>> Live from Orlando, Florida.
It's theCUBE.
Covering Enterprise Connect 2019.
Brought to you by Five9.
>> Hi, welcome to theCUBE. Lisa Martin from Orlando.
Lots going on in theCUBE set obviously as you can just tell.
I'm with Stu Miniman, we're at Enterprise Connect 2019
for day 2, you can hear all the buzz in the expo hall behind
me.
140 vendors exhibiting new products and services.
We're joined by ServiceNow. Venki Subramanian,
head of project management and customer service.
Venki welcome to theCUBE.
>> Thank you.
>> So, ServiceNow. Give us a little of info about your role
and some of the announcements that have come out from this
week.
>> Oh, absolutely yeah. So ServiceNow, I think all of you
are familiar, I'd say, one of the leading Cloud software
vendors.
Our sole purpose is digitizing workflows in the Cloud.
We do that for various different parts of an enterprise,
like the IT workflow, employee experience and customers.
My role in ServiceNow is I lead the project management
for one of the business units,
which is customer service management.
That is focused on providing companies with the
tools and technologies required for them to provide a great
customer experience for their end customers.
So in that role, I'm responsible for defining the product
vision, the roadmap, and working with that engineering team
to release the product and capabilities that our customers
love to use.
>> So Venki, we've heard the keynote this morning,
we heard ServiceNow come up. Tell us a little bit about
at the show, some of the partnerships you're working with.
It's a pretty diverse spectrum of activities going on
where ServiceNow has important plays.
>> Absolutely. So ServiceNow, like I mentioned, plays in
multiple different areas. And helps Enterprise develop great
employee and customer experiences.
So in that sense, this is a very appropriate show
for us to be at,
where we are connecting different parts of the organization
to collaborate.
And to develop great experiences and develop
outcomes for employees and customers.
We have several of our partners, including Five9 right here.
And we partner on various different areas,
like collaboration is a key area of focus for us.
And you heard us mention the Microsoft keynote earlier
today, we partner with them on integrating their teams and
other products with our product portfolio.
Five9 actually serves a different part, different purpose
for us.
Where they enable contact centers to operate
optimally, and they connect that with our customer service
management.
Which actually combines both the customer
engagement aspect and the customer service and the customer
workflow aspects that we provide.
>> Let's dig in to that a little bit more Venki, because
the last day or so Stu and I have been talking a lot about
the customer experience.
It's table stakes for any business,
because as consumers we're so empowered,
we can churn easily, there's always another provider
that's going to be able to deliver something.
And if we're unhappy we have that opportunity easily.
So CS has table stakes. Talk to us about why companies
should make customer service part of those table stakes.
>> Oh absolutely yeah. So if you look at the evolution of
how customer service has evolved over several years -
it started off as a key component of customer relationship
management software.
Customer relationship started with
managing the customer calls and customer data so the
companies can make sense of who their customers are
and how to serve them optimally.
The second stage of evolution added several engagement
capabilities and the customer experience layer on top.
So how do we make sense of all of this data and intelligence
that we're collecting about customers to provide contextual
personalized experiences to those end customers?
Customer service is not just about engagement and
experience, right?
Ultimately customers are looking for outcomes - they want
their services to be delivered uninterrupted for
them and things like that.
That is where we are looking at the third stage of evolution
if you will.
Where we are connecting that customer engagement and
the customer experience layer with different parts of
the organization that needs to work together on a single
platform to be able to deliver an effortless customer
experience - to deliver the results and the outcome that
your customers come to expect.
>> Thank you. Wonder if you could drill down a little bit?
Do you have a customer example you could share of that
or just some specifics to understand how we're cutting
across silos hoping to have the business act as a whole
to improve that customer experience?
>> Absolutely. I can mention a couple of names,
I mean we drink our own champagne, so we are our customer
as well.
ServiceNow uses our own software, our solutions,
to actually deliver customer service and customer
experiences.
One of the other customers that have [unintelligible] for us
is NYCE.
I believe they are probably at this show as well.
And if you look at what they have done, they have been able
to connect their Cloud data center operations, the product
organization, the product engineering and R&D organization,
and customer service on a single platform.
So that when customers report issues they are able to reduce
the effort for customers with great self-service experience
that are contextualized and personalized.
They are able to identify issues and drive all the way
to the root cause a resolution and then provide that
information back to customers so that it's not just
about answering questions faster,
it's about reducing call volumes,
it's about eliminating the root cause of the issue so that
the next customer does not face that and then have to call
you again.
>> So in terms of that integration, it's critical, right?
For all of the key constituents interacting with
the customer to have the data,
at the right time, to be empowered to make
the right decision.
But that integration is challenging.
Can you give us an example of maybe an old-guard company
that has to transform to stay relevant
and to be competitive.
How do they undergo that process?
Maybe it's more of a cultural change
>> Right.
>> To facilitate that integration so ultimately they can
deliver that personalized customer experience that
you're saying more and more we demand as consumers.
>> Right. There are many examples.
But most of it actually starts with the realization
that we need to transform. Right?
And with more and more services or products getting
enabled through technology and technology product services,
that is not an option for companies anymore.
So, it really starts with the realization, it starts with
driving the change top-down.
A lot of it is really driving the change management
throughout the organization.
It involves identifying your customer journeys, mapping
them out and identifying what are their touch points.
It also is a huge challenge for many customer service
executives in a lot of those companies where
there still are that traditional mode of operation,
where they find it difficult
to hold the other parts of the organization responsible.
Customer service is not an island.
Customer service is not the responsibility of a single
department within the company.
It's a mindset that needs to actually percolate down
to every part of the organization.
So really for me, that it where it starts, that is where
I think organizations start to transform.
And then it's about deploying the right tools
and technologies to really make it happen.
>> So Venki, couple of themes that we've been digging into
at this show is how Cloud and AI are transforming a lot of
those spaces.
I don't think we even need to talk about the Cloud piece
when it comes to ServiceNow, because that's a given,
but from an AI standpoint - where does AI and ML fit into
the solutions that you're building to deliver here today?
>> That is a great question. We cannot have a conversation
about customer service or Enterprise collaboration without
mentioning AI.
So if you go back to what I said a little earlier about
the third phase of evolution, where we are now able
to connect the different parts of the company,
different parts of the processes on a single platform.
A lot of that actually ends up providing a lot of insight,
a lot of data.
You need to convert this data into insights,
and that is really where AI comes in.
And then you need to be able to surface those insights
at the right points of consumption to be able to eliminate
the repetitive mundane tasks and to provide value added
capabilities for agents and for customers.
Because nobody wants to waste their time doing the same
thing over and over again, right?
If you talk to a customer service agent, what they really
feel excited about is the ability to serve the customers.
Not being able to write down tons of notes and captioning
all the interaction details.
So that's something that they have to do.
So if we can help them with those aspects with AI, with
automation, with intelligence, that is what makes them
more productive.
And ultimately that is what results in a direct impact on
customer experience positively.
>> So when you're out in the field talking with customers,
as I imagine, as the head of product management you are.
Where do you find ServiceNow coming in and educating
the customers on the opportunities
and the enablers that AI can deliver to them?
Are they still sort of on the fence about this?
Where are you from a consultative perspective?
>> Right right. I think we are past the phase where people
are kind of wrestling.
There are levels of AI, I think we are way past that stage.
Everybody understands the value that it delivers in
different points of consumption for different people.
I think we are at the stage where people are now trying to
understand how fast they can move with this.
How they can apply this, how they can adopt these
technologies with it.
And this is where ServiceNow is trying to really be
an enabler in that process, right?
So we don't want an AI adoption, an AI initiative within a
company to be a science project.
We don't want it to be somewhere in the back office with
a number of geek-scientists and all that.
We really want to bring it to the forefront,
and the way we are doing that is by embedding the AI
capabilities directly into the experience and also by
productizing a lot of those AI-based solutions so that
our customers don't have to start from the very basics.
So we are not asking our customers to go and define
their own data sets and bring a number of data scientists
to identify features and things like that.
What we are saying is, we have already done that heavy
lifting for our customers.
We have identified key scenarios that we can enable, that
can be be powered with AI, we're productizing that,
we're building that into our product directly, and will
bring those innovations into the market.
So just one more point.
Just earlier this month, March 6th actually,
we announced our latest version of our product that
we released during market.
It's called the Metric Release, and Metric Release if
you go and look at it, it's packed with a lot of those
innovations.
For example, customer service. We are able to identify
when a customer service agent is working on a case,
we are able to identify similar issues that other people
might have already reported.
Something that might be already resolved, and the agents
can quickly use that information and resolve this particular
case that they're working on.
Or being able to identify an issue that might be impacting
multiple customers.
>> I wonder if you could give us a little bit of insight as
to just the changing role of the agents and some of the
stressors and strains on them.
Some concerns, like "Okay, wait."
Do your customers look at automation as
something that will displace agents,
make their lives better?
How much do they worry about that agent, agent retention,
and how happy their agents are?
>> I think that's a huge priority for most customer service
organizations.
I would say it should be a priority for all customer service
organizations.
And the reason is very simple, right?
A lot of these simple, easy capabilities
are offered through self-service.
As a customer, I'm sure, our first option would not be
to pick up a phone and call and talk to an agent.
That would be a few steps down the line.
And that experience should definitely be enabled and should
be easy, but when issues show up at agent's desks they
are much more complex then what it used to be.
And the expectation is that I don't want to be handed
over to somebody else, the last thing I want to hear is
"Oh wait, let me hand you to an expert."
So that's where these agents need to be upskilled, they need
to be empowered with tools and technology.
I think the term that we use in the industry is they need
to be super agents, right?
They're not the people that sit and answer a call and
then pass it on to an expert, but they are the people
who can actually take a call and resolve the issue
all at the first-time engagement.
>> And if I understand it, some of the solutions and products
that you're helping to build take that agent and give them
their super powers.
>> Exactly, exactly yea, that's our goal.
So we have interfaces that we actually design and build
specifically for that persona.
And we augment several of those experiences with
applications of AI and technology.
And we also leverage a lot of partnerships in that process.
For example, the ability for an agent to seamlessly look
at the call coming in, to be able to identify who
the customer is, what is the issue they might be calling
about, previous interactions I've seen.
All of that stuff in a single pane of glass, and that
optimized experience, that's a priority for us.
That is something that we bake into our products.
>> And how is it that agents want to be trained these days?
One of the gentlemen in the customer panel this morning
was talking about, I think from Continental AG,
that they identified about 20 different ways that internal
users, whether they're agents or not, want to be trained.
If it's "send me an email", "shoot me a video", "send me
a YouTube link"?
What are you guys finding as you're looking at these
different personas?
Any sort of top five training mechanisms
boiling up to the top that you are going to be
consistently delivering?
>> I mean training and upscaling is a huge priority because
if we just look at how do we make an agent a super agent?
They need to be provided with the right kind of trainings
and upscaling of opportunities.
There are various different ways, I'm not an expert on
the training methodologies itself.
But one thing we can all realize is, it has to be relevant,
it has to be provided at the point of consumption.
And it also should be something that is captured back
so that the knowledge that gets created in the process
of researching and resolving an issue, it gets
institutionalized, it gets put back into a system that is
leveraged by everyone else in the organization.
So those are capabilities that I think should be important
for everyone.
>> Last question for you as we're here at Enterprise Connect.
What are the exciting things that people can see and feel
and touch with ServiceNow that this event?
>> At this event? First I would say that we have a booth.
We are showing our product demonstrations, and you can talk
to us, there are experts who are here at the event.
I have a small speaking assignment later today, I have
a session that I will be talking at.
What you will actually see is some of our latest innovations
that we are bringing to the market with the new release.
So you will see how we can expand or extend the customer
self-service to not just web but also to mobile.
We are releasing that new mobile capabilities for agents,
which can also be sent out to your customers.
You will see a brand new agent interface that I just
talked about, and how we are packaging some of
the agent intelligence mission learning capabilities
into that.
And you will also see a lot of our powerful workflow
platform and how you can apply that for orchestrating
and optimizing processes.
>> Wow, a lot to learn. A lot of knowledge to be gleaned.
Thank you, thank you so much for joining Stu and me on
theCUBE this afternoon. We appreciate your time.
>> Thank you. It was a pleasure talking to you.
>> For Stu Miniman, I am Lisa Martin.
You are watching theCUBE.