Alright. Let's kick things off here. So today, this case study is about accelerating multi channel success and why relevance, is the answer. And we are joined by Bonnie from Coveo and Joel from eight by eight. And I will let them take it away. Thanks so much, Sandy. Thanks everyone for joining us today. Really excited to talk about this topic. And as you know, a lot has happened over the last year that has really impacted the way that we deliver digital support, and not just in the way that we deliver, but also in how quickly we are delivering it. And so, you know, as the last year highlighted, it's really important to be able to adapt to the changing needs of customers and to do that quickly, which is really why, you know, we wanted to have, to share this discussion with you today. And really thinking, you know, just even based on recent Salesforce research, a majority of decision makers have invested in new technology due to the pandemic. And so what we're seeing is that the transition to digital is has been happening, but now is fast happening at a faster pace than ever before. And so when you think about with these changes, now that companies have more channels for customer engagement, multiple sources of content, even, a distributed workforce the biggest challenge will be really bringing these experiences together and personalizing at scale. And so I next slide really kind of highlights what that looks like in a cost to support curve. So as the pandemic, what, you know, what the pandemic really highlighted is that you know, we need to be able to meet people wherever they are, and we need to be able to do that quickly. And we need to provide those experiences in order to differentiate. But what happens when we roll something out quickly like a chatbot, for example, We end up rolling things that we can end up rolling things out in a disjointed way. So maybe you have a chat bot, a knowledge base, a community or other forms of self-service, but they may not necessarily have the same content or necessarily be connected to each other or to other touch points in the journey. And the reality is that you know, it's more than just, putting those channels in place and it's more than just going digital. Right? Because we know that digital is the bare minimum. We know that reaching customers where they are is the bare minimum, and it's really the experience that makes the difference. And, you know, and what we what we're talking about when we talk about this experience is really It's really about relevance. And what we mean by relevance is really having the the data and search and AI capabilities in place to be able to understand those individuals, and deliver those connected experiences as a whole, as a whole. And so just quickly, I'll I'll give you a brief overview just to give you some examples, of relevance and and what we're really talking about here. And so this is where we're talking about search providing exactly the right results and being tailored to the individuals. We're talking about accurate and proactive content recommendation. So they experience that people are seeing and having every day and their their Netflix or, Spotify that that personalization that they encounter every day. Having an experience that improves with each interaction based on the activities that came before and with context informed by by all data including, you know, what you've purchased, and then having all of that stitched together for each person across all those digital silos and channels. So this is what what we really believe is the key to making sure that, you know, you have those digital channels. Now it's time to make sure that you're providing that consistent experience across all of them. And so so with that context, I really wanted to bring bring Joel here to really share more about the experience at eight by eight and and what they've done to, to create a relevant digital experience across channels. So Joel, thank you so much for joining me today. Why don't you tell us a little bit about about yourself and how the pandemic, changed your your, or or evolved your multi panel support strategy. Yeah. Thanks. So I am the senior manager for, digital support at eight by eight. Digital support as a formal program is a pretty recent development for us, but it is born out of some work that we've been doing for years now in trying to do more to engage, our customers in support Coveo digital channels. And so it's interesting, you know, the pandemic for us, hasn't really changed our multichannel strategy in eight by eight support. As much as it sort of accelerated it. And it made it more of a company wide priority. At eight by eight, we have, you know, more than a million business users across the world, we have multiple global centers of excellent excellence for support, providing, round the clock, help to our customers we've always been committed to this idea of customer obsessed service delivery. And what we've been doing, for years now is laying the foundation for not only helping customers get the right help when they hit live support, but also giving them more and better digital channels to engage us and trying our best to be exactly where they are when they need the help that they need. So, what we've been undertaking, for some time now is to open up our past beyond direct phone calls and email, which, you know, has traditionally been, how we delivered support, to web case submission, live agent chat. Now we've got an AI powered chatbot that really helps us refine the experience, in the live support realm, if a customer, needs to push on through, past the AI But, you know, as we've progressed here, even with all of those immense resources that we've put in place, we realize that's not enough. And and we had to do more to get our customers on the right path for the most efficient solutions. And That's really undertaking a true digital transformation, in eight by eight support, played into our strategy. That's great. And I know that from from your perspective, you do have a strong knowledge management practice. Can you share a little bit about how you built that foundation there and and really how you how you created that foundation for those channels, I guess, would be the knowledge. Yeah. Absolutely. I I'm really happy to say knowledge is really the basis of everything that we do in support. It's something I'm particularly proud of. You know, having come up through the knowledge program, at eight by eight. A couple years ago, we took the next step to adopt KCS. As the way that we capture and manage and deliver knowledge. And so that has been key to really making sure that knowledge as a a concept is is the domain of everyone in support, that it is the way we help our customers get the best answer, at a given time, keep the content fresh and and not limit how we are able to capture and deliver knowledge to a small group of technical writers. So that has been very key in making sure we can do things like power, a chatbot and, and, and, quick answers in our case submission form. Like a lot of organizations though, you know, we have a support knowledge base. One platform, our product documentation is in another place. We have training walk throughs and videos, in in a separate delivery vehicle. And very shortly, we're actually gonna have a full blown peer to peer customer community as well. And so, a challenge we faced obviously was how do we make sure that our users can get, everything from all of those resources in one place, and and how do we, drive them to a a single source, where we can deliver them those answers. And and for us that has been, using Coveo. And and we use Coveo really in two ways. We have a single search interface, on our public knowledge base, from which users can find all of the content that we have, in our various repositories. And we also serve up answers in our customer case submission form online. As they're filling it out. Coveo is offering suggestions from within the content that might provide the solution they need so they don't have to work with support, and they can on today. Great. So it seems like, you know, and and I've I've numbered, a a few of your, highlight your approach here and, you know, really at that foundation, you know, getting people access to knowledge is is number one. So having that knowledge base in place the ability to access it. And then, you know, you have you have web self-service and So that's where, where the deflection comes in. And then from there, is the workflow really from, from website to agent to chatbot, or what does that flow look like? In terms of sort of the knowledge cycle, Yeah. The full the customer journey flow through your support. What does that typically look like? Yeah. So what we're what we've really tried to build towards is our customers engaging with the knowledge base and moving from there into wherever they need to get an answer. So they come to the knowledge base they'll search for documentation, or they'll engage the chatbot, typically is what we see most often now. And that has really been where we've seen the biggest will draw, particularly over the last, six to twelve months. And so they'll they'll engage the chatbot, ask a question. If they're able to get an answer, great If they can't, they have an opportunity within the chatbot interface to immediately connect with support, via live chat, a request to call back. They can even open a web case that way. Once they're working with support, and the support agent is able to provide a solution, presuming we don't have it documented through KCS, we'll get that into the knowledge base. And so the next time that a customer comes with the same question that chatbot is enabled or, the search is enabled to provide that answer. That's great. And what kind of, what kind of engagement are you getting in those channels And you you mentioned that chatbot has been kind of getting the most engagement or you're getting a lot of activity there. Are you finding it pretty spread across or or what kind of engagement are you seeing? Yeah. It's been actually, you know, incredible to see what we get over, what we call digital or web now versus what we used to, and even versus what we do over the phone, which has traditionally been, you know, the most engaged channel, today. We've actually had online case management, for years in in support at eight by eight. But, it was an area that was growing very slowly, in its engagement with our customers. And the thing that has really driven engagement across the board with our web based self help options with our support portal, it has been the chatbot. And the chatbot has been where we've been able to draw a ton of engagement and it has helped us drive the live support, volume away from the phone and into agent chat, which is much more efficient, both for us operationally, and for our customers in in getting answers. And so that the having that chatbot interface there, just on its own, has been great in in drawing in those users, getting them familiar with our, self help options on the knowledge base, getting the familiar with the web portal, just having the chatbot has driven web case submission and management, by users up exponentially, over the last year. So, it's been really great. So having that that chatbot as the draw has really opened everything else up for us digitally. That's great. And I think we have some numbers to show here. Well, this is interesting because, you know, you shared your that, the web track is increasing the phone volumes going down. And and really what we we kind of see here is that it's like a pizza pie. It's it's slowly that that phone support is going down, and that's really what what we want to achieve, right, whether the multichannel strategy is driving traffic to the lower cost channels rather than those high cost channels. And then you said you you have ticket to Flex Is that is that in place for your web and chat or right now is that just web? So, it's on the web case form. We have ticket deflection in place. So the the Coveo feature is is offering answers as you fill out a case. The chatbot itself is, is that attempt at deflection before offering to connect you directly to support. So for us, we wanted to make sure, you know, in building that, that experience with the chatbot, that it wasn't something that dead ended you in case an answer couldn't found. You know, we all know that as as awesome as AI is, it's not magic, and it's not gonna work a hundred percent of the time. And we wanted to make sure, okay, if we can't get you an answer, through the chatbot. We're gonna get you help right now, how you need it, whether that's through live chat, whether you request a callback from the bot, into support or whether you open up a web case right there. And so we had to make sure that that path was, was clear and reliable. And so that the but the deflection attempt happens before the chatbot, goes ahead and connects you. And, you know, one of the things that that that we've talked about are, you know, and that the point of of this, presentation is really kind of showcasing how you've been able to to accelerate your success there and and, you know, relevance played a big part in that. So so can you share what relevance means to you and how you see yourself leveraging that? Sure. Yeah. For us, relevance is is is a major driving factor in in the development of our strategy. I I do what I can to keep it at the forefront as as we push forward. You know, having been part of building the knowledge program here, from scratch I feel like we're now at this point very well versed in what I call prescriptive relevance, which is I I've compiled, what I Hope is a comprehensive set of answers. You come to where I've got my knowledge put together, and I'm gonna tell you what's on this page, what's on this page, what's on this page. And and now we're taking all of that and and what we've learned about how users engage that knowledge, what they're using it to solve, where they're accessing from. And and we're building that into contextual relevance, you know, where we can learn more about how we take what we've put together and give it to the customer based on what we know about them as a user and and what they're trying to accomplish specifically in the part of the product that they're in when they're engaging the knowledge. So that's been very, very important for us to make sure that we have, knowledge in the place where the customer is. And so beyond just answering well, for us, we understand that we need to put support touch points in more and more intuitive places inside of the eight by eight product experience. And as we talked about, you know, even beyond that, we had to enable the chat do more than just answer questions. The chatbot really had to be its own channel to support, right, and engage those other places where you can get live help if live help is really what you need. So so for us, I like to say that, you know, relevance extends beyond, am I answering your question from the right of content. And really, what do you need to get to a solution where you are now? So we've been laying the groundwork for all of that, and and that's the next big step step we're taking is is getting, to those touch points, across the product and and ingesting everything that we know about what's going on at the time that the user engages support so that we can deliver relevant answers. Perfect. And So, you know, we're we're talking through your your evolving your strategy. What would you recommend? What approach would you recommend to someone who's considering a multichannel strategy. Yeah. You know, what what we really tried to do was think big, but start small. So, when you're thinking about introducing a channel or new channels, You know, it's it's very easy to imagine that these channels exist in a vacuum and that the customer experience with a channel, starts and ends within that channel itself. And that's not really the case. Right? And it's very important to consider where that channel sits within the entire customer, experience with support from end to end, and what it's relevant is even within what you do operationally in support and your technical ecosystem. So you wanna think about where that channel is, what customers do you want in that channel? Do you want every customer to be in that channel? Do you want them to start in that channel? There a segment of your customers that you want to have a path specifically from that channel to another channel? And then all of what you do in support really should play into your channel strategy. You know, how does each channel factor into how you need to staff, what sort of knowledge you wanna inject in the channel and the users churning through it and how you integrate NEA solution that you have. So a lot to think about outside of the scope of the channel itself. Mhmm. But then what we had to do was pull back a little bit and consider, you know, not taking on too much at once. Right? So we weren't, you know, gonna try and adopt KCS at the same time as we were going to introduce multiple new channels of engagement with support or learn, you know, how to do knowledge management, at the same time as adopting the chatbot. Which, you know, would have not allowed the chatbot to be as effective as it is. So there there are certain things that fundamentally logically make sense do before you take the next step. And so you gotta, you know, approach a road map, honestly, realistically, and take the right steps to build a foundation that you need to to get to introducing, your strategy. For us, what what we were really trying to do was drive everyone to digital help, and we had a focus primarily on building our chat engagement. And so we had to do a lot of work to understand. You know, who are we gonna do this with and what's gonna be the impact across the board. And so we put all those pieces in place and everything from our solution vendors, our staffing, our support processes, business systems, security policy, all of these things, you know, really work together to make sure that the the channels that we create, provide the right support experience to the customer and are operationally sustainable. Yeah. And that's that's you've made some really good points, especially about, you know, thinking big and starting small. There's a lot that goes into it. It's not a one and done thing. You don't just launch your new channel and be done with it. It's keeping it connected with everything else, making sure that you're you you're functionally able to take on these new channels, you having that knowledge in place. So, that's a really good point. And I will ask you, you know, because you've you've mentioned chatbot a few times. Mhmm. That seems to be, the shiny object. It has been for a little while. So do you have any tips about, you know, should we do a chat bot? You know, is this just tiny? Is it, you know, can you can you give some tips for somebody who's thinking about a chatbot. Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, you really gotta get your expectations set. Understand what your requirements are whether that's, you know, technical requirements for integration, the experience requirements, what you want your customers to to, go through when they're engaging your chatbot, you know, Some some com companies don't need a chatbot to do much more than handle a few automated tasks, for us it was really important that we make sure that the chatbot was a thing that could usher you into live support in the in the case that it couldn't give you an answer. If you have, a fairly wide ecosystem of of product offerings, like we do, you know, you wanna make sure that the intelligence behind the chatbot is trained in a way to recognize when it's, appropriate to give one answer versus another depending on product is being talked about. And your knowledge management strategy, I think, is is really key. You know, some platforms require curation of knowledge within the chatbot platform itself. Some allow you to do crawls where you can leverage which already doing with your knowledge, but you wanna make sure that the answers in the bot are, you know, well maintained, well taken care of so that whenever someone is going in and asking you the question, that they're getting an experience that is gonna bring them back to use it again. Rather than abandon it entirely and go back to whatever they were doing to engage your support previously. So, you know, AI is not a magic bullet. It can do a lot of really cool stuff. We've had our chatbot in place for a little over a year now, and we are continuing to tune and to tweak in to learn about what our users are asking it and how best to answer those questions, how they ask their questions, It it's really amazing to kind of see all the different ways different types of users will pose a question that essentially means the same thing, to the bot. And and it's it's something we knew. I wanna say, you know, on some level in support. We had seen it, you know, kind of anecdotally through cases, but, to see it analytically spit out, in the bot, and and you have what we call, you know, utterances for, one question, you know, maybe forty different ways to ask it. It's it's pretty impressive to see in. And and it's something that, you know, we have to think about. Not every user is the same, not every customer's same, and you want them to feel like, you know, even when they're talking to a bot that, you know them and and you're ready to provide the answer that they need. Yep. Yeah. Exactly. And, yeah, keeping that experience there, regardless of of which channel it is, making sure that's a good experience is always important. So so I wanna share a little bit about the Coveo view on relevance maturity. And so, you know, this is something that that we are very close to and, there is an approach to to be able to do this successfully, and this is the approach that we use with our customers like Joel at eight by eight and really, you know, from a maturity perspective when we're looking on the left side at the reactive stage, That's typically where people start. They have a siloed search. Maybe they have a a search in their knowledge base. They have a search in their community, and then, you know, evolving into a federated search, which is, being able to search both, but But really where you start evolving is when you're unifying that data and content so that entry level unification that enables you to allow people to search for whatever they want wherever they are. From their building into the AI powered navigation and recommendations. So this is adding that layer of intelligence that understands who they are and can recommend based on based on that, and then really truly personal rising based on all of the interactions, all of the data, and really predicting what you're going to need next. And so there's a journey here and I think it's important to take this into consideration as well as, you know, the things that that Joel mentioned that are part of the strategy is you know, there are things to consider from how you pick your channels, how you structure your team, and then the Think Big start small. This can help guide you through that, process of, you know, if you're only able to start here, you can at least see where you where you need to go in order to provide that that truly personalized and relevant experience. So I hope, I hope you've gotten some tips on things to consider for a multichannel strategy and have seen, you know, what relevance can really do to accelerate that. I do want to save a few minutes. I think we have a few minutes of time left. So do we have any questions from the audience We do, Bonnie. We have a few questions, that are in the chat. So I can read them out to you. So the first question is, do you have any data to support the amount of usage the knowledge base is getting? Any idea of success rates, without further escalation needed? Those are two really good questions. So, yes, we we, we're tracking engagement with our knowledge base. Constantly, we use both Google analytics and, the analytics that are out of the platform that we have our knowledge base in, which is Mind Touch. And so engagement with the knowledge base has been growing, ever since we introduced it, about six years ago. But, again, as I alluded earlier, you know, having that chatbot on there and and and creating that new channel for engaging support directly via the knowledge base has really driven that engagement there. So we can track that very easily the second part of the question was, success rates without further escalation needed. So once a a customer is engaged with a specific channel, especially where it's one we where we have, you know, an opportunity to deflect, which is within the chatbot or within the customer submission, case submission form. We can track how often, you know, they, go away and don't push forward through into submitting that case or contacting support. The end to end journey is something we're still putting together. So a customer comes the knowledge base searches for something. Do I know they don't later, like, come back and and open a case for the same question separately? Or do they pick up the phone and call about it afterwards? Those are things we don't have, pinned all the way through as well yet. And so we're still working on putting that together. Great. I have another question. I am not a fan of most chatbots. They often don't help at all. Are there more dynamic chatbots worth the investments? Or are they just fancy FAQs? That's a that's a good question, and it's a question I'm sure everyone has, and and it's it's one that you might not be surprised to know is is very difficult to answer. It's really gonna depend on what you need that chatbot to do and what your ex expectations of the customer experience are gonna be. And so if you've got, you know, a limited set of knowledge, and and you can set the right expectation about what the chatbot is gonna be help a user with. It can be easier to get off the ground and get it going. Then if you've got a very expansive knowledge base, a very wide set of customers who might have a lot of more complicated questions, and then you have to consider how much training is gonna need to be done before that chatbot is really able to stand up its own. So like I said, you know, we're a year into having our chatbot. We started training it three months before we put it out for public use. We are continuing to manage and tune it day. We do it a lot less than we have to, but there is still that, that as a factor in in our administration of it today. On top of that, you, you know, where chat bots can really come in and be very helpful is is in, process automation. So can they accomplish something on behalf of the customer, rather than just, passively answer questions from available content And so there's there's a ton of chat bot platforms out there today, and there are more growing that are able to, you know, execute prescripted flows for certain things that customers or or users need to get within them. So I would say at a high level, yes. I think there are, very, dynamic chatbot platforms out there that can do a lot of stuff, but it's gonna take work to make it really build that experience that you want for your user. I know we do have a couple more questions, but we are out of time. So what I will do is I will send I know Greg is in the queue, and I know we have a couple more questions that came through. So what I will do is I will send your questions over to Bonnie and Joel so that you can get in touch with them, ask them all the questions that we could not get to today. But thank you so much for sharing your insight with us. This was so very helpful. Thank you. This is really cool. Thank you guys.