← The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström®: Expert Mode Marketing Technology, AI, & CX
The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström®: Expert Mode Marketing Technology, AI, & CX
#636: Building resilience in customer service operations with John Finch, RingCentral
00:27:10
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- [00:01]
A
The agile brand. Welcome to Season seven of the Agile Brand where we discuss the trends and topics marketing leaders need to know. Stay curious, stay agile and join the top enterprise brands and martech platforms as we explore marketing, technology, AI, e commerce, and whatever's next for the omnichannel customer experience. Together we'll discover what it takes to create an agile brand built for today and tomorrow and built for customers, employees and continued business growth. I'm your host Greg Kilstrom, advising Fortune 1000 brands on martech, AI and marketing operations. The Agile Brand podcast is brought to you by Tech Systems, an industry leader in full stack technology services, talent services and real world application. For more information, go to teksystems.com to make sure you always get the latest episodes, please hit subscribe on the app you listen to podcasts on and leave us a rating so others can find us as well. And now onto the show. What would happen to your business if your customer service operations went down right now? Do you have the tools and strategies in place to handle a sudden crisis or would your contact center be scrambling to meet demand? Today we're discussing how AI and cloud based solutions can help organizations manage crises and enhance customer service operations. With John Finch, Global Vice President of product marketing at RingCentral, we're going to explore our key strategies for building resilience and customer service, particularly in response to recent IT outages. John, welcome to the show.
- [01:40]
B
Thanks Greg. Happy to be here. Thanks for having me.
- [01:43]
A
Yeah, yeah. Looking forward to this. And before we dive in though, actually just wanted to maybe give a little background on yourself and your role at Ringcentral.
- [01:53]
B
Absolutely, absolutely. I am. I have been at Ringcentral now for my second run, I'm a boomerang for just over a year. Prior to that I spent time here at RingCentral from 2017 to 2021. I'd also spent some time at Zendesk and a few other contact center companies that are pretty well known in the industry over the course of my years. So I've got couple of good decades of products, product oriented marketing around all the innovations that have been happening over those years in the contact center and customer service. So I've got lots of stories to tell over time and I'm super happy I'm here at RingCentral and here at RingCentral specifically. I'm running our product marketing for our contact center portfolio. Great, great.
- [02:42]
A
So yeah, let's, let's dive in here and I want to start with, you know, there's certainly been over the last year there's been some, you pretty high profile global IT outages, lots of effects for lots of businesses in various ways. But I want to talk about the impact of these types of outages on customer service operations. So why don't we start maybe to just kind of paint the picture. How are these customer service operations affected? When there's a global IT outage,
- [03:12]
B
it can be devastating. In most cases, organizations will find a way to deflect calls and to more digital interactions and sort of drive people to call back activities and things like that to sort of decrease the amount of stress and difficulties that, you know, passengers or customers in general might be having. You know, airlines rebooking flights and things like that, you know, there's an immediate need. So I think a lot of times these organizations get into damage control kind of modes and figure out the best ways to do that with regards to utilizing web applications as well as websites to do that and automated booking activities going in the background. But in a lot of cases it's challenging. Right. And so most organizations really need to think through that. You know, that term disaster recovery is real and multimodality and multiple ways that customers can get through to the brand during times of crisis of this nature really is important to be thinking through an overall strategy.
- [04:17]
A
Yeah, I mean what, what can we learn from organizations that remained maybe either unaffected or relatively unaffected, you know, versus those that experienced some of those more significant disruptions.
- [04:31]
B
You know, organizations that have sort of figured out a way to provide a great level of self service, as I was kind of indicating here, are really the ones that are going to win. And it isn't necessarily about having live agents pick up a call, but it's having, in the case of today, AI agents be able to take interactions both voice and digitally. And those agents are intelligent virtual agents, if you will, can actually take those interactions and solve the problem for the customer there. You're just never going to be able to know if you need to staff up appropriately. There's never enough people power in any organization today, especially in the, in the contact center. We don't have the contact centers of old. Typically in most organizations where you've got staffs of people in giant buildings that are answering every type of, of interaction you could think of. It just doesn't exist anymore. So you're doing a lot more with less. And so figuring out ways to leverage technology that will meet your customers where they are in both normal business times as well as in times of crisis, like outages, et cetera, will be the way to do that, and that's really a part of that planning. But I do really see, Greg, that AI plays a significant role in this. It's less about modality and more about the availability of tools like AI and the agents that come with the AI to be able to craft that customer experience in a way that makes those customers satisfied and solves their problems.
- [06:00]
A
Yeah, I mean that's, that's a great segue because I definitely wanted to talk about the, the AI component of this and how it can alleviate some of the pressure on the humans and also obviously from the, from the customer perspective. So, you know, there's AI driven tools like intelligent virtual agents, automated responses, you know, how do, how do you see these, managing some of these sudden spikes during a potential crisis?
- [06:27]
B
Yeah, you know, I think, I think today's environment globally has been that most folks are in some way leveraging AI. I mean, even if you're doing a Google search now and you're someone that's not very technology savvy, even the realization that you're actually using Google's AI to surface those results that you're looking for, you know, that's an AI centric interaction. And I think the simplicity of that is really one that sort of dovetails into customer service, if you will. And I see that, you know, as we've evolved from saying, hey, you know, it's voice and then we've gone to Omnichannel and how many channels do you support and web applications for specific brands and how can you digitally support that via the web app for customer service? You know, we've seen that with Uber as an example and lots of other companies that are digital first organizations, you know, that that movement has already happened. But I think the AI takes to the next level, which is like, hey, it doesn't matter. Those modalities that you're coming through to, to this brand as a customer, you're going to have that window that you're going to and asking that specific question for customer service. And it's either a quick question or it's a complex rebooking as an example, or a purchase of some sort, being able to duck that transaction efficiently and effectively across voice or digitally with the same information on the back end, the same connectivity to the systems that are necessary to complete that is really the way that brands should be looking at technology that they're implementing for customer service. That's the way you solve it. And so my point in kind of tying that together is us as consumers are used to doing researches, having this window and Solving the problem ourselves as fast as we possibly can. Leveraging AI. It's leveraging AI to do the same thing for something that you need to rebook, like going to the website, rebooking it, using the chatbot. If you can't get through effectively in the user interface that exists in the application on the web for rebooking, and then being able to actually call in and have that same experience as well that you would with a web chat agent and having that thing all come together for a unified experience, I think that's really where it is and where it will continue to go. In addition to that, it's like we've all sort of had the bad experiences of the past with regards to interactive voice response units. Right. Our ivr.
- [08:52]
A
Right.
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B
And that's where you're hitting zero to exit quickly and get to an agent.
- [08:57]
A
It's like the doom loop. Right?
- [08:58]
B
It's doom loop, exactly. And that's the piece that really, you know, people are like, you know, the self service thing doesn't really work and we have to overcome that. But I think with AI you do overcome that. You have a human touch type interaction. The answers are there. The connectivity to the systems to be able to conduct those transactions is there. You have that great quality experience that the brand has laid out, chosen the right technology vendor to back that up and put and implement that in the cloud and then be able to augment and enhance and improve performance over time as it's being used by your customers.
- [09:39]
A
Yeah, and so in addition to the customer experience which you, which you described, there's also potential to help the agents themselves as well. It's almost the inverse. Right. Like can you talk a little bit about, you know, AI powered agent assist tools and how those can help in almost the inverse way?
- [09:57]
B
Yeah, I think that's exactly, you know, it's a great segue into like, what is that intelligence in the background? So obviously the data that's collected during those interactions is part of a knowledge base or other data tools that exist inside the organization that you're integrated with. And so that same information that's being used by an intelligent virtual agent or an agent assist or could be used for an agent assist as well. So you think about it, you're a live agent, it's listening to the call because the transcriptions going on, or watching the interaction, if it's a digital interaction, of course, and then it's actually providing guidance, I would say to the agent to take under consideration. So that's pulling from that same knowledge base that An AI agent would be using to interact with a customer. But for the live agent, that same information is there and it's the choice obviously of the agent to take that information and leverage and utilize that during the interaction. But it does guide and it does listen and it does follow. And it's especially important in certain situations where you're starting to, you know, have quality adherence types of interactions, or you need to say specific things based on, you know, different clauses or information that an insurance agency would need to provide or a financial institution like, you need to have these disclosures be able to be read out loud and those things can be prompted in that agent assist sort of component. So again, those tools sort of complement each other and come together nicely in the fact that the data and the information and the knowledge base is all feeding either the virtual agent or the live agent in an agent assist sort of scenario.
- [11:45]
A
And so to get back a little bit more to the infrastructure side of this, you know, it's not just a global IT outage that may be the issue, it may just be a surge in demand. Right. You know, there could be a number of explanations of why customers are waiting longer or having connectivity issues or things like that. So can you talk a little bit about why cloud and scalable cloud solutions are, you know, are, are so key here and you know, how should organizations be, you know, preparing using solutions like that to again, whether it's a crisis or I guess it could be a good thing if there's a lot of demand for something as well. But you know, what, whatever the need, you know, how, how should they be thinking about cloud to solve?
- [12:33]
B
You know, the promise of cloud is real. Right. And I think that organizations like Salesforce, who sort of paved the way for the rest of us as we came off prem and went into the cloud with technologies that provided a multi tenant environment with unlimited scalability, you know, five nines or greater uptime and could scale based on demand, you know, those promises have been fulfilled. And I think a lot of organizations that are still using on premise equipment, in most cases for customers that I've talked to, it works, right? And there's nothing wrong with it. If there's basic functionality, it's either being supported by the vendor who implemented it if they're still around, or there's enough talent within the organization or subsequent relationships with other vendors that they have to be able to maintain that equipment and update software and do the fixes that are necessary within that timeline. That's fine. Like you continue to use those. I think the Challenge that people have is how do I implement AI on top of this old legacy system, right? And then do I turn to a point solution from a cloud vendor that does this? Specific things like I'll use IBA or interactive virtual agents as an example. Those things like you can do that, right? So there, there are solutions where you can augment that and bring that technology in on top of and it will work, right? The thing that we see with a lot of our customers specifically is that having one solution end to end, that is riding on one single voice platform, that all the technology is embedded in one area where you have your employee communications and your customer communications all in one solution becomes easier. The data that you're transcribing and collecting through all of those interactions, both internal and external, provide more intelligence and provide more ability to improve the overall organization by leveraging that one vendor. It also becomes more cost effective. It also becomes future proof, which is also another promise of the cloud. So you're going to get the innovations as those things roll out. It's going to get the scale and the performance. You don't need to have the necessary staff, you're not going to have to have vendors, you're not going to have special contracts with third party folks that happen to know that legacy system that can fix it when it goes down. That's the answer, right? Really, you want to get to that, that, that vendor that can provide them all. But there also are steps that you can go through. We've done a lot of talks here at RingCentral around how to best deploy AI in your contact center, how to look at it, you know, and every organization is a little different depending upon size. And I think that the one thing that we sort of talk a lot about with our customers is that we're building an AI solution that is fit to purpose, right? It is for businesses. It's not this large language model like ChatGPT for example, that's going out and can write a poem for you. What do you need to write a poem for in customer service? You need to know business nomenclature. You need to know specifically information that is for healthcare or financial services as an example. And to be able to speak that language and even more be more specific for my specific insurance company or my credit union located in this specific location with this type of customer. So those kinds of things are what we bring to the table and it's, it's solving the problem, which is contact center as a service or customer service, or you know, UCAS unified communications as a service or Employee collaboration and communication. And so at the end of the day, though, all of these things come together, for one thing, and it's to solve revenue problems. How do I make more money, how do I sell more, how do I keep my customers happy and solve customer problems quickly? And how do I continue to innovate on the technology or whatever it is, service, et cetera, that I'm selling into the marketplace so that I can continue to outperform my competition, period. And that's what we're trying to provide, is that unified solution that does all of that. And that's what our customers and our case studies will all say. So we're continuing down that path and we'll continue to innovate as such. But again, it's that AI that's fit to purpose. It's one solution and you feel good about it, right? And you don't have multiple vendors and all of those complex things that SaaS doesn't provide or one vendor doesn't provide.
- [16:56]
A
Well. And, you know, so we've, we've talked about some of the features and definitely from the infrastructure standpoint, you know, a lot of what you've mentioned are things that RingCentral does. And so, you know, you work with a lot of CX leaders, contact center leaders. How do you work with them on, let's maybe say, the softer side of this, which is, okay, I'm now introducing AI into a process that didn't have that level of automation for it. How do you work with them to do that in a seamless and scalable way as well? Because I would imagine it doesn't necessarily happen all at once, right?
- [17:32]
B
No, it doesn't. I mean, there's a lot of consultation, I would say, right? I mean, most organizations, you know, I was talking to somebody this morning that happens to work at Apple, right? And I was talking to him about, you know, I was going to do this podcast today with you, and, you know, we were just kind of riffing on a little bit about what Apple's doing with AI, and it's sort of this comment of, you know, look, everybody's talking about AI and if, if folks, especially in businesses, aren't aware of AI, it would be a pretty rare effect, right? So I think, I think that component that most people, either in their personal lives, because we've all got phones, I don't know what Apple's market share is, but, you know, most, most cases you have access to AI in some way. We also talked about Google and just Google searches, which most people do as well. Across the world. So you're touching AI, you know about AI, you're using AI and I think when you go into a business environment, you're trying to figure out from the CEO down, the CEO is going to say, hey look, we need to figure out how to do better with less. We're all in that environment today. Doesn't matter what industry you're in. And what's the answer to that? Well, it's not replacing people necessarily, but it is to augment and enhance the work and the performance of the organization through the people that are using AI. And so how do you do that and what do you do to do that? So go solve it, says the CEO. Now underneath, what are the areas inside the organization that will be touched and impacted the most? And in most cases it's customer service and it's probably sales. Right? Again, revenue based components. What size organization am I, Am I going to go get access to a large language model or am I going to build my own small language model? Am I investing, investing in building AI in house? Maybe not right now. Maybe I need to prove it in a certain scenario, a fit to purpose scenario like customer service. And who are the vendors that are doing that? Well, there's a lot of us, right? It's a very crowded space. So who's the best, what is the best technology and how do we do this? And then you want to partner with an organization that has done this and can help you think through it. So the expertise lies within the vendor who's done this for other customers to guide them through. And you know the loose term is professional services, but consult through that. What do you want your organization's customer experience to be? What is your journey map today? Have you thought through that? What does this look like today? Where do you see it tomorrow? Having those conversations with a vendor that's going to provide you with that level of service to then help you make choices on what you need for AI so that your organization will use it and see the value and understand the benefit. Then at the same time, it's up to us as developing these products to make the AI easy to access, make it discoverable in the product, allow it to showcase itself, the usability, how it's performing summarizations to admins or supervisors in the context and on a weekly basis of how they've had 10,000 interactions this week. Of these 10,000, this was the KPI performance across the board. And every one of those improved your CSAT by four basis points. That's a celebration. And then those Discoveries lean in further into discovering what else you can do with the AI and where else you can turn it on in that customer journey. Just as an example.
- [21:17]
A
Yeah, yeah, well, and I like that you use the term augment and you know, in describing this relationship and you know, it doesn't mean that there may not be some differences in job roles and all those things over the years ahead, but AI, as you've, as you've said, you know, AI generated transcripts, summaries, things like that can coach agents in doing their jobs better. That's not AI replacing them, that's actually AI helping them. Right, so. Exactly, you know, because we're, these are high pressure. I mean, I've, I've, I've been a customer and, and frustrated before, I'll admit. I'm sure we all have at some point. It's like these people are doing their best, you know, doing the best that they can and dealing with, you know, whatever situations arise. So do CX leaders, are they, are they generally kind of getting that idea of the, the opportunity with augmentation? You know, how, how is that, how can that best be communicated to them?
- [22:11]
B
I think they are. Look, I mean, we still have conversations and it's like, okay, how can it cut costs? You know? Right. You know, do I need to hire a whole bunch of agents? I have high turnover. You know, this is a problem. I can't deal with all this. And what we like to talk about isn't, hey, you can cut 300 agents now that you have AI. That's, that's not the answer. There's an attrition component, attrition component that comes along with agents naturally. And I think when you implement this, it's going to make agents lives better in general. So those agents that enjoy what they're doing become more important to the organization, are leaning into their jobs. They become specialists in this area. And instead of answering mundane tasks like password resets or, you know, simplified questions and things like that, this is where replacement with an AI agent can do that. Right. So then you can uplevel some of these agents that do lean in. Some will tread out, there are some savings. But then the other piece of that savings is you've got these individuals that are great with customers and you can have better customer relationships. So more important interactions with a live agent and a customer become, you know, priceless. Right. And that's where more revenue can come from. That's where upsell, that's where more proactive service levels come from. Things like that naturally come into play so we try to coach folks through that and I think they get it. I mean, immediately a CEO is going to be like, how can you save money? And then it's like, okay, well we'll save money. Here's sort of our plan of saving money. And then, you know, we're going to have this natural attrition, then we're going to uplevel the service. But our differentiation in the business and why customers are going to stay with us is because we have different differentiated service levels. We have effortless customer experiences across the board and our CSAT scores have improved. And we're seeing this, you know, NPI go up and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Right. And it just kind of falls down the line. And I think there is that education and then there is that thinking through that business plan of how you're going to implement this and what kind of savings you're going to see. You enter in with specific, like, these are my goals. This is why I'm switching vendors. This is why I'm having this discussion. And then it's having that conversation of other areas to look into, then coming back with the customer and understanding where they've seen the value and continuing to improve that as the relationship continues.
- [24:43]
A
Yeah, yeah, I love it. Well, John, thanks so much for joining today. I've got one last question for you before we wrap up here. Like to ask this to everybody. So what do you do to stay agile in your role and how do you find a way to do it consistently?
- [24:58]
B
It's a tough one, man. AI is moving real fast. I think my biggest thing is reading a lot right now. It's reading everything and it's playing with the tools. And I think in our day to day as a product marketer, I'm writing, I'm talking with folks like yourselves. I'm crafting a story. I'm helping my business craft this story and this narrative. And AI has helped me do that. There's these tools that are out there, as you mentioned, OpenAI chat, GPT, you know, Claude from Anthropic, there's lots of others. Right. So at the end of the day, getting access to these, seeing how they can help you, it's looking at data, transforming it, figuring out what to do. I'm leaned into AI and I look at AI in the way that we described it today and I think that's where I keep myself agile. And I'm reading a lot because it's going really fast. What the analysts are saying, what and especially what customers are saying, and. And that's how I'm keeping up with things. But there's a lot of sleepless nights. It's a lot of work. But it's exciting. It's really exciting.
- [25:59]
A
Love it. Yeah. Yeah, agreed. Well, again, I'd like to thank John Finch, Global Vice President of Product Marketing at Ringcentral, for joining us today. You can learn more about John and Ringcentral by following the links in the show Notes thanks again for listening to the Agile Brand brought to you by Tech Systems. If you enjoyed the show, please take a minute to subscribe and leave us a rating so that others can find the show as well. You can access more episodes of the show@theagile brand.com that's theagile brand.com and contact me. If you're interested in consulting or advisory services or are looking for a speaker for your next event, go to www.gregkillstrom.com that's G R E G K I H L S t r o m.com the Agile brand is produced by Missing Link, a Latina owned, strategy driven, creatively fueled production co op. From ideation to creation, they craft human connections through intelligent, engaging and informative content. Until next time, stay curious and stay agile. The agile brand.