Everything is too hard to use, with Asurion CEO Tony Detter

Everything is too complicated. Asurion CEO Tony Detter joins Verge editor-in-chief, Nilay Patel to discuss simplifying our experience with tech products, the problems with closed eco-systems and why an insurance company like Asurion got involved with tech support. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:01Nilay Patel?

  Hey everybody, it's Eli from The Vergecast. On this week's interview episode, we actually have a kind of unusual guest. It's Tony Detter. He's the CEO of Asurion. Asurion is the company that sells insurance through your carrier. So if you break your phone, they can come and replace it. But they have a huge business that's growing alongside that, doing tech support for people. So every year, I write an article called "Everything is Too Complicated." It's just me, I go home during the holidays, I listen to my family as I drive around, you know, 15 Christmases, and I just listen to the questions people ask me. And they're always really basic. They're always about the difference between Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, or what streaming service to use, or my favorite is what the difference between Hulu and Roku is. Deeply hilarious. And so every year, I just write up these questions.

• 1:45Nilay Patel?

  I put them out in a piece called "Everything is Too Complicated." And Tony reached out to me and said, "Everything is too complicated, and we're building a whole business against it." They sell tech support to people because it's so hard to use stuff. So we brought him on the show. We talked a lot about what it means to run a tech support business when everything in your house is a computer, how they go about building that business, where the biggest problems are. That's actually a really surprising part of this conversation. I encourage you to listen to it because it is really basic stuff that people are still struggling with a lot. And we talked about what the future of ecosystem locking is because really, the entire business here is it's so hard to use an Apple product and an Android product that you can build a tech support business around it. So check it out, it's Tony Detter, he's the CEO of Asurion.

• 2:31Nilay Patel?

  Tony Detter, you're the CEO of Asurion, how are you?

• 2:34Speaker 02

  Good thanks, how are you, Linny?

• 2:35Nilay Patel?

  I'm great, you guys are in Nashville?

• 2:37Speaker 02

  Our company has our base of US operations in Nashville, yes.

• 2:40Nilay Patel?

  Always good to hear about a big sort of tech concern outside of the coast, so cool that you guys are in Nashville.

• 2:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, we love Nashville, it's been a great town for us. There's more technology there than you would think, there's also a ton of music, the intersection of those two creates quite an interesting dynamic.

• 2:54Nilay Patel?

  So Asurion, I think most people think of it as fundamentally an insurance company, is that right?

• 2:58Speaker 02

  That's a fair assessment, and I think if you were talking about our company eight or 10 years ago, that's pretty accurate.

• 3:04Nilay Patel?

  But the reason I wanted you on the show, every year I write a post, literally the headline is "Everything is Too Complicated." What happens is I go home for the holidays, basically I spend the entire holidays driving around the Midwest to parents' and families' houses, and I just listen to my family, which is big, and they always ask me questions about their phones and what they should buy, it's the holidays and I'm that guy for them. And it always strikes me that everything is so insanely complicated that no one really knows anything works. And so I write a post every year and I just list the questions I've gotten, and list the problems people are having, and it seems like our industry is racing too far ahead of the basics. So every year someone asks me what the difference is between Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, and every year I put it in the story.

• 3:48Nilay Patel?

  Every year, this is my favorite, someone asks me the difference between Hulu and Roku, which is deeply funny to me. But Asurion, you have a business not just doing phone insurance and repairs, you actually sell tech support to people. And so you and your team read the story, you reached out and said, "Hey, we actually sell tech support to people." That is wild to me. How big of a business is that?

• 4:08Speaker 02

  It's a pretty big business. We have 300 million customers worldwide who are paying us either on a one-time basis or a monthly basis for some level of support. And as you cited, the origins of it is they pay for, kind of think of it as phone insurance or protection, you lose your phone, you break it, it's damaged, we'll get you a new phone right away, sometimes as fast as in two hours. But that evolved over time, and it evolved into a technology support because I love your story, and you're right, everything is too complicated. For Asurion, what we realized was that the technology that we carry in our pockets, I would argue is the most powerful tool in the history of human existence. You can do so many things with that mobile device.

• 4:52Speaker 02

  And when we started, just getting it back in your hands was important. But as its capabilities have increased, there's now so much more that you need to do with it. How do I get the things done that I want to on a daily basis? I've got to board a plane. I've got to connect to be a Bluetooth, as you said, to my home speakers. All of those things are very, very complicated. And as we talk to people using their phones, what we found is it was a problem and they had no place to get to conclusion quickly. And so our business in that space was really just born out of talking to people the same way you do for your everything is too complicated article.

• 5:24Nilay Patel?

  The smart thing you did is you you charged them for it. I have yet to monetize the help I offer my family, but you're very smart. So in terms of your business, and I know you're a private company, but do you have a split on how many customers come to you for tech support? Like, how big of a market is it?

• 5:40Speaker 02

  It's a huge market. We have about a fifth of all Americans who are today paying for a service, which includes the ability to help them with their technology, either when they have a problem or they don't understand it. Or the other thing that's been increasingly important is we just help them maximize it because there are so many people that have this kind of nagging feeling that there's something else I should be able to do with my technology, but I don't know how to do it. And we help them solve those problems or or learn about their devices in that way.

• 6:10Nilay Patel?

  It's that service that doesn't come with we're going to fix your broken phone or replace your broken phone.

• 6:14Speaker 02

  The way that is most commonly purchased is through your wireless carrier and they'll sell you a package which includes we'll replace your phone if it's broken or lost and we'll also help you with all of these technology needs that you have regarding how to use it, how to set it up, how to troubleshoot.

• 6:30Nilay Patel?

  Do you acquire customers independently? Do they come to you directly or is it all through the carriers?

• 6:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, the overwhelming majority of our business is through either wireless carriers worldwide or through major retailers.

• 6:40Nilay Patel?

  So that's really interesting to me because there's always this question of who owns the customer relationship, right? And the fact that you're saying there is this huge market of people who want to get more out of their devices, who need a quick answer to a problem. It seems. Like Apple and I mean, these are big companies that make these devices that they should just provide that from the go. And that's how they would build this customer relationship they want. But you're saying, actually, we come through the retailer, we come through the carrier, and we're the ones providing the actual help. Do you see them leaving the opportunity for you that they're not doing enough for customers? Or is this on top of that?

• 7:15Speaker 02

  It's actually in concert with them. You're absolutely right in that there's this huge need, and it's all about being able to help the customer and who's that source. And you can break it down a couple of different ways. Google and Apple are big companies. They produce a lot of technology that goes out in the world. The challenge is, in my household, and it may be true in your household, everyone isn't on iOS or Android. We're not a homogeneous society. And when you go to those larger technology companies for help, they know their operating system really well, but they may not know the interplay between their physical devices and an operating system somewhere else. And that's why the wireless carriers become the source for the overwhelming majority of customers. I'll

• 7:58Speaker 02

  tell you a quick story that's funny. When we first got into this business, and what we did was replace your phone, people would call us and say, yeah, I need you to replace my phone. And we say, great, what kind of phone do you have? And they'd say, I have a Verizon phone. We said, well, no, no, we need to know the manufacturer. And they said, well, no, it's a Verizon phone. And this would go three or four times. And finally, we'd say, no, no, someone else manufactured it. And they said, no, it says Verizon right here on it. That's who manufactured it. So consumers naturally think of their wireless carrier as the source of my connectivity to the world. And so our products are sold through them, under their names, under their brands. And we're helping those people that we call our partners, these wireless carriers, help the customer experience of the customers that they have.

• 8:37Nilay Patel?

  So when the carriers come to you, right, is it, is the first conversation about, you know, hey, we have to offer some insurance program. And I know that's just a huge part of your business. But is it, is it mostly about that when the carriers come to you? Or is it about? Hey, we have a lot of customers that have no, they're going to buy a Galaxy S10. It has 10,000 features. It has a duplicate set of Samsung apps on it, on top of the Google apps. They're not going to know how to use it. Can you help us do the education? What does that conversation look like?

• 9:05Speaker 02

  We were the insurance provider, so we were there to help when the phone was damaged. And what we did was listen to these carrier partners. And in meeting after meeting, what we heard them say as the smartphone started to come on to the scene was, you're doing a great job. You're helping us. We really appreciate it. We, you know, we've got a ton of problems in our call center operations because customers are calling us and they're trying to connect our phones to a home stereo system, or they're trying to use it as a remote control for their TV. And it's outstripping our ability to know everything that exists in the world and how these phones connect to all this other technology. To your point, it's really complicated and it's more complicated than we can handle. So we kept hearing this over and over in a variety of forms and fashions

• 9:47Speaker 02

  from our partners in the wireless carriers and from the customers that we were already serving. And so we organically built this capability and said, wait, there's got to be a place here because this technology is so complicated. And that's how it came about. They didn't come and say, solve this for us. They just articulated the problems that they were experiencing and we built the capability from there.

• 10:07Nilay Patel?

  Okay, this is more of a philosophical question. Why do you think it's so complicated? This is what, what kills me about it is so many of the big companies, we talk about ecosystem lock-in on the Vergecast every week, all the time. We know people don't like it, but every company architects their ecosystem to lock you in and to say, well, if you buy this phone and this watch and this speaker and use this cloud service and we own it all, everything will work seamlessly. But the second you step out of it, you create all this friction. Do you feel as though that is by design? Or is that just an accident of the industry? Is a company like yours cannot exist and sell tech support unless there's a need for it, right? And it sounds like that business is growing. Why aren't these companies seeing the market signal of that need?

• 10:48Speaker 02

  Neel, you just hit on a topic that could be a five-part podcast for you. You've nailed exactly what the problem that the average American consumer faces. And I don't think there's a single answer. There's a whole bunch of different factors that go into making this happen. One is we're in a society, particularly for technology, where there's a reward for prototype, iterate, get something to market to see if there's a product market fit. When you do that, you're not worried about how that product, that technology product, might interact with the myriad of operating systems that it could come in contact with. In your "Everything is Too Complicated" article, one of the things you always talk about is Bluetooth.

• 11:29Speaker 02

  How many times have you, as a customer, or I have, you connect something via Bluetooth, and it works, and then you come back a week later and it doesn't work? But you've done all the same things. The reason behind it is so complex, from companies wanting to get products to market fast, to there are so many different operating systems, to the point you raised in the question, which is, "I want to make sure the customer's loyal to me, so I want to have some sort of control over the environment in which this technology device operates." All of these are factors, and it just compounds. But you're right, it's a growing space, because things are getting more and more complicated. The technology can do so much more, but as it does more, that means there's more interactions, and each of those interactions is a complexity point.

• 12:13Nilay Patel?

  Do you see the sort of rise of security concerns, some of that misinformation concerns? I've gotten to the point where I literally tell my parents to just not install apps. Right? Like, just don't do it. Like, I can't, I'm not going to be there for you when something goes haywire. I'm always afraid that it'll be some, you know, bad malicious app, that something horrible will happen. Do you see that? Have you built your kind of tech support business against that?

• 12:39Speaker 02

  Absolutely. And I think you're spot on, which is, from the true security concerns, and there are many, whether it's someone nefariously getting access to your information via an app, to apps that are trying to infiltrate your information, to honest errors, to the misinformation that you spoke of, which is, "Hey, this app or this operating system is actually secure, and it's safe, but there's a bunch of misinformation, and people don't understand." Like, the difference between Hulu and Roku, people don't get that. Imagine the complexity of, well, is Facebook, do they have, what of my information does Facebook have? I don't know.

• 13:17Nilay Patel?

  Do you see like a place for your business to go into that space as well? I mean, going from we can replace your phone to we can help you get the most out of your smart TV to we can expand your capability set by giving you some new ideas to we're going to protect the quality of information receiving. That's quite a spectrum.

• 13:36Speaker 02

  It is quite a spectrum. We are already in that space, which is through the support tools that we that Asurion provides today. You can, we do provide you with the ability to understand some of the security basics of your phone. We help you with, if you want to create a VPN connection on from your mobile device as an example, we can help you set that up. If you want to know, hey, what are the top three parental controls apps that I might put on my phone to really make sure my kids are safe? We have, Asurion has a lab of hundreds of engineers that are testing all of these products and making sure that they work, figuring out which ones are best. So when our customers reach out to us, we can provide them with assistance and guidance on where to go.

• 14:18Nilay Patel?

  If you're recommending products, and we recommend products too, and we, we face this sort of incoming pressure, but you know, we have this like ethical journalism firewall where we just don't take it. But you run a business. Do people come and say, hey, we'll give you money to recommend our products?

• 14:32Speaker 02

  So far, we haven't faced a lot of that. And the reason I think is because of that partnership we have with the wireless carriers. The wireless carriers want to be agnostic because they need all of the providers to be working on their network. And so they are, as our partners, those wireless carriers have not come and said, hey, you need to recommend this security application or for parental controls, do that. Now, that being said, they do at times say, hey, we'd like you to explain to customers really clearly our app. So think about Verizon as an example. They have a My Verizon app, which is a fantastic app. It does a bunch of stuff. They want us to make sure that as we're helping customers set up their phones, that Asurion is teaching that customer about My Verizon and how it

• 15:16Speaker 02

  works. But beyond that, into the more commercial world and some of the things that you look at, so far, we haven't had a lot of pressures in that area.

• 15:23Nilay Patel?

  As a Verizon customer, I've had, I've had my run ins with that app, but I appreciate where you're coming from.

• 15:30Speaker 02

  Well, stay tuned because I think they're going to make some improvements which might surprise you and delight you a little bit.

• 15:36Nilay Patel?

  Oh, I'm always breaking some news on the Vergecast. This is great.

• 15:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:39Nilay Patel?

  So it strikes me, and I think this is another just kind of philosophical question. It strikes me that apart from the warranty repair stuff, which makes sense, right? Insurance is sort of a known quantity. The tech support side of your business, just as you've been describing it and where it's come from and why it's grown, it just feels like more of an indictment of the consumer tech industry than I, even I, expected to be coming into this conversation, that they are not actually responding to the market demand, that they are not actually serving their customers. Do you see it that way, that harshly? Or do you see it as this is a market that exists, we're just there to serve it?

• 16:15Speaker 02

  A little bit more of the latter. I think you can make an argument on either one, but from our perspective, we look at it and think the producers of technology devices or applications are really pushing the bounds of what's possible, and they're doing that really, really fast, which benefits all of us. We can, you can hail a ride, you can board your plane, you can look in on your kids, you can do a number of things with your mobile device. And those companies that are pushing in that direction are really advancing the human experience by doing that. There is this side effect, which is it's complicated, it's hard to fit together, and where can I get support? We view that as an opportunity for us in partnership with our wireless carriers, but

• 16:56Speaker 02

  as a shurian, we can fill that void and we have great people who are really skilled and it's a different type of person than you typically see in a tech support environment because of the way we have built the business and the company, so that you're really getting delightfully simple help.

• 17:14Nilay Patel?

  What are some of the most common questions people ask you when they, when they come to you for support?

• 17:18Speaker 02

  There's really a few key buckets. One is, how do I set up my new device? I've got an old device that's exactly the way I want it to be. My new device is a blank canvas. How do I get that new device to be just like my old one as fast as I can? That's kind of number one.

• 17:33Nilay Patel?

  That's incredible. Just right there, that is incredible because every time we are shown a new device, we're often told how great the setup experience is.

• 17:41Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 17:41Nilay Patel?

  It's a part of every product briefing that I've ever been in. Like, this is a setup workflow, we're so excited about it, it's so simple, you know, pull it out of the box, the wizard's going to do its wizard thing and it's going to be perfect. And you're saying that is not the case.

• 17:53Speaker 02

  That's not the case. There have been great advances and it is much easier than it used to be. But just as your premise of coming in here is true, it's complicated. If I don't have everything backed up properly on my old device, that wizard that's going to move everything to the new device won't work properly. There's other aspects, which is if I'm moving from one operating system to another, there's a bunch of hiccups and glitches in doing that. Another example would be, how do I set up my phone, get everything transferred over, and then get all of my passwords and usernames into the new device? So that the first time I go to use my Lyft app, I don't have to re-enter my name and my credit card. Those are all complicating factors of that new device process that we help you with.

• 18:34Speaker 02

  And we have protocols and processes and checklists to make sure we get everything done.

• 18:40Nilay Patel?

  This is blowing my mind. Okay, so it's bucket one. You said there are a few buckets. What's another bucket?

• 18:44Speaker 02

  The second bucket would be things about, hey, I can't connect to my Wi-Fi, my Bluetooth, a whole spectrum of connectivity issues. And these manifest themselves in simple things like I get to my home and I can't get on my home Wi-Fi anymore. But they become more complicated things such as, I'm trying to stream this video that I want to watch, and it's buffering and I'm not getting it. What's wrong with my service provider? And the reality is, there's nothing wrong with your service provider. Your phone's just not properly connected to a network to get it. So that whole connectivity category is the second bucket. A third bucket would be battery life. My battery doesn't last as long as it used to. I don't know why. I don't think I'm running a bunch of apps. I don't think I'm draining the battery, but it just doesn't seem to be holding up.

• 19:29Speaker 02

  And a side note to that, one of the things that we found is, very rarely does the battery physically degrade. Oftentimes, it's a process that's running in the background.

• 19:37Nilay Patel?

  Really?

• 19:38Speaker 02

  Or an app that's really gobbling up your battery. Yeah. Most of the time, we can fix those problems without any sort of physical change to the device.

• 19:45Nilay Patel?

  Does that happen mostly on iOS or Android?

• 19:47Speaker 02

  It happens on both, surprisingly.

• 19:49Nilay Patel?

  These are so basic. And I'm probably just repeating myself, but...

• 19:54Nilay Patel?

  My phone isn't properly connected to a network. Just given the amount of, you know, we constantly are told that these phones have massive AI capabilities. It seems like they should just be able to figure that out for you. And yet you're saying that this is one of the most common problems you're getting asked.

• 20:09Speaker 02

  Absolutely. It's the most common one, and I agree with you that it seems rather straightforward. Hey, this is a device whose sole purpose or whose complex purpose can only be fulfilled by connecting to other things. That's the root of what we need to be doing, but it is what people run into problems with all the time. But I'm sure many of your listeners have experienced this exact scenario where I've connected to something, be that a home network, a work network, a public access Wi-Fi, some Bluetooth device. And when I go back to it the next time, it just doesn't work. Why not? What happened?

• 20:43Nilay Patel?

  And you're saying you've developed an entire protocol for your techs to walk people through it?

• 20:49Speaker 02

  Correct. Yeah, we have, we have 100 engineers that sit in a lab in Nashville, and they test the interplay of all different physical devices, whether they're connected home devices, networks from all of your service providers and the mobile device. And we figure out what those problems are and where the glitches tend to occur. So I'll give you a really specific example to bring this to life. Couple of years ago, each year, Apple unveils a new operating system, a new version of iOS. And a couple of years ago, one of the things that happened when you upgraded from iOS 6 to 7, I believe it was, was if you had a Bluetooth connection to a Toyota manufactured vehicle, and you did the operating system upgrade, the Bluetooth connection dropped.

• 21:33Speaker 02

  Well, that's a pretty simple thing, but if you don't know why that happened, it can be complicated and time consuming. We're able to get those things in advance, test it, and then alert all of our customers. Hey, if you're doing the 6 to 7 upgrade and you've got a Toyota vehicle, just make sure you reconnect to Bluetooth. And if you don't know how, we can help you do that as well.

• 21:50Nilay Patel?

  That's incredible. How early do you get things?

• 21:52Speaker 02

  For major operating system upgrades, like I talked about, we have a developer role. So we get them typically about a month before they become public. We've got the latest version of iOS right now. We're running around playing with it, testing it with all those sort of connected home devices that we have in our laboratories to make sure it works, to look for any glitches, and really to fulfill the promise that we make to our customers, which is we're going to be actually helpful. We're going to help you with what you need to know so you can get it done, and it doesn't become time consuming.

• 22:21Nilay Patel?

  It sounds like what you are doing is Politely answering the questions that frustrate me when I go home. So how do you develop the scripts? You know, when someone calls you and they have a problem, how do you? Do you have a process by which you you like go through the troubleshooting steps and get to the answer? Is that scripted? Is it just smart people on the phone? Ready to make it up as they go like? How does that work?

• 22:44Speaker 02

  Both. We do develop a set of protocols and processes for troubleshooting. Should it be somebody who calls with a particular problem? So that we're doing it in a methodical way that we've proven over time is the most efficient use of the customer's time. But then we're also combining that with human intelligence. And the people that you talk to at a shurri and it's not going to be like talking to a recording of. Okay, Neelai, you need to press one and then two and do a reset. We're going to have a conversation with you that's that's human in nature. So that we're walking you through how to do this in a way that is understandable. The other aspect of this that we run into all the time is technology can seem complicated and a little intimidating to a lot of folks.

• 23:29Speaker 02

  You talked about your family and some of those people that ask you these questions. They may have a question, but not be willing to ask it because they think I'm going to look dumb by asking it. And part of what we train our shurri and technicians to do is to make technology approachable for everyone, regardless of their technology sophistication.

• 23:46Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Do you think that sort of influx of smart home devices, smart speakers? Is that helping or hurting this conversation?

• 23:56Speaker 02

  It depends on your perspective. From our perspective, it helps because it creates more complication. And so we have the ability to add more value to customers.

• 24:04Nilay Patel?

  That's great. That's one of the most honest answers any CEO has ever given me on this show. I love it. Another just small example from my perspective. You know, we have a smart TV. I rarely got my wife to use our Google Home for anything except timers. But now she will turn off the TV using the Google Home, right? Like it is just a little bit simpler and we do it. She will ask for music and light up the stereo system. Does that balance out the sort of complexity of? Okay, now I have three different wireless protocols in my house. I might need a smart things hub. This light bulb needs a firmware update. Do you see that is the value is balancing out the complexity?

• 24:42Speaker 02

  In the long run, the value will balance out because you're able to do so much more. But you hit on a topic that's really important to us and it's a big category of what Asurion deals with, which is, okay, you have a Google Home. I have one as well. Each week, each month, Google is adding new capabilities to that, new things that you can do through a voice command. As the average user, how do I keep up with that?

• 25:07Nilay Patel?

  Well, you read The Verge. I just want to throw out one little plug for me in there.

• 25:11Speaker 02

  Exactly. I tune into The Verge Cast and Eli walks me through it and you do a great job of this. You're absolutely right. I think it's wonderful what you're doing in terms of educating people about technology because it's advancing so rapidly and being able to stay up to date on what's out there and what's available and what can I do with the tools that I already have. That's another layer of the complexity and the complicated nature of this whole technology infrastructure.

• 25:39Nilay Patel?

  So, are you getting, do you see the call volume for smart speaker help increasing?

• 25:45Speaker 02

  Yes, absolutely.

• 25:47Nilay Patel?

  And what are the most common questions there?

• 25:48Speaker 02

  I could turn on my lights yesterday and today they're not turning on. Or I've got some smart light bulbs and I can turn them on, but they're supposed to turn red or blue or purple and I can't get that to work. We get lots of questions about, I have a Spotify account and it's supposed to play through my Google Home, but when I ask Google to play a song, I just get a generic song, not the song that I want for my Spotify. Those are the nature of the questions, the basic usability of the product that people know they can accomplish, but sometimes don't quite know how to fulfill.

• 26:23Nilay Patel?

  And the Google Home in particular has the worst error message of all time, which is, please try again when you're ready, which implies that you, the user-

• 26:32Speaker 02

  There's something that you didn't do. Yeah, exactly.

• 26:34Nilay Patel?

  And it's like, I've been ready the whole time. I'm still ready. Do you see that? When you talk about the frustration and so many embarrassment that people feel, do you see that sort of error message UI getting better, affecting that over time?

• 26:46Speaker 02

  Yes, I think all the companies that are particularly with the voice assistants, where it's seemingly an interaction between the user and the technology. I see them making great strides and advances and attempting to make it better. But it's difficult. You think about, this is, you talked about AI earlier in our conversation here. If you think about one of the big challenges of AI is our brains are phenomenal pieces of equipment in that we can anticipate, we can read context into a dialogue. Building that into technology is really, really complicated.

• 27:20Nilay Patel?

  Every time we talk to Apple and Google, they tell us the AI is going to do more for you on the phone. And yet, it seems like the basics of, is this thing connected and how do I fix it? Doesn't appear to be where they're pointing their effort. Do you get more complaints about specific brands? Do you get more iOS complaints than Android complaints? Samsung complaints versus Pixel complaints?

• 27:40Speaker 02

  We don't really. Our, the volume of our customer interactions and where Asurion does most of our work is really reflective of the distribution of the partners we work with. So at Verizon, we get, you know, we get calls and inquiries from customers in the iOS, Android mix that largely Verizon sees. Same thing at AT&T, same thing at Sprint. If you go overseas, we see a different mix in Japan because the manufacturers and the operating systems that they use there are just different. But it's relatively proportional. There's no worst offender or really bad actor in the market that we see from our experience.

• 28:16Nilay Patel?

  We're going to take a quick break for an ad. We'll be right back.

• 28:23Speaker 03

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• 29:24Nilay Patel?

  Okay, we're back with Tony Deder as the CEO of Assurian.

• 29:28Nilay Patel?

  So I want to ask you about the other side of your business, which is the insurance repair business. The debate about whether to buy an insurance program is very heated, right? Some people say this is just a waste of money. Where do you, how do you make the sell? How do you convince people it's going to be worth it over the time of the device? Just, look, you're going to, you're definitely going to break it, you're definitely going to drop it in the toilet, or is it something more than that?

• 29:51Speaker 02

  It's more than that, although that is a key component, which is you undoubtedly, if you haven't lost or broken your phone, you have firsthand experience with someone who has, and it's been catastrophic and it's difficult. Devices are getting more and more expensive, and with the way the rate plans work in most of the developed countries, if you break that phone, or if you lose it and you go back to the carrier, you're going to have to pay the full retail price. So there is an economic component to it. But the other component is, if my phone breaks, let's use an example today, and we've talked a little bit about Verizon, so I'll stick there. If you're a customer of Verizon and you break your phone right now, in two hours, we can be at your home with a replacement

• 30:35Speaker 02

  device, ready to set it up for you to get it back up and running, so that within a three-hour total window, it's as if nothing ever happened. That's a huge convenience for a lot of people, and that adds into that equation of, is it worth it or not? Is it worth it for me to have my phone back and running in a short number of single-digit hours, just like it was before this accident occurred?

• 30:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. So when you think about, you know, there's a big right-to-repair movement out in this world. People are saying, we should be able to repair our own phones. You know, I talked to the companies, they say, look, this is also a safety issue. We don't want people to, like, damage our own batteries. It's going to make your life easier. The phones are easier to repair, right? Do you handle the refurbishing as well?

• 31:18Speaker 02

  We do repair, yes. And you're correct. When they're easier to repair, that makes the whole system work better, I believe.

• 31:25Nilay Patel?

  So you're in favor of right to repair legislation?

• 31:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, we're in favor of the ability for customers to be able to choose how they want to get things repaired. If you want to do it yourself, that should be a possibility. I think you and I are probably folks that have taken apart a few electronic devices in our life and figured out how to rebuild them. And some of them you can, and some of them, like you mentioned, replacing a battery is a little bit of a tricky endeavor, because if you puncture that battery in some way, you can create a real risk. So there are concerns on both sides that are valid.

• 31:58Nilay Patel?

  So when you look out at the industry and you see devices getting a little bit more self-contained or simpler on the client end and more complicated in the cloud, do you think that's going to help the overall set of complication right of the user to control their home sense of security instability? Or do you think that we're going in the wrong direction?

• 32:20Speaker 02

  That's another $64,000 question there. I think there are components of both. There are aspects of the work that that technology manufacturers are doing that's going to make life easier, make them easier to interact with. I mean, take a simple example. Text messaging now versus when phones were 12 buttons and if you wanted an N, you had to push the five button three times. That's more complicated. It's gotten easier. At the same time, as those devices do more, that creates incremental complexity and difficulty because it's got to interface with a different network. It's got different protocols. It's both. I think over time, yes, technology is going to advance to make aspects of our life simpler.

• 33:05Speaker 02

  But we're also going to continue to have these struggles where things like just basic connectivity is going to frustrate us.

• 33:12Nilay Patel?

  The thing that it's always hardest to connect to is Bluetooth. And when I go and talk to the Bluetooth special interest group or whatever, it's always, well, it'll be better with Bluetooth 25, right? Like, are you trying to stay ahead of that curve? Do you think that is getting better over time? Or is it? Is it just the same stasis as ever?

• 33:29Speaker 02

  You do a great job of working with those people and talking to them and trying to understand. From our aspect, we focus more on just the reality of what exists today. Because if it's going to be better with Bluetooth 25, that's fantastic. But the people that we're dealing with today and that we have to deliver on our promise to, they don't have Bluetooth 25. They have the current version and we've got to figure out how to help it work for them. So we're investing all of our energy in that, just testing it. The existing devices with the existing Bluetooth connected capabilities and figuring out how best to solve that when something goes wrong.

• 34:04Nilay Patel?

  Are you seeing a world in which people are just sort of falling into ecosystem lock-in because it is slightly simpler? Or are you still seeing consumers want to buy whatever they want to buy and you're going to be there to help them connect at all?

• 34:16Speaker 02

  We're going to be there to help them connect at all, but I do think your former point is pretty accurate, which is, over time, I think individuals are falling into the category of being one operating system focused. They learn those interfaces. The manufacturers are doing a lot to make it easier to share your content across their various devices and it's more difficult when you exit the operating system ecosystem. We do see people that are, hey, I'm just an Apple person or I'm just an Android person.

• 34:46Nilay Patel?

  And that's great for you because when they want to leave, you're there. I mean, I keep coming back to this point, which is it sounds like you are running a great business. It sounds like you're very thoughtful about that business. It sounds like it's growing. But there's a piece of it that just seems like an indictment of these companies, that they've created a market for a business like yours and they've done it because they're selfish and they're not actually looking at their customers.

• 35:09Speaker 02

  I think the manufacturers are spending a ton of time looking at their customers and trying to solve those, the needs of the customers. They're doing it through technological advances and the capabilities in the devices. That naturally creates some byproducts that are difficulties and we're here to help. On your point about people going to one operating system or another, yes, you're right. We do see more of that. But my household is a great example. My wife and daughters are loyal Apple users. I happen to be an Android fan. I love the operating system. I love the way it works. I like Google's products. So even though one user might have all of their pictures in an iOS environment,

• 35:51Speaker 02

  if you want to share them across environments, there's still a need to be able to interact between the two.

• 35:56Nilay Patel?

  There's a lot of talk in the history about phone sales flattening out, about the upgrade cycle kind of getting longer as people are happier with their phones. Is that reflected in the kinds of conversations you're having with people? Is it... The thing I ask, I get asked most often is, when I get a new phone, what can I do? Right? Like, what's the new thing that I need a new phone for? It seems like you're kind of on the flip side of that conversation, which is, how do I get more out of the phone than I have, or more out of the phone than I just bought? But do you see those cycles extending the same way that sort of analysts tell us that they're extending?

• 36:27Speaker 02

  We absolutely see those cycles extending, and people are holding on to their phones for longer periods of time. And we are faced with the types of issues and questions that come up because now my phone's been around longer. So, we talked earlier about battery life as an example. Well, that's not an issue if I'm swapping my phone out every year. But when I hold that phone for two or maybe three years, the life of the battery is really important. But I would caution that I, from my perspective, we'll see how this plays out. But I think that over time, we're gonna, those cycles are gonna shorten again because we're gonna move into a 5G world. And while I can't tell you what the killer app or the killer use on 5G is, it's going to be faster, and people are gonna want their phones to function faster. And so you're gonna see a shortening of those cycles, I think, in the near term.

• 37:13Nilay Patel?

  The only killer app anybody has articulated for me with 5G is, it'll be faster, and people like faster. So, I see it. We'll see. Right now, it's faster on like, one street corner in Chicago. But, you know, the phones are out. I'm eager to, I'm eager to see that roll out. Where do you see the future of these user interfaces going? If there is such a, if there exists a market for a service like yours, and again, it seems like you're, it's, you know, it's a great company, and it's growing. So if there's that much of a market, do you see, like, massive competition and disruption inside of that market? If, do you see competition that's growing, that's offering a different service in a different way? Like, what is the future of helping people get these devices to work better together?

• 37:56Speaker 02

  You're right, it is a growing space. I think there's going to be an increasing demand over time. We see lots of competition in this space. And I would tell you that solving the riddle of technological complexity is a difficult one, because you have to understand the devices, the operating systems, and how they work. But you also have to pair that with the availability of people that can have a conversation with you as a user at your level of technology understanding. So it's not a factory-based, "I'm just going to crank out answers." You have to build remarkably human people that can interact with a customer and help them with their problems. So, yes, competition will increase, but the requirements, and what we hope to do is to set the standard

• 38:39Speaker 02

  for the industry, that is, this is hard, and you can do it in a really elegant way, which makes it easier for you as a customer.

• 38:46Nilay Patel?

  Do people come to you and ask questions about the limits of lock-in? So I'm just looking at my list of "Everything is Too Complicated" questions, and it says, "Why can't I rent a movie from YouTube and Apple TV?", which is a real question that I got. Do people come to you with those questions, and you just have to explain, like, "You can't"?

• 39:02Speaker 02

  Yes, they come to Asurion with those questions, and we have to just say, "You can't." Or, we don't just end with, "You can't." We say, "Hey, if you want to do that, you need to move to this platform." Or, "The platform that you're on does have that movie, and you can access it this way." It's a very common set of questions, where they're asking, "Can I do X on the following platform?", and it just doesn't work. And so we try to guide them to end up be able to get to what they want.

• 39:31Nilay Patel?

  This is how you end up with a Roku and an Apple TV and a Chromecast on your TV.

• 39:35Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 39:36Nilay Patel?

  That is the mess, right?

• 39:39Speaker 02

  And then you put all three of them in your house, and the signals that they're all sending are interfering with one another. So then, when you try to stream video from your mobile phone to your smart TV, and it buffers, that's part of the reason why.

• 39:49Nilay Patel?

  I mean, and then the next question I always get is, "What remote can control all of these things?", and that is...

• 39:54Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 39:55Nilay Patel?

  That is a deep, dark rabbit hole. Do you guys work on that stuff as well, in the smart home integration aspect of it, or are you kind of focused on general consumer devices?

• 40:04Speaker 02

  No, we do a lot of work around smart home integration, and we do test most of the hardware and the remote controls, so that if you have one of those, we can help walk you through how to get it to work in the way that you want.

• 40:16Nilay Patel?

  I know you're a private company, but I'm going to ask, can you disclose the split of revenue between sort of the insurance side of business and the tech support business?

• 40:22Speaker 02

  We can't because the product itself isn't really broken out that way. Our partners sell it as one package, so it's kind of one revenue stream.

• 40:30Nilay Patel?

  Okay, and it's the same package for every carrier that you work with?

• 40:33Speaker 02

  Not exactly the same. Each carrier names it, brands it, and then puts together the features in their own way. You would look at them and largely say, hey, they're relatively similar, but there are nuanced differences from one carrier to the next.

• 40:45Nilay Patel?

  Tony, thank you so much for coming on the show. It was really great.

• 40:47Speaker 02

  Thanks, Eli. I appreciate you having me. I also appreciate you being a champion for technology and it being simple and approachable.

• 40:54Nilay Patel?

  We're doing our best. I don't know if we're getting it right, but we're all doing our best. So I appreciate it as well. Well, thanks to Tony Dieter, CEO of Asurion. That was a great conversation. Everything is too hard. Everything is just a little bit too hard. It's fine. Just admit it to yourself. We mentioned Why'd You Push That Button? You should listen to Why'd You Push That Button? They're wrapping up their season. They got a new episode this week about sliding into the DMs. I have no idea what that means because I'm old, but I assure you it's a wild episode. You'll learn something. Go learn something. Listen to Why'd You Push That Button? It comes out on Wednesday. Subscribe to the Verchats for free on your favorite podcast app if you haven't already. Rate and review us on Apple Podcasts because that's what the producers tell me I have to say. But Apple Podcasts, go do it there. Hit me up on Twitter. I'm at Reckless. Let me know who you want to hear from. Literally this article about everything being too complicated. They just saw it and reached out. It was great. So hit me up. Let me know who you want me

• 41:39Nilay Patel?

  to talk to. Eager to take your feedback. And lastly, we're back on Friday with Dieter and Paul to talk about the week in tech. We'll see you then.

• 41:51Speaker 04

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