Does Your Company Pass “The Ugly Tech” Test?

The following post is written by Lance Gibbs, CEO of BP-3 and author of Not My Circus, Not My Monkeys:
Our tech choices are biting us in the ass.
Companies are still using back-end systems that should have been thrown in the trash a long time ago.
Most of these systems have just been “fixed” or “patched,” as if with Band-Aids and chewing gum.
It’s ugly shit.
It was ugly shit back then and it’s even uglier shit now, more than two decades later.
I could list so many examples of the ugliness, but one of my favorite examples are Interactive Voice Response systems.
Interactive Voice Response, aka IVR, is the automated system that answers our calls when we call in for technical support, customer support, or to conduct over the phone payments.

Remember the time that you had an issue with your cable provider and decided to call in to talk to a customer service agent?
Remember the maze of buttons that you had to press in order to hopefully be connected with a real person?
Please press #1 for billing.
Please press #2 for technical support.
That was IVR.

I have screamed many an expletive into the phone while interacting with an Interactive Voice Response system. I cannot believe this damned technology still exists today.
Why do things like IVR systems exist?
Because they are cheap.
They allow companies to hire a smaller number of people in their contact centers than necessary. The IVR systems are a poor attempt at offering self-service to customers, and always end up making customers more aggravated.
The poor souls in the contact center are then burdened with angry, sometimes inane, callers. It is an absurd system where no one really wins—customers and employees both suffer.
But because back-end processes like IVR may not easily be correlated to revenue using historical metrics, there is no incentive for companies to change them. So these back-end systems just sit there rotting, and employees have to sit there smelling it.
In today’s world, employees and customers alike will not stand for ugly shit like that anymore.
Companies like Amazon, Grainger, Nordstrom, and, hell, even Green Mountain Coffee employ humans to answer the phones.
They figured out the secret to improving their bottom line:
Engaging with customers directly.

At BP-3, we fervently believe that every employee and every customer can have a great experience in their interactions with companies.
This belief is the “why” behind the “what” and “how” of what we do.
The “what” of what we do is we work to get rid of all of the ugly stuff that prevents a great experience.
Finally, our “how” is we identify the root-cause problems and then work to change them through the vehicle of “people, process, and technology.”
Our work gives us unique insight into the various aspects of a business, and we specialize in melding the back-end experience to the front-end experience.
We pay attention to the actual “process consumers.” Not just the customers, but also the people moving the ball forward from a process standpoint: the employees.
Then, we ask how the processes meet their needs. At BP3, we practice what we preach. We ask our employees, “What would make your life easier, and what can we do to help you do the best you can for our customers?”
It is such a dead, stupid simple, in-your-face obvious question, yet so few companies ask it. But we do.
The BP-3 team has won a lot of awards:
#12 Best Workplaces for Recent Grads (Fortune and Great Place to Work®)
#4 Best Workplaces for Technology (Fortune and Great Place to Work®)
#8 Best Small Workplaces (Fortune and Great Place to Work®)
#2 Best Places to Work Medium Companies (Austin Business Journal )
Fastest Growing 50 Companies in Central Texas (2012–2016) (Austin Business Journal)
#1 Top Small Workplaces (Austin Statesman)
We know the importance of giving our employees a great experience in our quest to offer the best customer experience possible, and we’ve figured out how to do it.
Honestly, it only took us asking ourselves—as customers, as employees, and as consumers—what was important to us. We knew that what was important to us would probably be what was important to the next person.
What we found was stupid simple, and I want to share it with you.
To read more about BP-3’s lessons learned, check out Lance’s book Not My Circus, Not My Monkeys on Amazon.


