Alright. Rejoining here. Alright. So hopefully hopefully, we'll get, get all those attendees back. But for those of you who are able to rejoin, thank you so much. And my apologies as we've been having some technical difficulties this morning. But but yeah. So thank you so much for joining. You know, this this roundtable session these roundtables are really a a way for us to to connect and have a conversation since we can't really meet around the water cooler anymore, or at at conferences and events, recently. So for those of you who have attended, you know, our roundtable session last time, thank you for for joining us again. And if you're new to the roundtable discussion, I just wanted to, invite you to participate in the conversation. You know, this is this is one where we we really do wanna have a conversation. We wanna hear from our guests and hear from you as well. So, anytime you wanna join in, just click the raise hand button, and I'll pull you into the conversation. So my name is Bonnie. I'm product marketing director for our service line of business here at Coveo, and I'm very excited to be here with you today, and, of course, welcome our special guest. We have John Radsdale, who is a distinguished researcher at TSIA, who I'm sure you're all familiar with. Thank you, John, for joining us today. My pleasure. And we also have Patrick Barca, who is the senior director of support here at Coveo, and and he is our customer number one. So, he's in the weeds and and, you know, giving us really good details about what what he's seeing, from a support perspective. So just to set the stage for the conversation today, you know, we really wanted to to take a minute to just talk about the agent experience. You know, we've, we've been impacted. Everyone was impacted with the pandemic in in a in a variety of different ways. So we saw case volume skyrocketing in some industries. Some needed to expedite their digital transformation. And we also saw that there was a shift to focus from mainly CX to, you know, increasing that importance in the employee experience. And I wanted to start by kind of thinking about, you know, how things have changed over the years. And, and really, you know, from a CX, EX perspective, the agent experience is really part of both. So so, John, I wanna start with you and just see, you know, has this shift, you know, whether it's the shift in the shift in CX and EX and the prioritization, has this shift caused businesses to rethink how they invest in customer support? What are you seeing? Well, I I think in general, companies that already were concerned with employee engagement and had good employee engagement programs really doubled down. I think that there were a lot of companies that really hadn't been too worried about, employee satisfaction, the employee experience, employee engagement. And, you know, they're they're paying that that price now with with crazy attrition rates. But, some of the changes I saw, it was interesting, like, a week after the shutdown started, I knew a bunch of companies that instantly rolled out empathy training to all of their employees. And I have to admit that a couple of years ago, when empathy training started being a topic, I thought it was a little crazy. But, you know, the customers were under really extraordinary pressure, personally, business, and I think that that really helps set up the agents for success. And some people are very empathetic by nature and some people aren't. And having that additional training, I think, helps set them up for success, dealing with some really stressed out, customers. Another change that we saw is so many companies had their own off shore locations and they found out really quickly that not only did they not have the infrastructure for work at home in some countries, but they also really didn't have any capabilities to recruit and train people remotely because it had always been assumed they came into that local office. So there's been a big surge in outsourcing that people are going to outsourcers in those offshore locations who had all of that, you know, infrastructure in place. So that's been a a pretty big, you know, adoption change for a a lot of companies. And, you know, I just think in in general, self-service is always a hot topic. But as as you mentioned, a lot of companies saw overwhelming influx of support volume. And, even though spending on self-service has been high for a number of years, we're still not seeing amazing results unlike self-service success, which is averaging fifty eight percent. So I have seen companies getting really serious about not just, you know, a few bells and whistles, but getting really serious about intelligent search, about content strategies, about redesigning the website, investing in in chat bots, or really anything they think they can do to improve self-service because you probably don't have budget to hire hundreds of new support techs. So you've gotta deal with that volume, somewhere. So those are some of the changes I've seen. Patrick, how how were you guys impacted? Honestly, I was surprised to see how quickly we were able to ship to turn this ship around. I mean, you know, we we were all in the office. I remember I was in Montreal in on March twelfth. And on March thirteenth, it was decided that everyone was gonna work from home starting Monday. And, you know, we just turned this around, being you know, I think we were lucky enough, and, maybe most support organizations being, you know, twenty four five or twenty four seven are kinda used to, you know, moving things around different locations. So people just took their laptops, their phones, and, you know, plugged in at home, and they were all set to go. Where we where we struggled is is really where you touched on it, John. We had a very, in person mentoring and onboarding program where someone new came in, and we would actually bring them to the Quebec office where the bulk of the resources were for a month. You know? We we paid the apartment. We paid everything. And now we were said that we were stuck with anybody who comes in. We have to train these people remotely. And and that was the biggest the biggest challenge for us. So from an operational perspective, that was not a concern for the most part because, you know, we we we had a very robust knowledge management strategy. We had the tools. Collaboration forums were in place so that, you know, so that our our day shift, evening shift, and night shift resources could collaborate, very strong collaboration with internal teams as well. But it was more the training and the onboarding aspect that was that was a challenge. And also keeping that team synergy in place. So the first things we started to do is opening up different communication channels so that the team could continue to chitchat outside of just work so we could keep these relationships, open and and keep the synergies going between, between folks. And we completely reviewed our our, our training program because, you know, now it was completely remote. And still to this day, we look at, you know, our locations. We got about a third of the team who'd never set foot in an office and never seen their colleagues. And and, you know, getting that company culture, the team synergy in place has has really been the the the challenging part. Yeah. And I like how you both mentioned onboarding because one of the things that that I was thinking about well, John, as you were kind of giving giving your examples, I mean, onboarding wasn't just challenging and difficult in person. It was impossible, if you were, you know, if you were an international company with with with teams in different locations. Like, we literally couldn't fly out there and visit them and help them and train them. And I think, you know, it's also the same with with our customers too. So if we're doing, you know, customer onboarding, customer training, and we're not able to to meet in person, I you know, one of the things that that I've seen that has helped companies get through this is having a a solid knowledge management strategy and a way to share that knowledge. I'm curious, you know, John, from from your perspective, I know, you do a state of knowledge management survey every year. You know, what did your study, tell you about this last year? Well, the survey is open right now, and we'll be publishing that, twenty twenty one Stata Kilometers in October. I looked at some of the the data and prepped for this, and, you know, it's not final data. But, you know, one good thing is I've been surveying about knowledge management culture for years now, and the culture scores went way up last year. And I think that, people were really forced to collaborate and share knowledge, and it was a lot harder. You know, you can't stand up and yell over the cubicle wall, so you've got to rely on collaboration tools or or whatever. And I think, for the first time, I saw people getting more serious about leveraging analytics for knowledge management, such as identifying the content gaps. What are people searching for and not finding? What is the most commonly used knowledge so we can create better FAQ list? So, you know, they've been leveraging technology like yours for quite a while, but they've not always made the most of the analytics. And Mhmm. You know, I think, there was a lot of gloom and doom about, you know, the impact on the pandemic on the tech industry, but, boy, we have not seen that happen at all. In fact, so many companies invested a lot of money that had been set aside for conferences and corporate travel in the infrastructure. And, you know, we're seeing some really interesting rollouts of AI and even some early examples of robotics. So I think that they took advantage of the downtime to really push a lot of digital strategies. You mentioned customer training. One of the I just published a report, a week ago, about virtual reality, and the the big use case there is customer training. And we had multiple members present at our conferences, adoption by hardware companies, the virtual reality tools went from, like, twenty percent to sixty or seventy percent in one year because you couldn't bring people into a hardware lab to do hands on training. So they're sending them out, you know, these these glasses that they can walk them through procedures and and training. So, you know, in some ways, they're absolutely accelerating, digital transformation. And just so, you know, to bring it back to the agent experience, I I don't know if it's the the same, Patrick, where you are, but I'm in Silicon Valley. And I can tell you every tech support agent has fifty to a hundred friends who are also tech support agents. They all compare notes. And let me tell you, if your company is really behind on cool technology for employees, they are gonna leave fast. And a lot of companies are seeing some pretty climbing attrition rates, because everybody's hiring right now. And let me tell you, when next year comes and if the companies would start demanding people go back to the office, you know, I would not be surprised to see fifty percent attrition rates happening. So so, yeah, I think that the the technology, not only is it making the life of the agent better, it's making it look smart in front of customers, which is great. But they're also just benchmarking what the tools they have to what their friends are using at other companies. And if they see a significant adoption of really cool technology someplace else, they're gonna go there. Mhmm. Yeah. And and definitely, you know, here's a little different, John, because in the in the Quebec market, you know, there aren't that many tech companies who have support organizations, you know, local, in Quebec and Montreal. So, you know, it's not a it's not a huge community, but what you're saying is is spot on. Definitely. I mean, you know, if you're if you're answering the same questions all the time and you're not being challenged with new, more complex issues to in in today's world, you know, the work from anywhere now is gonna be a thing. So, you know, we've we've been talking about it here is, you know, everybody has a target on their back now. It's now people don't really it doesn't really matter where you sit. As long as, you know, you're able to have a computer and an Internet connection, you can basically work for anyone. So now people are gonna start comparing the experiences and going to the glass doors of the world and seeing what it's like to be, you know, a support agent at this company or that company. And and technology and agent experience is definitely is definitely gonna be at the center of it because, you know, we're not gonna kid ourselves. It's it's it's tough being in support because you're dealing with problems all the time. So if it's not a pleasant experience, if you're not having, you know, the most up to date technology, if your tools are not, are not, you know, as optimized as they should be, if if the company is not enabling you to be relevant to the customer every single time, you know, you're gonna go wanna go work for a company who's enabling you to do that because, you know, that enables you to be successful. Yeah. Absolutely. I'm curious for for those who are attending and listening in. You know? Has has anybody shifted their their priorities as far as the agent experience goes? Maybe, you know, implementing new programs to improve, the experience or leveraging new strategies like PCS or intelligence swarming to to help with that. So please raise your hands, clicking that bottom button. Here we go. Alright, Justin. Hello. Welcome. Hey, Bonnie. How are you? Good. Good. Yeah. So here at Dell, I mean, you know, before COVID and the pandemic hit, we were already rolling out Kilometers and KCS across our agent communities. But, you know, we did see, you know, as the pandemic hit and we were shifting our employee workforce from a remote standpoint, you know, it hindered or slowed down the process of the Kilometers and KCS rollout. We're we're certainly on track to deliver, on our expectations there. But I think as, you know, the representatives have already mentioned on the call, you know, it it it poses challenges. And then, you know, at the same time, you're trying to deliver new technology and get everyone up to speed on those new technologies and unifying the search experience across the different, technologies that you're delivering, you know, such as SFDC, from that perspective, on-site with Kaveo, and offline with Kaveo as well. Mhmm. Yep. Yeah. We're seeing that a lot. You know, even, you know, thinking thinking a little bit further about a KCS perspective or or or, intelligence swarming knowledge management, You know, one of the things that we're seeing is it started in support and service, and now it's expanding beyond there. I'm curious, you know, maybe, Justin, you you you might have some input here as well. But are you, are you rolling out, intelligence warming as well, or are you looking at at more ways to kind of increase collaboration among your agents? I don't, I mean yes. Collaboration amongst the agents through, you know, the existing tools that are out there also, you know, that are native to, Salesforce. We're also looking at opportunities in how we, you know, collaborate as a group, across the different, communities, within Dell to understand how how do we meet the needs of our agents. And then at that same time, how do we meet the needs of our customers that are coming to the site on a day to day basis, so that we can provide them with, you know, exceptional service across their customer journey. And customer real you know, when we take a look at and think about a customer, a customer is really, you know, anyone that accesses your technology. That could be a search engine. It could be, an agent. It could be a partner. It could be a customer in the traditional sense. But I think that's one area where, you know, we're really trying to make sure that we're looking at who the customer is and what does that journey really look like no matter if it's a person or a bot from that perspective. And that I think that's a challenge a lot of people see it these days just, you know, kinda wrapping their head around. Oh, well, Coveo is a customer. Google is a customer. They're all customers. Without them, our technology, our, our content, our knowledge does not get presented in a proper form. Mhmm. Yeah. And and, Patrick, for you, you know, what what what's top of mind for you when you're thinking about, I mean, you're managing a support team. So when you're thinking about delivering an exceptional agent experience, what's top of mind for you, and how do you how does that fit in with, your view of the customer experience? Yeah. Well, from from my perspective, you know, try to put relevancy at the center of everything. Right? So I I mentioned a little bit earlier is you you wanna make sure that the customer doesn't feel like they're dealing with, you know, support and then dealing with customer success and then dealing with any other organization that they interact with. You wanna feel that they're interacting with with your brand. And to do that, you need to make sure that your your agents have not just the product content, but the account information, the previous cases, anything that they need to know that is contextual so that they can handle the situation correctly. So if they know that they've talked to another agent on another case, they have that global picture. They have that three hundred and sixty degree view. So it's not just about, you know, content or or knowledge management. It's also about making sure that you have that that central repository of customer information, and you incorporate that in your tools. So in in our insight panel, you know, we do have the content and and all the sources that are indexed there, but we also, customize it so that we have a client tab. So, you know, the agent could just click on client. They can have all the technical notes that are attached to the client, whether it came from customer success or and, you know, sales or whatnot. So they understand the customer context. You know, we're we're working on bringing in the health score in there, you know, any previous cases so that, you know, they're able to manage the customer and not just focus on the break fix mentality, but really start focusing more on on outcome based support. And this is gonna be our challenge in the next few years is is transitioning from this, you know, break fix mentality of saying, this is the problem and this is the fix for it, Instead of saying, okay. This is what you're trying to this is what you're experiencing, mister customer. Let me ask you the question. What are you trying to accomplish? What is your end goal? Because I can give you a fix that's gonna fix your problem, but then you're gonna call me again and say, yeah. I fixed that, but now I get this problem. And so you have to take it one up a notch and just say, okay. What are you trying to accomplish? What what's the end result? And then we might get away from that that problem you're having because you might not be taking the right path to getting where you wanna go. And and that is really where you you need to make all the information available to your agents so that they are able to do that. Yeah. I like how you how you called it outcome based support because, you know, one of the things I I like to to say is, you know, not all support issues are break fix. There are multiple intents. But when you think about a outcome based, I mean, they're trying to achieve something. What is that end goal? What are they trying to achieve? And, yeah, it can be multiple intents. John, do you have anything to add to that? Yeah. Just the from a data perspective, if you look at the data correlations from our benchmark, you know, we and we've talked about the fact before that there's an incredibly strong correlation like an exact correlation between high customer satisfaction with incidents and renewals. Companies that have high CSAT have high renewals. Company with low CSAT have low renewals. But there's also an incredibly strong correlation between employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction. So happy employees make happy customers. It's trite, but it's true. So, you know, if you draw that extension, then happy employees create high renewals. And and I think that, you know, companies need to understand that that it's not it's not just this feel good thing about making employees happy and lowering attrition rate. It has a direct impact on the financial success of the company. And, you know, I I recently did a a call with a a big member who was talking about every Monday morning, they have a team call with the entire support organization and the support executive pulls up the chart of, the customer satisfaction scores by employee for the previous week and publicly flogs the people with the lowest scores. And I said, wow. You must have really high attrition rates, and they do. They have more than than double the the average attrition rate. So, you know, I I think that's just one example of some kinda old thinking that I mean, that used to happen when I started in support in the late eighties, early nineties. I I didn't know that was still going on, But it it really is a a culture shift, and I think that if people did that correlation analysis and understood the financial impacts of delivering a great employee experience, maybe we could get rid of some of these outdated practices. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And I mean so so that kinda reminds me of one of the points that you had earlier on, which was about, you know, the pandemic kind of increasing the need for empathy training and and and people looking at some of those soft skills and things like that. Patrick, are you are you are you implementing the same thing? Is this something that, yeah, can we dig more into this? I wanna hear more about this empathy. And and anyone on the call, if if this is something that you're looking at with your support teams, would be curious how you're approaching that too. Yeah. I mean, we didn't necessarily go into, you know, full on empathy training, but one of the things that we did and maybe it's just, you know, pure coincidence. But before the the pandemic hit, you know, we were we were reviewing a lot of things around, you know, how to define our own purpose and support and trying to align the team around that purpose. Because, you know, what what you want is you want people who believe in what you do, and you wanna have those types of people join your organization. So we we work together to define, you know, our own purpose statement, and we got the team involved. We did some workshops, and and we came to to the the result that it it's basically, you know, to to transform every situation into an enriching experience, one interaction at a time so that Covey with customers, partners, and employees can strive toward their desired business outcomes. And and every decision that we do is based on that. You know, we start our job description with that. You know, we kind of tell our our candidates, hey. Do you remember what your your best experience was with the company? Do you remember that company? Yes. Well, if that resonates with you, you know, read on. So, you know, in transitioning that over to the the the agent experience is that if if you're able to bring people in that share those same values, that share those same concepts, and and every decision you do is is tied to that, I think it just brings everybody together around focusing towards the same goal and focusing on that customer experience and focusing on the agent experience. So when you're rolling out new technology, when you're rolling out a new process or whatnot, if you think back to our purpose statement, you know, it needs to be an enriching experience. So anything that we'd roll out, we need to be an enriching experience for our agents as well, not just for our customers, but for our agents and our partners. So if everybody is aligned around that purpose and that and that goal, I think it just makes the whole change management much easier, because your your team, trusts that you have their well-being at, at the top of your mind when you're when you're doing that kind of stuff. Yeah. And and, you know, I've been hearing a lot about how important trust is right now, trust and transparency, collaboration. Just to kind of summarize some of the things that we talked about, we've we've we've talked about, you know, an increase in collaboration. People are relooking and and prioritizing knowledge. Insights and analytics was was something that was mentioned. I'm curious, and maybe, John, you can you can start. But, what are what are some of the tools that people are starting to look at now, versus pre pandemic? Has that changed, or is there is there still a a a chatbot wave? Is where what what are people looking at? Is there a chatbot wave? I don't know. I you you know, I'm I'm not the greatest fan of chatbots just because I think that, the majority of them are not implemented in a really user friendly way. I still see companies, pretty high planned spending like more than half of companies are looking at bringing in a chatbot in the next couple of years. So we'll see how that actually pans out. My data shows customers aren't that anxious to use them really. So I don't know if they're really taking the customer experience into mind when they plan that. But I think we touched on this on a roundtable previously, but definitely, seeing a lot more focus on leveraging analytics to do things like automated routing of cases, escalation prediction. We're seeing a lot of automating health scores. So every time you touch a customer, you can see, you know, red, yellow, green. I'm also seeing, and, you know, not to plug Salesforce too much, but because they've introduced this out of box, the ability to transcribe conversations with your customers into case notes automatically. And, you know, that's such a huge challenge is you get to the end of a call, and you've got five people waiting on hold. And do you take the time to really recap everything you discussed? No. And that means that you're doing a lot of diagnostics that are not being captured in the case. So when the next person has, the same problem and they're searching, they're not gonna find that to know, you know, what you did about it. So I think, you know, this this the ability to transcribe, in real time, not only is that creating very accurate case history, but it's also allowing analytics to start recommending things to the agent the next best action. They don't even have to search anymore. Right? Because they can plug in all of these keywords directly into Coveo and refresh the agent desktop. So there's some, you know, forward looking companies, doing some really, really interesting things. You know, one thing that we we were talking about intelligence swarming, and the the concept of intelligent swarming is you own an issue cradle to grave. And if it's not something you're an expert on, people can swarm in and help you with it. And one thing that I'm a little concerned about is I am seeing so much focus on using analytics to route a case to someone who has solved a similar case before. And does that mean that we're gonna see employees getting pigeonholed into solving the same problem over and over and over again, which is not what swarming is about? And while I agree that sending it to the expert is probably better for fast resolution time. But, boy, I would definitely get bored if if if I was getting every single one of these problems and not able to coach and train other people on how to solve that that same problem. So, you know, I think we we also need to be cautious about leveraging some of the analytics because it it could end up, creating some very repetitive patterns for employees. That's a great point. I'm curious if if any attendees are have, dug into intelligence warming at all or, have anything to add based on on the conversation that we've had so far. So feel free to raise your hand if you wanna join in or drop in a question in the q and a, and we will ask our panelists. I'll just just add on that. You had mentioned that that it's an applicable paradigm for other departments, and that is absolutely happening in professional services. Mhmm. But suddenly, you know, you've got project implementation teams all working remotely, and they're used to being altogether in a room or altogether at the customer site. And they're not calling it swarming. But you are seeing that kind of collaboration that they're creating new places that you can post questions and everybody responds with, you know, how they solve that or, you know, if they've customized that or if they've seen that bug in the software before. So I I'm saying, you know, professional services teams who, by the way, have the highest average culture score in the surveys of all the departments in a company even higher than support, which kinda surprises me. But I I I think that's one area of sales, obviously, is a is another area. You know, you're on the phone with a customer. They've got an objection. How do I overcome it? Can can somebody swarm in with with the answer to that? So I I am saying real time collaboration tools enabling that they're just not calling it swarming. Yep. Yep. And and I see that as well, you know, from a from a customer success perspective too. Oftentimes, they they get looped into support issues that a customer may ask them instead of a support agent. So instead of bouncing them around, maybe there there's a way for them to to work together in that way as well. Yeah. You you have to because or else. And and that's it comes down to what we're seeing before is it doesn't really matter who the customer interacts with. What you need is you need that central repository of every action being captured. Or else Mhmm. You know, if the customer spoke to their CSM and then they log a support case, and then they tell the support agent, yeah. We we ran into a similar issue the other day, but you have no trace of it. Unfortunately, the support agent says, well, you know, I I don't find anything related to the issue because it wasn't it wasn't tracked. So that that's where the that central repository and that information sharing becomes, becomes crucial so that everybody has the same information when they're interacting with customers. Mhmm. Yeah. And, you know, that that's a great transition because I know one of the things that we wanted to talk about today was really how to set up your agents for success with unified access to knowledge. And, you know, one one thing I did wanna kind of call out in the few minutes that we have left is that when people think about unified knowledge, sometimes it's it's unclear what that means. Right? And and people implement different tools, maybe a federated search, maybe a unified search. You know, any thoughts on that? I mean, obviously, there's a difference. You know, Patrick, what what have you seen, in as far as when people are trying to set up Coveo, are they coming with a federated search first? Is that still something that that people are trying to set up, or is is it really federated or unified pick one? I think what we're seeing is is most people seem to have understood the value of having that unified search are, at least, as I mentioned, from what we see here, are moving away from that, you know, federated search where you have, you know, multiple places that you need to search to find the information because, basically, what happens is that no one searches because, you know, it's it's a pain versus if you have that unified experience, you know, that you have that one stop shop. And even if it's you know, what's even better is that you don't even have to search and that things are being, you know, put in front of you without you having to search because the context is being pulled, and and that creates the search query right off the bat. That is really you know, from a services perspective, this is real really where customers are are heading. And that's that's the end goal. That's their outcome because, you know, the reflex or human nature is that, you know, if you have to do a manual search, chances are you're gonna rely on what you already know before going to search. So you might miss out on something else that someone else already did, and you're doubling the work, versus if it's in your face and it's put in front of you, you know, it it's it's hard to admit it and it's hard to ignore it. And then that's really where where, you know, services organizations are are heading to. Mhmm. And and how about you, John? Anything to add there? Well, not surprising. I have a strong opinion on this topic. You know, my definition of federated, and this is a conversation I have a lot with IT because IT is always saying, we can give you federated. What's wrong with that? And the issue is federated means that the search goes out to every content repository and says, what do you have on this? And most content repositories have horrible search capabilities. So you're only gonna be federating a bunch of crap because these individual repositories probably only have full text search. So I, you know, I just think it's ridiculous that in this day and time, people are still saying federated is good enough. And that tells me that they've never experienced intelligent unified search because it just so dramatically improves the results of what you're you're getting as well as the analytics to understand over time what content is the most useful for for one question. So it's it's always getting more and more accurate. So, yeah, I, I I get very frustrated when, I I do workshops and IT is there, and they say, you know, we've got Federated and that's all we need because, you know, you're maybe twenty years out of date if that's what you need. Yeah. Yeah. Well, this has been a great conversation. So thank you so much, John and Patrick, for joining. I'm sure we could talk about this for hours more. But for those of you who are interested in we will another time. So if if you enjoyed the conversation, if you have questions for John and Patrick, feel free to reach out. We'd be happy to to continue the conversation with you offline. But thank you so much for joining us today. This will be this is being recorded, and you will get, access to the recording afterwards. So, John, thank you. Patrick, thank you. Everyone, have a great day, and we'll see you next time. Thanks, everybody. Bye bye. Thanks. Bye.