Today’s interview is with Thomas Laird, founder and CEO of both the Expivia Interaction Marketing Group, a USA BPO omnichannel contact center, and OttoQA, a next-generation solution for automating contact center quality assurance scoring. Thomas is also an author and joins me today to talk about his new book: false hustle: Transforming Customer Experience from Illusion to Impact, what ‘false hustle’ is, how to spot it, the paradox of efficiency and personalization and, if you identify that you have a culture of false hustle, what you should be doing to transform your brand into one that truly values human conversation, insight and connection. This interview follows on from my recent interview – The five promises of personalization – Interview with Mark Abraham and David Edelman – and is number 520 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.