? I think that’s really the holy grail of it all is to get your UX, get your user knowledge so much that it becomes invisible. AI can do a lot of that, can’t it? There’s a lot of bashing on about what’s wrong within the AI, but I know you are quite passionate about how AI can help communications.

Chris Wade:
One of the things that we have a stated objective over at Gamma is to make communications more human. That doesn’t necessarily mean you’re always talking to a human or interacting with a human. It means you get the same outcome that you think you’ll get if you talk to the human who’s going to help you out the most. It’s really, really important, I think. That will apply in so many different ways. One of my team actually coined the phrase, you’ve got AI and you’ve got IA. Artificial intelligence or intelligent automation. Those two I think cross over quite a lot as you start to think about how do you make as efficient and automatic and seamless as possible, that communications experience? We’ve all sat on hold at call center for an hour, not the best experience in the world. Often in the past was the only way you got through because you had to wait for all the other humans so you could speak to the human who could solve your problem.

The first step in that is that intelligent automation. If you want to get a call back, press one. We’ll call you back as soon as the agent. You can put the phone down, go about your day, phone rings you back. You follow that up. I’m ringing in to speak to the next person I need to speak to follow up on a query. I’d like to speak to the person I spoke to before. Again, intelligent automation can take you down that route. There’s probably another, I think there’s two flavors of AI as well. You’ve got artificial intelligent, you’ve got almost intelligent. You go through that gradation in my mind, intelligent automation, almost intelligent and genuine artificial intelligence.

I am not sure we quite see that third phase yet coming to fruition, but we’ve got all sorts of clever things in there. Be it on the phone. Tell me your order number. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. Okay, Mr. Wade, your order is here. I haven’t had to speak to a human. I’ve got a great outcome. I haven’t cost the business any money. I haven’t cost myself any time. How’s that? Where’s that? Between intelligent automation and almost intelligent. You’re somewhere across that gap, aren’t you? AI, true AI, who knows where that takes us? It’s a story, a Google story I think where in a meeting talking about what’s the optimal search time, what’s the best search time that Google search engine could give you back to which the engineering response was obviously zero.

We tell you just as soon as you’ve put the answer in. I think it was one of the founders, he lifted his hand and said, “Why? Why does it have to be zero? Why can’t we know before you search what you want?” I don’t think we are quite there either, although the precedence of Facebook advertising in your feed might tell you that we’ve got all those things to go. Particularly when it comes to delivering that mainstream for businesses. Whole spread of things that can make our life as consumers and businesses life easier and better. Are we out of intelligent automation? No. We’re still exploiting that. We are almost intelligent and we will get to true artificial intelligence in those. Who knows when and what it means.

Debbie Forster MBE:
I think and who knows what it means is interesting. When I was looking and reading about Gamma, I was intrigued to see that you talked about comms with a conscience. What does that mean?

Chris Wade:
That’s one of our higher-level statements of what we want to be. I think it breaks down into two parts, doesn’t it? Obviously, comms is what we do, we’ve talked about that. The conversation we facilitate. The outcome we want to give to our customers. The conscience piece I think is rooted in why do we want to think about ourselves different and how would we want people to think about us? We want to do communications, we want to do it the right way. That can mean all sorts of different things. We’ve obviously got, as a planet, we have this ESG agenda. We have a requirement to be the best we can be for businesses, in our case, people on the planet. Again, statements we make in our vision and mission statements, but it also boils down to the decisions you make. Who do you work with? How do you price an offer? Who do you hire? What is it that embeds what a Gamma person is? We’re clear on what that looks like too.

We try and put that conscience piece through our decision-making process. We want to do communications, we want to do it in the right way. We want to make a positive impact at every level then, so the planet. We’ve got very strong environmental agenda. I always get carbon-neutral and carbon net-zero mixed up. We have a clear plan to get to that with the science-based target initiative. We want to optimize power and data center usage and all those kinds of things. Then you come down through the stack of other things. We want to be a well-run company. We want to make a positive contribution to the communities that we operate in. we want to work with our partners to support their business. We did a lot of stuff.

We talked about COVID before in terms of in that massive uncertainty shock. We did a lot of things like extending payment terms and commercial support for the people that we work with to make sure that you’re trying to leave behind that best impression. It’s one of the things that we think makes us different in terms of the communications industry and businesses that commitment to doing that. When you’ve got the choices, every business has to think about what are you. I think that clear communication is technology. How are you and why are you? I think there’s a higher-level statements that everyone perhaps disregards a little bit, but we’ve decided that we’re going to take that on and be very clear about that conscience element.

Debbie Forster MBE:
I think that is something that is exciting, not just within tech but within business, is as consumers are getting smarter, we’re looking for businesses that don’t just do good work but who are good businesses and that focus on beyond the acronyms of ESG. Really trying to look at those human-centric decisions at all levels. What I love seeing across the market is that is starting to be not just the right thing to do, but the smart thing to do. Because people, consumers and businesses are beginning to make their choices based on not just the product, not just the price point, but actually what is the morality, what is the impact behind that? It’s a powerful way to move forward. Times are hard for everyone. In business you’re always looking at the next mountain, the next thing. What would you say is your biggest challenge at the moment?

Chris Wade:
Biggest challenge? I think it’s probably around this how does uncertainty impact business in general? You’ve obviously, as we said there, you’ve got levels of uncertainty all the way up and down from global environmental challenge, right the way down to local conditions of inflation, talent, technology trends, all those kinds of different things. I think it’s balancing all of those and being clear how do you respond to each of them in a coherent way? Talent has been one of those things. COVID again drove the great resignation. Before, there was the war on talent or the war for talent, whichever one side you sat on.

Debbie Forster MBE:
Sometimes felt like on talent but it technically should be for talent. Yes.

Chris Wade:
I think like you just said about people almost questioning now more deeply why something is happening and how is it going to happen? You’ve got those as a business. We’re trying to bring people in. We’re trying to make positive contributions. We’re trying to make great technology. We’re trying to enable good communication outcomes. It’s against a backdrop of people making harder choices. Is that an investment I want to make at one level? Is that a company I want to deal business with? Is it a company I want to go and work for? Do I want to work five days a week? Do I want four days a week? You’ve got all these which just throw in certainty into the mix. Obviously, they’re quite interrelated as well with environmental agenda, particularly young people coming into the workforce today, their experience of the working life and what binds a company together is very different. I think as an organization and frankly, as a middle-aged person sitting as you go through all this, you go, how do we make sure that our prejudices that are formed in one paradigm aren’t constraining what we do going forward?

I think it is about that. Technology can solve any problem. I think that’s one of the things people get frustrated about with say the environment is it’s a bit like the million-dollar management. We have the technology, we’re just not choosing to do the right things with it. For us, it’s making sure we’re making the choices today as a business and we’re sufficiently balanced in our view of we’ve obviously got shareholders, we’ve got to keep a good business going for them for today, but also for tomorrow. Customers, partners, employees, all those different communities. You’ve got to balance where all these different levels are. Striking the right balance I think going forward we’re quite different to how it was struck in the past. I think businesses, some will struggle I think with that of like you said before, over rotating on what the commercial things rather than some of the environmental societal things. I think balancing them, blending those pieces together will be hard.

Debbie Forster MBE:
I couldn’t agree more. I think as we move on, we’re now actually, because we operated and felt the hardest thing for business was the height of COVID and the lockdown, and it’s not. Even that first new normal, whatever that was, was not. I agree with you. I think the businesses who were starting to thrive are the ones who are realizing the old world is gone. The ones who are willing not to panic as times are harder to go back to those old paradigms. You can see it. You can see some of the companies trying to crack the whip and back to the, they’re trying to retreat back into what may feel like comforting old ways of doing things. I think you’re right and I think it’s almost time to also stop. I’ve used the term, I run something called the Tech Talent Charter. We have to remember talent are people and the old rules are gone.

The companies who are willing to go into that rather scary space to redefine how we work with our workforce, to redefine how we see our client base, our customers, our users, and to ask those difficult questions and do that balancing act in a different way. It is a time for bravery, but I think we’re going to see. There’s already studies starting to come through. Those companies who were continuing to lean into these changes to look for more diverse workforce to really focus on culture will come out of these hard times stronger and faster and more effective and leaner. All right. Well, let’s then think. I’d like to hear, because when we’re in tech we don’t just focus on what’s on the desk in front of us. Key questions I always want to ask is, for you Chris, is there anything about tech at the moment that is really either frustrating, frightening you, worrying you? What’s the dark side of tech for you right now?

Chris Wade:
Actually, it’s twofold, I think, a little bit. One is, and obviously, some of this is driven by the events in say Ukraine and Israel where you’ve got conflict and then how does technology play a part in that? What does it enable? Not just in the physical world, but as cyber techniques and cyber exchanges become more destructive or more far-reaching and more pervasive. What can that do and where does that open up? The globe, so the whole world becomes a center where it can be impacted by something. I think that’s a little bit something, I don’t know what that looks like. I don’t know what it feels like, but it bothers me that you’re in an industry that at least partially is related to that.

Obviously in communications, we see it as one of the first things that get disrupted in Ukraine was internet access. Suddenly, the population are isolated from each other, from the outside world. It’s a path back to I think a darker time where people are more isolated and we are less aware and comfortable with each other. I think that crosses straight into AI, doesn’t it? Who does know where that goes? I don’t think it’s Skynet extrapolating those two things together, but where does that go? I don’t know. I think also the people making statements about what AI is today are just wrong. It just isn’t all the things that they say it is. Every company you ever look at now is artificial intelligence. It’s like, no. That’s just an if then statement repeating quickly and lots of them. Come on.

I think we in the technology industry are probably alienating ourselves from the general population by trying to appear like we’ve got something that really, they know we don’t. It’s a bit emperor’s new clothes and it’s creating this situation which will polarize society. Because you’ll get people who are instinctively afraid of that because it’s unknown and it has risks. That’s just not a good place to be. I think all of us are better if technology can be harnessed to be something which is a force for good and a force for positivity and solving problems rather than building barriers and creating division. I think those two or three themes together make me feel a bit uncertain about where that goes.

Debbie Forster MBE:
It’s a shout-out to all of us too. I’ve heard that from a number of our guests. We have to start using our voice more effectively and our knowledge and not mystify things and to come out from that magical thinking into this is a tool and let’s talk about tools are tools that can be used for good or evil. The world is filled with something that is much more in between good and evil. It is that gray area. Well, what excites you in tech? What gets you up in the morning you think, that’s amazing?

Chris Wade:
I think I said it before, I mean with technology I think you can do everything. I think anything is possible. Because half the things that we, if you think about even just the path of technology over my lifetime, you go not having a mobile phone, dialing a rotary phone at home, now you’ve got two phones on your desk, we’re talking through this and that’s in 40 odd years. It’s just staggering. If you think about that in every single level I think of technology, we look at, let’s say what aviation is possible now. Vilified is for climate change, but think about the engines that are on those machines now compared to what they were that time ago. In the real physical world, material science, fuel technology understanding has just moved night and day. Looking forward, you’ve got things like the fusion situation.

Getting more energy out of the reaction in the US whilst it’s enough to boil a kettle if you can harness it in the picosecond that it’s there. That’s a principle proved and from a principle proved genuine change can come. Maybe I’m being naive, maybe I’m just being optimistic. I think with a background in physics and we’re seeing how these things have played out historically and the pace of change now. Once we marry the imperative and the human will, I don’t think there’s anything we can’t not do. That’s terrible English. Apologies. The world is our oyster as it were.

Debbie Forster MBE:
I do think so. I think to be in tech is at some level to be an optimist. There is that part of us, whether we’re taking apart stereos or trying, it is that possibility, the art of possibility that’s exciting. Then more widely, my audience are always looking for some good tips of what to read, to watch to listen to. Is there anything that’s inspiring you or really blowing your mind at the moment?

Chris Wade:
It may come as no surprise, as a physicist, I read a lot of sci-fi because I think it’s quite nice escapism. It’s nicely not connected to any problems in the real world. They’re all grounded in the science fact of today. I think I draw inspiration from that. Like I say, that anything’s possible. Then when you look around for when you’re looking for inspiration closer to home, I just watch my kids with iPads and you’re like, “Oh, my God. I am so outclassed by what they can do.” It’s very simple inspiration, but you watch their just ability to logically infer, if I do this, this will happen and on you go. Be it in gaming or anything else.

It’s not I listen to this podcast or read this book, it’s just look around for the places. I’m fortunate I live on the coast in Newcastle. You run up down here and watch the sunrise in the morning. Newcastle can’t fail to be inspired by the difference that, that can happen. From Storm Babet with waves 20 foot high through to this morning glowing sunshine. You’re like, it’s there all around you if you just take the time to do it. Technology is great, but I think that natural world helps me too.

Debbie Forster MBE:
I like that. Everybody, when you finish the podcast, turn it off. Turn off everything electronic and look around. Because there is that, there is so much beyond the screen, beyond our earbuds, et cetera.

Chris Wade:
Exactly. It won’t solve the problems, it won’t give you the answer, but it might give you the mind space to be able to go, I know the answer actually, and this is what it needs to be.

Debbie Forster MBE:
Fantastic. I really like that. That’s a great way to finish it. Chris, thanks so much for joining me on this episode of XTech.

Chris Wade:
My pleasure. I enjoyed it.

Debbie Forster MBE:
Thank you for listening. If you’re a tech innovator and would like to appear as a guest on the show, email us now at xtech@fox.agency. Finally, thank you to the team of experts at Fox Agency who make this podcast happen. I’m Debbie Forster and you’ve been listening to the XTech podcast.

Speaker 1:
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