Alright. Let's get started. Okay. So my, my name is Tracy Carson. Everyone, I wanna thank you for joining our relevance roundtable for service leaders today. I work on the global marketing team here at Coveo. But more importantly, I'm joined by John Ragsdale. He's our distinguished distinguished, I wish he was ours, but he's not. He belongs to the TSIA, VP of Technology Research, there, so probably known to many of you today. We also have who I like to call Coveo customer number one, Patrick Martin. He's the senior director of support here at Coveo. And then, of course, I'm really excited. Bonnie Chase is joining us for this session. She's the director of product marketing, and she'll lead today's conversate conversation. She's a very busy woman, so we're very lucky to have her as well. I'm gonna quickly go over the agenda. We didn't call this a roundtable because it had a nice ring to it. Although as a marketer, I like rings. But we do want this to, think of it as your space that, replaces a lot of the coffee chats you would have had at TSW, huddles at our own in person event, Coveo Impact, or other industry, sessions where you would find yourself meeting your peers, having an opportunity to have some open dialogue and ask some great questions. We definitely miss these conversations and this is a big part of why we wanted to create this space for us in a virtual world. We want you to raise your hand. So with Zoom, there's the ability to do that, and I can easily take you off mute. You can join on camera. It's really your choice. But we wanna hear from you. And and John and, Patrick tolerated my interruptions last time, and they'd be certainly welcome to yours as well. And I'll be helping in the background for Bonnie's sake, to make sure that we get your questions and the discussion going with you directly. So as the agenda says, raise your hand, use the chat, and let me know if you wanna join the conversation live. We are gonna record the session, so you can pass it on to peers. You can pass it on to your team. It should be in your inbox about twenty four hours later. And with all that said, I'm going to get out of the way and happily pass it on to Bonnie. Thanks so much, Tracy. I'm very excited to be on the roundtable with you all today and joining the discussion. One of the things that I I really wanted to kick off with was to really kind of share some of the takeaways that I got from our last relevance three sixty session. So I don't know how many of you joined that session, but it was it was, a fun event. Really, you know, was was meant to announce our stance as a relevance platform. But we also got to hear some some some interesting, trends and stories from thought leaders and, some of our customers. And so there were a couple of things that that I thought, you know, I wanted to to call out, see what see what you thought, John and Patrick, and maybe respond to this. But one of the things that I've been thinking about it and that I saw in relevance three sixty is, you know, when we think about making content findable, what I see us doing a lot is figuring out how to make the customer find the content, and it's all about the customer doing the work. When we think about relevance and we think about how we can leverage AI to, to make that easier, it's not just about the customers finding the content, but it's also about the content finding the customer. And so this is where, you know, AI can come in and and really predict what would be the best information in that moment. And I feel like it's a it's a good marriage to have when we're thinking about, creating a support experience of making content findable on the customer's end, but also from the technology side, how can we make that content find the customer. And so, you know, part of that we had Matt Chin from AARP joining the conversation. And, you know, one of the things that that he said really resonated with me, which is we want to really start to drive people to the channel of their choice, where they want to interact with us as a brand. And I think this really helps set up our conversation today, which is really around, you know, how can we how can we optimize in this multichannel environment, you know, where where you know, whether you whether you're calling it multichannel or omnichannel, you know, obviously, we're striving for that that seamless experience. But, you know, one of the things that Matt shared at the event was they they're using a lot of channels, and they even have multiple chatbots. And they're seeing, they're seeing some good results. But, you know, it leads the question, you know, what are the channels we should be using? How can we optimize those? And so hopefully, we can dig into that some of that today. So I'm gonna pause for a moment, and really, you know, John, Patrick, jump in. Let me know your thoughts if you if you have any additions or or, wanna, yeah, discuss any of those points. Well, we were chatting before we started. I Ray Wong had the opening keynote, and I've known Ray for a lot of years. And I thought it was a really, perfect way to start the event because he was discussing the importance of personalization to products and service experiences and content. And he gave a if you haven't seen it, you've gotta watch the on demand because he gave a a very funny analogy about Toast as a service that I I just love. And I would the other session that really stood out to me was, William Hudson from Dell, did a a session, and I spend so much time focused specifically on support. And Bill was coming at it from really a marketing perspective and how Dell is leveraging Kaveo, really across the enterprise and across the website. And you you so all of these things that we're talking about, personalizing the support experience and making sure that it's a relevant web self-service experience is, of course, completely applicable to ecommerce and, you know, everything else. So Mhmm. I that kinda broadened my my view of of the topic. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. And for I mean, from my perspective, based on what you were saying, Bonnie, and and this quote from from Matt is, you know, being in the support and having been in support for so long and having this, you know, case deflection and trying to push people to self-service for for many years. I think we're at the point where with the diversity of generations that make up the workforce, what their needs are or what their preferences are, I think Matt really hit it on the nail, which is as a support organization or any customer facing organization or or company, you need to ensure that you have the diversity of channels that customers want to use to interact with you, whether that is self-service, whether that is a chatbot, whether it's calling you on the phone or sending you an email. You have to offer that and be ready to, make it easy for your customers to interact with you. And every single interaction needs to be relevant, whether it's self-service or whether it is assisted. You need to you need to have that level of relevancy for sure. Yeah. Absolutely. And and I like that you called out the especially, you know, generational preferences because I remember at one event, which it wasn't relevant, but it was a different event where Matt was talking about how some of their customers prefer sending in letters in the mail. And so, you know, it's AARP. They have, members who are older and and still prefer that mail in method, and they they still support that. So I thought that was interesting. You know, it's really about what the customers want and and meeting them, you know, where they wanna be. Like So I think, I wanna take a poll. So maybe we can get this kicked off, Tracy, and really just try to understand what what you all use as channels, and where your preferences are or maybe what you have in place right now. And I don't know if I'll see it on my end, Tracy. So, I see it. There we go. So my my assumption here is, you know, I feel like many people will have a combination of these channels. What do you what do you think, John and and Patrick? Well, the the industry is littered with failed chatbot products projects. So, I'm I'm interested to see how many actually have one. I think, my data says eighty percent have a community. Ninety to ninety four percent have a support portal, just about everybody. So, hopefully, we'll get some all of the above. Yeah. That's that's what I was on a couple of people in the audience who I know It's in my group. Alright. I'm gonna end that poll now. Just make sure you can see the results on screen for me. Here we go. No. Any surprises? Well, we got thirty three percent all of the above. Mhmm. And in one person, none of the above, which is interesting. We're here to help you. Yeah. I'd like I'd like to I'd like to know more about that. Thank you for joining the roundtable today. Okay. I'm gonna get out of everyone's way once more. I'm going to close down that poll. And, Bonnie, I'll be quiet, and it's your show to run. Yeah. Thanks. So, I mean, I would love to hear if if if you're the one who said none of the above. If you would be willing to raise your hand and kind of chat with us about the way that you you're thinking about support, that would be that would be awesome. We're all friends here. You can be friends. Yes. No. See, John, that person is gonna surprise us. They're gonna see that they're doing SMS chat, web chat. It's like WhatsApp. Yeah. Yeah. They're they're done with all the old the old channels. They're they're really in in two in in twenty twenty one, and that's what they're doing. Yeah. That that's why they had put none of the above. In the future. Okay. Well, let's let's continue. So, you know, with with talking about channels, you know, obviously, John, you shared some stats about what you're seeing people have. What are what are some channels that that you see people are leveraging well? Well, we did our twenty twenty one channel preference study recently, and this is a survey of a thousand people, one hundred people from ten different countries spread across four age demographics. And we give them a choice of twenty three separate channels, and I use that word loosely, and ask them, when they need support for a product, which do they prefer to use, occasionally use, seldom use, and never use. And the year over year data was pretty impacts from the pandemic. In particular, video chat. Last year, fifty five percent of respondents from the US said that they never use video chat, and this year, fifty five percent said they preferred or occasionally used video chat. So it completely swapped. And the other interesting thing is there was we've been seeing these digital channels like SMS text and WhatsApp inching up, and they made a huge leap forward. Something like, you know, eighteen percent higher prefer than last year in the US. And, WhatsApp is the fourth most popular channel globally after Google, YouTube, and email. So, you know, if you don't have a WhatsApp strategy, particularly if you have customers in South America, you are not giving them the the support that they want. And so that that was really interesting. Also, phone dropped, eleven percent. It was the only channel in the study that went down year over year. And the other thing I talk a lot about is, email is not going away. It you know, we always thought that younger demographics may not be as enamored with email as older demographics, but they are. And, I think that, you know, we we really need to be investing in more email automation, which has been out there for a decade and a half, and I don't see a lot of people using it. And the finally thing I'll I'll mention is I've done over a hundred inquiries in the last year on chatbots. And so we did, we added chatbot as a channel. And I'll tell you, your customers are not demanding chatbots. So, you know, on average, something like seventy five percent of people say they prefer occasionally use self-service, but only forty percent, prefer occasionally use the chatbot. So, you know, I continue to say if you've got an amazing self-service website and you've got pay setter numbers for deflection and success and engagement, then absolutely do a do a chatbot. But if you're still figuring out your content strategy and your UI and getting it mobile specific, don't don't prioritize the chatbot. I I I just think that, you know, there there are a lot of reasons, and there aren't as many good examples as there there could be. So, unfortunately, I spend more time talking people out of a chatbot than into them. And now I think this data kinda supports that. Yeah. That makes sense. And and, Patrick, have you, what have what have you seen with chatbots, and, have you implemented those in the past? Are you using one now? Can you share a little bit there? Sure. I mean, we're at Coveo in support. Our main channels is is mostly our our community. I mean, you know, ninety nine point nine percent of all of our case volumes comes through that. And the way we interact with our customers is via email once the case is created. So everything is integrated with Salesforce. So, you know, that makes it easy. You know, the the customer can either go to the community and and update their case directly, or they can reply to the email. Phone is not a channel for some reason that our customers are are, using. We get, like, one call every two weeks approximately even though the toll free number is there. So it's not something that they're, that they're they're they're using. But we've we've started having chat discussions. And and, you know, the the whole discussion around chat is is how do we go about implementing it? You know? Do we because of our tick because of the the domain that we're in, you know, do we go down the chatbot route because, you know, we do have, you know, tons of content. You know? We see it in our in our analytics around how people are leveraging content even before they get to that case creation page. So we can assume that there's high levels of self-service success on our community. But is it really what our customers want, versus having direct access via that type of channel, like web chat or video chat with our our support folks. So it is a channel that we're looking into. But, after looking at, the report that, John was, you know, kind enough to share with us. I think it's a broader strategy than that. You have to start thinking about, you know, SMS texting. You have to start thinking about those WhatsApp out there, and and really see what your customers want in the end, how they want to interact with you because I think the the context in which you're in and the type of product that you're supporting will play a huge role in that. You know, if you're if you're more in the hardware business, chances are you might wanna do a little bit more video chat where you can actually have some type of augmented reality part of it so you your agents can see what's going on in the field with with the, the equipment versus if you're in the software. Web chat might make sense with screen sharing and and, you know, taking control of someone else's, environment so that you can show them and guide them through the process. I guess it really depends on the context. But from our perspective, these are things that we're definitely gonna start looking into in our twenty eight in our twenty twenty one, twenty two strategy around how do we, how do we differentiate the channels that we have and that we offer our customers. Yeah. And and, John, I wanna ask you a question. So, you know, we we've talked about chatbots in the past and how, you know, implementations haven't been successful. And I feel like, you know, people are starting to realize that, and and you can you can talk to to someone in support, and they realize that. But why why do you think it continues to be a shiny object, that that people are are still, you know, looking to for for answers? Well, the potential is there. I mean, particularly for frequently asked questions and low complexity issues. I mean, I the old password reset issue, You don't want in a b to b environment where you're you've got degreed professionals answering complex support calls, you don't want them spending their day doing password resets. So, you know, it it makes sense to try to automate things as well as you can. And I think that if we had better examples of really good functioning chatbots, people would be more willing to use them. But, you know, most of them that I see are more of a scripted conversation. And Mhmm. I just think that we need to change the way we look at chatbots and consider it a conversational search. Because I know in talking to to all the folks at Kaveo, the biggest problem search engines have is people who do one or two word searches. You don't have enough to work with to to give them really good relevant content. And that's where the chatbot can kick in and say, I see you're interested in this. What product are you using? What version are you on? What geography are you in? So the chatbot can get enough info that the search tool can do a much better job. And, you know, that's I wish people would look at it that way instead of trying to create the scripted conversation, that's sort of a decision tree that's taken us back to the nineties, and that's what customers hate because their scenario never fits into the script. Yeah. Plus, to to add on that, John, I would also add that, you know, your chatbot needs to be intelligent enough to know when it's time to transfer to an agent and not try to keep people in that you know, try to, you know, case deflection loop over and over again and say, could this help? No. Okay. Then what can I help you with now? It's like, you know, it's a never ending, you know, closed loop that, you know, you never said, okay. If this didn't help, then let me transfer you to an agent. And or what would you like to do? Talk to chat with an agent or or, you know, log a case or something? And give them really the customer options. And and that's an another common problem. If you don't offer web chat, do not build a chatbot because you need a warm transfer to a live agent. And when you see it working really well, often the customer thinks they were talking to an agent, and this live agent pops in, and they they're not even aware that they went from a bot to a person. So, yeah, if you don't have web chat on your website, don't don't consider a chat bot. You've gotta have a warm transfer to a live body if things don't go well. And and one of one of the conversations that I have here internally is if we go wanna go down the chat route, it's not just about support. It has to be about customer success. It has to be about sales. It has to be about every team that is customer facing because, you know, the customer's, need might not necessarily reside in support. So you wanna be able to route them to the right team. And if they select a chat as their preferred channel of interaction, everybody needs to be, you know, able to respond to that and interact within that channel, or else you you're just gonna warm transfer to support, and support's gonna say, oh, you should contact your customer success manager. And that's not a really good, customer experience in the end. Yeah. Yeah. I wanna take a moment. I'm gonna pause for ten awkward seconds and see if anybody, wants to speak up about their chatbot experience or or if you have a question about your the way that that you're doing it, whether you have a positive or negative experience with your chatbot implementation, we'd love to we'd love to hear about it. Okay. We can continue. So, so we talked a little bit about chatbots. I wanna know, you know, are there any other channels you feel that people should be rethinking? I think the the obvious things that according to my data, people aren't investing in enough. One is video. I mean, YouTube is the number two choice after Google. It's where people go for information. And I think, I don't have the data at my fingertips. I think twenty five percent of TSI members have a YouTube channel. So, you know, they're just not incorporating video into the knowledge creation process. Mhmm. And it's just the way people wanna consume information. It's so much easier to watch a video on how to fix something or how to reset something or how to, you know, customize something than it is to read a long drawn out procedure. And, you know, like your AARP comment, baby boomers wanna read it. Not all of them. I'm not not generalizing. But, you know, older demographics prefer a written procedure. Younger demographics will not read it. They want, you know, they wanna watch the YouTube. So I I I don't know why people seem so reluctant, to create more about video. One of the challenges is corporate Barca, comes up with some crazy recommendations that, you know, it's gotta be scripted and it's gotta have a corporate background behind them. People don't want a scripted video. They want frontline support tech, you know, giving them the the truth, and it doesn't have to be pretty. So I, you know, I think that there's a a lot of cultural issues that we we've gotta get over. So that's one. The other is just mobility in general. One of the questions in the survey asks, what device do you use when you contact support? And, overwhelmingly, it's your smartphone. And I have I do a lot of, assessments where I assess people's self-service sites, and I can tell you I have yet to do one that I didn't find something that did not work on a tablet or a smartphone. And the majority of companies say, well, we recoded our website in HTML five or responsive design. We're done. And I'm sorry to tell you that that does not mean every widget, every control, every item you're displaying on a PC is gonna work on a mobile device. So those are you know, video and mobility, I think we've just got to be more understanding of how people consume information and the devices they're using to consume them on because everything is still optimized for a PC and not it's just not reality. Yeah. And I was I was I was reading through, through the report, John. The whole YouTube, you know, discussion or thought process got me thinking around, you know, how support can definitely collaborate with their education services team and look at their top you know, if you want something that really looks nice and that's corporate, you know, approved, if we can say, you can definitely collaborate with your with your education services team and say, hey. These are, like, our top ten or fifteen, articles that are being consulted by our customers. You know, if we if let's let's give it a shot. Let's try to do, like, five minute videos on how to do this. And if they wanna know more, you know, you can link them or you can redirect them to the actual document where they're gonna have the full detail, and it becomes kind of a complimentary effort where both education services and support can collaborate on on, you know, leveraging this channel because it's it's definitely picking up, throughout the the the last years around how people are using YouTube. And just reflecting on on how I use YouTube, you know, when I have a problem at home or it's something I don't know. That's one of the first places that, you know, you go to Google and all of a sudden, you know, YouTube videos pop up and it's like, do it your own. And, I've learned tons of stuff by just watching other people do it. Yeah. And if if you're as a company, if you're not putting those videos out, then then your customers will be watching somebody else, teach them how to how to do this. Right? Yeah. And and it also you know, one of the things that you mentioned in the last roundtable, Patrick, is this idea that, you know, support isn't just break fix. And so when you think about, you know, the types of content that you're creating, you know, video can be really helpful in in some of the that how to, type of content and, learning, as you mentioned, education. So yeah. I think what I think what's scaring a bit of people doing it and, you know, I'll include our, you know, our organization in there is is the time dedication. You know, sometimes it's easier to build that, written documentation because KCS is so embedded in our workflow. Then you just get to the end of closing your case. Your knowledge article is basically all created. You just have to finalize it, make it, you know, shiny and bright, and publish it, versus the video is is something completely different. Then you have to put the time and effort in in actually, you know, building it, maintaining it. Mhmm. It's you know, you don't necessarily own where it resides. It's it's on YouTube. So you have to think about that as well as if something changes in in that article that is tied to this YouTube video, then you have to okay. I have to redo the video or have to edit it, which which means that you need to have the resources to be able to, to to handle that. Yeah. That's a good call out. We had someone raise their hand, but it looks like, Robert, let me know if you wanna rejoin the conversation. I can let you do that, or it may have been a hand raising mistake. But we can get you ah, there you are again. And you're able to unmute yourself. You shall be hey, Robert. Thanks for joining. You're welcome. Hello. So I I I think to to this topic, what I've seen start to be successful because this is like a lot of other technologies and approaches. Right? You try one. It it's either you don't have the right knowledge or you don't have the right context. But, Patrick, I think, like you were saying, one of the things that we've seen be successful, the closer we can get to the client or the user and their context. So where we started doing things that went from, you know, we had the knowledge, then we built in the chatbots. We looked at how people are using the channels. Where we've seen really good uptake that makes sense is where we have more telemetry and more information to act upon, and that is in app. So where we've started putting the support directly in the application. So rather than being yet another destination that people have to remember, oh, wait. Is this on my phone? And I have to go to that other website. How do I get there? What's my credentials? What do I have to tell it? How people mention the application name may not be what the technology people call it. But if you do it right there, where and then, again, a lot of our context is is business applications. So if I'm offering support in the context of where you are, I know which module you're in. I might know what client or ticket or or any other like like like like Kopia itself. Right? You've got more relevance. You've got more data points that you can act on. So it becomes more like like the best support technician you ever work with. The people that know the right questions to ask and they're kind of intuitive about it, you can start to build that in a way that when we were just doing, like, a chatbot based on good FAQs, yeah, they can do FAQs. We've also seen instances where even with good FAQs, we did a terrible chatbot or or the experience, it wasn't trained enough, and and the the way people it just it just wasn't getting the reaction. And people will abandon it really quickly and hit zero and say, how do I get a real person? This is, like, this is horrible, which means you never really get around to training it. So, you know, it's it's like anything else in marketing where you've got that first chance to make a good impression. But, again, I think where where we've learned through through a lot of experience in in trying different things is really getting as close to the user experience as we can and really augmenting the application experience with the support built in. It's not it's not bolted on. It's not a separate thing. And I think as we've talked about before, it needs to be a single product, a single application. The the the people using your systems shouldn't feel your organization. They shouldn't feel a handoff between different parts of the groups. Now I'm with the networking team. Now I'm with the product team. But I think as someone else said, it does have to be full service because if that service only handles, like, a third or a portion of what people are likely to do, even if you tell them, hey. By the way, we only have a couple of things, you know, enabled right now. It's it goes back to that total customer experience. It's really frustrating, and they won't give you the time to come back in six months and add the other stuff, because it's just really frustrating. And and I think, like we said before, also, whether it's whether you're an AARP or whatever else, these are all individuals. So whether you're on a border of two generations, but you were raised different or how however you feel about technology and support and what you're trying to do in all these different scenarios, you know, it's just got you but I think you also have to be mindful of it and watch, is it being used? Are we getting good uptake? Are we getting good promoter scores? Is it helping people solve problems, are all kinda key. I I think I think the good news is, I think, in today's roundtable, we've touched upon, just about all those, which is, which is really solid. Yeah. I can tell you, Robert, that is a huge, topic of discussion at TSIA at the moment. I mean, our view is ultimately, there will be no self-service website. Right? It's all right there within the app, and so is customer success onboarding, everything. The latest term is end product performance support. And, you know, you should never have to leave, the product to get help, and you shouldn't even have to ask. I mean, ideally, the system's gonna notice you're struggling and prompt you with assistance. I mean, going back to the old Microsoft paper clip, which everybody hated at the time Way ahead of its time. We weren't ready. Yeah. But that that that's really I think that's really where where ultimately we need to be. We just we just need to get the product team to identify that as a priority and fund it, which is the roadblock. And and, John, would you say also I think I think that's I think that's absolutely right, and that's where things are kinda heading. But there's also a place for, like, a a self guided, like like like like we said, people consume information or find information or look for it in different ways in different circumstances. Right? Like, even for, like, within word and things, you you can you can look do spelling checks and thesaurus and all that stuff is right there. Well, what about people when you're trying to look up, spelling, of a word and you're not even close enough to it for the dictionary to kinda pop up and say, you know, you need a place to go to to to say, well, this is what I'm looking for. Because, again, especially in in a large global enterprise, different regional dialects, different word terms and words are used in different places. So I think I think it's a matter of I think that's the biggest place to focus in the in product, space because that's really there's gonna be a lot of bang for the buck and a lot of deflection and a lot of, improved adoption and usability can come from that direction. But but we still do have to have, like, a landing page and some self guided pieces. And, again, optimally, it's leveraging the same back end and all the same data. It's just a different way of connecting people. Yeah. For sure. I mean, the the very first case study I ever had of of support from within the application was a Coveo case study with Adobe. This was I did a keynote on this in, like, twenty fifteen or something. And when we were trying to find more examples where, you know, there's still not a lot out there. So, yeah. I think a lot of updated on your progress, Robert. I'd love to hear. Yeah. It's it's probably what I've seen where the struggle is. It's it's organizational and politics. It's the product owner saying I own this and the operation team saying I own that as opposed to, like, a DevOps approach where we are doing this together. What can we contribute to get it done? And that's, I think, industry wide, we're still kinda getting into that. Right? Yeah. And and I think you you you touched right on it, Robert, where, you know, this whole, for lack of a bet of a better term, this whole case deflection and self-service conversation has to get out of just support's, hands. It needs to be a corporate, it needs to be on a corporate agenda and say, how can we best serve our customers across all the possible channels that we have? And it's it's doesn't just reside within support or or any other customer facing organization. Could I speak to the question Jim submitted, about if there are good videos on YouTube, should companies still please them? It's it's a tough one, Jim, especially when, you know, your company has oceans and oceans and oceans of administrators creating YouTube videos. But I would still say you should do it, because you don't have access to the consumption data on other people's videos. So you don't know how often they're being viewed, how far through they're viewing them. You know, you're not really getting sight into the analytics. But also, I think that you wanna build reliance that you're the place to go for information. So maybe there are fifty eight videos on one topic from different administrators, but I wanna know what you have to say. The official word that I know is correct. So, you know, I'd prioritize, but, ultimately, yeah, I I would want your company's official take on all of those FAQs because you wanna build stickiness to rely on them, not some third party implementer they've never heard of because they they may sign up for their support offering instead of yours. Mhmm. Yeah. Jim, do you do you have anything to add to that or, anything else there? Okay. Great. Yep. There he is. Oh, there we go. No. I I agree with John. It's, it's something we've thought about, which is this notion of if you could crowdsource your videos, and that could help you scale a lot. I agree with John's point of a lot of times customers want the kind of official point of view from a company, so that's totally true. I think I I've talked to people that have also thought about the idea of could you offer to buy the the content rights from from the people that have produced those other videos? If you thought they were really good, then you would have the, you know, the ability to get those metrics. But I still think it I still think the, you know, producing it from a company perspective is probably still the best approach. It just does cost a little bit more. More. Mhmm. And it seems that there's some opportunity there given that there's a lot of great content out there on a lot of products that's just sitting out there and is quite quite good in a lot of cases. Yeah. For sure. Yeah. And maybe even something, you know, you can start pulling into the community and having customers participate in that video creation. Okay. So I wanna kind of, shift the conversation a little bit, and really, you know, start looking at, how we can look outside in. And so what what do I mean by this? You know, oftentimes, we talk about customer preferences and what our customers want. And, but but how but do we actually take that into consideration when we, when we set up an implementation, for example? How do you know, how do you know how do you begin to know what your customers prefer? So I'm gonna post this question, to you, John, first and just say, you know, what what are how can people start identifying what their customers prefer? You know, you you made a comment, you know, your customers don't want, aren't asking for chatbots, but how do you how do you know what your customers want and and need for support? Well, unfortunately, most companies ask the VP or the CIO or the CFO who's signing the checks at the customer site for their input. And I can promise you, they are not the ones calling for support. So, you know, I I cannot tell you how many arguments I have with TSIA members who tell me that their customers only want phone and email. And I simply don't believe that's true. You've trained them to use phone and email. So you can survey them and ask them and make sure you're surveying the end users, the, you know, the system end users who are calling with the how do I questions. But I think, you know, again, you've trained them to use the channels you offer today, and that's probably what they're gonna tell you. So this channel preference study, we used to let, our members forward the survey to their customers, and I would give them a report showing how their customers answered compared to the industry. And in most cases, they always preferred the channels they have today because that's what you've trained them to do. So I think you need to do more than survey work. I think it's, doing some, some focus groups, having some dialogues at user groups where you're actually discussing, tell me your best support experiences with other companies, with consumer brands, in your personal life, and get them thinking about, you know, maybe they've had an amazing experience with Comcast, which is kind of an oxymoron. But let's say somebody has somewhere. You know, what what was that and how would that apply to an enterprise discussion? So I think you kinda have to do the bread crumbs for the the customers to give you that kind of input. Because if you just ask them what do you prefer, they're just gonna tell you whatever you're doing today. So it it's a discussion, not a survey. And I think it's an ongoing thing. And I also think you've gotta be brave and take a leap. And I'm telling you, my data we've been gathering this survey data for years now, and it's you know, it changes year to year, but it's fairly consistent. So I think you can look at, you know, some of the country specific data and take the leap and build some of these channels. And, you know, you're gonna have to market them. Just because you start up WhatsApp doesn't mean anybody's gonna use it. But if you market it heavily, they're gonna start using it. And if they have a great experience, they're gonna keep using it. So, you know, that that was a long answer, but, it it's it it's having a real conversation with customers. As my former colleague and and friend, Judy Plott said, you know, it starts with what is the experience you wanna create for your customers. And you gotta start with that conversation. And from there, you know, what are the people process and technology to deliver it? But, you know, again, sometimes you just have to take a leap of faith because if you only offer phone and email today, it it's not enough. So pick one and add it this year and see what happens. Yeah. I I couldn't agree more, John, with that. I mean, you know, a lot of times, do we have a tendency to assume and say that's what that's what we wanna do, and that's where we wanna go without even, you know, validating with our customers what they want. And then we sit down. We we kinda do a retrospect, and we look at it and says, oh, well, that didn't work well. Did it? Because we, you know, we based ourselves on on assumptions. Or someone else is doing this with their customers, we should do the same thing and different context, different technology. You know, there's there's a lot of differences in in how we, we partner with our customers and what they want. So, I mean, you know, definitely, it starts with, you know, having that discussion with with customers and trying to figure out, you know, what they want. And and, you know, you know, we we talked about in product support. I think of, you know, Coveo as being a product. Our our, you know, our customers are not in our product day in, day out. I mean, it's not like, you know, how we in support use Sales Force. I mean, that's the central piece of everything we do. That's our CRM. So definitely in product support, there makes sense. But from a Coveo perspective, people are not in the admin tool all the time. You know? They're using the technology, and it's working for them. So doesn't product support is it, like, the pro top priority for us? Maybe it is for the administration. But for the user the administrators, but for the users, it might be something completely different that they're looking for. So you have to take all that into consideration. Yeah. And I I like the way that that you phrase that that question, John, in in relation to what what you're saying, Patrick, is, you know, what what is that experience that you're trying to create? So not just thinking about the tool that you're wanting to implement, but the experience that you're wanting to create. Because when you think about that, then you start taking those things into consideration like you mentioned. You know? Maybe maybe it's not so much for the end user. Maybe it's more for the admin, and you can really kind of get more strategic about how you're implementing that technology. Well, one of the things that we're seeing is younger demographics have more preferred channels. I provocatively call them channel promiscuous because, you know, the older demographics usually prefer two or three channels max. Younger demographics, prefer, like, ten. So it's very situational. You know? If you're on a website and there's a chat option, you're gonna use it if it's a simple question. If there's smoke coming out of the machine, you're gonna call. Phone calls never are gonna go away. If it's long and detailed, you're probably gonna send an email. So, you know, it's very situational and, you know, as as several people have said, and it's also a personal preference, what you've had good experiences or bad experiences with before. So I think the more channels we can offer, the better because you're gonna find that customers use all of the channels. They don't just pick one and stick with it. Yeah. And and you have to be if I if I look Laurel has a question. I it's gonna be a tough one. I I was just gonna say if if you if you look if I look back on my personal experiences sometimes in dealing with with, you know, consumer technologies is, you know, exactly like you were saying, John, something was a little urgent. So I say, hey. I'll call. And then, you know, I'm I'm on hold. I'm on hold, and I'm navigating the website, and they see the chat option. They say, oh, well, I'll try to chat just in case I get someone quicker. And within thirty seconds, I have someone on chat, but on the phone, I've been waiting for twenty minutes. I have to find that right balance. It it you know, to me, it seemed like the supplier just wanted me to put wanted to push me to the chat option and didn't wanna talk to me. But as a customer, it's a little frustrating, especially if you're not looking at the diversity of channels that you have. You have to find that right balance to make sure that the experience remains the same across your channels. Mhmm. I I was just gonna add that, that to the situational and kind of training your customers' conversation. And I had a a recent experience with travel and a snowstorm, and, the the phone queue to the airline was over five hours. Oh my god. So, so you're you're frantic trying to, you know, find other channels and that actually work because, because some of them, you know, weren't available based on the the type of service that I was needing. Right? And so you really need someone to, fix my canceled flight, and so it's not something that I can self serve. But, you you literally, you know, are sitting there on the phone or waiting for a callback. And, and I this is one of the first times I tried text, text support, and it got done in forty five minutes. And so That's good. Yeah. So I I think that sometimes these these, like, crises and situations with support can can really quickly help educate your customers different channels that that might work better. Now you certainly don't want yourself to be in that situation, you know, where your customers are are sitting on the phone for five hours or or have the potential for that. But but I do think that sometimes something fairly drastic can also, you know, open open eyes, right, and and start to for people to to branch out and and force them into some sort of uncomfortable situation and then they're like, oh, that wasn't so bad. That actually was a great experience, so I'm gonna try that again. Yeah. It's a great example, Laurel. And a good point. I mean, you know, we we talk about surveying customers. You know, maybe maybe we're we're kind of leading the witness when we do those surveys and and asking them if they if they're happy with this channel or not happy with this channel. And and that discussion, you know, that that you recommended, John, is really important in getting that context and getting those nuance of of how they want to experience support, regardless of channel. I think I think that's where the, that's where the the whole notion of customer effort score comes into play. Yeah. It could be. When when you're measuring it is is you shouldn't just focus on, you know, the customer effort score for overall support, but you should have a customer effort score per channel that you have because you wanna see, you know, is there any friction across our channels? You know, to Laurel's example, there's a lot of friction on the phone, but it was very easy via the text channel. Mhmm. So if you survey both these channels separately, you can definitely, you know, right out of the gate, have a good idea on where you need to remove the friction, where you need to improve from a, you know, from a channel perspective. Because you might be doing very well in managing a certain channel, but not so well in another one from your customer's perspective. So NPS is is okay, but I think that customer effort question is it will will get you where you want to be, in in seeing how people are appreciating your channels or not. Yeah. Absolutely. I'm gonna go ahead and and start looking forward now. So, you know, in in our last few minutes of discussion, John, I'll I'll ask you, how are you how are you helping TSIA members, map their channel investment road map? Well, I've done a lot of workshops on that, and I've dragged a couple of people in the audience through the glass on that one too. Mhmm. It's I I think what you need to keep in mind is when you're adding these new channels, I mean, to bring it back to Caveo, you probably optimize this amazing agent desktop experience for phone. And then I see them bring in a separate chat product from a stand alone vendor that isn't integrated to anything, and it's completely separate. So they're not getting suggested content. They're not getting suggestion processes. They're not getting suggestions on experts they can collaborate with. It's just implemented as this add on channel that is not even integrated into the CRM system. So, you know, I think you've really gotta look at, how do we create the best customer experience, but also the best agent experience. And how can we add these new channels one at a time into the existing agent desktop and leverage all of the knowledge management tools, all the AI, and anything that you've got, you've gotta bring the channels into that experience. And that's, you know, the problem that I see is people just add these extra channels on as a as a plug in product that has nothing to do with anything else. And then it's a it's a disjointed experience. The customer feels it. The employee dreads working in that channel. They don't feel as smart in that channel because they're not getting the knowledge management suggestions they are for phone calls, for example. So, you know, it's not just about technology. And my advice, I, you know, I have this crawl, walk, run methodology for three phases of of planning digital transformation. And it starts with what are your existing technology providers and how far can I go with them? So, you know, Jim's on the line from Salesforce. They have lots of channels, and seventy percent of our members are Salesforce customers. So before you look anywhere else, see if you can just add it in to what you're already doing with your CRM provider or your call center provider, and try to go that route first. And once you exhaust all the capabilities of your existing incumbent vendors, then we can help you find some best of breed tools to add on top of it. But, you know, I I just see people starting with these really advanced capabilities instead of building on what they already have, which would be much easier change management for for the people involved. Yep. Exactly. That's exactly what I was having what I had in mind when when you were speaking, John, is is all about managing the change management within your organization because, you know, I just I just leveraged the conversation of chat within Caveo. And, you know, I I have people at the extremes. You have people who say, oh, yes. It's a good idea. And we see the value, and you have other people say, oh my god. Another channel to manage. And it's like it's it's all about how you're gonna bring it to life and make it easy on your on your, your support, resources to incorporate it within their their, their day to day activities. And and, you know, it you need that central repository, which is your CRM, and everything needs to start from there. Great. So, I love this discussion. There we have just a couple minutes left. So I do wanted to to take a pause and see if anybody has any questions for John or Patrick. And, I mean, if there's one thing that I've learned today, it's it's definitely time to take a step back and and relook at your channel strategy, not just from a technology perspective, but from a, a customer experience perspective as well. I can I'll just mention, Patrick and Bonnie were talking about the report I shared with them, the twenty twenty one channel preference study. I I I gave them a draft version. It's gonna be published on the first day of our Interact conference, because I'm doing a a session on that. So it'll be on our website, on May fourth. And if you aren't a TSIA member and you want a copy, shoot me an email, j r at t s I a dot com, and I'll be happy to share a copy with you. That's super generous, John. Thank you for that. We don't have any hand raisers, and I wanna thank those who did raise their hand. We definitely want more of that as we do our next session and our next session. And, quickly before we let you go for your afternoon, your morning, we have an upcoming event with, John and our customer, OSI Soft, and Bonnie will be, once again expertly, navigating that session. That's coming up next week, so I strongly encourage you there. And then, of course, with TSI's event following the first week of May, we'll be there as well. Just a big thanks to John, Patrick, and Bonnie for leading this conversation. As I said, also to those folks who raised their hands and participated, we thank you for that. Otherwise, this session is being recorded, and we're gonna have it in your inboxes soon. And then we're also looking ahead to schedule, our next roundtable. So if you have ideas, you can reach out to me as well. Reply to that email you get with the recording. You've given me a ton of ideas, Bonnie. I'm sure the same, for some of our next sessions and some of our next thinkings. So we really do appreciate that time. With that, I'm gonna end the the roundtable for today. Have a lovely day, everybody, and we'll talk soon. Take care. Thanks, everybody. Same. Everyone. Bye.