What if RDR2 Arthur Morgan was a Call Center Representative?

Over the holiday break two life changing events happened to me. First, my girlfriend bought me Red Dead Redemption 2 and second, I started working at Five9.  If you are not aware of Red Dead Redemption 2 or haven’t heard of Five9, let me give you a high-level review. 

Red Dead Redemption 2 is an action-adventure role player game set in the old-West. Developed by Rockstar Games, it is a digital experience you cannot miss this year. The story is centered around a character named Arthur Morgan, and his dedication to the Dutch Van der Linde gang, his survival through the declining world of the outlaw and the simple premise of telling people to “Calm Down!”.

Net net. I am a true fan of the game.  Steve Marin, David Kunkler, Christian Cantemessa, Ted Carson, Joshua Bass, Daren Bader, Nick Trifunovic, Dan Houser, Michael Unsworth and the many others who put this game together did a phonemical job.  Nice work! 

Five9 on the other hand is not a western. It’s not even a video game. Well, it kind of is. If you replace moving out West to moving to the cloud and consider the gamification releases scheduled later this year, then I suppose there are some similarities. 

For those that don’t know, Five9 is a cloud contact center software solution that provides a flexible, easy to configure and deploy, cloud-based contact center solution.  The platform gives users an integrated end-to-end experience that empowers your customer care agent to have more personalized conversations with customers. 

So… How does this relate to working at Five9? I know - this is the question everyone is asking. 

After doing my homework on Five9, grabbing a ham sandwich and watching as Arthurs moral meter gradually declined to the point of no return (the moral meter is a gauge on how criminal or honorable Arthur becomes throughout the game), I started to wonder what if Arthur Morgan was a call center agent and how could Five9 help improve his moral meter? Could Arthur ever recover and become an upstanding citizen like Jim Milton in the epilogue? Let’s take a sample call to show how and where Five9 could help improve Arthur’s moral meter. 

Caller: Hello.  My name is Joe Kelley and I am having an issue with my washing machine

Arthur: “Lennyyyyy!!!!  Lennnnay!!”

Caller: No!  My name is Joe.  Don’t you have my information up?

Arthur: “Hey there mister!”” 

Caller: Okay…. Again, do you have my account information up?  I am having a problem with my washing machine. Can you help? For some reason the rinse cycle is running for over an hour. It doesn’t seem normal.

Arthur: "WHINE WHINE WHINE"

Caller: Excuse me? That is no way to talk to a customer. I would like to speak to your manager.

Arthur: “Calm Down!”

Caller: Hangs up

Arthur: “That didn't go very smoothly…”

As you can see, Arthur needs a lot of help in how he talks to customers and fields his calls. And as such, Five9 has solutions to help. 

Computer Telephony Integration (CTI)

If Arthur had been using Five9 CTI or “screen pops,” he could have started the conversation correctly and not called the customer by the wrong name. As soon as Arthur connected with Joe, his information would have been on screen from his company’s CRM platform for him to reference and edit. The result is higher efficiency and more effective customer support interactions.

Performance Dashboards

Similar to Arthur’s moral meter, Five9 has been working on performance dashboards that not only benefit the agent, but allow the supervisor to step in when calls are escalated. With Five9 performance dashboards, Arthur and his manager can create a call script that would have helped Arthur tailor the conversation to meet the customer’s needs. Without the dashboards, Arthur and his manager will need to review the call recording, which will likely show Arthur’s moral meter in the red. 

Five9 Genius and AI

Although AI is in its infancy, it’s a pretty cool development and something our CEO, Rowan Trollope, describes as a way Five9 allows human agents to do what human do best.  To talk to people on a personal basis showing compassion and empathy.  He did a great interview with theCube where he says:

“…We're able to predict the answers to the questions from customers. We're able to predict those things really quickly. So that's a sort of a mastery. The machines can help with mastery. They can help with being able to answer every question instantly. Or know the best thing to say to a customer at any given time. But what machines can't do, is empathy. Humans are the ones that have to bring the heart.”

If Arthur had access to the customer’s information and order history, he would of had a better sense of who the customer was and what he was calling about. This would have allowed him to spend more time on “bringing the heart” to the situation – rather than trying to route the call or ask the customer repeat questions. 

Overall it has been a pretty interesting last few months… or as Arthur would say, “It has been an interesting past few months.” I have learned a lot about the contact center space and believe there is tremendous opportunity. I have also, sad to say, finished Red Dead. I can’t say I have completed it as I still have much to do in my compendium… and I look forward to crossing off everything on the list. 

To learn more about Five9, feel free to reach out and talk to a sales representative. They are a good group that I have enjoyed getting to know and believe you will too. 

Also, check us out at Enterprise Connect this year.