Chris Brown, CTO of Wow Remote Teams, shares how Latin America became his go-to talent solution—and why more U.S. businesses should follow. After running a booming medical e-commerce operation during the pandemic, Chris needed scalable, affordable, and reliable help. His wife Julie, originally from Bogotá and now CEO of Wow Remote Teams, helped him build a nearshore workforce that outperformed U.S.-based teams at a fraction of the cost.

Chris breaks down the real-world benefits of remote hiring—language capabilities, time zone alignment, and deep professional talent. He also exposes the limits of AI in customer support, highlighting the irreplaceable value of human connection.

Leadership, in Chris’ view, means building systems that adapt fast, scale responsibly, and serve both customers and team members well. He didn't just outsource—he restructured for performance, proving leadership is about leverage, not micromanagement.

Want to learn more about Chris Brown's work? Check out their website at https://wowremoteteams.com/.

Connect with Chris Brown on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/wowcto/.

Key Points with Timestamps

• [00:00:51] Chris Brown joins as CTO of Wow Remote Teams, co-founded with his wife Julie.

• [00:02:00] Latin America offers deep talent pools beyond just software development.

• [00:03:25] Why every growing company must have a clear talent strategy.

• [00:04:08] How Chris discovered top-tier talent in Colombia through Julie’s network.

• [00:08:00] Running multiple businesses: medical supplies, CBD e-commerce, and software development.

• [00:10:00] COVID-19 created explosive growth—and massive inventory challenges.

• [00:14:48] Julie’s informal recruiting led to a full-fledged staffing company.

• [00:17:00] Replacing entire departments (CSR, admin, sales) with Latin American remote teams.

• [00:19:00] Dramatic cost and efficiency gains through nearshore talent.

• [00:20:00] On language barriers: hiring based on client-facing roles vs. internal support.

• [00:21:00] Why AI fails at customer connection—and what businesses miss when they rely on it.

• [00:27:00] GoDaddy’s shift from human-first to AI-first support—and the customer backlash.

• [00:30:00] Leadership lesson: communication isn’t intuitive, it’s intentional.

• [00:34:28] Where to find Chris Brown and learn more about Wow Remote Teams.

Transcript

00;00;05;20 - 00;00;30;20
Craig Andrews
I was in a coma for six weeks while the doctors told my wife I was going to die. When I woke up, she told me the most fantastic story. My team kept running the business without me. Freelancers reached out to my team and said, we will do whatever it takes. As long as Craig's in the hospital. I consider that the greatest accomplishment in my career.

00;00;30;23 - 00;00;51;07
Craig Andrews
My name is Craig Andrews and this is the Leaders and Legacies podcast where we talk to leaders creating an impact beyond themselves. At the end of today's interview, I'll tell you how you can be the next leader featured on this show.

00;00;51;10 - 00;01;20;23
Craig Andrews
Today I want to welcome Chris Brown. Chris is the CTO of Wow Remote Teams at Wow. Chris works with his wife Julie. That's Julie with an eye hand. Don't see that often. Julie is the CEO and founder of Remote Teams. Together they build custom recruitment platforms that help US based companies hire top talent across Latin America. Chris, welcome.

00;01;20;25 - 00;01;24;04
Chris Brown
Hey, Craig. Thanks for having me on. It's great to be here with you today.

00;01;24;07 - 00;01;49;01
Craig Andrews
It's good to be with you. I you know, it's it's interesting. I, you know, we were chatting in the green room since I heard Latin America and my my brain just kind of locked in. I was like, oh, he does offshore software or, you know, nearshore software development, because that's the only context I've ever heard of. You know, Central America, you know, near shoring.

00;01;49;03 - 00;01;57;19
Craig Andrews
But you kind of surprise me. You it's you said that that's a shrinking part. The business as a part of the total pie.

00;01;57;21 - 00;02;17;01
Chris Brown
Yeah, I think so, yeah. Yeah. There's a I mean, there's a there's a wealth of talent available. And now, you know, it's 20, 26, there's Starlink is everywhere. Internet is solid everywhere. Like there's so many things that you can do remotely. And as you start to just broaden that horizon of like, where else can I find talent to do the same kind of thing?

00;02;17;03 - 00;02;33;26
Chris Brown
You find out that there's a huge talent pool that's well-educated and there's giant companies down there. So all these people have worked in all kinds of areas, and you just go, okay, well, how many other things can I do? And the list is huge, of course. You know, it's just a matter of finding the right people and knowing how to look and knowing where they're at.

00;02;34;02 - 00;02;41;22
Chris Brown
So yeah, software, the software is a shrinking percentage of the pie. I think just because there's so many options available for for the pie.

00;02;41;25 - 00;02;48;26
Craig Andrews
Yeah. Yeah. And then and I mean right now, you know, talent is still

00;02;48;29 - 00;03;07;07
Craig Andrews
I think right now we're at close to one. One unemployed worker for every job. That doesn't mean that the skills match up. But, you know, the projections I see by economists are that, you know, we're going to get back into a talent scarcity race.

00;03;07;10 - 00;03;08;12
Craig Andrews
And,

00;03;08;15 - 00;03;25;02
Craig Andrews
and so I think. Well, I think any company that's growing, any company that's growing has to have a talent strategy. It can't just be, you know, it can't just be, hey, here's here's what we're making and we're going to sell a ton of it. We're going to be awesome.

00;03;25;05 - 00;03;30;25
Craig Andrews
Inevitably you're going to run into one of the roadblocks you're going to run into is you're gonna run on talent.

00;03;30;28 - 00;03;40;21
Chris Brown
Yeah. Yeah. And I mean talent as a whole. There's a whole world of pieces there because it's, you know, how do you how do you find the talent? How do you get them interested in your position?

00;03;40;21 - 00;03;50;21
Chris Brown
How do you interview? How do you onboard? How do you off board? You know, all of these pieces are really integral to how do you do a good job of keeping a business running?

00;03;50;22 - 00;04;00;02
Chris Brown
You know, talent is talent is part of your capital deployment strategy at the end of the day. And to be a good steward of capital is to be good at capitalism.

00;04;00;04 - 00;04;01;21
Craig Andrews
Exactly. Yeah.

00;04;01;26 - 00;04;03;02
Chris Brown
Yeah.

00;04;03;05 - 00;04;08;11
Craig Andrews
Well, how how did you discover that all this talents down Latin America?

00;04;08;14 - 00;04;11;28
Chris Brown
Well, you said my wife, who is the CEO? She's the original founder.

00;04;11;28 - 00;04;26;12
Chris Brown
She's from Bogota, Colombia. So I lived in Bogota for a few years, and then we moved up here to the US. And, you know, I had another business and. Yeah, that other business, I needed talent. Like, every business needs people. It doesn't matter how much you want it to be.

00;04;26;12 - 00;04;30;14
Chris Brown
Like a one person, awesome operation, and it never is.

00;04;30;17 - 00;04;35;21
Craig Andrews
So let me let me. You know what I am. Did you say her name is Luisa?

00;04;35;24 - 00;04;37;29
Chris Brown
No. Julie. Julie. Oh.

00;04;38;05 - 00;04;42;08
Craig Andrews
Oh, yeah. Okay. Julie. Julie.

00;04;42;14 - 00;04;57;08
Chris Brown
Oh, yeah. Sorry. Yeah. It's that Julie. Just because it's the. In Colombia, the j that J is a soft J. Yeah. Like in Mexico would be hard j here for us we call it Julie. So it's a hard J. But for some reason Colombian Spanish. That's a soft J. So because Julie.

00;04;57;10 - 00;05;04;22
Craig Andrews
No I get okay now all makes sense. I was just I was panicking a little bit. I was afraid that I had missed introduced to my room.

00;05;04;24 - 00;05;08;21
Chris Brown
Yeah. No, not at all. Not at all. Just a little bit different pronunciation.

00;05;08;23 - 00;05;11;04
Craig Andrews
So you were living in Bogota?

00;05;11;06 - 00;05;13;09
Chris Brown
Yeah, I lived there for five years.

00;05;13;12 - 00;05;15;11
Craig Andrews
Wow. What years?

00;05;15;14 - 00;05;18;12
Chris Brown
2014 to 19.

00;05;18;14 - 00;05;31;00
Craig Andrews
Okay. What was it? Oh, you know, one of the thoughts goes into my head in that part of the world is. Okay. Was there a period where it was stable, or was that period where it was unstable? You know, because.

00;05;31;00 - 00;05;37;16
Chris Brown
It was stable? Yeah, it was pretty and it was pretty. It is pretty stable, especially the major cities down there.

00;05;37;16 - 00;05;47;19
Chris Brown
It's it's pretty safe now. The 90s were I didn't go in the 90s, but my wife had stories about it was it was a wild world, you know, for a while there for her, for the 90s. Right.

00;05;47;19 - 00;06;01;09
Chris Brown
Because we're we're 40 now. So 90s is our memory time. But previous to that, her family has stories about the 80s and late 70s and stuff. And, you know, where the show Narcos and all of that happens. Like the real crazy, like very unstable.

00;06;01;12 - 00;06;05;27
Chris Brown
But nowadays it's it's pretty stable. I mean, it's, you know, they're major cities.

00;06;05;27 - 00;06;25;19
Chris Brown
They're not as secure as there's the suburbs of the US, you know, all over in the suburbs of Phoenix here. And one of the like number 2 or 3 rated safest cities in the US. Like it's a totally different lifestyle here, of course, but in the grand scheme of things, it's not the 90s in Colombia anymore. It's, you know, you go out walking and you don't have a problem.

00;06;25;25 - 00;06;27;03
Chris Brown
Yeah.

00;06;27;05 - 00;06;36;09
Craig Andrews
Well, I'm having a flashback to I think it was 2002 or 2003. I used to work with somebody named Diana Segura and,

00;06;36;12 - 00;06;39;00
Craig Andrews
and the World Cup was on and,

00;06;39;00 - 00;06;41;27
Craig Andrews
it's like, hey, Diana, I was watching the World Cup.

00;06;42;00 - 00;06;51;14
Craig Andrews
I having trouble finding the Colombia game. When does Colombia play? And she just looks at me and she's like, I hate you because they they hadn't made it in the World Cup.

00;06;51;17 - 00;06;57;13
Craig Andrews
She's like, I hate you. And I told her, I said, well, maybe if you quit shooting your soccer stars.

00;06;57;16 - 00;06;59;03
Chris Brown
Right.

00;06;59;06 - 00;07;05;15
Craig Andrews
And she was like. She was like, oh, that was an accident. I'm like, what? Tripped and fell under a bullet.

00;07;05;18 - 00;07;16;24
Chris Brown
This is not an accident. It was not an accident. Yeah, but they stopped doing that. And now, like, now, they're in the World Cup. Yeah. Your advice worked.

00;07;16;27 - 00;07;22;25
Craig Andrews
Yeah. Yeah. It helps when you quit shooting your soccer stars. You have more talent for next year's bench.

00;07;22;27 - 00;07;29;18
Chris Brown
Yeah, essentially, you keep them alive. It seems to help. Yeah.

00;07;29;20 - 00;07;33;14
Craig Andrews
So. Okay. So you were there. What were the years again?

00;07;33;16 - 00;07;36;28
Chris Brown
2024 to 19 to 2019.

00;07;37;01 - 00;07;41;06
Craig Andrews
And then you moved to Tempe? To Phoenix?

00;07;41;08 - 00;07;53;11
Chris Brown
Yeah. Phoenix? Yeah. Yeah, just outside of Phoenix. We're in the southeast Valley, so my address is in Queen Creek. It's just outside Gilbert. These are just little towns and southeast of southeast of Phoenix.

00;07;53;13 - 00;07;57;21
Craig Andrews
Yeah. Yeah. And then when did you start working on then?

00;07;57;23 - 00;07;59;12
Chris Brown
So then I had a business.

00;07;59;12 - 00;08;02;22
Chris Brown
So we had a couple different lines of business, but we had only had a small,

00;08;02;22 - 00;08;05;25
Chris Brown
medical and dental supplies company called Metate and Supplies.

00;08;05;28 - 00;08;13;21
Chris Brown
And we did, you know, lots of dental supplies, dental surgical kits, medical supplies, medical, just everything and everything. It was mostly in e-commerce.

00;08;13;24 - 00;08;17;23
Chris Brown
But there was a physical sales aspect because you're talking about selling dental medical supplies.

00;08;17;23 - 00;08;22;09
Chris Brown
So, you know, somebody's got to go to their office and show it to them and bring them cookies and all that kind of thing.

00;08;22;12 - 00;08;36;05
Chris Brown
But yeah, so I was running the tech side of that business. We also had a CBD e-commerce, which was a giant pain in the butt because selling CBD products is not easy. The banking side of it is always a nightmare.

00;08;36;07 - 00;08;44;04
Chris Brown
And then we had like a software development agency prior to that and that we also ran. So I was like the I was the CTO and all that kind of stuff.

00;08;44;07 - 00;08;58;10
Chris Brown
Building out those systems, building out those pieces and. Yeah. So I came to it, came back to Phoenix, where my family lives. And, you know, we started a we opened a warehouse because we had quite a bit of flow in that e-commerce.

00;08;58;10 - 00;09;11;11
Chris Brown
And three piles are expensive and it's easier to if you have the ability and the manpower local. It's easy to run it yourself, especially at the scale that we were at that point in time.

00;09;11;13 - 00;09;14;11
Craig Andrews
So,

00;09;14;13 - 00;09;24;17
Craig Andrews
so that was kind of like an awesome time to start up a, a medical supply business. What, one year before Covid hit.

00;09;24;19 - 00;09;32;12
Chris Brown
Well it had actually already been started. It had been running. So I'd been running because I do the tech side. So I was running the tech side from Columbia for a while. There,

00;09;32;15 - 00;09;40;29
Chris Brown
for a couple of years. I think it started in 2016. I want to say we actually started that. So it takes time to grow. But yeah, it went absolutely bonkers.

00;09;41;04 - 00;10;04;12
Chris Brown
I mean, Covid hit, you know, we had supply lines from China and Korea for all kinds of different stuff. So we ended up just importing and we hadn't previously been doing those kind of supplies. Right. We've been also doing like surgical kits, like high end specialty items like, you know, it was a niche kind of thing. And then Covid hit and the whole world needs, you know, swab kits, they need test kits, they need,

00;10;04;15 - 00;10;06;00
Chris Brown
needles and syringes.

00;10;06;00 - 00;10;10;18
Chris Brown
They need, you know, masks. Meth became a huge thing. It was very odd.

00;10;10;21 - 00;10;11;11
Chris Brown
But it worked.

00;10;11;16 - 00;10;12;28
Chris Brown
Hand sanitizer.

00;10;13;00 - 00;10;16;02
Chris Brown
There were crazy. There were companies that were doing like,

00;10;16;02 - 00;10;27;04
Chris Brown
petroleum products, like, racing fuels and stuff. Started making sanitizers, and they were the worst smelling thing ever. Like, imagine racing fuel that you're rubbing. It was just awful.

00;10;27;05 - 00;10;41;22
Chris Brown
Yeah. But, you know, people needed it and there was a massive shortage and that's what was available. So yeah. So we ended up importing tons of things. Our warehouse space grew significantly. We took over multiple warehouses in the same block. So just expanding sideways,

00;10;41;25 - 00;10;50;18
Chris Brown
and ended up with just. Yeah, just ten, eight figures, you know, millions of dollars worth of worth of medical supplies.

00;10;50;20 - 00;10;55;06
Craig Andrews
Wow. Yeah. Talk about being in the right place at the right time.

00;10;55;09 - 00;11;10;08
Chris Brown
Yeah. I mean, you know, it's a it's a blessing until it's a curse. You know, like, the pandemic did come to an end. And when it did come to an end, we were stuck holding the bag, and the bag was large and. Oh, no problem. Yeah.

00;11;10;11 - 00;11;12;16
Craig Andrews
You know. Yeah. So,

00;11;12;19 - 00;11;17;16
Craig Andrews
Yeah. So what, you just you had, like, a ton of inventory. You couldn't sell.

00;11;17;19 - 00;11;21;19
Chris Brown
Yeah. I mean, medical equipment expires, especially stuff like that.

00;11;21;19 - 00;11;30;25
Chris Brown
That wasn't our primary business line. And initially, you know, we were built for specialty. You know, high dollar, smaller scale kind of surgical equipment was our primary business originally,

00;11;30;28 - 00;11;37;10
Chris Brown
that, you know, we did importation from China and Korea for a bunch of that stuff, which gave us the network.

00;11;37;13 - 00;11;56;00
Chris Brown
But all of this stuff expires, right? So masks come in. Masks are, you know, they cost nothing. They're just a little piece of nothing. The little blue masks and stuff. And then n95s are nicer, and they're they're higher quality, but they come in and they come in on a pallet and there's the, you know, the bajillion of things on a pallet.

00;11;56;00 - 00;12;01;16
Chris Brown
The blue masks are tens of thousands. Do a pallet N95 or thousands to a pallet,

00;12;01;19 - 00;12;16;24
Chris Brown
and you're shipping over containers full of these things and, you know, storing them in your warehouse and then moving them out through contracts to municipalities or hospitals or agencies, and then also the e-commerce side. So e-commerce was huge. Just didn't, you know, DTC, B2C,

00;12;16;27 - 00;12;19;01
Chris Brown
see you on this massive flow.

00;12;19;04 - 00;12;39;23
Chris Brown
And you're trying to keep up with the inventory needs of that kind of flow. And it's a surge kind of situation, you know, so you have this huge peak, you have massive flow, you have all the sales of all these different items. And then the surge comes down because the pandemic slows down and pandemic stops. But the things that are already in transit are already in transit.

00;12;39;23 - 00;13;02;20
Chris Brown
The things that are already ordered or already ordered. And it's hard to understand that supply chain from our perspective at that moment in time, just because, you know, it wasn't a long term business model of doing this. And we weren't very well experienced in doing that kind of thing. So, yeah, you end up with a warehouse full of stuff that is slowly expiring over the next couple months, years,

00;13;02;23 - 00;13;04;23
Chris Brown
of things that are just no longer in demand.

00;13;04;29 - 00;13;20;04
Chris Brown
And the price points on them were high because they were bought in the middle of the surge. You know, a lot of revenue was made because the price points were high on both sides. We were able to, you know, we had to charge higher prices in order to sell the things because some words,

00;13;20;07 - 00;13;30;22
Chris Brown
so a lot of money was made, but there was a lot of leftover and a lot of just additional inventory that just essentially expired.

00;13;30;25 - 00;13;33;02
Craig Andrews
So like masks, those expire.

00;13;33;04 - 00;13;56;29
Chris Brown
They do expire. Yeah. Mask is higher. You know, especially the higher quality stuff. N95s things like that. Those those expire. They're only good for like 18 months or something because the inside of an N95 mask is electrostatic charged. So part of the mask is not just the filtration of the material itself, but the electrostatic charges on the inside of the mask is also part of what's keeping things from, you know, expanding out from the mask itself.

00;13;57;02 - 00;14;16;15
Chris Brown
And that degrades over time. And then also just there's there's rules about how long these things are good for, like the little blue mask that you have. Like it doesn't, you know, it's not it's not milk in the fridge. It doesn't start stinking and go bad. But it's outside of its expiration date. It's outside of its approved lifespan of 18 months or whatever that is.

00;14;16;15 - 00;14;17;22
Chris Brown
You know.

00;14;17;24 - 00;14;24;21
Craig Andrews
And it's probably not real good if you cough a bunch of germs and then those germs just kind of hang out for you to re breathe.

00;14;24;23 - 00;14;28;04
Chris Brown
Yeah.

00;14;28;07 - 00;14;32;03
Craig Andrews
So where was your warehouse? Was it in Phoenix or.

00;14;32;05 - 00;14;37;22
Chris Brown
Yeah, in Mesa, Arizona. So just outside eastern, eastern Phoenix.

00;14;37;25 - 00;14;44;16
Craig Andrews
So this point had you kind of left the Columbia behind you and you were,

00;14;44;19 - 00;14;48;03
Craig Andrews
was Columbia still part of the story?

00;14;48;05 - 00;14;53;15
Chris Brown
I mean, only partly so. Julie, the founder of. Wow, she was she had started

00;14;53;15 - 00;14;57;16
Chris Brown
a while doing recruitment services. So she was a,

00;14;57;16 - 00;15;03;22
Chris Brown
an executive for an education executive in Columbia. She was married. She's very skilled, very professional.

00;15;03;25 - 00;15;11;23
Chris Brown
And then we came over here, and she kind of had a network of people that she knew here, between my family and her friends and people that she knew.

00;15;11;23 - 00;15;19;11
Chris Brown
And, you know, a lot of people needed talent, essentially, like, we, you know, a lot of entrepreneurs, because I'm an entrepreneur, we all are.

00;15;19;14 - 00;15;28;09
Chris Brown
So it ended up this thing where she ended up in a position where people were asking her, hey, can you help me find some people for primarily software positions at that point in time?

00;15;28;11 - 00;15;43;29
Chris Brown
So it just became this like she was like, yeah, you know, and she started posting on her Facebook to her network and that kind of thing and just kind of finding people and connecting. Hey, here you go. Here's some, here's some people I know that I think are good. And you know how those things kind of fall on in on themselves and become a business, right?

00;15;43;29 - 00;15;48;04
Chris Brown
It's like, okay, well, can you help me do X? Like, can you help me,

00;15;48;07 - 00;16;04;02
Chris Brown
do the background checks? Can you help me set up the interviews? Can you help me XYZ? You know, the entire process essentially. And then you just land on this thing where you're like, well, yeah, sure. Why not? I may as well set this up, go get an LLC, get a bank account and start running.

00;16;04;02 - 00;16;23;29
Chris Brown
You know, HR services, essentially recruiting and staffing services and that kind. It just coalesced on itself at that point. So there was multiple, you know, multiple positions, mostly software, mostly developers, mostly tech doing, you know, just all kinds of software developers doing a lot of front end stuff, doing some network engineering kind of stuff. And,

00;16;23;29 - 00;16;28;17
Chris Brown
at that point, the my business was quite large.

00;16;28;20 - 00;17;00;06
Chris Brown
I was doing significant numbers, and we had a large need for talent because the, the sales need, the admin need and the CSR need were all just basically intractable problems like it is. There's always more need, like you always need another sales guy because there's another hospital, there's another agency. There's 12 calls that aren't getting answered. You always need more CSR people, because if you're doing a couple thousand orders a day on a website, 5% of those people are calling you asking about something.

00;17;00;08 - 00;17;04;23
Chris Brown
They might be mad, they might be happy, then who knows? They're calling you. That's a lot of calls.

00;17;04;26 - 00;17;18;04
Chris Brown
And then the admin side, you know, if you're doing that much flow on a B2B side, that much flow on a, B to C side, the accounting piece of that is especially when you grew suddenly like the pandemic was, you know, it was fire all of a sudden.

00;17;18;04 - 00;17;22;23
Chris Brown
Right? So just that kind of growth, this is hard to deal with and it's hard to maintain,

00;17;22;26 - 00;17;24;06
Chris Brown
staffing for

00;17;24;09 - 00;17;41;11
Chris Brown
all that's to say. So I came to her and, you know, we had this discussion of like, well, hey, she's doing all these software pieces. So, you know, I was the tech guy for this company. So I'm bringing in the web developers, I'm bringing in the backend people, I'm bringing in the tech, you know, the IT kind of support guy from her and going, okay, well, I can place these people.

00;17;41;13 - 00;18;04;10
Chris Brown
They're just as good or better as the US talent that I'm finding and significantly cheaper. This is a great setup for me like that. I'm saving money on my department. The best thing that can happen, and then I'm like, the CSR team is struggling. They're struggling because whatever reason, I don't know. I didn't run CSR team, but they were struggling.

00;18;04;13 - 00;18;25;14
Chris Brown
Can we find people for that? And she goes, no, let me try. And we replace the entire CSR team with people from Latin America over the next couple of months. And then we did the same thing with the admin side. And then you get to the point where the only people that are left in the business that are in the US are the people that have to go to the warehouse and physically ship the stuff out, or receive the stuff or whatever needs to be done.

00;18;25;14 - 00;18;49;02
Chris Brown
In the warehouse. There was like four people in the warehouse at any given day. It wasn't even a huge need of operation because most of it's just packing work that can be done at any time, you know, or unpacking work that has to be done when the truck comes in. So you end up with this entire shift in operations to, you know, there's a huge US talent pool and you're dealing with all of the payroll and you're dealing with all of the taxes and you're dealing with all the regulation.

00;18;49;02 - 00;19;11;25
Chris Brown
And it's just the spaghetti mess of it's, you know, it's a pain. And then you move to a Latin American contracted services. You're paying by the hour. You don't have any of the massive nightmare overhead. And somebody else is handling the recruiting. Somebody else is handling the primary first line of interviews you got to interview. You got to see that they fit with you and can do what you need.

00;19;11;28 - 00;19;24;06
Chris Brown
And it was a night and day difference for me. You know, it is change, change the operation of the of the entire company at that point. And we moved everybody. And yeah, it's just fantastic.

00;19;24;08 - 00;19;29;25
Craig Andrews
That's cool. Yeah. How is the language barrier?

00;19;29;28 - 00;19;30;23
Craig Andrews
It depends.

00;19;30;23 - 00;19;41;13
Chris Brown
I would say not bad. I mean, I was hiring CSR and sales people like those people need to speak English fluently. Quickly, you know, without too much accent.

00;19;41;16 - 00;19;50;03
Chris Brown
We're in the US. I mean, you're in. You're in Texas. I'm in Phoenix. Hispanic accents. Latin, Latin accents are not a problem for us. You know, it's part of life.

00;19;50;05 - 00;20;06;27
Chris Brown
But so it's more of a sourcing kind of thing. It's if you need somebody to do data entry and they need to be able to talk to you in English, but they don't need to talk to a customer. And as long as you and them can get together, it doesn't really matter, you know? But if they need to talk to a customer, if they're taking sales calls and,

00;20;06;27 - 00;20;10;12
Chris Brown
and it's, you know, we have people that are doing like Medicaid services.

00;20;10;12 - 00;20;25;21
Chris Brown
So, you know, you can imagine talking to elderly US people. You need a fairly solid level of English and a very good accent. So it's really just across the board. It's about finding the people that you need at the level that you need them.

00;20;25;23 - 00;20;38;06
Craig Andrews
Yeah. Now there's a big movement where you know, with with AI coming out, there's a lot of companies that are like, oh, this is great. Customer support is now AI. We're going to send people over to these.

00;20;38;09 - 00;20;42;20
Craig Andrews
The way you're laughing, I get I get the feeling you don't think that's a great idea.

00;20;42;22 - 00;21;04;24
Chris Brown
I mean, personal experience. I don't even have to think it's a good at just personal experience. I hate it, right? Like, if it works, if we can get it to work, it'll be amazing. Or maybe. But currently, I don't know about you, but anytime I go on the thing and I'm like, I have a question. And it goes, let our AI system, the only thing I'm typing in is talk to a human, because the assistant, like all it's doing, is reading the FAQ back to you.

00;21;04;24 - 00;21;21;18
Chris Brown
I can do that myself on your website. It's like when you get on a sales call and they bring up a presentation like, I'm not here for presentation. I can read your website. I'm here to find out if you have a solution to my problem and if you're actually have a real good solution or not. And I need to talk to somebody about that.

00;21;21;21 - 00;21;39;03
Chris Brown
And the AI is it's not there yet. I mean, you know, if you just need something to chat to because you don't want to read the FAQ, you then that's great. But that's not why I'm contacting support, you know? And maybe that's me. I'm maybe I'm just going to. I don't think so. But maybe.

00;21;39;06 - 00;22;03;10
Craig Andrews
Well, my personal belief I don't believe AI is good at human connection. No. And when you're dealing with customer support, it's the point. I'm usually either a mild or significant frustration, and people aren't calling customer support to say, hey, I just want to tell you, I'm having a wonderful day and I love your product. Glad you're here. That's all I have, and have a good day.

00;22;03;15 - 00;22;06;05
Craig Andrews
That's not why they call customer support.

00;22;06;08 - 00;22;12;09
Chris Brown
Yeah, mostly you'd be surprised. People do call customer support to give praise, but it's yeah, it's 2% of the phone call.

00;22;12;09 - 00;22;20;13
Craig Andrews
Like so here's somebody that's coming and they have at least a mild level of frustration.

00;22;20;16 - 00;22;36;03
Craig Andrews
And my personal belief is they now maybe if you could have it like an AI that you know quickly services but has a quick exit ramp to say hey you know I'm happy to see if I can answer this for you. But at any time we can get a human on here.

00;22;36;06 - 00;22;40;14
Craig Andrews
But generally I think AI is not good at human connection.

00;22;40;16 - 00;22;44;14
Craig Andrews
And when people are calling customer support or sales,

00;22;44;17 - 00;22;50;23
Craig Andrews
that's where you really need good human connection. I actually have a a salacious,

00;22;50;26 - 00;23;06;24
Craig Andrews
proof point that AI is not good at human connection. If it was, only fans would not be a viable business model. I mean, there's a thing about the required vocabulary. They're not reciting Shakespeare.

00;23;06;26 - 00;23;26;05
Chris Brown
Yeah, right. It needs to be. What's funny is there's a bunch of bunch of AI models for for those platforms now. So there's a whole sub world of people that are using AI models for, for all of that. So they're creating, you know, even the image models, the video models, you can get the unrestricted ones that create that kind of content.

00;23;26;07 - 00;23;43;22
Chris Brown
But the chatting is not done by the AI. The chatting is still done by a person. So there's people that contact us about finding chatters. People do chat for these platforms. So there's people that are managing, only fans managing. I don't know what are the other ones are, but they're managing these platforms and they'll contract.

00;23;43;22 - 00;23;47;00
Chris Brown
We don't actually have any on contract for whatever reason.

00;23;47;03 - 00;24;00;28
Chris Brown
We've never actually contracted those kind of positions, but there are people who contact us looking for chatters, which are people that just do the chat side of that. And it's a it's an engaged sales position for X-rated content.

00;24;01;00 - 00;24;01;28
Craig Andrews
Wow.

00;24;02;01 - 00;24;16;17
Chris Brown
Yeah. But I mean, I don't know if they're using it again, I'm not in that world in any shape or form. So I have no idea if they're like cracking that egg of of getting AI to do the chatting. I would imagine they're trying and I'm trying hard because it's going to be a lot cheaper. But yeah, you're totally right.

00;24;16;17 - 00;24;23;02
Chris Brown
Like when I chat in to a service that I'm looking for support on, you know,

00;24;23;02 - 00;24;52;16
Chris Brown
having having owned multiple companies that have decent support means I know that the FAQ reading back you part is, you know, it's an 8020 kind of situation, right? It's a principle thing where it's like, if I give you the FAQ, 80% of people's problems is probably solved at that point because most of what my CSR team is doing is picking up a phone call and then looking through the FAQ to find the answer because they're, you know, 80% of problems are the and when is my order going to arrive?

00;24;52;18 - 00;25;16;14
Chris Brown
Well, it shipped two days ago. It'll be there tomorrow. You know, like they're normally a simplistic kind of thing, which is where that front end of that really. But you end up with the thing I'm talking about, and I'm not trying to say I'm special in any way, but I'm capable of reading an FAQ, and if I haven't found the answer myself, it's probably because it either is a more in-depth problem or I just missed it.

00;25;16;14 - 00;25;29;25
Chris Brown
So maybe the I bought has the answer for me. They're always going to try, but the other 20% of that time I'm trying to get to a human. And the harder that gets, the more frustrated I am. By the time I talk to that person.

00;25;29;27 - 00;25;36;25
Craig Andrews
Well, I'll I'll give you an example where I called in to a who knows where they're based now, but they used to be based in,

00;25;36;29 - 00;25;38;02
Craig Andrews
Scottsdale.

00;25;38;05 - 00;25;51;03
Craig Andrews
GoDaddy used to have like, the world's best customer service. Yeah. You call there, you get human. They had a clear English accent. American accent. They were helpful. They seemed happy to be there.

00;25;51;08 - 00;25;54;06
Craig Andrews
They seemed happy that you called. And,

00;25;54;06 - 00;26;04;04
Craig Andrews
And there were times I would call God, and they're like, well, this is not technically in our service, but we want to help you and we'll solve this for you. And they did.

00;26;04;06 - 00;26;04;25
Chris Brown
Yeah.

00;26;04;28 - 00;26;30;17
Craig Andrews
And now when I call GoDaddy, it's like a whole different experience. As a matter of fact, for the first time ever, for the first time ever, I bought a domain on the platform other than GoDaddy, and I actually transferred a couple domains from GoDaddy over to this other platform. And it's just the website sucks. And when I call customer service, it takes forever to get a person.

00;26;30;19 - 00;26;49;10
Craig Andrews
And there was one time I'm I'm on I'm waiting, you know, going through the music and all that, waiting for a person. And I just keep searching and eventually figure out how to solve it for myself while I'm sitting there on hold, waiting for customer service. And there's a part of me that wonders if that's really where they're aiming.

00;26;49;10 - 00;26;53;17
Craig Andrews
You know, they're like, yeah, they that they saw my interaction like, oh.

00;26;53;20 - 00;27;08;22
Chris Brown
God, it work. It worked. It worked for them on hold for an hour. They'll figure it out himself or just go away one or the other. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you have this like, yeah, it's the same issue with a bunch of all these big companies.

00;27;08;22 - 00;27;29;28
Chris Brown
You get to the point where I think it's part of the problem is that just the flow of customer support need is so big that it's just, you know, it becomes, again, an intractable problem, like, you know, imagine being meta or Facebook or whatever, like the amount of people that have the just most brainless requests to their customer support must be just an inundation that you can't deal

00;27;29;28 - 00;27;49;12
Chris Brown
with, you know? But when you have a legitimate request, when you're a business running large advertising budgets or you need support, I need I need their WhatsApp platform to do you know, I need the business WhatsApp I needed made a verified in order to use WhatsApp because Latin America uses a lot of WhatsApp, it was impossible to. There was absolutely impossible to contact anybody.

00;27;49;19 - 00;27;55;05
Chris Brown
And I'm like, I want to pay you for service. I literally want to give you money. And they're just like, yeah, we don't care and we don't care.

00;27;55;07 - 00;27;59;16
Craig Andrews
Well, I was going to say meet is actually solve the customer service problem. They just don't publish them. They don't.

00;27;59;16 - 00;28;20;06
Chris Brown
Do it. Yeah. They don't have a customer service. That's all there is. No that's it. Yeah. It's like Amazon Amazon they're part of their ethos was customer service and let's say was because as an Amazon customer, as a prime customer, it no longer seems to me like yes, returns are easy. But, you know, I bought a coffee machine, an espresso machine a couple months ago.

00;28;20;09 - 00;28;33;27
Chris Brown
And it's not a cheap machine. It's not like super expensive or anything, but it's not cheap. And then Christmas time rolled around and this was like two weeks after I bought it and it went on sale like 20% off. So I tried it in and I was like, hey, this I literally like I just pulled it out of the box.

00;28;33;27 - 00;28;49;22
Chris Brown
Can I just get the difference back? And they go, no, sorry, we have a $50 maximum on returning the difference, I was like, okay, so what are my options? He's like, well, you can you can buy the new one at the lower price and return the old one. I'm like, how is that a better business? Like this is a large machine.

00;28;49;23 - 00;29;06;08
Chris Brown
This is going to cost you $70 to ship back and forth. And instead of that, instead of just making up the, you know, $100 difference or whatever it was, you're going to make me order a new one and you're like, this is wild. And it's that same thing. You know, customer service just became this. It becomes a rote sop.

00;29;06;09 - 00;29;27;04
Chris Brown
And I understand why I'm not like, I can't believe that's the thing. I don't have a solution for it today. Obviously it's not. My problem is all, but it's just a frustration point constantly. And you just you're using AI on the front end to filter out that 80%. I understand that, like of course you are, but just letting the other 20% basically fall off is not the answer.

00;29;27;07 - 00;29;29;17
Chris Brown
And I don't have the answer. I don't know if the answer is.

00;29;29;20 - 00;29;33;29
Craig Andrews
Yeah, yeah, I think the answer,

00;29;34;02 - 00;29;44;27
Craig Andrews
do you remember the days when if you bought a piece of software, if you bought like Microsoft Word, it came with a manual that was two inches thick.

00;29;45;00 - 00;30;10;19
Craig Andrews
At some point they figured out, hey, we need to make this so easy to use that people don't need that thick manual and we need to provide documentation. It and I think I think you need both I think you need maintain the customer service. But you need to go through your your system and look at where where people getting tripped up and how can we how can we build something in so somebody don't get confused by this.

00;30;10;21 - 00;30;16;11
Craig Andrews
I mean, yeah, you'll you'll get an email from me probably in the next week as an example,

00;30;16;14 - 00;30;19;03
Craig Andrews
saying, hey, we produced your podcast.

00;30;19;06 - 00;30;27;22
Craig Andrews
It's going to be going live on this date. Here are the assets to help promote it. Well, for a while when those emails were going out, I had people that were emailing me back.

00;30;27;22 - 00;30;59;14
Craig Andrews
I'm like, I can't find the podcast. I'm like, no, it's not live yet. Oh, it's not. And so eventually I changed and put it in bold, all caps, red letters. Your episode is not live yet, but it will be soon, you know, and went back to, you know, normal black lower you know case. It will be soon. But I had to do that because I had so many people complaining that they got my email, but they can't find the episode.

00;30;59;16 - 00;31;08;09
Craig Andrews
And and so that's just human interaction. You have to say, okay, when people are getting tripped up on this, instead of me blaming them for not reading,

00;31;08;12 - 00;31;14;18
Craig Andrews
how do I make it? How do I make sure that they one feel delighted and to,

00;31;14;21 - 00;31;18;02
Craig Andrews
receive the message? I'm intending to send?

00;31;18;05 - 00;31;18;29
Chris Brown
Yeah, it's it's,

00;31;18;29 - 00;31;27;06
Chris Brown
Hey, I know what my in my immediate response to your email is going to be now, and you're going to love it. Yeah.

00;31;27;08 - 00;31;41;07
Chris Brown
You know, it's it's just communication is always an issue. I think it doesn't matter. It's not it communication with clients, communication with other people, communication with your team, like communication with your wife, like your spouse or whatever. It's it's always an issue because but from my,

00;31;41;07 - 00;31;45;24
Chris Brown
my perspective, we always assume our knowledge and the other person. Right.

00;31;45;24 - 00;31;49;11
Chris Brown
And we always assume our importance and the other person and you're,

00;31;49;11 - 00;32;01;18
Chris Brown
you mean everybody? We're emailing somebody who. This is not the top of mind thing for them today. You know, there's 12 other things that are there something that's on fire over here and it's just going sideways and they get your email and like, okay, I need to put this in the queue.

00;32;01;25 - 00;32;15;21
Chris Brown
Wait, I can't find the episode of what happened. And you're like, what do you mean what happened? You didn't read the email, you know, but like, it's just so easy to get lost on that point that you were constantly looking for. How do you clarify communication? And it's something it's again,

00;32;15;21 - 00;32;16;00
Chris Brown
not

00;32;16;00 - 00;32;20;01
Chris Brown
just talk about hard problems for some reason, like they don't sound like hard problems or communication.

00;32;20;01 - 00;32;39;03
Chris Brown
Just talk to people and tell them, no, people don't understand you correctly. You don't, you don't. You know, you don't effectively give your position to people. And it doesn't mean you like you as in everybody, including myself. Because for me, like, it's so easy to assume knowledge. Like, yeah, of course it works that way. That's that's how it works.

00;32;39;03 - 00;32;42;02
Chris Brown
Why don't you go see? Why don't you know that it works that way?

00;32;42;05 - 00;32;55;08
Chris Brown
How would they know that it works that way? They haven't done it a thousand times like I have in the past two weeks, you know? So, yeah, you end up having to write big, bold red letters at the top of emails doing this, and then, you know, you're like, yeah.

00;32;55;08 - 00;33;07;16
Chris Brown
And then people call other people stupid all the time. Oh, they're stupid. They didn't read the email. No. It just wasn't, you know, it wasn't top of mind at that moment. They got the email from you and thought, oh, their episode out and it's not. Yeah.

00;33;07;19 - 00;33;11;29
Craig Andrews
Well. And when I did that, it solved the problem. I don't get those emails anymore.

00;33;12;01 - 00;33;13;17
Chris Brown
Well, you're going to get one.

00;33;13;19 - 00;33;21;02
Craig Andrews
Okay. But you know, it's a better experience for them because I don't have to go back and say,

00;33;21;05 - 00;33;28;06
Craig Andrews
you know, if you read the email, which I've obviously I wouldn't say it that way, but yeah, how I said, yeah.

00;33;28;08 - 00;33;40;00
Chris Brown
I yeah. And you get to that frustration point of like you want to reply that way after the third or fourth one, you're like, read the email, you know, and instead of, yeah, I'm doing exactly what you did is the right move. Of course. Like you got to fix the communications. You.

00;33;40;02 - 00;33;47;06
Craig Andrews
Well, I don't want them to feel embarrassed once they put two and two together and realize, oh, that was my problem. Not you said.

00;33;47;06 - 00;33;47;25
Chris Brown
He. Just the right.

00;33;47;25 - 00;33;52;17
Craig Andrews
Words. I just didn't read. Well, let's remember that embarrassment that I don't want them to experience.

00;33;52;20 - 00;34;06;17
Chris Brown
Yeah. And you're never sure how people are going to respond to that embarrassment, right? Some people take it as like, oh, I'm sorry, I lose my dad, and some people get defensive instead, you know, like, is that why you why are we going to run into that problem? Why are we going to be offensive in a moment that we don't need to be?

00;34;06;17 - 00;34;08;23
Chris Brown
Just clarify and move on.

00;34;08;26 - 00;34;18;00
Craig Andrews
Yeah. Well, Chris, this has been really interesting discussion. I never realized there was so much talent in Latin America. That's that's available in skilled

00;34;18;03 - 00;34;23;04
Craig Andrews
especially with, with good English or American accents. And.

00;34;23;06 - 00;34;25;11
Chris Brown
There's a huge talent pool.

00;34;25;14 - 00;34;28;14
Craig Andrews
Well, how can people reach you?

00;34;28;17 - 00;34;32;21
Chris Brown
Mostly our website. Well, remote teams.com is always a good place to go.

00;34;32;21 - 00;34;34;00
Chris Brown
You can find me on LinkedIn.

00;34;34;00 - 00;34;42;14
Chris Brown
Chris Brown's a little bit hard to find, but you do while or while remote teams on LinkedIn, you'll find me and the rest of the the people associated with me. So that's an easy way.

00;34;42;17 - 00;34;45;00
Chris Brown
I would say those are the best ways, really?

00;34;45;03 - 00;34;48;08
Craig Andrews
Well, excellent. Well, hey, thanks for coming on Layers and Legacies.

00;34;48;11 - 00;34;56;16
Chris Brown
Yeah, thanks for having me. It was fantastic chatting with you today.

00;34;56;18 - 00;35;18;10
Craig Andrews
This is Craig Andrews. I want to thank you for listening to the Leaders and Legacies podcast. We're looking for leaders to share how they're making the impact beyond themselves. If that's you, please go to Ally's for me.com/guest and sign up there. If you got something out of this interview, we would love you to share this

00;35;18;10 - 00;35;20;05
Craig Andrews
episode on social media.

00;35;20;07 - 00;35;43;17
Craig Andrews
Just do a quick screenshot with your phone and text it to a friend, or posted on the socials. If you know someone who would be a great guest. Tag them on social media and let them know about the show, including the hashtag leaders and legacies. I love seeing your posts and suggestions. We are regularly putting out new episodes and content to make sure you don't miss anything.

00;35;43;19 - 00;35;51;24
Craig Andrews
Please go ahead and subscribe. Your thumbs up. Ratings and reviews go a long way to help promote the show. It means a lot to me.

00;35;51;24 - 00;36;02;05
Craig Andrews
It means a lot to my team. If you want to know more, please go to Ally's for me.com. Or follow me on LinkedIn. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.