WFM Unfiltered

Cost Vs Value - Rick Denton

• Rick Denton • Season 1 • Episode 28

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When does customer experience actually drive value, and when is it just an expensive vanity metric?

In this episode of WFM Unfiltered, we’re joined by Rick Denton, a seasoned expert in customer experience, to dissect one of the most controversial topics in contact centers: Is customer service a cost or a value driver?

With decades of experience in operational excellence, customer advocacy, and brand strategy, Rick brings a no-nonsense take on how businesses should really measure customer experience. Forget the fluffy feel-good metrics—this conversation is about hard ROI, brand loyalty, and the real impact of AI in contact centers.

🔥 Inside this episode, we break down:

  • The dangerous myth of cost-cutting in customer service
  • Why AI isn’t the magic bullet companies want it to be (and how it can help)
  • How your support team can either enhance or destroy your brand’s promise
  • What leadership gets wrong about “customer experience”—and how to fix it

For anyone in WFM, customer service, or leadership, this episode delivers brutal truths about budgeting, branding, and business survival. If you’ve ever felt frustrated by leadership's obsession with cutting costs at the expense of service, this episode is for you.

Watch now and level up your CX game!
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🎙️ Check out Rick Denton’s podcasts:
CX Passport: https://www.youtube.com/@cxpassport
The Loud Quiet: https://www.youtube.com/@TheLoudQuiet


📢 Show Links:
• RightWFM website: www.rightwfm.com
• Email: Irina@rightwfm.com
• Podcast email: WFMUnfiltered@gmail.com
• Podcast Directory listings: www.wfmunfiltered.buzzsprout.com/share
• YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@wfmunfiltered?sub_confirmation=1

Thanks for listening.

If you'd like to contact me about the show, you can email me HERE.

If you have questions about working with me on WFM projects and Consulting, you can find The RightWFM website HERE.

Please remember to subscribe and leave a review of you've enjoyed the show!

Irina:

Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of WFM Unfiltered. And today we're going to the great state of Texas in the U. S. And I have such a great guest with me today that's going to be turning things around and talking a little bit more about CXO. I'm very excited to introduce you to

Rick:

Rick Denton. That is who I am from Texas. Coming to you live.

Irina:

I'm, I'm sure that it's gonna be a great episode. I mean, I love Texas. I think everybody knows that. But Rick, why don't you introduce yourself to the audience?

Rick:

I will, yes, so I am Rick Denton, I'm coming to you from the Dallas area, if folks happen to know it, I live in Frisco, office in Plano, grew up in my favorite town in the state, Austin, Texas. So those of you that might have an image of Texas, make sure you've got that image including Austin, because it's one of the most beautiful places in the state, and an incredible experience to have grown up there, and certainly to go back and visit there. Irina, I am I'm currently the owner creator of, actually, it's a podcast and media company. So my wife and I have a podcast that we do together called The Loud Quiet about being empty nesters. And then you also know that my long running podcast, CX Passport, which has been going for about four years now, is a conversation about customer experience with a little dash of travel talk. And that gives you a sense of who I was before I went all in on this podcast world creating that media company. And for the last seven years before doing this, been an independent customer experience consulting, helping companies really extract tangible, honest to God business value. Not fluff or nutter, not just a journey map on the wall, but true, honest to God business value from improving their customer experience. Before that roles that were very customer experience focused inside of companies, Capital One comes to mind, and then before that, process improvement, project management Those types of roles, and that's really shaped my philosophies around customer experience, that, that process and that project management approach. And heck, I started my career as Anderson Consulting hired a guy out of college who was a poli sci major and taught him how to code. I got out of coding as quickly as possible, but that's where it started. So the journey all the way from Anderson Consulting to now all podcasting all the time. And I'm very excited to be a part of your podcast today.

Irina:

Oh first of all, what a great introduction and I learned so many new things about you. I didn't know that you have another podcast.

Rick:

Ah, a little,

Irina:

one?

Rick:

If folks are either interested in or entering the empty nest phase of life, that's why my wife and I created it. As we looked at each other, as we started to enter that empty nest phase, we said, Hey, we like each other. But we want to continue to like each other when the kids are gone. What are we going to do about that? And the idea of creating a podcast was all my wife's. She's the one who came up with the idea. She came up with the, with the name and off we go. And it's been phenomenal to keep us connected and also build a community of empty nesters to help share stories and learn from each other as we go through this phase of life.

Irina:

I really like that. And I'm gonna actually mention your shows in the links before this episode. So I hope the folks are going to find you and are going to enjoy your shows, both of them, but let's, let's get jumped into our topic for today. And you mentioned something about customer experience, right?

Rick:

Yes.

Irina:

And value. And I wanted to chat with you about. A lot of companies, and this is not the case only lately with AI, but it has been the case, I assume always, revenue and how people seem to be the problem of increasing revenue in the companies. So what companies are actually doing is getting rid of people as a direction to bring their revenue up. So I was actually wondering, what do you think about that cost versus value?

Rick:

I will. I don't want to enter into a business discussion with you, with just with a rainbow colored glasses and the idea that, oh, it's just happiness that creates dollars and, and. without recognizing that there are hard business realities. And I understand that a business needs to make profit. If it is a for profit business, it exists to make profit. And so I can understand, and I actually value a company focusing on their income line. I think what I'm seeing though, especially over the last couple of years in the area of customer experience, And by that I mean like the wide definition of customer experience, I'm not here to say this versus customer success, I just mean anything sort of customer related. The companies, if you think about what income is, it's revenue minus expenses. And there's such a heavy emphasis on the expense side of customer as opposed to focusing on the revenue side of customer. It is a lot easier to say I'm going to cut 30 percent of my customer service contact center team than it is to say I'm going to invest in that contact center and not treat it like a cost center but actually treat it like a customer insight center. And take that understanding of what those frontline agents are getting. They are the closest to the customer. They hear the customer complaints. They hear the customer celebrations. They know the customer's journey, if you will. And learning from them, then I can then amplify what my company is doing well. Add what my company is missing. Improve what my company is getting wrong. And increase revenue as a result. I can't do that if I keep reducing cost and squeezing the humanity out of my customer contact center. If I'm doing that, then I'm missing that opportunity for customer insight. That's just one example, but that's an example where it does seem like companies, it's just easier. It's easier to slash costs. It makes it look good on the quarterly statement for the shareholders, but it is a frequently a short sighted view towards how business should operate.

Irina:

Interesting view. Actually, I'm going to completely change the the direction of our conversation because from the moment we, you introduce yourself, I started thinking about the company experience. And now that you mentioned contact centers as being inside center, this is something that I have never heard. So I really appreciate that. I might actually steal that from you to

Rick:

I'm gonna have to trademark that phrase.

Irina:

We'll see about that, but there has always been the discussion whether contact centers are a cost center or a revenue center, and I think the truth is somewhere in the middle. Unless it is a sales contact center, I don't really see it as a revenue one. But we're never talking about the value side of it. And for me, the value goes into the insights, but now you mentioned those of something related to squeezing out the humanity out of it. And of course, I'm going to mention AI because that's precisely the point. That's why we are developing technology. So a lot of things can be done potentially better and faster with the production of robots and artificial intelligence. Isn't that the new direction, then?

Rick:

I think it is. I, and this is what I meant by leading with the, I don't want to walk into a business conversation with rain, rose colored glasses. I'm going to say rainbow, but rose colored glasses, right? There's a business reality that comes from applying technology and getting more efficient. And that efficiency can end up in a reduction of headcount. What I'm seeing though, is companies saying, I don't need humans anymore. Humans are in the way. I can just wipe out everything and slap in this AI tool. And I say that with a little bit of, I'm describing the recent past, because I think the hype cycle has now come back to where it's a reality of, oh wait, I can't just buy that shiny tool, turn it on, and suddenly get results. There's a lot of work that goes into it. I am not an AI expert. There are plenty of those out there that can actually talk about what it means to get it right. But what I've seen is how you get it wrong. And that is assuming that you can just throw it in there, And that your humans are no longer necessary. Whereas instead the successes that I'm seeing are more around how can I amplify the humanity? How can I make an agent be able to spend more time engaging with a customer or Agents are really good at this. They can discern whether a customer wants to connect and engage, or if a customer is just get me my issue solved quickly, AI can help with both of those because the AI can take away the mundane, the difficult, the research, and pop up the information available to the agent so that they can answer the question quickly. Or, they can use their intelligence, their humanity, to be able to build a deeper connection with the customer that could then result in deeper loyalty, increased sales, whatever that looks like in a business as they are viewing what their objectives for their contact center is.

Irina:

That's an interesting view, and I am very split in the conversation about AI, because I'm a huge fan of technology. And I keep on saying technology has been around for a long time, artificial intelligence included. And for me, the irritation with the whole conversation about AI is that a lot of companies are using it without specific examples. So they're just getting the buzzword and saying, we're going to save you millions and millions of dollars and pounds and blah, blah, blah, by just using AI, but we don't know how exactly second of all, is that there isn't a connect there isn't the connection in the process of, okay There has been two arounds for a long time, but we are not even using these tools properly. And now we're jumping ahead, like skipping big parts of the journey, thinking that AI is going to be the, the solution to everything. And. Specifically talking about customer experience. And, we had that conversation on the background and sorry, if I'm a little bit jumping here and there, guys, I'm just so tired so tired and exhausted. Sorry, Rick, you had to

Rick:

Hey, we're gonna still have fun. This is all sorts of good. We're good. You got the energy. We're good.

Irina:

Yeah. I mean, I have my coffee. I just have to start drinking it, but there you go. So when we're talking about customer experience, for me, the huge disconnect comes from the fact that we're slapping all sorts of scores like customer satisfaction and net promoter score and this. And, my opinion, we're skipping the availability part of the customer experience. We're completely disregarding my area of experience, which is the workforce management. But I'm interested in discussing with you, what do we mean by good customer experience? Because this, I feel it's one of the areas where a lot of people are having opinion, but I don't have Very well thought out explanation about customer experience.

Rick:

I'm going to channel a fellow customer experience and process guy, Nick Zeisler. So folks go check out his, his profile, his, his views on this. He said something to me a couple years ago and it's always stuck with me. And a great experience is one where the brand has delivered on its brand promise.

Irina:

Oh,

Rick:

And if you think about that, that allows, because a lot of folks may look at, at Ryanair for example, and say that is a horrible customer experience. I would never fly Ryanair. You're absolutely right. It is a horrible customer experience for you. What's that Right. But what they are very clear about is what their brand promises. We are going to offer you a very inexpensive ticket, and we may or may not get you to your destination on time. We may or may not get your luggage there. We may or may not have at all sorts of upgrades available for you to pay for while you're there. But our brand promises your, your ticket into the, the plane is going to be remarkably inexpensive. Now, compare and contrast that to the Ritz Carlton's of the world or the Qatar Airways or the Emirates, right? These luxury experiences, they are saying to you, you are going to have a luxury experience and a successful customer experience is the delivery of that brand promise. And it's not that a great customer experience is always the customer has to just be delighted and impressed and wonderfully ensconced in the, the, the highest world luxuries. A great customer experience is simply a brand says, I'm going to do this for you. And they actually do it for you. Those two things go hand in hand to make a great customer experience.

Irina:

I really love that explanation and this is making it very simple and very well understandable for everyone, but I'm going to be challenging you back. This is the brand promise, but there isn't a brand promise when it comes to support of the customer. And for me, this is a bit, or part of the customer experience. So I immediately started thinking about all the promises that our brands are making for their contact centers, for example.

Rick:

hmm.

Irina:

Let's say that we're going to be replying to your email within 24 hours. If you're lucky, maybe a single customer will receive that

Rick:

Right.

Irina:

And isn't that a part of the brand promise then?

Rick:

I totally agree. I think it still fits inside of that definition. What I love is that you've expanded it. Expanded it into the sense of, I'm describing that initial moment, but what about after the experience? How is it how do they listen to me? How does a customer, how does a company listen to what I'm saying about my experience? How does a company listen to me when I have an issue? How does a company address me through the entire experience that I have with them? Absolutely. Customer support is one of those. And there are brands who have gone out of their way to say, look, we are going to surround you, not just with your upfront purchase, your upfront experience. We're going to surround you with a great experience post sale. And that's part of their brand promise. There is a, a, an automotive group that's located here in the North Texas region. I think they're also in other parts of Texas and they may be other places called the Sewell Auto Group. And you don't normally hear people say that auto dealerships are a positive experience. But they have built their entire brand, and regardless of which model of car, BMW, Subaru, Kia, whatever the model is, their entire sort of brand promise is around you're going to have a great experience. Your sales is going to be great. Your service is going to be great. You're, you're, you're, if you have an issue, it's going to be repaired in a way that needs to be handled well. That's their definition. And so a brand can and should include customer service in their brand promise. If. If they want to claim that it's part of their brand promise, then you have airlines like one I won't mention, but they declared about a year and a half ago, they're like, yeah, we don't need human agents at all. We will eliminate, actually we don't need human agents. We will eliminate our phone support. You cannot call us. They've declared it up front, so at least you know what that brand promise is, and if that's acceptable to you as a customer, then that's what you know going into it.

Irina:

Oh, wow. Okay. That I understand, but I think this is where I'm again, a little bit conflicted about the AI side of things, because purely psychologically, a lot of customers would still want to have the opportunity to be serviced at one point or another by human,

Rick:

Mhmm.

Irina:

decide to, but I love that you mentioned that if it's if it's presented upfront, then it's up to you to decide whether it works for you or not. Looking at it from that direction, I'm more receptive to that idea, actually.

Rick:

And I do want to say this is, I'm giving kind of ivory tower sort of answers. If you want to talk about what Rick Denton feels, I hate those customer experiences. I hate that. I wish those brands would actually fail and die and fade away. And the, the, the better experiences out there are the ones that where I'm going to open up my wallet for it. I just have to view it in a pragmatic way and realize that, My desires for a brand are not the same as what the rest of the customer community have as a desire for a brand. And if a customer wants absolutely the cheapest way to put themselves on a metal tube flying through the air, then that's their expectation. That's their hope. That's their desire. And that brand is delivering on that promise.

Irina:

Okay, I might be persuaded. I'm starting to change my views on the topic. Okay, you're doing a great job.

Rick:

But see, that's the problem. I don't want to do a great job because I don't want that experience out there. I just recognize that I am one voice.

Irina:

failing big time with your own ideas.

Rick:

Crap. Can we delete all this? I don't want any of this out in the, in the, in the world. Oh,

Irina:

I started thinking about something completely different and it is a topic that I'm usually getting a lot of heat for. It's the fact that looking at my position of a Workforce manager or a WFM'er in a company, I'm often referring to the other departments as my internal customers. And this is usually when the conversation starts, whether they're customers in the real sense of the word or stakeholders, but let's not go into that direction. So how, and that's something that I've never thought about, like, how do we create a brand awareness about an internal department towards the rest of the company? For example, we're always going to be delivering your schedules by Thursday. Or you're always going to get at least, I don't know, five of your wishes for schedules granted.

Rick:

Right.

Irina:

create that?

Rick:

Yeah. I I think it comes, I hope I'm not being too simplistic here. We'll think this through as we're chewing on it together here. I think it comes down to that same brand promise. You are promising something internal. Every single person has a brand. I hope that my brand is one of, fun, good questions, authenticity, and also responsibility. Right? Those are things that I want people to think of me, that they can count on me, right? Inside a company, an individual has a brand. Inside a company, a team has a brand. So we think a brand is being external, but really we carry brands around with ourselves as individuals, as teams, as departments, as divisions, as companies. And I think it comes down to that brand promise, just like you said. Schedules are going to be delivered Thursday at 8 a. m. Okay, great. And if the internal partner, if that doesn't work for them, what's a little different than an external customer is, typically the internal partner doesn't have another option. So it opens up instead of, okay, I can just close my wallet and go to another internal provider, it doesn't work that way, but it does open up the, that doesn't meet our expectations. Let's work to reset your brand promise. Let's work to reset my expectations. And yes, that can involve corporate escalations and whatever that looks like. There are decisions and that's why we have hierarchies to be able to make those decisions. But it starts with a commitment to a brand promise and the internal customer saying whether they accept that brand promise or not, then it comes down to process and execution on actually delivering on that promise. Cause it's there, there's internally, we've seen it, but it's a process. Internal IT service helpdesks, right? How often have we had a struggle with that in that, something big blows up and there's an SLA associated with it, but that SLA then gets exceeded. And so it's that same kind of, we expect something, the process and execution deliver that something. And that's what helps build that internal trust and that same customer experience relationship.

Irina:

so how do we start then? Whether we're talking about internal customers or external, because that's one of my other irritations when We don't know where to start from. We usually say we're going to be using industry standards. So we're going to be promising our customers the same that everyone else is promising them.

Rick:

I'm, I don't know that that's inherently the best way to start. If you don't, if you don't know anything, right, then I guess maybe you start there. I would start with, who is your customer? Do you understand who your customer is? If you don't, I might start with the who. Then I might understand, what does that customer want? And then let that shape my brand promise. Or if I'm saying, look, I know that my customers love hot dogs, and that's what my customers want, and they're hot dogs, but you know what? I'm a French restaurant. I don't sell hot dogs. Then I need to reorient whether I'm going to find a new customer set, or I'm going to adapt who I am. But it's really understanding who that customer is, and what those customer desires are, to help shape what your brand promise could and should be. Ha ha

Irina:

Well, I am thinking a lot on the background because I'm using in my head, all sorts of experience and examples of contact centers and specifically targets, and usually. Targets are the way that we're creating our budget and how many people and how much of a headcount we're going to need in order to deliver to those targets. So this is the easiest ways that Companies are doing it. But now I'm thinking that again, that is complete disconnect of what you're mentioning about brand promise, because this is completely unrelated to our brand promise. We're just thinking in the sense of, Oh, you know what? We just need to make it. As cheap as possible. How much money do we get? Okay. something with that

Rick:

Yeah.

Irina:

we take it from there.

Rick:

And many companies, that, that's reality. I think a lot of times talking heads like me get on shows like this and we talk about these idyllic situations where it's, no, understand your customer and build your promise around that. A lot of times it is, hey, look, you get 100, 000 to do this. And I think that it's incumbent on the team to explain, here are the trade offs associated with that decision. We understand that 100, 000, and whatever the number is, right, of course. We understand that's what the budget is. And here's what is deliverable inside of that budget to deliver this level of experience for the customer while not sacrificing what an employee experience is. Oh, you, you, you want us to sacrifice the employee experience? Okay, here's the trade off associated with that. Your retention rate is going to go down. Your absentee rate is going to go up. And helping to just present these conversations as trade offs often helps. expose what a dictate of a budget or a dictate of a policy or a dictate of a principle, whatever that dictate is, explaining how that affects the trade offs associated with it can drive the discussion to either, look, that's just the way it is. Okay. That's the way it is. And then that's what the company chooses to do is, and that'll reflect their brand promise or opens up a conversation around how can we change this?

Irina:

This feels like the mature way to do stuff, but that's, again, as you mentioned, not the reality. And I'm starting to think that I don't think I have ever seen, at least in a contact center environment, the consequences of making a decision to cut the cost in order to, show that the pure profit is more, but seeing what the consequences is in terms of the business are you, have you lost customers, right? Because usually the way in, in the sense that we're thinking about it is how many customers you can handle in an hour, in a day, in a month, but we don't necessarily know out of those customers. Maybe we lost a bunch of them because I don't know. We, Reacted too slow, or maybe we had too many inexperienced agents because our absenteeism or whatever attrition is through the roof. So, I, I'm just struggling understanding how do we go full circle in the, in understanding the

Rick:

Yeah.

Irina:

on the customer with making these decisions.

Rick:

You're describing one of the biggest challenges, and that is being able to demonstrate the financial impact of customer experience decisions. And a lot of times you'll hear that described as the ROI of CAX, the return on investment for the customer. And the reason I use the phrase earlier is I think it's a little more expansive than just ROI. It really is. What are the economic, what are the business impacts based off of customer experience decisions, customer experience initiatives, customer experience improvements, or degradations. And you're right. It gets really challenging. It also is really challenging for the marketing team to describe what the impact is on sales coming out of an ad campaign. And I think we in the customer experience world haven't, we've, we've, instead of being willing to live in kind of a gray area, like a marketing world would be, there's that joke that, look, I know that 50 percent of my advertising works, I just don't know which 50%. Well, we laugh about that, haha, you know that, I think in the CX world we live in two worlds. Either we are going to do everything we can to get incredibly precise around this is the ROI of this decision. And we are, we are fully confident in all of the work and effort that it takes to get to that point. Or we just simply ignore it and say, Hey, happier customers, me more money, can I have a budget please? Great. I think if we could model it more after sort of the advertising, the marketing space and, and be able to develop models that are a little more ambiguous But based in an element of science, based in an element of research, based in an element of crunching numbers from the past, those kind of phrases to be able to understand the probability that an impact will have. So it's not necessarily pure ROI, it's not ignoring it, but getting better at the modeling. around customer experience improvements. And I know there are people out there that are already doing a great job of that. I just think that in the CX world, we haven't adopted that same kind of modeling mentality to be able to say, doing exchange is going to create a 30 percent probability that we will lose 50 percent of our customers and be able to live in that ambiguity and that kind of modeling.

Irina:

So if you have to be honest, and if I throw you a very honest question, the companies or the departments or the professionals that are coming up with ROI about CX, are they just throwing a number out there that means nothing?

Rick:

Not necessarily. No, and just to be clear, I will always be honest with you. I will always speak honestly on your podcast and even in conversation, fear not. But I understand that this is a question that has a lot of intensity behind it. I'll give you an example. I was part of an initiative that was able to identify an increase in 50 million of revenue through a specific customer experience improvement. And what we looked at was cancellation rates were X. And if we were able to reduce cancellation rates by Y, that would create the 50 million revenue run rate. We looked and understood through voice of the customer, and I don't mean surveys, I mean really understanding what the customer's voice was telling us, why they were canceling. We then put in place improvements, ah, process, execution, process improvements, to solve for the reasons why they were canceling. Cancellation rates reduced. Thus, more revenue. Now, someone could make an argument, Rick, that's not that precise. Cancellation rates could have improved just because there was a better economy. It was sunny that day. It was the branding was great. Absolutely. That's the ambiguity, though, that I think people have to be comfortable with. We set a target. Reduce cancel rates will improve revenue by X. We understood why they were canceling. We improved the reasons behind that. The results showed. And we claim that we delivered that revenue. I think living in that ambiguity is okay.

Irina:

I'm making the bridge with the conversation that a lot of WFM vendors are doing with ROI to their customers. And usually it's very, how do I put it politely? It's let's show you what we think you're gonna like

Rick:

Sure. That is how one sells products. I mean, no one goes on a date, a first date, dressed in their ratty tatty t shirt and haven't washed and don't have their deodorant on or whatever. So

Irina:

market for that as well! Come on! Come on! Okay, perfect. Uh, before we wrap up, Rick, Okay, perfect. Before we wrap up I have a final question for you. And this is something that I have seen time over and over again and personally really annoys me. It seems that always new potential customers are more intriguing for the

Rick:

Uh,

Irina:

than

Rick:

yeah. Oh my gosh. It is so much sexier to get a new customer. Look, we got a new one in the door than somebody to renew. Whether it's a, I'm going to date myself here, a magazine subscription, or it is a, a, An ongoing software relationship, whether it is a new guest at your hotel brand, there's so much energy. And I think the numbers do not support that being the priority. the, the the numbers simply do not support that new customers should be the priority. Now, if you ignore new customers, eventually your pipeline dries up, so you can't ignore them. But when it is so clear across so many industries. that it is much cheaper to retain a customer than it is to secure a new customer. I am, I am befuddled as to why any company would not prioritize that other than simply sales is just sexier than service and it just has always been that way and it's gonna take more of us speaking that logic into companies, speaking that hard, cold, numbered logic into companies To see that behavior change inside of a company.

Irina:

I'm trying to remain polite. That's why the post I mean You

Rick:

wait, if I look at the title of this, this is WFM unfiltered. I did not see the tea and crumpets WFM. Let's get

Irina:

why? You know why? Because I really like to curse, but recently I discovered that YouTube can really kick your ass if you start cursing.

Rick:

you do have to insert the beep or silence the cussing on YouTube. You are correct. You can't just put an E flag out there. You got to bleep it. You're right.

Irina:

I learned that recently. Let's put it this way. So now I just have to be silent. Yeah, I just don't know. Looking at what is happening around me, it's always, I don't know whether sales are more sexy, but I have noticed that people are really thinking, Oh, if we get X amount of new customers, we're going to make it doesn't matter that we're losing a

Rick:

Yeah. Yeah.

Irina:

customers. So it is the, the forever decision. Discussion and the Forever Irritation, but, uh,

Rick:

let's, let's you, people like you and me need to have, continue to force that logic into companies and maybe it will no longer be the forever discussion.

Irina:

okay, let's, let's stop there. It was a great conversation. Thank you, Rick, so much for such amazing insights and for making me think and pause and not curse and remain polite on the podcast.

Rick:

Thank you, Irina. It was a delight to be on your show today.

Irina:

Cheers. Bye bye.

Rick:

Bye now.

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