S2E2: How to Build Proactive Support Teams with AI

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Chris, how nice to see you.

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How are you, Peter?

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>> I'm great, Judy. How are you doing?

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>> I'm doing great, Chris.

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Thank you for joining 15 minutes with Judy.

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I've been looking forward to having you as a guest.

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>> Yeah, it's been so great getting to know your organization and getting to

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know,

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you know, Lynn and everybody.

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It's been such a pleasure really impressed with what we've seen so far and

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excited to

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spend a few minutes with you.

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>> That's awesome.

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Yeah, you've become known as Chris at support logic.

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You're almost little friends or Madonna.

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You have one name and when people say Chris,

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everybody knows who we're talking about.

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You have been truly a wonderful customer making us better every day with your

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feedback and input.

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But your enthusiasm has been infectious.

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I really appreciate that about you.

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>> I think that goes both ways.

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We've been super excited about support logic and we really see you as

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helping us transform our customer experience.

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I'm a CX guy and just the way we've been able to use support logic is really

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helping us transform

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how our customers engage with us and the ability to anticipate and provide more

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details

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as customers find hardship in their customer experience.

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>> That's awesome.

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So I always start with an icebreaker and let's see.

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I'm going to go with this one because it's an easy one.

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We're approaching Labor Day.

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Tell me the best thing that's happened to you this summer.

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>> I'll try not to take too long but my family's taken the same summer vacation

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for 49 years.

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>> Wow.

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>> We go up to this lake.

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It's up near Canada by the Washington, Canada border up near Spokane.

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And we basically book out 80% of the cabins and we just have this lake trip.

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There's like six or seven boats and we're just on the lake and we're at a cell

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phone coverage.

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So there's no distractions and you just kind of unplug and chill with the

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family.

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So I come from a big family and I got lots of kids.

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And so we just kind of spend time and water ski and swim and do stuff.

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So that's always my summer highlights.

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We tease my kids that they get a choice of going to Disneyland or going to Twin

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Lakes.

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And 49 years running, they pick from lakes.

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>> That's awesome.

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That sounds wonderful.

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Safe travels and I hope you have a beautiful weekend.

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So Chris, let's jump in.

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Tell me about you and your background.

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We try to focus not only on the support industry but the people that are in the

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industry.

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And their time in the chair and what they've done in the industry.

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Would you be willing to share about your background, your experience and

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support?

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>> You bet.

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So for about 20 years, I ran kind of BPO contact center.

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So I started out kind of in IT running dialers doing like political surveys and

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gradually into financial services.

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So I spent about 20 years in the kind of mid-sized BPO space.

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Nine years ago, I transitioned from running contact centers into supporting

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contact centers

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when I joined Nice and their acquisition of in contact.

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So I joined Nice as a technical account manager at TAM.

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Kind of is that kind of account management role and then progressed into

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leadership roles.

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And then I demonstrated some technical skills and some leadership skills and

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some communication skills.

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And that kind of led me to my current role, which is the director of continuous

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improvement,

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which means I'm a fixer within Nice.

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And so I get to do kind of an ITSM role, kind of helping our customer facing

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teams

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understanding our technology, how it works, how to talk about it, and support

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our customers in their conversations.

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So I create content, have a training team and a small operations team.

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>> That's awesome.

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So you're constantly looking for areas of improvement and finding what might be

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challenges in the customer experience,

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or even the employee experience I imagine.

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>> Yeah, so I look closely at MPS data and kind of get involved in strategic

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projects.

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And thankfully, I don't own every project because then I would become a

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bottleneck.

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But my boss Paul kind of authorizes me to jump in the big problems.

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And I get to make things better.

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>> I love that.

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So you've chosen, or you were chosen by support to live and

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breathe in this area.

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I think a lot of people in our industry think support is a place.

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Come in, get your feet wet, right, and move to another line of business.

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I love talking to people who've chosen support as a career.

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What's been the most rewarding part of that for you?

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I would say the people growing up with in call center industry,

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you get to know and love the people that you serve.

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And when you're a good leader, being able to kind of work with them and

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grow them and grow yourself is really, I think, part of having a successful

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career in this industry.

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>> Well.

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>> Is how do you improve yourself and then how do you help those around you get

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better?

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So for me, that's always been the most fulfilling part.

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>> That's great.

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Thank you.

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So you mentioned it early and for people who follow along, we try not to make

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this a support logic commercial.

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But you did mention support logic and your time with our product.

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You have been, as I mentioned, one of the most enthusiastic customers to the

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point.

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Everybody knows Chris, if you say Chris, it's a given.

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It's you.

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How did that journey begin for you and what brought you to support logic?

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>> That's actually pretty interesting because it kind of goes back to a

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discussion that you had with my leader, Paul Ferdmann, at TSA event.

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So we've been in the process of reviewing some of our technologies that we use

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in our support organization.

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And kind of are they being effective and how are they helping us move the

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needle?

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And he kind of got talking to you and learning what support logic did and how

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you differentiated yourself and how you were really moving the dials.

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And so Paul was like, we need to make room.

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We got rid of some stuff that we cleared some projects that weren't delivering

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in the made room in the budget.

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And then I was kind of brought on as kind of that project manager, technical

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liaison.

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Because tech supports busy.

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They've got a full time job and they've got customers and escalations.

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And so I kind of came on as a consultant and I was able to kind of meet with

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the support teams and help them gain a vision of how support logic could help

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them be more effective.

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And so it was great engaging with Monica, our fabulous implementation manager.

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We've been on the platform about a year.

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And now we kind of I think kind of reach stage one adoption and we're super

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excited about stage two in generative AI.

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And some of the new features that we're talking about in some of the office

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hours and roadmap sessions.

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>> Yeah, awesome.

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We appreciate that.

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It has been a journey and of course,

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seeing once you clear through the adoption challenges that might exist for any

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new software,

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how is this going to help me, how is this going to make my job easier better?

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Then you can get to some of the exciting things that are out there as far as

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what else can the product do for you and how else can we utilize it.

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So excited about that.

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So speaking of that, you're going to be speaking at our SX Live conference.

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What can we expect from you during that presentation?

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>> Well, we're still kind of fine tuning things, but I think I'm going to talk

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a little bit about generative AI and why using internet trained.

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AI-large language models may not be providing customers and partners with the

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solutions that they're seeking.

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Potentially, I think support logic is differentiating themselves because their

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language model is trained in support interactions.

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It's fluid.

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And that means that the signals that it identifies and even the generative AI

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that it's recommending is trained in our support cases.

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And so that's just incredibly powerful and I think that's what I'm going to be

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talking about.

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>> That's great because one of the things, and I hear this almost every day of

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my life, including my weekends, there's so much hype and so much buzz around AI

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And people, first off, don't know where to start.

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I think that's a given.

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And there's so much coming at them that promise to change their lives.

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And I find now I tell people that I say when I work for an AI company, I'm like

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, not the new AI.

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But the AI that started seven, eight years ago and is proven because I still

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believe for support, especially.

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They have the opportunity to change how they're viewed within their own company

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, how they're viewed in the industry,

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and certainly to become a differentiator with how they're handling customers

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and using AI to do that.

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But not again, all the hype and the buzz, right?

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That only goes so far and then you have to prove the results.

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So I'm excited for that session.

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So I want to talk a little bit about you in the support industry.

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You mentioned earlier, the people are something that is a blessing to you and

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you love the impact that you can have with people.

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You also mentioned that mentoring is near and dear to your heart.

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Tell me a little bit about your role as a mentor.

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So because I'm kind of what I call myself the fixer, I feel like my ability to

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fix things is limited to my personal time.

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I can work 40 hours, 60 hours, 80 hours.

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But if I can help lead change in an organization and create change agents, my

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ability to influence change becomes nearly infinite.

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And so I've always been just a super strong supporter of building up teams and

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helping people think about things differently,

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being data driven and working with my team and my peers and others in the

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organization to understand what they're trying to

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accomplish and kind of consult a little and say, "Hey, let's talk about change.

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Let's talk about what you're trying to achieve and how can we do this better

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and what are your goals and how do you want to measure this?"

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And helping them kind of become change agents to themselves.

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And I think again in the industry, this is key to our ongoing performance.

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You have these very passionate call center, contact center support leaders who

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can't fix every problem.

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And by kind of transforming your operations team and your leadership team and

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your managers and your supervisors into change agents,

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you don't have to.

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They will see the fruits of their labor and the success and the improvements as

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part of their job.

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And all of a sudden change becomes something that you do, not something that is

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resistant.

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So how do you motivate yourself to do that, Chris? Like what is the thing that

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you do that gives you the oath that you need every day to be a change agent?

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I think it takes a mindset. You need to be comfortable in change. You need to

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be comfortable in challenging the status quo.

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You need to be data driven because we're trying to change without data, without

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justification, without measurement, isn't going to work.

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So you need to understand where the data is in your organization, how to use

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the data to tell a story, how to gain advocacy within your leadership to gain

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somebody.

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And hey, we want to try this. We think we can do this. We think we're going to

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achieve this.

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And then deliver, you know, then achieve and find great partners like support

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logic and others who can help you be successful.

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And so I think that's the ideal scenario for me. That's the win.

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What's the future of AI and support if you could envision that?

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You know, back in the day when IBM Watson was kind of announced and everybody

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started getting excited about AI,

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I thought the person who kind of wired up an AI engine into a CRM would rule

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the world because they would anticipate customer needs as part of the journey.

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And I think we're seeing that today. And I think support logic is a trailblazer

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in this area.

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I think we're starting to see this dynamic customer journey that no journey is

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the same, but that we can start seeing patterns in the data and start surfacing

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those patterns as opportunities to improve the customer relationship.

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And it's going to be proactive. It's going to be rich. It's going to be, you

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know, it's going to be better than we could do it before because we're taking

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out some of the hardship of crunching the data.

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And we're letting all of our support people be our best person.

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You know, we always have had those top 10% of people who become our leaders,

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who become our managers.

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And we're trying to bring the tool set of the entire organization to meet those

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same standards.

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People in support are unique and they have this desire to serve.

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And if we empower them with tools and capability, we make their, we make their

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job less difficult in terms of automating logs and pulling things in and maybe

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guiding them in some interactions.

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We turn them loose to serve the customer and let them their personalities

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really show.

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That's awesome. And for those of you that don't know, our support experience

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conference, our first in person, we've done them virtual for the past two years

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Our first in person will be this year in October in San Jose. You can find more

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details on our website, of course.

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And we will be live and in person for two full days, October 7th and 8th.

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And Chris, do you know this part well? You've gone through all of our cert

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ifications. We're adding two new support logic academy certifications at the

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event. So that'll be fun too.

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Chris, thank you so much for giving me your 15 minutes today. I really

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appreciate you.

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You bet, Judy. Please to be here and I'll talk to everybody else on the, on

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those office hour sessions before you see your chats.

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Wonderful. Thank you.

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