October 29, 2025 • 12 mins
In this episode of Inside the Win, Sam Nelson, the VP of CX, and Meagan Thai discuss the financial insights from a recent project with a dental equipment manufacturer. They highlight the company's challenges, particularly their need for a unified communication solution that includes video capabilities. The timeline from discovery to execution was notably swift, emphasizing the importance of establishing clear communication and understanding customer requirements. The conversation also touches on the use of AI tools to assist teams in gathering requirements effectively. The episode concludes with a promise for more insights in future episodes.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to Inside the Win, We'llbreakdown real world wins,
showing you exactly how strategic partnership with our
experts empowers you to tackle your most ambitious
opportunities with confidence. Let's jump in.
What's up everyone? I am Sam Nelson, VP of CX and
welcome to Inside the Win CX edition.
We are here to give you insightson how early collaboration with
(00:22):
our team can completely revolutionize your customer
engagements. Joining me today is the one and
only Megan Tie, our CX and AI Solution Architect of the West.
Megan, how is it going? Hi, Sam.
It's going great. It's going.
Great. Thank you.
Yeah, great to have you. So today we just want to really
(00:43):
focus on a specific win, share some details with our partners.
So First things first, everybodywants to know about the money,
right? So give us some financial
insight into a particular opportunity we're going to
discuss today. Like how much was it, what did
we end up, you know, closing it on today.
Sure. Yeah, I like this one because
(01:03):
it's not like those big whales that we get once in a while, but
it's a it's a pretty good amount.
This one came out to be about 9200 MRR just for the service,
so 9200 a month. But on top of that, we also have
some professional services whichwas something like 37,000.
So we split it up by 12, which is usually another 3100 in MRR.
(01:25):
So we're looking at, you know, 10 to 12 grand, something like
that in MRR alone for this opportunity.
So, yeah, that's certainly not small.
And a lot of these CX opportunities I feel like end up
being a lot bigger than we thinkbecause we had started having
the conversation with the customer and we started covering
more things. So let's let's dive into that.
Talk to me about the type of customer, industry and size.
(01:50):
Yeah, OK. So this one was a little bit
different. They were a dental equipment
manufacturer. So you got some sort of
healthcare in there. But more than anything they are
a manufacturing company. So think of, you know, the, the
dent when you go to a dentist, the dentist chairs all the
equipment is the compressors, anything except for the X-rays
is what they were manufacturing and they were AB to B, so they
(02:11):
only sold through their distributors.
So dental equipment manufacturing company, they had
275 UCAS users and then a smaller portion of about 40
contact center agents that we had to help find a new solution
for. Interesting.
And so in that scenario, what kinds of pain points or I should
(02:33):
say challenges were they experiencing 'cause you'd think
something like that is kind of aniche situation, right?
So what exactly were they kind of troubled with?
Sure. All right.
So their line of work, their business model was that they
would have to dispatch their field techs.
OK, So if a chair wasn't workingcorrectly, they had to go on
site to take a look at it. Their biggest challenge was they
(02:55):
had to do some video. So on their current solution,
they were doing an audio recording of it and then they
have the video of of what's going on.
Like, oh, this chair turned likethis and it started squeaking
right there. Stop right there.
It squeaked. So the problem was it was 2
separate streams. So they would audio record on
one solution, do their video on another solution and they
couldn't couldn't get the two toa line.
(03:17):
So it, it, it caused a lot of challenges for them to try to
figure out, hold on, stop. Let's line this apart.
Let's, let's listen to it and, and let's watch at the same time
and figure out exactly where that squeaking happened so that
we can figure out what needs to be replaced or what needs to be
fixed. So that was one of their biggest
challenges, honestly. And they do this all day long.
And so their call center or contact center were the folks
(03:38):
who were troubleshooting alongside with the the field
techs. And yeah, it, it just caused a
lot of problems. So we're trying to help them
solve for that specifically. And they had other integration
needs and whatnot, but that was the main issue that they were
they were having and they were using Zoho.
So the other challenge was they wanted a solution that had UCAS
(04:00):
C CAS video capabilities, being able to record the audio and
video stream combined and integrated into Zoho.
The fewer applications the better.
You know, we hear this all the time, right?
Customers like who wants 7815 different applications to work
in? So they wanted us to streamline
as much as possible. That was another challenge.
Interesting. I've never heard of kind of a
(04:22):
squeaky chair troubleshooting use case.
That's a first, I know. For healthcare.
Yeah. OK.
So let's talk about the actual customer engagement in terms of
strategy formulation. Walk me through sort of what the
timeline looked like from discovery to formulation to
actual execution. Yeah, this one.
(04:44):
I like this one moved, I feel like a little bit faster than
normal, but you know, so it didn't go for years like some of
our our typical opportunities would.
This one is interesting. I was going back on the timeline
of it and then this part of oursRTA was so good.
They're usually really good at giving me a heads up.
So it was like the week before Christmas, they shot me an
(05:04):
e-mail and they said, look, Ryan, like they're still
working. We need your help on a discovery
call. It's not going to happen till
next year. But here's the idea.
And this was literally like the 20 something right right before
Christmas. And I said, that's great.
Thanks for the heads up. Come closer to the time.
Let's let's sync up, let's talk about it.
So we did. And then I think by Feb, by
(05:25):
early February, we finally had our first discovery call with
this customer. And it's an hour long call,
which is what we typically like to do for a a first time
discovery. So that was in early Feb.
That was one call. At the end of the call, what we
told the customer and what I love about this TA is they
always, they always have a next step.
(05:46):
So at the end of the call they'll say great, thanks for
your time, thanks for all this information.
We are going to put our notes together, our heads together,
come up with some vendor ideas and we'll re meet again at a
later time. And we always establish the next
meeting to to be had. We met again in March.
Yep. So it was like a good month,
month and 1/2. So we met again in March with
(06:08):
all the vendor recommendations. And again, this is what I loved
about this TA. They do such an amazing job at
putting everything together, gathering all the requirements,
putting it into a nice spreadsheet.
At that time, right after the first discovery call the TA and
myself would brainstorm and say,OK, let's share our notes.
Who do you think? Who do you like?
Who do you, you know what, what did the customers say that they
(06:29):
didn't like or they've evaluatedbefore?
Right? You get all that out of
out-of-the-box. And then what you do is come up
with a list of vendors and our TA went to these vendors, sent
them the requirements and said, look, we're vetting them out.
Are you guys a good fit? Check off the boxes.
And so by the time we met again in March, we had this whole
list, here are the vendor recommendations and why, right?
(06:51):
So we gave ourselves about a month to do all the vetting out.
And so this TA, what I love thatthey did, they went above and
beyond. They actually spoke to each of
these vendors because the trickything was that video portion,
how do you, if we have a contactcenter solution, how do you
trigger the video portion to kick in?
(07:13):
And So what we realized is we really had to go after those
UCAS, the, the robust UCAS vendors with contact center as
well, because video is their strength, right?
And so we realized after vetting, I don't know, I think
we went to six or eight different, different vendors.
After vetting through a few, we found that the UCAS vendors, the
robust UCAS vendors with some really good contact center
(07:34):
capabilities were the ones that fit the mold better.
So this TA actually went as far as talking to the vendors and
saying, can you record a demo ofwhen this video gets triggered?
How does this happen so we can share it with our customers.
It was amazing. So we, so that kind of helped us
narrow down quite a bit. So anyhow, when we've been again
in March, we went through, Hey, here's the work that we've done,
(07:55):
here's what we put together. Here's the whole requirements
list. Here's all the vendors checking
off the boxes. And here's some videos that we,
we've gotten from them, a recording of, of the use case.
I'm telling you what the customers, when, when vendors,
I'm sorry, when partners can do this for them.
They are so appreciative of all the work that they put into it.
They, they know that you listened and you understand the
(08:17):
requirements, right? And you're, you're guiding down,
you're guiding them down the right path.
So that was in March. And so then we helped them
narrow down, OK, all this list, here are the check boxes, here
are the videos. What do you think?
We further narrowed down the list again and met back in June.
So now you've got March to June time frame in that in those
several months, we helped coordinate all the demo
(08:37):
meetings, multiple demo meetings, meetings with the
vendors. So by the time we got together
again in June to do a feedback call, right?
So we started Feb was the first discovery in June, we're doing
feedback now. And from there they, they
further narrowed down to where we were starting to help with
contract negotiations. So that was June time frame.
And in August, August, I think it was August, Yep, they finally
(09:02):
signed. So right before Christmas was
the first time I've heard of it.In February was the first time
we had a discovery call and thenthey signed in August.
So to me that was fast moving, but there is so much work in
between like the that our TA took upon themselves to do to,
to help guide the customer down that path to make it an easier
process for them. So I love it.
(09:23):
So this Tai can't, I can't have enough good things to say about
them. I mean they do so much work that
it makes my job easy as well. Yeah, that's incredible.
I mean, that level of detail, itcan is really, really time
consuming, especially because a lot of these CX deals can become
really complex. What options are available to
TAS if they don't have the expertise of like gathering all
(09:45):
the requirements, putting them into documents and organizing
demos and things like it can be really overwhelming, right?
Like what additional? Resources.
Does your team have or TAS who don't have that kind of
capacity? So I will find myself doing
often times, especially if it's a larger or even even if it's a
smaller deal, but it's complex in nature.
(10:05):
Because I'm on this first discovery call, I take lots of
notes. Rtas now are also using things
like AI companion or Otter or whatever to transcribe and and
summarize their meetings. So they use that.
We all share notes together sometimes.
I've done this recently. Sam and I told my partner to do
this as well as take the notes, combine it, put it through Jet
(10:29):
GPT, see what it comes back with, tell it to summarize it
for you, right? And then help help have it help
you build out a requirements list.
I've had I've done that and there's some tweaking that has
to be done, but you at least getsome sort of a framework done.
OK, so that's one one option. The other option, of course,
like I was saying, if it's a more complex opportunity where I
(10:50):
can lend a hand, I will actuallytake all the notes, summarize it
myself as well and put it into aPowerPoint.
Slide one, here's the current environment that you told us
you're in. Slide 2, here's what we're
trying to help solve for. Here's all the requirements,
here's the the business drivers that is going to help you make a
decision. And now here are the vendor
(11:10):
recommendations. OK.
So I can help with some of that.I would say then come time for
scheduling demos, I really wouldlike the partner to handle that
if they need help. Our operational folks, our Peas
can help as well. But really our partner should
help with that process because they have access to the
customer's calendar and they canwork with a vendor to schedule
(11:32):
all that. But I would say, I mean lean on
me as needed through that process, especially with the
discovery and the requirements because that can get a little
bit complex and convoluted and then the more administrative
some of our peas can help or of course the partner can do most
of that themselves. Awesome.
Well, I love that it sounds likea ton of different best
practices for our Tasmania as far as requirements gathering,
(11:55):
setting, I would say proper expectations, but even more
importantly, bringing you in really, really early, right?
Because again, you mentioned they reached out right before
Christmas, but you didn't have the customer conversation until
February yet. That gave you and the TA a lot
of time to really, we prepare and get as much data and just be
as prepared as humanly possible for that initial discovery call,
(12:18):
which of course ended up in a great win, which is fantastic.
So thank you again, Megan, for like sharing all these details.
Really, really impressive. Very clearly folks engage us
early and often, right? So with that said, joined here
by the great Megan Tai, once again, thank you so much for
joining me, Megan. But folks, go ahead and stay
(12:40):
tuned for our next Inside the Win episode to learn more about
how leveraging our team leads tobigger and better.
Results.
Welcome to Inside the Win, We'llbreakdown real world wins,
showing you exactly how strategic partnership with our
experts empowers you to tackle your most ambitious
opportunities with confidence. Let's jump in.
What's up everyone? I am Sam Nelson, VP of CX and
welcome to Inside the Win CX edition.
We are here to give you insightson how early collaboration with
(00:22):
our team can completely revolutionize your customer
engagements. Joining me today is the one and
only Megan Tie, our CX and AI Solution Architect of the West.
Megan, how is it going? Hi, Sam.
It's going great. It's going.
Great. Thank you.
Yeah, great to have you. So today we just want to really
(00:43):
focus on a specific win, share some details with our partners.
So First things first, everybodywants to know about the money,
right? So give us some financial
insight into a particular opportunity we're going to
discuss today. Like how much was it, what did
we end up, you know, closing it on today.
Sure. Yeah, I like this one because
(01:03):
it's not like those big whales that we get once in a while, but
it's a it's a pretty good amount.
This one came out to be about 9200 MRR just for the service,
so 9200 a month. But on top of that, we also have
some professional services whichwas something like 37,000.
So we split it up by 12, which is usually another 3100 in MRR.
(01:25):
So we're looking at, you know, 10 to 12 grand, something like
that in MRR alone for this opportunity.
So, yeah, that's certainly not small.
And a lot of these CX opportunities I feel like end up
being a lot bigger than we thinkbecause we had started having
the conversation with the customer and we started covering
more things. So let's let's dive into that.
Talk to me about the type of customer, industry and size.
(01:50):
Yeah, OK. So this one was a little bit
different. They were a dental equipment
manufacturer. So you got some sort of
healthcare in there. But more than anything they are
a manufacturing company. So think of, you know, the, the
dent when you go to a dentist, the dentist chairs all the
equipment is the compressors, anything except for the X-rays
is what they were manufacturing and they were AB to B, so they
(02:11):
only sold through their distributors.
So dental equipment manufacturing company, they had
275 UCAS users and then a smaller portion of about 40
contact center agents that we had to help find a new solution
for. Interesting.
And so in that scenario, what kinds of pain points or I should
(02:33):
say challenges were they experiencing 'cause you'd think
something like that is kind of aniche situation, right?
So what exactly were they kind of troubled with?
Sure. All right.
So their line of work, their business model was that they
would have to dispatch their field techs.
OK, So if a chair wasn't workingcorrectly, they had to go on
site to take a look at it. Their biggest challenge was they
(02:55):
had to do some video. So on their current solution,
they were doing an audio recording of it and then they
have the video of of what's going on.
Like, oh, this chair turned likethis and it started squeaking
right there. Stop right there.
It squeaked. So the problem was it was 2
separate streams. So they would audio record on
one solution, do their video on another solution and they
couldn't couldn't get the two toa line.
(03:17):
So it, it, it caused a lot of challenges for them to try to
figure out, hold on, stop. Let's line this apart.
Let's, let's listen to it and, and let's watch at the same time
and figure out exactly where that squeaking happened so that
we can figure out what needs to be replaced or what needs to be
fixed. So that was one of their biggest
challenges, honestly. And they do this all day long.
And so their call center or contact center were the folks
(03:38):
who were troubleshooting alongside with the the field
techs. And yeah, it, it just caused a
lot of problems. So we're trying to help them
solve for that specifically. And they had other integration
needs and whatnot, but that was the main issue that they were
they were having and they were using Zoho.
So the other challenge was they wanted a solution that had UCAS
(04:00):
C CAS video capabilities, being able to record the audio and
video stream combined and integrated into Zoho.
The fewer applications the better.
You know, we hear this all the time, right?
Customers like who wants 7815 different applications to work
in? So they wanted us to streamline
as much as possible. That was another challenge.
Interesting. I've never heard of kind of a
(04:22):
squeaky chair troubleshooting use case.
That's a first, I know. For healthcare.
Yeah. OK.
So let's talk about the actual customer engagement in terms of
strategy formulation. Walk me through sort of what the
timeline looked like from discovery to formulation to
actual execution. Yeah, this one.
(04:44):
I like this one moved, I feel like a little bit faster than
normal, but you know, so it didn't go for years like some of
our our typical opportunities would.
This one is interesting. I was going back on the timeline
of it and then this part of oursRTA was so good.
They're usually really good at giving me a heads up.
So it was like the week before Christmas, they shot me an
(05:04):
e-mail and they said, look, Ryan, like they're still
working. We need your help on a discovery
call. It's not going to happen till
next year. But here's the idea.
And this was literally like the 20 something right right before
Christmas. And I said, that's great.
Thanks for the heads up. Come closer to the time.
Let's let's sync up, let's talk about it.
So we did. And then I think by Feb, by
(05:25):
early February, we finally had our first discovery call with
this customer. And it's an hour long call,
which is what we typically like to do for a a first time
discovery. So that was in early Feb.
That was one call. At the end of the call, what we
told the customer and what I love about this TA is they
always, they always have a next step.
(05:46):
So at the end of the call they'll say great, thanks for
your time, thanks for all this information.
We are going to put our notes together, our heads together,
come up with some vendor ideas and we'll re meet again at a
later time. And we always establish the next
meeting to to be had. We met again in March.
Yep. So it was like a good month,
month and 1/2. So we met again in March with
(06:08):
all the vendor recommendations. And again, this is what I loved
about this TA. They do such an amazing job at
putting everything together, gathering all the requirements,
putting it into a nice spreadsheet.
At that time, right after the first discovery call the TA and
myself would brainstorm and say,OK, let's share our notes.
Who do you think? Who do you like?
Who do you, you know what, what did the customers say that they
(06:29):
didn't like or they've evaluatedbefore?
Right? You get all that out of
out-of-the-box. And then what you do is come up
with a list of vendors and our TA went to these vendors, sent
them the requirements and said, look, we're vetting them out.
Are you guys a good fit? Check off the boxes.
And so by the time we met again in March, we had this whole
list, here are the vendor recommendations and why, right?
(06:51):
So we gave ourselves about a month to do all the vetting out.
And so this TA, what I love thatthey did, they went above and
beyond. They actually spoke to each of
these vendors because the trickything was that video portion,
how do you, if we have a contactcenter solution, how do you
trigger the video portion to kick in?
(07:13):
And So what we realized is we really had to go after those
UCAS, the, the robust UCAS vendors with contact center as
well, because video is their strength, right?
And so we realized after vetting, I don't know, I think
we went to six or eight different, different vendors.
After vetting through a few, we found that the UCAS vendors, the
robust UCAS vendors with some really good contact center
(07:34):
capabilities were the ones that fit the mold better.
So this TA actually went as far as talking to the vendors and
saying, can you record a demo ofwhen this video gets triggered?
How does this happen so we can share it with our customers.
It was amazing. So we, so that kind of helped us
narrow down quite a bit. So anyhow, when we've been again
in March, we went through, Hey, here's the work that we've done,
(07:55):
here's what we put together. Here's the whole requirements
list. Here's all the vendors checking
off the boxes. And here's some videos that we,
we've gotten from them, a recording of, of the use case.
I'm telling you what the customers, when, when vendors,
I'm sorry, when partners can do this for them.
They are so appreciative of all the work that they put into it.
They, they know that you listened and you understand the
(08:17):
requirements, right? And you're, you're guiding down,
you're guiding them down the right path.
So that was in March. And so then we helped them
narrow down, OK, all this list, here are the check boxes, here
are the videos. What do you think?
We further narrowed down the list again and met back in June.
So now you've got March to June time frame in that in those
several months, we helped coordinate all the demo
(08:37):
meetings, multiple demo meetings, meetings with the
vendors. So by the time we got together
again in June to do a feedback call, right?
So we started Feb was the first discovery in June, we're doing
feedback now. And from there they, they
further narrowed down to where we were starting to help with
contract negotiations. So that was June time frame.
And in August, August, I think it was August, Yep, they finally
(09:02):
signed. So right before Christmas was
the first time I've heard of it.In February was the first time
we had a discovery call and thenthey signed in August.
So to me that was fast moving, but there is so much work in
between like the that our TA took upon themselves to do to,
to help guide the customer down that path to make it an easier
process for them. So I love it.
(09:23):
So this Tai can't, I can't have enough good things to say about
them. I mean they do so much work that
it makes my job easy as well. Yeah, that's incredible.
I mean, that level of detail, itcan is really, really time
consuming, especially because a lot of these CX deals can become
really complex. What options are available to
TAS if they don't have the expertise of like gathering all
(09:45):
the requirements, putting them into documents and organizing
demos and things like it can be really overwhelming, right?
Like what additional? Resources.
Does your team have or TAS who don't have that kind of
capacity? So I will find myself doing
often times, especially if it's a larger or even even if it's a
smaller deal, but it's complex in nature.
(10:05):
Because I'm on this first discovery call, I take lots of
notes. Rtas now are also using things
like AI companion or Otter or whatever to transcribe and and
summarize their meetings. So they use that.
We all share notes together sometimes.
I've done this recently. Sam and I told my partner to do
this as well as take the notes, combine it, put it through Jet
(10:29):
GPT, see what it comes back with, tell it to summarize it
for you, right? And then help help have it help
you build out a requirements list.
I've had I've done that and there's some tweaking that has
to be done, but you at least getsome sort of a framework done.
OK, so that's one one option. The other option, of course,
like I was saying, if it's a more complex opportunity where I
(10:50):
can lend a hand, I will actuallytake all the notes, summarize it
myself as well and put it into aPowerPoint.
Slide one, here's the current environment that you told us
you're in. Slide 2, here's what we're
trying to help solve for. Here's all the requirements,
here's the the business drivers that is going to help you make a
decision. And now here are the vendor
(11:10):
recommendations. OK.
So I can help with some of that.I would say then come time for
scheduling demos, I really wouldlike the partner to handle that
if they need help. Our operational folks, our Peas
can help as well. But really our partner should
help with that process because they have access to the
customer's calendar and they canwork with a vendor to schedule
(11:32):
all that. But I would say, I mean lean on
me as needed through that process, especially with the
discovery and the requirements because that can get a little
bit complex and convoluted and then the more administrative
some of our peas can help or of course the partner can do most
of that themselves. Awesome.
Well, I love that it sounds likea ton of different best
practices for our Tasmania as far as requirements gathering,
(11:55):
setting, I would say proper expectations, but even more
importantly, bringing you in really, really early, right?
Because again, you mentioned they reached out right before
Christmas, but you didn't have the customer conversation until
February yet. That gave you and the TA a lot
of time to really, we prepare and get as much data and just be
as prepared as humanly possible for that initial discovery call,
(12:18):
which of course ended up in a great win, which is fantastic.
So thank you again, Megan, for like sharing all these details.
Really, really impressive. Very clearly folks engage us
early and often, right? So with that said, joined here
by the great Megan Tai, once again, thank you so much for
joining me, Megan. But folks, go ahead and stay
(12:40):
tuned for our next Inside the Win episode to learn more about
how leveraging our team leads tobigger and better.
Results.
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