Romain Rothier Principal Platform Architect of Zendesk: Redefining Customer Support Excellence

all right I am thrilled to introduce Roma rotier an accomplished principal

platform architect at zenes thanks for joining us today Roman thank

you uh well I I have um I’ve learned a lot quite a lot about you to prepare for

this conversation um really excited to to have you you know share some of your experience traveling around the world uh

visiting the Mojave Desert playing on the Dublin City University volleyball team and also just working for a great

company like zendesk for so long and building incredible products uh so I I wanted to start off just with a quick

question around you know if you could work having worked pretty much all over the planet seems like if you could live

in and work in Paris London mve desert you know where where would you want to

live uh well you know at the risk of sounding an original I I would say Paris

you know I’ve uh I’ve been back since uh 2016 and I really fell in love with the

city again um I’m very lucky to be able to cycle to work most days and I go

through some some very pictures neighborhoods so um it’s been great so far and also the the Paris office has

moved to to a great location the the hotel bony uh it’s a beautiful

historical landmark and it’s it’s it’s so much beautiful that my co-workers call it the castle um so so it’s it’s

very you know shiny and and full of gold flourishes and so on so but it’s a great

Vibe and I love you know spending time with people they face Toof face I think it’s it’s really important and how about like uh you know

what’s your close second well early it’s completely the opposite so I um my in-laws actually

have a farmhouse um in the countryside near puer and they literally built it

Brick by Brick like with their own hands it took them 30 years I really I really

came in their lives in the life of my wife and the later part of it so I got to enjoy the benefits without

necessarily putting in the effort but uh it’s it’s a it’s a great Testament to to

kind of perseverance and outwork and it doesn’t get more secluded than this so it’s really great amazing I I so I don’t

know if I I I mentioned this to you but so I worked for Facebook for a number of years and my boss uh Julian he actually

was based in France and so we’re you know the initial team that I worked with

at Facebook so I actually got to go to Paris every quarter probably and it it

still is and continues to be my top favorite place maybe in the world so I I love it there and I’m very jealous that

you get to live there thank you that makes me very happy so let’s talk a little bit about zenes your time there you’ve been there

almost a decade so almost 10 years um tell me a little bit about your kind of what what Drew you there what brought

you and then how things changed as as you’ve looked at the company’s EV

evolving you know customer service and and Technology over the years yeah well it’s funny you said you

say 10 years but it really really felt shorter than this um I think I was

originally drawn by you know zendesk’s promise to to deliver a great user

experience across all all its users so you know from from the customers that are starting a chat or uh you know

looking up a a knowledge based article to the the customer service agents who are working through tickets all day

and all the way to the the administrators who are configuring the the product and the platform so I

remember when I when I joined back in 2015 our Mantra was beautifully simple

software which at the time uh most customer service softwares were very

slow and and clunky so it was a big a big Mentor big promise to feel and I also had a passion for design

you know I I moonlighted as a as a freelance developer uh for a while

and so I was really impressed by Z as dedication to to product design which still hasn’t changed to this day I love

the I love the phrasing of that beautifully simple software and it it’s really interesting how often we spend

time thinking about or I should say like many people spend time thinking about what the the experience of the customer

looks like but they don’t talk as much about I wonder what it looks like behind the scenes for that agent who spents all

day that customer support person and and you guys I think we’ve been as NS customer for quite a long time as well

and it’s been excellent for us and we’ve seen it evolve over the years so I I can definitely see where it’s it’s been that that great type of product yeah

absolutely and it’s often those users that are you know overlooked and but

they’re the one who spend the most time using the the solution so it’s really important for them it’s really important

to think about their satisfaction not just the customer satisfaction yeah that that would actually be I’m sure you guys measured

you know uh agent satisfaction but basically they’re your customers so I guess you’re hearing from them all the

time but um so you know I I’m sure you’ve seen those like uh Tik Tock

Instagram videos Day in the Life um I I imagine you know Roma’s life working for

zenth is not quite just hanging out uh like many of those Tik Tok videos uh show but I’d love to know you know as

your role as a platform um architect you know moving through some of these roles

from solution consultant to senior architect what what does it look like what are you actually doing back there

what are you doing yeah that’s a good question because when I tell people I’m a platform architect they’re like you

know what house have you built recently or like and and I’m like that’s that’s not really what I do so but my day today

you know it’s mostly mostly two parts um really I’m I’m I’m supporting our sales

motion so I’m working with um uh sales account Executives pre-sales engineers

and just the the go-to market teams in general by providing them technical expertise

and best practices on how to to integrate zendesk and customize zisk

right uh but I also engage directly with customers and Prospects uh I I run

workshops to understand their technical ecosystem uh and their integration

requirements and then I go away and I design I draw the architecture and the

data flows to integrate and customize and as to deliver the most value basically

okay is so may maybe my product experience is is probably pretty naive

with zenes um if from the way you’re describing it it sounds like there’s a lot of Integrations technical components

so is it more that the product itself is tweaked or is it more like the tools and

the systems it connects to is tweaked or is it a bit of both um it’s I guess it’s

a bit of both both so as as I mentioned you know the our original Mantra was

beautifully simple and it is a simple software so a lot of what you do is point and click you know when you create

your your flows and and your views and so on um but there’s a that’s almost the

the tip of the icebag right there’s a extensive platform that you can use to

to to do a lot of things to make zenes communicate with your with your your

back office systems to automate processes um to extend the data model

beyond beyond what’s native so um it’s it’s a big sandbox uh and there’s lots

of things lots of opportunities to um to deliver additional value using that

platform so presum you you’ve probably had some I don’t know challenging unique

problems and experiences with your customers over the years um any of them that have like really made you work

extra hard or had to be extra creative oh yeah a few of them actually

well I’m I’m mostly engaged on on like large complex opportunities you know for

Enterprise prospects or customers so um so delivering at scale is is always a

challenge um in terms of you know recent challenges I know we we we had one

customer that really challenged Us in the past um a few years ago it was a a large gaming and and gambling um entity

that should remain nameless but they had they had very

complex operations you know they had multiple Brands um millions of customers and they had very complex uh routing and

prioritization rules when it came to chat uh they wanted to prioritize obviously the the customers that were um

spending more and winning more Etc so but it it went further Beyond so um and

I don’t want to go into too much technical details but our product at the time wasn’t there yet in terms of

complexity so again we had to turn to our platform to come up with a very

creative and custom solution but we also had to convince um

our product teams to accelerate some of the areas of our road map in order to

make the solution happen so it felt a little bit like we were you know the nail stuck between the the wall and the

hammer and I’ll let you decide who which is which right is the customer the nail the wall or the hammer um but in the end

we manag to close the deal and and deliver the solution so um you know I

I’ve only really experienced uh a lot of the customer support you know by calling into a

company like I have Google Fiber in my area and I’ll talk to them on the phone or I experiened you know your product

through lots of different help centers and chat Bots and and all these kinds of things but what what your product do or

like how do you help folks who are in like uh I don’t know field you know I don’t know like companies that have

people that are not at a desk may maybe it doesn’t fit perfectly but like what have you had to do with those yeah

that’s actually a very um upand cominging use case right

because um well for many reasons first of all we you know people that are in the field whether they’re like uh retail

salese that are in store or or I don’t know like um repair people in the

autoshops and so on um they are the ones that hold the knowledge right they know

where your order is they know they know if your car is fixed or not so you want

to be able to uh get them to support customers through digital channels but

they are it’s not their primary focus right their primary focus is doing their job in the field so it’s really

difficult to to get them to to stand by a computer or answer a chat or so one of

the thing that we did for a big um autoshop kind of um auto repair company

is to be able to connect the people making the repairs with the customers via WhatsApp um and we do that through

mobile of course so the the people in the autoshop they don’t sit by the computer they have their Mobiles on and

they receive the messages and they can also send proactive messages to say oh actually we realized that you know um

upon investigation you know there there’s something that needs to be fixed on your car it’s going to cost extra are

you okay and you know being able to have that easy Communication channel with the

customer has really really helped um bring the the satisfaction

up I think that’s great because I a lot of the time you know you try to pull people to where your workflow is and it

may not fit best to them and as you adapt it to them they’re much happier um I did have I did have a follow-up

question to your your comment earlier about um you know sort of uh having

let’s say once you find the requirements from a customer and maybe they don’t adapt or fit into your known product

road map I I was sort of curious like how do you approach your team and try to

convince them to adjust or tweak the road map is that you know you come with anecdotes you come with data it’s like

Revenue sort of a mix you hang out in a sauna and you know become best friends with the piano like how how have you

approached that um yeah I think yeah a few of those um it doesn’t hurt to to

have um uh relationships with the PMS you know like to to check in on them to

see how the product road map is going for them and so on um at zisk we have

standard processes for you know uh customer feedback so we can attach a

feedback to an opportunity or an account and we are going to qualify that

feedback right is it is it the blocker for the opportunity or for the account is the is their revenue at risk or is

there opportunity to bring more revenue of course uh and then we feed that back through a tool that we use internally so

but aside from the actual process typically what we would do is is you know either ping the the product team on

on slack or or the product manager for that feature and just inquire about their road map because they might have

this on their radar already yeah that that totally makes sense uh you know part of the reason I was

thinking about it is um I’ve worked for both big companies uh where the process

and uh C of sort of workflows are really dialed in they make sense they’re clear and then I’ve worked for startups where

where like I’m a early sales guy who is sort of like hey you know this this person is shouting from the rooftops and

uh what I would often do I became really good friends with a couple of the engineers so one of them you know Honday

he would go running every day so I’d go run with him another engineer liked to go to the gym and another one I uh he he

liked to try to think we just want to walks a lot and so uh I I would basically say like ah you know our

product team is we’re not we’re not able to build this SSO feature for some big company or whatever and and uh it would

be really hilarious because sometimes the engineer would come to me on Monday and say hey I I built it over the

weekend for you uh go close the deal or whatever um and then my our product team would be like what well how where did

this come from but anyway it’s so I I appreciate that you guys have a well-defined clear system uh because

that can get a little crazy yeah um let’s let’s talk a little bit about uh you know sort of your technical

expertise and some of the customer you know conversations you’ve had over the years so um as you mentioned zenes is

really known for its uh customer Centric approach you know you list to your customers you adapt the product you make it work well for them and also really

help their customers how do you view this sort of balance between your technical expertise you know this this

uh Solutions architect aspect itive you and then also being empathetic being a

great listener to your customers yeah I I

mean the role that of platform architect obviously requires technical skills to be able to um understand the the

customer or the prospect’s te technical landscape to be able to map out their

processes and their integration requirements and so on um but I would

say empathy is as critical as as technical expertise um I often compare

this this job as uh one of a city planner you know because I have to explain what what I do and it’s really

difficult to people who are not in Tech so I say you know I’m like a city planner I’m I’m designing the roads that

connect the houses where people live to the office where they work to the shopping mall where they shop and you

know I have to understand how they live what is most important for them as they commute in out of those areas what their

experience is going to be Etc um and this is kind of the empathetic part uh

but I also need to account for technical constraints like you know traffic how

many people are going to be in the on the road during peak hours uh functionalities and so on and so

on uh and lastly one additional challenge as a as a pre-sales Architects

uh because you have of course you know post celles and and and system Architects is that everything you

present needs to emphasize the additional value and the benefits that are driven by the solution um so you

need a degree of of sales of salesmanship or sales sales peoplehip uh

on top of your technical Knowledge and Skills I I love I love how you put that as a city planner um I I drop my kids

off every day at school and one of the things I’ve noticed is that there is a path that is a 90 degree sort of angle

of like everybody walks here and then over here but realistically what happens is there’s a dirt path now that kind of

Curves and it’s like you can have the greatest plan but if the customer doesn’t want to use it then you know

it’s not super effective so I love your city planner analogy um okay so there’s there is a a

lot going on right now out in the world of customer service uh you know with

respect to AI you’ve probably seen the the products change you’ve probably are

starting to see the customer service industry change how do you see where zenis is now and where do you see you

know and what do you think is is coming next what are you excited about what do you I mean obviously you can’t share things that you can’t share but you know

what are you excited about where do you think things are going um well I would say you know to

to just to talk about what you know where things are going I want to talk about where we come from so you know

when I joined back in 2015 um again we were really about you know providing this beautifully simple

experience and encouraging people to selfs serve through knowledge base and

Community forums and just connecting them with with support agents quickly um

but are the the customer service channels were very limited you know it

was phone email life chat was on the rise in some Industries like retail um

but but that was it uh and then something happened and it became all

about Omni Channel about meeting the customer wherever they were um and you

know customers were were dictating The Rules of Engagement and companies had to adapt um and and to create a uh a

beautiful simple experience on those channels and now most customers are on

messaging right social messaging apps know WhatsApp Facebook Messengers they’ve completely changed the way we

communicate with our friends and family we communicate our feelings through emojis and so on uh and I mean even at

work right we use slack we use teams and we put thumbs up when a coworker sends

us a message and so on so so you know so again companies had to to quickly adapt

to to the changing customer needs and to adopt

messaging it’s it’s funny to think about I I wonder you know whether it’s like my kids if they did a customer service role

or or their experience in the future you know it’s it’s not going to be like at the end of the ticket hey have we

resolved everything and how can we help you more it’s just like they just send a thumbs up like hey thank you that’s it

and then they just move on yeah probably won’t even use the thumb up anymore they would use like some weird emoji that

they they find is the equivalent of it right so yeah it’s very true that’s very true I think I’ve seen some uh stuff on

Twitter where it’s like there’s almost a glossery of what emojis are and how they fit into the current generation and I’m

like what what does that even mean that’s crazy yeah they’ve completely corrupted the the true the the initial

meaning of each emojis and made it their own yeah yeah absolutely um so and then

how about you know where are you seeing things like AI fit into this development yeah so so now you know

we’ve we’ve completely entered the the AI era um and I think it’s it’s impacted

all aspects of our work and our lives uh and particularly in customer service you

know because it has many applications um it makes company information and

knowledge much more accessible and and consumable by the customer and it also

allows for a higher service of um uh automation because AI agents they are

able to understand you know what you want and they able to respond and they’re even able to take action so uh

you know things that uh you might have had uh a human agent do in the past like

checking the status of an order or changing your your address the AI agent

can do it for you but it also empowers uh support agents to work much faster the AI gives

them insights about uh you know what your issue as a customer is and what are

the steps to solve it and um they can even you know tell

you if the customer is angry or if he’s frustrated so all of this empowers the

support agent to to Really deliver more personalized responses yeah I think I think one of

the things that um I’ve Loved about this sort of future of customer facing

conversations especially in a world of AI is that you know there’s there’s just I mean I I’ve done thousands tens of

thousands of customer support tickets myself in zendesk and there is just so much that gets in there that that

probably doesn’t need to ever be seen by a person and they it slows them down it

makes them feel depressed and sad and tired um and I think as we can say all right that stuff can be automatically

handled maybe some tickets like for example we get a lot of like hey would you like to do SEO and Link posts okay

that goes to marketing um Sal sales conversations maybe it could automatically go to sales but you know

from like you mentioned and then similarly all these sorts of conversations around like can you help me refund or cancel or unsubscribe from

an email all that stuff I think it it allows our support team to be the best

version of themselves and provide the best customer service which which I am personally excited about because I’m

honestly I’m tired of a lot of companies providing bad customer service um I I

imagine you guys probably have to educate a lot of people on like what is good and what is bad and provide benchmarks and all those kinds of things

yeah and it’s it’s often you know um a journey right so and and it’s

interesting because uh you know from a platform point of view all those opportunities you know to to make agents

more productive and to automate uh more they create challenges as well because

AI agents have to be able to talk to your systems to talk to your order management to say hey this is when your

order is going to arrive or and so on and so on so so you know it it increases

the gap between digital native companies whose their back office systems are in

the cloud and they can be very easily integrated versus older companies who have to go through a more

transformational change uh for them to get there so the opportunities are not the same for every company but it’s

again it’s a journey there there’s a couple other really interesting things I think about you know generative AI that I’d love to

you know get your perspective on um so for example I I know you kind of just mentioned it just now it’s like you you

can take a customer support agent and and make make them the best version of themselves the other side of it too is

you know one one thing that I’ve noticed is that we’re always spending a lot of time um updating documentation making it

better making it clearer so that either the bot that we use or the people on our team can send those documents and and

you know people can basically help self- serve how do you see like helping these agents helping these admins do more be

better and not have to spend so much time in the weeds um yeah so there are lots of

opportunities there too one thing that we that we’ve been doing for a while is we have been um suggesting

admins uh to either uh update or create new knowledge based articles based on um

an AI assessment of um their tickets so basically we look at all the the the

questions all the queries that they receive and we check if their knowledge base as gaps and we suggest you know uh

admins ways to um Bridge those gaps and then sorry no you go ahead

sorry no no I was gonna say and then and then and this is more this is less around generative Ai and more around uh

you know machine learning and and and um but then when they go and write those

articles we have generative AI options for them to um expand or change the tone

of the article or just you know use use all those great features to facilitate the creation of

content right that that makes a lot of sense are you seeing also um you know sort of like now that it’s easier to

create and maintain this content that admins are I guess clearer on the

problem areas within their documentation of their tickets as opposed to I get 500 tickets I’m not sure what’s going on

presumably it’s like much easier to synthesize the data now right MH absolutely and it’s also we when we

think about kind of knowledge centered support we um it’s not as much about

let’s think about everything that that the customer might ask and and create a massive knowledge base but rather

iterate uh using those tools so start small and then write more and more

articles as you see them needed by because you’re analyzing your your queries in real time so it’s really

interesting I think to be a a knowledge based content manager today I I think

that that totally makes sense uh one of the things that you know I I grew up in the east coast in New Jersey New York

area and when I moved to Silicon Valley I think this sort of Mantra of like you know big impact focus on the impact

focus on the you know 20% of the things that are going to be the most impactful most important and I think sometimes you

know when I talk with uh our customer support team they’re like we’re going to spend a quarter updating every landing

page every customer support talk page and I you know and I talk with our team and I’m like let’s look at the data

let’s see which ones are the most viewed let’s make sure those pages are amazing

and beautiful and then let’s iterate on them again because otherwise it can feel like you you’re just doing the same

thing over and over but a huge scale and you come out exhausted so I I think that’s a great point about you know

focusing on iterating um I I’d love to know you know we talked about your career in kind of

zenes and some of the products you’ve worked on and built your customers but I’d love to know a little bit more about you personally um there’s sort of two

things that I you know in reading about your your background that I was curious about um one of them was I I’ve never

been to the Mojave National Preserve can you tell me about that experience you know your your this this road trip that

was pretty epic it sounded like and you know what what did you love about it yeah I mean it was it was an incredible

trip um a very ambitious as well because we we started in Los Angeles and we were

we had a goal to go um to cross the the country to Boston and we had 12 days to

complete the trip oh my gosh that’s that’s a serious commitment yeah yeah it was it was a pretty serious commitment

we were starting a a semester in in Boston so that’s that was that gave the opportunity um so it was it was really a

great trip and um yeah as there are many stories that you know I can’t can’t say

on podcast but but the one about the moabi deserts is is interesting because we we were on our way to to Las Vegas

and we decided to take this little detour uh through the the moav National

Preserve um to see the the beautiful desert landscape right it’s it’s amazing

um and we don’t have those kind of landscapes in France I can tell you so it’s um so we we we drove there we

stopped to take pictures and and when we tried to leave the the car wouldn’t start

uh it was an old car that we bought you know uh relatively cheaply um and we

were really inexperienced drivers so we we had kept the the AC going all the way

from Los Angeles to this place so it was obviously overheated um and we were stranded there

with nothing but probably a bottle of vodka and one of those massive big gulps

that you buy at 7-Eleven that was full of soda no water whatsoever so so we panicked a little

bit but eventually the the engine chilled down and we got it started again

and uh we ended up rolling into Las Vegas at the sunset so I guess that was

that was a good experience in the end oh that’s that’s great um I I’ve I’ve actually read about quite a few

obviously the number is quite low but um particularly in Utah and in Nevada and

and some of these states nearby that have big deserts it’s very common for folks from Europe to come over and then

just go on a hike and then basically have to have like a helicopter come rescue them because they didn’t really

appreciate how hot and how much water they needed and uh anyway it like I I I

like the takeaway for your car it’s basic you know being prepared but um it’s funny when when I think about your

drive from you know Boston to La like that is I’ve done it myself a few times

and it’s like three four if you drove every day and just almost spent the entire day it could take three or four

days Alone um so yeah it’s a it’s a huge commitment okay and then the other one I wanted to ask you about is uh you know

playing I I have a I have an 11-year-old who loves playing volleyball oh yeah and so yeah I’ve never talked to a

professional you know or Collegiate volleyball player before so tell me about your your Collegiate uh volleyball experience it’s super cool yeah so I I

don’t think professional is is maybe an overstatement but I sure sorry sorry sorry but I did I I did um I did play u

uh uh from from early on all the way to UNI um and no it was it was great you

know great competitive Sports always a um uh always great thing to do and and

one thing that I I didn’t realize you know playing volleyball but um I realized later on is I’ve always been

good at at moving on you know I’m not I’m not one to dwell too long on on a

loss or mistake or failure uh in fact I have very bad memory when it comes to events um I remember technical

documentation much better uh which you know sometimes serves me right sometimes

not and it’s funny because I was watching uh Ted lasso recently I don’t

know if you’ve watched it perfect show it’s one of my favorite shows I love it yeah so one thing that resonated with me is I actually have like right here on my

wall I have very few things on my walls but I have the sign that says believe right next to me no way that’s amazing

so you know so you know his big Mantra is you know be a goldfish uh and and and the way this

applies to to my work as well is hey and actually before you before you um move on to how it applies will you just share

a little nugget on on what the Goldfish means just in case anybody hasn’t seen it or doesn’t know what it means oh yeah

of course sorry so so B goldfish basically refers to the fact that the Goldfish supposedly doesn’t have a

long-term memory so they forget you know pretty much whatever happened and I

think it’s applied here to say you know don’t don’t dwell on on on your mistakes

and just look forward and move on right yeah yeah I I I think that’s a

great way to look at it especially knowing I I think that’s that’s advice that I would tend to agree with

sometimes it’s so easy to hold on to these stupid problems or mistakes you made but if if you just let it go you

can so okay so like playing like what what is the training like how how often are you playing are you traveling a lot

you know is I don’t I can’t tell from how you’re sitting but are you a tall guy what’s your vertical I have so many

questions so I’m probably the shortest volleyball player you’ve ever seen I’m not a tall guy I’m uh I

wouldn’t be able to translate it into into feet and inches but probably like 1

170 uh meter okay but I’m a short guy and but I play pass you know like so I’m

I’m usually in the middle passing to the to the tall guys who are actually uh shooting the ball over the over the

whatever it’s called in English the net the net the Nets yeah thank you

sure oh interesting okay um and so let’s

see Chachi PT is so funny I’m like uh I ask it a question sometimes it’s like really great and then I’ll ask it a

question and it’s like other times I’m like nope that’s not even close I I asked how tall you were said

557 ft and 8.91 in so that’s uh maybe I prompted it wrong that’s probably what

happened no no I said I said it wrong it’s it’s 170 cmers oh c yeah that’s

totally it says a meter is huge right it’s yeah exactly okay um okay and then

you know I have I have two other questions for you you know one is one is a little bit about sort of the future of your your your kind of career but um

you’ve you’ve lived in some great places and how have some of these cities these cultures impacted your work style or how

you feel about work or the work that you accomplish does the environment change

you or or are you pretty consistent wherever you are and and what do you get excited about as a result of maybe where

you are um well I think I’m more well I’ve I’ve I’ve been very lucky to you know to

have the opportunity to live on uh three three continents actually North America

Europe of course and Asia also for a little bit and I mean it’s interesting

to see um the differences in in culture and how it it drives the way people work

and live and and also the tech and Innovation right so so because it’s

always about trying to solve people’s problem and they’re not the same whether you’re on one part of the world or

another so I think I’m always trying to keep that in mind uh whenever I talk to

someone and and adapt the way you know my discourse and my level of sometimes

technical um speech uh depending on the people that are in front of me and and

try to adapt to their culture as well is there other technologies that you remember seeing and being kind of

surprised so so for example like I have some friends who work for uh door Dash in San Francisco and one conversation I

was very surprised by as he told me that uh one of the most popular brands

and products that people use for door Dash is actually McDonald’s and I was I was surprised I was blown away I’m like

people are getting McDonald’s delivered to their house I you know I I sometimes

I guess I’m a little disconnected but um anyway so how how about you do you remember seeing Uber or or you know some

of these products and Technologies throughout the countries that you were living in either ahead or sort of slow

or maybe delayed yeah yeah absolutely I mean um in in 2009 I was living in qu

lour uh in Malaysia and and I was actually already seeing those those food

delivery apps you know it wasn’t D Dash but it was something um um Regional um

and seeing those delivery apps that could deliver any restaurants that you wanted and especially McDonald’s

actually I think McDonald’s had their own delivery service which was uh not available in France none of this was

available in France but I think it was very common there because there was a a takeaway culture you know people were

working a bit later uh restaurant food was being cheaper to be honest I think the the the workforce the delivery

people um salaries were probably um uh uh uh less as well so so you know so so

that made the environment um uh a good environment to have those this kind of

Technology where it would have failed in in other countries I I think another another area I’d love to hear your

perspective on is is just sort of like um you know there’s there’s a couple different people that I I read on

Twitter one of them is a developer I think his name at least his he I think his name is pet Peter levels and he

talks about he basically roams around the world lives in different countries creates new products and he highlights

how um certain countries maybe don’t have air conditioning as much as others do and so maybe those people are just

hot and unhappy um or for example I think you know we we see this frequently

that there’s I think sometimes US the US can feel and be a little bit more like a

cowboy who’s just sort of like hey let’s release and launch products very fast without and then Europe is is sort of

more measured and careful um maybe you’ve seen some of those impacts to the products you’ve worked on or built is

that fair to say yeah yeah of course I mean as you said the US is the the land of opportunities right so and that’s why

I I don’t know if you know this but zendesk is a is a Danish company um so

it was created by three uh three Danish guys but they makes sense now that I

think about it because the default template for the help center is Copenhagen I think right exactly yeah

good spots absolutely but they they actually uh a couple of years after creating the

company they they um uh they moved to the US to have it Incorporated because

that’s where you know the the market was and that that’s because because I think American people are are faster to adopt

those kind of new technologies than than us in Europe um but yeah Europe in

general and you know France and Germany in particular we’re we’re very strict about things like data privacy and

protection so that leads to to regulations that can sometimes slow

technology down right um maybe for goods I’m not I’m not the one to to judge but

I think you you mentioned you worked at Facebook so I think that’s what slowed down the the roll out of meta AI in in

Europe right yeah yeah yeah definitely um I I think even even while so I I I’ve

been you know out of Facebook for probably eight years but Facebook is always running into all right we

launched this product and then India is like H I don’t know about that or in you know Europe or specific countries um but

yeah like you said probably for good in many cases uh I think it’s it’s obviously it’s helpful to think about all the details there um okay last last

question for you and then I’ll let you go but um you know you you’ve uh you’re working at a great company you’ve been

there a while uh what what are some of the things may maybe you have some personal goals or some of the

opportunities you look at internally or even some of the um the jobs that you’d like to try within the business at zth

what are some of the things that you’re hoping to do hoping to see hoping to um experience going forward in your

career um well so I’ve been atend this for almost 10 years as you mentioned um

as as an individual contributor so I’m I’m really curious about moving to a lead or or a management position you

know I’ve had the the opportunity in the past to do some some mentoring and I really liked it and I also would like

like to be able to have a more more impact on the business and on my team to you know to influence the way we work

and influence the way we we impact the business basically totally makes sense um and uh

I I think that’s that’s a pretty common thing right like it’s in some ways one

of those maybe the grass is greener or you just don’t know how the grass feels yet and maybe like I I actually had a

lot of experiences with people at Facebook who were leaders who were like

I’m tired of this I just want to go write code or I want to go sell or I want to go work in the field um well

anyway Roma it’s been awesome talking to you thanks for taking the time to talk with me today on our Z podcast it was my

pleasure thank you very much for for having me